You can say pretty much whatever you want. But if you address (or refer to) someone in a way that they've explicitly told you they'd rather you didn't, and you continue to do so clearly out of spite, then don't be surprised if folks call you an asshole for doing that.

This is known as "traffic signal preemption" or "emergency vehicle preemption" and has been in place in a number of countries for years.

Vendor lock-in, to just about any vendor you could choose? You don't even need a vendor at all if you don't want one - just use Debian, or Fedora, or...

I wouldn't say it's fun, I'd say it's disappointing. A whole bunch of people who appear to be reasonably smart who are so entrenched in their long-held opinions that they can't see any value at all in doing anything differently.

Nice shootin', Tex!

I went through a similar thing when applying for a loan - the mortgage broker wanted me to give my bank login details to a third party info gathering company. Naturally I refused on the grounds that that would be insane. Luckily they were able to complete the application using bank statements I manually exported instead, but it did make me wonder - if this is an industry-wide problem, why don't the banks just get together and define a common API to allow me as the account holder to authorise limited access (transaction date range, desired redactions, limited time period etc) for the agent? That would not only reduce risk but save time and avoid mistakes for me - once authorised, agents can then directly request whatever data they want subject to the reasonable restrictions I and my bank have put in place.

Actually, the funniest thing about Experts Exchange (aside from the URL) was that for some years you could get the supposedly paywalled answer just by scrolling down past the notices telling you to pay for it - I guess that got Google the full page data while fooling enough people to make a business, at least until StackOverflow took over.

Wow, who could have predicted that trebling fees back in 2012 would cause a problem?

If you can't provide an inventory of what is in your software product, you probably don't know what's in it, and therefore shouldn't be in the business of writing software.

Are you saying you never had to learn what "Excel" is? or "Powerpoint"?

Right. Although we do consume some toothpaste via what's leftover in the mouth after brushing, I'd expect you'd have to have quite high concentrations in the toothpaste to be of any concern. We probably ingest more lead via air pollution and in our food than via this vector, though it would have to be properly studied to be sure, assuming it hasn't been already. This study in particular seems to have some flaws.

The government is supposed to take care of everyone, not just people like them. So yes, everyone's problems (within reason) are the government's problems.

I think at this stage we have reached Doom II: Hell On Earth.

Maybe they finally can reduce the UI down to one button that says "do what I want".

Then you don't know much about it, apparently. Check out the application compatibility database.