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134,000: Number of US troops sent to Iraq, to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, which had nothing to do with September 11th.

17,900: Number of US troops sent to Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the people responsible for September 11th and other terrorist attacks against the US.

That give you an indication of what the Bush adminstrations priorities have been?

Here's what the original blogger gives us as proof that this was rare, courtesy of the ever-accurate freerepublic.com (where "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerry Corsi conflated islam, catholicism, and "boy buggery"):

"Every single one of the memos to file regarding Bush's failure to attend a physical and meet other requirements is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatine or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing (especially in the military), and typewriters used mono-spaced fonts.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction high-end word processing systems from Xerox and Wang, and later of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's.

Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang and other systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used mono-spaced fonts. I doubt the TANG had typesetting or high-end 1st generation word processing systems."

That's absurd, and demonstrably false. You mentioned the selectrics. IBM's electric typewriters had proportional fonts as far back as 1945. Even if the base had a typewriter that was nearly 30 years old, it would still be capable of creating proportional fonts.

Doubters should also remember that today's most popular proportional fonts have been used in typesetting (and on selectrics) since well before TrueType.

Furthermore, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, mentioned in the memos and involved in the back-and-forth, has confirmed that Killian expressed to him the same sentiments contained in the memos.

Regarding the superscripted 'th' argument, this document from Bush's official records also contains a superscripted 'th': http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellane ous.pdf. The superscripted th is on page three, in the second line of the log.

The White House even admits the authenticity of the documents, so why is this even an issue?

Because people don't want to realize that Bush disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER from his superior officers.

Because people don't want to think that the plane Bush flew continued to be used regularly through 1975, despite Bush and Bartlett's claims that it was "being phased out" and that Bush didn't need to take the physical because the planes wouldn't be used.

The best line I've heard lately, courtesy of Kevin Drum:

This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy.

Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day.

In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying.

Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.

The usa today article is HERE. The article was pretty informative.

There are a lot of contemporaneous docs from Bush's unit available, have a look: http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-02-14-bush-docs. htm

Look especially at the 30 Apr 72 FITREP in the "performance grades" documents.

There are now two side-by-side comparisons available on the web:

Spacetown.

LGF

Look at them yourselves.

I'm not a typographical expert, but I typed a helluva lot of memos and documents on US Gov't issue typewriters in 1969-73. I don't remember any of them having a superscript key.

You might also want to look at some of the other documents from Bush's records. Look, eg, at the 30 Apr 72 FITREP in the "Performance grades" PDF.

But here it is anyway, it details most the changes between original star wars, special edition, and the new 2004 dvd.

Updates StarWars scene image comparison

And... ...an interesting trivial tid-bit on the enhancement process to the trilogy.

Is that why the veep started the fear-mongering yesterday?

I predicted this crap would happen over a year ago. You have to be a really sick desperate administration to stoop so low. For those that missed it, Cheney basically said to the American people: If you don't vote for us this election, the terrorists will attack again, in worse ways.

Mr. Cheney, how do you know that?
Mr. Cheney, are you financing the terrorists?

Well, the President of Diebold did claim in 2003 that his company was

committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.

I suppose the California officials are upset that Diebold didn't include their state in the obvious corruptions of an opaque and unmonitorable voting system.

Grr I already moderated the AC which replied to you up (who btw offered this informative link which will now be negated by this post and I was going to mod you down too btw:). Just to set the record straight he didn't claim that Diebold would help deliver the votes, he said "I am committed", an "I" you conveniently truncated from your quote. It may be your belief that that is what he actually meant, personally I've always felt that it was just an unfortunate choice of words and he was talking about campaigning (I mean how stupid do you think this guy is to admit election rigging publicly).

Now don't get me wrong, I think it's more likely than not that he has some sort of plan for rigging the election in mind, I know the "don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity" axiom but the magnitude of the stupidity required to reach the current lack of security (they can't be that stupid can they?) combined with the fact that other than keeping the exploits more secret and non-obvious I can't think of much that I would do different if I was rigging the election (although I'd rig for the other side;).

