Yes, but that would not net Apple or Bono or the record company, or whoever else is making money from this reverse payola scheme, any extra cash.

Builds carpool lanes...
Declares carpooling illegal.

Actually I have never been to CA, so I have no idea if they have carpool lanes. I assume that at least one of those massive 10+ lane wide highways they have in LA contains at least one carpool lane.

I am sure people already do this, and in any event the employees of the store will steer the person to the thing that is the most profitable for them, even if the person really does want an iPad.

Best Buy's Samsung store within a store are really annoying at this. (Though oddly enough I liked the Samsung Tab much better than the Nexus 7 I originally intended to buy. But I only got the tab because I told the Samsung guys to leave me alone while I inspected both products and made my own decision.)

In this case, both would work.

Actually bad puns are never obligatory. I consider it a privilege.

Think about it. The volume of 12 hard drives would easily fit instead of a standard party balloon. Now consider that most of the drive is filled up with platters and electronics, and there might be 10 cents worth of helium inside of each hard drive. Lets say they use super pure helium... so 50 cents.

Considering a single balloon has more helium than $10,000 of these hard drives, I don't think this is going to be a serious issue anytime soon.

For party balloons, well, too bad.

I fail to see how this will prevent the device from recording.

I read this as "Silicon Valley Fights In Order To Pay Bigger Settlement In Tech Talent Hiring Case"

Now that totally reversed what the title was saying!

Fine, make it "a court less corrupt than the Argentinean one".

How about Crown Royal spiked with Royal Crown? In fact, forget about the cola.

"isn't always right"

More like "is almost always wrong with few exceptions."

Seriously, thats it? Someone insulted someone and now you want to ban anonymous posting, one of the hallmarks of slashdot for 15 years?

Fuck it, If people that have been around forever cant see it, then this place is hopeless.

A jihadist downloads the musilm verison of anarchists cookbook and now its the end of the world?

What he means is, that department store telescopes are shit; and department store telescopes given as gifts to people who do not care about astronomy will be shit treated in a shitty way. No better way to discourage someone from astronomy by giving them an entirely non-functional telescope.

Besides, there was no advice in your post about what kind of scope to get. Picking up any random thing is exactly what the poster was trying to avoid.

My suggestion, contact a local astronomy club to find out if they have any spare telescopes for sale. They usually have small ones that a member has fixed up and collimated. As an added benefit, they will be happy to teach you how to use it properly.