I am also firmly in the physical keyboard camp, and I constantly hear that argument that screens are so big now,

I'm also in the physical keyboard camp. Physical KB's have one huge advantage that cannot be negated by big screens. You can type on them without looking at the keys.

Sadly it's very difficult to find a phone that has a physical KB and even though larger screens have helped its not really the same as using a physical KB as I'm constantly having to watch what letters I press rather than the output on the screen. You simply cant touch type on an on screen keyboard.

Getting a physical USB KB for my Nexus 7 was one of the best $12 I've spent in recent years.

Or you can buy an Android phone outright with the manufacturers image on it.

I know this concept may be foreign to many in the US, but it's quite a common occurrence to those of us in Europe, Australia, Asia... pretty much anywhere that isn't the US.

BTW, you shouldn't need to root the phone to get rid of carrier crapware, all you need is the signed base image from the manufacturer. I understand these aren't hard to find.

Ok. Everyone hates ads.

I dont hate ads, I hate being annoyed by ads. The only ads I see are the ones that are passive enough to get past adblock. This I dont really mind as they're almost always not interfering with the content.

When ads become more important than displaying the content people went there for is when people start to turn off, or in the case of the internet they start to use an adblocker. This is in response to advertising becoming more and more painful for the end user.

Few are suggesting that advertisement needs to be eliminated. This is entirely the product of your black and white thinking, that we must accept bad advertising or the entire system will fall apart. It wont.

What we are saying is that the advertising business model needs to change to be more accommodating to the end user, not hostile to it. As long as advertisers think that becoming more and more annoying is a good way to get eyeballs, more and more people will continue to use adblockers. Eventually they'll be forced to change, even if it results in most advertisers dying out and being replaced by companies with an adapted business model. Think about it, then reply.

Usually the settlement documents specifically state that if the patent/etc. is declared invalid that they get to keep the money anyway.

So... $45 million is not a bad run for this troll. It will probably encourage them to keep the extortion ring going with another worthless patent.

False. Science paradigms, for better or worse, remain in place for as long as it takes (Plato to Copernicus/Kepler, anyone?) for a paradigm shift to come along and pull the rug out from under the previous paradigm. This is how its always been. BTW, "modern physics" is always wrong... because its only a model, and NOT REALITY, and merely the best model we have to explain observations as close as we can. What science observes is reality, but the description and explaination is a model, a fictionional likeness of reality, but not reality itself. You're probably thinking of mathematics.

However this is not how vaccines work. I suspect the fine article got a lot wrong.

The idea is that if you vaccinate people they have an increased immunity to the pathogen and have a greater chance of not becoming infected if exposed. This slows or stops the spread of the pathogen amongst a community.

What's the benefit for a pathogen to be more deadly? Killing the host is actually bad for it, since that ends spreading (with this host at least).

Our assumptions about evolution is that its driven by the need to survive. When a pathogen is faced with a change in their environment bought on by a pharmaceutical treatment it is possible for a pathogen to adapt to fight or avoid that treatment. This does not mean they'll automatically adapt (they're not the Borg), in fact in most cases the opposite can occur where the pathogen is completely (or nearly completely) wiped out such as the case of smallpox.

Evolution does not consider risks and benefits, changes are random. Sometimes these changes can cause a species to die out by destroying its environment. As for pathogens, killing the host is often required for a pathogen to spread, especially for pathogens that only spread through direct contact (not air, food or water borne), not killing the host by producing symptoms that allows the pathogen to spread is going to result in the pathogen dying out.

In nature, when there is a rapid change in the environment, most species end up dying. This is the bad part of anti-biotics as its a similar event on a mirco scale. They're indiscriminate, so they'll kill the micro-organisms in our body that aren't just benign but helpful. For this reason alone we should try not to not over subscribe anti-biotics, however anti-biotic resistant pathogens are also a consideration.

I have a very strange method of storing my passwords. I keep them in the mk I human brain.

The real security risk is with the online service being compromised and databases or details being downloaded... As what happened to LastPass a few months ago.

What is this them that you talk about? Them, the company with personhood?

If you bothered to read my post, it would have been obvious that I inferred the owners of the effected vehicles.

I really don't see any need for any plugs or ports on a smartphone. I haven't plugged my phone into anything for at least a year.
It charges wirelessly, backs itself up wirelessly and communicates (WiFi, cellular data, NFC, Bluetooth) with everything.
Why would I ever want to fiddle with a plug?

That doesn't always work unfortunately. Some pages are set up to redirect everyone to prevent this. When that happens I move my thumb 2 cm to the right to hit Androids menu button so I can swipe the offending page into oblivion.

Then I make a mental note never to go back there again.

The thing that's going to hurt them is the fact that they'll be forced to buy back hundreds of thousands of Jeeps if the owner chooses.

I suspect quite a few of them will chose to do just that, everyone I know who's owned a Jeep will rabidly warn you off them.

Jokes aside, THIS.

Cup holders are essential. I can live without Twitbook integration, voice activation, in-car DVD and all that other bollocks but cup holders are a basic need in an automobile.

If you're going for a long drive, you'll need a bottle of water and this sits in a cup holder. Same with transporting a drink from where you buy it to where you drink it. Especially if its in a cup instead of a bottle.

I'm one of those people who instantly turn off whenever I get an Interstitial. If I dont get taken directly to the page I wanted I'll mash the back button.

The main reason is that if I'm going to a site, I want a specific page and when you dismiss an interstitial 9 times out of 10 instead of taking me to the content I want to view, it drops me on the sites main/landing page.

Its the same with popup/popover ads. On mobile these are a pain in the arse to close and they interfere with the content I'm trying to view, so again I'll just mash the back button until its gone.

Clothing is among the fundamental elements of civilization. Clothes make the man -- always hated this, but seems true enough: dress affects behavior, behavior determines performance. It certainly doesn't seem fair that those among us with poor taste should be punished for it, but nearly everyone I've ever encountered is very quick to judge based on incredibly short and shallow impressions. If one desires success in corporate career, one will make themselves more attractive, less offensive, and embrace a level of vane pageantry. Yet most prefer to dress how they feel, or as an adjustment to their attractiveness to increase or decrease the level of their social engagement.