Not "even with" but "especially with". You can make a movie for $30M and it grosses $300M and that'll still be a "loss" on the books if anyone is due points on profit.

I've also found that laptops are bad for power. My desktop uses less power when in "sleep" than my laptop when "off" (when fully charged, and not charging at all). My desktop is close to the laptop "off" when the PC is on and idle (doesn't include the monitors). For me, a well-built PC is cheaper to run than a laptop that's off 95% of the time. But then, I built it with a laptop processor, zero fans (aside from the one in the energy star power supply), and power in mind.

External monitor? I find it helps last if I'm using an external-only display. The laptop battery isn't powering the monitor, just sending the signal along for the external monitor.

I'm saying there is no such thing as "legal". It's illegal or it's not. If it's illegal, then it's illegal. In your question, two courts finding differently, that requires two people convicted of the same thing. That makes it illegal.

Hence why I lean on the side of "if you can be convicted of it, it's illegal, regardless of how the Supreme Court will rule about it after you've spent 10 years in prison".

I wanted to try out some of the sites in the list. A few of them have to work still, right?

Hmm, three of my posts on different stories all modded down within minutes, including this one on a relatively old story well past the date when most readers have moved on. It appears that I've annoyed someone who is very petty and has decided to list my comments then downmod them. Is that person going to be a childish coward or own up?

Snowden turned both whistle blower and traitor.

I mostly agree with you, but I don't see how giving information to American journalists could be considered treason. The rest of the world did not hear it direct from Snowden. We've been manipulated into thinking he's a traitor when he was really the enemy of powerful bureaucrats instead of the USA.

Yes but none of them actually had time to read it did they?
Even the name was a very low trick, since it implied that anyone rejecting it was not a patriot. In the political climate of the time voting against it looked like a career ending move, and career is what seatwarmers on both sides saw as important above all else.

Because the part that changed is a very small part of the structure of government. When there's a mess dating back to Edgar Hoover it's not going to be cleaned up by a single administration no matter who is in charge. I wrote something similar here when Baby Bush got in, but he didn't even attempt to touch the Clinton era mess since it would have cut into his vacation time.

My brain melts when I watch the Discovery Channel

Offtopic, but I decided to watch a "documentary" made by those guys on Charles Manson. They made him look like some evil genius instead of some loser that tried to kill people out of spite when things went wrong with his music career, got the wrong ones and was caught by Park Rangers for vandalism.

Toaster: Howdy doodly do. How's it going? I'm Talkie, Talkie Toaster, your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkie's the name, toasting's the game. Anyone like any toast?
Lister: Look, I don't want any toast, and he doesn't want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. No toast.
Toaster: How 'bout a muffin?
Lister: Or muffins. Or muffins. We don't like muffins around here. We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks.
Toaster: Aah, so you're a waffle man.

A civilian reactor, to a tried and tested design, with the control systems built by Germans versus a one off secret enrichment plant built by local contractors.
I'd back the former as more secure versus the latter just about everywhere, probably even in the USA given some massive fuckups in defence industry electronics at times.

Tyranny is seen as the "easy way out" by the unprincipled in any *ism. As the "gene pool" of any group shrinks you end up with less people that see concentrations of power as dangerous, and whatever values the group is supposed to represent become irrelevant in the face of increasing personal power.
In far too many situations "cutting red tape" is code for "I want to be a tyrant", and we need to especially beware of those that know little about how society runs that push simple, blanket solutions.
There's one near me whose solution to stopping crime was to lock up all the bikers. Of course that didn't stop crime such as one of his own government attempting to shake down two supermarket chains for money, funny how that one was initially hidden and is still free while the bikers don't get bail for merely meeting.

And do not mistake me for a conservative or a traditionalist, I am neither.

So, do we have here - a whiney little gay woman hater or a whiney little virgin that thinks he should get a free girl without doing anything to make one think he's worthwhile to be with? Or is there some other reason for the sheer poison above that even people in their 70's would think is too fucking medieval?

However you wrote:

the only way to get into Offline Mode is to first be online. Apparently you're supposed to know ahead of time when your Internet connection will die for a week.

That is both deliberate misinformation and calling me a liar over my account of how it behaved above.