" There's a guy at work whose wife is expecting a baby... Maybe his wife should have a talk with him about working for a company that lets him work from home. "

#1 Are you saying he should change jobs so that he can be available for a call for the singular time that he may get a call that its time for her to give birth?

#2 Not all jobs lend themselves to working from home. What about those people who actually have to be somewhere to get work done?

"There is no situation I could be in where an incoming call is important enough to warrant my immediate attention."

So, if your mom/dad/wife/child/friend had a heart attack and had moments to live, you wouldn't feel the need to try to see them? Or as a more common issue, if one of those people had a flat tire and found the spare was flat also, you wouldn't want to go help them if possible?

"15 is bigger than 5"

What does "bigger" mean? Perhaps, better? Not necessarily greater. 5 is a better score than 15 in golf.

If they have a true legal right to view your account, the school shouldn't have to come to you to gain access. They should contact Facebook and have then grant access to your account.

"when you look at how much money is made because of the IT departments "

That's the same argument every department makes. "If it wasn't for us, this place would fall apart." It seems, sales depts. are the only ones who can pull that off.

" Admit that there is going to be huge structural unemployment in the future, and enact European style unemployment insurance and worker protections"

Or, you could pretend that the $100k you're earning this year is actually $50k, because you are unemployed half the time and plan to live off of $50/year instead of the feast/famine model.

"Unfortunately, a lack of stable income will impact your credit score."

Is that really unfortunate? Should companies loan you money if you have a "lack of stable income"?

You know what else impacts your credit score? Lack of debt.

Plus, don't forget how people used to live wayyyy longer. Noah made it to 950 according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah)

"It is only in the past 75 or so years that we have started to do a LOT of nothing."

And how has the average life expectancy changed over that last 75 years?

"municipal broadband would be rationed, unreliable, and overpriced in the same way municipal water and sewer are"

Sure, water can be rationed and pricy in some areas where it is sparse, but does more than 0.1% of America have unreliable water and sewer?

It would be easy to get that fire started if you poured on a little diesel gas first

A browser fingerprint is not that perfect. I've done an in-depth analysis looking at 4.4 billion hits and user agents are not that unique. From that I found 4.3 million unique user agents. About 9% of the overall daily traffic contained user agents that were only seen from a unique IP address. So, there is less than a 1 in 10 chance you can be fingerprinted. And, if/when you ever update your OS or browser there is a good chance you will be lost in the crowd again.

" cars are often too cheap for the service to be sustainable, in the sense that the money does not even cover the running costs of the cars when considering wear and loss of value on purchase price"

This could be true if you purchased a car just to be an Uber "taxi". If you already owned a car though, and want to make a few extra bucks a few nights a week, then you may be able to come ahead. Especially with gas being $1.50/gallon now.

Sure, we've all heard of googol, but you're spelling it wrong. We all know its 1.0 × 10^100. What does that have to do with anything?

How about a system that safely works in fair weather and then shuts down for manual driving when it can't cope like in the brutal conditions you described. For many of us, that will cover 98+% of the driving. I can suck it up for the 1-2% if needed. And really, no one should be on the road if the conditions are near what you described.

I'd like to see someone set one of these up outside the FBI's office somewhere and stream the data to the web. Since there are no expectations of privacy, all should be ok.