Star Trek Voyager: Say what you will about the series as a whole (admittedly having problems whose root cause starts with the words "Brannon" and "Braga"), but Janeway generally had the respect of her crew, spoke to the other female characters about whatever the relevant topic was (engineering, Seven of Nine's character development, etc.), and ultimately got her crew home.

Mass Effect: FemShep does her thing the same way male Shepard does, by diplomacy, by 'bigger gun diplomacy', or both. She speaks to whoever she wants, however she wants, and gains the respect of virtually everyone she crosses paths with...ironically, most anti-Shepard sentiment is based upon her being a human, not her being a female.

Metroid: you kick butt the entire game and THEN find out that Samus is a girl.

Clearly not an exhausive list, but off the top of my head, there ARE examples of strong female protagonists that aren't vapid caricatures.

It's even more difficult than that. Movies like "Star Wars" lend themselves to video games, because it's "an expansive universe in which stuff happens, including the movie". Tie Fighter Wars was a fun game because you were flying a Tie Fighter, and shooting other ships. The movie tie-in was "the ship you were flying" and "the ship you were shooting". "Jedi Knight" was a fun game because you were using blasters, thermal detonators, and lightsabers in an FPS - they also kept the costumes, force powers, and good/bad guy entities, but you didn't actually play through anything that happened in the movies.

Movie-based games that don't involve an expansive universe like Star Wars or Star Trek are a bit stuck in that players need to be able to see things that happened in the movie, and somehow participate, while still advancing to the next movie scene that needs to be added. Thus, we end up with a very "on the rails" situation of leaving users to "do something" that will involve them doing what the protagonist did, but somehow making the player responsible for it, without making the game a movie itself. It doesn't need to be a Mass Effect decision tree, but it's the RARE gem of a game that's directly based on a movie (instead of tangentially so) that has a core gameplay worth playing.

Finally, movie-based games tend to happen more toward the lower end of the MPAA rating system than the higher end. It's amazingly difficult to make a Toy Story game that's fun to play, and is also easy for children to play, that doesn't simply end up being a platformer like every other children's game.

On the other hand, since movie tie-in games tend to find themselves more on the mobile side of things these days, we end up with games like "Temple Run: Brave" and "Angry Birds: Star Wars", which seem to do alright. They're certainly not new, but they don't have to justify a $40-$60 price tag, either.

OSX is its own vertical silo, so the hardware/software/driver/OS integration is completely seamless - it's the benefit of the Apple approach. Windows 8 kinda-sorta has this, but for the most part those gestures are handled by the Synaptics drivers and software, and are configured as such. In other words, Windows 8 will see a touchpad as a garden variety 2-button mouse. If you want pinch-zoom, swiping, and all that other crap that I disabled on my touchpad anyway (except edge scrolling), it's all a result of closed source Synaptic driver magic.

Jury nullification, in itself, isn't going to get you in trouble. Getting on a jury with an intent to nullify, and answering 'no' to a question like "do you have any beliefs that would make it difficult for you to make an unbiased decision?", however, is perjury...and you'll still need the 11 other Angry Men to agree that the defendant is 1.) guilty, but 2.) shouldn't be punished, and 3.) it's a good idea to give a 'not guilty' verdict regardless of what the evidence is.

On the other hand, the judge disregarding the jury's decision would be a nifty tidbit to bring up in appeals court. The jury can say whatever they want, which is why they exist, and why they can't be punished for a 'wrong' verdict. If the defense says "The jury gave a unanimous 'not guilty' verdict, but the judge decided that they were wrong, so he overruled them", there may be grounds for a retrial or something...but I too am not a lawyer.

It's not always that simple with Aunt Google. If you have logged into Gmail with your browser, you're logged into Google. If you close the tab without explicitly signing out, you're logged into Google, and when you go Maps next week, you'll be logged in still. Even if you sign out, Google still seems to keep enough of a session cookie lying around that it shows you the last person to log in, so you just need your password. Depending on how tight your tin foil hat is, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Google is still tracking the movements based on that session cookie, so it's entirely possible that the logic goes "IF user_signed_in='false' THEN display_map_data='false'", rather than "IF user_signed_in='false' THEN collect_map_data='false'".

On Android, it's even worse. Apparently, the folks at Google don't seem to have a concept of "I just want to buy apps, nothing more, nothing less". It's impossible to get apps from Google Play without tying the phone to an account. Fair enough...but that also logs you into Gmail, keeps your search history synced with your account, syncs your contacts, and keeps your avatar on Youtube. I generally don't use Google Maps, but I did do so once a few months ago. I didn't explicitly sign into it, nor was I prompted for it...but when I got curious two months later, I went back through my 'travel history', and I saw exactly the routes I took, and exactly the times I took them. There is *NO* reason why that kind of data collection shouldn't be explicitly opt-in. Finally, you wouldn't believe how naggy Android is if you don't have a Google account tied to it. I'd liken it to Clippy in a new outfit, but that's an insult to Clippy - at least Clippy was intended to provide actual assistance to users.

The only way I've been able to feel reasonably certain that Google isn't collecting this kind of data is to root my phone, gut my phone of all the Google apps except the Play Store and Play Services, and then use Xprivacy to deny access to contact/calendar/location/etc. data to both.

I pine for a viable alternative to Aunt Google....

