I picked up a Samsung Series 5 last summer, and it came with 2 years of (minimal backup) 3G service, which when amortized into the total cost made Series 5 a decent budget buy.
3G plus excellent battery life means that it has been very useful as a commuter device -- particularly on trains and planes, or in the middle of nowhere. In these circumstances it's better than a smartphone, and I prefer it to any tablet device I've used so far -- but mainly simply because it has a real keyboard. And I'd already been using google docs as my main office platform already. Had I not been doing so already, I'd likely have found this thing far less useful.
If you're unable, reluctant, or unwilling to try adapt from a desktop model ChromeOS will probably only be maddening. It, OTOH, you find that 90%+ of the time spent on your desktop is in a browser already, it's not a terribly difficult adjustment to make.
In the past three weeks I've seen dozens of stories about James Cameron, including one talking about how he's made three movies about the Titanic This person makes movies, for entertainment. This guy gets lots of money for doing this. This guy used some of his money to pay people to help him dive deeply, recently.
The next story should be this: JAMES CAMERON! (!) (!!!) will have an upcoming project. It involves the sea!!! You will pay money to watch it, if you're not already thanks to your $100/mo cable bill.
JAMES! CAMERON!!!!
The sooner we leave this old world media behind, the better. James Cameron: you're employing an old-school PR style, and the sooner your account managers' styles no longer make money, the better off our world will be.
I'm very much interested in how feasible you think it is for you to apparently shoot your way to freedom. Please spend more of your time, effort, and energy on the running for office plan, because of the two I strongly believe it will be the far more effective one.
The way is still open to "overthrow" every elected official --and, after time, all appointed officials-- without violence. It is incredibly difficult, statistically unlikely, and the odds are very much stacked against you... but it's still a much better idea then trying to, ah, "free" a 300+m country with oh say, for starters, 1.5m active personnel and 1.5m reserve personnel and an annual budget of more than half a trillion (long scale) dollars.
SCOTUS has taken the unusual step of asking the administration to provide them with an interpretation. This does not necessarily mean SCOTUS will hear the case; they can still reject the petition.
To be more precise, this move indicates that the court has a strong interest in the case. It's still possible that they'll let the circuit decisions stand, if they basically agree with everything they can get their hands on.
That said, I really hope they hear it, and separate patents from seeds. Fuck you for this case, Monsanto.
I am a news hound. Because of my interest in actually finding and learning about news developments, I can barely stand any video news, be it broadcast news or an online clip. Video is just an unbearably slow way to get a news story. It's much faster to read copy to myself than it is to wait for someone else to read that copy to me out loud. The format is as annoying as a powerpoint presentation where the lecturer reads the text off of every slide.
There are exceptions, such as where video footage is itself an essential part of the story. But even in this particular story --audio feed of an emergency call-- transcripts are a much faster way to consume the facts of the story than listening to the actual audio itself. Reading through an accurate transcript of the 9-11 call in this story would have not only been faster, but it would have also eliminated the problem with the deceptive audio editing.
Why don't we have nutritional content labels on beer, wine, and other forms of Alcohol? Alcohol has calories; even if they're devoid of any other nutritional value, it still packs a lot of calories. It seems bizarre to me that, of the two bottles required to fix one's rum and coke, only the coke bottle will be labeled with caloric information.
Just to offer my commentary on US vs Canada law. The US is all about absolutes. You (supposedly) have a set of absolute, undeniable rights. In Canada, it's about balance and compromise. I have a right to express my opinions, but people have a right not to be harassed with hate speech.
Your cultural observations are astute, but I disagree with this particular conclusion. Like any constitutional form of government, constitutional law in the US is about compromise, and balancing various rights against one another. (Whether you agree with their conclusion, the SCOTUS opinion here does just that -- it balances the right of security against an individual's other rights, particularly freedom from unlawful search and seizure.)
