" to a cartridge designed to release smells"

Seriously?

WTF "realistic" smell would EVER come from a game I'd want to play? For every "stroll through the garden" in fable (Oh wait, Fable is "mid evil" times, so open sewage, scratch that) there are mainly sports games, yea, no thanks to the sweaty locker room, killing "everything" yea, i'm SURE the Covenant's entrails smell great after I blow them open. Forza? While I love the smell of race fuel, I'm VERY certain my wife/kid would murder me if the whole house smelled of race fuel and gear oil... (Race fuel spills do cover the smell of differential gear oil I've found)

So thank you for making sure my video games don't smell... (Now if it was a deodorant cartridge, that might have been a better idea...)

Period.

Try riding a motorcycle through a city, or along a highway. That's when you tend to not be on a phone. (I've definitely used hands free, and texted from stop lights or pulled over on the bike) That's the ONLY people that are on our roads that I'd put better than 50% on not being on their phone. Either blatantly, both hands texting away, or talking on it, or just holding it for easy access.

There is NO WAY that only 1 in 4 people are using their phones on a daily commute. I'd say 3 out of 4 or even 4 out of 5 use their phone daily during their commute.

You'd tie... Wouldn't you rather switch from scissors over to paper? Since if it "thinks" you'll have scissors, you'd want paper cause the robot would choose rock to beat you...

Ermm, no. He had a "lead" spotter to get him out of the NE corridor of traffic hell, where construction can easily add 4-6 hours to your trip.

Then he had a spotter in the car, and a co-driver that was also spotting/sleeping.
As to the parent,
  There are definitely places out west, where with a proper car (and proper driver) a "safe and reasonable speed" could easily be well into the triple digits.
Is that true in my lifted Jeep Wrangler? Nope. Is that true in a nice sports sedan with active suspension? yep.
Was he breaking the law? Yeppers... Do I think he was pushing it? less than you'd think..
Do I know people that have done similar/worse things on motorcycles? Yeppers...
I've ridden on interstate trips and averaged 90-100 on the bike including quick fuel stops... and felt perfectly safe.

So while he was "breaking the law" I doubt he was as wreckless as Sally the realtor hurtling along in her Infinity SUV on her cell phone, explaining stuff to clients, and looking up things on her laptop....

I know I'm a lot more scared of the texting idiot than someone actively trying to drive...

So his main issue with gmail....

"It doesn't work with Exchange Active Sync"

And that's google's fault? My guess is that MS stopped allowing it easy access HOPING people would move over to outlook.com (as he did, because he was "getting scroogled" cause we ALL know MS has NEVER used target advertising. etc etc)

he complains that you should be able to easily access it from a browser, or a native app... Ermmmm... Works just fine for me from a browser and from apps on iOS and Android devices for me... (I don't believe in WinMo.. they sucked, they annoyed me, i'll never trust them again...)
Even works fine on Blackberry....

Soooo... "MOVE TO OUTLOOK.COM Don't get Scroogled...." thanks for the look MS... oh yea, use bing.com, it's AWESOME..

". But it also raises the question of whether targeting anonymity services to hunt out fraudsters could have chilling effects for harmless Tor users trying to protect their privacy online—particularly this year in light of the NSA-spying scandal."

Seriously?

Why would you ever need to "protect your privacy" via Tor etc, from an ONLINE SHOPPING SITE that you are GIVING YOUR CREDIT CARD AND SHIPPING INFORMATION TO?

I mean, I'm as much anti NSA crap as the next guy. but come on. That said, cool tech. It would make sense that retailers would do this. I see this is a good thing, not a reason to slam the lizards running our government.

I agree, the calendar thing, seems overly stupid.

the screen shot thing was in all the google commercials etc.
I'm really surprised no one from VZW or on the forums suggested trying that.

As for the turning off when you move it away, I'll borrow the line from Jobs, "you're holding it wrong" :) I have a feeling the mounted the light sensor somewhere that when you go to type on it, it thnks you are putting it back against your cheek.
My Epic, (galaxy 1, very similar to the stratosphere 1) was like this. DROVE me nuts, then I watched a left handed friend use it, worked perfect... I was annoyed.
My s3 works great for me, but that same leftie friend hates hers for the light sensor. So she has to actually THINK about it to not turn the screen off.
So maybe it's cause Koreans made it and they all have tiny hands.... Us Americans with huge claws just cover too much of the screen.

As for Canada, my mom (yes, old people do text. poorly sometimes, but oh well) sent me a text from up near Montreal to say they were there. I got the text 3 weeks after they were back in the states..... Blame Canada....

It's running a newer version of Android.
All the new android phones take a screenshot by placing the "blade" of your hand on the side of the screen and sliding it across the screen.

Calendar issue, Not sure, but I'd wager there is a setting like you said using the wrong timezone. there are 300 calendar apps. I use google's and have never had an issue.

Group texts are NOT BUILT INTO SMS. It's kind of a kludge and iMessage from apple makes it worse because group texts in iMessage are not even SMS. They use data and the apple servers, so you get all sorts of weirdness there.

When you were in Canada, using a foreign service, it maybe have been rogers, or whatever that blocked it as their roaming contract doesn't cover that. No telling why that failed. I wouldn't blame that on the phone.