Still that's all secondary since one thing I cannot stand on any side of a debate, and will mod down every time if I don't respond to it, is factually incorrect information, especially if such information is close enough to the truth to avoid a closer inspection and if I feel that inaccuracy may be deliberate. Yes he gave a highly controvertial claim, yes he may infact be planning to use his company to rig the election in Ohio, but the subject in that quote you gave is not his company, it's him. All it takes is one bit of damning misinformation like that to be launched on by the other side in a debate and instantly you've lost your credibility, it might be fun and satisfying to ignore the middleman by combining fact with your conclusion but flase statements like that work only to the benefit of Diebold.

The swift vets are also behind the anti-Kerry best seller, "Unfit for Command," which has already forced Team Kerry to retract his decades-old claim that he was sent on an illegal covert mission to Cambodia on Christmas 1968.

Kerry's own handpicked historian, Douglas Brinkley, told the Washington Post over the weekend that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia claim is "obviously wrong," backing up a key claim by the swift vets who say it never happened.

Kerry at times has claimed that he only threw away his military ribbons and not his medals at anti-war protests, but the swift vets use video uncovered by ABC News that shows him saying he did in fact toss his own medals.

Here is another Kerry claim that is withering:

A primary claim against Mr. Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans is that Mr. Kerry's first Purple Heart -- awarded for action on Dec. 2, 1968 -- did not involve the enemy and that Mr. Kerry's wounds that day were unintentionally self-inflicted.

They charge that in the confusion involving unarmed, fleeing Viet Cong, Mr. Kerry fired a grenade, which detonated nearby and splattered his arm with hot metal.
Mr. Kerry has claimed that he faced his "first intense combat" that day, returned fire, and received his "first combat related injury."
A journal entry Mr. Kerry wrote Dec. 11, however, raises questions about what really happened nine days earlier.
"A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky," wrote Mr. Kerry, according the book "Tour of Duty" by friendly biographer Douglas Brinkley.
If enemy fire was not involved in that or any other incident, according to the Military Order of the Purple Heart, no medal should be awarded.

And more:

None of Kerry's three Purple Hearts was for serious injuries. They were minor scratches, resulting in no lost duty time.

Each of these decorations is controversial, with considerable evidence (and in two cases, incontrovertible and conclusive evidence) that the injuries were caused by his own hand and not the result of hostile fire.

You should also be clear that not all of the veterans who have spoken out and revealed information contrary to John Kerry's claims are members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

And then there is John Kerry's testimony before Congress in 1971, which was a masterpiece of political theater in the service of lies.

It is also interesting to note that while you will hear endlessly repeated that the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth are funded by rich Republicans which means this:

But public records show that two of its three main backers are longtime GOP contributors: Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who gave $100,000, and Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate executive, who gave $25,000.... The third major backer is John O'Neill, who put up $25,000 and is co-author of the group's book.

.. what you won't hear is that the seed money was followed up by a lot of people making small individual contributions:

But the swift-boat veterans have vowed to continue their ad campaign and have raised more than $2 million in contributions, a

No, he said " I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Notice that first-person pronoun? The statement takes on an entirely different, equally plausible, and less conspiratorially ominous meaning when you use the appropriate noun. But, oh wait, this is /.

Not sure the 500,000 number is releavant if you change the rules. Had the system been based on popular votes, the actual turnout in FL and elsewhere might have been dramatically different. Changing the rules in how votes are counted is a variable that could impact the motivation of a voter to actually cast his/her vote.
Given a choice between pure pluarality and the current electoral college system, I tend to lean toward the EC. My preference would be to see more states adopt practices such as Maine where electoral votes are assigned to Congressional districts. This might help with the "all or nothing" approach the probably alienates voters. Of course there are studies that said this type of approach would not have changed the 2000 outcome http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/bush25.htm#r eadmore Which returns to my original point that by changing the rules you alter a key variable in the original equation...so that study is nothing more than an interesting intellectual exercise.
If I know my state may lean Republican, but I live in a decidely Democratic (or Liberterian?) district, then I personally would be less likely to stay home and concede my vote in a system where electoral votes were assigned per district.

