The Tea Party didn't become "skeptical of PATRIOT Act, NSA surveillance, and all that stuff" until January of 2009. For some reason, having nothing to do with the color of the skin of the guy in the White House, I'm certain.

But the timing is a little suspect, you must admit.

Maybe you can find an example of a Tea Party person showing opposition to those programs prior to 2009. I tried and I could not.

This bill actually does very little. The DMCA is written very broadly, and has been commonly interpreted as to prohibit cell phone unlocking. Because Congress, in the 90s, when they enacted the stupid thing, was aware that the DMCA could go too far, but didn't want to be cautious or have to keep reexamining the law itself, they gave authority to the Library of Congress to add exceptions to it in specific cases. The process for these exceptions is that every three years, anyone who wants an exception has to plead their case. If found worthy, they get an exception. But the exception only lasts until the next rule making session, three years hence. Then it has to be reargued from scratch or lost.

Two rule making sessions ago, the Library of Congress found that cellphone unlocking was worthy of an exception. But in the most recent rule making session, they did not find it worthy, and the exception was lost; it went back to its default state of being illegal.

This law could have amended the DMCA to permanently allow cellphone unlocking. Or it could've directed the Library of Congress to always find that cellphone unlocking is allowed. But it does neither of these.

Instead it only reinstates the rule from two sessions ago for the remainder of the current session. Next year it will have to be argued again, from scratch, to the Library of Congress, or lost, again. And even if argued, it can be rejected, again.

This is less than useless. It's only a temporary patch, it doesn't even have an iota of long term effect (the rules don't take precedent into account, and this doesn't change it), and we've wasted all this effort getting it instead of something worthwhile.

What's the use of that, if you have to wait 18 years for her to grow up? Unless you want a future mate for your newborn son?

And where does the money come from that pays for those ads?

No one is paying $200 for a phone they can get for free with a contract

Not true. The 2ndary market for last years premium phones (iphone 4S, galaxy 3, galaxy 4 ...) and they do go for ~$150-250.

There are a few niches where used premium phones really shine:

kids phones -- kids want imessage/sms, games, youtube, and parents don't want to spend $50-80/mo for phone contracts for their kids, so they'll 'get' an older premium phone and stick a pay as you go text messenging plan on it.

This is a popular setup parents go for around here, and its usually put on 'hand-me-down phones' or phones picked up 2nd hand.

For example, I put my daughter on 100$/year unlimited SMS plan, on my old iphone 3GS, and then after she had it a year it gave out, and wasn't worth fixing - so I bought her a used iphone 4S for $180. I think this is a pretty common situation, as everything from small computer shops to ebgames deals in used premium phones and there's always 10+ iphone 4, 4S, samsung SIII and S4 phones in stock at any of these places.

I think I replied to something similar already, so you can enjoy the answer if you like.

But that simply indicates that the economy in USA is in such shambles (which I argue it is) that there are so few actual real jobs available that it is possible to get people to work for little money and no other benefits. However if that it the case (and the economy in USA is dying AFAIC due to government created inflation and destruction of individual freedom, which caused massive capital outflow and massive loss of productivity, huge growth of deficits, debts, destruction of full time jobs that are either not replaced at all or are replaced with worse quality, lower paying, part time jobs) then it stands to reason that in fact the worker in USA cannot afford to take a paid vacation and this is not a problem that is created by an employer, this is a problem created very democratically (mobocratically) by the employees (majority voters) and politicians who promise this free lunch to the majority voters. Employers do not make weather in terms of the government pushing policy through that is catered towards the majority voters.

Employers search for ways to avoid being taxed and being driven out of business, so employers move to other countries, they search for ways to reduce their total costs, this includes cost of labour and taxes and regulations.

So when you are saying that the situation in USA is bad, I agree with you, it is. It is bad for reasons that are much beyond most /.ers, so never mind, you can read my journal. However this still does not mean that government can force an employer to add something on top of what an employer would pay for labour.

Labour has a price, however this cost is paid for, no employer will be overpaying. The market conditions are such, that American workers cannot expect anything anymore, not because any one of them is particularly bad or lazy, but because the system is such that their productivity is worth less than before, much less than before the dollar was actually redeemable in gold, much less than before there were any income taxes, any government labour laws, any government business regulations.

A Ford employee back in 1913 was making 5 dollars a day, working 5 days a week, 8 hour shifts. An ounce of gold was 19 dollars. There were no income taxes that applied to anybody pretty much (and by the way, the income tax is illegal for so many reasons, again, a different discussion).

5 days x 5 dollars = 25 dollars a week. That bought 1.25 ounces of gold in a week. Under current prices that would mean about 1625 USD per week or 6500 USD a month or about 78000 a year. No taxes. No payroll tax, no income tax, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no SS, no business taxes of any kind, no education taxes, no road taxes, not even gasoline taxes.

