The satcom device does not have to have been on the aircraft.

Yes, I can come up with a thousand free market answers. And yes, that pretty much answers your question.

Would you buy a vehicle from any company whatsoever if you knew that parts were difficult to acquire? A manufacturer can play a game with parts availability only if they don't plan to stay in business.

Maybe we should go back to renting our phones from ATT as well.

Good luck trying to convince people to not have children, especially the Bible Belt people who literally believe it's their God-given right to litter the Earth with their offspring.

It's not just the Bible Belt -- the UN Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights (article 16) declares that "men and women of full age ... have the right to marry and to found a family." It's pretty totalitarian to suggest otherwise... which you really should try to be more aware of, lest it damage your pitch...

Dumb ruling, or accurate ruling on a dumb law?

It is no longer strictly a private affair. However, if the government decides to make certain laws that substantially burden some individual's ability to exercise his religion, such as by limiting the conditions under which he may operate a business, then those laws may be found unconstitutional -- something about "congress shall make no law" blah blah blah.

I think it's not as simple as that and we're being confused by the proximate issue. I know that a typical case is "is it okay for a business run by some fundamentalist Christians allowed to refuse service to bake cakes or provide flower arrangements a gay wedding." Let's use different groups here to make the issues clearer. Is it okay for an event-planning business run by a Buddhist to refuse service to plan a KKK rally? To refuse to bake a cake that says [insert offensive thing a KKK member might want on a cake here]? How about just to refuse to provide services to a KKK member? Refuse to provide sale of goods?

If the answer is "no" to the Christian baker's refusals and "yes" to the KKK rally refusal, what are the differences between these hypothetical situations? If relevant, what are the differences between the rally and the general sale of goods? What are the differences between these hypothetical situations and the law(s) being proposed?

I wrote this up a day before that at http://technocrat.net/d/2014/2/20/6. I've known about it for a month or so, I don't know why nobody else was excited until now.

That makes more sense. Thanks.

I did that with Slashdot. I don't like the way it worked out.

Hi,

So, it is tempting to resurrect Technocrat.net now that Slashdot stinks worse than the last two times I shut down technocrat.net .

If you remember, we didn't get very many readers. We didn't get them because not enough people submitted usable articles.

As it happens, we don't just need a better Slashdot. We need a replacement for Groklaw. And I personally would be happier reading something with the absolute minimum of Javascript except perhaps in the submission editor. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

I know that I can do it technically, and I have the server, and Cloudflare should be able to help me handle the load. But if it is like last time, and my wife observes that I'm talking to the same dozen guys all of the time, it's not going to work.

What do you think?

You dial 1-510-4PERENS. Email is probably better, though. bruce@perens.com .

You can't take the sky from me.

"So you are turning off and removing the battery from your Cell Phone? No?"

Pretty soon, that won't matter either, with MIT developing wireless radios that rely on nothing other than power from the wireless signals floating all around us. That's why I use a Faraday Bag to put my devices in when I am not actively using them.

"And you are worried about your CAR?"

There, FTFY.

It's still my car. If I want my car's exact speed, location, route and destination being sent to anonymous, random strangers sharing the public roadway with me, I'll be the one who authorizes that data being sent outbound, thank you very much.

"They ALREADY can track you, even with out a warrant. It's called a stakeout and tailing somebody. They can watch you in public, any time they wish, no warrant required."

The major difference here, is that we can track them as well, and they aren't allowed to continue to track you, follow you onto private property without a warrant. They're also not allowed to illegally attach GPS devices to your vehicle, but they're doing that anyway too.

See the problem here?

"Conspiracy is when you invent an implausible explanation for something."

If we've learned anything over the last 4-5 years, it's that those pesky conspiracy-theorist friends we have that we never acknowledge to others, were much closer to "Right" than we had ever dreamed of.

I agree with you. There's absolutely no way this is going to go unabused.