Does anyone really believe that anymore ? Despite the constitution's demand for "checks and balances" The Republican congress has pretty much abrogated its responsibilities to the Executive branch. And, Cheney has explicity said that's the way he thinks it ought to be. Thus, the statement ought to be :"Bush controls the world (by fiat)."

[...] Cheney says, presidents have stood by as Congress has chipped away at their executive powers.

-S

Actually that's not insane. There have been studies done on baby teeth. Strontium-90 was found in the teeth of those living relalitively close to nuclear power plants. Baby Teeth offer radioactive clues

The cell-phone story itself is a scam. A K Dewdney tested it; you can't reliably make cell-phone calls in flight - without these new gadgets added to the planes. C'mon, they're waving it right under your nose!

All good points, but there's one flaw in the strategy this time. iPods don't do WMA. They really are going to need that $50 vapor player if they plan to take the market this time. And since iPods are only $0 to $69, it's going to be a hard sell :-)

In all seriousness though, Apple has momentum. They've got a greater marketshare with iPods and iTunes than they ever had with the Macintosh. This time, Apple has the ubiquitous hardware advantage. Microsoft is Tyson fighting Buster Douglas. MS is getting soft. XBox hasn't gone according to plan. Licensing and product activation is leading their customers to jump ship. They've peaked. There's nowhere to go but down now ;-)

Let's change the wording a bit shall we: ... Do as I say, not as I do.


right, but changing the words as you have done changes the whole point. It's not the powerful government that is doing the tracking, it's powerless individuals who are tracking agents of the government to ensure that they don't abuse the power they ALREADY have, by virtue of their government affiliation. Shoe's on the other foot, isn't it? It is entirely appropriate for individuals to engage in behavior that the government is prohibited from pursuing, because of the differential in the balance of power.

Last I checked, I don't need a permit to follow you around my candy store and keep an eye on you. Especially if I've already caught you with one hand in the cookie jar.

now, s/candy store/country and s/cookie jar/treasury and there we have the current situation. Are you saying it's not legal to watch people as they go about in public? This society seems to spend an awful lot of time watching people for the sole reason that they are unusually attractive or wealthy. Do you think it should be illegal for this cult of celebrity to continue chasing movie stars around just to take "candid" pictures? If this kind of celebrity worship is legal, why isn't it legal to make available information about other, less famous people?

If you think tracking people who haven't been convicted of any crimes should be illegal, I think John Ashcroft would choose to differ with you. I'm sure that retired Admiral John Poindexter would disagree, were he to be given the opportunity. try my first paragraph again, and this time s/cookie jar/koran and I'm pretty sure that you have criteria that the justice department would suggest is probable cause to keep an eye (and maybe a wiretap) on you. Do you think that the FBI isn't spying on American Citizens right now, making a list and checking it twice, without telling anyone who is on that list?

Think again, my friend, think again. At least Indymedia has published the list of delegates, and the delegates themselves can look to see if they are listed on it. You would think these delegates would be PROUD of their chosen roles in the democratic process, and be willing to submit themselves to stand up and be counted, rather than so ashamed of the policies they represent that they have to call in the FBI to make some bogus claims to protect them from the public eye.

1. "
2. If I were a soldier that I would prefer a decorated war veteran as commander-in-chief"

It makes you wonder what kind of impact might be made by an x86-ready OS X.

No, it doesn't-- we know: It would put Apple out of business, because Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. All the nifty stuff they do in software is designed to sell their hardware, the way iTunes and the iTMS is designed to sell iPods. Hell, even some Apple hardware (again, the iPod) is partially designed to sell their other hardware.

~Philly

insane southern frankenstien judges

You mean like this judge?

And that 7.0 Richter scale rating would need to be for reals.

