He finds ways to justify all sorts of unconstitutional, unnecessary spending of the American tax payer's dollar (like his proposed $80B/year for international poverty), so why not NASA?
And how much has Bush spent on his initiatives for Africa, like AIDS reduction?
Fighting global poverty doesn't seem to be limited to Democratic Administrations and for that we can be thankful -- for all his other faults, GWB has actually done a few good things with his Africa policies.
Eh, I'd be more vocal too given the cost difference between Apple products and most of their competition.
Anyway, I didn't think it was a "Motorola sucks!" rant on your part. Was just looking for clarification because it was the exact opposite of most of my experiences with Motorola products.
I thought all the fees were laid out in the contract they sent you
That argument only goes so far. With the wireless industry you can't even get that until AFTER you've signed the contract and usually AFTER you get your first bill. Hell, around these parts you can't even get a straight answer from Time Warner on what their rates are (never mind the fees) without calling them and haggling with a sales rep. Guess publishing them on the website is asking too much.
I don't think it's asking too much that these companies just offer a rate so people can easily do comparisons between different offerings.
Eh, I cut the Chinese more slack than I do us. The Chinese have tried before and been smacked down by their Government. We don't even bother to try. Sad.
I seem to remember reading that some cable modem providers require all residential high-speed Internet customers to subscribe to some cable television package, especially in areas where the phone company provides no high-speed Internet access. You're lucky that this package is "lifeline" and not "basic cable".
Umm, usually (at least in New York State) the cable companies have to provide the "lifeline" tier (typically the local broadcast stations for the big networks) as a condition of their franchise agreements. If that isn't the case in your community then raise a stink about it at the appropriate levels. Around here they have to offer the local broadcast stations plus a community access channel. I get the local CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and PBS affiliates for $4.95/mo.
With regards to internet access I guess it depends on area. In my area Time Warner has always offered Roadrunner regardless of any underlying cable service or lack thereof. It might cost a bit more to get it installed (they typically have to roll a truck to adjust the traps on the line instead of just giving you a self-install kit) but it's available and was available even before Verizon started to roll out DSL, which is also available without phone service around these parts.
Whether or not that's Time Warner being forced to provide that service or actually being a good corporate citizen I honestly can't say. If it isn't like this in your local area though I'd be raising a fuss at every level of the cable company and local government trying to get it changed. One shouldn't have to pay for the boob tube just to get on the interwebs in this day and age.
But what do you do for sports, or do you just happen not to have a sports fan in your household?
I'm a baseball fan -- but not enough of one to pay $60/mo for 59 channels of crap just to get the one channel that carries all the Mets games. I usually wind up catching them on the radio or the web. I understand that MLB has a couple of pay options on their website where you can get more than that but the radio broadcasts are usually enough for me.
You do raise a valid point though and I can see how that might not be an acceptable option for the hard-core sports fan.
Yes. I do not agree with drug laws, and if I were on a jury in a drug case (well, I wouldn't be because the prosecuting attorney wouldn't let it happen) I could not in good conscience vote "guilty", no matter what the evidence.
That's your right and one of the beauties of the jury system. I'm opposed to the war on drugs and would probably consider jury nullification as well, though I would take the facts of the case into account -- I wouldn't nullify a charge of violence for example.
The fifth amendment gives the criminal the right to remain silent, the witness should have the same right.
I'm sorry but I disagree. The accused (not a criminal until conviction) has the right to remain silent so they don't have to incriminate themselves. The witness has an obligation to tell the community what happened. In this scenario I think that the needs of the many (society) outweigh the needs of the one (the individual), particularly in the case of the murderer example that you gave.
In the case of the War on Drugs..... no easy answer there. If you really believe that earnestly in your principles then stand up for them and refuse to testify. Be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so however.
If my child committed murder I would go to jail rather than testify
That's a bit of a blanket statement. If your child was the unabomber would you really keep silent and let him keep blowing people up? He was turned in by his brother as you recall. Couldn't have been easy for him. But I think the obligation to society outweighs the obligation to the family member in that instance.
*shrug*, at no point have I claimed that our system is perfect. The biggest problem with our system is people that neglect their civic responsibilities. Why bother staying informed and holding public officials accountable when the new season of survivor starts soon?
Still, I'll say it again: Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
You seem to have a rather rosy view of journalism in the past. Ever read about yellow journalism? William Hearst's activities in the run up to the Spanish-American war? The media has always been vulnerable to corruption, propaganda and particularly sensationalism (it sells copy). This isn't a new phenomena by any means.
