Seriously. I want to see the result for the past year. Or better yet, the past two years. Not everyone in the private sector gets a pay raise every year, even in good times.

*Yawn* go read up on federalism. Sadly, so many Americans know so little about how this country actually works...

Believe it or not many rural areas get by with volunteer fire departments that are largely funded through donations...

The early web game Stellar Crisis is still going today. The web's first multiplayer strategy game!

http://homeserve.org/sc/sc.php

I'll also note that this per subscriber fee is significantly higher for small ISPs. By about a thousand percent... as a result, small ISPs do not carry the service. If you *want* ESPN3, you have to switch to a big carrier, because you cannot buy an individual subscription to the site.

There's a separate fee for ESPN3 (previously known as ESPN360). Almost every provider provides ESPN on basic access, so that's not the issue. The issue is that ESPN is charging a PER SUBSCRIBER FEE for a WEBSITE to ISPs. This means that if your provider has ESPN3, you are paying for it, whether you want it or not. ESPN wants to turn the Internet into cable TV. That is the issue.

I prefer steam to non-steam pc games. I can install any steam game on my computer at the click of a button without digging around for a disc. Integrated friends list, achievements, steam cloud... I'll take tangible benefits today over the possibility that Steam *might* someday shut down. Steam has been around for, what, six years? It's not going anywhere...

that they know is dangerous

BZZZT Wrong. Please keep your fiction off /.

incorrect patent marking stifles innovation.

How, precisely? You have to look the patent up anyway to see what exactly it covers. When you do, you will surely notice if the patent is expired. Sure, you wasted a couple minutes, but was innovation stifled? I don't think so.

Yeah, seriously. You forgot things like Netflix, which requires a live subscription AND a Netflix subscription.

At least when they had 1v100 I felt like I was getting a little value add, but now it just seems like a ripoff. I wonder how many people will actually pay $60 though. When the price was $50, the subscription cards periodically went on sale for $35 - $40. I wonder if the sale price will go up too. I think I'm good until around March, which means I'll have to renew to play Gears 3, *groan*

When live first came out it was a great thing. No one else had that level of seemless match making, game joining, friends list, etc. But now the PC has things like Steam and XFire *for free* so Live just seems like a rip off.

teabaggers

Name calling is not a form of argument. It only makes you look like an idiot.

if you consider Palin to be the start

Not even close. I watch CNBC. I clearly remember seeing the birth of the tea party movement, live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k

Palin didn't sign on until well after the fact, when all Republican politicians were signing onto the movement because it became popular.

Nope. The fear is that the government entity would be funded by tax dollars no matter how inefficient it was. The real fear is tax payer funded competition. A tax payer funded competitor could kill a private enterprise by charging little for its service and getting its real funding through tax dollars.

There are appropriate places for both government and private enterprise. Letting government and private enterprise "compete" will never tell us where to draw the line.

Personally I think the line should be drawn by things such as entry barriers and whether the industry is a natural monopoly. Of course, there is the third "hybrid" choice. Private enterprise closely regulated by government (eg utilities in many states), though this approach has dangers as well (regulatory capture).

Except everything you just said is a lie. Network neutrality has always allowed reasonable network management, including spam blocking, firewalls, etc. Why are you deliberately misrepresenting the issues involved in network neutrality? And who on /. modded you up for it?

He also explained why it can't. The SATA cables only transmit 1's and 0's. If any of those 1's and 0's were switching or degrading on the SATA cable, you would have serious computer problems and audio quality would be the least of your concerns.

I'm really curious where you got your definition of "right of way." Has a government ever been able to take back a right of way? I think that would be a problem under the Fifth Amendment. The government can regulate, of course, provided that there is no regulatory taking, but that power doesn't sprout from the fact that the right of way was granted by the government in the first place. The government's regulatory authority is independent.