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[quote] If developed countries did not have good protection of intellectual properties they would not be able to produce quality music, movies or even software. [/quote]

Not able to create quality music without copyright? I wouldn't say that's true.
Bands have started to adapt away from the RIAA.
They do things like give away MP3s of their songs and make their money through events, back stage passes, fan clubs, and merchandise.
More bands embrace the option of giving away music

Not able to make quality software without copyright? In the case of software, it's usually patents rather than copyright 'protecting' the software.

Many open source projects use variations of licenses that have nothing to do with restricting distribution to protect them. Their licenses are mostly in place to protect the author from being sued for someone else using their software and suing them as if the original author was infringing on someone's copyright/patent. These licenses explicitly allow distribution and editing.

Linux distributions follow this kind of model.
If you need more examples, surf around projects at SourceForge.

Often patents/copyright actually cause a slow down in software level innovation.
For example, why doesn't the TMobile G1 phone use mulitouch features? The screen can handle it and the code has been implemented in a hack already.
Perhaps it's to avoid being sued by Apple for it.
They hold patents on multitouch heuristics
Apple vs Palm -- Article on their various technology patents

As to movies, box office sales are within the first couple weeks of hitting theaters. DVD sales stack on top of that quite nicely with a full 50% of each DVD sale being pure profit.
Box office sales and dvd sales are roughly correlated.
"...the positive correlation between box office
performance and subsequent video sales is still in evidence..."

There is a decline in that correlation but it isn't due to piracy.
"...this decline is due to the dramatic increase of sales of TV series on video..."
New research from Screen Digest looks at the link
between box office and subsequent video sales
Warning: PDF

No, copyright and patents are not causing the creation of quality software, music, or movies. Innovation and creativity are creating quality software, music, and movies.

"Cannabis/Marijuana is carcinogenic"

I would be interested to know what research you base that on.

A very dishonest research protocol designed to give that conclusion.
It tests for incidental carcinogens resulting from combustion, and measures them from an UNFILTERED joint compared to a FILTERED cigarette.
They then claim a conclusion based on the different materials burned.

example of this FUD: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSHKG10478820080129

Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.

Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.

Anyway. From Realclimate:

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

Their licenses will get extended the 116 days the switchover is delayed:

US Senate passes bill to delay digital TV switch

There is an interesting politics as usual angle to this too:

Chicago politics lands in DC

This bank bailout crap has been a fiasco in terms of loosening up money, which also needs to happen. The other prong of recovery is often new private enterprise, which is fueled by large numbers of skilled workers who are no longer employed, but that usually requires some start-up capital, and that's problematic right now.

I'm glad to see that at least the commercial paper side of things is doing better.

-l

My only concern is for the overall turbine design and aging repair costs associated with a salt water environment.

The Dutch and other European countries seem to have solved this problem (though I guess only time will tell, none of these farms is very old...)

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL3192557920070903

If they are our friend, then please explain why they keep getting caught spying on us? That's not something friends normally do to each other.

And I'm not paranoid in the least - Israel has admitted to their spying.

And yet it continues happening, year after year.

We shouldn't be rewarding bad behavior with aid. Rewarding bad behavior only encourages it. Israel needs to be punished for its crimes against the US by losing its aid. The time has long since passed.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/20/1624253

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/21/1543234

It was also on Wired: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/encryption-stil.html

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/cold-boot-disk-encryption-attack-is-shockingly-effective/

Schneier's blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/cold_boot_attac.html

Information week: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801184

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/21/cold_boot_utilities/

Cnet: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10003167-83.html

PC World http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,762-page,1-bid,0/video.html

Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/19/cold-boot-encryption.html

It was even on reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS163325+27-Feb-2008+PRN20080227

It's not an obscure thing, you are just ignorant of major technology news. Perhaps the summary should define "CPU" and "linux" for you as well, just in case you don't what they are either.

I really get frustrated when doublespeak is acceptable. It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers. The fact that anyone is asking the question is mind-boggling.

