Statistics are a poor excuse to stop anyone.

All are significantly more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but offer significant energy and costs savings over the long run

...if they shine long enough to ever start saving - not so likely with all-too-tightly-packed cheap Chinese semiconductors that often fail within months, at least for much of the short-lived (and often annoyingly artificially-looking) light Europeans get to see since "their" ban on bulbs.

...seems to be as real as Rearden Metal, and to have found yet another target in Tesla after writing Segways to shreds.

How could anyone ever not get it?

A space-warring world forcibly united under a pax (versus bugs) (US-)americana, kept in check through brainwashing highschools (with a nod to Pink Floyd) and psi-ops staring at no goats at all, as well as gamified, interactive global military-state television (nicely imagined when few people had ever seen such things, Fox, or even always-on internet) - full of overidentification that probably even North Korea would recognize&ban, and not-too-subtle references to world events, history and plenty of other notably (anti-)war movies...

The big mistake (like for Highlander) was ever making sequels of it.

To teach use of a non-free program is to implant dependence on its owner, which contradicts the social mission of the school.

Bertrand Russell's The Impact of Science on Society (1952) should probably be given another read:

Fichte laid it down that, education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished [...] to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.

Now consider when the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group met for the first time (1954) and who gets to attend... ;-/

My manager has my personal email address (I have hers). She has used it once: on the final day of a holiday last year she emailed to tell me that the office was shut to non-essential staff due to a problem with the water supply. That's the way it should be! She also has my mobile phone number, but she's never called it.

When and where are you hiring? ;-)

For the same reason that European rules would plant potatoes in a "guarded garden for the king" so neighbors would want them too: ;-)
There's no better way than artificial scarcity to ensure accelerated adoption.

Plus, replacing the Home screen and interacting with the system at a lower level than probably e.g. Apple on iOS would allow, given the wide variety of Android versions (and hacks) out there that might be incompatible in unforeseen ways, Zuck probably does not want his company to go down in history as the one that (at least temporarily for Joe Avg. Users) inadvertently bricked a hundred million phones or so.

when he manages to remove every trace of phone-home crap in there, then it's maybe news worth mentioning

Then how would it work?

As a "leech-only client to Facebook" for the few who do actually care about their own privacy, but are nosy enough to want to read up on everybody else's every move (from the phones of all those to whom it couldn't matter less as they use an unpatched very verbose version).

...would rather have it as an exposé (pour les initiés) after meaningful peer review. ;-)

...when every minor misdemeanor or even purely civil matter becomes a federal felony.
The legal response to progress must not be "harsher punishments for every new generation" to consider computers (including cellphones these days) evil because "even" organized crime uses them, and to treat everyone else (who inevitably has to use them as part of one's daily life as well) like a mobster too - until the whole world becomes a "prison planet". Good to see a DA (possibly unintentionally) acknowledge the real issue in the midst of fearmongering.
Cf. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/aarons-law-amending-the-cfaa/

http://www.mike2.com/2012/08/11/mars-rover/

is the order of the day. Food has to be ordered online. Kitchenware is not at home anymore, but in an Italian, Chinese or other canteen kitchen cloud," the Estate Agent says: http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/2010/11/gross.jpg

If Zuck doesn't know enough about most of his users to get debts collected, then on this Earth who does?

A strange bot-herder it would be not to teach his one-click ponies how to hit "Oh, yes, PLEASE pester all my friends!" a millisecond after it pops up...
On someone else's machine, at the drone's users' expense.

users who like to send spam [...] typically aren't willing to pay for the privilege. Impose a fee – however small – and they probably won't bother.

But for different reasons: The spammers will find ways to avoid being billed themselves - having a habit of abusing the resources of others, they already are in people's PCs with their botnets, for crying out loud...