At first I was going to mod this up, but then I thought a bit more about it. Let me give you a better example of what the grandparent was likely getting at:

RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.

Let's face it, I sincerely doubt that ANY slashdotter uses Realplayer on a regular basis. Most of us file it under "relics of the 90's" or "squandered tech opportunities" or something similar. Had RealNetworks won that case, I sincerely doubt anyone here would have actually purchased or used this application. However, this court case was one where many of us were hoping that RealNetworks would win - not for the amazing software or for the continued growth of RealNetworks, but for the court precedent. If RealNetworks won, it would be the first piece to fall of the problem of legislatively backed DRM. The war would continue, of course, but it would be a start.

I can't speak for the GP, but I concur with his sentiment. I don't think that Apple, Google, or these retailers have my best interest at heart. Not in the slightest. However, they all want the same thing: money. Apple seems generally better about not directly selling marketing data, but there's also no guarantee that they're not doing it under the table. Even without the tin foil hat, Apple may keep all that data in-house, and if iCloud security is any indication, that database security is questionable. Aunt Google, we all know, sells marketing data - they compete just as much with ClearChannel as they do with Microsoft - arguably more so. Retailers have their own science about how to psychologically manipulate you to buy stuff in their store. Apple may be the 'least offensive' in this lineup since their biggest crime is still a matter of speculation, but they're still no saint, even by corporate standards.

Thus, we have ourselves a bit of a conundrum. Even if you and I continue to use cash, the order invariably goes "opt-in, opt-out, alternatives disincentivized, alternatives socially unacceptable, alternatives impossible/illegal". Thus, the question becomes "who do we want blazing that trail?" That's the true question being asked by the GP, and unfortunately, I agree.

Because before he started Tesla, he started Paypal.

From the summary:

Therefore, we can reasonably assume that CurrentC will take off like wildfire.

Is that seriously a federal law now? "Real-time traffic information" has been available on the radio since my grandfather was driving. Waze, Google Maps, and virtually every other software-based GPS provides traffic information. Can we all agree that this is allowed to be filed under "completely useless legislation"?

To get to that point, one has to:

1.) buy airplane tickets, most likely by credit card (I'm sure there's some way to use cash to pay for airplane tickets, but I don't know a single person who's done that in a decade). These tickets give a very good probability as to where you are going to be, when.
2.) check in - in other words, directly inform the airline that you are at the airport.
3.) get onto a line whose exit involves partial undress (shoes, belts, jackets), placing your personal effects on a conveyor belt to be searched, and an X-Ray of your body. ...so now they're using the MACs of cell phones to figure out how long people are going to be in the queue, and we're worried about "privacy concerns"? You're in the wrong place if you're worried about privacy in the security line at an airport.

...and exactly how many games run without an internet connection these days?

Depends where you look. Many major topics have moderated groups. misc.legal.moderated has lots of interesting information in it. rec.arts.drwho.moderated also has some insteresting discussions. Surprisingly, misc.phone.mobile.iphone has lots of posts and barely any spam; one wouldn't normally think of iPhone users as usenet users, but apparently there's plenty. alt.os.linux.* has some great discussions in it; .mint and .ubuntu are both pretty active. There's plenty of spam to be found, don't worry - but most of it ends up in inactive groups and is generally recognizable. Conversely, much of the spamming seems to have subsided - with the relatively small number of people using it in comparison to Facebook or Kik messenger, and those that do being the kinds of people who are going to be able to download and configure Pan or Agent and find a Usenet provider, the 'intelligence floor' for getting in is generally higher than the 'gullibility ceiling' required for a spam campaign to be terribly useful.

The details of what they're looking to do is a bit vague, and it depends on what the real requirements are. In other words, this is a two part question, and the choke point is vague...

Part 1: Getting the data in the door.
I'm a huge fan of Machform for this. It's not free, but it's inexpensive, self-hosted on any garden variety LAMP stack, their support folks are pretty good, and making new forms is a very simple process that you can teach Sally Secretary to do in half an hour. You can download the data in a CSV once the form is done and look at it in your spreadsheet flavor of choice.

Part 2: Doing something useful with the data.
So, you've got a spreadsheet full of names, addresses, and phone numbers. What do you do with it? Do you run a Mail Merge in Microsoft Word? nice and easy. Does this go into a SQL database somewhere? Importing it gets interesting, although I think you can export the data from Machform using PhpMyAdmin. Does it need to go into Quickbooks? Good luck with that, although to be fair you'd need half a dozen interns to copy/paste that no matter how you slice it. ConstantContact? I don't know what mass import tools they have, so that can vary. The list of potential use cases goes on and on, and whether this is a practical method or not depends if "data getting into spreadsheet form" is a solution.

It's been said that a well-asked question is half the answer. If you can provide us with more information as to what's done with the data, and where their current solution falls apart, and what specific uniquenesses are limiting the current setup, more solutions may come to light.

Don't be ridiculous. Flashlights have removable batteries.

The "Show Logic" was that the runway wasn't long enough for the plane to land without taking out a few blocks in the process.

Why they didn't land at the airport with no ground control was what didn't make sense to me - They can communicate with the pilot and all the runways are clear, so why not just hand someone at LAX the phone, let 'em land, and do everything else via Remote Desktop?