This. Actual stamps is mostly a consumer thing, I just checked our commercial postal service and they recommend a "stamping" machine if you send more than 40 letters/week where you charge it up like a prepaid cell phone, same thing for packages except there they normally print to labels they slap on the package. And for the big companies you get bulk pre-printed envelopes with logo that are collected at your place of business and charged to your corporate account, we have those at work. The potential for abuse is small since you can't drop them off at a regular mailbox and it'd be obvious who you're using to pay for your postage. A lot of the consumer-to-business mail is prepaid and rolled into the cost of business too, the few times I use stamps is to other people but most of that is replaced by email since you don't need a formal signature on anything. I guess there's the odd package, but if it's too big to fit a mail box you're going to the post office anyway.

Of the "let's frame it and put it on a wall" more than "I want one in my pocket" variety. I'll always have fond memories of Nokia 3210 and the state of the art in 1999, but it's not selling a new phone and it's not quite up to collectible/antique standards either. And Elop's little stunt sure didn't help Nokia's reputation as a has-been either. Not to mention that Nokia running Windows Phone might have some of the same hardware but there's very little in common between "old Nokia" and "new Nokia" anyway. I think this was a pretty easy call of Microsoft and would have happened regardless, if they'd ponied up a little more they could have gotten the Nokia name for good as it matters more to consumers than the commercial market the remains of Nokia serves.

Because Facebook is really interested in their stock value and not kicking the DEA in the teeth? They're not going to win any favors with anybody for actively sabotaging a criminal investigation, even an illegally conducted one. They want to have the public on their side which is why we're hearing about this in the news, Facebook couldn't win an escalating conflict with proxies and whatnot. If this becomes a big enough PR problem for the police though, the practice might go away.

You might as well say the constitution is based on words, so we can do whatever we want.

Here's the legit deal: The judges get judicial power. Guilty or innocent, sentencing.

The feds, congress get enumerated powers.

The states get anything else that isn't outright forbidden to them (ex post facto laws, for instance.)

Anything left after that goes to the people.

See how those powers slide in a very particular direction? See why it's downright silly to claim that they magically slide UPHILL to the judiciary, when there's no such indication, anywhere, that such is the case? AND, to hammer it home, the thing explicitly says that if it's not in here, it belongs to the states or the people. There is NO authority for SCOTUS to do most of what it does. None whatsoever. And hell, even if there were, there they go rubber stamping the inversion of the commerce clause, ex post facto laws, rights violations left, right and sideways... you're looking right at them, and you don't see what they've done to you, and the rest of us. Pity.

This is all about direct usurpation of power that belonged to the people, frankly. Although we still have just the barest sliver of it left, which we can apply via jury nullification. Although, as you probably know, we're not even allowed to talk about that in court because judges(!) don't like it. Funny thing, that. Judges. They seem to be doing a lot of unauthorized things, don't they?

There's no such thing as a "well designed lawful age metric." Though I'm not sure you were even implying there was. But in any case:

It's about comprehension, consent, and physical development. Age cannot serve to draw such a multidimensional line effectively. There are obvious cases of young teens who know exactly what they are doing, are doing it carefully, and not in any way coming to harm. There are obvious cases of "adults" who are so unready for sex by the "comprehension" and "informed" metrics that it is painful to even consider it. And everything you can think of in between.

Verizon, as a telephone company, doesn't censor "illegal" voice traffic, does it? They do not, last I checked. That's because Verizon is a common-carrier and is not held liable for telephone content over its wires.

No, it's because they make sure every word you say is parsed by the government. The government decides if it doesn't like what you said if and when it becomes convenient for them to do so. Not only is your speech free, it's on deposit in special government accounts with your name right on them. You had just better hope it doesn't start earning "interest."

You're being disingenuous here.

We know loud sound and loss of sleep can cause direct physical harm. That's the basis for not yelling, bullhorns, and so on.

There is no sane basis for banning words, drawings, sculptures, renderings, woodcarvings and so on. None whatsoever.

The only sane basis for banning *anything* is it either causes such immediate harm to purse or person, or it is so likely to do so (ex, massively drunk driving) that the activity must be interfered with to lessen the odds of that potential becoming reality.

When speech gets loud or amplified, the legit question is not what was said. Ever. The question is what were you thinking putting people's hearing and/or sleep cycles at risk?

There is no reasonable argument that can justify a "right not to be offended", and there never, ever should be such a thing encoded in law. It should be painfully obvious as to why. If it isn't... oy.

So, when people devise these tests, are they just out of their fucking minds, or what?

Awesome. You get it. You and a few others. Everyone else has a torch in one hand, a pitchfork in the other, and they like it that way.

Yes, but it's the Supreme Court's job to decide if the law about it is Constitutional.

Only because they said so (Marbury v. Madson, ca 1802 -- they made it up out of thin air.) The constitution says they have judicial power. That's guilty or not, assign punishment if so. Not "the law is whatever I think it is today."

The constitution is crystal clear about many things that the judges, in explicit violation of their oaths, have made mean something else entirely. Previous poster is quite correct. The experiment failed.