All you can do is obtain your news from a broad range of different media and media outlets. They all have their vested interests, the big one being making money (for the for-profits) but if you obtain your news from diverse sources you'd be surprised at how much you can learn and how well informed you'll be.
You are comparing bullfighting with societal attempts at obtaining justice? That's the underlying reason that our judicial system has the right to compel testimony. Do you really think a witness to a murder (or any crime for that matter) should be able to refuse to testify?
Grand juries can be quite politically corrupt also
Any institution made up of human beings can be corrupted. But I'd rather live in a system that requires the consent of the community (via the jury process) to take away my freedom than one that requires the consent of some appointed bureaucrat or judge.
They have no right to force me to do anything.
Actually the community does have a right to force you to do certain things. It can force you to testify in a judicial proceeding. It can force you to serve on a jury. This is the balance of power between society and the individual that has been tweaked and honed over hundreds of years. You are free to dislike it but the fact that you can voice your opinions against the status quo places you light-years ahead of your friends living in China or Russia. I wish people would remember that.
The press in America isn't free, its perpetually sitting on the auction bloc
I love how you talk about the press as though it's some monolithic entity. The press consists of everything from the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC), cable news networks (MSNBC, Fox, CNN), news magazines (Time, Newsweek), other magazines (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc), PBS, NPR, the AP, Reuters, blogs, newspapers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hell, that doesn't even count the numerous foreign press (the BBC, Le Monde, etc) sources that are only a few mouseclicks away in the information age.
You don't like what the mainstream news is covering? Get your news from somewhere else. I get my news from a combination of almost everything that I listed above. The nightly news broadcasts are good for a quick snapshot of the major events of the day. PBS does a good job of covering a handful of stories in depth and generally pays attention to parts of the world (Africa) neglected by the big networks. Most of the news magazines are worth reading through. Foreign newspapers and websites are a good source of news about events not well covered by American media or for a look at how the rest of the world views a particular issue.
The information is out there for those inclined to turn off Fear Factor long enough to look for it. There is no excuse for not being informed in this day and age other than laziness.
FWIW, I've noticed that all of the phones that come into my office with "power problems" are phones that are left in someones car baking in the sun for hours on the end. Heat destroys li-ion batteries by accelerating the aging/wearing process. Give it a month or two of being left in the car all day and you'll find that your phone has a talk-time under ten minutes and a standby time of an hour or two before the battery quits.
I did see some glitches with some of the Motorola's released by Verizon when Verizon first came up with their proprietary UI. These seem to be solved now and in any event never occurred (in my experience) on the Moto's running the native Motorola OS. They wouldn't charge while talking on them (phone would eventually crash) and had glitches getting up to a full charge if you left the phone on while charging. The V325 series was notorious for this. Interestingly enough the V323 (the exact same phone minus the Verizon UI -- it was released for Alltel and a few of the regional carriers) didn't have any of those problems.
I wonder just how many of the problems we see with cell phones have to do with the way the carriers modify them? My only personal experience with a Nokia was a brief flirtation with the Nokia 6086 UMA phone on T-Mobile. It had glitches up the ass -- random crashes, wi-fi issues and an all around horrible design (external display was white on black instead of black on white and virtually impossible to read outdoors... WTF?). The horrible design I blamed on Nokia but all of the glitches and crashes likely had more to do with T-Mobile's software than anything Nokia did. The generic unbranded version of the same phone didn't have any of these issues.
I wish we had a real market for cell phones in this country. There's a small market for unbranded GSM phones but it's not an option at all for CDMA users. I'd love to go back to GSM but Verizon is king in the Northeast -- get out into the rural sticks and odds are that Verizon is the only one with coverage. Sprint claims to match them but if you bother looking under the hood that's just because your Sprint phone is roaming on Verizon's network. AT&T tries to match them but they don't even come close yet. T-Mobile is useless outside of the major cities.
As to the free press issue, American reporters go to jail over politics, too [cnn.com]
No, American reporters go to jail for refusing to testify in front of a Grand Jury. Bit of a difference there. I would argue that we need a press shield law on the Federal level (my state has one) but there's still a difference between going to jail for contempt of court and being whisked away for investigating Governmental abuses or corruption.
the right to free speech is supposed to be the right to not speak as well
Actually, no, there is no right not to speak if you are subpoenaed to testify. You have a right against self-incrimination but if you are offered immunity (i.e: nothing you say can be used against you) then you don't have the right to refuse to testify. This is based on hundreds of years of legal precedent and tradition.
