Guess who's not buying an S8?

My Kia won't let me take the key out of the ignition unless the shifter is in park. You're saying my econobox has more safety features than a luxury Jeep?

Look at all this terrorism they could have stopped if only that had the power to install anal probes in everyone on the planet.

No it was the TSA that confiscated them. The NSA just downloaded everything from your phone while it was passing through the X-ray machine

Well now you know what the judicial system thinks.

This, exactly this.

My kingdom for a mod point

Well I just tried to buy a Minecraft license online. I went through their payment page, put in my name and credit card info and got declined because their payment processor, Moneybookers, said I needed to sign up for an account and scan my drivers license and send it to them.

I kinda would have liked to have played the full version of Minecraft but I am sure as hell not giving out that kind of information for it.

Again somewhat true. Academic research is largely funded by private companies, in exchange for exclusive rights to the fruits of the research.

This. A thousand times this.

At my son's school they have a student code of conduct regarding technology which both the children and their parents are supposed to sign. One of the more egregious clauses gives the school permission to seize and search through students cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, etc, if they believe there is some incriminating evidence contained within. I struck that clause out and wrote a note saying if they had any problems with that to contact me, not a peep.

If the school has any concerns or suspicions about what my son is doing they should contact me and have me search through his stuff. If we give the school that power it just desensitises our children against invasive privacy abuse.

This is exactly what needs to happen.

A locked door to the cockpit prevents anyone from hijacking the plane and crashing it into a building. An armed guard deters (but doesn't entirely prevent) someone from taking hostages. There is no way to prevent every misdeed, but this seems like a fair compromise between security and liberty to me.

I believe that under all kinds of conditions paper beats rock.

Speaking from personal experience that 1 in 6 set of odds is only for the first 360 you buy. If you have to send it in for warranty repair/work then you get a refurbished unit which has a significantly higher rate of failure. In my case I went through 3 refurbs which each arrived DOA before I sold my 360 and all my games and went and bought a PS3.

I went against my conscience and bought a 360 because it had some cool games, but it wasn't worth it, and that's the last dime of my money that M$ gets.