Don't know where you're living/what jurisdiction you mean, but you don't need anything above a JD to practice federal tax law, generally speaking. You can go get an LLM in tax if that's what you want, but that's mostly for academics or *really* heavy lifters in the field.

The idea would be to have *better* regulation of the Internet, which won't happen with the UN/ITU. Adding culture clashes to the present political clashes and putting countries that actively censor content at the table is just asking for trouble.

Don't know about the speed, the one I tried out seemed fine. However, the hardware didn't feel durable (and there were lots of reports of issues with the slider), they went with a Sprint exclusive deal that gave them a small initial market, and they had those commercials with the creepy woman speaking in a creepy zen/detached voice. Add that up and they did a pretty nice job of shooting themselves in the foot.

I'll agree with you about health insurance not being insurance, though that's priced into the market for medical care and prescription drugs. That said, I don't think this will have all the effects you assert.

The prescription contraceptive market is already priced to be affordable only for those with insurance, for the most part. Retail on those products is generally quite high, though obviously lower for the older versions with generics. As the health care mandate will require that all individuals be insured, though, it shouldn't drastically change pricing. If anything, price wil be mostly irrelevant for the vast majority of users.

See above for people with little/no money and no insurance. The coverage is available and incentivized. Aside from that, there's no indication that the current contraceptive provision/assistance programs will be discontinued.

With effects on female jobs, you're right in that if things unfold as you suggest, there will be more lawsuits. Hopefully that properly motivates employers to stay away from violating civil rights. I don't see why premiums would go any higher because of this...current plans almost universally include contraception coverage. I also don't understand why there would be fewer makers in the market - it's unlikely that the government plans will discriminate against specific drug companies.

With freedom, you have a valid point. I'm not sure the mandate is a good idea, especially as written. If done properly it could have reduced the inefficiency of current government health programs (Medicaid/Medicare/VA/etc), but as with many things, it got watered down to the point of only being controversial without solving many problems.

Since all of those organizations will have good Catholics as employees, I'm sure the provision will have no actual effect...

(I actually have no dog in that fight, but I do find it slightly amusing to watch.)

They could also have just not sent P3P headers if they didn't intend to actually provide a valid one and comply with it...

Well, there are a few problems with those suggestions (outside of the "they're just following the P3P standard" issue). A browser that shipped with an ad blocker enabled is unprofitable for the publisher and competitors. If it allows the publisher's ads and not everyone else's, they're going to end up in court. Actually, if it has the equivalent of ABP or other extensions included and on by default, they're probably going to end up in court. Targeting particular adversaries with privacy controls -- same problem. Even if they win all of the lawsuits, it's a major diplomatic failure for them with adversaries who may also be business partners.

That said, I'd like to see it happen, but unless some rich benefactor independently funds a browser, it's not likely.

Assuming business orgs are similar to what they are in the U.S., suing the Taiwan office wouldn't kill the company, just that division. Companies typically protect themselves against that sort of liability where possible, particularly when you get to international and/or not strictly controlled by home base offices.

Even if it *did* kill the company or the branch that owns the trademark, Apple really doesn't want that. Most likely, the trademark would then go up for sale with the rest of the company's assets, and you can bet Apple would have to pay far more when they're bidding against any companies that wanted to buy it for resale to Apple.

I see what they're doing, and I get it, but they're probably better off paying the ransom to end this and making damn sure their lawyers get airtight agreements for trademarks next time around.

Eh, I'll agree with you on our U.S. Senators, and concede most of the state offices as well. That said, the state Senate is controlled by Republicans, but the House and Governor's office are Democrats, so there's plenty of opportunity for this to get thrown into gridlock hell....

To be fair, you've only included 2 MS releases vs. 3 Apple releases, which I presume is because including XP would weight the average time between releases against your argument.

I'm not saying that GP's argument is a good one, but yours is really no better...

Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, and I am also in IT administration at a public university.

ASU may or may not have such rights. Public universities occupy a broad role, in that they are generally considered agents of the government, and as such are subject to all of the legal issues that entails, including 1st amendment issues.

Also, public universities *are* ISPs. They are not traditional commercial ISPs, but most provide network access for a large group of residents, and provide other network services for incredibly diverse groups at a level that puts most commercial ISPs to shame. That access is not always solely for school use. To pretend otherwise is to argue from a position of absurdity.

Universities certainly have the right and responsibility to ensure the security and stability of their networks. However, they also have the responsibility to do so in the least restrictive manner possible. In the public case, this is partially to ensure that protected rights are not infringed. However, it is crucial to remember that universities are places for growth, learning, and research. As any network blocking puts that mission in jeopardy (you can't possibly be aware of every research project, and you can't effectively guarantee that your block doesn't harm your core mission), the proper course here would have been for the firewall or mail admins to temporarily block messages from the offending servers in order to maintain service availability.

While I don't claim that my employer should be upheld as the great example for IT policy (far from it, in many ways), I do believe that the current firewall policy is in the best traditions of academia. For most VLANs, the firewall blocks only the most commonly exploitable ports (Windows file sharing is the only example I can recall off the top of my head.) If a particular machine on the network causes issues (primarily botnets, DMCA notices, other viruses/trojans), that port is shut down with an email notice to IT security staff across the University. Once the problem is remedied, the port can be reactivated by the IT personnel investigating the incident.

Floods to particular services, including spam, are handled at the service level, never by a blanket firewalling of an external IP. Our mail gateways/scanners are sufficient to handle this type of problem on their own, and our student population is about half of ASU's. If their systems can't handle a single spam source, they need to check their budget or their strategic planning.

Comparing this to an employer blocking a website for its employees is comparing apples and lead bricks. Most people on campus are not employees, and for many ASU is furnishing the only network connection they have. Moreover, as mentioned above, openness is core to the values of a University. Blocking twitter at my law firm was no big deal. Block it at my University and we've got problems, because there are people doing valuable research with that data.

Yeah, management doesn't want to have to look at anything like that except for maybe a demo of how cool it is. As long as they aren't being bombarded by board members or customers, they probably don't really care what's going on.

Citation needed. Having a primary revenue stream does not preclude having others as well. I'm not at all convinced that providers are rushing into the content business when it's unprofitable.

I don't know that this is what the GP is referring to, but I see police talking on their cell phones (not their radios) while driving on a regular basis.

OTOH, the rest of your post seems pretty angry in general, so maybe your post isn't really so much about phones and radios....