Why should we be forced to ?
Don't get me wrong, I usually sleep or read entertainment stuff (recently for me: either Pratchett or Iain M Banks - I heartily recommend his excellent Culture cycle, BTW) on airplanes, but what this is about is giving people choice in the matter. If you want to relax and "enjoy the peace and quiet", fine ! if you want to connect to the global planetary network, be it for work reasons or entertainment too, you should be given the choice.

I get what you're saying - but you can't say to people they *have* to relax just because they're traveling. I've co-founded and currently lead a small computer sciences startup and given the choice, I'd much prefer to read or sleep when I'm in an airplane. However, there were several times when I *had* to work (in my current job as well as the previous, more traditional / employed one) during travel to make sure I was ready upon arriving, just because I didn't have time before that to do it

Basically, what I'm saying here is: the more choice people have, the better. They might use the network to read their favorite news site (slashdot or some twitter feeds or other), or they might use the network to work, or they might simply relax using an old-fashioned book. The point is, if you add Internet connectivity to your flight, you are simply giving them more choice in the matter, which is good in my book.

Dupe, there's already another (better I think) submission. Didn't see it, sorry !

When the difference is so unbelievably huge, for me it does mean it's okay. If and when large corporations are taxed the same way I am, and tax loopholes are made unlawful, and in general if and when the insane income disparity is fixed (I'm not holding my breath), then I might reconsider that position.
Also, it's not like I actually abused their mistake - I might've ordered 10 covers on that third order so that I could resell the readers on ebay. I did not. As I said, I feel no guilt over this. I get your point of view, though, but I consider that in a sane society no person should ever hold hundreds of times the wealth of the poorest one in the same society. That I find very wrong.

Happened more than once, and I do signal the error and give the money back ;-)
Mostly because in that case it's the clerk that it will impact, not the shop (although I do the same for the small shop owner next to my flat).

I think most people do, too - either for the same reason or because there's an actual human being in front of you (which makes it very different psychologically than ordering from an automated system).

Well, you're a better guy than me then, I guess :-)
That being said, the online store in question is very large (first or second largest in France I think), has a reputation for screwing customers when it comes to warranty/customer service, and has repeatedly been highlighted in the media for cutting their workforce while having record profits.

Given all that, I care little for their ~540 euros loss. Had it been a smaller store, I would certainly have pointed the mistake (but even then, I might not have sent the product back, unless it was a very small shop).

Forgot to say that this was in the EU - we were in the UK at the time, ordering from a French online store.

No idea either - however, something close happened to me a few years ago.
I ordered an e-ink ebook reader (for 200+ euros) as well as a cover (~20 euros) for the same. A few days later, package arrives: there were two ebook readers in it, no cover at all. I said to myself "lucky ! they made a mistake", did not tell the online store they did (it was a large, national one - I have no guilt over this), and proceeded to order two covers on the same store for the two readers I now possessed.
A few days later, package arrives, contains two other ebook readers. At that point I thought "what the hell", and ordered four covers, one for each of the readers, half expecting four new readers to arrive. This time however, they had fixed the mistake, and I received the product I ordered - the four covers. At that point, me and my flatmates (there were four of us) each had a reader and a cover to go with it anyway.

Frankly, I expected them to at least contact us or use legal action, but the only thing that happened is that we received a phone call with a weird guy asking us "did you order something online recently ?". We simply asked who he was and he answered "I can't tell you that", at which point we simply hung up. Never heard from them again.
This suggests to me that since they made the mistake, they weren't allowed to try and get the products back - I could be wrong though, and I was overseas from said online store at the time, so they may simply have considered that legal action in another country would simply cost them too much.

The "built-in" torch function you're talking about in CM is an app. It's open source - see here: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_packages_apps_Torch .

You make it an app because it makes no sense to integrate such a feature directly in the OS/ROM - it would take longer, and that way you can update it and have additional features (morse code flashing, for example).

What baffles me is why people would install an app named "Brightest Flashlight Free" (name sounds like a moron-magnet), which probably require network access and include ads, when there are tens of ads-less Open-Source alternatives in the Google market as well as outside it.

There are several tumblers existing for exactly this purpose. See for example: http://bitcoinfog.com/
I do not know whether or not they did indeed attract the attention of law enforcement, but since they are running as a tor hidden service and such a tumbler is pretty easy to code/deploy (meaning any such service taken down would be pretty assuredly replaced by 10 others the next day), it is unlikely LE could do anything about it.

Google enabling SSL may be privacy-relevant when using an open wireless network or to prevent wiretaps from other countries but it does not protect you from the NSA listening in on your traffic, since they force Google to provide all the private keys.

Replying to undo wrong moderation.

So are diseases and genetic defects, for example - thining out the herd through evolution, making sure the survivors have the most updated genes to fight the current diseases, themselves constantly evolving. Would you suggest that we stop treating them ? thinking like that, we should also stop extracting problematic wisdom tooth for people, because that also is part of the "cycle of life".
We have consciousness. This allows us to go beyond our mere nature and try to decrease suffering, for everyone of us. Aging implies suffering. And beyond this, aging should IMHO become a *choice*, not something that is imposed upon us.

In my mind, the very expression "cycle of life" evokes something almost sacred/religious (or at the very least romantical) in nature. There is no sacred "cycle of life". We are the product of randomness, and our consciousness a response born from the process of evolution to a universe where anything can happend, at any time: self-awareness, the ultimate (for now at least) way of surviving in such an universe, by allowing our species to react at time scale inferior to a generation - by being aware, we can analyze our universe, understand it, and overcome potential species-wide issues at the scale of a lifetime, instead of relying on genetic evolution over larger timespans. If one day we finally get our collective asses to space and start colonizing other planets, then even a nuclear winter following a meteor event (such as the one that wiped out 75% of earth's species at one point) becomes survivable for us. Such a thing would be highly unlikely without self-awareness.

And precisely because we are self aware, we should in my opinion consider aging as a remnant of our animal origin: something to be fixed. Eventually, even our very bodies ought to be replaceable. I know *I* certainly long to see in wider wavelengths, to feel and experience more and thus to become more aware. It is the essence of transhumanism, and in my view what we should aim for.

As for the ressources issue, we have an entire solar system full of ressources, and an exponential tech development curve to match it. Even on earth, tech such as transmutation will eventually make ressources wars pointless, and scarcity itself could become a thing of the past. I'm not saying we'll see it for sure during our lifetime, but I definitely wouldn't bet it won't happend. I was born during the eighties, and the tech progress I've witnessed during my (admitedly short) lifespan is simply staggering - a lot of the SF stuff I read as a child is already a common part of life. We live in a time of miracles, and I think it's only the tip of the iceberg and we'll see incredible, profoundly changing progresses during the upcoming century.