Mainstream economic theory clearly states that free markets only work when they are both competitive and transparent, and yet, just as clearly, the profit motive drives companies to minimize both competition and transparency.
You ignore the fact that while they may be driven to minimize both, the free market itself virtually guarantees that there will be competition to put a practical limit on how much of their goal they can achieve. The exception, of course, are true monopolies which most people do agree should be subject to careful oversight.
Oh yeah? well, for every chicken you eat, i'm going to NOT eat FIFTY chickens.
Save the chickens! For every chicken you eat, feel good about it by buying "chicken credits", the money from which will be spent on looking for ways to reduce chicken consumption. You haven't actually saved any chickens but you can feel better about the one you ate and I get rich in the process. Hmmmm, this sounds like an awesome business plan. I wonder if Algore can help me promote it, or at least something similar?
Positive stereotypes by definition imply a negative stereotype on those that aren't in the positively stereotyped group. GP was correct, it's silly racism and political correctness.
HOW F*CKING HARD is it to make a secure voting machine?!?
Not very hard. But such a system would not be based on Windows or any normal version of Linux, or any other such operating system. The underlying code should be programmed as firmware which means it is stored in EEPROM or flash memory that cannot be changed by the machine itself. It should be electrically/hardware impossible for the code being run to be changed by the platform running it.
A microcontroller (take your pick... 8052, ARM, even lowly PICs) is the ideal platform for a voting system. The small architecture makes it easy to develop an entire system without an underlying operating system so that all the code being run can be reviewed easily. The platform could be such that the code cannot be changed by the hardware running it (some microcontrollers include in-application programmability, but such parts would be specifically excluded as options). And even an 8-bit microcontroller with 64k of program memory is more than enough to implement a functional and secure modern voting system with touch-screen GUI.
The use of complex OS-based system, whether Linux or Windows, is going to make any system vulnerable to unexpected problems, intentional hacking, and intentional or careless problems due to viruses. A voting system should be like a microwave or a refrigerator: It just goes and is essentially impossible to hack. That does not exclude modern electronic voting systems, but it does exclude such systems based on Linux/Windows in virtually all cases.
Professing to care little for material wealth, he explains that he has "always lived cheaply... like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."
I have no idea how this guy lives. But based on your comment and the quote attributed to him, it sounds to me like he is leeching off society via MIT. Living "cheaply" is not the same as living off of somebody else. Claiming to care little for material wealth while squatting at MIT puts him leaps and bounds, materially, above those that live in the street. Heck, above even many people that live in housing projects. If he doesn't care for material wealth, maybe he should try that lifestyle. Dunno, based on what I just read about Stallman, he strikes me as a paranoid hypocrite.
Only because it's something to do outside the house with your significant other. Prices here are at $9.75 per ticket here now, though. When it gets to $10, I seriously suspect we're not going to be going as often. It's just a psychological barrier. Or maybe just go to the movies to see those movies that really benefit from a massive screen. Those are the exception. For most movies, our 46" LCD with 5.1 surround sound is more than enough.
Heck, if we stopped going to see movies in the theater, we'd actually have the opportunity to use our home theater investment more. Most of the time, the 46 incher is just used by my wife to watch the Food Channel. That's pretty much overkill.
I go to at least one movie a week with my wife. In the last year, I can't recall a single time where a cell phone in the theater has rung. Maybe people here are just more polite.
Camera-equipped or not, why do people need to take a telephone to an activity where you're supposed to be silent?
Perhaps you missed the part of my message where I said that people might have other places to go before or after they go to the movie, and perhaps they don't want to leave a valuable in their car. I don't have the phone with me in the theater to use, I have it with me because it's always with me.
Any law which a citizen, acting in good faith, can accidentally trip so easily, is not a good law.
Actually, no law was probably broken here if the clip was indeed 20 seconds. They simply violated the rules of the theater and the theater people were dicks. Just because the theater posts a sign saying "No video recording units allowed" doesn't mean you've automatically broken the law if you enter with such a device, or even if you use it. They should have asked the girl to leave. If she didn't, then call the police.
