Actually, a lot of smartphones don't. My understanding is that "standard" USB is limited to 500 milliamps or so; the wall chargers sold with most phones can output 1amp or more. The phone detects the difference (in my case, detecting whether pins 2 and 3 are shorted together) and will charge much faster off of an AC source--on the order of less than an hour vs 3-4 hours.

No it isn't, unless you're doing stupid things like constantly monitoring GPS position to trigger various tasks. Tasker is typically at the very bottom of the batter use percentage list, with cell standby, display, and my music player at the top.

Perhaps the company's lawyers are on salary, and therefore want to limit their work?

Yes, everything OP wants can be done with Tasker, except that it can't parse email... unless you use K9mail. Tasker has support for that app, letting you parse the emails like you do with SMS. I've been debating whether to get K9mail myself, just for that reason.

They were just the first two that came to mind. I could sit here all day and list them out.

As for the police, they try to deter crime, but generally they're just doing the investigation afterward and trying to catch the guy after the act. If you think that you will (a) be able to call them when someone decides to attack you and/or the place you are in, and (b) that they will be able to be there in seconds, you're fooling yourself. If the police aren't actually right there, then everything will likely be over by the time they arrive. Heck, it's going to take at least a minute or two just for the 911 call to be taken and for the call to go out.

Tell that to the 71-year-old man in Florida who stopped an armed robbery because he was carrying. Or the 57-year-old grandmother who fought back against two armed carjackers. Yep, no reason at all. Because it won't do any good.

Because they are necessary (but not sufficient) for the rest of society to function. It's also much harder to find people qualified to work and/or teach in STEM fields than the other ones.

As for your list of other subjects, I'd throw medicine under the STEM category. Sports have plenty of focus already--if anything, maybe a little too much focus. There are enough arts, history, and social studies majors sitting around with no job prospects already; they should be focusing on securing themselves financially before indulging in their hobbies. And WTF is "solidarity" doing on a list of areas of study?

This system may put out open flames, but it's not going to do anything about heated gases or smoldering combustion, and I don't think it'll do much to prevent reignition, flashover, backdraft, etc.

I'm in engineering, and have a similar situation. I could get sizeable pay raises by going the contractor route, or by finding another employer. But as it stands now, my pay is decent, benefits are good, I have a 4-day workweek, I'm vested in the pension and getting close to a fourth week of vacation. I also have a fairly interesting job, a short commute, friendly coworkers, and (usually) intelligent and reasonable management. Oh, and we get paid for overtime.

Taking another I'd be giving up a lot of the above, plus having to move if I want to stay in my field. Not only is moving a pain in itself, but also would take us farther from our families (most parents/grandparents/siblings live within 4 hours). And there's the weather factor--neither of us will ever move somewhere that it snows on a regular basis if it can be helped.

So yeah. I don't plan on going anywhere.

GP is from the UK. In British English, collective nouns (companies, sports teams, etc.) are treated as plural, and use the plural forms of verbs--hence "Microsoft have" and "Google don't".

In American English, collective nouns are treated as singular, in which case "Microsoft has" and "Google doesn't" would be correct. Unless the noun itself is plural (e.g., "the Atlanta Braves"), in which case the verbs are usually (but not always) plural.

It's like honor vs. honour, or color vs. colour. Either is correct, but you should be consistent with your usage.

The origin of this difference was once explained to me as being a result of the American Civil War. Previous to the war, plural collectives (as in British English) were used, and it was common to see "the United States are", since state identity was still important, and the prevailing mindset was one of a loose collection of independent states (albeit a little tighter than under the Articles of Confederation).

After the Civil War, the idea of the US as a single unified country was reinforced, hence "the United States is". This bled over into everyday speech.

I have not independently verified this, however.

Probably about the same time people stopped using the parking brake when they parked. They prefer to slam the car into "park", and leave the whole weight of the oversized SUV/pickup/APC riding on one little half-engaged pin in their automatic transmission. And then they can pull that pin back out under load when they go to leave.

SCOTUS also declared that the penalty wasn't a tax (and therefore wasn't affected by the Anti-Injuction Act), right before they declared that it was.

The best part is this... the majority opinion says

Therefore, it is not a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injuction Act (which says you can't challenge taxes beforehand; you have to pay first and then sue).

And then they go on to say Congress could have made it a tax, and that would have been ok, so we're calling it a tax and saying it's ok.

So, it's not a tax, but it is a tax. Which one is it?

This is the part I'm upset about. I don't really give two flying pieces of excrement about the law itself anymore; we're already doomed to Greece redux since our appetites are too big for our wallets. But the government blatantly saying "we'll just contort language however we need to so we can do anything we want" does not bode well at all.

I'm not aware of any public schools around here with shop programs; I believe they were phased out in the push to emphasize "college-prep" classes. We didn't have any when I went through (98-02).

My siblings and I grew up using tools--power saws, drills, rivet guns, and so on. We also learned all of the other independent living skills (laundry, cooking, basic home and car maintenance, etc.) well before leaving the house.

No, it's just an example of the old Soviet-style communist approach where the crew can't be trusted, so everything is set up to run automatically and/or from the ground. Once that has been proven to work, and if the crew is deemed reliable enough, they are allowed to try a manual docking.