Camera not working. there is a good chance that using the flash could kill it, also risking the battery going incredibly low and damaging it. This setting can be changed I believe without rooting, but definitely with rooting.

The display turning off IS a setting, also make sure when you go to type, you don't cover the light sensor on the front. It wants to turn the screen OFF when you put it to your head to talk to save battery and avoid your cheek pushing buttons by accident.

Overall score for your rant, Meh. Nice long rant, but you obviously didn't spend as much time googling as you did writing that.

So

if I'm sitting in your car, plugged in to the canbus, I can control things on the canbus....

Yeppers....

Just like if I have access to your laptop for long enough, I can get whatever is on it. (encryption will slow it down, but like I said, given time and access?)

But you'll probably notice me sitting in your car, plugging a cord into the port before I take the time to crash your car, with me riding in it.....
While this is amusing, I'm not that nervous about "security through not having some donkey plug his laptop in your car with a death wish while you are hurtling down the highway"

Having them use the "open" canbus specs, you can add aftermarket devices, and not have to take your car to the dealer for any service.

If they fully lock it down, the dealer will be the ONLY place that could work on it. And the ONLY parts you could add to your car.

That deduction for a kid is less than the deduction you as a person get.
So since it's more than one person, shouldn't the tax deduction go up?
Just like when I was single my tax deduction was 7500. When married, it went up to 15000.
Does that mean you're paying more for not being married? Nope. It means it's even.
Truly even, the deduction would go up to 22,500 for having a kid, 30k for two kids, etc etc.

but it doesn't. And kids are friggin expensive. Trust me on that.

I just assumed that her character had been so nerfed, she figured the only way to get it back was to run for office, and legislate the other classes down to restore rogue to top tier.

I'm hosed for karma now.
". Are you telling me that not one of them thought the bill was a good idea "
yes. And one apparently even agreed with all of it. (Senate was zero)
I don't know anyone that has read all 2801 pages that agrees with all of that bill. There are lots of good things in the bill, but there is also a ton of crap and just horrible things in that bill.
Had that bill been broken into say 28 different items, (100 pages per. I know it wouldn't really work out that easy) then the people voting on it would have maybe read each of them before the vote and then decided to vote for some of the good, and punt some of the bad.
I have also spoken with several representatives that said "We didn't have time to read all of it, so we just voted the party line" (Both Ds and Rs)
There was entirely too much in that one bill to not have issues with and there was entirely too much in there for there to not be good in it.

health care in this country does have serious issues and needs a lot of fixes. BUT there was too much crap in this bill for it to be the "fix" we need. Including "savings" by "keeping benefits the same" they are going to pay doc's less for the same procedures, because they have become common. So for procedure A in 2014, a Dr will make less than he did in 2008. It's still the same procedure, and inflation has occurred, soooo.

Oh dear.
Here we go again, "everyone will get 54 mpg"
No, the automakers are behind this because it allows for MORE shenanigans, and they can say "look we're struggling cause we're having to be green"
Remember, this is NOT based on MPG.
It's carbon output. WITH "incentives"
EPA is establishing standards that are projected to require, on an average industry fleet
wide basis, 163 grams/mile of carbon dioxide (CO2) in model year 2025, which is equivalent to
54.5 mpg if this level were achieved solely through improvements in fuel efficiency.11
(This is from http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/2017-25_CAFE_Final_Rule.pdf )
So have a "good" AC that doesn't leak? That's 24.4 grams/mile credit. No mileage improvement at all. Just a non leaking AC. ;)
Have LED lights? that's a savings.
(NO IT IS NOT)
Have some other vehicle that is electric? That's a savings for your trucks. So some good exhaust cleaning, good AC, good LED lights, and your 22mpg SUV has the emissions of something equivalent to 50mpg.
My motorcycle that DOES get 40mpg, but has no exhaust cleaning systems, no AC improvements, no LED lights, etc, is without the bonuses WORSE for the environment.

The EU and the "Green Cert" or whatever that stupid environmentally friendly crap are the reason FOR these lights. If you use the remote to turn it off, it stays in "standby" so it has to let you know it's in standby. That way you'll know to turn it all the way off to make the light go off. Some of the Samsung TV's have a "full power" switch by holding the stupid button on the tv. No way to turn the light off from the remote.
As for the lights on the chargers, that's just stupid. :) And I hate all people that do that. One of the more gratifying moments in my career was smacking an engineer at Ericsson when he decided to have the LED light be always on when charging. He wouldn't admit "most people" would want it off, and just have an icon by default, but we added the option in the menu's to NOT have the bright ass blue light kick on when it was fully charged. (which woke me up at night when the phone finished charging)

Since I couldn't find the actual patents in my 45 seconds of looking, (yes I'm lazy) I'm not sure if they are what I would consider "valid" patents or more of the blatant "on a phone" type patents.
I also did zero research to see what NCKU was, and whether it was a "proper uni" or if it was a "for profit" type uni.

BUT to me, a patent troll is someone that has a patent for 5 years, does nothing with it, then sues someone that made a successful device. Once more information is available, maybe the joke won't be as funny. But mainly, it was just a smart ass comment. I was amused by it.

Cheers. :)