Umm, I'm pretty sure we aren't on the gold standard any longer so what relevance does the price of gold have to do with anything? Somehow I think if we had 300% inflation in the last nine years that it would be a story..... according to this $20 in 1998 was worth $25.75 in 2007.
Given the fact that both viable candidates seem to against the worst excesses of the Bush administration, yes I think it will make a difference.
Will it solve our bigger problems? Who knows. Democracy doesn't seem very good at solving big issues until they reach the crisis stage. But I'll take it over the other forms of Government that are available to us.
And the reason those boxes are of such crappy quality is because the cable companies have such a tight lock. The cable companies want to keep the box cost down to maximize their own profits. If Motorola and SA could sell directly to consumers, they would suddenly have an incentive to improve the quality.
If consumers would grow a pair of balls and realize that TV isn't really worth this much money Time Warner would eventually have to lower their rates or be content with less subscribers. I remember when basic cable (roughly 40-50 channels back in the day) cost $20/mo around here. That was as recent as nine years ago before the local cable company got bought out by Time Warner. Now it costs $60/mo for the same number of real channels and about a dozen home shopping channels that weren't available before.
I dumped my cable down to 'lifeline' (local stations only) four years ago and haven't looked back since. Hell, I'd dump lifeline and go with an aerial if I could get decent reception out here in the boonies. The combination of the internet, books, PBS and the major networks is all the entertainment I need.
People who live in glass countries shouldn't throw bricks. In the US you don't have to critize anybody to be arrested and hauled away by the cops [illinoistimes.com].
What's your point? Governmental officials abuse their power? Nobody would deny that. The difference between the US and China is that we have a free press that can investigate those abuses of power and bring them to light. In China they can't even get answers as to why their schools collapsed and killed thousands of their children during the recent earthquakes.
Remember that Democracy is the worst form of Government ever -- except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
oh, this has the making of a beautiful class action suit against RIAA and the record companies. Can you imagine the beautiful, beautiful damanges?
*looks into crystal ball*..... I envision millions of dollars in legal fees for the lawyers representing the class and free iTunes download credits for the class members
My job actually involves (at times) testing things on various brands/models of mobile phones
So does mine. I manage the equipment for around 200 mobile users, mostly CDMA (Verizon Wireless) but roughly a fifth of them are GSM (AT&T). I've seen issues with a few Verizon-branded Motorola phones -- primarily battery issues -- never seen any with the GSM models.
and nokia/samsung seem to be regarded as higher-quality
Depends on what you consider 'higher-quality'. I wouldn't dispute you on Nokia but Samsung? In my testing Nokia and Motorola are roughly equal in terms of RF performance. The Samsung's are horrible in this regard.
That might not matter to you if you are located in an urban environment with a well built out cellular network but out here in the sticks it's a huge consideration. I've seen places where a Motorola or Nokia work just fine but the comparable Samsung (or LG for that matter) model doesn't even have enough signal to do SMS let alone voice. This seems to be consistent even between the CDMA and GSM models -- Nokia and Motorola just do much better with weaker signals than anything else -- though a few of the Blackberry models come close to equaling them.
The difference is that KO didn't abuse, insult and threaten the son of a 9/11 victim on his show. BillO did.
What's your point? That Bill O'Reilly is an asshole? I don't think that was ever in dispute.
And because you're apparently a bit dense
I'm dense? My original point was that Olbermann is doing a pretty good knock-off of O'Reilly, complete with "selective hearing and manufactured outrage". You apparently feel the need to draw a contrast between the two of them because Olbermann has never gone after the son of a 9/11 survivor. Point taken, but I still don't think that makes Olbermann any less of a closed minded partisan hack than O'Reilly is.
I love the fact that we have 24 hour "news" networks and the best thing that MSNBC and Fox can do with the time is give hour long slots (plus encore showings -- at least of the factor) to closed minded angry individuals that get to vent their frustrations to millions of equally closed minded viewers.
Eh, I see it on both sides. My favorite example of Democratic/Liberal hypocrisy are those that talk about how important our civil rights are while simultaneously supporting gun control. Umm, WTF?
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He finds ways to justify all sorts of unconstitutional, unnecessary spending of the American tax payer's dollar (like his proposed $80B/year for international poverty), so why not NASA?
And how much has Bush spent on his initiatives for Africa, like AIDS reduction?
