I'm pretty sure they got the patent from Xerox, for rooms. The idea was that you use a room and house analogy for your window manager. So all offices applications are in the office room, games in the gaming room, recipes belong in the kitchen, etc. And you had to switch rooms via a door icon, no joke.

It's clear from the context that he meant a lobbyist influenced someone in the administration to block the appointment. Stop being pedantic.

It's a very fast moving tree. For example, I'm running 2.6.32 on F12 right now even though it shipped with .31. The .32 kernel just happens to be the release that balances the need for test enough with the latest release out of kernel.org.

I don't know, ibiblio is kind of legit. Red Hat didn't feel like releasing a torrent, since they don't have a tracker lying around.

Exactly! I'm reminded of this post by email researcher Meng Weng Wong, where he talks about DSL and providing good email service:

DSL providers should just say to their customers, we'll just drop your price by $X a month if you decline POP --- that way we save on machines, sysadmins, and software licensing fees, and we get to say we're 20% cheaper than the competition ... and you'll just go off and use Hotmail, which is what you were going to do anyway!

Maybe they'd use gmail instead of hotmail today, but the same principal applies.

The parent article also mentions that ruling. But aside from that, what makes you think that the FCC is going to lobby for broadband deregulation in the future? If anything, they're going to fight for broadband regulation now that they've realized they've created a monster. I expect in the future broadband will be more heavily regulated, and Comcast will file this incident under, "Lessons on biting the hand that feeds."

Good thing Comcast doesn't operate across state lines!

But seriously, broadband access is already "lightly regulated" by the FCC. All they need to do is go to congress and get that changed to "heavily regulated" and then they can continue with their net-neutrality laws, despite what the Constitution says.

Indeed, it is the case that "they don't have common carrier status." This is explicitly mentioned in the article:

The cable company had also argued that the FCC lacks authority to mandate Net neutrality because it deregulated broadband. The FCC now defines broadband as a lightly regulated information service. That means it is not subject to the obligations traditional telecommunications services have to share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally.

The best part is that the decision may cause "the agency [to] simply reclassify broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommuniciations service." In that respect, Comcast has dug its own grave, as well as those of several others, Time Warner, Cablevision, Verizon to name a few.

Thanks for setting the record straight. I can't tell you how many times Citizens United has come up in conversation where people went in with the wrong assumptions. In fact, just recently, a federal court blocked the Republican National Committee from taking unlimited money from corporations, which is exactly what most people think is perfectly legal in the wake of the Citizens United decision.

The second case is completely legal, though currently there are limits on the amount of money an individual can contribute to a campaign or party (RNC or DNC). The first case of getting a bonus for donating money to a political party must be illegal, though I admit I don't know through what law.

This doesn't deny corporations from running ads, they just have to do it on their own, and out in the open where everyone can see who they are telling people to vote for. They have to buy their own ads to tell people to vote for Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell.

I don't think you are familiar with the case. What you describe above and said should be allowed is exactly what Citizens United did. They released a feature length film called "Hillary: The Movie" about Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Federal Election Commission said that you can't spend that much money on a movie like that so close to the election, so they took them to court.

It's the people in the van helping the wounded that are the crime.

For trying to save the life of an innocent photographer? How the hell were they to know this would get them killed? Does the military distribute leaflets telling them that if they try to save the wounded they will be fired upon?

You never shoot wounded, ever, ever, ever.

Maybe on paper, but the pilot was a little trigger happy. It was nerve racking to hear him say, "Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a wepon." just so he could fire on an unarmed journalist.

The Pentagon had their chance to release the video and explain themselves at the press conference covering the attack. In fact, David Petraeus said he would. Then they could have shown from the video footage that there were two guys with assault rifles, and that it would have been impossible to tell that there were two children in the van, and that the camera looks like an RPG from head on, and that they (supposedly) followed the rules of engagement. They could have cut out some of the audio and the images of the Hummer driving over dead bodies. Instead they denied Reuters the video despite repeated FOIA requests, and proceeded to lie about how the children were injured.

My hunch was that Petraeus thought they were following the rules of engagement, and then when they looked at the video later they realized it was worse than they thought, and decided not to release the video. I don't have the experience or understanding to know what's going on either, but those in the Pentagon do. If they're not comfortable releasing the video because they can't justify what happened, and they have to subsequently lie about certain important details, it means that someone screwed up.