As for the possibility she was a threat to their business model, very few people that go to the movies and pay $30-$40 to spend some time their with friends or their significant other are going to not go because some awful copy of the video is available free online. That they are willing to destroy the life of a young girl and generate this much badwill among their target audience to try to eliminate piracy in an audience that probably isn't going to give them money anyway just shows how misguided their understanding of reality is.
They'd rather alienate and piss off hundreds of thousands or millions (depending on how ridiculous this kind of thing gets) of people in their demographic to make sure a few thousand or hundred thousand people that aren't in their demographic don't get free stuff. Yeah, good idea.
Recording a movie in the theater--even if that's what she was doing--is pointless.
1) Those that are going to pirate the movie are going to get a high-quality copy obtained from somewhere else, not from an in-theater video recording.
2) Those that are going to stay home and watch a piss-poor quality movie aren't the bulk of the people. I suppose I could find brand new movies online even before they're released, but I don't because going to the movies is something I do with my wife to have an enjoyable time, usually preceded or followed by dinner or some other activity. If the movie is entertaining, great. But there's no reason to pay $30-$40 for a night at the movies if what you're really concerned about is absorbing the content. That price is only justified because of the fact that it is a social event that people like to do to get out of the house. That's not going to change just because I can get some lame free copy online.
In short, the number of people that are going to stop going to the movies because they can get some shabby copy online for free is minimal.
The goon at the door saw that my phone had camera capability and denied me entrance.
Are you serious? If that's the approach they're going to take, pretty soon they'll be showing their movies to empty theaters. Most phones have video recording capabilities these days. And people aren't going to leave their phone at home (perhaps the movies isn't the only place you're going while you're out) and I for one am not going to leave an expensive phone in my car since, if that's the policy, thieves are going to know that cars outside theaters are target-rich environments for cell phones.
I've always seen the warnings that video recording devices aren't allowed and wondered WTF given the cell phones we have these days. It's a lost cause, really.
The day they don't let me in because my cell phone has a camera is the day I stop going to movies.
It was silly to ever expect it. You've always been seen, it's just a matter of whether anyone noticed or cared. People driving a stolen car have been pulled over because a cop happened to pull up behind them and run their plates--turning around and complaining, "Wait, I didn't do anything wrong when you were behind me so you had no right to look at and recognizing my license plate" is a bogus response. And complaining because someone is actually now paying attention to what's happening in plain sight is just absurd.
I'm with privacy advocates most of the time, but complaining about the police using technology to observe what's happening in plain sight is where they lose me. GPS transmitter on my car that shows that I parked in front of a strip joint for 3 hours? Yeah, I'd have a problem with that. Cameras that recognize that I drove down the freeway or some major street? Nope.
Most people (99%) just want to leave others alone and to be left alone.
I doubt that made-up number. I suspect that more than 1% of the population are assholes.
And even if your number is right, the question is how many people are honest enough to return something they "found" when they know they can find the owner but also think they can get away with it if they take no action? I'd like to think it's more than 50%, but I really am not sure.
The bank should ask for the money back.
Press charges? Only if people refuse. But if people are honest and give the money back, just leave them alone.
I suspect that's exactly what will happen and the public announcement was just a little added "motivation" to keep people honest so that they will either make the first move to return the money or be cooperative when asked to return the money.
I also suspect that if this went to court, the only one that would be liable would be the person/company that stocked the money in the ATM. The banks of the customers show a withdrawal of $20, not $80, and I'm not sure how keen they'd be at pissing off their customers by debiting them $60 because another bank made a mistake with their ATM machine. And while they might have the names of the people that made withdrawals from the "broken" ATM, I seriously doubt they have video images showing each bill that customer received. A customer could claim (perhaps even honestly) that the ATM did, in fact, dispense only the amount he requested. Without video image of the actual bills being dispensed, there's not much chance at proving otherwise.
