Mod the parent up.

My smartphone“ (an iPhone in my case, but to be honest, something running WebOS, Android or Windows Phone would also work) is a lousy phone. My cheap Nokia work phone is far better. In fact, every cell phone I’ve ever owned has been a better phone. I don’t really care because I average 1 minute a day talktime and most of that is with my wife and kids; logistical syncing stuff. I was late to the smartphone bandwagon because I lived like the OP for many years; using an old clamshell with a dirt cheap voice only plan.

Holy cow! I’ll never go back!

I’m increasingly finding that my phone is replacing my laptop. Many tasks that I used to crack open the laptop for, I can do perfectly fine on the phone and for serious work, I’ve always preferred desktops for real work anyway. So basically, it’s a substitute laptop that fits in my pocket, has internet access wherever I go and a GPS built in. And that GPS has a standardized API, so many of the applications on my little pocket laptop are location enabled; from the useful (such as finding the highest rated restaurant within walking distance, or checking on traffic info) to the useless, but fun (such as finding out about that airliner flying overhead; which airline it is and where it is going).

I could even put an ssh terminal on it if I had need of one.

And I pay about €20 a month for it. Are service plans really so expensive in the US?

Yes, being able to display a google earth layer over the camera on my phone would be cool. In theory. The problem with AR is that it combines cheap in-phone GPS results with low quality solid state compass data. I’ve got an app called “go sky watch”. It’s really cool in that it can show me where constellation, individual stars, elliptic line and the current locations of the sun and moon are. Too bad that more likely than not, it thinks my phone is pointed to a different part of the sky than it actually is. Wikitude suffers the same problem and is most useful in overhead map mode, where it is reduced to being a not as good as google maps, google maps clone.

For the foreseeable future, AR is just going to be a gimmick that” will become the next big thing sometime soon”.

*TSA reach brouhaha?

"TSA search..." Perhaps I do need a right to be forgotten to hide my un-proofread comments. :)

Why does the GP owe it?

If I choose to post on this public forum with - for example - the pseudonymous ID that I've been using for a decade on slashdot, I've made the choice to associate those words with that persona; publicly. If I don't want to associate my user ID with those words, I check the AC box. If I feel that I may regret it sometime, then either I post as AC, but more likely I regards the statement as something not worthy of having been said in the first place and don't post it. It is not at all clear to me that I have a right to force someone else to have work to erase ill thought out comments on my part.

This right to be forgotten scares me because of how it can be misused. Remember the TSA reach brouhaha? That agency was deeply embarrassed by people posting videos of TSA agents going the neo-stazi route. TSA agents tried intimidation tactics in many cases to prevent those videos from being posted, or taken in the first place, but legally they were on the wrong side. Now suppose those agents could invoke their right to privacy and use that to force the erasure of the video. How does society benefit?

The GP's point is that both sides have to agree on each and every juror. If I was a lawyer doing jury selection, I’d certainly not allow the opposing side to stack it with people likely to be reflexively sympathetic to the their argument.

Cue the next generation LoJack, with a jammer detector, combined with a gyroscope and a good dead reckoning algorithm...

I can see from your writing that you don't listen to your teachers. I'm not a grammar nazi, but that hurts my eyes. Oh and it's spelled "technophobes", not "technophobs".

Try the cell phone off during school. You might learn something.

And in my home country, you can't force anyone to testify against themselves, police need warrants to conduct searches (even though most sheeple don't realize this and grand permission to be cooperative) and you can't be compelled to do commercial work for free.

What does jamming GPSes have to do with mobile phone conversations? A GPS being use by someone else is not going to bother you, so jamming it really is just being a dick.

Which would require an active citizenry. We can't expect a working government to just happen.

Unless you want them to think that you can train sharks and vultures as agents.

>All that'll change here will be some American libertarians who're stupid enough to belief Fox news even
>half the time will now lump Fox news criticism of wikileaks

You realize that Noam Chomsky calls himself a libertarian socialist, right?

You might want to take a look at the Nolan Chart sometime. You might find that the definition of libertarian (as evidenced by the platform of the libertarian party in the US) is a bit different than you (and all of those FOX viewers who currently style themselves as libertarians) think it is.

Well, a party will always have a core of support that will vote for them and only for them.

Some voters may actually be ok with either of the major party candidates; neither completely agreeing with either, not completely disagreeing with either. Many voters who might be inclined to support the Libertarian or Green party, but don't due to fear that doing so will strengthen the major party that they like less, can freely do so.

I hope this experiment is implemented and works well. Democracy 3.0.

So which axis of the nolan chart do we drop to get your left/right?