In addition to being a totally off-topic thread hijack, tell me when, in the history of warfare, have POW's/detainees ever gotten civil jails and courts? I thought in war, enemies went to POW camps until the war is over, like the US did with the Nazi's, the Japanese, the North Koreans, the North Vietnamese, the Confederate soldiers, the British, etc. The point being, we don't want the enemy coming back and shooting us again, as 61 released prisoners have done to date.

But now, because terrists flout all rules of war and Geneva, they should be treated better than POWs? I thought the point of Geneva was that you had to earn its protections by complying with its rules, carrot and stick. Think of the moral hazard. Now countries will actually be encouraged to foment terror, as terrorists will be treated better than POWs. And they can clog up our criminal courts with 100's even 1000's of them! Fun fun fun for Iran.

And now we have dropped the "torture" bar even lower. First it was waterboarding 4 people. But now torture is not getting the right jail? Have you ever seen a city or county jail? I assure you, Camp Delta is the nicest jail in the world. I saw a special on GB and I got hungry after I saw what they feed the detainees. So now torture isn't getting the right jail cell? And anyone who disagrees with that entirely new definition of torture is doublespeaking? Wow, just wow.

Great Idea China. In the face of falling property prices, your economy slumping and people losing their jobs and riots growing... take away their porn.

http://www.propertywire.com/news/asia/property-prices-fell-sharply-china-2008-200901072355.html http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jYY3ugKb9diKGictWunUrDVu-aBw http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/07012009/323/china-fears-recession-riots-europe-joblessness-grows.html http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/20/china.jobs/index.html http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKPEK226188 http://libcom.org/news/chinese-factory-workers-riot-26112008

Sure it can. If China were to dump all of their US Treasuries on the market tomorrow, you'd see the effective interest rate jump up a couple points and they'd be sold out to other investors, likely within the same day if not within hours. There is always a demand for high-quality bonds.

You've obviously not kept up with events. For a year now, the US has been under attack over its' AAA credit rating. This was BEFORE the market meltdown, etc.

From January 10th, 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN1017237120080110

Moody's: U.S. rating could be pressured in long term

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday the United States' "triple-A" government bond rating could come under pressure in the very long-term if the Medicare and Social Security programs are not reformed.

"These two programs are the largest threats to the long-term financial health of the United States and to the government's Aaa rating," Moody's analyst Steven Hess said in the agency's annual report on the United States.

The report is not a rating action.

Hess also said that risks from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis are not affecting the nation's credit rating.

However, the housing downturn and subprime crisis could result in "a period of slower growth in coming quarters, although further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve could help to maintain positive growth," he said.

John McCarthy, director of foreign exchange at ING Capital Markets in New York, noted that "some are saying comments about the possible downgrade of the U.S. long-term rating is hitting the dollar a bit."

The United States' "Aaa" foreign currency ceiling and "Aaa" bond ratings and stable outlook are supported by the nation's large and diverse economy and moderate level of debt, Moody's said.

Federal debt ratios relative to gross domestic product and to revenue appear "set to improve modestly in the next few years," the agency said. (Reporting by Neil Shah; additional reporting by Steven Johnson; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Since then, we've had a deficit that's ballooning, revenues dropping like a stone, unemployment going up up and away despite a fed rate of zero%, the sub-prime crisis now is calculated to affect at least 17% of ALL mortgages in the US,

Interest rates will have to go up a LOT to compensate for the inflationary effect of printing up all that new deficit spending. Do you really want to return to the days of 20% prime rate interest, like in April, 1981? Or 21.5% in December of 1980?

From October 14th, 1978 to May 20th, 1985, even the most credit-worthy couldn't get loans below 10%. How many people with prime mortgages can afford a 15% mortgage? How many businesses are viable if they have to pay 18% interest on their loans and bonds?

