Damn it, Steve! Fine! Time for plan B! Put up the artist rendition of the sexy anthropomorphized herpes-infected man-whore mosquito! Just in time for the 50 Shades of Grey movie!

Error. You are proceeding from a healthy input of facts. The constraints of the thread are to proceed from a health input of science fiction.

Then, one day you get distracted and don't see or hear the car backing out and CRUNCH! You become the one with the handicap.

The sabotage here was more intense and without consequence. Also, any ticket involving a competing DSL service went to the very bottom priority every time. It could literally take a month to get a plug inserted into an adjacent jack. It would, of course get 'accidentally' unplugged a week later and take another month to get plugged back in.

Then, as you said, they got rid of it.

Actually, many businesses had a credit surcharge for a while. Then the credit cards added a no surcharge clause to the merchant contracts. So they hiked their prices and offered a cash discount. Then the credit cards added a no cash discount clause.

Yes, services cost money. That's no excuse for hiding how much it costs and forcing it to be paid for by people not using the service (for example, everyone that pays cash).

Many merchants prefer cash because cash can't be charged back after the fact. For example, if the card turns out to be stolen but not yet reported or the customer files a false claim.

Dibbs on opening the cage! I'll get to work practicing my mad scientist laugh! "Muahahahahaha! YES! GO FORTH AND FEED, MY CHILDREN!"

Yeah, if you're in the market for cheap plastic crap and aren't terribly picky about quality, that's definitely the place to go. Hopefully that's not where my doctor goes to get his pee-hole probulators. There are some goods where cheap wal-mart quality simply won't do. Hello Kitty Branded dildos, yes, pee-hole probes, no. Because you know if that goddamn thing breaks off inside you, doc's gonna have to go for the forceps, which were probably also made for cheap in China. And you know, next thing you know, you have 18 things broken off and stuck up your pee hole. All because your goddamn PPO thought it'd be a good idea to do bargain-basement shopping for dick probing. And also didn't think you might maybe want some drugs when some guy is digging around up your pee hole. Entirely hypothetically speaking, naturally.

Please don't trot that old nag out again. Major metro areas with much greater population density also have crappy service.

How exactly could Google even stop Microsoft? The OS allows for side loading and alternative stores. If Microsoft can't get on the Play store, they could just sell their stuff through Amazon.

That summary makes absolutely no sense.

WITH a warrant, a pentrace is still available. That is, who did this phone call and where was it at the time. But note they're not complaining about phones that encrypt voice communication. Neither Google nor Apple are proposing to do that. They're complaining that they can't read your address book or paw through your email and photos. They're complaining that your papers might be secured nearly as well as Capone's (but not quite as well unless you have a tommy gun).

The thing is, most crimes eventually come down to some sort of physical activity somewhere that can be observed or to money moving from one place to another which can be traced (yes, including bitcoin).

For us here in Norway PSTN/ISDN was our bad time, when the one monopolist could charge pretty much everything they wanted. When we got DSL, the market was deregulated and lots of offers showed up. In the US, far more people get Internet via cable, which obviously has far more reason to protect their traditional business. As for recent fiber roll-outs it's really the power companies that got the ball rolling there, eyeing an opportunity to break into a new market by running fiber optics as well as power lines. Obviously the incumbents couldn't sit around and watch that and it became a race to lay down fiber first, since it's rarely profitable to come second. So it's a very nice three-way race to roll it out, though the prices are fairly steep.

Replaceable battery? Why? this is not 1998 where batteries only last a year or two. I haven't replaced a laptop battery in 4 years. and it STILL holds 95% capacity.

Dammit, Why do all laptop makers think that nobody does real work on their laptops. 17" 4K display in as small of a body as possible.

GIVE IT TO ME!!!!

I think what you are proposing is "long term occupation", and I agree that *can* be made to work. It does, however, have significant costs, and opportunities for disaster. The US occupation of Japan, and the Allies occupation of Germany were examples of successes, but it's not clear that this either could have been done in Iraq, or that there wouldn't have been intolerable costs. And there clearly wasn't the long term political will to accomplish it.