No, no, no. This is not the way to do it. The "American way" is not to control people directly, but economically.

Instead of giving poor people checks (and I say this as a current college student who earned $12k last year), give them government credit cards that cannot be used to purchase junk food of any sort. No freezer meals, no chips, no candy, no boxed foods, no white bread, and especially no soda pop. Of course, people will then simply rearrange their spending to to cover the junk they want, but we can at least make it more difficult to use tax dollars on that stuff.

My last shopping trip, I purchased 3 bags (1 lb each) of pretzels for studying, a can of peas, a can of corn, 2 cans of potato soup, a half gallon of milk, 4 packets of Ramen, 2 cans of peaches, and a pack of black dress socks. The total was $19.33, and $5.50 of that was the socks. Now, I know that pretzels and Ramen are not particularly healthy, but it could be much worse. I eat in the dining hall on weekdays - I feed myself on the weekends. I made the potato soup with the milk and added a serving of tuna fish and a pack of crushed saltines to make two servings (lunch and dinner).

While that's not the healthiest of menus, it's very cheap and at least marginally nutritious. However, when I visit my friend's place who's single mom is on welfare, they eat all sorts of nasty brand-name stuff. My family collects food for a food bank, and we tried to give them a box of food every week. However, they didn't want it! Why? Well, it's not the ready-to-eat stuff they are used to. Why does the government give them cash? If they're going to get aid from my tax dollars, it ought to come with some serious strings attached. As it is, it's just a vote-buying system, and everyone knows it.

In my irrelevant opinion, a true fiscal conservative is someone with a steel backbone who will veto spending projects (that's a cool term I made up) until they die, regardless of the political consequences. Such a person must be a principle fanatic who realizes that he probably won't be re-elected, because the financial systems move slowly enough that his term will be over before the gains are realized. He must also be heartless enough to ditch the special concerns of everyone who helped him get to the top, simply telling them, "Sorry, I'm doing what's Constitutional and best for the country."

In short, he's either a myth or something resembling Ron Paul. Regan a good start, but a) his priority was dealing with the Soviets, and b) he had too many political connections and favors to pay.

http://www.networknotary.org/
Perspectives is a wonderful little Firefox extension (with Chome beta) that does exactly as you suggest - uses a web of trust to automatically bypass errors for self-signed certificates, while also detecting stuff like these fraudulent Comodo certs.

I highly recommend the Perspectives Firefox extension. It basically compares the cert you are handed to the one everyone else received (including in the past), which would have detected the fraudulent Comodo certs. Much easier than running around to multiple connections.

I highly recommend the Perspectives Firefox extension. It basically compares the cert you are handed to the one everyone else received (including in the past), which would have detected the fraudulent Comodo certs.

Wine does not necessarily equal alcohol in the Bible. ;) It was not possible to get drunk on normal Jewish wine. What we consider wine today was called "strong drink."

The castle is advertising, not search. Correcting that fixes your tunnel.

Yes, I've been making real, 100% VOIP calls on my Android device over WiFi with my GV for a while. There's a whole project dedicated to it: http://code.google.com/p/google-voice-sipsorcery-dialplans/
Personally, I use the IPKall + Sipsorcery method, but I hear signups at Sipsorcery are currently closed. I'm not sure what's available in the meantime.

I do! Via Perspectives. I've very, very rarely had it alert me to anything, but it could be extremely useful the one time it does.

That's a good point. The summary is written as if it's the Roman Catholic Church trying to keep the commoners from reading Scripture and or pamphlets by dissidents. Is Evolution, Global Warming, and whatever else really so frail as to fall over if any other theories walk in the room?

I use Perspectives out of paranoia about this sort of thing. It's easy - just install and hope it never alerts you.
This is a tool activists should be aware of and employ religiously.

The cell phone industry (part of telecom) is currently in the middle of an earthquake, and it is being driven by two extremely capitalistic companies: Apple and Google. It will get even better when deregulated spectrum starts coming into play. The FCC has hindered advancement in cell communications with many of its rules, but a few regulations (like billing transparency) have been helpful. Finding the proper balance between anarchy and central planning is the key.

There are some industries that must be regulated more than others, like financial services, but most of the regulations needed are "sunshine" type laws. Information is an excellent disinfectant!

Electricity is an industry that needs more care and feeding than others, largely because of the rural problem. Nobody wants to risk many millions of dollars to bring service to the middle of nowhere. That is a job, like rural road-building, that almost certainly needs public money involved. However, there are many large markets around the country that would benefit immensely from some energy entrepreneurship.

Why not leave the current public-private companies in place, but stop barring private entities from attempting to compete with them? That way rural areas can continue to be serviced, but the booming areas can benefit from free-market innovation?

I assume you don't live in the US. Our government isn't very popular at present. Sunshine is being cautiously welcomed, although the release of military information spooks a lot of us.

Corporations don't get money just for existing and being evil. They get it from customers. Now, unless they have a monopoly, they must be doing something to attract those customers. Perhaps you are in a minority that doesn't want to be a customer?

But the NYT does speak far louder than other entities. It might as well be donating to the candidate when it provides them free services.

I cannot imagine how a playground analogy can be applied here. There is no playground parallel to mass media that I can think of./quote