you mad, bro?

Well, that anecdote must make it so..

Could it be simply from increased exposure of the devices to the world.. Seems easy enough for all these different Android handsets to get lost in the crowd as there are so many of them.

I'm happy to blame gun control law. I see many posts comparing the use of an assault rifle with using knives, swords, cars, fire. Ridiculous! An assault rifle is engineered for one purpose: stopping power. It puts a unusually large potential for death and mayhem into the common citizen's hands. Yes, this deranged fuckwad is to be blamed, he is the asshole who committed this atrocity. But surely you can see the ease of which someone obtains weapons like a ar15 as a bit of a problem. This is no hunting rifle or hand gun. Come on.

Yeah, might as well lug a laptop around, I agree. I'm not vendor bias, my smartphone is a blackberry bold 9900, chosen because of it's size and because 99% of my phone usage is text and email. My tablet is an asus transformer pad, chosen because I wanted something other than my ipad. And my laptop is a Macbook air, it's light, small, and does what I need for my job (software engineer). My point was only that I prefer a small phone for general mobility and being out and about. If I know i'm going to be surfing the web and reading docs, I'll use my tablet. And if I'm gonna work: laptop. I have friends that spend a lot of time on the bus and love their giant screened phones..

It's not an excuse to treat employees badly, but, if it's bad enough there is nothing forcing people to work there. Possibly the alternative is no job at all, in which case walmart is still a step up. As for driving competitors out for the market: welcome to capitalism.

But what you do most is carry it around. Give me a small smartphone and a good tablet and I'm set.

There is usually an agent setting for your browser on your tablet that you can set to desktop from mobile. This isn't an arbitrary decision to redirect you, it's a calculated one based on the type of browser you're using

Everything is a gimmick before it becomes standard.

If that bar had millions of customers interacting at any given time including minors and adults together, well, it just might. Shop owners and bar tenders will report things to the police if they overhear certain conversations. The level of reporting is going to be effected by how it impacts your customer base. Fb is not going to start reporting every chat with the word dope in it because they'll loose their customers. Because fb makes it easier for some online predator crime I believe they have a moral obligation to take steps to prevent that. I'm done with this: if you're using fb to pick up minors you might be caught. Good.

Wait, the people actually providing the feedback got what they wanted... and you think they're the morons?

There is probably a decent list of domains out there that you can put in your hosts file so that lookups for these fail. I assume you're more concerned about accidental adverts and such, which is a fair concern considering how many sites have em.

I bet most people here know the viagra music from the commercials - you know: Goooood morning.. goood morning !!! we danced the whole night through.. good morning, good morning to you. With the dude prancing down the sideway to work all chipper. You'll never convince me these ads don't sink in.. Advertising is about exposure and your post simply enforces that - even if you don't want these items (right now and possible not ever). For example, you said "b) Intimate product ads, many targetted at an older demographic (I don't need viagra or KY, thanks)". You may have no need of this product at the moment but thanks to the advertisements you know it exists; mission accomplished.

I was actually quite surprised recently when I re-order cable television to watch the Canucks lose in the first round of the playoffs.. I was surprised at all the products, movies, and television that I had no idea about until I saw commercials on tv for the first time in two years. Maybe I'm unique, but I doubt that. I think commericals and advertisements have more effect on us than most people are willing to admit. I'll go out on a limb and say that advertising via commericals on television still works for companies (especially clever and memorable ones such as Coke or Apple)

Obviously it's silly to sue someone over this tech, however, if users reduce the value of advertising on television by not watching them then these lost revs will have to be made up elsewhere. And that will likely translate to more direct costs to the user.