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS144846+15-Apr-2008+PRN20080415

"QNX Achieves Boot Times in Milliseconds on the Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor Z500 Series"

Come on -- forget the Internet. You're going to be on a ship with probably 300 hot co-eds in bathing suits, all of you with only each other for entertainment for long stretches. If you spend the time in front of a computer instead of squished between several rotating co-eds, you're an idiot.

Don't just take my word for it that "interpersonal interactions" should be your focus when presented with such a situation -- clearly the scientists stuck in Antarctica agree:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0943167020080609

Of course this will get modded down and is unlikely to be read, but this is a sincere statement. The opportunity for learning something valuable in life during this cruise doesn't come from your internet connection, and it doesn't even come from all the places you'll see -- it comes from getting to be part of this huge, temporary community of folks with similar backgrounds and purpose. Be someone you aren't today -- if your new personna works out, great -- if not, you can be someone new again after you leave. Step outside your comfort zone and get away from the computer.

Oh like citigroup buying a spanish highway construction company with 7bn euros in bailout money from our taxes?

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10450514/1/citi-to-buy-spanish-highway-operator.html?puc=_tscrss

Here's the day they got our bailout check. Note the dates:

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2636427520081126

Yeap we paid for it. Be pissed, very pissed.

I can't believe regulators aren't all over them for this. What are we paying them for? What good is all this bailout money doing if they are just using it to buy foriegn companies instead of saving the jobs of the people that effing paid for the bailout? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. That bailout money did NOT come from Europe.

Here's the layoff announcement of the US employees:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/154130/citigroup_layoff_could_decimate_it_jobs.html

grrr

-Viz

Look at this. Then paw over this.

Shock and surprise? He was a rocket maker and it even makes reuters, I mean seriously.

Lets not forget that the Pallies regularly used ambulances in the past to transport everything from IED's, suicide bombers and belts to rockets and mortars, and also break every rule that we have regarding the laws of war too. That includes using civilian structures, religious buildings and hospitals as attack points. Because we know that any bad press from counter attacks is just bad for us.

Too bad the world media would rather use stringers rather then investigate, now I'm not even going to get onto the whole Pallywood thing with staged photos or anything but they do that too(Oh Green Helmet Guy...). Lets not forget that the journalists and I use that term loosely here, often embed directly with them. Their lives are their own if they're getting shot at.

Oh lets not forget that there's a pile of aid sitting at the egypt/gaza border either but hamas won't open it. I mean seriously do a bit of research.

Viacom wanted to jack up rates for next year and TWC basically told them "NO". Good for them. If Viacom was offering more channels I could understand but to increase because they feel like it?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUKN3137458820081231

Natural disasters seem to be all the rage lately.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Northeast was hit by a major ice storm. At the peak, ~1.4 million people were without power across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and upstate New York. FEMA declared emergencies in several areas, and each state declared emergencies and disaster areas in additional areas. Like a lot of people, I lost power for several days, which means I also lost heat and water (not on municipal water or on piped gas). This guy had the presence of mind to take a few pictures of the ice layers... it was kind of astonishing, at least to me.

Looking at the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
page, flywheels are in range of batteries. Someone else cited Activepower, who cited 99% energy efficiency on their systems. Wow, so flywheels might be better. On further investigation,
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS179065+30-Jul-2008+BW20080730
http://www.pentadyne.com/site/our-products/faq.html
says, as the most efficient magnetically levitated flywheels on the market, they comsume about 300W to maintain power levels of 190kW. (This loss is due to friction, even in a vacuum magnetically levitated device, because there is still eddy current drag - you'd need to spin either a superconductor, or an insulator.) Conventional flywheels need 2.3 kW instead of 300W to do the same.
This 300W represents 0.15% of 190 kW, and because the system is able to deliver 190kW for 10 s, the total energy is 1900 kWs(or kJ)=190/3600 kWh. So 1900 kJ requires 300 J to maintain each second, or 0.015%. Its storing efficiency is therefore 1-0.00015*t(s).

