That's right. And the countdown doesn't change that. Once the DON'T WALK signal lights up, you cannot legally enter.

Not in Oregon. Drivers in Oregon are not required to stop for people standing on sidewalks, only for pedestrians who have actually entered the crosswalk. And even though the definition of "enter" is very liberal, it still requires an act on the part of the pedestrian to show he's intending to cross, not just standing on the sidewalk watching traffic go by.

An interesting twist in Oregon law is that a crosswalk does not have to be marked to exist. By default, crosswalks exist at all intersections.

The law cited does not differentiate between how the person gets into the crosswalk, so it applies even when the pedestrian has broken the law to enter the crosswalk in the first place.

That is not what "effective" means in this context. It means the ability to actually be heard. Not forcing people to hear you, that's something else. It means that your message is available to people.

You can have "free speech" as in beer by telling someone they can stand on a soapbox on the corner. This isn't effective free speech because the range is deliberately limited. Being able to pay for the "free speech" and buy a radio spot is effective because it puts the message where people can actually hear it. That's why effective free speech requires money.

Oh, absolutely the rights of the CU people were involved, free speech especially. If they could not be allowed to pay for airtime for a political message, then their right to free speech was being infringed. "You can speak all you want, as long as you can't be heard by anyone" is just as much a violation of the first amendment as "you cannot speak at all".

Well, campaign finance law has serious first amendment issues attached to it, so it should be no surprise that a lawsuit based on that law might include issues of free speech. And no, it wasn't to be MORE effective, and it certainly wasn't to be louder, it was to have the same kind of effectiveness. They were paying to air a movie. On TV. Where someone might actually see it.

So, apparently, it is ok if someone can pay for such airtime out of his own pocket, but not if twenty people pool their pockets to pay for it. Why shouldn't those twenty people have the same first amendment rights as the rich guy who can afford to pay for his speech on his own?

No, really, it isn't. You apparently don't understand the difference between an exclusive and a non-exclusive franchise.

It isn't falsely, because I know the franchise agreements in the places I've lived, and I know they aren't that unusual. Can you provide a link to something that shows the exclusivity of most of the country's franchise agreements?

Yeah, if you can't provide data to support your argument, just toss in an insult to make yourself feel better.

My town doesn't have an exclusive franchise. None of the places I've lived has had one. There is no "protection racket" to protect. You want to overbuild the existing plant and make huge profits battling Comcast, then put your money where your mouth is because you can do it here. Or in Portland (where Google is going to try), or in Syracuse, NY, or Lansing, MI. Go for it.

It is, and I've already told you why. The definition of slavery as presented earlier included "no choice" as a significant requirement. Since you can CHOOSE not to sign an NC, it cannot be slavery. Why is that so hard to understand? Why do you keep making things up?

And if signing an NC is a requirement for a job at employer X, then you won't get the job BY YOUR OWN CHOICE, and thus the job is not slavery. Slavery means "no choice". You choose. This really is that difficult?

No, that is not the same thing as slavery AT ALL. Ad arbitrium employment is common. It means the employer can fire you at will. They cannot force you to work for them. You can still choose not to work for them. That's why it isn't slavery. Slaves don't get that choice.

Yep. And this is related to a non-compete agreement exactly how? A non-compete means your employer can sell you to someone else? I don't think so. A non-compete means you cannot chose to leave their employ? I don't think so. In fact, I know otherwise. All a non-compete says is that you promise not to work in the same kind of business for a certain amount of time after you leave your current employer. It doesn't say the employer can sell you to someone else, it doesn't say they can keep you from leaving.

The FACT is that you can choose to sign a non-compete or choose not to. It's up to you. That's why it isn't slavery.

Actually, slavery. You quoted the statement and you can't even get it right.

Yes, if you can choose not to work for someone then you are not a slave BY DEFINITION. Slaves have no choice.

Stop trying to put words in my mouth and I won't have to tell you I didn't say what you are pretending I said.

In other words, a group of individuals have fewer first amendment rights to free speech than any individual, despite no such limit being found in the constitution anywhere. You'd limit some folks to soapbox first amendment rights, while others have unfettered ability to purchase airtime and express their views. Do you really not understand how this hands control of the public fora over to the richest people and strips it from any possible use by the poorer folks? If you can afford a national advertising campaign using your own bank account, that's fine, but those who would group together to pool their money cannot be allowed to speak in the same way? Do you not realize how dangerous that becomes as a precedent for free speech as a whole?

In the world the rest of us live in, money is necessary to pay for effective free speech. You can limit people to standing on a street corner, but that also limits their ability to be heard. How does that differ in any significant way from the "free speech zones" that were objected to on first amendment grounds during previous political cycles? "You can speak, but only over there where nobody can hear you ..." is what you think meets "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"?

