WhatsApp is exclusive to phones. What sense does not allowing its use on laptops make? Chase Bank's check deposit app is exclusive to phones. What sense does not allowing its use on PCs with a flatbed scanner make?

Unless you pair a Bluetooth keyboard and plug in an external monitor. What sense does forbidding this make, other than to make iPhone users buy more Macs?

Even if there is "nothing morally wrong", a copyright infringement lawsuit can still bankrupt you.

Which is difficult if nobody's advertising entry-level positions for recent graduates in your home city, as was my case. Or by "first job [...] paying peanuts" did you actually mean a minimum wage service job such as food service or retail?

You're joking but I feel that the 2nd Amended does guarantee the people the same weapons to which the government has access. Now of course we can't have John Q Public running around with a thermonuclear device so I believe the solution would be that the government can't have them either.

ISIS is worth an estimated $2 billion and has been around since 1999 and would love to nuke any Western target but they haven't. That they haven't tells me they don't have a bomb. That they don't have a bomb tells me that it isn't that easy.

Science isn't speculation any more than drawing is sharpening a pencil. You seriously think SF writers do extensive research into feasibility & utility rather than what will look cool/make a good plot device/drive merchandising sales?

Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film

What if you is hating them?

Am I supposed to be impressed? I was playing with Omnibot in the 80s and it could do everything this POS can do.

They would return no hits. Shazam and Google Song Search work with specific recordings. They cannot identify a new recording of an existing song. SoundHound claims to be able to identify humming, but it failed to find matches to pop songs that I used to test. Nor can any such automated service identify the sort of comprehensive nonliteral similarity for which Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were recently busted.

Science fiction attempts to anticipate what is useful.

It does nothing of the sort. See the second word? It tells a story. It's entertainment.

Arithmetic != mathematics.

Roughly the same percentage can form the possessive plural properly. In English.

somewhat familiar to traditional time pieces

So my kitchen clock will see it and say "Hmm, I've seen that before"?

But is it also trivial to ensure that your music is truly original, not an infringing accidental copy of an existing song?

As I explained in a comment to a previous story, US copyright law provides for a compulsory license to stream sound recordings at a fixed royalty so long as a service resembles radio more than a jukebox. Pandora, for example, selects songs in a similar style to the artist whose name you key in and is therefore not considered an "interactive service" that substitutes for purchases.