Gasoline has more than tripled in price in the last decade (1.04 to 3.27) . Housing? Doubled or tripled. Food? Don't even ask. Sure, you can substitute for some items, but for the stuff you actually NEED, like a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and transportation to and from work?
Also, the calculators of the CPI have already done the "substitution", to such an extent that they use USED cars instead of new cars, and "owner's equivalent rent" instead of the actual cost of the roof over your head. Its a lie.
Instead of using new car prices, which were going up each year, the BLS substituted used car prices, which were falling. In place of exploding real estate prices, the Bureau gave more weight to the price of rents, which were falling as more households bought homes. Rents were given more weight even though 69% of households own a home versus the 31% that rent.
The average house price in January of 2000 was at $200,300 and in April of 2007 the average house price stood at $299,100. The average house prices grew about 50% from January 2000 to April of 2007.
It was a lot worse on the coasts, where price increases of 15 to 30% per YEAR were the norm.
One way to lower entitlements would be to bring the inflation rates down, which would translate into lower Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). The way to do this was to bring down the rate of inflation. However, this was not done by natural means, but artificially through statistical manipulation. The supply of money and credit began to go parabolic in the 1990s as shown in the graph of M3. The rise in money and credit would mean higher inflation rates. Higher inflation rates would mean higher COLA adjustments, which would lead to bigger deficits.
As for the "it is assumed that the cost of energy will be picked up by cost increases in all other goods" - when calculating the CPI, they substitute goods preferentially so as to lower the calculation, as well as "adjusting" the price of a good downward!!! if it's better than last year's model...
Hedonics
The manipulation didnt stop there. The bureau also began to adjust prices for quality. This practice became known as hedonics. Hedonics adjusts the prices of goods as a result of the increased pleasure a consumer derives from a product. A few examples will illustrate how removed the index has moved away from reality. Tim LaFleur is a commodity specialist for televisions at the BLS. In December last year he adjusted the price of a 27-inch television set for quality improvements. The 27-inch television set had a retail cost of $329.99. However, he decided the new model, which still sold for $329.99, had a better screen. After putting this improvement through the governments complex hedonic adjustment model he determined the improvement in the picture was worth at least $135! Taking in this improvement he adjusted the price of the TV by $135, concluding that the price of the TV had actually fallen by 29%! [1] The price reflected in the CPI was not the actual retail store cost of $329.99, but $194.99. The only problem for we consumers is that if we went to Best Buy or Circuit City to buy that TV, we would still pay $329.99.
Another example of hedonics at work is the way the BLS treats rising automobile prices. Mr. Reese, a specialist for autos, took a 2005 model car, which went from $17,890 in 2004 to $18,490 in 2005. After adjusting for quality items and making antilock disc brakes standard, the bureau adjusted the actual $600 price increase down by $225. The problem for we consumers is that the price of the car in dealer showrooms was still $18,490.
and
Instead of using new car prices, which were going up each year, the BLS substituted used car prices, which were falling. In place of exploding real estate prices, the Bureau gave more weight to the price of rents, which were falling as more households bought homes. Rents were given more weight even though 69% of households own a home versus the 31% that rent.
Real inflation has been understated since 1986, when they changed the way it was calculated. Anyone who says they believe the "official" CPI is a fool or a liar.
*notes that illegal immigrants cost the government more in services per year than the war in Iraq does*
* notes that illegal immigrants do jobs that americans won't take, keeping whole sectors of the economy from collapsing - or do you really want to pay $35 for an apple pie made from imported apples because there's no longer a viable fruit industry in the US because nobody picks the fruit... *
Superstition has no place in a discussion of science, unless its the psychology of mass delusions.
My point was exactly that - that current policy-makers are using the large portion of the population that has a particular superstitious belief to further their own agendas, and that they have a strong incentive to keep their "power base" happy by diverting money away from scientific endeavors, especially scientific endeavors that run counter to the beliefs of people who believe such malarkey as "Intelligent Design".
Example - what if probes do detect that life actually DID evolve on Mars - even if "just a few microbes"? So much for "Intelligent Design" - and the public will then push harder to detect life elsewhere. Maybe they'll find it in the seas of one of Jupiter's moons... again, more proof of life evolving rather than "Intelligent Design"...
Besides, we need to find ways to get off this planet before the religious kooks on all sides destroy it in the name of God | Allah | Jebus | FSM.
