It tries to determine when you're looking at it, and it shows the screen then instead of waiting for you to press the power button. Obviously since it can't really know when you're looking at it it guesses based on movements and touching the screen.

They don't want to own the band, they want the band to be open for everyone and to produce devices that YOU can use in that band. The difference isn't like that between two tv stations. It's more like the difference between a tv station and everyone's walkie talkies.

They wouldn't own that band anymore than Linksys owns the wifi band. Anyone with a device that obeys the band's rules could broadcast into it.

The service providers own their service. They sell what they want to sell. You are not entitled to get your way in all things. Just because someone offers services that differ from what you want doesn't mean it is okay to force them through governmental action to offer what you want. If you want a gallon of milk and Costco only sells in 2 gallon increments, do you ask congress for a bill commanding them to sell single gallons? Of course not; that would be wrong. You would buy somewhere else. The same is true of internet service. You don't like what they offer, buy somewhere else. If enough people agree with you, they will get the message, or maybe your preferences aren't the same as everyone else's. Either is fine.

I've only heard one good argument about why net neutrality should be enforced by law, and that's that there are too few options in internet service, effectively making them monopolies. That argument actually makes sense. But if that's your position, then you don't want the FCC involved, you want the FTC. Having the FTC do it is fine. It follows the common precedent that it is justified to compel fairness in the behavior of a company when there is not a real open market for its services. If the FCC does it then the precedent is very broad, that it's okay to compel a company to offer a particular set of services merely because the services deal with communications.

None of this is to say that net neutrality itself is a bad thing. I want it. I would prefer if my ISP offered it, and I would pay a modest amount for it. I also think it's a good (in the being a good citizen sense) position for the providers to take. But the government is the biggest, meanest bully on the block. If they're going to be asked to wield that considerable power to force someone to do something, you want to be damn sure it's justified, and it has to be done for the right reasons.

Samsung competes with Motorola, a side business of Android, one of Google's side businesses. Google has far bigger rivals in Microsoft's Bing and Facebook. Samsung sells a lot of phones, which is just what Google wants. It may be a version tarted up with a bunch of crapware, but it's still Android, and it's still funneling people into Google's web suite.

The reverse vampires.

To pile on, yes the GalCiv series is extremely bland. Toss Endless Space onto that pile as well. Master of Orion II holds up remarkably well. The patterns for me is that a new entry into the genre comes out, I play it a couple of times, then I reinstall MOO2 and play that for a week.

World of Tanks is pretty fun. Master of Orion is a completely different kind of game. Hope they can manage it okay. I'd love a decent sequel.

I believe you are referring to hookworms, which were found in an estimated 40%-70% of people living in the Southern US in the early 1900s in sufficient amounts to cause disease. They cause anemia and fatigue. They're expelled in feces, and can live in soil for a while. The problem was them digging out of outhouses through the soil and finding their way into people walking around barefoot. The solution was to dig deeper outhouses, so that the hookworm couldn't live in the soil long enough to reach the surface, and to wear shoes. On the flip side, there's serious current research into using small-scale hookworm infestation as a treatment for inflammatory diseases, including crohn's and multiple sclerosis.

ebooks are very convenient. I can fit a thousand of them on my phone which I always have with me anyway, and I can download a new when whenever and wherever I want. Paper books are a better experience. They have a nice tactile interface and good optical properties, and they're easier to navigate. Ask me which I "prefer" and I'll say paper. That doesn't mean that I don't sometimes use ebooks. Consider laptops. No way I'd say I prefer a laptop to a desktop, but sometimes you're out and about.

"Bell curve" means normal distribution. Unsurprisingly, human intelligence does follow a normal distribution. Are you disputing that intelligence follows a normal distribution or that there is such a thing as a normal distribution?

Neither. Both are indicative of general intelligence, and we don't have a thorough grasp on the mechanism for any of them yet.

We're already in that boat. One of the reasons it's so hard to make changes is that nobody really knows why the internet works. We know how and why individual networks work. We can understand and model RIP and OSPF just fine. And we know how BGP operates too. But that large scale structure is a mess. It's unstable. The techniques we use could easily create disconnected or even weakly connected networks. But they don't except for occasionally a single autonomous system falling off. We've built ourselves a nice big gordian knot already. We know what it's made of, and we know how it operates, but good luck actually describing the thing.

Due process is the 5th. The 4th is "secure... against unreasonable searches and seizures... and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...". In short, to search you need a warrant, and for a warrant you need probable cause. Now I suppose in order to obtain a warrant once you have probable cause that could be said to require due process of law.

Screen protectors don't just protect the screen from scratches. They also improve the touch interface by increasing friction.