Not to mention that the amounts in question don't seem to be high enough to make it worthwhile to pursue litigation. They're just trying to scare the "winners" into forfeiting their windfall willingly.
If someone just went up to the machine and did a withdrawal and they got 4x as much money as they asked for, I would think that's not grounds for prosecution--though they should be expected to return the money. If someone re-plugged the unplugged machine and/or went back for a second withdrawal after observing the problem, I think that's something I'd consider prosecuting.
Probably the latter. I am concerned about privacy, but I have no concern about this. It's a state-issued license plate that is being monitored in public space. The fact that this could be used to try to track movements of non-criminal persons is a little concern, but even then I have to recognize the fact that my public movements are not particularly private nor should I expect much privacy in my public movements.
This is a good case for "Nothing to see here, move along."
$79 a month for 1000 minutes doesn't strike you as expensive? Maybe on your salary, but that's outrageous to me.
I'd always like cheaper, but, no, that doesn't seem bad. I have a Comcast land-line and I'm paying $49.95 for two lines of local service with unlimited domestic LD. For an extra $30, my wife and I get to use our cell phones anywhere in the world (at least anywhere I've traveled so far), it works, and we can be pretty much anywhere in the U.S. and still use our phones with no additional charges--plus Internet access everywhere I go. And it doesn't matter if I'm in Mexico, home, or on the beach, my friends and family always know exactly where to get ahold of me and/or leave a message.
I'm willing to pay an extra $30/month for that convenience. Would I like it to be cheaper? Of course, I won't complain when the price comes down--and it will, eventually. But I don't feel like I'm being ripped off.
Same here. I only have a landline for my business. All my personal communication is via my cell phone. Well, and I have home Internet access which also is mostly for my business. But I, too, can use my Treo 650 as a Bluetooth modem for free. And often do. When I'm sitting in an airport that doesn't have free WiFi and if I've only got maybe 15 minutes before they begin boarding, I'm not going to pay $9 for 15 minutes of Internet access. So I just have my laptop connect to my cell phone via Bluetooth and off I go, free. Heck, on one or two occasions in the last year, my cable-based Internet access went down for more than half an hour and I needed to access the Internet so I did the exact same thing.
And if I'm at the airport and don't anticipate doing much on the Internet, I just grab my email with my Treo and/or do some quick browsing. If I find something that demands more navigation, I might whip out my laptop and connect with it. But I can connect to my Linux Internet server via my SSH application on my cell phone and use the Qwerty keyboard to get things done. And I've had this phone for about 1.5 years and it existed long before that.
I find my cell service reliable, functional, and not unreasonably expensive for what I get. In terms of what our phones are capable of, don't misinterpret the silly over-the-top response to the iPhone as meaning that the U.S. is just now getting those capabilities. We've had them for years. And those of us that have had phones capable of doing what the iPhone does (and more) and who have had those phones for years are just looking at the iPhone and shaking our heads. Been there, done that, got the phone. Years ago.
Perhaps it's because I lived in Mexico for 10 years where cellular service is really expensive that I find Cingular service downright economical. It's all just a matter of where you come from and what you're used to. The state of affairs in the U.S. cellular market is far from the worst. It just so happens that you seem to have come from an area that is even better. Had you moved from Japan to Mexico, you'd probably have gone into a coma.
Seriously, I have no qualms with prices of just about anything cellular-wise except for the per-SMS charge which is patently absurd and a total rip-off. My Treo 650 cost me, I think, $350 last year with a 2-year contract. It works great and I see iPhone as just marketing fluff and more of an indictment of Apple's pricing more than that of cell services; and the fact that people are willing to pay such a premium for such fluff is an indictment of them. My two-phone/1400-minute-shared with rollover costs $99/month with unlimited calls to other Cingular customers and 1400 free minutes to any non-Cingular customers in the country. The data plan is $40 a month which is a bit high (especially considering how little I use it), but I'm still only paying $139/month and am basically able to forget about it and just use it as much as I want.
