He didn't say that. He's just pointing out, correctly, that "volunteering" means there is little to no incentive to do something, but you do it anyways. Convicted criminals don't "volunteer" to accept community service or probation, they choose it as an alternative to options they consider worse. Just like I don't "volunteer" to go to work every day.

These kids are the same. To call it voluntary is a joke.

Yes and no. Yes, standard browser settings restrict a cookie to be read by a single domain. But most advertising networks put the cookie on the root domain of the network. So if EBay and Slashdot have the same advertising network, Ebay can pass what you bought to the ad network and through a hidden iframe or various other techniques load a page at the ad network. Which then sets the cookie on your computer from the ad network. Next time you visit Slashdot, it loads a hidden iframe with a page at the ad network, which loads the cookie, and passes the data on to Slashdot.

I'm sure there's probably even easier techniques than the one I came up with as a "can I do this" exercise one rainy day.

Pretty much every Western culture requires women to cover their breasts while men can leave theirs bare. I'm not sure of the anthropological history of this particular example, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had Judeo-Christian roots. All cultures have screwy social norms. Most members of that culture can't recognize them.

Do you consider drinking human blood and eating human flesh normal?

Do you seriously believe raising taxes on the wealthy is going to make them say "Well, that didn't work out. I guess I'll try being poor now?" Of course not.

You know why a graduated tax system is used just as much as I do. Because the people who need services can't afford them. They aren't being paid enough by the people you seem to admire.

Pure socialism may not work, but pure capitalism is nothing more than a pyramid scheme.

Well, I give away mine if they're still working. And "replacing" my PC generally consists of a mobo/cpu/ram upgrade. I keep the rest.

I had to double check that your username isn't in fact "vitriol8," because that's sure how you come across, Angry Internet Man.

Who said he's throwing it away? Or even that he's replacing every part of it?

Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?

That's a bit different, though. You haven't agreed to the TOS, and as such Facebook hasn't agreed to provide you a license to copy the photo. I would think its either a copyright violation if they never agreed to the TOS, or a contract violation if they did.

There's a lot of people bashing the USPTO, but I can't think of a way to manage them any better given the resources they do have. Its like blaming teachers for schools falling apart. Patent review is not exactly a prestigious job, so it requires at least average pay for its workers. The filing fee is, what now, about $350? That's about a days worth of work for a patent examiner, maybe a bit less once you include benefits. So unless I'm wrong, assuming the patent office is fully staffed with no waste, a patent examiner has to read a usually massive document from start to finish, review if the material is actually able to be patented, review past patents to see if any conflict, and make a judgment whether to approve or not. Denials need to make sense and stand up in court. All in a field the patent examiner likely has little to no experience in.

The office isn't screwed up, the system we use to evaluate patents is.

Why be accurate when you can generalize incorrectly to get a point across, eh? I hope you aren't in a research field.

That used to be what people believed about web pages before PageRank. Ranking recipes should be quite a bit easier, since that path is already well worn.

Counting cards isn't actually illegal, at least anywhere I'm aware of. The casinos can ban you from coming back for it, or for any reason they like. I haven't heard of anyone being denied their winnings from counting cards, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does happen sometimes.

Or they just don't want to fight every single battle that comes along. Same reasons I don't picket a store that allows people with 11 items in the 10-or-fewer line.

Traffic that should be given high priority includes VOIP, video conferencing, infrastructure interfaces (hospitals, fire stations, security companies, etc.), and anything else that requires a nearly live transmission (OnLive, for example).

Anything the network can ID as an attack, such as DDOS's, should be decreased in priority or dropped.

Could we actually get an article with some details, rather than an editorial about what the policy MIGHT contain?

Commenters here and at Huffington Post are seriously suggesting we have a second American Revolution because you didn't get everything you wanted on a Net Neturality policy change?

Jesus, get some perspective! I hope most of you realize that this is the first time Net Neturality is being tried in the US. At all. Anyone spending more than 5 minutes looking into Net Neutrality realize its a complex issue that can't be solved with "Don't discriminate." There are unintended consequences for any action they take.

You do realize that policies can be changed at a later date, right? They aren't written in stone. These policies make more sense than the alternative of doing nothing, and they make more sense than being heavy handed and creating more problems then they solve. If problems crop up, they can be dealt with.