Meh -- the nomenclature is pretty much meaningless. I bought an "ultraportable" about 7 years ago, a "netbook" about 4 years ago, and a "ultrabook" last year. They all pretty much were smaller-than-usual laptops, they were all underpowered compared to standard size laptops when I bought them, and they all weigh pretty much the same thing. The only thing that has changed over time is that the prices have gone down, the value has gone up, and they're generally thinner (usually with slightly large screens). But they're basically the same market. Anyone declaring that "netbooks are dead" is just buying into a marketing ploy because everyone kept saying "netbooks are dead" in 2012. So now they're basically the same, just fewer of the ones with really tiny screens... but we call them "ultrabooks" because it sounds snazzier.

It may have existed for millennia, but until the past few decades it was commonly perceived as "cheating" someone out of money. The assumption 50 years ago was pretty much that anything you bought could and should be repaired, until so many parts fail that it doesn't make sense repair it anymore. I still own and use my mother's kitchen stand mixer, which is nearly 50 years old. I could say the same thing for a number of things that have been passed down to me and still work even though they were manufactured a couple generations ago. My grandmothers used to repair clothing rather than simply buying something new when a hole appeared.

Nowadays, we just expect that most things we buy will fall apart or wear out in a few years, but this is a radical departure from what the world was like 50 years ago or more.

It isn't "larger." We've always accepted there must be some limits on free speech. In the U.S., you can't incite people to riot lawlessly, for example. In much of the EU, there are stronger restrictions, like not being able to publicly insult someone else's reputation (e.g. in Germany), an idea that goes back quite some time. (Even in the US, it used to be justification for a duel, a practice which I believe had its roots in medieval Germanic trial practices which could involve combat.)

This seemingly novel "right to be forgotten" is simply an extension of much older law like this in the EU, which prevented punishment for offenses after time has been served. (Ever read Les Miserables, for example, where Jean Valjean is supposed to go about for the rest of his life carrying a yellow card branding him as a convict for stealing a loaf of bread? That kind of crap was real, and reforms ere implemented to allow convicts to move on after time was served and they were "rehabilitated" -- they were essentially granted the right to have their past forgotten.)

So this isn't a new right, and it has been codified in various ways before. But even if it were, rights have to evolve with technology. Before the printing press, there was no reason for "freedom of the press," but after a century of governments trying to suppress it and control it, a movement to assert this right began in earnest in the 1600s, which we now accept to be a bedrock principle of law. But the right not to be publicly defamed is much older than that, so how do we adjudicate between these in the present case with Google?

I'm not saying that the EU ruling is actually workable right now, but your assertion that this is entirely new legal territory is demonstrably false.

First, because we've fought wars over the right to live our private lives without government or others tracking everything we do.

But if you need a stronger justification: because something may actually be false information, or it may present information in a misleading way. Lots of people are charged or arrested or whatever everyday and ultimately released because the allegations turned out to be false. But all those newspaper stories which are technically okay because they say "alleged" never go away, and since dropping charges rarely sells news as well as the initial outrage, newspapers and media often never even bother reporting that charged or were dropped (or never even filed) or the person was acquitted. Even if the newspaper prints something about that in a blurb on page 20, is your employer going to go through hundred of Google hits to find that, or just read the headline in the top links that you were accused of child abuse or whatever? (And by the way, just for one example, if you think false accusations of child abuse or neglect are rare, look up the stats -- child protection services in the U.S. removes something like 100,000 kids per year for allegations that ultimately turn out to be completely unsubstantiated... and that's not even counting the questionable cases.)

The standard for libel or slander is quite high in the U.S., particularly against a news media source. (It varies in other countries.) You basically need to show that a news source acted with "reckless disregard" for the truth, and often a few "alleged" adjectives serves as sufficient protection.

I don't know what a workable system should look like, and this current Google thing has a lot of problems. But the questions do deserve to be asked, because we are dealing with conflicts between long-standing "rights," which are just framed in a new way and more prominent in an internet age.

By definition, the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian is that a vegetarian will consume animal derived products (including proteins), just not animals themselves. Hence your statement is correct for vegans, false for vegetarians.

Fired? Maybe not, unless this was a pattern of bad behavior. Suspended for a week or two? Yes, absolutely.

Just my opinion, but this goes beyond a minor "flaw" or a slight error in judgment. The guy had already shown his willingness to publicize his dissatisfaction by tweeting about a minor inconvenience, and this employee provided him with a much worse story to tell. Any person with common sense should have seen this as the potential for some seriously bad publicity.

There were many ways to handle this and defray the damage from the initial tweet, from a sincere apology and perhaps offer for free future tickets or upgrade (if the employee wanted to use kindness) or a response tweet thanking the customer for his feedback and also thanking all the other customers for following the rules (if the employee wanted to be passive aggressive but still make a point).