Other areas where science is a threat to "people of faith" - especially the fundies: we now know that same-sex behaviour is normal in humans, is mediated by a combination of genes and hormones in utero, that hundreds of species of mammals do it naturally, that AIDS was not "God punishing gays," and that the Bible is full of shit on that particular topic.
It's only one step in the long line of work we need to do to construct workable von Neumann machines that are able to handle non-earth environments. It's probably cheaper to build them and send them to Mars than it would be to make an equivalent "test environment" here on earth, and maintain it for that length of time.
As someone above you pointed out, Bush is the president to enact a plan for getting men to Mars. Perhaps you need to actually look at budgets, because as someone else pointed out, NASA's budget has grown by a billion dollars this year. Spew elsewhere.
Perhaps YOU should look at NASA's budgets:
NASA budget: 1997: 14.358 Billion
NASA budget: 2007: 16.250 Billion
This is not an "inflation-adjusted" figure. Over the last 10 years, NASA's budget has grown by a total of 13.177%. Over those same 10 years, inflation totalled 27.23%. (and that's only using the "core inflation" figures that don't take into account housing, food, or energy).
Adding a billion still leaves it short by $2.017 Billion.
Don't you love people who purposefully don't quote your stuff, then present arguments in an attempt to sidetrack you?
Original statement by poster and my reply:
Maybe it's just me but I'd rather see the quality of life improve for millions of people rather than look at another boring shot of a red rocky destitute landscape. I could just drive to Utah if I was that needy.
Offshoots from the space program improve the lives of billions of people.
Now notice the deception:
Please explain to me how the mars rovers have improved the lives of billions of people.
Never made that claim.
However, I will be happy to demonstrate just one way that the space program (specifically remote sensing - you know, the stuff that the Mars Rovers are an extension of) has improved the lives of 6.5 billion people:
Without decent remote sensing capabilities (spy satellites) allowing real-time verification, the cold war would have turned into a hot war. Glowing in the dark might be "cool", but it sucks when your half-life is cut down to hours.
Remember - some of the shuttle missions were military spy satellites. These missions helped end the cold war, since the USSR couldn't keep spending at the same pace, and ultimately lost the "militarization of space race."
Continuing to develop rovers into semi-autonomous or even autonomous vehicles would be one step towards workable von Neumann machines. There are lots of practical uses for a working von Neumann machine right here on earth
NASA's FY2008 budget has been increased by about 1 billion over FY2007 ($17.3B vs $16.25B).
That won't even keep pace with inflation. Real inflation (not the CPI bs that the government hands out every year, which excludes stuff like fuel) is running between 10% and 12%. Or are you planning on doing space missions without any energy costs, and getting all your supplies from suppliers that don't have to contend with energy increases?
Maybe it's just me but I'd rather see the quality of life improve for millions of people rather than look at another boring shot of a red rocky destitute landscape. I could just drive to Utah if I was that needy.
Offshoots from the space program improve the lives of billions of people.
Now that we can't come up with pocket change (in comparison to Iraq, for example), we're expecting them to work when we 'get around' to reactivating them?
No. the idea is that they won't work, so that the program can be quietly killed off completely. Science is a threat to your faith-based overlords.
Sorry - they were made in China, at the former Maxtor factory. Quality at the facility is still hit or miss. One of the replacements showed a ton of errors from smartd on initial power-up, and failed completely (to the point of not being able to get any smart data) at the 40 minute mark. You'd think they'd at least test their replacements for 15 seconds, if only to catch the obvious pieces of contaminated crap...
Thanks. I'll write them when I have some free time (I'm dealing with a lame St. Bernard who might be giving birth RSN, so that is taking up a lot of my free time).
So, since you couldn't refute my arguments, you now retreat into the childish "lalalala I can't hear you".
You've been demonstrated to be wrong, Freedom of speech is not absolute, it's not license, and you can't break the examples I gave. The only thing you got right was that you DO hae a right to be an asshole, just like Fred Phelps has. And, as I pointed out before, if you think that defending Fred Phelps' "right to free speech" is worth throwing your life away, you may have in fact put an accurate price on your life...