I've also been very pleased with Cingular's coverage. Granted, I haven't tested it on the truly side-roads a hundred miles off the interstate in New Mexico, but I *have* tested it all along I-10 and I-25 throughout New Mexico and if there was a moment I didn't have coverage, I didn't happen to see it. The fact that there is cell coverage in the lonely expanses of southern Texas and throughout states like New Mexico really just blows me away.
Anyway, there's room for improvement. There's ALWAYS room for improvement. But having lived 10 years in Mexico, I'm absolutely thrilled with the coverage and relatively low costs we have in the U.S. Just the other side of the coin, I guess.
But it's ultimately a bluff that's easily called. If the FCC doesn't accept Google's terms, do you really think Google is going to sit out the bidding? Of course not.
So because someone can "go postal" or "do a Columbine" we should forfeit our rights? Just because someone can get drunk and drive and kill a family of five, should everyone be prohibited from owning a car? Twisted my left foot... With the government (under both Democrats and Republicans) getting ever more powerful, now MORE THAN EVER we need to protect the 2nd Amendment.
Our "huge" professional army is to defend us from foreign threats. Our 2nd Amendment rights are to defend us from each other and, more than anything, from our own government.
Not twisted at all. The founding father made the right to bear arms pretty friggin' clear, and they were right on the money. The need for a large standing army has changed over time, but the need to be able to defend one's self from others and our own government has not changed.
Hmmm, that's an interesting definition of "emergency." Unfortunately, none of the dictionaries I just consulted seem to agree with your assertion that it ceases being an emergency if it never ends. The definitions I read all seem to say along the line of "a sudden unforeseen crisis (usually involving danger) that requires immediate action". No reference to a definite end to the event.
Like I said elsewhere, I'm getting really sick of liberal trolls trying to redefine the English language in order to justify their hatred for Bush. There are plenty of reasons to hate Bush. You don't need to redefine and mangle the English language to justify yourself. In fact, you rather discredit yourself when you do.
First law of Slashdot: Criticism of government power only applies when that power is being wielded by Republicans and being done in the national interest in a foreign war. When the Democrats or liberal special interests do it domestically with no national interest or lives at stake, it's to be applauded and those of us who disagree are to be written off as unenlightened.
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You ignore the fact that while they may be driven to minimize both, the free market itself virtually guarantees that there will be competition to put a practical limit on how much of their goal they can achieve. The exception, of course, are true monopolies which most people do agree should be subject to careful oversight.
Save the chickens! For every chicken you eat, feel good about it by buying "chicken credits", the money from which will be spent on looking for ways to reduce chicken consumption. You haven't actually saved any chickens but you can feel better about the one you ate and I get rich in the process. Hmmmm, this sounds like an awesome business plan. I wonder if Algore can help me promote it, or at least something similar?
Positive stereotypes by definition imply a negative stereotype on those that aren't in the positively stereotyped group. GP was correct, it's silly racism and political correctness.
Not very hard. But such a system would not be based on Windows or any normal version of Linux, or any other such operating system. The underlying code should be programmed as firmware which means it is stored in EEPROM or flash memory that cannot be changed by the machine itself. It should be electrically/hardware impossible for the code being run to be changed by the platform running it.
A microcontroller (take your pick... 8052, ARM, even lowly PICs) is the ideal platform for a voting system. The small architecture makes it easy to develop an entire system without an underlying operating system so that all the code being run can be reviewed easily. The platform could be such that the code cannot be changed by the hardware running it (some microcontrollers include in-application programmability, but such parts would be specifically excluded as options). And even an 8-bit microcontroller with 64k of program memory is more than enough to implement a functional and secure modern voting system with touch-screen GUI.
The use of complex OS-based system, whether Linux or Windows, is going to make any system vulnerable to unexpected problems, intentional hacking, and intentional or careless problems due to viruses. A voting system should be like a microwave or a refrigerator: It just goes and is essentially impossible to hack. That does not exclude modern electronic voting systems, but it does exclude such systems based on Linux/Windows in virtually all cases.
