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NFC is actually a touch faster because it doesn't even require handing anything to anybody. Hold your NFC device to the sensor and it'll be done as fast as it takes you to extend your arm to give them the card. I first experienced this level of convenience with Mobile Speedpass 15 years ago, and was hooked... pay for gas in 1 second, every time. Put the thing near the thing, it lights up, and you're done. Simple as lifting your arm.

Cash evangelists are the same people that refused to get a cell phone until they absolutely needed to, and now refuse to get a smart phone. They proudly use the oldest version of their computer OS available that's still patched, and freak out when devs sunset it. Embracing skepticism and moral panic about technology gives them a feeling of control, superiority, and sense of purpose. They'll throw assumptions and anecdotes at you about how evil technology is, but in 5 years when it's considered outdated, they'll be touting the amazing benefits of it when the rest of the population has moved on.

Just out of curiosity, what's your ideal theoretical end-game once that happens? How exactly would people pay for servers, bandwidth, IT workers, content creators, site designers, site developers, electricity, the accounts payable and receivable person, the backup service, and the janitor?

Would you prefer to have all content be pay content, with pay-per-click or subscription schemes for all of the stuff you want?

Should advertising be so closely intertwined with the content that it's basically an infomercial? (Hope you love slashvertisements. They'll make up most of the feed.)

Should all free content be created and hosted by companies that have other successful businesses, and operate some website just for funsies?

Should all free content be donation driven, even though that barely works for an organization as visible as Wikipedia?

Should all free content be like archive.org and shoot for grant funding? That would significantly change the landscape of the free content out there...

Should all free content be amateur people hosting their own servers, hoping that it doesn't get so popular that they will have to pay a zillion dollars for their bandwidth charges?

How does that actually work, in the real world, where it costs real money to operate websites?

Local music can easily blow through that limit. Mine does. Streaming stuff is fine in urban areas, but if you travel outside of urban areas with little phone service regularly, and you don't want to carry another device, it's pretty irritating to be significantly limited in the amount to music you can carry.

2 Laptops: one for me and a MacBook for the girlfriend's design work. I have to deal with big hardware enough at work, and a beefy VPS instance for personal projects and random freelance necessities is more than enough for me. I used to have a bunch of hardware, but that's not where I'm at right now.

My favorite thing about this is how many of the yelp reviewers think that yelp removing their reviews is a violation of their first amendment rights.

My favorite game! It's time to queue up everybody who doesn't have a mobile phone, or as is the case more recently, people who *refuse* (as if anybody gives a shit) to get a smart phone, so, with an overtone of great cultural and intellectual superiority, they can proudly show the world how awesomely anti-mobile they are! There may even be little branch threads containing anti-mobile pissing contests. Also, we should plan on hearing from all of the people making sure that everybody knows just how abhorrently distasteful they find public telephone conversations.

I commute on the MBTA Red Line, which is a subway line in Boston, which has consistent cell phone service for every part of the line I hit on my commute. I don't think I actually notice more than 2 or 3 phone conversations actually taking place on the train in any given MONTH. I am significantly more likely to be bothered by loud conversation among two passengers, face to face, than I am by a loud cell phone conversation. Even if someone was having an loud conversation... that's what headphones are for. The chance of someone being annoying enough, while sitting close enough to drown out my music is pretty slight. You'd have to be pretty thin-skinned not to be able to tolerate it. I really can't imagine that being on a plane would be so much worse that it's worth getting any feathers ruffled over.

So if people aren't talking, then what's the point of the service? People text, reading news, catch up on social media, play games, stream music...

really means "limits of its current supply of fucks to give."

(queue the comments about taxes being extortion)

If the system is funded in large part by criminalizing a behavior so consistent and common that it can fund life-long full time salaries with benefits and pensions, then it's a system worth dismantling. Defending the need to criminalize otherwise law abiding adults for budgetary purposes is obscenely poor governing. If we, as a society, deem the crime important enough to stop, and it's rampant enough to be an epidemic, make an earnest effort to stop the crime. If it's really not that big of a deal, change the laws to reflect that. Riding the sweet spot where it's not enough of a penalty, consistently enough, to really dissuade people from doing it, yet it's enough to be profitable for the people exacting the fines, is unethically exploitative. If your government department needs funding, then get it through taxes, not extortion.

It's only hunting for broken planets?

The Turkish Twist ban, however, remains firmly in effect as Erdogan's shuddering remembrance of the projectile vomit he was forced to clean up at the fair, during his summer job in high school, brushes aside the media's criticism of his hard-lined approach.

Well *I* saw a documentary that said that these cameras were really Federal Reserve Bank mini chemtrails planes dispatched by the Illuminati filled with MMR vaccines designed to give the moon babies of the Area 51 aliens space autism... ...they ARE very socially awkward...

Most people that were interested in tempting someone back to their place to play with butt toys would just try and woo them with a couple of strong drinks and some sweet talk, instead of the creepy abduction/space roofies crap that they seem to be fond of... but I don't think autism necessarily makes someone more likely to go down that path. Maybe space autism does.

If I remember correctly, the second matrix movie showed a closeup of a terminal where someone was running nmap with sensical command line arguments. No, it didn't make it any better.

But what good is it, really, without the built-in ability superimpose moronic LOLcats style text on them.

Yeah, lots of universities use it for a lot of things, like scientific and cultural heritage images... they serve the images up, if need be, through the proprietary lurawave image server... not a great solution from a systems perspective, but it's what they like.

Personally, I think the lack of widespread adoption makes it a serious preservation concern.