What I believe is a more accurate assessment to explain the difference is that you Canadians, along with most of the rest of the citizens of the world in constitutional democracies, have one fundamental right that US citizens do not: a constitutional right to dignity. When it comes to balancing out something like say hate speech, the right to dignity makes a huge difference. When one does not have to consider whether the basic human dignity of another is infringed upon because citizens have no such right to begin with, you will often get a different outcome, one that looks absolutist if you're used to considering other factors that the US simply will not. So the way I see it, it's not that the US takes an absolutist approach to settling questions of constitutional law and refuses to balance constitutional rights, it's just that people in the US don't have the same rights to balance.
Personally I think the lack of a US right of dignity underpins a lot of our culture, from our permissive outlook on hate speech (neo-Nazi marches are permitted, for example) to the massive amounts of undignified, crappy entertainment and "news" that we generate and consume.
Has your son demonstrated any musical interest or talent? Singing the same three words for an hour straight while hitting the floor over and over again in specific patterns sounds like a fairly precise description of musical practice exercises for a lot of different musical instruments. Add one more word in to make it four, and you've got one long-established system for learning classical Indian tabla drumming. (If you're not already familiar, in english the drum syllables approximate to te-ne-ge-ne. Some students simply practice rhythmic patterns using these tones for weeks or even months before they ever touch a drum.)
Music students spend hours practicing scales and patterns. Often they sing while they play these exercises -- this allows one to internalize the tone to the point where you can play a tune as easily as you could sing it.
You're a parent, I'm not and so have no idea nor pretense. That said, if you haven't already been doing so, please consider throwing as many sorts of instruments as you can find under him the next time he does that particular "weird" thing.
It's curious to note that a dystopic system of constant video and audio surveillance would actually serve to check this particular behavior, as long as the cameras were not controlled by any government department or organization in the regional executive branch.
It's actually not difficult for facebook to know that you're using a pseudonym. Even if you don't accept, many family members will probably at least send you friend requests. If you accept any, many of them will also try to indicate your familial relationship --you can choose not to confirm it, but it's still telling. Many of your friends will address you by your real name. Even worse, people you're not connected to but have known in the past might label your pictures with your real name, regardless of whether or not you're f/b friends.
Each of these might be weak proof on its own, but add enough of them together --particularly tagged photos-- and you soon have a lot of circumstantial evidence indicating that Billy Bob Beerhouse is actually Osawald McWeany.
I signed up with a pseudonym, and by now every one of the examples I've mentioned above has happened, some frequently. F/b would have to be intentionally ignorant by this point *not* to know what my real name is. While pseudonyms are officially against f/b policy, I think they tend to let it slide as long as you're generating enough data/revenue.
What is the point of this amendment, when private citizens will remain free to do the same? And then, of course, to sell the information to whoever will pay for it, be they private companies, the government agencies of *any* state, or interested individuals?
Nope. Music is not a finite set, not even if you (inaccurately) define music only as a series of discrete pitches.
While musical forms specify certain frequencies, there are an infinite number of pitches between any two notes. (Think of that slide guitar sound that accompanies Wile E. Coyote whenever he's stretching out his giant ACME slingshot in preparation for launch; that's one version of what infinity sounds like.) The twelve notes on a piano are an arbitrary selection of pitches.
On top of that, there are other musical dimensions that make up a song, each of them similarly infinite: tempo, rhythm, tambre, harmonic structure, etc.
What you can do, though, is come up with all permutations of X number of piano keys to press, in all possible orders, for any given X (as well as all combinations of keys (i.e. chords).) That will give you a pretty good start, but even if X is infinity, you'll still never have all possible songs.
Ha. That reminds me --wish I could source this story, but I haven't been able to find the original source since I came across it a few years ago. The gist was this:
-phone dial tones are actually two-note chords, and every phone number can be represented musically -a couple of (Australian, IIRC) composers went through all the permutations of all the chords of phone-number length -they then tried to enforce their copyright, by claiming every time a number was dialed it was a performance of their copyrighted song.
It was a beautifully subversive idea. While I'm glad I don't have to pay royalties to dial a number, part of me wishes they had gotten rich for coming up with the idea.
...and, as long as each artist created the work entirely independently, both would still be copyrightable.
It's an interesting theoretical distinction between patents and copyright. Two artists could create exactly the same song, in terms of key, tempo, rhythm, melody, chord structure, tambre, etc. As long as each artists did so independently of the other, both songs would be properly copyrightable by the author.
