Ahem, fixed that for you.

I bet the lead singer from Herman's Hermits couldn't care less about software patents.

We finally know what account apk logs in under.

Umm... No.

In 1946, considerably fewer than five countries had nukes. Hell, France barely had a country.

WTF is it necessary to slander Herman's Hermits?

Given the use of the word 'bloody', I assume you're a UKian. In which case "I learned it from watching you!"

And yet at least two of the places where this has happened were able to rebuild, and quite magnificently, I might add.

It happens in the US as well. In thirty days, the state I live in is going to make talking on a cell phone without hands free an excuse for a stop (currently, it can be cited, but only incidental to a stop for another reason, such as, driving erratically.) Yet it's not unusual for me to see a police officer operating a cell phone (held to ear, not with a bt earpiece) and a laptop computer while driving. I've seen some use two cell phones at the same time. And follow speed limits, laws regarding signalling, etc, etc? Forget about it.

Such a pessimist.

https://www.google.com/#q=ball+gag&safe=off

He's probably a tralfamadorian, unfamiliar with human customs and just wanted to verify his studies of our species.

You seem to forget that the Constitution grants powers from the people to the government, not the other way around.

Even a pretty anarchic libertarian is going to think that the Interstate Commerce clause, has some kind of non-abused non-perverted legitimate meaning, where The People really did intend to grant some sort of power over something. No?

How broadly those words were meant, is something worth fighting about, sure. But if someone buys a ticket to use a commercial airplane, where the airplane crosses state lines it's not totally crazy that the federal government has the power to regulate that commerce. Maybe it's wrong (probably not, though), but it's not on-the-face-of-it totally stupid, is it?

We shouldn't be outraged if the feds happen to think they're allowed to be involved in this.

The part I don't get, is why the federal government thinks that its regulatory power is best used, by turning the transaction into some kind of broken fraud thing. It's like there's some regulator dude, and he gets the bright idea, "I know how we can best regulate this trade! Let's make it randomly break sometimes, where people buy tickets and make plans, and then at the last moment they get surprised by not being allowed to get their money's worth for the ticket, and their other plans are disrupted and their hotel bill is for nothing, and we don't even tell them ahead of time or why." To that guy, I just wanna give a big FUCK YOU, and I wanna tell who ever opposed the plaintiffs in this case, to fucking drop it and concede that the government screwed those people with its evil and incompetence.

But evil and incompetence aside, the power just might have been granted. Just like if, for example, Congress decided that to mail a letter, you have to pee in a cup. It would be stupid, but running the post is one of the their powers, to fuck up however they may. But fucking things up with evil, stupidity, shortsighted incompetence with malice toward the American people, and exceeding Constitutional authority are two different things.

if a state says "it's legal", it's legal. Period.

If 99% of the voters say "the Republicrats say it's Interstate Commerce and I'm going to keep voting Republicrat" then it's within federal powers.

(Not their constitution-granted powers, just their legitimate-by-might powers. But don't we all pretty much agree, that Might is all we care about? If not, please cite.)

Amazing that in 2013, HTML still cannot perform even half the functions a PDF can do. This includes, for example, non-flow oriented precise layout.

Amazing that in 2013, anyone could still see non-flow oriented precise layout as a feature, rather than as a bug.

You don't know the type of device I'm reading on, you don't know what size or shape its screen is, you don't know what size or shape the window within the screen is, you don't know my personal preference for fonts and their sizes. And you want to try to have the server lay out text?

I know what happened. We all pretend it's just innocent joking and no one is ever really harmed by it, but I think this is proof that sometimes real damage is done. It has gone on long enough, beyond what's necessary and beyond the limits of respecting human dignity. Enough. I'm going to end it.

Attention, people who think servers should be laying out text. You have been tricked by an unethical news media, and mocked by the cruel bastards of the tech world. Here's the deal: many years ago, you started hearing about the increasing popularity of "tablets." You made a common-sense and reasonable assumption about what that meant, and no one corrected you (the bastards!!!). Initially, you thought "this changes everything!" and came to the conclusion that pre-rendered text would be a reasonable lowest-common-denom that everyone could live with. But it was all based on an erroneous, if well-meaning, assumption.

The tablets are NOT made out of stone or clay or even plastic. They are NOT the output of those "3D printers" that you keep hearing about, where you assumed people download and "print" your stuff, so that they can read the tablet later on the subway, and you wanted to help with the rendering. The tablets are just touchscreen computers, and can run web browsers, pretty much just like desktop computers. There are some minor differences, but the overall quality of the HTML rendering engine,s on even the worst of them, is actually excellent and flowing text works great. That means your desktop users can go back to flowing text too. Hope this helps.

And to all of you heartless sadists that resent me letting the cat out of the bag, ending your prank: fuck you. It had gone on long enough, and the consequences were starting to get really irritating.

I'm a US citizen that's strongly opposed to all of this bullshit. I've lost my own patience for my government.
What should people like me do to show people like you that we're just as fed up as you are, if not more?

Fuck it. It's not true, but if it helps, think of it like this: the president ordered the NSA to order Snowden to "leak" what they've been up to, as a sort of Public Service Announcement to America and the rest of the world, to make us think about privacy issues.

Your own federal government is just one of a hundred potential adversaries. The fact that they intercept network traffic is not merely a statement from your government that they have malicious intent. It's also a proof-of-concept that there are technical problems with the network; that parties with malicious intent are able to do damage. And that means that even if your government didn't have malicious intent, you would still have the problem and adversaries would still be spying on you.

You can't solve that second half of the problem by running for Congress or persuading your government to become benevolent. You solve it by working on key exchange. That is what everyone needs, because we have had some great tech for decades now, but there's some kind of difficulty that is keeping people from using it. Solve it, for everyone from grandma to teenager, and you're the hero of the century.

If you want to work on the civics problem in parallel with the technical+techsocial problems, ok. But don't for a moment ever lie to yourself and think it will make one iota of difference as to how much privacy anyone has. The AC you replied to, doesn't get it. The US government isn't his real problem either; he just thinks it is. He hopes his bitching will shame one of the adversaries on his hundred-long list, to shape up and behave civilized, leaving him with a mere 99 to go. That is a doomed strategy.