Except that's not even true.

His approval ratings are higher than Bush or Carter, he has had more victories for his agenda than most presidents in the first two years, has an astoundingly high approval rating OUTSIDE of the US, certainly higher than Bush and even Reagan during his first two years.

While the health care thing is probably a non-ideal solution, it is apparently too painful for republicans to realize that it was an almost exact copy of the bill originally drafted by Bob Dole and rejected by democrats for being "too conservative". Frankly, it sounds like partisan hackery or talking-point-itis to claim he's the most incompetent president on record.

uhm, it is not a pseudo-random in a true sense. The number generator is DESIGNED to output only a fraction of the input.

It's also true that some machines are set to higher numbers than others in order to attract attention.

They intentionally change the odds on you on the fly when they need to collect more money. Of course, this is regulated by a minimum percentage by most gaming boards, but there is no upper limit. It might be in a casino's favor to put a machine that pays out over 100% sometimes near a high traffic area to attract attention. Of course, they can change the odds at will, and probably often do.

But when the odds go against them, rather than being strictly under their control, it's a federal offense.

Your post was pretty insightful until the last sentence.

The US is still in the top 10 percentile of "right leaning" countries. The Obama administration would be conservative by the standards of almost any other western democracy, and a far right wing conservative by the standards of some.

Comparing the US to China or Cuba makes the rest of your post shrivel and stink.

The problem here is that SEVEN carriers carry almost all traffic in the US. Most smaller cities are only served by four or less.

If you live in Portland, you have three choices in peering. All of them are large corporations. If those three decide to block your traffic, you have no recourse other than to leave the state, or invest $100 billion in creating a new backbone, and then arrange peering agreements with all of these companies AND provide direct connectivity to the content you want published.

The problem isn't necessarily Fox News, because they have a substantial demographic, but rather, for smaller groups. Sure, it is nice to think about blocking the KKK or something similar, but what about other somewhat fringe groups like radical libertarians. The first amendment says the government cannot prevent their speech, but what if three major backbone companies decide to restrict it? They are effectively wiped away. There is no "soap box" if you are compelled to stay inside your "virtual" house by corporate owners.

The government stepped in (rightly) when the 19th centry mega-corporations began to dictate local laws with their wholly-owned corporate shantytowns, where employees were required to live.

But in a digital era, when more jobs are going online and most communication is online, a corporation restricting speech is just as dangerous as the government doing it, because the corporation is the de-facto government of the internet, by the nature of their control over its traffic...

Unless there is some rule that says otherwise.

I regard net neutrality akin to the first amendment or the anit-monopoly laws in "meat space". They are simply that important.

Go buy a twinkie and tell me if the government stops you.

In fact, go eat some dirt. Did someone stop you?

so... what exactly are you saying?

Socially, America is in the 90th percentile of "right" leaning countries.

There are plenty of issues where it falls "extreme right" in the midst of few peers, such as Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.

There are other issues where the US is "center" by the rest of the world's standards (not just talking Europe). There are virtually NO issues where the US falls left of center by a global standard.

Just sayin...

Well, this is understood, but how do you do that?

This guys was forging documents from his circuit agreements and things. You can't call Verizon to ask about someone else's account. You have to rely on the documentation the colo gives you.

I would bet that at least one of those 300 customers had asked for proof of current accounts and things like that and was provided such (fradulently) by the colo owner.

It's too bad they had to be pulled in. It seems to me that the FBI could have made an effort to clone the systems and at least return some of it.

The CPU/RAM/Motherboard of the systems in question is NOT of value to the investigation, other than for leverage and fear and financial detriment.

The companies who had their systems taken would probably have not balked at all if the servers had been returned in a week, without drives. I'd wager they may even pay the costs of having the drives forensically duplicated so they could get their stuff back online. That is much cheaper than the business loss that was a result.

Of course, everyone should do backups, etc. It just seems rather strong-arm to take that much equipment, including power strips, cabinets, rack mounting gear, third party documentation and the like.

It is old news, yes. But tell that to the 300 OTHER businesses who had their equipment siezed, 100 of which subsequently went out of business, likely at least partially as a result of this FBI action.

Seizing the power strips and cabinets and even the books full of system documentation from OTHER COMPANIES not involved in the fraud, other than to be physically located near the suspected fraud.

That's the news, if you ask me.

Yeah, good reason to use only "insured" services like PayPal or government/bank cheques for online transactions.

I will be royally pissed if this idiot turd makes the banks change their rules to wait for 2 weeks after the posting of a check.

Understand? There's two options.

1) Post checks rather quickly, assuming that most are good, and letting you take a bit of the risk

2) Hold on to all checks for 2-4 weeks before releasing the funds, royally screwing people like landlords, or any other business or individual who collects checks and then needs to use those checks to pay other expenses.

Your idea is terrible. You can't have you cake and eat it too.

The problem is that they had expectations from the old "Stargate" fans. the bad guys would be unspeakably evil and have minions of bald dark skinned servants and giant gold head dresses and names like "Aphophis". And the hero is ALWAYS captured by the bad guy half way through the episode and it ALWAYS looks hopeless, but they are ALWAYS rescued in the last 3 minutes through some absurdly improbably confluence of events with absolutely no casualties.

This is what they expected, and didn't get, therefore this show is "emo and too dramatic". It's "too dark".

I agree, its the only show I still watch on regular TV. Now I can cancel my cable and save $50/mo. Sweet.

I'm curious which characters you find "whiny"?

I'm not sure if you've ever experienced being forcibly removed from your own life for a period of months, but I know a few people who have and those real people make these characters on the show seem downright stoic.

To me it seems pretty realistic, though people who have never suffered much in their life might find it a bit corny to witness exactly how much that upsets people.

LOL. "Adult" has nothign to do with sex. Steamy sex scenes in a scifi drama screams "teenage boys, come watch!!!".

The concepts of intractable moral dillemmas is what makes good fiction. The decision between two evils is powerful.

SG-1, Star Trek, etc gets out of this by always finding "magical third answer that saves everyone with no casualties" but that's so trite as to be almost funny sometimes.

Having some character flaws is valuable to a good story.

Well, if you look at what is replacing SGU in the lineup, I might have to agree this time.

Yet another "ghost hunter" show and increased "WWE" coverage.

SRSLY?