In practice this doesn't happen; at least I haven't heard about a real example. When one finds substantial similarities in two works, they look to prove to a sufficient legal standard that a later song borrowed from an earlier one. If one can show exposure to the earlier work, that's usually enough to prevail. For example, George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was so close to Ronnie Mack's "He's So Fine", and it was pretty easy to show that Harrison certainly must have heard the Mack song before.
That's the first time I've ever heard a complaint about sharp edges biting into wrists. I was taught long ago that your wrists should not be resting on the keyboard when you type because it has the effect of bending your hand upwards, which compresses the wrist, and makes problems like tendonitis and carpal tunnel more probable.
It seems like increasing the resting comfort of an area upon which one's wrists shouldn't be resting in the first place would just ultimately serve to increase physical injuries.
http://www.votesmart.org/candidate/48696/bo-watson "A smaller government is more effective at addressing the needs of individuals. Bo believes that the government that is closest to home is the best, and that is why he chose to run for office in State Government."
How exactly does micromanaging school curricula --down to the very topic-- by the state legislature count as small government, again? It seems like those who trumpet "small government" are the quickest to use government as a big, nosy cudgel to impose their beliefs upon citizens, and to compel or prohibit citizens' actions.
despite the facts and evidence I've provided to support my statements.
I'd appreciate it if you could just point me to exactly that. You have provided none that I see. Perhaps my liberal bias keeps me from noticing whatever source you provided in this response.
Once again, you claim to have provided multiple sources, without providing any. Your request to supporting material seems odd, since my last cite was to your own source, and again that disproved the very point you were trying to make. If you'd like to read further, start by checking out the rest of the 99 books on the top 100 banned books list.
Just fyi, I"m not the AC. I have family in the South, and am aware how annoying the regional stereotypes can be. If you're really more upset by the term *only hillbilly inbred republicans* here and have taken it personally, know that your emotional quarrel is with someone else.
"Cases"? Interesting use of the plural. You have used one (1) example, it was a quote from a blog you partially read, and the very next four paragraphs (which I qutoted right back atcha, after I found the blog post) proves your assumption wrong. You use the word "ban" to describe a woman who is happy to keep a book she objects to in a school library. You go on to claim she tries to have it wiped from the school system. Where this comes from just baffles me. Where are you seeing this?
Anyway IOW, that "liberal" example of yours --one you provided only in response, one which you didn't bother to source- also precisely demonstrates the same distinction between "ban" and "complain" that I've been trying to describe to you. Apparently you still don't see any difference.
But then you say you gave me "cases" that supported you. I saw just the one. In case I missed it -- what exactly was the other case, again?
Since you clearly don't understand wtf with Obama, let me help you out.
Obama is responsible for the daily price of gas. Obama is responsible for the effect that the Bush tax cuts have had on our economy. Obama is responsible for the effects of Republican-led deregulation of the financial industry. Obama is responsible for the Lewinsky scandal. Obama is responsible for AT&T's terribly-implemented "unlimited data" plan. Your favorite restaurant just hiked their lunch buffet up to $11.95, and Obama made them do it. Obama is responsible for Newt Gingrich's congressional ethics violations (unless you're talking to Newt, in which case they never happened and/or he was completely exonerated.) Have you, or has anyone you've ever known had cancer? Thanks, Obama. Obama is responsible for the Reagan tax increases. Obama is responsible for Iran-Contra. Obama is responsible for funding jihadists during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and thus responsible for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Obama is responsible for Barry Goldwater. The Vietnam war is just yet another example of Obama's complete incompetence.
The problem is that you still seem to equate "getting hysterical over a book" with book bans and censorship. It is not the same thing at all, and the responses differ in an important way that you simply gloss over. Of course people from over the spectrum get upset and will complain about books they find controversial or offensive.
In the same article you quote, the very person who made that statement goes on to makes this point:
Sense-Wilson wants to make her position clear. She is not trying to ban the book. "We are not about book burning and we're not radicals," she says. "We're not trying to in any way censor that book, we're just saying it does not belong in high school. It is not appropriate for the curriculum." If the book is an important or interesting novel for teenagers, she suggests putting it in the library.
