Finally, the curse of Verizon is coming to GSM!

True. Keep your second amendment weapons.

But please, only the ones that were around when the second amendment was written. At a shot rate of maybe 1 per minute, and its accuracy, everybody wins.

Those letters, "Abmahnung", are different as they have been used for many years, especially ever since computers got popular ... some of the most famous cases initially came to light when one lawyer from Munich, Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, sent those letters to hundreds or thousands of (mostly) school children for them swapping home computer games ... what made it bad was that it turned out to be some sort of entrapment in many cases ... i.e., the infamous "Tanja" or other cover identities were used to trick children into sending him pirated software, then used that to threaten the kids with suing, which could be avoided by paying the sums listed in the "Abmahnung". While at that time there were quite a few cases, it was nowhere close to what is going on nowadays ... those letters have become an easy income for some German lawyers, with little work and nice 4-digit income per letter ... often, they are also less attackable than in this case, where multiple factual and technical mistakes were made ..

The interesting part also is that all the requests were sent to the same court, which in turn had multiple internal offices handle the requests ... so, as usual, interpreting the law once again differs between the people ...

That's another point of criticism - while P2P or download is a deliberate action, leading to local storage of files, streaming videos from a free site that is not by definition a pirate site makes it near impossible for users to know they are breaking copyright laws ...
Which is why the letters to the court left out the word "streaming" - for streaming, no court order would have been issued (most likely, anyway). Which, in turn, should get the lawyer knowingly misleading the court disbarred or at least fined ...

Not only is the NSA breaking the law, they also consist of idiots who ought to know better about social engineering and the likes ... Does anybody need more proof that the NSA should be shut down?

Not very surprisingly, the news about European countries' secret agencies cooperating with GCHQ and NSA easily explain the reluctance of said countries' politicians to really go after the US and UK for spying on them and their citizens ... after all, it's the local agencies that do the work ... too bad that too few of the citizens care ... ("I have nothing to hide")

Guess what they say is true: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're not being watched ...

... how long, until the only ones able to correctly solve the captchas are computers ... throughout the last couple modifications to the generated images, it already got to the point where I'd have to reload the images multiple times until I got one that I could get close to being able to read ...but maybe my natural senses are just not up to par with AI ...

... when all 80 Million Germans were under surveillance, everything seemed to be OK ... political leaders said everything was fine, all questions had been answered, go back to your everyday life ... (mainly because German BND most likely was completely involved, also) But now all of a sudden they are p*ssed because they may have been a target ... sorry, but _I_ am also concerned about _MY_ privacy ... why do you believe you are better than anybody else of the 80 million citizens? After all, _YOU_ are also a citizen, and _WE_ have put you where you are now ... so, next time your citizens are under attack (so to speak), remember what it feels like and do your God damn job right!

Did I mention most politicians suck?

... even in that area, China generates more jobs than the US ... I wonder how many of those jobs have been outsourced by the NSA ... ;)

http://cdn.iofferphoto.com/img/item/985/572/87/o_2DeyRlFrMivDa12.jpg (mine is still somewhere in the attic I believe ... or the basement ... after 40+ years ...)

Anything else means you're not fit to be a parent, IMNSHO ...

What's the deal with "easily damaged" USB connectors? In all my life, out of probably 3 dozens, I've not had a single cable - or device - break. I've had one cable (cheapest kind, ~1$ or so) that had gotten worn out, losing contact when wiggled, but for that price I won't be complaining. WTF are you people doing with your devices and cables? Or is everything you buy from the $1 shop?

Right. Humanity has gotten so d@mn lazy that - in case of not being able to see the correct orientation - rotating the plug by 180 is too f'ing hard to do ...
Sorry, but many of proprietary "advances" are just ways of securing companies' income, with minimal advantages for the customer ... e.g., as you mentioned it - micro USB cable: ~1-2$. Lightning cable: ~20$

For one, you should get your numbers straight ... I seriously doubt the number on "accidental", but that may depend on the definition of "accidental" ... anyway, defining 100 accidental gun deaths as "negligible" does really say a lot of how much you value a person's life ...
Also, what about the thousands of other gun deaths in the US every year? Are they also negligible in your eyes, after all they aren't "accidental"?

The increased usage increases the problem of bad throughput ... haven't used it in a while, but when I played around with it a bit, latency (which would be expected) but more importantly throughput was bad to unbearable ... more users require more performance at the exit nodes, which means more exit nodes are needed ...
Having run an exit node for a short while myself, I know of the results: within less than 4 weeks, we received an inquiry into the owner/operator of the machine with the node's IP address, due to reported child porn access. Luckily, the police seemed to be halfway knowledgeable, and with the provided infos on the operation of the node (stats about the node throughput, etc.) they stopped investigating the issue. Needless to say node operation was terminated the day we received the initial inquiry. Without decent "provider status protection" for exit nodes, the risk for operators may be a bit too high unless extensive (and expensive) measures are taken to block illegal material ... which, in turn, makes the whole network subject to other manipulation, and goes against the reason for the network ...