If you don't agree with the terms, don't use it. No one's forcing you to.

Consider this similar logic: "If you don't like the Patriot act, don't live in the USA. No one's forcing you to."

This "free market" response to such issues is bullshit. The free market works when there is a lot of varied competition and when there is near-zero cost to transitioning from vendor to vendor. Neither is true in the case of picking a place to live, and neither is true in the case of Instagram. And when you try to pretend that free markets solve all and therefor nobody should give a damn, you make me want to blow your ass away with my 12-guage. Don't like it? Go live on a planet without guns.

I disagree with xkcd's take on this. Xkcd is proposing that the instagram situation is captured in this analogy:

* Paul puts lots of stuff in Iggy's garage
* Iggy gets sick of Paul freeloading, because Iggy has limited garage space and the agreement between Paul and Iggy was either unspecified or for limited-term, and Iggy feels that whatever length of time Paul's stuff has been there exceeds social etiquette / good taste.
* Iggy notifies Paul that he (Iggy) will get rid of Paul's stuff if he doesn't clear it out in a month.

I feel the analogy sucks because in reality, Instagram has tons of storage space, and the agreement between Instagram and its users was very well defined, even before these terms changed, and because Instagram made a massive pile of dough in no small part because of that original arrangement. A much better analogy is:

* Iggy solicits people to store personal writings into his boundless garage, because of benefits Iggy can derive from mass exposure.
* Iggy in fact benefits extremely handsomely when Fred comes along and purchases Iggy's garages. Iggy remains on in a capacity somewhere between consultant and semi-autonomous steersman.
* Fred-Iggy now tells all people who put stuff into the garages and contributed to the wealth that the terms are changing and their personal writings will be sold and used and appropriated in any way Fred-Iggy wants and profits from.
* And, xkcd comes along and uses an analogy that portrays people as freeloaders, and as selfish for wanting the agreement they signed up for to not be yanked away from them.

This isn't the first time I've found xkcd on the wrong side of an issue, and for me, this has rubbed me the wrong way to the point that I've actually decided to stop reading xkcd. Don't worry about telling me xkcd won't miss me, it's mutual.

"We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.

So this guy's name is "A. Noyes". I find that fitting somehow.

(I usually don't go for the ad hominem humor, but can't help myself in this case, sorry)

Tell it to the person in Milwaukee who, on November 21, used his carry weapon to defend himself in a hair salon. Two men knocked, were let in by a customer, then one of the men pulled a gun and aimed it at the customer, who knocked it away and then used his own gun to kill his attacker and wound the attacker's accomplice.

When I search for news of the above, I get an October (rather than November) 21st incident at the Azana Salon in Milwaukee. Of the several articles I read, not a single one mentions a customer having a gun or the heroics you mention. Would you please indicate the source of your information so that I don't have to wonder whether my search is of or your retelling is, um, overly enthusiastic?

DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches

Please feel free to provide evidence of your claim.

say you wrote an amazing article. I summarize it and slap advertisements on it and provide a link to your original article. Lets say that my summary of your work brings me a ten thousand bucks. Shouldn't you be entitled to a cut of that ten thousand bucks?

What if I win a marathon, and you run an article on it with ads that end up getting you thousands of dollars... shouldn't I be entitled to some of that money for having done the newsworthy thing? My marathon training cost me enormous amounts of money, as well as true sweat and pain.

What if instead of running a marathon, I throw a benefit auction for children with leukemia, and you make money off of making news/ads over that? Might the dying children be entitled to some of the money you made?

What if I rob a bank, and you run an article on that which brings you ad money? What if your refusal to share that ad money with me makes me decide never to rob a bank again unless you change your policy?

a Tobin Tax on each trade would have little impact, as a significant amount of the HFT activity involves submitting trades with no intention of completing them.

Is there a reason that the concept (a fee on each transaction) can't readily be extended to include all submitted trades, whether consummated or not?