*That* is very typical behavior for an outraged liberal parent. If you don't see the difference, I'm not really sure how to else to explain it in a way that makes sense to you.
For some reason you seem to believe that only liberals will get upset about Huck Finn. This is not at all true; calls for its banning have been based on perceptions of negative social commentary about the South, even that it improperly promoted interracial friendships.
I simply can't follow your point about the google maps at all. Do you believe that there are simply no deeply conservative people at all in "liberal enclaves"?
I get annoyed at this kind of learned helplessness when it comes to federal regulation. Regulatory law can make for dry reading, but just because it's boring doesn't mean that it is impossible to follow. It also happens to be the area of law that is most easily affected by public interest and comment --moreso than legislation, decisions, constitutions, even elections themselves.
Proposed federal regulations are published in the Federal Register. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=FR Except for emergency regulations, proposed regulations have a public comment period. During this period, anyone is able to comment --even online, hint hint-- on any proposed reg before it is put into effect. These comments become part of the official regulatory history. Public comments can, and have been used to prevent regulations from going into effect. They can also be used to guide agency policy decisions. Remember Janet Jackson's nipple exposure, and the subsequent huge fine? That was thanks to, IIRC, around 1200 people who trolled the FCC in the federal register.
A businessperson in a regulated industry can make a daily scan of the TOC of the day's Federal Register part of their regular current-awareness review; or at least delegate this to someone else. Check for any regs in your industry, and complain loudly about those deserving of it.
This is how it has been for decades. By and far it's simply a matter of no one wanting to bother doing the boring work --reading regulations-- that is required to guide regulatory law to one's favor.
Slashdot Mirror
I picked up a Samsung Series 5 last summer, and it came with 2 years of (minimal backup) 3G service, which when amortized into the total cost made Series 5 a decent budget buy.
3G plus excellent battery life means that it has been very useful as a commuter device -- particularly on trains and planes, or in the middle of nowhere. In these circumstances it's better than a smartphone, and I prefer it to any tablet device I've used so far -- but mainly simply because it has a real keyboard. And I'd already been using google docs as my main office platform already. Had I not been doing so already, I'd likely have found this thing far less useful.
If you're unable, reluctant, or unwilling to try adapt from a desktop model ChromeOS will probably only be maddening. It, OTOH, you find that 90%+ of the time spent on your desktop is in a browser already, it's not a terribly difficult adjustment to make.
In the past three weeks I've seen dozens of stories about James Cameron, including one talking about how he's made three movies about the Titanic This person makes movies, for entertainment. This guy gets lots of money for doing this. This guy used some of his money to pay people to help him dive deeply, recently.
The next story should be this: JAMES CAMERON! (!) (!!!) will have an upcoming project. It involves the sea!!! You will pay money to watch it, if you're not already thanks to your $100/mo cable bill.
JAMES! CAMERON!!!!
The sooner we leave this old world media behind, the better. James Cameron: you're employing an old-school PR style, and the sooner your account managers' styles no longer make money, the better off our world will be.
I'm very much interested in how feasible you think it is for you to apparently shoot your way to freedom. Please spend more of your time, effort, and energy on the running for office plan, because of the two I strongly believe it will be the far more effective one.
The way is still open to "overthrow" every elected official --and, after time, all appointed officials-- without violence. It is incredibly difficult, statistically unlikely, and the odds are very much stacked against you... but it's still a much better idea then trying to, ah, "free" a 300+m country with oh say, for starters, 1.5m active personnel and 1.5m reserve personnel and an annual budget of more than half a trillion (long scale) dollars.
Better hurry up, then! Looks like you've only a few more weeks. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/us-usa-deathpenalty-connecticut-idUSBRE83406N20120405
SCOTUS has taken the unusual step of asking the administration to provide them with an interpretation. This does not necessarily mean SCOTUS will hear the case; they can still reject the petition.
To be more precise, this move indicates that the court has a strong interest in the case. It's still possible that they'll let the circuit decisions stand, if they basically agree with everything they can get their hands on.
