I do wonder why everyone is so gung-ho about the single core atom,,, isn't the dual core only about $5 more? That's worth it for me... add on a Nvidia chipset (please do CUDA), it'd be beautiful.

Intel is restricting the dual-core Atom to desktops AFAIK. Probably something like 80-90% of Atoms are in netbooks, so the dual-core Atom not an option for most people for now, at least.

-1, TMI

Do you believe in democracy?

What does democracy have to do with it? Democracy and social services are not incompatible. Regardless, you might want to take a look at this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/opinion/polls/main2528357.shtml

They were hijacking your internet connection to periodically show you their monitoring software advertisement in your browser until you opted out. So you would randomly get their ad instead of the website you were attempting to reach. I think that's a pretty standard use of the word "hijacking."

From your link:

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States.

Like I said...

If the authorities thought that you were dangerous, they wouldn't have let you in

So I forgot to mention the caveat that you can be detained at the border, but once you're in, you're not going to be arrested and thrown into some secret prison.

I would never defend the US's use of torture, suspension of habeas corpus for terror suspects, etc. They're horribly corrosive and embarassing things that every American should be ashamed of.

But, our "secret police," if you will, is the CIA, which only operates abroad. The whole reason that Guantanamo Bay exists is that the CIA and military were afraid of having to be subject to US civil law and courts, so they held all the illegally captured and held prisoners on a base that's on foreign soil.

There's really no risk to someone who is vacationing in the US of being arrested and held without warrant. If the authorities thought that you were dangerous, they wouldn't have let you in, hence the ridiculously onerous requirements for getting in, even for visa-waiver countries. The FBI and domestic police know better than to try to flagrantly break laws regarding habeas corpus or torture, because if it happened within our borders -- where our civil courts have clear authority -- they know their asses would be handed to them.

The article's illustration includes an astonishing statement regarding the two J-2X engines: "NASA says the extra engine doubles the chance that something will fail".

I would assume that they're following logic similar to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate#Additivity

NY should drop their income tax and replace it with a flat sales tax increase.

We already have some of the highest sales tax rates in the country when you consider state plus local rates. Raising the state sales tax would only drive businesses out of state when internet stores cannibalize their sales.

There's also that whole inherent regressivity that sales taxes have.

(2) Obama may have been born in Southeast Asia, and therefore not a natural born citizen.

Dude, you can't even get your conspiracy theories right... Obama was born in Hawaii, but since his father was a centaur, he's ineligible to be President.