Yes, there were import taxes and some duties, alcohol accounted for 50% of taxes in USA at the time. But you didn't actually have to pay those taxes because you could avoid buying those products.

So what does it mean in today's terms in USA to make 78000 after tax? You can easily more than double that amount just to start understanding what it means, you really have to do more than double it though, because at the time prices for things were going down, not up.

The dollar was gaining value, not losing it. A man could save money, buy a house, no mortgage, have a family, 10 kids or more, stay home wife, she didn't have to work though 10 kids is probably more than enough of work. But people had live in help and it was possible because there were no welfare checks coming to anybody to do nothing.

My point is, when you talk about low standard of living in USA today I agree with you! I think 19th century lifted the standard of living of Americans more than the 20th century and since 1971 the standard of living of Americans has been falling actually because their productivity was falling due to all this government, all the rules, regulations, taxes, inflation and all the government debt financed spending.

You can't use more government to fix problems created by government and no amount of government mandated paid vacation time will lift your standard of living, it only ends up lowering it further as businesses move out and automate more and more.

I imagine many of these people would end up dead without electricity

What, are they androids or something? You talk about boredom; is that what allegedly kills them?

I worked as a contractor software developer/architect for 10 years, always negotiating everything I needed to negotiate in every contract. I had probably negotiated 30 or so contracts (and contract extensions) in that time period and nothing was off the table. I worked for large companies and for small, negotiation was always part of the process.

- you mean I know what I am talking about. I run my company, so you are correct, I am a manager - managing a business. I make hiring decisions, I make product decisions. I am also the chief architect, every one of my employees comes to me with the question "what do I do next?" when they are done with the current task. I deal with the clients, I search for new ones, I decide what internal products we are building, I decides what technology we use, I decide what everybody does here. Yes, I manage the place and I do know what I am talking about whether this concerns technology or hiring or client communications and of-course writing checks.

- 'bzzzt'? That is your opinion and if you think that somebody is asking for more than they should be getting in the market, then obviously you are not going to hire those people. If somebody else decides to hire them, then it stands to reason that person is worth that to the other employer. However when you are talking about bubbles then you have to take into account the fact that they are not normal market creation, they are created by the Federal reserve pumping money into the system. Bubbles are created by government inflation and under those circumstances the scarce resources, including labour and money and land are misused, misallocated.

So certainly there can be misallocation of scarce resources in the economy that is not free from government intervention. That is what recessions are for: removing the misallocations, but the governments and the central banks work together to squash any recessions' attempts at fighting the misallocation of resources and eventually the bubbles grow bigger and then even the entire economies can collapse.

Is that normal free market behaviour? No, it's normal for governments to behave that way because politicians love to sell you the bill of goods to stay in power. But again, this is a tangent, it's only marginally pertinent to the discussion only from point of view that yes, governments cause misallocation of resources. Government intervention misallocates resources, this is just as true in case of money printing (inflation) as it is in case of labour laws, such as minimum wage or these forced paid vacation days.

If Verizon was really going to give her a new iPhone for nothing (but a contract extension), she should have still paid Apple the $100 to fix the screen on the old one, and then sold it immediately.

Meh... depends on what phone she had and has now. She probably has a 4S. $100 to repair it and then maybe sell it for $200... $100 net profit whooo... still worth it assuming you value your time less than whatever grief is involved dealing with putzes on craigslist. :)

- and you won't budge on your hourly rate, it takes two to tango. I am an employer, I negotiate with my employees all the time, nothing is off the table.

No, I am running my own business, I am creating value out of nothing by building stuff that didn't exist before I decided to build it. It's not a zero sum game, that's how businesses make money by making new products.

However this is not the subject under discussion here, while the economy is not a zero sum game your total value to me as an employee has a minimum and a maximum levels on it, so your total compensation will be within certain boundaries, thus if government dictates a minimum number of paid vacation days, those will be counted as part of your total compensation and your hourly wage is also part of that total compensation, so is the payroll tax (both sides of it, the employee and the employer portion), so is anything else.

The minimum boundary to your total compensation package is the your value in the market and the minimum dictated level of compensation by the government. So what you are going to get into your hands will be the delta: total compensation package minus all the other expenses that are government mandated (taxes, minimum paid vacation, whatever), the cash that you receive is the rest of it.

You are not going to be paid more than you are worth in the market and you are not going to be paid more on top of what you are worth in the market regardless of what the government dictates. Your total pay will include all of those components.

This, by the way, is a huge problem for the economy. To pay somebody 18,000 dollars for example, the employer has to shell out 27,000 (or so), so the labour prices are high while the wages are low.

Well, that's what you get for all this government, that and the falling value of your money and the rising cost of living.