Flywheels are great for extremely short term uses, but in any application you pile on the seconds, the energy storage efficincy is dismal, much less than 99%. In fact 1900000J/300J gives you 6333 seconds, or about 1 hr 45 minutes before the device comes to a complete halt due to friction. Sodium sulfur batteries can store power much longer than 2 hrs.

Sure the isolation sounds terrible but apparently those clever scientists have figured out a good way to pass the time, huddle up with other researchers, feeling cold, and needing warmth...

Where did you read PwC?

Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSBNG7477320081218

"Dec 18 (Reuters) - Fairfield Greenwich Group, the fund whose clients
stand to lose $7.5 billion in Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi
scheme, is considering suing its accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC), for failing to detect the fraud, the Financial Times reported on
its website."

Price Waterhouse Cooper - one of the biggest SOX auditors - are also the brilliant investigators who audited Madoff.

If you can't find billions of dollars worth of fraud - the largest Ponzi scheme in history - I must question the purpose of audits.

Credit Suisse did something like that, by giving their executives bonuses that are in effect tied to the illiquid MBSes that are causing so much trouble.

So programmers signed away their rights and now they want unions to give them back? NDAs don't stop you from working for a competitor or for a company that isn't a competitor. You just can't reveal trade secrets.

NDAs can and do prevent you from working for a competitor. Have you ever signed one? I've signed a few. I've even drafted some.

Check this out: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0743124420081108

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge in New York ordered a newly hired Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) executive to stop work immediately because he might be violating an agreement with his former employer, IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains ordered that Mark Papermaster "immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc until further order of this court."

BTW, non-disclosures and non-competes often go hand in hand for programming jobs. They're usually combined into one document.

No, the people claiming that the temperature is currently rising are not lying or wrong. Global mean temperature is still showing an upward trend.

I don't see any climate scientists using "single data points" and "localized weather" as proof of global warming. You need to look at the overall trend in global temperatures, over the past several decades. If you even glance at such a graph, you can easily see the rise.

You may be referring to the abnormally warm year of 1998, which was caused by a strong El Nino. The fact is that the mean global temperature is continuing to rise, at an increasingly faster pace. This is why the Arctic ice is melting.

and put in a strong CFO/COO to manage the business.
Like Peter Oppenheimer and Tim Cook?

and put in a strong CFO/COO to manage the business.
Like Peter Oppenheimer and Tim Cook?

Funny because it's true, Steve Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder and is a member of the board of directors.

Speaking of choking on misinformation. This:

"8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S."

is simply wrong.

BUSH REGULATORY SPENDING BREAKS RECORDS {Reuters]

ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After nearly eight years in
office, President Bush is on track to be one of the biggest regulatory budget
spending presidents in history, according to a new study from the Mercatus
Center at George Mason University and the Weidenbaum Center at Washington
University in St. Louis

MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS192062+12-Aug-2008+PRN20080812

    - Alaska Jack

If you read the article, you will find that the depicted girl had no problem with the image, when asked 15 years after publication. And by the way, I disagree that this should be classified as child porn. It's not porn. It's nudity. This is akin to Berlusconi ordering to repaint a 300-year old painting because it depicted a naked breast and happened to be hanging in his office.

The thing is that this site is a Linux-centric religious institute, so obviously you'll easily and frequently hear "Upgrade myth busted", "Linux to dominate world in 2009" and "w00t!".

Except for you, right?

I wanted to compare the number of Google hits for "w00t!" with & without "quotes" but I guess my regex-fu is weak. I haven't been able to prevent Google from dropping the "quotes" from the string to search so I don't have the data I want to compare. What I did find is that the most popular "woot"-containing page as measured by Google is is obviously selling things, from the preview text:

Welcome to Woot. Skip straight to the product or let us know if anything on our site can be improved to further meet your accessibility needs. ...

The next three pages are from dictionary/wiki sites, and after that, fewer sites use the string "w00t!" as defined, than are about "w00t!" and its recent victory in the fierce "Word of the Year" competition, which according to the "standards" in place at Reuters, qualifies as "news."