I have no idea how this guy lives. But based on your comment and the quote attributed to him, it sounds to me like he is leeching off society via MIT. Living "cheaply" is not the same as living off of somebody else. Claiming to care little for material wealth while squatting at MIT puts him leaps and bounds, materially, above those that live in the street. Heck, above even many people that live in housing projects. If he doesn't care for material wealth, maybe he should try that lifestyle. Dunno, based on what I just read about Stallman, he strikes me as a paranoid hypocrite.
"Number 5 is Alive!"
"What if it goes out and melts down a bus load of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that one?" "Nun soup?"
That doesn't refute my point.
Only because it's something to do outside the house with your significant other. Prices here are at $9.75 per ticket here now, though. When it gets to $10, I seriously suspect we're not going to be going as often. It's just a psychological barrier. Or maybe just go to the movies to see those movies that really benefit from a massive screen. Those are the exception. For most movies, our 46" LCD with 5.1 surround sound is more than enough.
Heck, if we stopped going to see movies in the theater, we'd actually have the opportunity to use our home theater investment more. Most of the time, the 46 incher is just used by my wife to watch the Food Channel. That's pretty much overkill.
I go to at least one movie a week with my wife. In the last year, I can't recall a single time where a cell phone in the theater has rung. Maybe people here are just more polite.
Perhaps you missed the part of my message where I said that people might have other places to go before or after they go to the movie, and perhaps they don't want to leave a valuable in their car. I don't have the phone with me in the theater to use, I have it with me because it's always with me.
Actually, no law was probably broken here if the clip was indeed 20 seconds. They simply violated the rules of the theater and the theater people were dicks. Just because the theater posts a sign saying "No video recording units allowed" doesn't mean you've automatically broken the law if you enter with such a device, or even if you use it. They should have asked the girl to leave. If she didn't, then call the police.
As for the possibility she was a threat to their business model, very few people that go to the movies and pay $30-$40 to spend some time their with friends or their significant other are going to not go because some awful copy of the video is available free online. That they are willing to destroy the life of a young girl and generate this much badwill among their target audience to try to eliminate piracy in an audience that probably isn't going to give them money anyway just shows how misguided their understanding of reality is.
They'd rather alienate and piss off hundreds of thousands or millions (depending on how ridiculous this kind of thing gets) of people in their demographic to make sure a few thousand or hundred thousand people that aren't in their demographic don't get free stuff. Yeah, good idea.
I know you're an anonymous troll, but...
Recording a movie in the theater--even if that's what she was doing--is pointless.
1) Those that are going to pirate the movie are going to get a high-quality copy obtained from somewhere else, not from an in-theater video recording.
2) Those that are going to stay home and watch a piss-poor quality movie aren't the bulk of the people. I suppose I could find brand new movies online even before they're released, but I don't because going to the movies is something I do with my wife to have an enjoyable time, usually preceded or followed by dinner or some other activity. If the movie is entertaining, great. But there's no reason to pay $30-$40 for a night at the movies if what you're really concerned about is absorbing the content. That price is only justified because of the fact that it is a social event that people like to do to get out of the house. That's not going to change just because I can get some lame free copy online.
In short, the number of people that are going to stop going to the movies because they can get some shabby copy online for free is minimal.
Are you serious? If that's the approach they're going to take, pretty soon they'll be showing their movies to empty theaters. Most phones have video recording capabilities these days. And people aren't going to leave their phone at home (perhaps the movies isn't the only place you're going while you're out) and I for one am not going to leave an expensive phone in my car since, if that's the policy, thieves are going to know that cars outside theaters are target-rich environments for cell phones.
I've always seen the warnings that video recording devices aren't allowed and wondered WTF given the cell phones we have these days. It's a lost cause, really.
The day they don't let me in because my cell phone has a camera is the day I stop going to movies.
