to make half as thick phones, instead of phones that last twice as long...

I don't see how what the state does has any impact on what your religious organization says or does. the christian bible still supports slavery, stoning, mass murders... that support hasn't stopped though those actions are illegal (I'm not talking morality here, just legality). Simply refusing to perform religious ceremonies to marry gay couple is much less an issue than those other divergences between the state's law and the religion's wishes.

They didn't, really: alcohol and cigarettes are available pretty much freely, and most drugs are available as long as you pay the "health" complex to get them.

Mostly, they pump them full of drugs. Even worse than human for-pay athletes, which is a hard one to beat.

Professional sport in general is a disgrace, animal professional sport is even more loathsome.

You do know pretty much all mapping apps allow you to cache local content, and work perfectly well offline ? GMaps does, HERE does, Tom-Tom does...

Well, for online stuff you... need to be online.
Aside from that, my phones and tablets work perfectly well in airplane mode, and have SD cards full of media and eMMCs full of apps & games to keep me entertained.
I'll get off your lawns now, utterly unconvinced.

Yep. Old computers were so much better: you could type on them w/o a keyboard, see stuff on them w/o an external monitor, and.... post on slashdot w/o an Internet ! Clearly today's computers are full of new dependencies (whatever that means)

(takes out his autonomous, self-contained smartphone)

what where you saying about new stuff having more dependencies ?

Here, have some extra caps on me:

AZERTYUIOPQSDFGHJKLMWXCVBN

You're welcome.

Get a Nexus, or a Motorola.

kthxbye

G+'s homepage was a disgrace for the longest time, filled with.. hangouts logs ? And not just at launch, this went on for months, and I gave up.

They could have populated it with my RSS feeds + Google Now stuff, but they cut Reader, and Now isn't that good for me.

Is education about information, or about skills (in the subjects, but also meta-skill at learning in a classroom and by oneself, plus handling deadlines/difficulties/failure/criticism/success...) + socialization w/ peers, teachers, admins, gurlz,... ?

Actually, I read an article on The Economist a long time ago saying just the contrary: freelance cab drivers quit working earlier when they make a lot of money. Easiest explanation is that they set out to make a certain amount of $$, and stop once that goal is reached, regardless of whether it'll take them 3-4x longer to make the same amount the next day.

and by "post", I meant "phone".

That's one of my purchase criteria. Samsung used to have it, now Huawei does. I use it several times a week, and a lot when on trips w/spotty data.