Obviously I haven't made an air-tight case that "w00t!" has only ever been used as trash-talk, attributed falsely to others, but if you can figure out the Google machine you can see for yourself that it's more often used ironically and in stories about the word itself, than in the supposed "definition" as as exclamation of some sort. And considering the comment to which I'm replying, which cites zero evidence for your sweeping claim that "this site is a Linux-centric religious institute, so obviously" it's equally obvious that I've exceeded your standards of evidence already. "To cut a long story short" you've attributed "w00t!" and other trash talk to everybody else who uses this site, instead of finding some facts that support your opinion that

The truth is that MicroSoft isn't all bad

nor your prediction that

but at the end of the day I do believe people will skip Vista to some degree (ME anyone?) only to hop on board at the next iteration again.

nor your opinion:

not necessarily bad for the market or the consumers.

Why argue ad hominem unless no facts exist which support your assertions?

This purchase rumor was proven false on the 30th of November The same day it was announced. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AT1AO20081130

Yes, but that means Telsa is only playing catch-up. Not to mention Toyota and Honda.

And don't forget, GEM is a subsidiary of Chrysler.

Everyone seems to believe designing and manufacturing a car that everyone can drive is easy. Tesla didn't design their chassis, its Lotus derived. Tesla didn't deliver on time and didn't deliver what they promised because they couldn't get their transmissions done properly. They laid off their workers via a blog post. They've got 100s of pre-order checks, but no money to build them.

The union contracts are the single biggest anchor on the Big Three.

That's right. Let's make sure that the people who actually *make* the vehicles don't get compensated for making them. I'm sure the management class are the only people actually producing anything of worth.

Workers at the big 3 are getting about 28$/hour plus pension and benefits. Want to help them out? Move them to a single payer healthcare system and socialize their pensions...

I do agree that the big 3 should have to file bankruptcy like every other business, but not because of unions, and definitely not for the explicit purposes of extracting money which would otherwise be used to pay unionized workers.

Unions are all about collective bargaining. Do you really think that automakers would pay operators a living wage if UAW wasn't involved? I'm happy that they're finally suggesting limits on executive compensation. Chumps like Wagoner haven't exactly been adding value to their employers.

I would have been really happy to see any of the financial giants who came to Washington begging on their hands and knees for some government green actually have to justify their loans or give some sort of, you know, *plan*. Automakers get to jump through hoops to explain their lousy business plans and practices, but banks and other financial firms get a pass.

According to Reuters
it's $99 and movies are $1.99 after the first 25. Also they have a miserable 2000 movies but they are the latest from Hollywood, they say.

4) They are going after Apple because its the "hot" thing with lots of money to go after (likely)

"We haven't looked at anything other than the iPhone," Gibson told Reuters. "That was the device that we looked at. Obviously it's very popular."

Well here's a bit of information that most people try to avoid. That is, cholesterol not only clogs your heart, it clogs the blood flow into your brain. There was a study that showed lower rates of alzheimers/dementia among people taking cholesterol reducing drugs (statins). Of course, rather than depending on drugs, you could always lower your cholesterol intake and reap the longevity benefits of a plant based diet.

Link to article about study

Provided Stevens doesn't ask for a recount, and accepts defeat, the republicans won't have to hold the vote that they postponed yesterday regarding his status as a senator. This time they can just let the people dismiss their convict friend from the US Senate for them.

Under the proposed model, it's the content provider who pays.

Link please? That's not mentioned in the reuters article about the bill. If that is what this law says, then it has nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is not about who pays. It is about the pipes that deliver the content being neutral to what the content is. The pricing model should stay the way it is.

First, the ruling preserved the right exercised by the USN to use sonar as it saw fit in training. It overturned a judicial order by a lower court, rather than setting regulations.

Second, it is President Bush, the honorific goes to the office he holds. Dropping the title makes the BBC sound petty.

Further, I personally doubt Bush himself had anything to do with the case, if the Administration defended the Navy, that's its job, the Clinton administration preserved the same rights. It's important to note, only two justices rejected the Navy's case. From Bloomberg: "Liberal Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented in part and agreed in part with the ruling, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter disagreed with the entire decision."

