Well, when they escalated it to calling in bomb-threats against an aircraft last night, I think "terror" suddenly became a valid terminology.

Reading, it sounds like it is able to replicate various mag-stripes, and therefore can replicate various credit-cards.

This, in a world where credit-card issuers are trying real hard to get away from mag-stripes and over to chip-only operation, makes no sense.
Personally, I've seen a LOT of stores over the last 4-5 years, where the mag-reader has been taped over (or a standard cardboard thing inserted), so the only option is to use the card-chip; likewise, several new portable readers (in restaurants, taxis), that only read chips and not mag-strips.

Sooo.. what is it about this product, that makes it worth however little money it may cost??

Seriously, I read about this via Google+ (!) a few days ago - Slashdot is getting properly slow now.

Can confirm is not only Oracle, but any large (IT? Consulting?) company, that thinks they can get away with it, uses this strategy.

So that's both CopSub and SpaceX having a boo-boo thing month - coinkidink?

Get a Dyson - it uses less power, but is more efficient at turning that power into loud noise!

Yes, if you pay for a paper-copy of the Mail, you get ads ... and paper ... Naturally, this would only work if you could buy an ad-free service, i.e. it would be dependent on the content-provider to be willing to sell you an ad-free product; This is why I noted that sat-tv used to be ad-free, due to people paying for it, but contains ads despite the subscription fees.

Also, at rates of 1-10GBP, there is room for more than 4 sites before you hit 140GBP - I didn't enumerate every site on the planet, just some examples. I'm sure some are already ad-free, some have ads you do not mind or that you can ignore, so you could chose to only pay a subscription at those site where it would help you the most?

Quite true

My last employer paid our private internet-bill (up to some amount), as everyone in my team needed internet when working from home during night- and weekend-shifts.

This went well until they repeatedly "forgot" to pay the bill, and the provider cut internet, phone and TV to some of the guys in the team, due to considering them all part of a single package (despite being billed separately).

C'mon, it is the year 2014 already - no-one uses Fahrenheit any longer.

hmm... people in low-cost countries should start studying US law, so they can give cheap legal-advice :)

I don't think you're looking at this the right way....

Ads are per-site.
Those sites are generally free (ignoring the various ads).

To pay for an "ad-free internet", you would pay the sites you use directly, to get an ad-free experience with them.
You use YouTube? Pay them 3GBP/month.
You use Slashdot? Pay them 1GBP/month.
You use Reddit? ...uki, they should then pay you...
You use The Daily Mail? Pay them 9.99GBP/month. ...and so on. Eventually, the internet bits that you use, are ad-free for you.

Yes, this doesn't make the complete internet ad-free, but it makes everything you use on the internet ad-free; your experience becomes an ad-free one.
No issues with a central collection and distribution, no licensing headaches, no cumbersome barrier-of-entry for new sites, and still the presence of this "democracy" thing you talk about.

Note: The idea of for-pay TV (Satellite TV in the form of Sky) was that the consumers would pay directly, and not have any ads ... not sure that worked out very well.

If GoDaddy filed an effectively-bogus DMCA, why weren't they punished?

"[..] statement by you UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf."

Am thinking we should look at the requirements and budgets set out by management, before we put the admins into the stockades.
Yeah, the admins probably could have done better, but if there were expressed requirements to do stuff in a given way, perchance from upper management to make something easier, the admins might not have had much say in the matter.
Likewise, if there wasn't sufficient budget to do things correctly (not really seeming likely, given the nature of this beast, but possible), the admins cannot really be blamed.