Your basing your argument on the assumptions that she did none of the things you suggest. Verizon also had the option, once they received a summons, to solve the problem out of court. I see that they didn't do that either.

I heartily agree with this. I've seen it in my own former company. Ineffective management things that one programmer is the same as another, so just hire the cheaper one. I recently saw this as my former boss chose a new programmer to replace one that had recently left. AFTER he was hired he discovered that the programmer had never worked in the language or environment that was currently in use. His response was "Does that matter?".

My problem is that my US Representative is Joe Walsh. A bigger idiot, corporate lick-spittle and traitor to the American citizen never existed. Writing to him is a huge waste of time. (I know I've tried.) Calling him is worse. You're lucky if you ever get past voicemail. (I never have.) Joe doesn't want to hear from the "little people". The only way to get his attention is to have "Corp." after your name and a check in your hand.

Your experience with Comcast is very likely related to where you are located. I live in a NW suburb of Chicago. Literally the very worst service I have ever received from any company was from Comcast. Outages that lasted for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Outages several times a year. Technicians that I stayed home for waiting for them to arrive and they never came. Technicians who eventually came to the house and said "I don't know what's wrong" and left, and closed the ticket. (This happened more than once.) Bandwidth that made dialup look like a miracle it was so bad. Two different routers that literaly over heated and melted. (and yes they were in a ventilated area.) Replacement equipment that was used and dirty and didn't work. Comcast screwed with packets that belong to Skype to make sure the quality was terrible. (Oh but their VOIP brand was just fine.) The list goes on and on. It was so bad that I finally dumped my cable TV completely and switched over to AT&T business DSL. Mind you AT&T is not my favorite company either but the service is rarely if ever down and if I have a problem they fix it. DSL at 6 Mbps is better than Comcast 22 Mbps that delivers 150Kbps and is down more than up. So for those of you who have "never been happier with the amazing orgasmic experice that is Comcast" ... good for you. I certainly won't be doing business with them again anytime soon.

Seriously. This sort of crap is why I had my cable pulled out and told Comcast to jam it up their corporate asses sideways. Who needs them?

True that.

You'll find much more complete information here. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMZ6GSVYVE_index_0.html Unfortunately Discovery is the web site that turns science into an infomercial complete with annoying ads.

At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I remember back in the late 70's when this was a problem in early designs of mini-computers. Then we used to see single bits get flipped and crash computers from a variety of sources including cosmic radiation and alpha particles that came from the spontaneous decay of elements in the ceramic chip housings. More recently, when I purchased my 2005 Cadillac CTS it experienced a variety of problems similar to this when I would drive through a toll station that was equipped with RFID ID systems. Behaviours including sudden acceleration, engine stalling, indicator lights on the instrument panel going "crazy", On-Star calling for help when nothing was wrong, causing the driver's seat to suddenly drive forward to the steering wheel (making it really hard to steer), etc. At the time the only solution was to pull over, shut off the car, remove the key, open the door, wait for everything to shut down and then restart. After many frustrating weeks of "we can't duplicate the problem" it was discovered that the car had faulty shielding on one of the cables that makes up the in-car network. Once fixed the "gremlins" went away. The real crime here is that, because the problem can't be replicated on demand, Toyota is blaming the behaviour on attention seeking owners. This bizare response was recently repeated on the floor of Congress by one of Toyota's congressional tools. (I mean duly elected government representative.)

So if I understand the position of these legislators I could properly restate their postion as: 'The big companies pay us money and then tell us what to think. Therefore, we think that the big companies should be allowed to screw their customers anytime they want. If they are not allowed to screw their customers then they might stop investing in their core business. Since we are corrupt shills, we have agreed to support our corporate sponsors in defeating any regulation that might protect consumers from being screwed thus maximizing their profits and our contributions.' There, that seems more clear.

I suppose by "re-used" you mean reissued. I currently have 3 illegal aliens using my SSN right now. I've spoken to the Social Security Administrtion. They know about these people. They confirmed it. They also told me that they can't do anything about it because they don't pass information to law enforcement agencies. I spend untold hours every year correcting entries into my credit reports from these lawbreaking, bad check writing, no bill paying assholes. It's a great system we have.

For those of you are are just bitter about life in general and need to complain. Just to clear a bit of fog and confusion. Unlike most of the people responding, I own one so I'm not totally full of crap. 1. $309 seems a bit pricey but then the books don't cost as much as paper book. In fact they cost quite a bit less. Most of the books I've purchased have cost less than $3. Some less. That price also pays for lifetime access to the EVDO network which is used to deliver the content within 2 minutes of purchase to the book. Yes you can do some web browsing as well though that's a bit painful given the interface. The device also plays MP3 files for music while you read or audio books. The screen is electronic paper. No backlight. It can be read indoors or in the brightest sun. No problem. So far the price doesn't seem that bad. 2. If you buy books from Amazon they are DRM encoded. If you don't want to buy DRM books, download any of the thousands of free books available online and email them to the Kindle. That's really all there is to it. If you have PDF files then email them to the Kindle. That works too. 3. You can buy additional batteries. 4. A copy of all of your purchases is archived at Amazon and can be downloaded to a replacement device at any time. They can also be shared with anyone in your family with a Kindle on the same account. Finally, you can keep copies on an SD card that slips into the Kindle or on your PC via the USB cable. (which can also be used to load content.) 5. The battery charge lasts about 2 weeks with the radio off and about 3 days with the radio on. 6. It can do full text search across all of your content. 7. It can look up and define words and phrases. 8. You can annote the books. 9. you can clip content for use elsewhere. 10 etc. etc. etc. It's not a bad deal just because Oprah likes it anymore than it is a good deal becasue she likes it. It's just a decent device at a decent price