This, that being said 90% of them are OK and just want to be treated like a human being.

There are three people in the office you should never piss off.
1. Secretary/receptionist - You depend on this person for so many low level functions that can make your life a living hell, everything from supplying stationary to mail to taking accurate messages.
2. Helpdesk/Sysadmin - Again, you depend on this person for a lot of low level functions needed just to do your job. Also IT staff are vindictive (trust me, I am a sysadmin), annoy them at your own peril.
3. Bookkeeping/Accountant - Forget what your boss said, these are the people who actually sign your pay cheque. They do the pay runs and if there are every any problems, they're someone you want to like you enough to help you immediately.

This,

Which is why I'd rather ask for permission and have it denied on my feet, than have beg forgiveness and have it denied on my knees.

Pay stubs can also be fabricated.

That being said, in the country where I live it's illegal for a recruiter or other employer to ask to see your payment summaries, so I can lie as much as I like. The problem in Australia is that recruiters tend to try to beat you down and tell you that you're not worth that much (as well as excuses like "well the market has changed" and "GFC"). I drop these recruiters like a hot rock as soon as they start feeding me lines.

The thing is, 90% of people who get trapped, get trapped through their own bad choices. They buy an expensive car they can barely afford, they put everything on credit, they have personal loans for consumption, spend too much money keeping up with the Joneses (by spend money, I mean use credit) and all of a sudden when something bad happens they're up to their eyeballs in debt with few assets to show for it and little to no money in the bank.

Whilst the proliferation of easy credit shoulders a lot of the blame, a significant amount still falls onto the shoulders of the credit addled. They could say "no" when the bank offers them an easy loan. They could say "no" I dont need an expensive car. They could say "no" to credit and pay cash/debit at the store.

I have $12K of cash in the bank as an emergency fund only, I keep that so I never have to touch my investments if the shit hits the fan. $12K is enough to cover over 6 months of my expenses if I lose my job. It would suck if I lost my job and had a $4K credit card bill due in 28 days, fortunately I dont (I also haven't had a car loan since my 2nd car).

The problem with societal norms is that the norm is the dictate of whoever is in power at the time. There have been a lot of societies where what we would consider backwards and barbaric are the societal norm, hell even 50 years ago it was considered a societal norm to beat your wife or force black people to sit at the back of the bus.

"Societal norm" is simply a nice way of saying "tyranny of the majority". The problem is, people who are different dont like tyranny. As much as many hate to admit it, enforcement of societal norm creates the kind of monsters that do school shootings.

Now as for the law, the law gets very specific about what you cant say, not about what you can say and its also gets very specific about the circumstances which you say it. In other words, the court considers context. If I were to post on ./ that I'd like to shoot Tony Abbott it wouldn't get a second look, if I were to send the same message to the Prime Minister of Australia, someone will take a look at it and I may even be charged.

IF they're on the same hardware. This is a vulnerability with the EFI on Apple computers. Because the hardware and firmware are different the same vulnerability is likely not exist with the EFI on IBM servers.

Also you're wrong about turning it off for a short time. This is basically the same as the flaws that lead to the old BIOS viruses. As malware can hide in the EFI it doesn't care what you do with the OS as the EFI is completely independent of it.

Hey, dont try to use logic and reason here.

They'd need to cut the price by 100% for me to accept ads.

I've seen two cases on how this was solved.

The first was when an assistant manager came up and said "Please stand over here so that we can continue to serve other people", he ranted and raved about how much business the store would lose but I can practically guarantee that the store would have seen more repeat business from the others in that line.

The second was another customer pushing past them and telling them to naff off when they complained that they were in line. The guy did ask nicely for the couponer to move along first, then just shoved him out of the way. Australians tend to have little patience for the kind of person who likes to hold up lines.

Why would they do that?

Remember that both Apple and Google make money by collecting your information and selling it (at least Google gives you some assurance it's anonymised before sale). Why would they want to make it harder to do this.

now, I had nothing against uber before hearing this; but now, I won't be caught dead inside one of their cars, now. this 'war on your customers' is nothing I care to help fund or support!

With the way Uber acts, why did you think this wouldn't happen?

The way they thumb their nose at the law means that its a safer assumption to assume that they will do arse-hattery like this. Uber is in the business of making money and your data is worth money. They are not honest businessmen who care about the reputation of their business, regulations designed to protect you or their customers in general.

I've never installed the Uber app, I took one look at the permissions it requested and figured out it was a data mining operation.

I've said it since the begining. The only thing Uber has going for it is the irrational hate people seem to have of taxis... Whilst they've capitalised on that fantasitcally, soon people will realise they've got all the same problems as traditional taxis and a few that traditional taxis dont have... Like this one.

This, different jobs have different requirements. Personally I hate open plan, but I find that if I can communicate quickly with my team it's very helpful. The problem is listening to everyone one else communicating with their team. Having been sat right next to sales, I'd rather be stuck in the dreariest, boxiest cube farm ever devised by Catbert, the evil director of human resources. Sales never shuts up, ever.

Its not real estate, its tax.

Certainly in Australia, a partition is not considered furniture, it's considered part of the building so the cost cant be amortised or depreciated as quickly as the desks and chairs (IIRC furniture is 3 years, walls have to be depreciated over 40).

So finally I will have multiple apps in the foreground bringing my tablet to a crawl.

Jokes aside, have Google announced wich devices will get this, I'm wondering if my Nexus 7 and 4 will receive the official update.

Obviously for marketing purposes, they wouldn't consider that a switch.

But with it being a 2 player market and Android having the lions share, it's obvious that most switchers to iphone will have come from Android. The same would be true for switchers to Android. The question is, are the people switching to Iphone greater than the numbers switching to Android.

Also recent numbers will be skewed by the introduction of the Iphone to several countries, most notably China. In established markets, for several years the Iphone user base has been stagnant or dropping slightly with 75-80% of Iphone purchases being from current Iphone users.

Simple answer: it's easier to fleece Apple users.

Android users tend not to click on ads, some will even have ad blockers. Iphone users are less discerning and more prone to impulse purchases. Also Android owners are a lot more varied than Iphone owners meaning the Iphone market is easier to target. Point in short, its not that Android users aren't using the more advanced features of Android phones, it's just that Android users aren't clicking on the "free ringtone" ads.