Stop with the "free speech" dogma. As I pointed out, it is not an absolute, and there are NO absolutes. Your country was founded in opposition to an absolute - the "absolute right" of the king of England. Everything involves compromises, judgments, decisions. Some speech is not protected, just like the leaders of some governments (the current Bush administration being one of them) are not protected under international law - how's it feel to be ruled over by a several-times convicted criminal, who is also now a war criminal?
Unfortunately, that's not the address for serving a notice of suit and motion for judgment. They refused flat out to give it to me.
And if not giving you my address is all it took to keep you from suing me, then I wouldn't give you my address either.
Guess what - you can't just sue someone without giving them legal notification, served in due and proper form. Courts won't allow it. That's why they want to see proof of service when you file the case at the courthouse. It's all part of what's called "due process" - something that judges are kind of funny about.
Some arguments are subjected to reduction depending on context. This (cogito, ergo sum) is one of them, in the sense of proving that there are absolutes.
Whether you posit your own existence or not doesn't change the truth of your existence, so to frame it as "it's pointless for *me* to posit my *own* nonexistence." begs the question. This is NOT anywhere near the same as "I think, therefore I am." which acknowledges a truth - "I am" - which is not dependent upon whether you think or not.
In other words, we can reduce it to "I am." That's the truth, and its unquestionable, "What I am" is a different question, but "that I am" is undeniable. Think about it - even if I'm just an AI, I still am.
Unbridled "freedom of speech" is not the way to "challenge" liars. By your logic, the way to deal with robbers is to let them steal ALL your shit; the way to deal with rapists is to let them screw anyone and anything they want, while you "tut-tut" them and say "see - I don't do that because I'm a bette person - follow my example!"
Do you have locks on your doors?
And no, there are NOT more fundies than there are non-believers. Most people who claim they believe, when push comes to shove, admit that their "belief" is luke-warm at best. Heck, most priests and pastors have never read the whole bible. Want to really piss off a "true believer?" Learn their book, cover to cover, and quote it back at them, then do the "evil laugh" thing when they fall back on "even Satan quotes scripture."
Point out the lies that they hear every weekend. Point out the stupidities and contradictions in their bibles. Heck, tell them that you've used it to wipe your ass (I did that during one "holy flame war" to make a point - contrary to their assertion, god didn't strike me dead;-0 ). Their lies and delusions need to be challenged. Anything else is giving your tacit approval by being silent. To turn one of their favourite phrases - "Love the religious nutcase - hate the religion."
Other countries do have hate-crime laws that cover such things as racist or hate speech. You'll find these countries are what the fundies call "post-christian". Freedom FROM religion is going to be one of the big things this century, along with water wars.
I'd rather side with the dyslexics and worship dog and fear santa.
Well, nice chatting with you, but I've got what looks like a very pregnant (and very lame) St. Bernard getting ready to pup in the next little bit, so gotta go.
It was the drives - the drives from that factory are what drove Maxtor into bankruptcy. That factory is also the reason for the overall 3x rise in the failure rate of Seagate drives since Seagate acquired it.
Trust me on this one - I don't do Windows. Several of the drives failed almost immediately (one I couldn't even access the drive's firmware), and I tested them on several rock-stable machines. Also, one of the replacements that didn't crap out immediately now has an uptime of 57 days, so its not the box (and the box runs at only 37 degrees), so the only issue is the drives. "Maxtorgates" are still crap.
None of those addresses is the right one to have a summons served for a law suit. You can't just have a summons served at any old address - it has to be to their legal counsel, and they refuse to give me that information.
Fred Phelps has the "right" to be an asshole only to the extent that he is willing to face the consequences of his actions - in his case, it meant a $5 million dollar judgment against him. He found out that "free speech" doesn't exist when you're being a total asshole.
Now, if you want to throw your life away defending the "right" of people to say things without having to face the consequences of their actions, again, you don't put much stock in the value of your life.
So stop with the simplistic sophistry and dogmatic "defense of freedom of speech". When Phelps says things that are, by their nature, indefensible, he deserves to be fined. Heck, he deserves jail time.
Next you'll be saying it's your "right" to be an asshole and go into a crowded theatre and shout "fire." You have no such "right."
In other words, paypal is trying to intermediate themselves between the banks, which already offer this exact same service, sans the paypal fees. If you have a bank account and online banking, your bank (at least in most parts of the world) offers this. You may need to dig around their web site a bit, or ask your customer service rep how to set it up, but it works.
