I'm not sure this is true. If you could hack my fridge to control the temperature then it would be fairly easy to turn it off right after I leave for work and turn it back on before I return at the end of a long day. Many foods in my fridge like liquids (excluding milk) and condiments wouldn't go back in a noticeable way, but it could leave me at increased risk for salmonella from the chicken or eggs.

If you claim (in large print) to be selling me unlimited internet access and are then charging me more when I go over some limit, then yes it's a cap, and the FTC dam well ought to be going in and bitch slapping any company doing this type of thing even if they put an asterix with words in tiny print to the effect of "when we say unlimited what we really mean is as long as you don't exceed the limits we actually put on it"

And when they conspired with others to commit a crime did it also become a RICO crime? (I must admit I don't know what the hurdle is to make something RICO)

Yes, but remember broadband isn't regulated like telecom. That's part of the whole fight over reclassifying broadband as common carriers so that they would have to comply with net neutrality. True the telecom services (phones but not voip phones) are regulated the way you say, and anything that cherry picks the profitable areas impacts the ability to subsidize the unprofitable ones. But broadband isn't classified in the same way and so I don't think you can say that they are required to offer the services everywhere. Certainly where I live, I'd like to get ATT UVerse which they offer in other part of my Silicon Valley town but not where I live (close to Stanford). I've been asking for it for years and I'd really love to hear that they are obligated to provided it but, clearly, they don't think they are.

Suppose I bought chips specifically for this feature and now you've disabled that feature in firmware. Can you say class action law suit?

First I'm not fat and I don't drink 44oz of soda at a time, thanks for the ad hominem attack. I have not chosen for you to subsidize me or anyone else. You've decided that you want to pay for people who have no health insurance (I assume that's because you think that's what a fair, just or civilized society does) and that as a result of your choice you now get the right to tell those who do and don't have health insurance what to do so that your choice to pay for people who don't have health insurance isn't so costly for you. I understand your choice I'm just not willing to let you take away my rights to fix the problem you created (and with a law that does't really fix the problem but simply inconveniences people, see your buy two fatty comment.)

That's your opinion of what constitutes a civilized society. I don't agree. In my equally valid opinion, a civilized society ought to protect us from each other. If a civilized society would like to educate me as to why it believes what I'm doing is bad for me that's great. If it wants to tell me what to do, I don't consider that civilized.

No the FAA has regulatory authority over those things it makes regulations over pursuant to it's grant of authority to regulate. In order to exercise that authority they must create regulations using the recognized federal regulatory process. Otherwise they haven't created regulations. The judge ruled that in this instance they didn't follow that process. Instead he decided they issued a policy statement and then behaved as if that was a regulation. I think in this case he found, for instance, that there wasn't a publishing of the proposed regulations and a comment period. Therefore theses weren't regulations. Therefore he found there are no regulations covering the activity involved independent of the profit motive. I don't know what the statutory grant of authority was but throwing a rock probably is ok because there are no regulations covering it (just as their aren't for RC aircraft) but if the FAA chose to properly invoke the regulatory process and create regulations they probably could.

I don't see why this is a problem. They have a duty to search their files for the requested information. It's not the requester issue that some may have to do this employee mail box by employee mail box. What am I missing?

What will they do when I take my bag out of the back seat and hand them the valet key which will only open the doors and activate the ignition. Will they then break into my trunk? If not, then what the F*** good is this anyway? Real terrorist will simply give the valet key. (Not that I think this is useful no matter what they do, it's just more theater.)

Mohamed Atta the ring leader of the September 11th attacks was not uneducated, he had a degree in architecture and was pursuing a graduate degree. He came from a wealthy family. It is dangerous when you make the claim that violent extremism is a product of poverty and lack of education. While they may be correlated, correlation is not causation and the statement leads people to believe that we can eliminate violent extremism simply by eliminating poverty and providing education.

Don't be so sure. While I agree with your statement as *I* interprit the Constitution that is clearly not the view of the Supreme Court as demonstraighted by precedent. The entire thesis of Wickard v. Filburn was that by producing wheat for his own consumption, Filburn would not be participating in commerce and thus while he didn't have an effect on interstate commerce by himself many actors doing the same will have an effect on the market via their lack of participation. As Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce and the "neccary and propper" power to implement that regulation it has the power necessary to fix prices even if it has to regultate people who don't participate in order to accomplish that out come. Congress will try to regulate printing guns and if the Supreme Court follows precedent it will succeed.

"Apple sells" and that's the heart of the problem Apple *sells* you the software, there is no EULA presented for you to agree with or disagree with *at the time of purchase." It's a sale and as such the first sale doctrine should apply just as it does with books. If I want to read it upside down on the moon or run it on a non Apple machine that's my first sale right since they *sold* it too me they didn't license it to me. It also means I can sell it on to the next person if I want to. If they want to claim the ability to restrict the use and resale then then need to enter into a license agreement with me, and present me with all the terms *before* they complete a license deal.

Actually ModelSim (now Questa) does run under Linux, very well, and I use it every day.

Uh, no! They are correctly referring to 450mm *wafers*. 450 mm or about 17.7 inch diameter *wafers*. Not line width wafer diameter. This represents a roughly 125% increase in area over current 300mm wafers, and since the marginal cost of processing a 450mm wafer over a 300mm wafer is no where near 125% (it's mostly in the cost of the newer machinery) TSMC will be able to significantly decrease the cost of their products and so will companies like NVidia, ATI, Broadcom and Qualcomm (NOT Apple they don't make chips at TSMC yet). We Americans may not be great at using the SI system but at least we know what where talking about.