For a fascinating take on the subject, I recommend "Industrial Society and its Future" by Ted Kaczynski.

We are slaves to our genes plus our conditioning, both of which are greatly influenced by our ancestors and completely influenced by things outside of our control.

Does anyone know a way to easily migrate MySQL data to sqlite?

I disagree. I think the argument is more about who gets to decide what is "moral" and who gets to promote/enforce that morality.

OK, may I ask who that is that should make this call?

If I have a kill switch on my platform for apps that endanger people and I see that the app is endangering people, I'll feel a moral obligation to toggle that kill switch. Again, this is a rather straightforward call.

In Massachusetts it's illegal to drive and use SMS. Similar legislation is being or has been passed in other states. Should Apple then disable SMS during rush hour? Should it detect you're in a car and shut the phone down?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of drunk drivers and I'm less a fan of people screwing with their phones while they drive, which seems a whole lot less safer. But it's arguably something Apple and/or the carriers could address. However, I don't think it's right for them to do so. I guess it's the whole slippery slope thing.

And FWIW, I do turn around if I think a roadblock is ahead, regardless of whether I've been drinking. It's a hassle and I don't trust I'll get a ticket for something else I'm completely unaware of.

I think it would save lives if Apple figured out a way to be smart with voice recognition and speech to enable hands and eyes free texting. It absolutely should be on the roadmap for them.

The user should make the call, obviously, or perhaps the user's legal guardian if the user is a minor, or maybe the device owner if the user is not the owner, such as a corporate user.

The platform vendor should not have final say over the software an end user may wish to run. The restriction of software distribution to Apple's own app store on such a popular computing platform has serious ramifications to consumer interest if not exercised very carefully to be perfectly aligned with them.

I think the fact that there is s kill switch at all is the problem. The argument being made is that there shouldn't be a person with a platform that has a kill switch. Platforms should be open as opposed to controlled by a single person or entity.

I don't know why this is being upvoted. What does it add to the conversation?

An element of humour.

I honestly don't understand how anyone can question that we lack free will unless one believes in a soul or some other kind of "magic". If all of our actions are governed by our brains, and our brains are simply a collection of particles obeying the laws of physics, where is the room for free will?

Physics may not be entirely deterministic. At the quantum level physics starts being about probability. (In fact, quantum physics is all about probability, something my grades wish I had understood while taking the course...) Maybe particles have free will: do I tunnel now or not? Not now, maybe later. Maybe the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a reflection of the free will: you can determine either a particle's position or velocity as much as you want, but you give the particle an equal amount of free will to choose the other one.

Ask yourself why you feel the need to identify with Free Will. Are you free to choose otherwise (e.g. reject Free Will)?

You may find that Free Will is a paradoxical concept.

Are you able to configure the touchpad to support right-clicks under Linux? I'm curious because that's one thing that's been a pain for me when running Linux on an Apple laptops in the past.

yes. one finger tap is single click, two fingers is middle click and three fingers is right click. All via synaptics.

A hunch is a gut feeling or intuition about something. Asking someone to prove a hunch seems odd to me.

I like David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, but it might be a little too heavy for kids that age.

I love that one, too, but I'm saving it for at least 5 more years.

What type of low-stress work do you do? I am currently looking for a similar situation.

Programmer for a large corporation - interesting work, steady hours, reasonable job security. My place of employment is a ten minute bike ride from home, so my commute is short and pleasant. I also don't have TV cable or satellite. Because I don't spend a lot of time commuting or staring at a one-way communications channel, I have more time to spend on the things I enjoy.