... and using only the "good" elements (when one or two elements fail the battery is dead for laptop use).
This is precisly what I've been doing for many years, any decent flashlight (or R/C or electronics) forum has at least one huge thread about people doing this.

I have an electric bike pack made out of the best cells recovered from (dead) laptops batteries. I've been using the individual cells for (flash)lights for years and in fact there are so many fake (or just "cheap") 18650 on the market now that if you don't know where to buy and what to buy you'll end up with something worse than a good cell from a bad 10-15 years old laptop battery. It is so bad that it is worse than SD counterfeiting...

There are dozens and dozens of anonymous VPNs available, plus starbucks, McD and so on free wifi, etc.

If the strongest link in the chain the identify of the "last hop" connecting to the web server they're seriously screwd.

Sure. Ever heard of libraries?

Now having a web server waiting for a connection from a tablet to unlock the toolbox (so you have power requirements + extra nuisance) is certainly something I DON'T want to mess with when I just want to go ahead and screw (pun certainly intended) something.

BROADWAY HOTEL SUCKS

Come and take your 100 pounds for this.

Streisand Effect anyone?

Last review from tripadvisor:

"I spent two nights for my son's 18th birthday at this hotel, but had I read the reviews 1st I wouldn't of stayed at this hotel. The breakfast was disgusting, the tables and cutlery were filthy and the dining room looked as it hadn't seen a hoover in months. In our bedroom the shower head was useless cause you had to hold it yourself as the holder on the wall was broken also I don't think they clean the showers regular cause it was filthy, we couldn't turn the TV on, the floor was dirty. In my son's room he couldn't turn the heating off so had to be too hot all night "

WTF, 100-200 titles on f* Christmas!?!?!??

Including "A Christmas Carol-Charles Dickens-Audio (mp3)" ?

That would help for sure... and somebody complained about pdf's...

"FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD: TRADING POST & RESTAURANT BAR

American Vodka, Corn Liquor, Applejack, Pure Spring Water, Grade "A" Milk, Corned Beef & Potatoes, Steak & Fried Potatoes, Butter & some days Bread, Smoked Bear Meat, Jerked Quisling (by the neck), Crepes Suzettes to order. !!!

Any BOOK Accepted as Cash!!!!
DAY NURSERY !!
FREE KITTENS!!
Blacksmithing, Machine Shop, Sheet Metal Work-You Supply the Metal.
FARNHAM SCHOOL OF CONTRACT BRIDGE Lessons by Arrangement. Social Evening Every Wednesday.

WARNING!!!

Ring bell. Wait. Advance with your Hands Up. Stay on path, avoid mines. We lost three customers last week. We can't afford to lose YOU.

No sales tax.

â"Hugh & Barbara Farnham & Family, Freeholders"

I guess distribution in "dead tree" form is getting harder and harder: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

There was another case where a whole issue (like all/most copies) got "lost in the mail" and not only they had to be reprinted but postage had to be paid the second time...

That much about having the "heart in the paper".

Yes, Amazon has it as well for kindle (and all the associated devices, including android kindle app, etc.). I think subscription is (or at least used to be a while ago) really cheap (like $0.99/month) but DRMed (easily stripped for the "no-touch" kindle, you just need the serial number and the local copy from the kindle) and nonDRMed for issues bought separately.

There are some more options too but I wonder why they don't offer it directly from the site; yes, it is some extra work but I'm sure they can do it well (and they already sell some stuff directly so they are set up to process credit cards). Sure, most people would prefer to "one-click" buy from Amazon or Google Play but I think is better to have your own channel too where they can't ban you or remove the books from customer's readers, etc.

Or something essential was lost in translation.

Outstanding! "We refer you to figure A". Yeah.

Also I liked the "PDF Warning". So 2001sh...

I wanted my data ever since I've heard the first time about the Data Retention Directive (now longer in force since earlier this year, GOOD).

Mind you, they don't keep only the metadata for you calls but also a lot of "control plane"/out of band communication mobile-network. Apart from this being extremely interesting for law enforcement it's interesting for me too! That is the location part of the data.

Yes, I know I could keep a diary or keep a GPS logger with me but that needs a lot of extra effort - even for the most automated solutions (charging, downloading, etc - mind you this was well before smartphones, probably today you could do this much easily, especially if you are plugging your phone into a charger each time you step into a room...).

Anyway the point is that I've never got the data. Even if I would be willing to pay for it, every 6-24 months (that's the retention interval that was in the law).

I did some tests a while ago (it was around Occupy XXX) and ustream did just that, if you set it up to stream+save (I don't know exactly the option but anyway there aren't many possible) nothing would stop it. Take out battery, no problem, the video (whatever was on transmitted already) would appear in your online account after a short timeout.

Android makes it possible to actually replace the launcher. Windows Mobile didn't do that, and that is where they failed.

I'm calling the shenanigans on this one. There were (are...) plenty of launchers for Windows Mobile. From the well known and better ones:

ilauncher
claunch
spb pocket plus
resco explorer

Bought a while ago a T-Mobile (.co.uk) SIM and got stuck with "you are not allowed to view user-generated content".

WTF!? Whole internet is "user-generated". I mean they were blocking youtube and flickr.

They unlocked it on the spot in the shop once I managed to get there during working hours (of course weekend was a bust as they closed early Saturday and opened Monday 10:00). Of course, you couldn't do it over the phone, they really wanted to check your age.

And Google Play RATINGS. If you used your real name on email and you had a not-so-common name you had good chances to have a review or rating on angry brids to come up in the first restuls when somebody googled you. WTF?

In fact what does it mean "Pseudonyms Now Allowed", precisely? You could change your name anyway for like 3 times and yes, it was supposed to be your own name but of course there was no way to police this for normal accounts. Of course, the drawback was that if you wanted to comment on Play (or youtube) as John Doe you would still show (for people you communicate directly with) as John Doe in Hangouts, Mail, Drive (John Doe shared a document), etc.

Mail you chould change but I think the others not. Anything changed here? Because if not the change is "meh...".

Last time I checked the standard Android encryption will not do the sdcard partition (I mean not the physical card, but the partition on the internal flash, usually the biggest chunk of it, like let's say 11 out of 16GB). YES, some manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola (possibly many more) have their own solution (I bet a really crappy one but never mind that) and it would do mostly everything, including the big sdcard partition and (if needed) even the physical sdcard.

Anyway bottom line is that:

a. depending on the phone you might not be able to encrypt at all /sdcard
b. ANY activity, including storing random (non-private) crap on the phone and then removing it helps. However, this is no maggic bullet.