...as all of the other security theater they spend billions / year on. Why stop with SPOT? How many terr'rists have been caught by body scanners versus good old metal detectors? How many terr'rists have been caught by Freedom Gropes? Oh, I get it, travelers don't actually see SPOT in action. Carry on.

If you think the NSA isn't building a massive database of what metadata belongs to what person, you're painfully naive. They've lied at every turn -- their leader even lied under oath to a Congressional panel. Why would you ever believe them when tell you they're *not* doing something?

Because we (used to) have a reasonable expectation that private conversations would remain private, and in the 21st Century, things like phone calls are needed to, well, live. There's no fucking reason the NSA needs metadata about my call to Grandma. It's private and I don't want them to have it. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. And decades of horrible precedent have distorted the meaning of "legal" so that the 4th Amendment is able to be ignored by anyone in gov't who wishes to do so. It's time to start over.

Do not discount the impact of the Internet on the declining use of traditional mail services, or the fact that almost half of what is delivered is junk mail, almost all of which just gets thrown away. You can't only blame privatization while completely ignoring the most significant advance in communications technology in human history. Let's face it -- traditional mail services just aren't important as they were before the Internet.

. . . when they sat in the bubble-wrapped chairs and the interviewer asked about the chairs' significance, I seriously assumed the archivist was gonna say one of them was the one that Ballmer threw whilst ranting about Google.

As a gov't employee, you have the most ironic Slashdot username ever. :-)

That's funny . . . while all of the 800K furloughed gov't workers were getting paid vacations because the idiots in Congress couldn't (and still can't) agree on anything, my (privately owned) small business hired two new folks and signed a multi-year lease to triple our square footage. We *worked* while they sat around and did squat. A huge chunk of our productivity is being siphoned off to pay for the decisions of these entitled, rich, elitist, sociopathic jerks -- not only the less innocuous ones like shutting down the gov't, but big ones like wars and domestic spying. So spare me with the "inept private business" bullshit -- we're not the ones that have had all consequences removed from our lives. If I don't work, I don't eat.

. . . last time one of my friends visited Tokyo, he spent two hours (jokingly) asking directions to the Godzilla Victims Memorial. ;-)

And you should be aware that blue states also gerrymander . . . Maryland is a perfect example, which has several of the most gerrymandered districts in the entire nation and gladly subverts its citizens' rights right to fair representation just as fast as Texas.

For 95% of what people take pictures of in the real world, yeah, a camera built into a smart phone is probably good enough. However, if you're shooting:

• * Stuff that moves fast
• * Stuff you want to print really, really big (over 4 feet across)
• * Stuff that needs to be color-accurate
• * Stuff where you want to control what part of the image is in focus

Then you need something like a DSLR with a real shutter & aperture and honkin' big sensor, and hopefully expensive lenses that can take advantage of all of the above. Spending $200 on a hands-on photography class will have much more impact for most people than spending the money on an expensive camera, and then hoping you getting better results when you push the button (which ain't happening).

Those of us who breed responsibly and only buy shit we can afford have very little sympathy for this point of view. And there's no reason to whore yourself out these days for evil in order to fill an empty resume -- this isn't post-Dot Com nuclear winter, not in the tech sector anyway. In summary, what you describe is the very reason our country is fucked up at this point. Folks who are willing to rationalize evil and immoral deeds for personal gain, at the expense of everyone else and our Constitutional rights, ABSOLUTELY are the problem.

That's how this tax was sold, and the justification used to pass it. Sounds like you're OK with the gov't lying to its citizens as long as it's a net-positive according to them, e.g., the NSA dragnet spying on US Citizens?

It makes sense if the revenue collected actually goes to fix the problem you describe. In Maryland's case, the State fought tooth and nail to make sure that it doesn't have to. There is no designated fund or trust for this massive amount of money being collected from MD taxpayers, which means that, as is evidenced by decades of historical precedent, only a tiny fraction of it (if any) will actually be used for what it's supposed to be used for. See also the blatant theft from the MD Transportation Fund by both parties for decades as further proof of what WILL happen to this new revenue. As a Marylander, I'll gladly pay to "Save the Bay!" if that's what they actually did with my money . . . but this is yet another scam in a long series of scams foisted on the MD taxpayers.

Ah, queue the apologists. California's not broke thanks to St. Jerry's "balanced budget" shenanigans, right? You think a 300K increase in a state of 37 million is a huge increase? And how many of those new 300K people are illegal aliens versus income tax-paying US citizens actually moving there to start a business? How many small business owners and those who were actually paying the highest income taxes and the highest gas taxes in the country (while being rewarded with with the fourth-highest unemployment rate), simply threw in the towel and left for TX, NV, and FL? How is that "growth" helping to pay the crippling $1 trillion in total gov't debt that the Bear Republic owes?

I have no problem with paying taxes to fund something -- but the gov't damn well better use the money it takes from me to do EXACTLY what it's supposed to. The problem arises when the politicians say they'll use the funds for X, but there's nothing in the new tax that actually REQUIRES them to spend the new revenue on X, so they piss it away on pet projects and favors owed to the special interests who got them elected, and come back the next year and say, "we're still broke, and still need to fix X." That's the same as theft in my book. Social Security would easily be self-funding if the goddamn politicians stopped stealing from it!