How many people actually make calls nowadays anyway?

For personal use, I'd wager not too many.

I'm texting and/or using data most of the time when I've got my phone out.

I don't have a landline, and my personal cell gets maybe 10-15 minutes per month of calls.

My work phone, on the other hand, probably racks up a few hours a month. I telecommute a couple days a week, and while I use data for most communications I still have conference calls and other discussions. Eventually that stuff might go to VoIP or something, but we're not there yet.

And yes, I use a headset most of the time. My work cell is, ironically, a bit too small to hold comfortably for the length of a call.

But arguably he can't be worse than the slate of directors who got them to where they are.

True, unless he convinces them to pull an Elop.

That meme pretty much bit the dust with the advent of decent bluetooth (or even wired) headsets, or integrated vehicle sets.

If a device is too big to hold comfortably to the ear, you're pretty much an idiot (or, to be redundant, a hipster) to stand there holding it that way if there's a better solution.

At this point, the only significant difference between "tablet" and "phone" should come down to pocketability and how well you can hold it.

I've always said, since the NSA is reading all of my e-mail anyway, the least they could do is filter out all the spam for me ...

Won't happen. We all know that buried in the avalanche of spam are NSA/CIA control messages being broadcast to their agents embedded among the patriot militia population.

To the norms, it may look like yet another penis enlargement discount herbal supplement (at wholesale prices!), but to the government storm troopers, it's a new mission parameter.

if he had just gone to AT&T or acted responsibly in the disclosure, rather than trolling, he would most likely have never been charged.

I tend to agree with most of what you wrote, except that.

It's been shown time and time again that when it comes to reporting security issues, large corporations like AT&T have a very strong "shoot the messenger" tendency. Unless you can do it anonymously, reporting a disclosure to them is almost certain to get you charged.

One might make the point that a phone which is waterproof to 1 meter for 30 minutes has reasonably tight seals and well-fitting exterior surfaces, but that it probably could not handle e.g. being dropped into a shallow puddle

I'd like to think that waterproofing levels would apply up to the maximum designed impact levels, though. That is, if someone says their phone can handle a 2m drop onto concrete, then it should be able to handle a 2m drop into 20cm of water if it's rated for 1m of submersion.

One meter? So that's just enough to stand in water up to your head

It's enough to survive a dunk in the toilet (and subsequent washing in the sink) or a drop into a puddle. In other words, it'd cover 95% of water damage a typical phone might be subjected to.

Otherwise, you're trying to figure out how to make the real world more like the Internet (minus goatse, natch).

I was under the impression that it's the TSA's mandate to make the real world more like goatse, but otherwise I agree with your point.

Once things become reasonable the unions seem unwilling to drop their adversarial position.

Exactly. I'm in a union, and this is one of the biggest annoyances. Every round of contract negotiation is the "toughest yet", every law passed which might possibly affect the union is going for their throats, etc.

Problem is, if every situation is treated as a major crisis, union members start to tune it out and it becomes nearly impossible to mobilize them when you actually do have a serious labour issue.

However, the idea was rejected, because even the US government wasn't willing to go that far.

I thought it was because the Kardashians' already record and archive everything they do on the off-chance that it could be turned into money at some point.

I also understand the CIA has drawn up plans to destroy this "archive of mass destruction"...

Seriously, just look at Tom Cruise and his claims that anti-depressants don't work.

Well, now, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame the CoS for Hollywood celebrities being nuts. Hollywood celebrities were nuts before Scientology, and they'll be nuts long after Scientology is just a memory of a bad trip.

Why would ad removal on the search engine be even slightly useful as a marketing hook?

Or, to rephrase the question, why would a school which gives a crap about kids seeing ads not already be running ad blocking software everywhere possible? It shouldn't be more complicated than a check mark in their existing porn/malware/Facebook filters...

What is the point of automatically removing child porn so it's not searchable.

Well, if it works to prevent people from seeing it unintentionally then it means the Google search engine provides more relevant search results. So that's a major improvement in Google's search engine.

If it's automatically identified removed, then presumably Google would be able to purge ephemeral copies from their caches and whatnot, which is probably nice from a liability perspective.

It might help to reduce casual interest in the subject if it's not easily searchable.

It doubt it would prevent anyone actively trying to find it, and it certainly won't stop the kinds of people who would go to the length of producing it; at least, I can't imagine that fame through improved search engine results is a significant part of their motivation.

The question is what is the impact on the people who might make a transition from casual interest (if they could view it by searching) to actual production? If it helps prevents that, it's a win. On the other hand, if these people deal with frustrated urges by just going ahead and making their own, we'd have to call it a major failure.

Ideally, someone has actually done the research and determined that yes, blocking casual searches for child porn should amount to a net benefit.

In practice it wouldn't surprise me if it's a move to reduce the threat from Attorney General's who see child porn in Google's search results as an easy PR and courtroom win.

This. I've been telling people this even before the iPad came out - tablets are going to replace the clipboard.

Durable, waterproof tablets will. Clipboards and paper are still a shedload more failure-tolerant than electronics.

Still, it's getting close and some of the cases available are pretty tough.

Nobody forced him to change the name.

"Force" is maybe a strong word. It was one of the two options given, presented as if it might be undesirable, and it doesn't look like he wasted much time thinking about it.

Such a better solution (which would be: work more with the Debian Multimedia team, and make his repository not needed anymore, with everything directly available in Debian) have been attempted multiple times. Though he didn't seem to care doing that.

Actually, from my read of the situation, a better solution doesn't involve him at all. That's usually the case where you have intractable personalities associated with a problem.