"What's xpi? Is that a new Windows?"

No atmosphere = no natural disasters my ass.

Because companies that pay us to do these things care an awful lot about how their site looks to the most amount of people. Then again, they hire people for "SEO," so it's not like they know what they're talking about. But who's going to tell them that?

Yeah, pretty much. I don't expect anything to happen, but it's a lot of changes that bring some percentage of the prior userbase along to the new version. Now we'll have more people spread out among version numbers (albeit arbritrary). It's happening fast enough that a security mistake in one of the many versions gone by between then and now could pop up eventually, meaning we need to (for example) tailor our scripts around one of them.

But again, yeah I hear ya, probably nothing to actually be concerned about.

As a web designer, they're turning my hair white with all these versions. Not so much that we need worry about things becoming incompatible, etc. but it's spreading out the userbase, which is just inherently more difficult to ensure cross-version identicality.

It's Sprint's network, which roams onto the Verizon network. As a subscriber, I can tell you there's few places I can't get data from.

Yep, exactly. Why the hell does Swype, for one, need to know who is calling me, from which number?
It pisses me off that good programs are conditional on compromising your own privacy. If only society were more discerning with what they agree to, these things wouldn't be so rampant. It's there because we accept it.

Again, leaving Detroit in the dust. Innovation has always been the key to success... when did we get so tired of it?

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

-Nikola Tesla

Just a thought... they carefully cut out all excess weight for a shuttle launch because every extra pound is some $massive.amount. On the way down, however, is it really more of a "pack it all in" mentality?

Different sorts of information, yes, but also far more advanced sorts. We will still need to memorize the basics ... language, math principles, rules of science, etc. to be able to learn at high levels.

It's a double-edged sword: being able to look up the bits of information you don't already know can be a great mental bridge-builder, but being able to recall many complex ideas at once (working in advanced physics, for example) requires one to have instant recall of many unrelated laws, theories, and bits of information to forge ahead and create new ideas. It narrows the gap between people learning and working at low and medium levels of knowledge, but too much reliance in society could stymie advanced work.

All Civilization-franchise manuals soon to be confiscated and destroyed in the name of national security.

Libertarianism works great until you run into the tragedy of the commons. Your use of a $0.50 bulb over the course of your lifetime affects others, both in increased energy demand (and thus higher energy prices), and higher pollution rates. It does not matter if the price increase is $0.0001 per bulb, or if the pollution increase is equivalent to one lit match per bulb. These are increases that add up to important figures when others do the same as you.

So, yes, if you want to get flame-y, it IS the government's job to mold your behavior if the behavior negatively affects civilization.