We are just never going to agree on this. If you aren't restricted by laws, and you have absolute control over the military, you win. That's it. You can be a tyrant, a petty despot, an absolute monarch, and so on. If you aren't bound by laws, then there are no limitations.
One could say that no one has ever ruled without restrictions, and so there have never been absolute rulers in history ever under any circumstances. Therefore, terms and titles which claims absolute power is false; a fictional account of their status. If that's true, then every citation that involves this kind of power and description, whether it's a dictator, or an absolute monarch, an emperor, etc. should mention that it's a fictional status, because it has never existed and will never exist.
Therefore wouldn't it make sense to say something like Stalin was never a dictator? Hitler was never a dictator either. Why so?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dictator
dic·ta·tor
1. An absolute ruler.
Since there never have been absolute rulers, to call anyone a dictator is false. This is what you're saying. No one has ever had absolute authority.
Again, if we use the definition from Princeton, we get this:
"Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government where the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, thus wielding political power over the sovereign state and its subject peoples."
But we've established that there is no such thing as ultimate authority.
Do you also tell people that dictators have never existed, at least per the definition? In your line of thinking, they haven't, and if you use a certain logic, I would agree with you. I don't know what kind of a response you'd get from a professor about this, because technically, you're right. My instinct tells me that they wouldn't buy the argument, even if it does carry a certain kind of logical resonance.
No person, ever, has done whatever they wanted without limitations. It's impossible. Does that mean that those types of terms are pointless?
(Oh, and about the laser gun or whatever that guy was saying as an example--of course, I found it ridiculous).