Seems to me that the problem is people wanting to complain over nothing. So what if an album (and it's not like it's something offensive) gets added to your iTunes account as a 'purchased' product?

Maybe Apple could have added a new category with a separate list of "Free Media" or something, but seriously? I'm no fan of Apple but this is a storm in a molehill.

In addition to the other suggestions made here, one use case for machine lip reading is tracking multiple simultaneous conversations in a crowd. You could theoretically have searchable index of anything anyone said in view of a particular camera (whereas once more than 2-3 people are talking at once, it becomes almost impossible to separate out their individual speech.)

So things like rounded corners, for example?

Leader of a large corporation says that corporation's product is essential to the future of the human race.

Exactly. I hate seeing 3D printing touted as a mass production technique when in fact it's terrible for that. Traditional mass production methods like injection molding, vacuum forming, milling, etc. are intrinsically better in most cases and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

3D printing is great for prototyping and very short production runs, not for mass production.

How about benefits to people who actually create innovative solutions to real commercial problems instead of Yet Another Ripoff Of Software I Don't Want To Pay For?

Exactly. Who the hell pays an "evangelist" unless it's for their own product? Generally the hard part is getting them to shut up...

Any idea whether it'll work internationally? Android 4.4 has NFC transaction support but it's only actually supported in the U.S.

They think "reds under the bed" worked for decades during the cold war, and it's been just long enough that it might work again.

Not any more! That's kind of the point of these pushes to alter the way copyrights are enforced online: They want to shift the burden of proof from the copyright holder to the alleged infringer.

Actually involuntary euthanasia = murder. That's kind of the reason that euthanasia isn't legal. It's potentially very hard to prove (especially when the patient has some cognitive disability) whether or not it was in fact voluntary or not.

Well, if a substance is affecting your brain then it's gonna be either covalent or ionic. There's not really a lot of other options.

They'll just want to read our brains, electronically.

Of course, before they can read our brains they'd have to be removed and prepared.

Like, diced.

No it hasn't. A machine that will perform a given task correctly 9999/10000 times is 100x more reliable than a human that will only perform that same task correctly 9900/10000 times. A rare combination of factors that make the machine fail don't make it absolutely broken, any more than the human is "broken and no longer a matter of probabilities" if they make a mistake sometimes.

I'm not sure what metaphysical definition you're using for 'aware'. When a control system (biological or not) gathers information via a sensor and processes that information in a way that can affect the system's behaviour, then it's 'aware' of the thing that sensor measures.

As for the straw-man argument about the stroke victim, consider this alternate scenario: You've got a passenger in the back seat of your conventional, manual-controlled car and you're heading to the hospital. You have a seizure and lose vision in both eyes. You're "aware" that your video sensors have failed, and refuse to drive further. Would I, the passenger in the back seat, prefer to be perfectly safe with the car pulled over, or would I prefer that you kept going despite failed sensors (maybe with me shouting out "left a bit!" "right a bit!" to try and guide you)?

Yep. I have it on my manual Supra, touching the clutch or brake will drop it out so if you have to change gears you have to hit 'resume' afterwards to turn it back on with the same speed setpoint. Once you get used to it, it's a pain driving without it.