Fighting global poverty doesn't seem to be limited to Democratic Administrations and for that we can be thankful -- for all his other faults, GWB has actually done a few good things with his Africa policies.
Eh, I'd be more vocal too given the cost difference between Apple products and most of their competition.
Anyway, I didn't think it was a "Motorola sucks!" rant on your part. Was just looking for clarification because it was the exact opposite of most of my experiences with Motorola products.
I thought all the fees were laid out in the contract they sent you
That argument only goes so far. With the wireless industry you can't even get that until AFTER you've signed the contract and usually AFTER you get your first bill. Hell, around these parts you can't even get a straight answer from Time Warner on what their rates are (never mind the fees) without calling them and haggling with a sales rep. Guess publishing them on the website is asking too much.
I don't think it's asking too much that these companies just offer a rate so people can easily do comparisons between different offerings.
Eh, I cut the Chinese more slack than I do us. The Chinese have tried before and been smacked down by their Government. We don't even bother to try. Sad.
I seem to remember reading that some cable modem providers require all residential high-speed Internet customers to subscribe to some cable television package, especially in areas where the phone company provides no high-speed Internet access. You're lucky that this package is "lifeline" and not "basic cable".
Umm, usually (at least in New York State) the cable companies have to provide the "lifeline" tier (typically the local broadcast stations for the big networks) as a condition of their franchise agreements. If that isn't the case in your community then raise a stink about it at the appropriate levels. Around here they have to offer the local broadcast stations plus a community access channel. I get the local CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and PBS affiliates for $4.95/mo.
With regards to internet access I guess it depends on area. In my area Time Warner has always offered Roadrunner regardless of any underlying cable service or lack thereof. It might cost a bit more to get it installed (they typically have to roll a truck to adjust the traps on the line instead of just giving you a self-install kit) but it's available and was available even before Verizon started to roll out DSL, which is also available without phone service around these parts.
Whether or not that's Time Warner being forced to provide that service or actually being a good corporate citizen I honestly can't say. If it isn't like this in your local area though I'd be raising a fuss at every level of the cable company and local government trying to get it changed. One shouldn't have to pay for the boob tube just to get on the interwebs in this day and age.
But what do you do for sports, or do you just happen not to have a sports fan in your household?
I'm a baseball fan -- but not enough of one to pay $60/mo for 59 channels of crap just to get the one channel that carries all the Mets games. I usually wind up catching them on the radio or the web. I understand that MLB has a couple of pay options on their website where you can get more than that but the radio broadcasts are usually enough for me.
You do raise a valid point though and I can see how that might not be an acceptable option for the hard-core sports fan.
Yes. I do not agree with drug laws, and if I were on a jury in a drug case (well, I wouldn't be because the prosecuting attorney wouldn't let it happen) I could not in good conscience vote "guilty", no matter what the evidence.
That's your right and one of the beauties of the jury system. I'm opposed to the war on drugs and would probably consider jury nullification as well, though I would take the facts of the case into account -- I wouldn't nullify a charge of violence for example.
The fifth amendment gives the criminal the right to remain silent, the witness should have the same right.
I'm sorry but I disagree. The accused (not a criminal until conviction) has the right to remain silent so they don't have to incriminate themselves. The witness has an obligation to tell the community what happened. In this scenario I think that the needs of the many (society) outweigh the needs of the one (the individual), particularly in the case of the murderer example that you gave.
In the case of the War on Drugs..... no easy answer there. If you really believe that earnestly in your principles then stand up for them and refuse to testify. Be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so however.
If my child committed murder I would go to jail rather than testify
That's a bit of a blanket statement. If your child was the unabomber would you really keep silent and let him keep blowing people up? He was turned in by his brother as you recall. Couldn't have been easy for him. But I think the obligation to society outweighs the obligation to the family member in that instance.
*shrug*, at no point have I claimed that our system is perfect. The biggest problem with our system is people that neglect their civic responsibilities. Why bother staying informed and holding public officials accountable when the new season of survivor starts soon?
Still, I'll say it again: Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
You seem to have a rather rosy view of journalism in the past. Ever read about yellow journalism? William Hearst's activities in the run up to the Spanish-American war? The media has always been vulnerable to corruption, propaganda and particularly sensationalism (it sells copy). This isn't a new phenomena by any means.
All you can do is obtain your news from a broad range of different media and media outlets. They all have their vested interests, the big one being making money (for the for-profits) but if you obtain your news from diverse sources you'd be surprised at how much you can learn and how well informed you'll be.
Also the terrorist to tourist ratio are probably quite low ..
