Sorry, but in this case we're definitely talking religious social conservatives here. Now obviously the social conservatives in places like Iran are a lot more extreme than the ones we typically find in the US, but they're still coming from the conservative side of things, as they're attempting to rule by a set of ancient religious laws that are designed in part to stifle progression and return life to a time long ago (that probably never existed) when society was morally pure.

The words "conservative" and "liberal" mean different things in different contexts and in relation to different countries and political systems, and mean even more different things when you throw in the differences between social, fiscal, and general governmental policies. A conservative in Iran is not the same as a conservative in the US, so there's really no need to take offense if you identify as a conservative and that word is used as a pejorative when describing a group in a different country and culture.

No bandwidth caps except for the fact that it takes 3 weeks to download a single episode of a TV show. I used to have dialup for similar reasons, but these days nearly every hotel has wifi available and if your DSL or cable goes down frequently enough to be a problem then you should probably switch to a different provider.

To some degree, but the first prius went on sale in the US in 2001, which was 11 years ago. Lots of people replace their cars far more often than every 11 years.

From what I've seen, diesel prices tend to be more volatile than gasoline prices. Around here, diesel will range from around 50 cents cheaper to 50 cents more expensive than gasoline depending on a number of factors (including, as far as I can tell, a coin flip). So, the price of the fuel shouldn't be an overarching factor in deciding to go for one or the other.

Having said that, though, diesels do get good mileage, and as long as you live in a decent-sized city or near a major highway there usually isn't too much difficulty in finding gas stations that sell diesel fuel.

We have a couple of problems here: As you point out, hybrids are more expensive than they should be for purely cost-concious consumers. Secondly, though, with all-electric cars (or even gasoline-assisted electrics like the Volt) coming out, it's becoming more and more obvious that hybrids are destined to be a short-lived stepping stone and not the long-term solution to our oil and pollution problems. This means the environment-concious people are more likely to buy a Leaf or a Volt than buy another hybrid.

So, basically, hybrids aren't cost effective enough for people buying primarily on cost, and they're not green enough for people buying primarily on environmental friendliness. As all-electrics continue to improve, the age of the hybrid will come to an end.

As in "Caprica was a major frakking disappointment."

If the influx has only been happening for the past 10 years, then it's far too early to make those sorts of claims. Unemployment in Ireland has been steadily rising and they're just now starting to implement the types of austerity measures that have tipped Greece into chaos. When economic times get tough and people start losing their jobs, they start to look for people to blame. Foreign immigrants are an easy target.

You may be right that Ireland will be able to escape the rampant racism and ethnic conflicts that usually occur in situations like that when the economy goes south, but I think it's too early to tell how it will pan out.

We should extend it to cases like that, yes. Innocent people have had their lives ruined more than once due to accusations of child pornography because someone else was piggybacking on their connection. With the ubiquity of WiFi, more sophisiticated methods of determining who the culprit is are needed. The cops should not be allowed to conduct raids or make arrests based solely on an IP address.

It's not really all that unusual or all that difficult. A lot of less scrupulous moderators abuse the underrated/overrated mods because they're immune to meta-moderation. Also, Ibelieve the label on it is just the last moderation to be applied, so a +4, informative could become a +3, troll with a single troll moderation.

Why would they need to band together with others, though? In the social networking space you have Facebook on top, Google a distance second, and nobody else even worth mentioning. If there were a lot of mid-sized players out there who combined could equal a significant fraction of Facebook's user base it would make sense, but there aren't.

Yes, and then Google came along and Yahoo consistently failed to do anything to effectively meet that threat, despite plenty of opportunity to do so. Google was not always the massive behemoth it is today...had Yahoo been smarter, it could have easily pushed Google aside and remained the dominant search/portal company, but instead if took misstep after misstep until it became an afterthought.

Las Vegas and countless Indian casinos are built on games that range from entirely to almost entirely random chance. I, personally, don't get the charm of gambling at all, but obviously a lot of other people do. When the lottery gets big like this, and the national news starts to run stories on it, you also get the added incentive of peoples' innate desire to be part of something that everyone's talking about.

I've bought exactly one lottery ticket in my life, and spent a total of $1.25 gambling in Las Vegas. I find gambling in general insufferably dull and pointless, but I'm clearly in the minority based on how large and profitable an industry it is.

An automated vehicle would be able to detect the moose and apply the brakes far faster than any human possibly could. There already are rudimentary collision-avoidance systems in some cars, and they'll only get better over time.

Came here looking for this. Was not disappointed.

When you "like" things, you get updates from those things. It is conceivable that someone would want to see updates from some organization while not wanting their friends to know they like that organization.

Having said that, it's been clear from Facebook's inception that your "likes" are public (at least to your friends) information. It would be nice if you could pick and choose who saw your likes similar to how you can pick and choose who sees your statuses, but Facebook isn't under any legal obligation to make that happen.