It's not real like a car, it's digital. Everyone should have access to it for free.

McAfee did nothing different than what millions of people do every day via TPB.

work performed by people relying on these folks to do their jobs falls dramatically. IT support staff frazzled at having to constantly find solutions to problems created by people who are supposedly wizards at what they do.

IT management oblivious to problems so long as products get shoved at door and they can make their bonuses.

You do realize stopping the flow of gas to Europe would hurt Europe more than it would Russia, don't you? That is why there are only economic sanctions going on and not the stopping of gas purchases because Europe needs that gas. And Russia knows this.

The supply lines run from Russia to the west, not vice versa.

They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable.

So why are Russian troops and Russian-trained operatives fomenting the unrest we're seeing? Don't you think Russia would want Ukraine to avoid what's going on? Why lie about ethnic Russians supposedly being targeted when they could provide not a single shred of evidence to show this was happening?

Russia started this because the people of Ukraine got fed up being used as a pawn by Russia and all the corruption their former leader was doing. That is why they opened up his former residence to show where the Ukrainian people's money was really going instead of for roads, electricity, etc.

Russia is the one who is causing the problem and the lies of the Crimean vote show the reality of the situation. Putin has become a modern day Stalin, though without the gulags. From dictatorial control of the media, the false imprisonment of political rivals and those who oppose his authoritarian rule, manipulating vote counts and election qualifications, goon squads to rough up and kill opponents, he has taken Stalin's playbook and updated it for the modern era.

Is there no comparable funding in the US, and if not, what is the political obstacle?

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the U.S. government gave out billions of dollars to companies to lay fiber all over the country for the expected increase in internet usage. They were trying to give a boost to the thousands of ISPs we had at that time by taking over some of the cost of the upgrade.

Tens of thousands of miles of fiber were laid and then nothing. It was at this same time The Great Consolidation started to take place and over the next decade we went from thousands of providers to a literal handful. All that taxpayer money that was given to companies to lay fiber went wasted because after it was laid, the money that was left over was used by companies to buy up competitors rather than upgrading backend services to provide higher speeds.

The result is what you see today. 3 or 4 providers covering the country with the vast majority of people having only 1 or 2 providers to choose from, both offering the same high prices for the same slow speeds.

The difference between your country and ours is that private industry is supposed to react to consumer demand by providing better products/services at lower prices than their competitor. In reality, millions of dollars each year are spent bribing elected officials and those involved with decision-making of rules and regulations to prevent real free market principles from taking hold.

To be perfectly blunt, the way things are now in this country, with businesses holding sway and able to get elected officials to do their bidding, is not too far off from the way things were done in your country, and most of Eastern Europe under Soviet rule, in the past. What the people want is becoming less and less relevant with those who have the power and influence dictating how things will be.

The interpretation comes from the ancient Hebrew writings which (supposedly) outline what the big guy said. As there have been a few years since the writings were created, and not many people still understand that form of language, they've misinterpreted what those writings said.

This was compounded by the Christians not understanding what the original words were and changing the meaning.

I'm not making this up. Go read the history of how this particular commandment has been misinterpreted for ages.

Here is a good explanation of why people get it wrong and this onecomes from the Jewish perspective (ignore the vegetarianism portion).

and God actually said 'Thou shalt not kill'.

The correct interpretation is 'Thou shalt not murder'. A very significant difference. Besides, the Bible is full of tales of God telling people to kill someone, wipe out entire villages, towns and cities so obviously killing someone who has wronged society is not against Biblical doctrine (for whatever that is worth).

Because of people like this. Or the person (or people) who thought it would be fun to put cats in a bag and beat them to death, or the guy who raped and killed an 11-month old.

For these reasons, and a whole host of others, these people have decided the basic rules of society do not apply to them. As a result they need to be removed. Keeping them alive does nothing except waste taxpayer money on people who will never be productive members of society.

That is why we have the death penalty.

15/5 is shit. The speed should have been doubled years ago and the price should be substantially lower. For 15/5 Verizon wants to charge me $75/month and I'm hardly in the boondocks. For that speed the price should be $45.

My points still stand. We have slow speeds and high prices in this country as a direct result of no competition.

anyone remember in the pilot of the Battlestar Galactica remake . . . designed it that way on purpose to prevent hacking?

I do and I grinned when I heard those lines. Like so many of us on here, I work in the IT field (mainly solving problems created by others), and want to continually smack people upside the head when I hear them talking about wanting to add devices at random to the network or all the things they do on their smart phones.

The amount of people, in IT especially, who think networking everything is the be all and end all is staggering simply because these people, do not think the process through to realize the HUGE security issues they are opening themselves up to. These are the same people who think pushing the envelope of technology is a good thing until it bites them in the ass and they come running to my area to fix what it is they broke.

In a way, I get a sense of schadenfreude when I hear about people who have their phones lost/stolen with all their information on it, or who install the latest and greatest piece of software and find themselves wide open to attack.

Like most things, there is a reason not being at the forefront of technology is a good thing. You let others make the mistake and get exploited so you know how to be safe. In the case of Galactica, not being networked and not having the latest and greatest was its strongest defense.

Note that one key element of cost of any service is population density, not population.

So what's the excuse for high prices and slow speeds in places such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc? Those would certainly qualify as population dense.

The fact of the matter is the FCC, just like Congress and local governments, has been bribed to allow near monopolies to exist rather than enforcing existing laws regarding competition. As a result the U.S. continues to fall further and further behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband penetration, speed and obviously, price.

Currently we are ranked lower than places in the former Soviet Union for both speed and price, and well behind places such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. You can keep using the excuse of population density and large land area, but the reality of the situation is we have only 3 (maybe 4) providers in this country who have tacitly agreed not to compete with each other, the end result being what we have now: low speeds for high prices.

Link one for reference

Link two for reference

Link three for reference

Note that all of the above links are from November-December of 2013, less than six months ago so the information is up to date.

I've no idea what sort of creds the writers have

Considering Mayim Bialik is an actual neuroscientist and several of the consultants for the show are physicists, the creds of the writers are very well established.

Don't forget Danica McKellar who showed up for an episode, with her degree in mathematics (sum cum laude). Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene and Neil Degrasse Tyson have also appeared with Hawking lending his electronic voice to a handful of episodes as well.

The fact of the matter is the show is written to both poke fun at the foibles of the nerd/geek crowd as well as provide a light-hearted commentary of some of the people, similar to yourself no doubt, and how they perceive things. Yes, much of it is formulaic but the zingers are worth ignoring the obvious plot holes (the most common of which is how Penny can survive on a waitress salary).

It's a show. Stop being a nerd and trying to dissect everything as if it's supposed to have some grand, overarching meaning to anything.

So then you're agreeing if I leave my door unlocked at night and someone comes in and steals something, it's my fault because the asshat thought it was okay to steal?

Shall we take that twisted logic to the next phase and say if you get shot it's partly your fault because you weren't wearing a bullet-resistant vest? After all, you knowingly wore something which wasn't secure (your shirt/jacket) so obviously it's partly your fault for getting shot.

If some crackers screw you over, that may be on them, but it's still partly your fault.

So like when a woman is drunk and she gets raped, it's her fault. Gotcha.

Essentially what you're saying is asshats like Anonymous don't have to take personal responsibility for their actions because their victims were asking for it.

Raj and Howard in front of a 3d printer:

Raj: Ooh. I, I think it's done.

(Opens door to printer)

Raj: It worked! We printed a whistle.

Howard: Amazing. You realize these things go for 25 cents a pop at a party store.

Raj: And we made it in only three hours!