Wouldn't that depend on if you are vacationing in Orlando vs Kabul or Baghdad? ;)
So is bullfighting. Doesn't make it right
You are comparing bullfighting with societal attempts at obtaining justice? That's the underlying reason that our judicial system has the right to compel testimony. Do you really think a witness to a murder (or any crime for that matter) should be able to refuse to testify?
Grand juries can be quite politically corrupt also
Any institution made up of human beings can be corrupted. But I'd rather live in a system that requires the consent of the community (via the jury process) to take away my freedom than one that requires the consent of some appointed bureaucrat or judge.
They have no right to force me to do anything.
Actually the community does have a right to force you to do certain things. It can force you to testify in a judicial proceeding. It can force you to serve on a jury. This is the balance of power between society and the individual that has been tweaked and honed over hundreds of years. You are free to dislike it but the fact that you can voice your opinions against the status quo places you light-years ahead of your friends living in China or Russia. I wish people would remember that.
The press in America isn't free, its perpetually sitting on the auction bloc
I love how you talk about the press as though it's some monolithic entity. The press consists of everything from the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC), cable news networks (MSNBC, Fox, CNN), news magazines (Time, Newsweek), other magazines (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc), PBS, NPR, the AP, Reuters, blogs, newspapers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hell, that doesn't even count the numerous foreign press (the BBC, Le Monde, etc) sources that are only a few mouseclicks away in the information age.
You don't like what the mainstream news is covering? Get your news from somewhere else. I get my news from a combination of almost everything that I listed above. The nightly news broadcasts are good for a quick snapshot of the major events of the day. PBS does a good job of covering a handful of stories in depth and generally pays attention to parts of the world (Africa) neglected by the big networks. Most of the news magazines are worth reading through. Foreign newspapers and websites are a good source of news about events not well covered by American media or for a look at how the rest of the world views a particular issue.
The information is out there for those inclined to turn off Fear Factor long enough to look for it. There is no excuse for not being informed in this day and age other than laziness.
FWIW, I've noticed that all of the phones that come into my office with "power problems" are phones that are left in someones car baking in the sun for hours on the end. Heat destroys li-ion batteries by accelerating the aging/wearing process. Give it a month or two of being left in the car all day and you'll find that your phone has a talk-time under ten minutes and a standby time of an hour or two before the battery quits.
I did see some glitches with some of the Motorola's released by Verizon when Verizon first came up with their proprietary UI. These seem to be solved now and in any event never occurred (in my experience) on the Moto's running the native Motorola OS. They wouldn't charge while talking on them (phone would eventually crash) and had glitches getting up to a full charge if you left the phone on while charging. The V325 series was notorious for this. Interestingly enough the V323 (the exact same phone minus the Verizon UI -- it was released for Alltel and a few of the regional carriers) didn't have any of those problems.
I wonder just how many of the problems we see with cell phones have to do with the way the carriers modify them? My only personal experience with a Nokia was a brief flirtation with the Nokia 6086 UMA phone on T-Mobile. It had glitches up the ass -- random crashes, wi-fi issues and an all around horrible design (external display was white on black instead of black on white and virtually impossible to read outdoors... WTF?). The horrible design I blamed on Nokia but all of the glitches and crashes likely had more to do with T-Mobile's software than anything Nokia did. The generic unbranded version of the same phone didn't have any of these issues.
I wish we had a real market for cell phones in this country. There's a small market for unbranded GSM phones but it's not an option at all for CDMA users. I'd love to go back to GSM but Verizon is king in the Northeast -- get out into the rural sticks and odds are that Verizon is the only one with coverage. Sprint claims to match them but if you bother looking under the hood that's just because your Sprint phone is roaming on Verizon's network. AT&T tries to match them but they don't even come close yet. T-Mobile is useless outside of the major cities.
As to the free press issue, American reporters go to jail over politics, too [cnn.com]
No, American reporters go to jail for refusing to testify in front of a Grand Jury. Bit of a difference there. I would argue that we need a press shield law on the Federal level (my state has one) but there's still a difference between going to jail for contempt of court and being whisked away for investigating Governmental abuses or corruption.
the right to free speech is supposed to be the right to not speak as well
Actually, no, there is no right not to speak if you are subpoenaed to testify. You have a right against self-incrimination but if you are offered immunity (i.e: nothing you say can be used against you) then you don't have the right to refuse to testify. This is based on hundreds of years of legal precedent and tradition.
