No. You do not "need" to do those things anymore than the dozens of fuckwits I see every day driving, walking, eating, pissing, with their heads bowed down to their smart phone "need" to communicate in such an awkward medium. Do those services make certain things easier? Of course, but that's the deal - "Here's your 'easy', now give me your life. Oh, and fuck your privacy." That, my friend is "the real world".

See, there's your problem. You don't believe it's an opinion piece unless the broadcaster is honest enough to say it is.

Perhaps not news, but as a topic worthy of consideration and discussion, you bet. Consider Fox News. It's veracity and accuracy are so poor that almost an entire industry has been built up around calling "bullshit" on so many of their "facts", and yet millions of viewers rely on it to help build their world-view every day. Those ratings wouldn't be there without Fox's heavy emphasis on "stories that people love to believe". Frankly, I find such phenomena fascinating, and often more than a little troubling. Before the chocolate hoax was the whole anti-vaxer phenomenon. To this day, otherwise reasonable people cling to the notion that routine childhood vaccinations are a bad idea, despite overwhelming credible evidence to the contrary and the plain fact that the notion itself was spawned by miscreant for personal gain. Why do they choose to believe bullshit in the face of plainly evident truth? What should we do about it? Can we do anything about it? Should we? It's excellent grist for the discussion mill, IMO.

Utter bullshit. The welfare of the citizens affected is not really a consideration to anyone with a dog in this fight. Let's get that part right, at least.
Everyone knows that it's a powerful telecommunications lobby flexing it's muscle in a state where there are lots federal dollars being spent on that industry's services. You don't piss off the industry who paid for your last election, be that for local, state, or federal office, so the whole argument about who has the "right" to look out for those citizens is nothing more than a deliberate distraction for the suckers (voters) who continue to act against their own best interests by electing Big Telco's whores to public office.

Cars are not PC's, but the author of TFA tries to argue that they are little more than a computing "platform". Automobiles are, of course, much more than that. Most of that "much more" is totally unrelated to computer-related functions or features, so to suggest that the auto industry will follow some parallel of the PC industry is just silly.

You don't have any idea how moronic that sounds, do you?

Disagree. Only the arrogant ones who feel the need to make others conform to their chosen religion's "moral laws" should be treated so. I have no objection at all to Christians, Muslims, Pastafarians, or even atheists indulging their peculiar beliefs, as long as that indulgence does not do even so much as inconvenience me.

So..., you're saying that all the Old Testament crap is right out the window? Cool. Please tell all your fellow "Christians". Until then, GP's point is valid.

Wow. You flunked Econ 101, didn't you? You've left out a couple of critical factors in your sophomoric analysis here.

While there is a proper definition of the term "libertarian", most slashdotters who identify as such do not understand it. Indeed, the same can be said for most anyone who self-identifies as "libertarian". Most would seem to fall into the "I should be able to get rich at others expense and smoke weed" camp. Then there are the Rand fanboys who still believe that labor is a "free market". I don't know which group is more self-deluded but they are both out of touch with reality.

Yeah. You're right, of course. It's much safer to just roll over and pee on yourself than to actually stand up for the rights we all share.
/sarcasm

Highly unlikely. While such a depiction would horrify a good many xtians, there is no explicit commandment to kill anyone making such a depiction. There is certainly no group of clergymen suggesting that anyone take such action. Not that there hasn't been such madness, on the part of xtians, in the past, but western society has largely recovered from that level of insanity.

But without the sad-clown eyebrows.

Anyone who has never sent an email using bang path routing, is a "digital immigrant". Now get off my lawn...

The energy industry would like you to come work for them to help "prove" that climate change is hokum.