Let's use car insurance as an example; something you are required by law to buy.

Millions of New Yorkers and other urban dwellers disagree with you. No one is required to own a car.

I disagree on both counts.

Lots of people like Flash: lots of websites still use it for various reasons (*cough* tracking *cough*), so obviously those people like it. And lots of Slashdotters like it too: just look at all the comments above: there's a ton of people here defending it. So it's definitely false that *nobody* likes Flash.

As for the Confederate flag, you may be correct about "most people" not liking it, but there's still a very large number of Americans who do, and have taken to flying this flag lately because of all the controversy. Lots of these people are likely blatant racists too. But that's how Americans are. Just look at the cops; most of them are blatant racists too. How many cops are there in America? Probably in the millions.

or for a competitor to show up and provide the service that Comcast refuses to.

Where are you getting that idea? Competitors can't just roll into town and set up shop and compete with Comcast. In most places it's plainly illegal: cable companies are granted monopolies by the local government.

See the above but, nice to see you condoning the corporate "Fuck the consumer" mindset.

How am I condoning anything? I'm just pointing out Comcast's point of view. Why should they care about the consumer? They have a monopoly. Thinking they're somehow going to grow a moral backbone is ridiculously wishful thinking.

My country has good quality prisons and reasonable rehabilitation rates.

Then your country is a very rare exception. For most of the world's population, prison is nothing more than miserable torture. You can't just say "well make the prisons nice like the ones in my country!"; that's like telling a dumb person who failed his algebra test to just get smart and ace it like you did. Or telling a country with severe economic problems to just become a utopian society where there's no money, like on Star Trek.

But we know from historical contexts that prison is better than the alternative of wholesale punitive murder.

We know that how? You still haven't proven that it's better to be tortured in a squalid prison cell and be subject to constant rape, for decades, than it is to be quickly (and presumably not too painfully) executed.

The point was the block from Comcast would be unenforceable, because too many users would be affected and complain

Why would it be unenforceable? Who cares if they complain? Why should Comcast listen to them? Why would Comcast care about their customers complaining?

When you're a monopoly, you don't have to worry about things like customer satisfaction. People complain about Comcast all the time, but it doesn't matter because there aren't many other choices so people continue to get service with them, even though they hate it.

Fair point, and that sounds dicier. 'Round these parts (California), that employee might have a case for wrongful termination. But maybe not; snooping around corporate computer systems, even if the door is unlocked, just doesn't look good.

In the other case, though, now that I think about it, even if I had signed a contract that said my salary was confidential, surely that's only an agreement between me and the company? Would I really be violating such a clause if I disclosed my salary to another agent of the same company? It just doesn't seem like there's anything management can really do to prevent this sort of thing.

Seems like the only thing that keeps people from discussing this sort of thing more is the fear that someone's feeling are going to be hurt -- either theirs or yours -- if it turns out there's a big salary discrepancy.

Well if a sealed letter had someone else's name on it I'd agree that's a firing offense.

Me voluntarily telling you how much I make, on the other hand, is our business. Management can cough and sputter all it wants, but unless I signed a contract that stipulates my salary is confidential information, there's nothing they can do about it.

Um, not at all?

What exactly are the ComCrap customers going to do, switch to another ISP? Oh wait, there is no other ISP!

This is the whole problem.

In reference to your first question, one is acceptable to almost all of society, the other is abhorred by almost all of society. So you can make your own mind up on that one.

So your argument is that society is correct by definition? Isn't that a tautology?

There have been other societies (including colonial American society) where prison was seen as cruel and unusual punishment, and that punishments should be swift, rather than dragging on for years or decades.

The whole point of jail is that it is meant to be good conditions to rehabilitate the prisoners. At one end of the scale you have some European prison systems that do this amazingly well, with very low recidivist offender rates. At the other end of the scale are some third world country prisons where the prisoners are kept in horrendous conditions.

So a tiny minority of prisons worldwide are doing it right? While the vast majority are horrendous? Doesn't that indicate that society is wrong? America has 25% of the world's incarcerated population, with just 5% of the global population. Our society seems happy to have shitty prisons and people locked up for decades for possessing a plant. Seems to me that going by what society thinks is a bad idea. Nazi German society thought it was a great idea to murder people by the millions just for being different. Aztec society thought it was cool to have human sacrifice.

Your logic is completely broken: in one post, you argue that just because a group of people ("society") decides to murder someone doesn't make it right, but then you argue that just because society decides to lock someone away for decades and torture them, that that's perfectly fine. You can't have it both ways.

Exactly.

And the cops are basically Joffrey Lannister Baratheon.

(and you better damn well have a way of communicating when and where a restricted airspace is

They have that, it's called "TFRs". Any pilot can tell you that. Anyone who doesn't know that has no business flying any kind of aircraft.

You can't "kill" a drone. It's not alive.

And with many weapons systems, you don't "destroy" the target either, you incapacitate it; for flying threats, that means hurting it enough that it just falls out of the sky instead of hitting its target and detonating.

So yes, "take out" is proper layman's terminology.

Seagulls aren't made of metal.

You do realize that these drones aren't any bigger than a suitcase, don't you? You could probably take one out with a small Estes rocket (with no explosive warhead) if you could hit it.

I believe firefighters are also the most trusted profession here in the US too. Certainly far above police; the police here suck.

I've never heard of a firefighter doing anything to abuse his power, ever. That's certainly not the case with cops, where it's a regular occurrence. I've even read about an asshole policeman, a few years ago, arresting a firefighter because he wouldn't move his fire truck, which he was using to shield an accident scene from traffic. That didn't work out too well for the cop IIRC.