I call bullshit on that argument. I have plenty of friends who work 10-12 hour days for ridiculously low pay doing jobs like construction and maintenance. You can't accuse them of not working hard enough, yet society places far more worth on other jobs, so they receive low wages.

CEOs and other executives can only have their ridiculous salaries because they make their money off the backs of other people. The wage gap between worker and executive has been increasing steadily in America since the end of WWII.

...aand where do these gigathingamajig corporations get the money to pay these CEOs ridiculous salaries? Take PepsiCo. for instance, their execs get paid handsomely because the millions of you keep plunking your dollars and cents into their vending machines, everyday.
And if they then decide to pay John Compton a ridiculous 8 million bucks, it's well within their rights. If the wage gap increases, why don't the union stop the workers until the gap decreases? Why won't the factory workers stop working until they get 6-figs salary? Oh yea, because they are willing to work at the current price.

Yeah, I'm sure that holds water. Society are the people who are earning peanuts to earn these executives their money. If executives were willing to pay their workers reasonable wages and not accept gigantic salaries, this wouldn't be an issue, but as it is now, corporations for the most part underpay their regular workers.

If society as a whole do not agree that the companies are giving their execs ridiculous salaries, then society should (must?) stop giving the companies money. If A doesn't like B giving C alot of money, A then needs to stop giving B money. Grow your own potato so you can make your own Lay's.

And bitching about government inefficiency doesn't hold water in most cases. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance, it just isn't very well funded. Honestly, I think military expenses are, for the most part, a huge waste of money outside of actual defense (instead of offensives in other countries), but I'll take the bad of blowing money on stupid conflicts for the ability to allow healthcare for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it.

I agree on the war moneypit. But of the insurance and medicare crap, I have lived in a (democratic) country where healthcare is provided or heavily subsidized by the government. It is planned into the spending for every fiscal year. Insurance companies (like the ungrateful AIG) are allowed by the US Gov to run loose with money from people while the Govt itself can directly inject money into healthcare providers (hospitals, clinics) in the form of salaries, medicines, etc.

"Vodafone and others say slashing fees would make handsets costly for poorer customers and may result in people having to pay for receiving as well as making calls."

By the way, there is $350 billion in securitized student loans, and now they're having trouble.

If Bill Gates/Microsoft and Google really pushed for this then you KNOW it is for the good of the people and not some attempt at corporate financial padding.

Obama: Nuclear power worth considering, not panacea

Could it be that Obama is actually a center-Right presidential candidate, and not the radical left wing terrorist sympathizing deep green wacko he was portrayed as in the campaign? Say it ain't so, Joe (the Plumber).

Er the rest of the world knew this 8 years ago, why do you think the rest of the world makes fun of the american system (well in Europe we certainly do).

What most amuses me is that the republicans like to paint the democrats as "tax and spend", where as I see the republicans as "and spend". At least the democrats generate income before spending it. Which is how in 8 years, mostly prosperous years, they've gone from the largest budget surplus in american history see here to the largest budget deficit in history see here

Your argument fails against Japan and England. It's much harder for criminals to get ahold of guns when there are no legal, non-law-enforcement channels to get them. As for differences from drugs, well for one thing, it's harder to hide them.

And yet we just had a kid killed by an illegal-non-law-enforcement gun in the UK just last month.

Don't mistake the non-use of guns as not having them. People are often just murdered with ball bats and knives now, but guns do find their way into the country and they do find their way into killing people, including the innocent.

Read this article from today for the main reason health care costs so much in the United States...

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN3033460820081031

If you are undecided, consider this quote from the same article...
"Democrats in Congress have pledged to push legislation to preserve a patient's right to sue under state law."

stands to become the Internet-age version of Standard Oil.

You mean they'll reduce the price of their product so low that consumers will flock to them putting their competitors out of business?
Oh no, maybe their competitors should get Congress involved.