Higher than the already ludicrous prices they charge? Seriously, $40 to install a bit of RAM or $80 to "Add a compatible electronic device to your wired or wireless network with this electronic device setup service for Mac or PC." is outlandishly expensive for something that should take all of (or less than, frankly) 5 minutes.

That's a great story, and while I'm sure that everyone applauds your efforts to support a local business with your commerce, the only thing that jumps out at me from it was the fact that the local "mom-n-pop" store probably made little to no profit off of the sale (unless you also splurged on some cables or something high-margin like that).

Small stores like what you're describing don't have nearly the level of "clout" to negotiate w/ electronics manufacturers (and their distributors, natch..) as a BB or CC, so maybe they earned your loyalty and your custom the next time you go to buy a piece of electronics, but if the price-shopping behavior of all of us (myself absolutely included, hypocrisy aside) becomes the filter that all purchases go through, then ALL but the biggest brick-n-mortar stores will eventually just be forced to fold.

Personally, I avoid retail locations as much as humanly possible, with the exception of a (totally unhelpful to the B&M store) tendency to go looking at the stuff I'll eventually buy from Amazon or Newegg. So, I'm just as big a culprit as anyone else.

So, after writing all of that, I realize what a total muddle it must sound like.. I guess what I'm saying is that in a dream world, a local store would be able to compete on a price basis with their biggest competitors, without sacrificing the "local touch" that they rightfully are offering. I just don't see how anything like that is possible. The reality I see as most likely is a dwindling number of physical stores catering to the least savvy (and oldest) among us, until the generation of people that decidedly DON'T shop online simply die off. Sad, but (I think) inevitable.

The first thing I do when I get home from work is check my personal email (I work for a company that doesn't allow personal email at work for SEC reasons).

That's why they invented the Crackberry.. I work for the "Big Evil Bank of Doom (tm)", and they took away our outside email and chat (for much the same reason as yours did, I assume..) a few years ago.. My reaction was to get a BB.

But the, I guess I'm missing the point, which WAS the subject of the GP.

"People" includes a pretty wide range of people... I personally use a pair of Shure SE420 headphones, which cost me roughly the $300 figure you mention. While I do enjoy their sound quite a bit, I know in my heart (and head) that the sound coming from them is NOT twice as "good" as what would come out of a pair of $150 (Say some Shure SE210's) headphones.

The same argument seems like it would work for codecs. I'd imagine that "people" that consider themselves "audiophiles" would almost certainly sniff at using something as "lo-fi" as an Ipod in their setups.. More likely, they are one of the approximately 9 people that bought dedicated SACD players, which they hooked up to their $10K tube amp and their $300K speakers. And "they" would NEVER hook up an ipod, even with tracks that are left in PCM format, to this.

Unless my assertions about "people" are just as unfounded as the rest of what I'm reading here.

IANAL, but....

Tortious interference with business?

http://is.gd/fmmX

In relevant part, "Tortious interference of business.- When false claims and accusations are made against a business or an individual's reputation in order to drive business away."

Nothing in that definition about "libel, slander or defamation", and given the scenario you presented above (in which it is made clear that the INTENT was to "cause him harm by driving away potential patients. There is intent to harm the doctor on the part of the poster."), it sounds like that particular set of actions WOULD be actionable under (some) states civil codes.

Just curious..

Exactly what "constitutional rights" did Airtran violate? Pretty sure that the protections embedded in the Federal Constitution only applies to actions by Congress and (via the 14th amendment) the states. You could argue that the FBI (thus involving the Federal government) violated their rights, but it seems pretty clear from the record that the FBI were the first people to tell Airtran that they had no case.

None of this is to say that Airtran didn't violate some sort of statutory law (which they almost certainly did) if it can be proven that they acted as they did BECAUSE of the race or religion of the 9 people impacted, but statutory law and constitutional law are not at all the same thing.

They owed them passage to where they (Airtran) had contractually obligated themselves to take them. And, to bend over, not just backwards, but 720 degrees into a corporate pretzel, to apologize for allowing 2 teenage twits to publicly cause a demeaning spectacle that impacted 9 TOTALLY INNOCENT people.

That's what.

Chinese Fire Drill

Shit, I could dumb down the issues presented here into words of no more than 3 syllables, and my Rep (Joe Pitts, PA-16, a man who is (Not that it really matters..) significantly to the right of, say, Genghis Khan) who might actually agree to actually listen to me for 5 minutes or so if I asked him REAL nicely, and my 2 senators (Specter and Casey (who almost certainly would not) would not understand more than 20% of it.

I'd be better off talking to a wall.

Noted.. But my point (and the overall point of the article, as I read it) was that it appears that only conspiracy theorists believe that the NSA (or whoever) had backdoor hooks into M$-published DLLs.

To be honest, I seriously doubt they'd bother, as there are always people looking in the code for exactly that sort of thing. In contrast (and this is my own tin foil hat moment), I have little (really none) doubt that the NSA can find out literally anything about anyone if they choose to.. If they really wanted to know what was on your computer or your network connection, they'd simply tap your connection and do a black-bag op to clone your hard drive for examination (at their leisure) by their acres (see "The NSA doesn't measure computers in computing power; it measures them in acres. That's how they talk about their computers: how many acres of computers they have. ... We're talking about millions of processors that can work on a single problem simultaneously. The amount of computing power is phenomenal. It's just staggering." of computers.

Tin foil hat much?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/04/0652226

Except he was not obstructing...

Section (A) requires that one of the underlying (#1 or #2a~2d) be true.. None of them were.

Also, Section (C) speficially says that the person has only to answer one or more of the following:

Name
Address
date of birth.

Nothing at all in there about showing ID.

2921.29 Failure to disclose personal information.

(A) No person who is in a public place shall refuse to disclose the person's name, address, or date of birth, when requested by a law enforcement officer who reasonably suspects either of the following:

(1) The person is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a criminal offense.

(2) The person witnessed any of the following:

(a) An offense of violence that would constitute a felony under the laws of this state;

(b) A felony offense that causes or results in, or creates a substantial risk of, serious physical harm to another person or to property;

(c) Any attempt or conspiracy to commit, or complicity in committing, any offense identified in division (A)(2)(a) or (b) of this section;

(d) Any conduct reasonably indicating that any offense identified in division (A)(2)(a) or (b) of this section or any attempt, conspiracy, or complicity described in division (A)(2)(c) of this section has been, is being, or is about to be committed.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of failure to disclose one's personal information, a misdemeanor of the fourth degree.

(C) Nothing in this section requires a person to answer any questions beyond that person's name, address, or date of birth. Nothing in this section authorizes a law enforcement officer to arrest a person for not providing any information beyond that person's name, address, or date of birth or for refusing to describe the offense observed.

(D) It is not a violation of this section to refuse to answer a question that would reveal a person's age or date of birth if age is an element of the crime that the person is suspected of committing.

Well, sort of.

The guy was arrested when he refused to show ID to the cop.. Nothing to do w/ the contents of his CC bag.

And, if you follow the adventures of this guy, you'll see that the case was dropped in return for Mr. Righi not suing the pants off of that police dept.