You contradict yourself, unless you truly are trying to limit the right of someone to "create fliers to address and issue" to people who own printing companies. Otherwise, money is required to pay for the fliers ...

Keeping money out of elections is truly a limitation of political free speech, which was one of the things the founders specifically did NOT want to have the government limiting. Maybe you're just confused over the two different meanings of "free" -- one is "free as in costs nothing", the other is "free as in unfettered". The former is not what the constitution refers to, and the latter happens to require money to be truly effective.

Interesting. There's an ISP in town that has no history at all of abusing customers. Explain how the government deciding to go into the same business isn't 1) abusing the taxpayer by forcing them to pay for something they can choose to buy or not depending on their own needs, and 2) competing with a company that has no history of abuse of anyone.

In an interesting bit of irony, that company started specifically because of a decision that the government should NOT compete with local businesses.

The fact is, the government is not and should not be in the business of providing every little thing your heart desires when there isn't anyone who meets your exacting standards for whatever it is you want, or because they don't treat you as well as you think you ought to be.

You want the government selling health insurance? What a marvelous way to screw up a huge part of the economy even worse than it is being screwed up now. Can people keep their existing doctors under your new government-run insurance company, or do those doctors just start serving the rich people who can pay them under the table?

You really have no idea how bad this would be for the economy and the consumers, do you? Your hatred for private business is so massive that you'd kill it all?

No, I'm sorry, that was not "part of the plan." And when you speak of "the government", you are actually taking about fifty different governments.

In fact, insurance companies are the best thing to privatize, so that the taxpayers aren't stuck covering everything.

And where might that be, pray tell? Remember, the FAA rules include one about not operating within 500 feet of any person, building, etc ..., so apparently the FAA has regulatory authority over that airspace.

"Below FAA airspace" would mean that Amazon could deliver stuff only to people in unpopulated areas (otherwise there is a minimum altitude limit) and more than 500 feet away from your house or where anyone happens to be standing.

Of course you can. It is done ALL THE TIME in the commercial radio industry. There are commercial radio shops that manage land mobile radio systems (including antennas) for their customers every day. You don't think that the local police department has someone on staff to go maintain and install the radio systems they use, do you?

What the company cannot do is sell you access to the copyrighted material that the antenna receives and not admit that they're in the business of selling access to that material.

Except it isn't "most of the country", so you actually tried putting false words in my mouth. I know of none, but people keep claiming that they exist. I don't automatically assume they don't know the difference between "exclusive" and "nonexclusive", but that they're just unable to point me to one place. As time goes by, I'm starting to believe the former.

Once again, we're talking about an NC, not signing oneself into slavery.

You would save yourself a lot of time if you just read what I wrote and stopped trying to make things up. I said nothing of the sort.

What I ACTUALLY said was that being able to choose not to sign was defacto proof that you have a choice, which is what I think they call a tautology. Now, if you read the definition as presented by the person I replied to, you'll see that it requires "no choice". Therefore, if you have a choice it isn't slavery. There, that wasn't that hard to follow, was it?

I'm sorry, where did you see me trying to explain why you cannot sign yourself into slavery? I thought we were talking about non-compete agreements, which are certainly nothing like slavery.

No, I doubt that. The rules are pretty simple. At an intersection with control signals, you can enter the crosswalk when the sign says WALK. Pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way. End of rules.

If the sign says DON'T WALK, you may not legally enter the crosswalk. The "numbers" have no regulatory basis.

And that's why I doubt you actually have a hard time.

It would be, but this is not such a case. A NC doesn't mean you have no choice of employer, only that you can't choose some employers in the future. You give up the freedom to choose in exchange for employment now at that specific company, which is also not a case of "no choice of employer". Saying "no" to a NC is expressing your right to choose, which is defacto evidence that you have a right to choose.

By your definition, it is not even a matter to dispute. "Not being able to choose to work for employer X" is not the same as "having no choice of employer." And, of course, the difference between slavery and an NC is that you can choose not to sign an NC.

Is there any existing NC that actually says that the only choice for someone who leaves employer X is "flipping burgers"?

My question would be, why do we still have screensavers for LCD devices, and why do we have screensavers that think they need to download images from the net AT ALL? And on a portable device where a screensaver does nothing except chew through battery ... The best screensaver on a mobile device is for it to simply go to sleep and display nothing.

That word has become so overused as to be meaningless. Anything that has to do with money that someone doesn't like is "greed" nowadays. What keeps being overlooked is that the companies that develop and provide the services that are being condemned for being greedy would not exist were it not for the "greed" that they are being accused of. You think prices for mobile data are the result of greed? Well, ok, but your ability to get those services in the first place is a result of the same greed.