This is a corporate oligarchy. Not a constitutional republic. It's been that way for a while, but it's right out in the open now. Corporations are people. Money is speech. Those two ideas, taken together, directly disenfranchise the people. You think you can outspend a corporation? If you can, you probably own one. Or more. And you're part of the problem. The rest of us are just along for the ride now... a brave new world, indeed.

No, a better analogy would be locking up people for having a drawing of a copyrighted song. Because, you know, people might THINK of hearing the song, and we can't have THAT.

It's. A. Drawing.

3) Contractual obligations/customer relations, in the enterprise world people build systems they expect to last many, many years and not have the parts disappear on a whim. Which is is why Intel has launched Itaniums as late as 2012, whoever they suckered into buying it will get time to bail out. Don't underestimate the value of grudges in the enterprise, any executive who gets burned by IBM ditching it fast and dirty will be their enemy when the next big consulting/outsourcing contract rolls around.

Except they're not chasing the mainstream, they're chasing the hype wave of Apple/Google/Microsoft trying to be the "big next thing" instead of what is actually mainstream today with Win7/OS X. Instead of picking a market and staying on target to finish the job they still haven't finished on the office desktop from 1999 or the laptop from 2004 or smartphone from 2009 or tablet from 2014. And at this rate I don't think Ubuntu will stay in one place long enough to be relevant to anyone outside the ~1% of the desktop market Linux owns today.

Most clickable things on the web don't have boxes to make them look like physical buttons.

Those are hyperlinks. That's the generally accepted, even traditional, look for a hyperlink. You do know what a hyperlink is, do you not? When I click a hyperlink, I expect to arrive on a web page forthwith. That's what they mean. But that's not what these mean. These mean... random stuff. Normal words... are words. Underlined and/or blue-colored words are hyperlinks. Buttons, despite Ive's insane, drooling jihad against skeuomorphism, should look like you are expected to reach over and press them. This leverages the user's familiarity with the real world (something I admit I don't think I can assume you have) and creates a natural understanding of an implied action just by existing. An action, I might add, that is not hyperlinking. Because we use, you know, highlighted words for that. How would you react to a stereo that had no buttons, just words on its face? Is that intuitive? Of bloody course it isn't. You press a button, it depresses, it looks different, it clicks, you know to expect the action to occur. If it's a toggled state, the button stays in. Natural. Normal. Expected. But a word? Where's the premise for touching a word? Where indeed? Hyperlinks, you say? YES! BLOODY HYPERLINKS!

Ives is probably the worlds foremost product designer

Ah. Ah ha. Ha. Ha Ha Ha. Oh, that is priceless. Just priceless. Ive's work is at best, a mixed bag, and he surely isn't the world's foremost designer. I can think of any number of designers that make him look like the pretentious hack he is. Starting with any number of supercar designers, wandering off into audio equipment and musical instrument design, heck, there are even refrigerators that are designed better than Ive's work product. Also, Scott Forstall's ideas were far better in terms of design than Ives. He just wasn't minimalist -- but minimalist is not a synonym for "good", and in fact, very seldom is that the case.

Also, look at the new Mac Pro. What a dysfunctional failure-storm. Can't install drives in it, doesn't fit in with other equipment well, requires desk warts to be even reasonably functional... expansion is a plug-addled nightmare... even the plugs themselves can be pulled right out, no security (physical or data) whatsoever. Oh yeah, Ives. I wouldn't let that guy "design" my kitchen. He'd probably take out all the plugs, knobs and buttons, color everything silver, and not allow silverware dividers in the drawers or pots on the stove. But you'd get a microwave with only one setting, and son, you'd be expected to like it. And you... well, you probably would. Lacking any kind of taste as you do. ;)

You're one of these people that will always be a reactionary against change.

Yes, absolutely, that's why I praise Mavericks so highly after years of buggy OS's left unfixed. That's why I thought "awesome" when the fully expandable Mac Pro came out, and why I bought right in. That's why I changed from Windows to the Mac. That's why I generally have the latest in home theater gear. That's why I have a Tesla on order. That's why I cohabit instead of marry. That's why I'm atheist and not theist. That's why I just took in a severely injured kitten. That's why I get such a kick out of messing with a Raspberry Pi, cobbling up little RPi projects we can use around the house. That's why my favorite literary genre is hard science fiction. That's why I have moved to SDRs, away from conventional radios. In fact, that's why I write SDR software.

Yeah, I'm just terrified of change, you bet. You crack me up. Any other "insights" you might care to share while you're making things up out of the clear blue? I think Fox News is holding a place for you, better get right over there.

Let me attempt to clue you in here: I'm not "afraid of the new Mac Pro because it's.... new", I dislike it because they functionally crippled it and because they compromised its reliability. I'm not "afraid of Yosemite because it looks different", I don't like it because it is unintuitive. because it is known to have privacy issues, and because it is ugly, which I would hasten to point out to you, since you clearly don't get it, is not in any way the same thing as "new."

I think your actual problem is that you pee down your leg when another Apple user doesn't play the sycophant as you expect. Can't help you with that. In my worldview, something is good when it actually is good. Not just because it came from a particular source.

Podkayne... isn't real?

But... but...

She's why I wanted to be a synthesist!