It was silly to ever expect it. You've always been seen, it's just a matter of whether anyone noticed or cared. People driving a stolen car have been pulled over because a cop happened to pull up behind them and run their plates--turning around and complaining, "Wait, I didn't do anything wrong when you were behind me so you had no right to look at and recognizing my license plate" is a bogus response. And complaining because someone is actually now paying attention to what's happening in plain sight is just absurd.
I'm with privacy advocates most of the time, but complaining about the police using technology to observe what's happening in plain sight is where they lose me. GPS transmitter on my car that shows that I parked in front of a strip joint for 3 hours? Yeah, I'd have a problem with that. Cameras that recognize that I drove down the freeway or some major street? Nope.
I doubt that made-up number. I suspect that more than 1% of the population are assholes.
And even if your number is right, the question is how many people are honest enough to return something they "found" when they know they can find the owner but also think they can get away with it if they take no action? I'd like to think it's more than 50%, but I really am not sure.
I suspect that's exactly what will happen and the public announcement was just a little added "motivation" to keep people honest so that they will either make the first move to return the money or be cooperative when asked to return the money.
I also suspect that if this went to court, the only one that would be liable would be the person/company that stocked the money in the ATM. The banks of the customers show a withdrawal of $20, not $80, and I'm not sure how keen they'd be at pissing off their customers by debiting them $60 because another bank made a mistake with their ATM machine. And while they might have the names of the people that made withdrawals from the "broken" ATM, I seriously doubt they have video images showing each bill that customer received. A customer could claim (perhaps even honestly) that the ATM did, in fact, dispense only the amount he requested. Without video image of the actual bills being dispensed, there's not much chance at proving otherwise.
Not to mention that the amounts in question don't seem to be high enough to make it worthwhile to pursue litigation. They're just trying to scare the "winners" into forfeiting their windfall willingly.
If someone just went up to the machine and did a withdrawal and they got 4x as much money as they asked for, I would think that's not grounds for prosecution--though they should be expected to return the money. If someone re-plugged the unplugged machine and/or went back for a second withdrawal after observing the problem, I think that's something I'd consider prosecuting.
Probably the latter. I am concerned about privacy, but I have no concern about this. It's a state-issued license plate that is being monitored in public space. The fact that this could be used to try to track movements of non-criminal persons is a little concern, but even then I have to recognize the fact that my public movements are not particularly private nor should I expect much privacy in my public movements.
This is a good case for "Nothing to see here, move along."
I'd always like cheaper, but, no, that doesn't seem bad. I have a Comcast land-line and I'm paying $49.95 for two lines of local service with unlimited domestic LD. For an extra $30, my wife and I get to use our cell phones anywhere in the world (at least anywhere I've traveled so far), it works, and we can be pretty much anywhere in the U.S. and still use our phones with no additional charges--plus Internet access everywhere I go. And it doesn't matter if I'm in Mexico, home, or on the beach, my friends and family always know exactly where to get ahold of me and/or leave a message.
I'm willing to pay an extra $30/month for that convenience. Would I like it to be cheaper? Of course, I won't complain when the price comes down--and it will, eventually. But I don't feel like I'm being ripped off.
Same here. I only have a landline for my business. All my personal communication is via my cell phone. Well, and I have home Internet access which also is mostly for my business. But I, too, can use my Treo 650 as a Bluetooth modem for free. And often do. When I'm sitting in an airport that doesn't have free WiFi and if I've only got maybe 15 minutes before they begin boarding, I'm not going to pay $9 for 15 minutes of Internet access. So I just have my laptop connect to my cell phone via Bluetooth and off I go, free. Heck, on one or two occasions in the last year, my cable-based Internet access went down for more than half an hour and I needed to access the Internet so I did the exact same thing.
And if I'm at the airport and don't anticipate doing much on the Internet, I just grab my email with my Treo and/or do some quick browsing. If I find something that demands more navigation, I might whip out my laptop and connect with it. But I can connect to my Linux Internet server via my SSH application on my cell phone and use the Qwerty keyboard to get things done. And I've had this phone for about 1.5 years and it existed long before that.
