And "selling pies" used to be a euphemism for prostitution. The English certainly have a way of using normal words in a convoluted manner.

Same.

I'm almost hopeful that in a few years, Starlink Mobile will be the push I need to change. I'm waiting until then, or it gets even worse with T-Maybe

It's worse than that. They will find a way to justify why that woman needed to be killed and skullfucked, trying to turn it into a necessary event that their heroic manbaby had to do. There are none so blind as those who cannot see.

The irony is, a few years ago you couldn't get them to shut up about dementia, government corruption or "crime" families... now their silence is deafening. Seems they were just trying to prepare us for Trump rather than warning us about Biden.

Yeah, I was thinking "We can stick it to KSA and Jared Kushner at the same time, just by not buying EA games? Where do I sign up?"

What Microsoft needs are companies to keep buying CALs yearly. The OEMs are just a drop in the bucket as most corporate laptops will have the corporate image dumped onto them as soon as they arrive. OEMs are mainly there to try to prevent home users from switching to other OSs by being able to buy a laptop without an OS on it (large corporate purchases can be made without buying Windows licenses). MS has largely stopped giving a shit about enforcing licensing for home users. I recently went looking for the Win10 key I bought 5 odd years ago and couldn't find it only to realise that I never actually used it so I never downloaded it from the CD key site I bought it from and that was entirely due to the fact at no point did it ever ask for a key in the entire time I was using the OS.

Microsoft has one trick to keep companies buying CALs and that is Office 365, without using the native programs which only run on Windows, it's an unusable mess.

The main reason I've given up on GOG, which is to say I rarely buy anything from them any more is because their marketing emails stopped listing prices, instead going with the ambiguous "XX% off" which doesn't actually tell me what the price is, it's telling me what it isn't and I know it's designed to get more clickthroughs but it really has the opposite effect on me and I've unsubscribed from their mailing list.

Sadly this kind of behaviour has become all too common these days... FFS, if you want to sell me something, start by telling me how much it is otherwise I'm just going to ignore it.

I personally couldn't give a crap about friends lists... I'm a Linux user, I don't keep a lot of friends anyway.

To me GoG Galaxy it serves two purposes, 1 for games that are too large to be downloaded easily such as Cyberpunk 2077 which has about 50 parts to download and for games that get updated regularly. Aside from that it's a convenient launcher.

And if they somehow manage to do something bad enough to get fired from a force that has some semblance of integrity, there's dozens of other forces who'll turn a blind eye to it just to get a trained body in the door, even the worst of the worst of the most corrupt, laziest cops can get a job at Bumfuck County Sheriffs Department because no-one wants to live in Bumfuck, Nebroma. Cops that get fired from the LAPD for egregious racism (to the point where they can't ignore it any more), they all flee to places like the Idaho panhandle.

You didn't read my post... you just made up what you wanted to hear and answered that. It's not an argument against choice... it's a prediction that it will inevitably fail. People don't want to take a 23 hour flight. There is simply a limit to endurance there. Hell, here in the UK you've got loads of people who refuse to fly more than 2 hours. There's just not enough people willing to suffer that much to make this program commercially viable.. that means they'll have custom planes that are unprofitable on any route... which means QANTAS will have it's hands out yet again for government money (after doing all they can to kill competition in the Australian domestic market). If anything, you're arguing against choice as we'll have to force people to take flights they don't want to take in order for this not to fail. First to fall will be the PER-LHR flights as you're flying from nowhere to somewhere (Perth to London if you're too lazy to google an IATA code), the only reason you'd take this flight is if you're going from Perth on to another city. Perth is literally on the arse end of nowhere.

they may not have the right... but a somnambulant population will let it happen, the "dont tread on me" types will happily let the "right" government walk all over them and worse, many will even attack those that resist.

I mean just a few articles down there's one describing how the FCC is being used to censor media... where are the "I need mah gurns to protect me from the gubbermint" types now... now is your time to shine... instead you're making excuses because you like who it's currently targetting and are too thick and short sighted to see how it will be turned against you next.

Turns out as long as you let them do the odd school shooting every few weeks, they're quite happy with an oppressive government.

The biggest shock of all is finding Ted Cruz on the right side. I wonder if it's just "a stopped clock is right twice a day" in action.

This reminds me of the plans BA looked at to run the Concorde to Australia. It never made it passed the planning stage as it would take six fuelling stops, only save a few hours at best due to the refuelling stops and would cost several times the cost of a ticket at 1970s prices (which were considerable... especially for 1970)

Yep, this is nothing but an advertisement for a third rate airline offering a flight no-one wants.

Why would you pay a premium... and I mean a premium over far better carriers like Singapore Airlines to take a longer flight with no break? I regularly fly from the UK to Australia to see family (once or twice a year) and realistically the 12-14 hour leg between Singapore and London is enough, especially in economy... even economy on a Singapore Airlines A380. Having an hour or two in Singapore where you can get a proper meal, use a proper toilet and properly stretch your legs (on a nice, static, non moving floor) is a godsend on a flight that takes 20-26 hours depending on which Australian city you're flying to.

Even if I were to fly QF again after the 2011 stranding of passengers to shaft employees... I'd have to have rocks in my head to pay more to fly for 23 hours with no break (estimated time from LHR-SYD) over flying Singapore where the stopover will at worse make it 26 hours. Hell, last time I flew to Oz I opted for the longer stopover and got a hotel in Singapore for the night which made a hell of a difference to how I felt when arriving back in London.

What should be noted, this is not a revenue flight, it's a test flight so it's not breaking any actual records. When this does start a revenue service the first thing it'll do is cannibalise the passengers on the current PER-LHR long haul flight as people who don't already fly QANTAS aren't going to be daft enough to take a less desirable flight for more money. So they'll be forced to kill that route to keep the LHR-MEL/SYD routes going which still won't be profitable so they'll be forced to cut those down. They can send the 787 Squeezeliners they use on the LHR-PER route to have the cabins refitted for regular routes but the A350s they've bought for this will be more expensive to run on regular routes even if they shove the maximum number of permissible seats onto them leaving them with planes that are unprofitable.... wouldn't be the first time and yep, they'll have their hands out to the Australian government again to pay for it.

"The only solution" is in fact, not the "only" solution.

The correct and LEGAL means for the police to gain access to the phone is to take it and seal it in a tamperproof container (aka electronic Faraday Evidence Bag), go to a court and ask for a warrant to search the contents.

We have established LAW and procedures for the state to gain access to the device. It is inconvenient ON PURPOSE. and serves as a checks and balance in legal proceedings.

IF that is the case, seize the phone, get a Search Warrant.

The problem is, the state couldn't be bothered following ESTABLISHED law and procedures.

Simply accusing someone of some unspecified crime isn't a right the state has to just bypass Constitutional protections, namely the 4th and 5th Amendments.

Americans have rights, secured in our founding Constitution. I don't care what feelings one might have to the rest of the case. Rights exist, enshrined and we ought to defend them tirelessly forever.