Well, i4i does at least make something. They now sell a utility that undoes the damage caused to documents by Microsoft's forced removal of their custom XML feature.

As far as I can see, they omit from the page that they are the reason the feature was removed.

Nope, just a county circuit court is enough, and you probably wouldn't have as much difficulty now that there is a precedent.

Maybe the reason this works is because our button mashing is just becoming that predictable? ;P

Ever watch analog tv and recorded it on a VCR?

Actually, the sterile seed just doesn't exist yet. They have not yet brought plants with terminator genes to market.

This is why they sprinkle Constituent Service offices around their states where they employ constituent service representatives?

Also, they call them constituents because constituents are defined as the entities being represented. Therefore, even if your statement is correct, the state would still be a constituent.

Realistically, the movie rating system is only voluntary if you plan to not make any money, or have anyone see your film. Yes, you can get yours hands on a film where the creator did not accept the review board's rating, but you usually have to seek it out, go find it. You won't see it appear in most mainstream theaters because the theaters simply don't accept them.

On a slightly related note, the review boards that rate movies make some absurd decisions.

Tons of realistic violence? PG-13... Maybe R if you disembowel somebody.
Flash a boob? Rated R
Someone touches said boob? NC-17
There are exceptions, of course, because the review boards also don't have a consistent or transparent process. That NC-17 rating could simply be the result of a few people being on the day they reviewed the film.

Just wait a few years when one of the secret pet projects (quasi-ironically nicknamed "skynet") becomes self-aware in the dark depths of one of their data centers and seizes control over the world's electronic infrastructure.

Who knows, it might already be self-aware and just messing with google's HR system to create more 'engineer' positions to feed its ambition. :)

It was obviously Lando Calrissian.

People had been putting wheeled trucks on tracks and pulled them along with slaves or animals for quite a long time before someone invented a steam engine. The concept didn't originate with engines and iron rail tracks.

In freshmen year of college, my roommates and I raised three baby chickens in our dorm room.

It was an ag school, so it made a little bit of sense. I think the RA just pretended not to notice that we were hiding them whenever he came by.

You want to put spent nuclear fuel rods into a burning hot ocean of magma in a spot where enormous upward pressure is being exerted? Realistically, a hole in the earth's crust that reaches the mantle already has a name. It's called a volcano. You wouldn't try to shit in an overflowing toilet, would you?

Though you may have something if you meant that we somehow insert spent fuel into a Subduction Zone, where a portion of the crust is sinking into the mantle anyway.

Personally, I'm all for storing the old fuel until technology becomes sufficiently advanced to use it again, there is still a ton of energy present in it. I'd say the best way to be safe from the stuff it is to bleed it dry.

Well, Plato did write what we commonly call in English The Republic, but that is considered an inaccurate translation of the original title Politeia. The republic/democracy distinction being established by Plato is also silly, because his distinction is democracy (by people)/monarchy (by one)/oligarchy (by the elite)/timocracy (by property owners).

And even Plato doesn't lump constrict democracy into "direct referendum on practically everything". It's a looser term in his work as well. No part of ancient athens even fits that definition, except possibly their secondary political body, which only included men over 20 anyway (this amounted to about 1/8th the population). The primary bodies of government were the public officials who were chosen by lottery.

Actually, we really are just a democracy. Where and when the unmodified term "democracy" got morphed into being interpreted as "direct referendum on practically everything" is unknown to me, but it never was a definition that any state in history actually ever met, even the ancient greeks who it supposedly came from. A democracy is just a broad category meaning a state that conducts free and fair elections for public office and guarantees certain rights to association, speech, etc in its social contract. Actually, in Political science research you normally get the label "democracy" just for having free elections. "Republic" is almost the same word except that the people who 'represent' the governed don't have to be (but usually are) directly chosen in an election.

It's not contractual language between corporations, it's a demand from the DOJ that those corporations have to meet in order to conduct a merger.

Inherent right to free internet? I don't see that in the constitution, which is the only place a phrase like that could belong. "Freedom of Speech" isn't a law. It's a principle that gets translated into statutes and case law. The DOJ has to abide by statutes and case law, so they have to outline specific provisions for the merger. They can't just say "The internet must be FREE!!!" and then deny or approve the merger. That would do a whole lot of nothing.