That said, I really hope they hear it, and separate patents from seeds. Fuck you for this case, Monsanto.
I am a news hound. Because of my interest in actually finding and learning about news developments, I can barely stand any video news, be it broadcast news or an online clip. Video is just an unbearably slow way to get a news story. It's much faster to read copy to myself than it is to wait for someone else to read that copy to me out loud. The format is as annoying as a powerpoint presentation where the lecturer reads the text off of every slide.
There are exceptions, such as where video footage is itself an essential part of the story. But even in this particular story --audio feed of an emergency call-- transcripts are a much faster way to consume the facts of the story than listening to the actual audio itself. Reading through an accurate transcript of the 9-11 call in this story would have not only been faster, but it would have also eliminated the problem with the deceptive audio editing.
Why don't we have nutritional content labels on beer, wine, and other forms of Alcohol? Alcohol has calories; even if they're devoid of any other nutritional value, it still packs a lot of calories. It seems bizarre to me that, of the two bottles required to fix one's rum and coke, only the coke bottle will be labeled with caloric information.
Just to offer my commentary on US vs Canada law. The US is all about absolutes. You (supposedly) have a set of absolute, undeniable rights. In Canada, it's about balance and compromise. I have a right to express my opinions, but people have a right not to be harassed with hate speech.
Your cultural observations are astute, but I disagree with this particular conclusion. Like any constitutional form of government, constitutional law in the US is about compromise, and balancing various rights against one another. (Whether you agree with their conclusion, the SCOTUS opinion here does just that -- it balances the right of security against an individual's other rights, particularly freedom from unlawful search and seizure.)
What I believe is a more accurate assessment to explain the difference is that you Canadians, along with most of the rest of the citizens of the world in constitutional democracies, have one fundamental right that US citizens do not: a constitutional right to dignity. When it comes to balancing out something like say hate speech, the right to dignity makes a huge difference. When one does not have to consider whether the basic human dignity of another is infringed upon because citizens have no such right to begin with, you will often get a different outcome, one that looks absolutist if you're used to considering other factors that the US simply will not. So the way I see it, it's not that the US takes an absolutist approach to settling questions of constitutional law and refuses to balance constitutional rights, it's just that people in the US don't have the same rights to balance.
Personally I think the lack of a US right of dignity underpins a lot of our culture, from our permissive outlook on hate speech (neo-Nazi marches are permitted, for example) to the massive amounts of undignified, crappy entertainment and "news" that we generate and consume.
Has your son demonstrated any musical interest or talent? Singing the same three words for an hour straight while hitting the floor over and over again in specific patterns sounds like a fairly precise description of musical practice exercises for a lot of different musical instruments. Add one more word in to make it four, and you've got one long-established system for learning classical Indian tabla drumming. (If you're not already familiar, in english the drum syllables approximate to te-ne-ge-ne. Some students simply practice rhythmic patterns using these tones for weeks or even months before they ever touch a drum.)
Music students spend hours practicing scales and patterns. Often they sing while they play these exercises -- this allows one to internalize the tone to the point where you can play a tune as easily as you could sing it.
You're a parent, I'm not and so have no idea nor pretense. That said, if you haven't already been doing so, please consider throwing as many sorts of instruments as you can find under him the next time he does that particular "weird" thing.
It's curious to note that a dystopic system of constant video and audio surveillance would actually serve to check this particular behavior, as long as the cameras were not controlled by any government department or organization in the regional executive branch.
It's actually not difficult for facebook to know that you're using a pseudonym. Even if you don't accept, many family members will probably at least send you friend requests. If you accept any, many of them will also try to indicate your familial relationship --you can choose not to confirm it, but it's still telling. Many of your friends will address you by your real name. Even worse, people you're not connected to but have known in the past might label your pictures with your real name, regardless of whether or not you're f/b friends.
Each of these might be weak proof on its own, but add enough of them together --particularly tagged photos-- and you soon have a lot of circumstantial evidence indicating that Billy Bob Beerhouse is actually Osawald McWeany.