That is an unquestionable truth. Even the attempt to question it shows that you do in fact exist... thus making its' truthfulness truly unquestionable
1+1=2 in base 10 math. Care to question that?
The sum of the angles in all triangles is exactly half a circle - 180 degrees. Is that not an absolute truth?
To make the claim that "there cannot be any unquestionable truths" is not only dogmatic, but demonstrably wrong.
Democracy doesn't mean that people have the right to unbridled free speech, when that speech is a lie. Quite the contrary, in a democracy people have the right to band together and punish those who choose to cause harm by their words, same as we can choose to punish those who cause harm by their actions.
That's why many countries consider the examples I gave as grounds for a "hate crime" - the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. We have the right, in a democracy, to state that encouraging people to lynch blacks because of their skin colour is a crime.
Democracy doesn't mean unbridled freedom - that is anarchy. Same as saying "There cannot be any unquestionable truths." It's all just an excuse to avoid making the hard choices - one of which is that people should be accountable for what they say. After all, we hold people accountable for all other actions - why should what you say be magically free of consequences?
The only speech that is free of consequences is inconsequential to begin with.
Seagate sold me 4 of their stupid Maxtorgates (drives from the former maxtor factory) that failed immediately - and most of the replacements ALSO failed immediately.
The won't give me the address to send them the legal notice so I can sue their sorry asses off.
Their Indian tech support said "we can't do that!"
Get me the address - I want to sue on behalf of everyone who bought brand-new drives and had to pay the shipping to get replacements.
Slashdot Mirror
The real CPI has not been reported since 1986. Here's some of the tricks used.
Gasoline has more than tripled in price in the last decade (1.04 to 3.27) . Housing? Doubled or tripled. Food? Don't even ask. Sure, you can substitute for some items, but for the stuff you actually NEED, like a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and transportation to and from work?
Also, the calculators of the CPI have already done the "substitution", to such an extent that they use USED cars instead of new cars, and "owner's equivalent rent" instead of the actual cost of the roof over your head. Its a lie.
Price of gasoline 10 years ago: $1.04.
Price of gasoline now: $3.27
They exclude energy from the inflation calculations for just that reason - it affects the cost of everything, and it's HUGE.
Then there's housing: http://therealreturns.blogspot.com/2007/06/median-and-average-house-prices-in-usa.html
It was a lot worse on the coasts, where price increases of 15 to 30% per YEAR were the norm.http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/0624.html
As for the "it is assumed that the cost of energy will be picked up by cost increases in all other goods" - when calculating the CPI, they substitute goods preferentially so as to lower the calculation, as well as "adjusting" the price of a good downward!!! if it's better than last year's model...
andReal inflation has been understated since 1986, when they changed the way it was calculated. Anyone who says they believe the "official" CPI is a fool or a liar.
Superstition has no place in a discussion of science, unless its the psychology of mass delusions.
My point was exactly that - that current policy-makers are using the large portion of the population that has a particular superstitious belief to further their own agendas, and that they have a strong incentive to keep their "power base" happy by diverting money away from scientific endeavors, especially scientific endeavors that run counter to the beliefs of people who believe such malarkey as "Intelligent Design".
Example - what if probes do detect that life actually DID evolve on Mars - even if "just a few microbes"? So much for "Intelligent Design" - and the public will then push harder to detect life elsewhere. Maybe they'll find it in the seas of one of Jupiter's moons ... again, more proof of life evolving rather than "Intelligent Design" ...
Besides, we need to find ways to get off this planet before the religious kooks on all sides destroy it in the name of God | Allah | Jebus | FSM.
Other areas where science is a threat to "people of faith" - especially the fundies: we now know that same-sex behaviour is normal in humans, is mediated by a combination of genes and hormones in utero, that hundreds of species of mammals do it naturally, that AIDS was not "God punishing gays," and that the Bible is full of shit on that particular topic.
It's only one step in the long line of work we need to do to construct workable von Neumann machines that are able to handle non-earth environments. It's probably cheaper to build them and send them to Mars than it would be to make an equivalent "test environment" here on earth, and maintain it for that length of time.
Perhaps YOU should look at NASA's budgets:
NASA budget: 1997: 14.358 Billion
NASA budget: 2007: 16.250 Billion
This is not an "inflation-adjusted" figure. Over the last 10 years, NASA's budget has grown by a total of 13.177%. Over those same 10 years, inflation totalled 27.23%. (and that's only using the "core inflation" figures that don't take into account housing, food, or energy).