This Has happened before. When that story broke it was carried by the likes of MTV and USA Today, but not slashdot. According to the later reportsthe students were ever charged with any crimes. Aprently this is how they've decided to deal with direct connect hubs. I bet neo-modus doesn't want news of this to get out.

Actually, in this case, it was Marvel Comics that made as if there was not profit linky here.

It's common practice in the movie industry for a movie to not make a profit, on paper that is. This is so the studios don't have to pay out royalties to all the suckers that worked for "points". That's why savvy actors specify in their contract that they get "gross points" - a percentage of the gross of the movie, rather than the profit.

here is a good overview of the costs and receipts that go into making a movie. Charging interest on all sorts of costs is the way Rain Man, Forrest Gump and The English Patient haven't made a single penny -- on paper that is.

If you had net profit participation in those movies, you were reamed.

Is this unethical? Yes. Immoral? Yes. Illegal? Well, it's the movie industry doing it, and as we all know, producers of intellectual property can do no wrong.

• Ms. Sandlin is so devoted to [Firefox] that she has taped a note to her monitor warning guests not to click on the desktop shortcut to Internet Explorer. "Do not touch the blue E!" the note says.

• Using Microsofts Internet Explorer Web browser to surf the Internet has become a marked risk even with the latest security patches installed.

• The US Government has sent out a warning out to internet users through its Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), pleading users to stop using Microsofts Internet Explorer.

• [A]ll-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it?

How about this article or this one. Maybe not direct evidence for bankrolling, but Iranians are moving into Iraq to fight against the U.S. Many analysts think that Iran and Syria are co-operating with the terrorist organizations.

I've seen many other articles as well. Do a search at google.

I'm not without sympathy, I've already told my story on Slashdot. I've seen it too, elderly grandmothers being wanded while a obviously foreign person is all but waived through and frankly these things offend me. It troubles me that these things work the way they do because they seem simply setup to fail. I realize that it is probably impossible to screen everyone to the nth degree and that a random method of doing some extra screening is intended to make the risk for a terrorist to be unacceptable. But grandma's and grandpa's as well as people traveling with an extra burden (ie parents with small children, wheelchair bound travelers and so on) should be able to be visibly excluded from these extra security measures by any half-way intelligent TSA agent.

Recently in Minneapolis, a trial program was launched which allows registered passengers to bypass some of the security screening processes. Perhaps, something similar could be done to allow these special needs customers easier access to travel. Maybe when they make their reservations they tell the agent that they have special needs and explain them - the information could be forwarded to the TSA where a TSA agent could pre-qualify the traveler(s) and issue a time limited card they could show the agent at the airport? While this would be a slight invasion of privacy it would be less public and less humiliating than having to undergo all the crap at the airport. For many, that would be acceptable.

Frankly, I think that the security procedures at airports are pretty much just pabulum for the traveling public anyhow. A lot of money is spent (er, wasted) on it which drives the cost of flying way up. Most air traffice remains business related so many of these costs are born by business' which must pass them along to their customers.

I'm not saying that all security is bogus. We learned from DB Cooper and other hijackers that some security measures are required for airlines. This was unfortunately underscored by September 11th. I'm not even saying that we didn't need to increase security after 9//11. All I am really saying is that I think that much of the money that has been spend on obvious security measures has been wasted.

We could do far better by quietly identifying threats and dealing with them before they ever got into the airport. We could require people traveling in the US with passports to undergo background checks and pre-register to fly. We could require proof of citizenship and do criminal background checks before allowing people to fly. Heck, we would probably even catch a few drug smugglers in the process too.

Sorry for the late reply, but here's a USA Today article and the snopes entry on the matter.

This is likely flamebait or trollish but hear me out....

Fed up with the insanity and indignities of airport security after 2001-09-11?

Simple solution to this mess....

Boycott the airlines--all of them--even the package delivery services that use airplanes.

Stop sending stuff by airmail through government postal services.

Contact the above and tell them you refuse to use their services until air travel security measures are returned to the way they were before 2001-09-11.

