Since the overwhelming majority of the web is useless trash, that would be called "improving the signal to noise ratio."

If the service is free - and ad supported web sites generally are - you're not the customer, you're the product.

No, he understands exactly what he advocates. He's not ignorant at all. His viewpoint isn't ignorant, it's . . . sociopathic.

If you find advertising that does not involve a realistic threat of physical violence against your person to be coercive, then advertising isn't the problem, your broken mind is.

Toxic bean waste. Smells good, though.

Don't say I didn't warn you. I won a bet on that, on Usenet, with a guy who claimed that it wasn't possible for Bruce Campbell to make a movie so bad it was just bad, since he's the all-time master of so bad it's good. I sent him a copy of the DVD from Amazon[1], on the condition that he watch every frame, and write us a review. His review started, "Wow. I was wrong. Bruce Campbell made a movie so bad it was just bad."

[1]My personal Scale of Suckage for DVDs is a fraction, the bottom of which is the retail price on Amazon for a brand new copy, and the top of which is the cost of shipping. When that number exceeds one - the shipping is more than the price of the DVD - you know you have a real turkey. It's also a bad, bad sign when used copies are selling for more than new copies.

Also, I'm told Man with the Screaming Brain, made with the same people at the same time, is actually worse, but Alien Apocalypse aired first, and my momma didn't raise that big a fool.

Alien Apocalypse, with Bruce Campbell and Renée O'Connor, made for the Syphilis Channel's movie of the week. So bad even Bruce Campbell couldn't make it so bad it was good.

IMO, you won't miss much. I was bored before it actually started, by the director's monotone, talking about how wonderful a film it was, and how Lucas copied him in one of the SW movies. Yawn. Then, the opening credits took about five minutes (which is to say, five minutes of Scottish scenery, with bland music, followed by a few seconds of the title), then about five minutes of the protagonist riding his horse though Scottish scenery, with bland music. So you're nearly halfway through before anything happens at all, including dialog.

And whoever choreographed the fight scene has never been in the same room with an actual sword - they couldn't even cut the scene well enough to hide the fact that the protagonist is staring constantly as the stunt man's hands to avoid breaking his fingers.

So, as I said, you won't miss much. Unless you like Scottish scenery and bland music.

What's to understand? He's likely a closet queer with such poor self esteem he can't admit it, even to himself. But the truth struggles to escape.

Based on my own experiences living in small towns, I can only conclude that either you never have, or you're smoking some mighty fine dope. There's no place where anonymous voting is more necessary. Boss Hogg knows where you live, and where your kids play. And will make certainly know he knows.

and to be diluted by the natural water supply

You have that backwards. What they pump in the ground is more pure than what's already there. It's reverse osmosis water, and far, far cleaner than what comes out of the tap. (And the plant is a technological marvel.)

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."