I don't really care how many people are wasting their education (I dislike it but we all make mistakes), but some of us need to get work done and/or take notes and it's hard to write by hand as fast as you can tex. I don't think I'd have gotten through undergrad without my laptop.

Or performance on the input type. Sure lossless compression cares less what it operates on, but you can still have algorithms which make more sense for different types of input. As a trivial example, if the input to your compressor is one of five GB-long sequences known in advance, you can compress that down to 3 bits.

The public doesn't need to catch everything. The public has to have a high enough chance to catch anything that Google doesn't want to take that risk. I fear the carriers a hell of a lot more than Google.

Arguably, if the cops are recording it too, they can show the context you didn't see in the shock vid on YouTube. I fail to see why the cops are against this; it's nice to be able to prove you're telling the truth when you have the public calling for your blood.

I agree that they're dumb, but playing devil's advocate: these devices are effectively multipurpose tools that come with a lot of hardware that could be purposed flexibly. Anything the phone can do, I suspect they already have: GPS, compass, radio, camera, etc...but suppose you now want your GPS device to be able to keep "bookmarks"? To triangulate a fire position from mulitple units? I don't know shit about military actions but I can see the value in a rapidly repurposable portable general computer. Plus office use.

My main concerns are security, dependence, cost, and durability. Mostly the last one. Grad school isn't exactly a combat zone but my electronics still take a beating in day-to-day use.

You screw up the country, it dies and you no longer get paid. You do poorly, you get fires [sic], you don't get paid.

I don't think I could give up my tomatoes even if they were...

Don't be so smug. I look to Britain for what rights we'll be losing across the pond in 6-12 mo.

Which is why I bought my phone direct, bypassing a carrier. Can't tell me not to tether, can't force shitty software on me, can't shove ads in every orifice...

Well that was fast...

Dryness aside, I want to live in a society where the government can get anyone's data (logs, cameras, etc), provided they follow due process and have a good reason, but not everyone's data. The cameras in the subway make me feel safe when they're wiped every week and no info gets out except if there's an incident. It's when it all gets linked together with face recognition software into a global surveillance network that I start to panic.

...I want to start failing.

Yeah but I've usually found that sites like yours [judging purely on the JS addiction, not judging content or anything] aren't worth visiting enough of the time for me to bother. Half the time I hit a JS only page I just close the window, the other half I might allow.

It's ok though; there aren't enough of me you need to care about me and there aren't enough of you I need to care about you so it all works out;)

I've never seen a site that didn't work perfectly withj "Temporarily allow all this page", except, eg a site where I was in the middle of something [order form] and the refresh interrupted the flow. In other words, if I did it first thing on landing it would work fine.

The thing here is I'm fine with Google's text ads getting through; they amuse me, are sometimes useful, are fast, and aren't obnoxious

I suspect it's because Google knows that virtually no one uses AdBlock, and that those who do aren't the sort that tend to click on ads anyway. Same reason they let you opt out of their DoubleClick tracking cookie -- you won't bother.