What the story doesn't mention is that, compared to Skype 2.8, the Skype 5/6 user interfere sucks. Users have been complaining ever since it was rolled out, and Skype's answer has always been to use 2.8.

Fortunately, there's a way to make the old version not check for updates: use your local DNS or hosts file to address ui.skype.com to 127.0.0.1. The update check fails, and Skype 2.8 runs, fat, dumb, and happy. I'm pretty sure this works for older versions of 5 or 6, as well.

This is just another spammer and net criminal enabler. The EFF has long fought against efforts to end spam. Encouraging wide-open net access with no accountability is just another step down that road.

The EFF: enabling spammers since the 1990s.

Tor has only ever been an enabler for spammers and other criminals, making it possible for them to hide their tracks. Time to get rid of it.

Sorry, but the burden of proof lies with CAGW advocates, not skeptics. You're seeking to overturn the world's economic system and replace it with government control. That extreme a change requires strong proof, and it's just not there.

And I note the standard Slashdot moderation is in full effect: "I disagree with it, therefore it must be trolling."

Science isn't decided by consensus. It's decided by predictive power and explanatory power. Nothing else. CAGW has neither.

I'm an atheist.

damned autocorrect.

that should be "the same old tired leftist government takeover of economies".

I'll believe in CAGW when the scientists quit fudging the numbers and it still shows it...when they can explain historical data that contradicts the theory...and when they can explain why the warming has stopped for the last couple of decades.

As it is, he fudging is so blatant that "climate science" is nothing of the sort...it's a Trojan horse for the same lod tired leftist government takeoff of economies. That trick never works.

All right, so Adelson evades the ban by paying the Times' owners $3 billion for the paper, runs his piece - indistinguishable from a full-page ad - and then sells the paper back to the owners for $3 billion less the price of a full-page ad.

There's still plenty of ways - available only to the rich - to evade your ban. You're not helping your claimed problem, you're making it worse.

Your argument is like the old joke:

"Will you sleep with me if I gave you a million bucks!"

"Yeah!"

"How about $25?"

"What do you think I am??!"

"We've already established that. Now all we're doing is haggling over the price."

If it's wrong to spend millions to publish political speech but not billions, then you're just haggling over the price.

Amen. I was looking for a direct answer to my pointed question, and all I got were mealy-mouthed platitudes.

"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" is, and should remain, the law of the land. Especially when it comes to political speech."

"Replace the word "especially" with "except" in that, and I agree."

In other words, you'd turn the First Amendment on its head when it comes to political speech. Fortunately, the entire history of First Amendment jurisprudence as applied to political speech disagrees with you.

This is as it should be. There is NOTHING more important in our society than the freedom to speak about political issues. Anything else eviscerates the First Amendment.

"If Sheldon Adelson wants to buy the entire newspaper and then run whatever he wants, fine. What I don't want to see is him giving a politician a bucket of money, or spending money to run ad or smear campaigns."

If you see no difference between Sheldon Adelson buying an ad in the NYTimes and buying the NYTimes itself and ordering it to run his positions, then there is no hope for you. All banning the first and permitting the second is raising the cost of the ad.

But if the NYTimes publishes an editorial supporting a candidate, how is that different from someone buying the same space in the NYTimes to run an ad? You either have to ban that as the NYTimes making a campaign contribution, or else allow it and leave a giant gaping loophole that lets corporations give to campaigns as long as they can do it in something that can be labeled "news media". This inconsistency is at the heart of Citizens United, and the reason that the decision came down as it did.

Not all contributions are money, though many are just as valuable.

Further, you talk about campaign contributions of cash, but ignore contributions of cash to such things as issue advertising, not related or coordinated directly with a campaign. Are you proposing to outlaw that kind of speech as well? If so, where do you draw the line? And how do you do so without putting a faceless, unelected bureaucrat in charge of deciding what is political and what is not? If you don't, doesn't that pretty much destroy your carefully crafted regime?

And this exposes the fundamental problem: governments cannot regulate speech and do it fairly. Political speech, especially, cannot be regulated without the highest level of judicial scrutiny. Supreme Court jurisprudence is recognizing that fact at long last, and this is to be encouraged, not stifled.

"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" is, and should remain, the law of the land. Especially when it comes to political speech. Don't like what someone says? Reply to them. Don't like how loud they say it? Say yours louder. Get help if you need to.

Anything else strikes at the very heart of our country's freedoms, and is not to be borne.

So are you willing to tell the New York Times they can't weigh in on an election, either?

And why should a million people be able to send $100 to a candidate but Greenpeace not be able to send that same $100 million from its members?

And how do you define "politician"?

The same rules must apply to all. Anything else leads to governments deciding what is and is not acceptable speech. That is simply unacceptable, period, end of discussion.