God bless Lili St. Cyr!

Serious? No. I don't seriously expect really safe speed limits to be set up by any democracy that has so many motorists in it. But I do think that's what we ought to do. As a civilisation, we are killing our own children at an appalling rate, just so that motorists can catch up to the back of the next long line of stationary traffic a few seconds faster. In town, slow down.

Look at the scenario you described. A car doing the speed limit towards a marked crosswalk... it's such a familiar scenario that we forget to be horrified. Think about what we're doing here. We have footpaths across the street specifically for people to walk across. And then we have motorists driving straight at those footpaths, at such speed that it would literally be a crime to go any faster at all, at such speed that they couldn't possibly stop should anyone suddenly walk out on the path. These motorists expect everyone else in the world to pay attention, to stay out of their way. God forbid they themselves should slow down! They're 'doing the limit' and that makes it OK.

That limit is obviously much too high. It should come down. Twenty is plenty.

Then let's redesign those footpaths. At the moment there are raised paths either side of the street, and when the path runs across the middle of the street it is lowered. For the convenience of motorists, of course; otherwise they might have to slow down. Well, let them slow down! The path across the street is a pedestrian walkway just like the paths either side, so let's have it at the same height, for the convenience of people using wheelchairs, people pushing infants in prams, people with mobility issues. We'll put a gentle slope to either side of the path so that it isn't a nasty bump for motor traffic. Well, I mean - so that it isn't a nasty bump if the motor traffic is moving at a safe speed.

Yeah, speed limits are definitely way too high, you're right about that. 20mph in cities is plenty. Then you have a lot longer in which to notice people walking across the road, your brakes have much less work to do in order to bring the vehicle safely to a stop, and if you still fail to respond in time you'll do much less bodily harm to somebody.

We can call these Hack-Back Utilities "Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics" or "ICE" for short.

Calling Dr. Arnim Zola to the white courtesy phone. Dr. Arnim Zola to the courtesy phone please.

End users might have complained (in a "Big Broth-er-Google Maps is watching my every move!") sense.

I'm guessing the feature was dropped due to privacy complaints, which just goes to show that you simply can't win.

So, since the Gold Shop and the Real Money Auction House were the primary reasons they were giving for requiring the always online, does this mean that they'll be patching that "functionality" out as well?