"The cost savings is great, but isn't the biggest driver for me, it's mainly the principle that I don't own the device I paid for, and I'm really tired of having cat litter everything in my home."

So exercise your rights as a consumer to research beforehand and not buy it. Or return it. Or modify it, as you have. Or, for god sakes, ask your vet or friends with cats or reddit for advice on having cat litter everywhere (I believe the most common solution is a covered box with fairly high side.) You can also teach your cat to pee/crap in the toilet, believe it or not. There are little "litter box" inserts that reportedly make it pretty easy; the cat goes "oh, another litter box" and uses it for a week or two, and then you remove the insert, and if the cat notices, they go *shrug* and still use it. No more litter, no more stink.

But for god sakes....I was around on Slashdot when the fist inkjet printer companies started chipping their cartridges. I also learned about Gillette in...either middle school or high school. That was a century ago, if not more. The "handle is free, the blades are disposable and we have a very healthy profit margin on them" model is quite, quite old. Why are people surprised? Especially if you read Slashdot, why didn't you do research on it?

Your robotic, do-everything catbox would've cost substantially more if the company were not figuring on a continuing revenue stream. In fact, it might have cost so much that nobody would've bought it.

I don't know which distro, I just know my friend griped about me sending him links to sites that use Flash because they frequently crashed Firefox. Heh

Yes, if you substitute one belief for another you greatly change the outcome of the extrapolation. "I beleive AI will never exist so that won't happen." Thanks for supporting my point that this sort of extrapolation is not science.

The artist workstations at Sony Imageworks are Linux.

More like $20, and that's for people who don't look up how much they were actually charged.

And cash, not a voucher. I'm a former T-Mobile customer, and they looked up my new contact information and got in touch to let me know that this was available (how to ask them to research my actual charges, vs how to accept the default amount).

A lot of these settlements are BS, but you might do a bit of homework for claiming that this is just more of the same.

If you're going to commit to this exercise where you use extrapolation to arrive at a conclusion, then you're going to have to take things like 3d-printing into account and even just the general demand for machines that build machines that will lead to eventual technical advances.

Try to remember that when you cherry-pick what does and doesn't count when extrapolating stuff like this you're simply adding to the risk that earlier you implied was a bad thing.

If you apply that same extrapolation to what's happening here on Earth right now and you get right back to the super-robots being dominant. I'll give you a hint: robots are the dominant life-form on Mars right now.

And the scientific evidence of this conclusion is...? ;)

No, it doesn't. The mall could have been attacked at any time with no announcement at all. The only difference is now you know somebody out there has an axe to grind.

Knowing the odds does not change the odds.

In fact, I'd argue that you might actually have a slightly LOWER chance of being killed or injured if the the intent to attack is announced. They could be bluffing. Increased security could ward off or apprehend the attackers. Law enforcement might be able to intervene and prevent the attack.

The most realistic outcome of this scenario? The mall would be closed and your appointment canceled... but assuming for the sake of argument that doesn't happen, you might as well go because your odds are certainly no worse than at any other time.
=Smidge=

People keep repeating this line ad-nauseum, spouting 'language is dead', etcetera. They might have bona-fide complaints, but maybe they're an alias for a different annoyance, perhaps that they didn't pay enough attention in school circa 9th grade to maintain a simple conversation on a site known to attract tech-lovers. Ergo this problem will not be solved quickly.

That won't happen, Apple didn't want the DRM.

"I hate Apple so I'm just going to make shit up."

Did you miss the part where (per said driver's assertion) Sidecar paid a better post-deduction base rate even without the temporary promotion?

Also, it's not exactly like there are substantial costs associated with switching which service a driver chooses to work from. If rational economic decisions were being followed, one would expect a driver to want to double their money while it was possible to do so, and then switch back to a different service if that paid better the rest of the time.

Except that drivers aren't making more money with Uber or Lyft.

Saturday night I took a Sidecar home, and our driver was talking about how Sidecar is currently offering better base rates (after accounting for deductions -- Uber shows drivers the price a customer is paying before their cut is taken out), and currently offering double payouts from their marketing budget as a limited-time promotion to attract more drivers.

The premise that Uber or Lyft pays better is, presently, false.

FTFY.