It has nothing to do with Gmail really, it's just a link to let someone view a message on some website. It isn't actually email.

It's only enforceable because it isn't email.

All this stupid thing is, is a system where the recipient gets a link to click on, which lets them go view the "email" (message) on some server somewhere, subject to a bunch of restrictions. I think there's also a browser plugin that basically does the same thing, but making it appear more like you're reading an email instead of just being redirected to some server.

This isn't email in the traditional SMTP sense.

Of course, it still is impossible for them to prevent you copying it somehow, even if you have to resort to screen capture.

This isn't the same KDE that runs on your desktop, this is a different version made for mobile platforms. Some of the underlying code (the "framework") is the same, but the UI is different. KDE is the only group out there, it seems, that thinks we should have different interfaces on different devices.

I haven't read TFA, but as this is for mobile devices, most likely it's a framebuffer.

Android - Huge app ecosystem, but a non-starter for anyone who doesn't consider it acceptable for mass scale harvesting of personal data by an advertising company. It's a "half open" platform, but the app ecosystem is a clusterfuck of crapware.

The crapware really isn't a problem. No one is forcing you to install crapware on your phone from the app store (undeletable crapware pre-loaded by the carrier and mfgr is another matter). If you're picky about what apps you install, you shouldn't have a problem. It's really no different from Windows that way: there's all kinds of crapware out there, but no one is forcing you to install, say, McAfee or PeopleSoft or some random toolbar on your Windows PC. Just stick to Firefox and MS or LibreOffice and you'll be fine. Now the danger of platforms like this is that you can easily install crapware, and you have to be a bit savvy and not completely naive and trusting that everything out there is OK. With (relative) freedom comes responsibility. So if you're a gullible fool, then you better stick with iOS and Apple iDevices, so that Apple can hold your hand and make sure you don't do anything you're not supposed to.

Unfortunately, you're right about the mass harvesting of personal data part. This (and Apple's approach too) is a consequence of having a non-open platform, where you don't have access to the source code, nor can you easily change the software. Whoever controls the platform can do whatever they want with it. With Google, they mass-harvest personal data. With Apple, they control everything you do. With MS, they give you a shitty, broken UI.

Let's use car insurance as an example; something you are required by law to buy.

Millions of New Yorkers and other urban dwellers disagree with you. No one is required to own a car.

I disagree on both counts.

Lots of people like Flash: lots of websites still use it for various reasons (*cough* tracking *cough*), so obviously those people like it. And lots of Slashdotters like it too: just look at all the comments above: there's a ton of people here defending it. So it's definitely false that *nobody* likes Flash.

As for the Confederate flag, you may be correct about "most people" not liking it, but there's still a very large number of Americans who do, and have taken to flying this flag lately because of all the controversy. Lots of these people are likely blatant racists too. But that's how Americans are. Just look at the cops; most of them are blatant racists too. How many cops are there in America? Probably in the millions.

or for a competitor to show up and provide the service that Comcast refuses to.

Where are you getting that idea? Competitors can't just roll into town and set up shop and compete with Comcast. In most places it's plainly illegal: cable companies are granted monopolies by the local government.

See the above but, nice to see you condoning the corporate "Fuck the consumer" mindset.

How am I condoning anything? I'm just pointing out Comcast's point of view. Why should they care about the consumer? They have a monopoly. Thinking they're somehow going to grow a moral backbone is ridiculously wishful thinking.

My country has good quality prisons and reasonable rehabilitation rates.

Then your country is a very rare exception. For most of the world's population, prison is nothing more than miserable torture. You can't just say "well make the prisons nice like the ones in my country!"; that's like telling a dumb person who failed his algebra test to just get smart and ace it like you did. Or telling a country with severe economic problems to just become a utopian society where there's no money, like on Star Trek.

But we know from historical contexts that prison is better than the alternative of wholesale punitive murder.

We know that how? You still haven't proven that it's better to be tortured in a squalid prison cell and be subject to constant rape, for decades, than it is to be quickly (and presumably not too painfully) executed.

The point was the block from Comcast would be unenforceable, because too many users would be affected and complain

Why would it be unenforceable? Who cares if they complain? Why should Comcast listen to them? Why would Comcast care about their customers complaining?

When you're a monopoly, you don't have to worry about things like customer satisfaction. People complain about Comcast all the time, but it doesn't matter because there aren't many other choices so people continue to get service with them, even though they hate it.

Um, not at all?

What exactly are the ComCrap customers going to do, switch to another ISP? Oh wait, there is no other ISP!

This is the whole problem.

In reference to your first question, one is acceptable to almost all of society, the other is abhorred by almost all of society. So you can make your own mind up on that one.

So your argument is that society is correct by definition? Isn't that a tautology?

There have been other societies (including colonial American society) where prison was seen as cruel and unusual punishment, and that punishments should be swift, rather than dragging on for years or decades.

The whole point of jail is that it is meant to be good conditions to rehabilitate the prisoners. At one end of the scale you have some European prison systems that do this amazingly well, with very low recidivist offender rates. At the other end of the scale are some third world country prisons where the prisoners are kept in horrendous conditions.

So a tiny minority of prisons worldwide are doing it right? While the vast majority are horrendous? Doesn't that indicate that society is wrong? America has 25% of the world's incarcerated population, with just 5% of the global population. Our society seems happy to have shitty prisons and people locked up for decades for possessing a plant. Seems to me that going by what society thinks is a bad idea. Nazi German society thought it was a great idea to murder people by the millions just for being different. Aztec society thought it was cool to have human sacrifice.

Your logic is completely broken: in one post, you argue that just because a group of people ("society") decides to murder someone doesn't make it right, but then you argue that just because society decides to lock someone away for decades and torture them, that that's perfectly fine. You can't have it both ways.

Exactly.

And the cops are basically Joffrey Lannister Baratheon.

(and you better damn well have a way of communicating when and where a restricted airspace is

They have that, it's called "TFRs". Any pilot can tell you that. Anyone who doesn't know that has no business flying any kind of aircraft.

You can't "kill" a drone. It's not alive.

And with many weapons systems, you don't "destroy" the target either, you incapacitate it; for flying threats, that means hurting it enough that it just falls out of the sky instead of hitting its target and detonating.

So yes, "take out" is proper layman's terminology.