For places like Seattle where you still have a lot of people that don't have DSL or cable as an option,

My god, there are large urban areas in the US (and large ones at that), where cable internet is not available?!?

Do you have other conveniences like electricity & indoor plumbing?

Wow...I thought internet options in Canada were pretty limited.....guess I'll count my blessings...

They go by many names... Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, Socialists...

And here's why they win. They've convinced Americans that the battle lines are "left vs. right", "republican vs. democrat", "liberal vs. socialist".

This keeps people fighting amongst themselves, arguing whether their shade of grey is the "right" way to run a government.

It's pretty obvious to an outsider what the power division is in America. It's pretty obvious if you look at america's decline over the past decades & see how authority has been consolidated & maintained. It's pretty obvious if you look at how fear and uncertainty are utilized by the government to herd the population in the direction they want them to go.

The battle lines are: "rich vs. poor". They almost always have been.

Until people understand that, and as long as people believe that stupid side issues like minor health care reforms (and yes, they are quite minor), gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, immigration reform, etc are what is going to ruin / save the country, the longer the people in power stay that way.

There are a ton of relatively affluent people here on Slashdot. It certainly wouldn't hurt you to allocate a small amount of money to EFF annually, and we know their results.

This.

Too many posts here are either "you should be willing to die for your rights, you sniveling cowards!", or "there's nothing we can do, nothing we should try, let's all go eat worms"...

Here's a simple, painless way to support the cause of protecting our rights. And as the court case shows, it is effective, if at nothing else than generating publicity regarding the crimes being committed by government on a daily basis.

Anyone who thinks what the NSA is doing is wrong should go and donate today.

The problem with this is that what is that even going to accomplish?...
It isn't like the court is going to make somebody go to jail if the law is broken. If YOU spy on somebody illegally you'll get locked up for it. If the government does it, well, I guess the rules just must not have been clear enough.

And this is one reason why they win. A large of the people who are even aware of what the NSA is doing, and who think it is wrong just don't think there is any way to change the system. The people in power have convinced the masses that either (1) what they are doing is right, or (2) you can't change it.

I'd suspect:
- 10% of people approve of what the NSA is doing is fine cause "I haven't done anything wrong" and "It'll help catch dem dirty terrerist's!".
- 50% just don't care, they just want to collect their paycheck and buy the latest shiny iThing they are told to purchase.
- 30% appear to care, but don't think there is any way for the system to change.
- 9.999999% care and are willing to act, but aren't a large enough group / organized enough to effect any change.
- .0000001% care and are in a position to act, but then have to flee the country and go live in Russia.

What is meant here however is that there is no limit to how fast space itself can expand. So say we have two ends of a ruler 1 meter apart. After a while, space itself would expand meaning that the ruler will now be longer than what it was.

No...almost right, but not quite.

Read up on it in on wikipedia, and especially the section on the effect of expansion at small scales. For the most direct answer, see here

The space between your atoms is not getting larger over time. As space expands, nucleic forces prevents the atoms from being moved further apart. It is possible that the expansion will one day become fast enough to overcome the nucleic force...resulting in all matter being ripped apart, and all sorts of other weird badness....but it's not like matter is becoming larger day to day.

Mass farther away from each other results in less gravity attraction on each other. So if there was enough mass to cause a big crunch then right now, everything would be contracting.

So I guess if I throw a baseball up in the air (or in a vacuum if you must), it'll just fly away into space? After all, what's going to slow it down? As it get's further away, there is less gravity....

See the problem with your argument?

stars and planets right now are flying around at faster than the speed of light

No, they aren't. Space is expanding at a rate greater than c. Objects are not moving "through" space at a space greater than c.

Imagine 2 dots on a balloon as you blow it up. Those dots increase in distance from each other. The faster you inflate it, the faster they "move" away from each other.

Same thing here, only in 3 dimensions, and the "balloon" is being inflated at a faster and faster rate.

On another note, this is your 3rd or 4th post describing the article and science as "bullshit". Why do you continue to belittle a subject that you obviously know very little about?

Even if you were a massless particle, you would reach the speed of light in less than 1 year of accelerating at 1G,

I don't mean to pick nits, but if you were a massless particle, you would already be moving at the speed of light.

Yes, but even putting dark energy aside for the moment, based on current observations we believe that some galaxies will never be reachable.

i.e. regardless of the why, the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. There is no evidence that this is going to stop, and some evidence that it will not.

Wrong on so many levels.

1) Yes, they are moving away from us at faster than the speed of light. This is well established.

2) As long as the photons reach a region of space receding at less than the speed of light, we can see these galaxies. Good info here

3) "And they fail to mention that they only way we're traveling through space is faster than light, some sort of weird quantum thing, by bending space, or via wormholes" None of which have been shown to exist. And there's some evidence that none of these options can exist.

Let's ignore all relativity and use kinematic equations

At which point the rest of your post becomes pointless.

As you approach the speed of light, it takes more and more energy to go faster (actually this depends on the frame of reference). Regardless, you can continue to apply 1G of acceleration indefinitely, but not exceed the speed of light.

The 30 years or 80 years or whichever is ship time due to relativity, not observer time.

Not as far as the light is concerned. Photons do not experience time (due to time dilation). If you were able to travel at the speed of light (you can't), the entire future of the universe would pass by instantaneously (from your perspective).

Yeah sure, wait until you see the latest product of Google Labs:

Sharks with frickin' lasers attached to the top of their spacesuit!

IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist), but as I understand it, the information is sent instantaneously (teleported), but can only be "read" via the use of a measurement taken at the source location & sent (via classical channels) to the target.

i.e.:
2 entangled particles exist. One at A and one at B
Measurement is take an A. This results in a change of state to both particles
Unfortunately, due to quantum funkiness, the state at B cannot be determined without the measurement from A.
Measurement is sent from A to B (via classical channels)
B can then determine the state of their particle (which matches the state at A)

Please excuse any butchering of the science that may of occurred due to my ignorance :-)

Ha, I'm Canadian! We in the North laugh at your petty squabbles and selfish greed!

I wonder if it'll stop snowing soon?