As recent revelations have shown, the NSA ban on domestic spying exists only on paper. The NSA does regularly and knowingly spy on Americans with impunity. It's only a problem if they get caught.

Learn to deal with it indeed. It won't be changing anytime soon. It's part of the price you pay for a sweet government gig.

Aww, too bad so sad. Did they think the days of virtually unlimited budgets could go on forever?

Sure. License them all. Want to write Hello World? That will be $1 million to cover all patent license fees plus attorney fees. Anything more complicated will be many millions more for all the relevant patents. Bye bye future innovation.

The main purpose of modern Slashdot is to air paranoid stories about "rights online" that border on conspiracy theory alarmism, or sometimes cross the line completely.

POTS service in the last 5 years is NOT what it was 15 years ago. Reliability, resilience and call quality have taken a hit in favor of cost cutting. Customers don't care enough to complain anymore since they are all using cell phones or Voip anyway. POTS is already on life support and not coming back - might as well go ahead and pull the plug.

Given the same scenario today, I doubt your POTS line would be working, not to mention you wouldn't be able to call any neighbors since they wouldn't have POTS lines anymore.

While your post is factually correct, it is logically inconsistent. If the standard for safe driving is complete and total sobriety and 100% motor control, there are many people who are on the road today, completely sober, who need to lose their license permanently. I have better reflexes and reaction time after a couple of beers than many people do when completely sober.

Either its safe for me to drive or they need to be off the road. Which one is it? In this politically correct country of ours we refuse to make this important distinction.

Great idea, make it free. Then it would be even more of a rolling homeless shelter / psych ward than it already is!

YOU try developing software without infringing anyone's patent. Can't be done. In fact we are all no doubt violating numerous patents right now just by posting a message on a public forum.

You don't think Yahoo also plunders your personal information for corporate gain?

Did you just get back from a showing of Hunger Games?

It's called differentiation between good gun owners and bad gun owners, dipshit. Yes its more complicated than that but I had to dumb it down sufficiently for you to even begin to understand. Here's a hint: it isn't hunters and target shooters that are shooting up elementary schools.

Sure, lets get rid of those wasteful cars. Not like they ever contributed to the economy or the public good or anything...

Android's permission listings are damn near useless. Every single app in the Play store wants permission to access everything on the phone. I'm not sure if this is just lazy programming or if there is some sort of serious limitation if your app does not ask for maximum permissions. If you decide you won't permit apps on your phone that are too intrusive, you will have a phone with no apps other than the crap the phone maker forces on it. Selective disabling of permissions would give the user some meaningful choice.

Remember it goes both ways. You can always manipulate it favorably too.