I signed up with a pseudonym, and by now every one of the examples I've mentioned above has happened, some frequently. F/b would have to be intentionally ignorant by this point *not* to know what my real name is. While pseudonyms are officially against f/b policy, I think they tend to let it slide as long as you're generating enough data/revenue.
What is the point of this amendment, when private citizens will remain free to do the same? And then, of course, to sell the information to whoever will pay for it, be they private companies, the government agencies of *any* state, or interested individuals?
Nope. Music is not a finite set, not even if you (inaccurately) define music only as a series of discrete pitches.
While musical forms specify certain frequencies, there are an infinite number of pitches between any two notes. (Think of that slide guitar sound that accompanies Wile E. Coyote whenever he's stretching out his giant ACME slingshot in preparation for launch; that's one version of what infinity sounds like.) The twelve notes on a piano are an arbitrary selection of pitches.
On top of that, there are other musical dimensions that make up a song, each of them similarly infinite: tempo, rhythm, tambre, harmonic structure, etc.
What you can do, though, is come up with all permutations of X number of piano keys to press, in all possible orders, for any given X (as well as all combinations of keys (i.e. chords).) That will give you a pretty good start, but even if X is infinity, you'll still never have all possible songs.
Ha. That reminds me --wish I could source this story, but I haven't been able to find the original source since I came across it a few years ago. The gist was this:
-phone dial tones are actually two-note chords, and every phone number can be represented musically
-a couple of (Australian, IIRC) composers went through all the permutations of all the chords of phone-number length
-they then tried to enforce their copyright, by claiming every time a number was dialed it was a performance of their copyrighted song.
It was a beautifully subversive idea. While I'm glad I don't have to pay royalties to dial a number, part of me wishes they had gotten rich for coming up with the idea.
...and, as long as each artist created the work entirely independently, both would still be copyrightable.
It's an interesting theoretical distinction between patents and copyright. Two artists could create exactly the same song, in terms of key, tempo, rhythm, melody, chord structure, tambre, etc. As long as each artists did so independently of the other, both songs would be properly copyrightable by the author.
In practice this doesn't happen; at least I haven't heard about a real example. When one finds substantial similarities in two works, they look to prove to a sufficient legal standard that a later song borrowed from an earlier one. If one can show exposure to the earlier work, that's usually enough to prevail. For example, George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was so close to Ronnie Mack's "He's So Fine", and it was pretty easy to show that Harrison certainly must have heard the Mack song before.
Thank you. IOW:
Actual scenario: Pi-based music is copyrightable.
Slashdot title: "Judge rules Pi-based music is not copyrightable."
Trying to copyright the idea of writing music based on Pi is like trying to copyright the idea of writing a blues song about a woman.
That's the first time I've ever heard a complaint about sharp edges biting into wrists. I was taught long ago that your wrists should not be resting on the keyboard when you type because it has the effect of bending your hand upwards, which compresses the wrist, and makes problems like tendonitis and carpal tunnel more probable.
It seems like increasing the resting comfort of an area upon which one's wrists shouldn't be resting in the first place would just ultimately serve to increase physical injuries.
http://www.votesmart.org/candidate/48696/bo-watson
"A smaller government is more effective at addressing the needs of individuals. Bo believes that the government that is closest to home is the best, and that is why he chose to run for office in State Government."
http://ltgov.tn.gov/2011/04/lt-gov-ramsey-to-appoint-sen-watson-as-next-speaker-pro-tempore/Lt. Gov Ramsey said Watson's "tireless work on issues of government reform has been an inspiration to all of us striving to make state government as small, efficient and transparent as possible."
How exactly does micromanaging school curricula --down to the very topic-- by the state legislature count as small government, again? It seems like those who trumpet "small government" are the quickest to use government as a big, nosy cudgel to impose their beliefs upon citizens, and to compel or prohibit citizens' actions.
despite the facts and evidence I've provided to support my statements.
I'd appreciate it if you could just point me to exactly that. You have provided none that I see. Perhaps my liberal bias keeps me from noticing whatever source you provided in this response.
