I dunno. I'll bet you could convince a hell of a lot of people to spit on their phone, then mail it off to Apple.

When we are not actively broadcasting our location to third parties as an inherent part of the service? Privacy isn't possible when your phone is broadcasting constantly where it is. Any more than privacy on the internet is possible, since everything you do, by the nature of the internet, passes through multiple parties' anonymous hands.

Only if you don't count the $250 they already got for the ticket you bought. Their complaint (on that issue) is that you're buying a cheaper ticket than they wanted to sell you. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, which amount to "we want to sell the same seat twice, and we can't when you do this, and we don't like it even though we couldn't if you bought the ticket we wanted to sell you."

The one real issue I see (as mentioned in TFA) is that when you skip the second leg, they will wait at the gate until they're sure you're not coming. That can, and I expect, does, make flights leave later. Not necessarily late, per se, but later than they might have otherwise. They can't really delay the flights very long over this, so in the long run, it means that they'll end up making less effort to wait until people who are running a little late (because their first leg was late landing) are at the gate.

In short, the airlines lose nothing, and overall, probably make a little bit more, and other passengers are inconvenienced, but probably not much. So this must be a day that ends in "y."

I'd be happier if we substitute "nuke from orbit" for "ban."

The problem is people - government goons and ordinary internet users - who can't tell the difference between blowing off steam and real incitement.

The standard in meatspace is that you can advocate violence, but you can't advocate specific violent right now. You so can say "we should overthrow the government," you can't say "Let's go burn the FBI building down right now."

Making that distinction online is impossible for most people, because most of the internet is text only, without context or body language, and because most people are hysterical idiots. So the teenage boy who says in some online game "go rape yourself" to some teenage girl, because that's how teenage boys always talk to each other is suddenly under investigation for making terrorist threats. And then the outrage starts from both sides, and the police have no clue what any of it means, or how to respond. They only know that voters are harassing their political bosses to do something, anything, even if it's wrong.

Add in a few Joker types, "who just want to watch the world burn," who are deliberately inciting violence, mixed with the usual retarded morons who gobble down whatever propaganda they're spoon fed, so long as it agrees with what they want to be true, and, well, welcome to 2015.

Note that either Researcher A or Researcher B, or even both, could be shoveling manure. If the research is allowed to be kept secret, and the EPA allowed to use it while keeping it secret, either can be either:

1) Suppressing valuable new inventions to protect dying industries, or

2) Promoting stock scams for political allies of the administration.

Or, of course, both at the same time.

They're really more a limousine service (that's the legal category in California, anyway), which is similar, but less regulated than real taxis, and less expensive to get in to.

I saw one of those driving through a parking lot once. It saw every light pole as an oncoming car, so the headlights would go bright, dim, bright, dim, endlessly. It was hilarious.

The technology in 1980 was . . . not fully developed.

I knew a guy, years ago, who had the magic touch for that - he'd just flick the rearview mirror and it would shine the headlights of the car behind us perfectly back in the driver's eyes. I wish I would do that.

Too late for some.

"Fool me once, shame you on you. Fool me 1,387,406 times, shame on me."

It's not like the fact that nearly all apps are shit is a big secret.

And if you can't rip it at the HDMI connector, somebody will crack open the shell of the monitor and tap in to the ribbon cable attacked to the LCD screen itself.

Folks like you said that about digital music, too. And yet, pretty much all music is sold without DRM these days.

They're more worried about you buying the Big Hero 6 DVD and ripping it so your neighbor's kid can watch it on his tablet, thus causing the neighbor to not buy a DVD he wasn't going to buy anyway. It's still stupid, but not as stupid as what you propose.

It won't even do that. As DVDs shows, when the keys are built in to the hardware, they're impossible to update when they're cracked, and they will be cracked.

I really admire the snake oil salesmen who can convince Hollywood, time and time and time again (remember DIVX - the original DIVX, that is?) that what is done in hardware cannot be trivially duplicated in software.