"I'm still wondering when the municipal gigabit broadband connections are coming."

They've probably been banned, thanks to Comcast.

That's something that I would love to see just go away. There's no reason whatsoever that municipal broadband projects should be banned anywhere. NO reason at all, other than "Comcast and their campaign contributions."

My power company should be able to provide internet access if they want to, for example.

the answer is "of course" since you are the product.

The OP asked for "OPEN Communications."

Nothing about Google Apps is "open" at all.

Excuse me, but who was whining? I certainly wasn't.

If I want to learn about interesting technology, I'll go to reddit or hacker news. It certainly isn't here anymore, sorry. The glory days of Slashdot are long gone and this place is looking like Digg more and more every day.

But thanks for your completely irrelevant comment anyway.

"I'm still planning on voting for him."

So he's basically the Ralph Nader of the 2012 election. Great.

A pretty weak "article" that has 3 links to some blog and one to laptop mag, and the still vaporware product is from a company the blogger pretty much wrote off 2 years ago.

*This* is what makes it to the front page now? Wow..

So much for the "transparency in government" that the Obama Administration had promised us. ACTA is nothing more than a Hollywood Democrat backed hand-out to 'copyright holders' and corporate media.

One of the bigger reasons I didn't vote for Obama was because of Joe Biden and his absolutely terrible track record when it comes to tech privacy and kissing ass to Hollywood. Same with Clinton and Feinstein. They have been bending over backwards to their Hollywood MPAA/RIAA financial donors for many years now. Wikileaks exposed this as well, but it's something most of us have seen for years.
It's back to six of one, half dozen of the other when we vote these days.

The problem is that people read on the bloggyblogs that it MIGHT happen in SOME cases and apply it to the entire store.

"In states that don't have such backwater environmental laws, power is often flat rate and around 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar doesn't make sense in these states."

I'm in Texas, and I'm paying 9 cents per killowatt hour. Solar makes a LOT of sense here. But most HOAs are still blocking people from putting up solar panels.

Stupid homeowner associations. :/

Are you sure about that?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/18/uh-oh-qwikster-already-has-a-lively-twitter-account-but-its-not-owned-by-netflix/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

Except that the bill collector industry is also riddled with abusers. They can slam an entry onto all three credit reports even if it's totally bogus, and it's up to YOU, the innocent party, to clean up the mess. Sure, the entry is removed, but it can take 2-3 months and even longer for your stupid FICO score to recover. I have gone through this on more than one occasion, unfortunately. There is little recourse against the shady debt collectors either, as they can simply resell the "account" to some other bottom feeding bastards who will do the same thing. There is nothing that we the consumers can do to prevent it, either. /still waiting for the next time the phantom Cingular account from a state he never lived in shows up on his credit report once again. :/

Newzbin2 is an example. The MPA is trying to get the Govt to expand the use of the super secret child porn filter to include "copyright violations" too.

you know that turned out to be a complete hoax, right?

Rick Perry is often the target of political shenanigans. His order to have Gardasil added to the vaccination list stirred up a huge hornets nest of political crap too. I thought that was a good decision. The opportunity to significantly reduce the number of cervical cancer cases? Good! Even Rick Perry dismissed the religious folks saying that this would just lead to girl having more sex. The "left" jumped all over this because of some flimsy ties he had to a pharmaceutical company. It was the stupid anti-vaccine dipshits that started crowing real loud about it too.

I'd rather that a few people listen to Rick Perry, who will admit that he's wrong about something, than that fucking moron Jenny McCarthy who still believes the repeatedly debunked vaccine-autism link and regularly spreads false information. The anti-vaccine twerps are more of a threat to healthcare than Rick Perry is. :/

"In Houston one recent day, a 17-year-old was in court after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other. “She was mad at me because I broke up with her,” he said."

if you did this on the street, you could be charged with domestic violence and/or assault & battery. The guy is also the one that would likely be arrested in most cases. Be happy it was just a ticket in school.

And really, the middle of your school isn't the place to be involved in a physical altercation.

"“I’m all for consequences, but I think it could have been handled another way,” she said. She had no chance to mention her son’s attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder, she said."

Oh yes, because that's always an excuse. "Oh, he has ADHD. He's bipolar." Letting that fly = special treatment. Treatment that minority kids and parents will bring up when their kids are the ones in court. Then the cries of racism start...

So everyone gets the same brush.