Escalating a minor disagreement with a customer into a public fight is just not a good idea, and employees who can't avoid that do deserve punishment. Customers can be jerks sometimes. Employees have a corporate image to uphold, though, and they need to aspire to a higher standard -- they're getting paid to be there. The customer was not.

LOL. Awesome. Thanks for that.

Also, to be clear -- I was joking. Realize this is a parody before I get flamed with responses from the libertarian squad or the Society for Boarding in Awesome, Really Reliable Order (or SBARRO for short -- ever wonder why they are in so many airports?) yammering onto me about how I insulted them.

Somebody did something on the interwebs (or intertubes or whatever those new-fangled contraptions are called). This is a tech site, so we've gotta cover it!

(Actually, if you're serious -- it's here because seating processes on airplanes make everyone bitchy for some reason, and everyone thinks it's inefficient and thinks they could plan it better. So, somebody complaining about some aspect of that is bound to get all the anal retentive wackos here worked up and spouting their favorite ideas about what's wrong with planes and boarding and kids on planes and snakes on planes and whatever. That and... FREE SPEECH, LIBERTARIAN MUMBO-JUMBO, AYN RAND IS A GODDESS!!!! etc. P.S. I'm NOT saying Southwest was in the right here -- just why this story will get everyone worked up.)

Huh? How does that produce greater efficiency? Let's see, we could:

(1) Let families board with the first half-dozen groups of random people with various privileges ("Now let's have our first class..." [2 people board, a minute later] "Now let's have business class..." [5 people board, two minutes later] "Now let's have our elite Silver whoop-di-do members..." [no one boards, three minutes later] "Now let's have our Bronze not-so-much-whoop members" [2 guys from the back take 30 seconds to realize they were called and slowly make their way up, chatting on their phones the whole way]... etc., etc.).

In that case, the families could get settled with almost no one else on the plane, and almost no one else in economy trying to find their seats.

OR...

(2) We wait until last, and the families join the end of the long line stopped almost at the gate itself of people waiting to get on. The families with more bags per person and more people to strap in and get settled in their seats per person then spend 10 minutes wandering up and down the aisles trying to find places for their bags and get their kids settled... while the attendants get increasingly testy as they have to go up and down reopening luggage bins and find a pillow for Jr. since he's asleep on Dad's shoulder and no one on the plane wants him to wake up when he's strapped in the seat. And the plane is now going to take off late because we needed 15 minutes to board 10 whoop-di-do members who didn't have to do anything, but now it's crunch-time for the parents who could have already been settled in.

I completely understand why airlines do NOT let families on early, because they now charge people extra for those privileges. But if they were trying to maximize efficiency instead of profits, it would definitely make sense to move the families on when fewer people are obstacles on the plane.

Yeah, it often is within the U.S. too, particularly for infants and very young children. But I mostly see it used for parents with kids in strollers or whatever, not for older kids or even relatively small kids.

Yeah, the problem is the escalation of fee structures in recent years. 15 years ago your policy made perfect sense. But now most airlines charge for any checked baggage, which means more people stuff everything into larger carry-ons, and many planes don't have enough room to stuff everyone's bag in.

So, everyone's worried about boarding early enough so that they don't have to have their bag stuffed 10 seats behind them, which will make them the last off the plane.

But, of course, it isn't enough for airlines to charge fees for checked bags -- now they figured out that people don't want to worry about the hassle of finding space for their carry-on, so now for an extra fee many airlines will let you board early (with business class or whatever).

So, it makes it really hard for the airlines to "give away" that option to families to board earlier, when somebody else in coach paid $35 or whatever that day for that privilege. In addition, there seem to be a lot of folks out there who assume that anyone travelling with a small child on a plane must be an evil person wanting to annoy other travelers deliberately by bringing a kid on board (when the reality is that most parents know they usually only travel with small kids on planes when there is no other reasonable choice). So, it will just lead to even more (unjustified?) feelings of unfairness if these parents are given seemingly special privileges.

It's the same crap that causes people to cut people off or not let people merge in traffic. Sometimes it's worth a really insignificant sacrifice to let everything flow better, and letting the kids on early would probably make the entire boarding process faster and smoother. But most people would probably just resent it... and so airlines don't do it anymore.

I would qualify this slightly and say that the plastics may be "just as good" in some ways, but they do feel different. And I know some people who have strong preferences. Ivory's porousness changes the way keys feel and how easy it is to grip them (or slip), particularly if your hands are sweating (as many people do when performing in front of crowds under hot lights). And on lesser quality pianos, ivory often had a distinctive texture that... well, just feels different. High-end older pianos had highly polished and very even keys (sometimes most "silky" feeling) that might feel similar to modern "perfect" plastic, but most pianos were not as consistent. Personally, it doesn't matter to me, but I can certainly understand those who might prefer one or the other.

(By the way -- just to be clear, I'm NOT trying to argue in favor of Word or doc/x. I personally prefer LaTeX and pdf... but I've experienced lots of conversion woes.)