I find my cell service reliable, functional, and not unreasonably expensive for what I get. In terms of what our phones are capable of, don't misinterpret the silly over-the-top response to the iPhone as meaning that the U.S. is just now getting those capabilities. We've had them for years. And those of us that have had phones capable of doing what the iPhone does (and more) and who have had those phones for years are just looking at the iPhone and shaking our heads. Been there, done that, got the phone. Years ago.
Perhaps it's because I lived in Mexico for 10 years where cellular service is really expensive that I find Cingular service downright economical. It's all just a matter of where you come from and what you're used to. The state of affairs in the U.S. cellular market is far from the worst. It just so happens that you seem to have come from an area that is even better. Had you moved from Japan to Mexico, you'd probably have gone into a coma.
Seriously, I have no qualms with prices of just about anything cellular-wise except for the per-SMS charge which is patently absurd and a total rip-off. My Treo 650 cost me, I think, $350 last year with a 2-year contract. It works great and I see iPhone as just marketing fluff and more of an indictment of Apple's pricing more than that of cell services; and the fact that people are willing to pay such a premium for such fluff is an indictment of them. My two-phone/1400-minute-shared with rollover costs $99/month with unlimited calls to other Cingular customers and 1400 free minutes to any non-Cingular customers in the country. The data plan is $40 a month which is a bit high (especially considering how little I use it), but I'm still only paying $139/month and am basically able to forget about it and just use it as much as I want.
I've also been very pleased with Cingular's coverage. Granted, I haven't tested it on the truly side-roads a hundred miles off the interstate in New Mexico, but I *have* tested it all along I-10 and I-25 throughout New Mexico and if there was a moment I didn't have coverage, I didn't happen to see it. The fact that there is cell coverage in the lonely expanses of southern Texas and throughout states like New Mexico really just blows me away.
Anyway, there's room for improvement. There's ALWAYS room for improvement. But having lived 10 years in Mexico, I'm absolutely thrilled with the coverage and relatively low costs we have in the U.S. Just the other side of the coin, I guess.
But it's ultimately a bluff that's easily called. If the FCC doesn't accept Google's terms, do you really think Google is going to sit out the bidding? Of course not.
How dare Tim Berners-Lee steal Gore's thunder. I guess that's ok. Gore has moved from one hoax to a new hoax.
So because someone can "go postal" or "do a Columbine" we should forfeit our rights? Just because someone can get drunk and drive and kill a family of five, should everyone be prohibited from owning a car? Twisted my left foot... With the government (under both Democrats and Republicans) getting ever more powerful, now MORE THAN EVER we need to protect the 2nd Amendment.
Our "huge" professional army is to defend us from foreign threats. Our 2nd Amendment rights are to defend us from each other and, more than anything, from our own government.
Not twisted at all. The founding father made the right to bear arms pretty friggin' clear, and they were right on the money. The need for a large standing army has changed over time, but the need to be able to defend one's self from others and our own government has not changed.
Hmmm, that's an interesting definition of "emergency." Unfortunately, none of the dictionaries I just consulted seem to agree with your assertion that it ceases being an emergency if it never ends. The definitions I read all seem to say along the line of "a sudden unforeseen crisis (usually involving danger) that requires immediate action". No reference to a definite end to the event.
Like I said elsewhere, I'm getting really sick of liberal trolls trying to redefine the English language in order to justify their hatred for Bush. There are plenty of reasons to hate Bush. You don't need to redefine and mangle the English language to justify yourself. In fact, you rather discredit yourself when you do.
First law of Slashdot: Criticism of government power only applies when that power is being wielded by Republicans and being done in the national interest in a foreign war. When the Democrats or liberal special interests do it domestically with no national interest or lives at stake, it's to be applauded and those of us who disagree are to be written off as unenlightened.