Once the airline and package delivery industries have lost enough money, they can put pressure on 'the powers that be' to get airport security back the way it was before '9/11'. Money talks!

You cannot have perfect security in a free society!

Although El-Al's security methods are quite impressive and should be used as a template for real airline security measures throughout the entire airline industry....

Saddam Hussein was not a nice guy.

Agreed. But irrelevant. Hussein would have been overthrown by the Iranians during the 1980s except for one reason: The US supplied him and kept him in power! You can't have it both ways; one day he's a great vicious thug, the next day he's a bad vicious thug.

Saying that 10,000+ were "mangled" is an outright lie.

Mangled is not very descriptive, it could mean many things. As to the number, this UPI article from Dec. 2003 states almost 11,000 medical evacuations from Iraq. No doubt, some of those evacs are for suicide attempts, post-traumatic stress, and other mental problems. Mangled could mean many things.

the highest number of wartime civilian casualties in Iraq: right around 12,000

Are you referring to the Iraq Body Count's stats? If so, those numbers are generally recognized as being low as they refer to deaths only cited by the major media.

As to whether the Iraqis are better off with the US occupation or with Hussein's dictatorship, the ultimate source of authority on this is the Iraqi people themselves. And based on western public opinion polls, the Iraqi people have spoken: they have run out of patience and a majority want the US out, the vast majority consider the US to be an occupier and a solid majority want US troops gone immediately, 55 percent said they would feel safer if the US left, and Americans polled believe the invasion of Iraq has increased the terrorist threat to the United States, not decreased it. (Note, CommonDreams.Org is a news aggregator; those stories are from wire services and mainstream newspapers.)

Strangely, in the quick check I did, I did not find a poll bluntly asking Iraqis if they were better off under Saddam or better off under the illegal US occupation. I wonder if I missed it or whether the corporate mass media is afraid to ask the question. (I'd appreciate a link if anyone finds such a mainstream poll.)

I guess now it's OK to vote for Bush. Kerry promotes broadband.

even our citizens on welfare tend to be wealthier than many in smaller european countries!

I suppose some might be offended (I can think of other, more controversial examples...), but more than likely we'd give them the chance to fix it first.

There's a swedish company that makes computer mice, keyboards and lcd screens in wood:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-05-06-woode n-casing_x.htm

http://www.swedx.se/

Chemical munitions can do a lot more damage...even just one.

Btw, BBC isn't exactly a paragon of truth.

Well, my tax kroner at work is giving me an education that helps me understand how the world works.

And for those who are not aware, there exist two classes of voting share, one class that offers 10 votes per share reserved to the founders and CEO, and another which as 1 vote per share, for the rest of us.

See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technolog y/2004-05-16-google-nonvoting_x.htm/

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040816 Calayan Rail/0.9.1+

I'm still using Firebird, because I've been too preoccupied to keep up. Wasn't there some issue with one of the names conflicting with the database system? Is it Phoenix, or has that been confused a BIOS of the same name and they're moving on to another?

Here's a thought! They just found a a previously undiscovered bird species in the Philippines, they could name it after that and beat every other software product!

Actually, this article says worker-productivity in Germany and France is equal to that of the U.S.

I googled, and here's the first link.

From the article I linked to:
"DVD "has changed the economics of the film," says Mike Dunn, president of Fox Home Entertainment, which is distributing Master and Commander. He expects DVD sales to account for half of the movie's revenue."

Or better yet this one.

Not necessarily. They could have succeeded in taking over the controls in time. After that all it takes is to engage the autopilot, and then the airplane will be back on the preset course and altitude.

Since the airplane had plenty of fuel, the passengers would have enough time to contact the ground and decide what to do next. A relatively safe crash-landing would be always an option, onto a foam-covered runway and into the safety net; with most of the fuel used up or dumped they would be all OK.

But even that would not be necessary, they had a pilot among the passengers:

Donald Greene, 52, was a licensed pilot and the vice president and chief executive officer of the Safe Flight Instrument Corp. of White Plains, N.Y. (link).