Adding a billion still leaves it short by $2.017 Billion.
Don't you love people who purposefully don't quote your stuff, then present arguments in an attempt to sidetrack you?
Original statement by poster and my reply:
Now notice the deception:
Never made that claim.
However, I will be happy to demonstrate just one way that the space program (specifically remote sensing - you know, the stuff that the Mars Rovers are an extension of) has improved the lives of 6.5 billion people:
Without decent remote sensing capabilities (spy satellites) allowing real-time verification, the cold war would have turned into a hot war. Glowing in the dark might be "cool", but it sucks when your half-life is cut down to hours.
Remember - some of the shuttle missions were military spy satellites. These missions helped end the cold war, since the USSR couldn't keep spending at the same pace, and ultimately lost the "militarization of space race."
Continuing to develop rovers into semi-autonomous or even autonomous vehicles would be one step towards workable von Neumann machines. There are lots of practical uses for a working von Neumann machine right here on earth
That won't even keep pace with inflation. Real inflation (not the CPI bs that the government hands out every year, which excludes stuff like fuel) is running between 10% and 12%. Or are you planning on doing space missions without any energy costs, and getting all your supplies from suppliers that don't have to contend with energy increases?
Offshoots from the space program improve the lives of billions of people.
No. the idea is that they won't work, so that the program can be quietly killed off completely. Science is a threat to your faith-based overlords.
All NASA has to do is say they found indicators of [terr'rists | oil | bin Laden's hideout | WMDs ] on Mars and they're good to go.
And for a manned facility, they can pitch Mars as the next Gitmo. Think of the security!
Thanks. There's a subsidiary on the list that I could probably get a judgment executed against, so all is not lost ;-)
Sorry - they were made in China, at the former Maxtor factory. Quality at the facility is still hit or miss. One of the replacements showed a ton of errors from smartd on initial power-up, and failed completely (to the point of not being able to get any smart data) at the 40 minute mark. You'd think they'd at least test their replacements for 15 seconds, if only to catch the obvious pieces of contaminated crap ...
Thanks. I'll write them when I have some free time (I'm dealing with a lame St. Bernard who might be giving birth RSN, so that is taking up a lot of my free time).
You've been demonstrated to be wrong, Freedom of speech is not absolute, it's not license, and you can't break the examples I gave. The only thing you got right was that you DO hae a right to be an asshole, just like Fred Phelps has. And, as I pointed out before, if you think that defending Fred Phelps' "right to free speech" is worth throwing your life away, you may have in fact put an accurate price on your life ...
Stop with the "free speech" dogma. As I pointed out, it is not an absolute, and there are NO absolutes. Your country was founded in opposition to an absolute - the "absolute right" of the king of England. Everything involves compromises, judgments, decisions. Some speech is not protected, just like the leaders of some governments (the current Bush administration being one of them) are not protected under international law - how's it feel to be ruled over by a several-times convicted criminal, who is also now a war criminal?
Guess what - you can't just sue someone without giving them legal notification, served in due and proper form. Courts won't allow it. That's why they want to see proof of service when you file the case at the courthouse. It's all part of what's called "due process" - something that judges are kind of funny about.
Some arguments are subjected to reduction depending on context. This (cogito, ergo sum) is one of them, in the sense of proving that there are absolutes.
Whether you posit your own existence or not doesn't change the truth of your existence, so to frame it as "it's pointless for *me* to posit my *own* nonexistence." begs the question. This is NOT anywhere near the same as "I think, therefore I am." which acknowledges a truth - "I am" - which is not dependent upon whether you think or not.
In other words, we can reduce it to "I am." That's the truth, and its unquestionable, "What I am" is a different question, but "that I am" is undeniable. Think about it - even if I'm just an AI, I still am.
Unbridled "freedom of speech" is not the way to "challenge" liars. By your logic, the way to deal with robbers is to let them steal ALL your shit; the way to deal with rapists is to let them screw anyone and anything they want, while you "tut-tut" them and say "see - I don't do that because I'm a bette person - follow my example!"
Do you have locks on your doors?