Once again, you claim to have provided multiple sources, without providing any. Your request to supporting material seems odd, since my last cite was to your own source, and again that disproved the very point you were trying to make. If you'd like to read further, start by checking out the rest of the 99 books on the top 100 banned books list.
You've never worked in the public service sector, have you.
Just fyi, I"m not the AC. I have family in the South, and am aware how annoying the regional stereotypes can be. If you're really more upset by the term *only hillbilly inbred republicans* here and have taken it personally, know that your emotional quarrel is with someone else.
"Cases"? Interesting use of the plural. You have used one (1) example, it was a quote from a blog you partially read, and the very next four paragraphs (which I qutoted right back atcha, after I found the blog post) proves your assumption wrong. You use the word "ban" to describe a woman who is happy to keep a book she objects to in a school library. You go on to claim she tries to have it wiped from the school system. Where this comes from just baffles me. Where are you seeing this?
Anyway IOW, that "liberal" example of yours --one you provided only in response, one which you didn't bother to source- also precisely demonstrates the same distinction between "ban" and "complain" that I've been trying to describe to you. Apparently you still don't see any difference.
But then you say you gave me "cases" that supported you. I saw just the one. In case I missed it -- what exactly was the other case, again?
Since you clearly don't understand wtf with Obama, let me help you out.
Obama is responsible for the daily price of gas.
Obama is responsible for the effect that the Bush tax cuts have had on our economy.
Obama is responsible for the effects of Republican-led deregulation of the financial industry.
Obama is responsible for the Lewinsky scandal.
Obama is responsible for AT&T's terribly-implemented "unlimited data" plan.
Your favorite restaurant just hiked their lunch buffet up to $11.95, and Obama made them do it.
Obama is responsible for Newt Gingrich's congressional ethics violations (unless you're talking to Newt, in which case they never happened and/or he was completely exonerated.)
Have you, or has anyone you've ever known had cancer? Thanks, Obama.
Obama is responsible for the Reagan tax increases.
Obama is responsible for Iran-Contra.
Obama is responsible for funding jihadists during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and thus responsible for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Obama is responsible for Barry Goldwater.
The Vietnam war is just yet another example of Obama's complete incompetence.
In the same article you quote, the very person who made that statement goes on to makes this point:
Sense-Wilson wants to make her position clear. She is not trying to ban the book. "We are not about book burning and we're not radicals," she says. "We're not trying to in any way censor that book, we're just saying it does not belong in high school. It is not appropriate for the curriculum." If the book is an important or interesting novel for teenagers, she suggests putting it in the library.
*That* is very typical behavior for an outraged liberal parent. If you don't see the difference, I'm not really sure how to else to explain it in a way that makes sense to you.
For some reason you seem to believe that only liberals will get upset about Huck Finn. This is not at all true; calls for its banning have been based on perceptions of negative social commentary about the South, even that it improperly promoted interracial friendships.
I simply can't follow your point about the google maps at all. Do you believe that there are simply no deeply conservative people at all in "liberal enclaves"?
I get annoyed at this kind of learned helplessness when it comes to federal regulation. Regulatory law can make for dry reading, but just because it's boring doesn't mean that it is impossible to follow. It also happens to be the area of law that is most easily affected by public interest and comment --moreso than legislation, decisions, constitutions, even elections themselves.
Proposed federal regulations are published in the Federal Register. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=FR Except for emergency regulations, proposed regulations have a public comment period. During this period, anyone is able to comment --even online, hint hint-- on any proposed reg before it is put into effect. These comments become part of the official regulatory history. Public comments can, and have been used to prevent regulations from going into effect. They can also be used to guide agency policy decisions. Remember Janet Jackson's nipple exposure, and the subsequent huge fine? That was thanks to, IIRC, around 1200 people who trolled the FCC in the federal register.
A businessperson in a regulated industry can make a daily scan of the TOC of the day's Federal Register part of their regular current-awareness review; or at least delegate this to someone else. Check for any regs in your industry, and complain loudly about those deserving of it.
This is how it has been for decades. By and far it's simply a matter of no one wanting to bother doing the boring work --reading regulations-- that is required to guide regulatory law to one's favor.