Umm, I'm pretty sure we aren't on the gold standard any longer so what relevance does the price of gold have to do with anything? Somehow I think if we had 300% inflation in the last nine years that it would be a story..... according to this $20 in 1998 was worth $25.75 in 2007.
How cute. You think that will make a difference.
Given the fact that both viable candidates seem to against the worst excesses of the Bush administration, yes I think it will make a difference.
Will it solve our bigger problems? Who knows. Democracy doesn't seem very good at solving big issues until they reach the crisis stage. But I'll take it over the other forms of Government that are available to us.
And the reason those boxes are of such crappy quality is because the cable companies have such a tight lock. The cable companies want to keep the box cost down to maximize their own profits. If Motorola and SA could sell directly to consumers, they would suddenly have an incentive to improve the quality.
If consumers would grow a pair of balls and realize that TV isn't really worth this much money Time Warner would eventually have to lower their rates or be content with less subscribers. I remember when basic cable (roughly 40-50 channels back in the day) cost $20/mo around here. That was as recent as nine years ago before the local cable company got bought out by Time Warner. Now it costs $60/mo for the same number of real channels and about a dozen home shopping channels that weren't available before.
I dumped my cable down to 'lifeline' (local stations only) four years ago and haven't looked back since. Hell, I'd dump lifeline and go with an aerial if I could get decent reception out here in the boonies. The combination of the internet, books, PBS and the major networks is all the entertainment I need.
People who live in glass countries shouldn't throw bricks. In the US you don't have to critize anybody to be arrested and hauled away by the cops [illinoistimes.com].
What's your point? Governmental officials abuse their power? Nobody would deny that. The difference between the US and China is that we have a free press that can investigate those abuses of power and bring them to light. In China they can't even get answers as to why their schools collapsed and killed thousands of their children during the recent earthquakes.
Remember that Democracy is the worst form of Government ever -- except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
oh, this has the making of a beautiful class action suit against RIAA and the record companies. Can you imagine the beautiful, beautiful damanges?
*looks into crystal ball*..... I envision millions of dollars in legal fees for the lawyers representing the class and free iTunes download credits for the class members
They'll just raise the monthly rate to compensate if they can't charge a rental fee for the box.
They'll just raise the monthly rate
Fixed that for you.
My job actually involves (at times) testing things on various brands/models of mobile phones
So does mine. I manage the equipment for around 200 mobile users, mostly CDMA (Verizon Wireless) but roughly a fifth of them are GSM (AT&T). I've seen issues with a few Verizon-branded Motorola phones -- primarily battery issues -- never seen any with the GSM models.
and nokia/samsung seem to be regarded as higher-quality
Depends on what you consider 'higher-quality'. I wouldn't dispute you on Nokia but Samsung? In my testing Nokia and Motorola are roughly equal in terms of RF performance. The Samsung's are horrible in this regard.
That might not matter to you if you are located in an urban environment with a well built out cellular network but out here in the sticks it's a huge consideration. I've seen places where a Motorola or Nokia work just fine but the comparable Samsung (or LG for that matter) model doesn't even have enough signal to do SMS let alone voice. This seems to be consistent even between the CDMA and GSM models -- Nokia and Motorola just do much better with weaker signals than anything else -- though a few of the Blackberry models come close to equaling them.
free the US?
You do realize we have an election in less than three months right?
After the last 8 years China and Russia aren't looking as bad as they used.
Are you sure about that?
It's a bit like the US really
Except in the US you can criticize the party in power without being arrested and hauled away by the cops.
The difference is that KO didn't abuse, insult and threaten the son of a 9/11 victim on his show. BillO did.
What's your point? That Bill O'Reilly is an asshole? I don't think that was ever in dispute.
And because you're apparently a bit dense
I'm dense? My original point was that Olbermann is doing a pretty good knock-off of O'Reilly, complete with "selective hearing and manufactured outrage". You apparently feel the need to draw a contrast between the two of them because Olbermann has never gone after the son of a 9/11 survivor. Point taken, but I still don't think that makes Olbermann any less of a closed minded partisan hack than O'Reilly is.
I love the fact that we have 24 hour "news" networks and the best thing that MSNBC and Fox can do with the time is give hour long slots (plus encore showings -- at least of the factor) to closed minded angry individuals that get to vent their frustrations to millions of equally closed minded viewers.
Eh, I see it on both sides. My favorite example of Democratic/Liberal hypocrisy are those that talk about how important our civil rights are while simultaneously supporting gun control. Umm, WTF?