And no, there are NOT more fundies than there are non-believers. Most people who claim they believe, when push comes to shove, admit that their "belief" is luke-warm at best. Heck, most priests and pastors have never read the whole bible. Want to really piss off a "true believer?" Learn their book, cover to cover, and quote it back at them, then do the "evil laugh" thing when they fall back on "even Satan quotes scripture."
Point out the lies that they hear every weekend. Point out the stupidities and contradictions in their bibles. Heck, tell them that you've used it to wipe your ass (I did that during one "holy flame war" to make a point - contrary to their assertion, god didn't strike me dead ;-0 ). Their lies and delusions need to be challenged. Anything else is giving your tacit approval by being silent. To turn one of their favourite phrases - "Love the religious nutcase - hate the religion."
Other countries do have hate-crime laws that cover such things as racist or hate speech. You'll find these countries are what the fundies call "post-christian". Freedom FROM religion is going to be one of the big things this century, along with water wars.
I'd rather side with the dyslexics and worship dog and fear santa.
Well, nice chatting with you, but I've got what looks like a very pregnant (and very lame) St. Bernard getting ready to pup in the next little bit, so gotta go.
It was the drives - the drives from that factory are what drove Maxtor into bankruptcy. That factory is also the reason for the overall 3x rise in the failure rate of Seagate drives since Seagate acquired it.
Trust me on this one - I don't do Windows. Several of the drives failed almost immediately (one I couldn't even access the drive's firmware), and I tested them on several rock-stable machines. Also, one of the replacements that didn't crap out immediately now has an uptime of 57 days, so its not the box (and the box runs at only 37 degrees), so the only issue is the drives. "Maxtorgates" are still crap.
None of those addresses is the right one to have a summons served for a law suit. You can't just have a summons served at any old address - it has to be to their legal counsel, and they refuse to give me that information.
Unfortunately, that's not the address for serving a notice of suit and motion for judgment. They refused flat out to give it to me.
Fred Phelps has the "right" to be an asshole only to the extent that he is willing to face the consequences of his actions - in his case, it meant a $5 million dollar judgment against him. He found out that "free speech" doesn't exist when you're being a total asshole.
Now, if you want to throw your life away defending the "right" of people to say things without having to face the consequences of their actions, again, you don't put much stock in the value of your life.
So stop with the simplistic sophistry and dogmatic "defense of freedom of speech". When Phelps says things that are, by their nature, indefensible, he deserves to be fined. Heck, he deserves jail time.
Next you'll be saying it's your "right" to be an asshole and go into a crowded theatre and shout "fire." You have no such "right."
Screw paypal. You don't need a paypal account to receive paypal payments - just an email address and a bank account ... https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/ema/index-outside
In other words, paypal is trying to intermediate themselves between the banks, which already offer this exact same service, sans the paypal fees. If you have a bank account and online banking, your bank (at least in most parts of the world) offers this. You may need to dig around their web site a bit, or ask your customer service rep how to set it up, but it works.
"cogito, ergo sum."
That is an unquestionable truth. Even the attempt to question it shows that you do in fact exist ... thus making its' truthfulness truly unquestionable
1+1=2 in base 10 math. Care to question that?
The sum of the angles in all triangles is exactly half a circle - 180 degrees. Is that not an absolute truth?
To make the claim that "there cannot be any unquestionable truths" is not only dogmatic, but demonstrably wrong.
Democracy doesn't mean that people have the right to unbridled free speech, when that speech is a lie. Quite the contrary, in a democracy people have the right to band together and punish those who choose to cause harm by their words, same as we can choose to punish those who cause harm by their actions.
That's why many countries consider the examples I gave as grounds for a "hate crime" - the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. We have the right, in a democracy, to state that encouraging people to lynch blacks because of their skin colour is a crime.
Democracy doesn't mean unbridled freedom - that is anarchy. Same as saying "There cannot be any unquestionable truths." It's all just an excuse to avoid making the hard choices - one of which is that people should be accountable for what they say. After all, we hold people accountable for all other actions - why should what you say be magically free of consequences?
The only speech that is free of consequences is inconsequential to begin with.
Seagate sold me 4 of their stupid Maxtorgates (drives from the former maxtor factory) that failed immediately - and most of the replacements ALSO failed immediately.
The won't give me the address to send them the legal notice so I can sue their sorry asses off.
Their Indian tech support said "we can't do that!"
Get me the address - I want to sue on behalf of everyone who bought brand-new drives and had to pay the shipping to get replacements.