Quite possibly this guy would have landed the aircraft with no damage at all, maybe with a couple of dry runs and with an advice of a professional Boeing pilot in order to learn how to handle such a large airplane.

So it is very likely that the passengers attacked not because they wanted to die in a different way, but because they wanted to live. This does not make them any less heroes - people in trouble sometimes just fall in pieces; heroes don't. It's just not a requirement for heroes to die in process.

The method of using viruses to introduce genetic changes has been troublesome up to this point. Viruses don't always take over the cell properly and if they don't then the splicing of genetic material causes errors which can lead to all manner of illnesses including toxic shock and cancer. Viruses look like a great way to introduce genetic changes until you realize the fight with the body makes it unpredictable and dangerous.

Have you noticed that the Republicans are the party that runs these actors, like Sonny Bono, Loveboat's Gopher, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger

Hollywood is the machine that runs the actors and they are very, very far left. If you are going to split hairs with Gohper, Reagan and Arnie you need to also point out the majority of actors or Hollywood industry people who give and donate (aka activists) like the following:

Now that Kerry is the party's likely nominee, activists showed their acceptance of the Massachusetts senator Tuesday night at Greenacres, a 5-acre hillside estate built in 1927 by silent screen comic Harold Lloyd in Beverly Hills. Nearly 1,500 stars and executives from movies, TV and music paid $1,000 to $2,000 a ticket to mingle with Kerry. The guest list included Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Lee Curtis and Steven Spielberg.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nat ion/president/2004-03-30-kerry-hollywood_x.htm

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.

You mean like this?

Despite the fact I can get at least three other channels that I don't have to pay for.

You don't have to pay for it, but they make their money through another revenue stream called advertising. Adverts on European channels are okay at the moment. What I don't like is the North American layout, where you get about 2 minutes of adverts for every 10 minutes of program. Sometimes it feels like the gap is less. Not only that, when they show a film they select the climax points for inserting the adverts - enough to drive anyone crazy. Are you surprised the concentration span is apparently so short in North America (see here)?

Maybe you were thinking about this and just added a zero?

I realize that it's very important to the Kerry campaign to emphasize that (1) the economy is not doing well despite the tax cuts and (2) the war in Iraq is not doing well and should never have happened, but (1) won't fly and (2) is debatable.

Don't blame me -- I'm voting for Nader.





Because I live in MA.

It was not that long ago IBM was laying people off...

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/projects/ibm/bu 072701s1.shtml
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2002/05/ 31/ibm-layoffs.htm

But best to have a job for a year or two than not one at all.

So I guess we shouldn't teach our kids that stealing is wrong. Right? Wrong.

So the report says do nothing. Ignore the fact that the public domain is slowly drying up as Corporate America constantly lengthens copyrights. Ignore the fact that we have college students getting sued by giant mega-corporations for swapping a song with some friends. Ignore the issues of concern and don't make any major decisions, right?

And that's where we need to come in. If these things really are important to you, talk to other people about them, organize an effort to communicate with your lawmakers, and try to affect some change.

I speak with anyone who will listen, IRL, about issues of "intellectual property" and copyright. I think we need "Joe Sixpack" to understand that the things he does today, w/ his VCR, aren't going to be possible in just a few years. Cases like the Wisconsin high school 'prom' that gave out burned CD's tell me that the public is really under-informed, and there are opportunities for education.

The RIAA / MPAA / copyright cartels are using this ignorance to brainwash the public into believing that the system as it is today-- the one that force-feeds consumers crap, strips them of their fair use and first sale rights, and defauds artists and creators of their negotiated compensation-- is the only one that can exist. We need to be informing people that current system of copyright isn't "just how it is", and that they have a say in changing it.

Actually... they did. They lowered the price considerably on a couple of occasions. However Munich wound up approving the go ahead of a more expensive solution despite the Microsoft price cuts.

Here's the usa today article