For everyone complaining about the beta format. They put a link right up on top of the pages now. Don't just post rants here (personally I doubt anyone in charge reads the comments here) send them emails telling them how much of an abomination it is.
feedback@slashdot.org?subject=beta_feedback

Any news worth paying for is important enough that the people should be warned about it for free.

And "Whoops, dashboard camera must be on the fritz again..." right when said event supposedly happened.

What happens when you decide a different company has better phone service but all your money is locked up in tmobile banking?

We don't?

Why? Don't you like your Japanese meat tender?

"And if you do not, the government will make something up for you."

I did the same thing to fix a friend's laptop. It was windows 8 though and giving me shit so I ultimately had to just rip the drive out and mount to another system. It was a pain in the ass but still recoverable.

You might want to rethink that statement.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-green-bacteria-in-shopping-bags,0,4837500.story

Did you check to make sure there wasn't an error? I know of some errors currently where the updater program doesn't function properly and locks up synaptic and the software manager as well but doesn't show the error unless you open it with the command line. So to the casual user it just looks like there's no updates. I currently have this issue but plan to just deal with it until Mint 16 comes out in a few weeks and just wipe and install fresh.

Do you honestly think the average person knows about the spying or even understands exactly what is happening or how it ultimately affects them? If they knew and understood it as we do I think they'd be as pissed about it as we are. Probably even more so considering how easily riled up the average person is by the talking heads on tv.