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Comment Re:(Re:The Children!) Why? I'm not a pedophile! (Score 2) 284

Others have pointed out that your interpretation is wrong and explain why. However, even if your argument was correct, you reach the wrong conclusion because the Framers of the Constitution addressed the issue of technology that did not yet exist in the 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, if the Constitution did not explicitly grant the federal government the power, that power is denied to the federal government.

Comment Re:Awesome quote (Score 4, Insightful) 232

The whole business is fishy as hell. 29 states and in not one single location do they compete. The only reason they get away with it is because ...

they were banned from entering the market the other company was in when cable franchises were handed out in the first place (well, in most areas, they were banned from entering even the markets they are in, but they bought the companies that had been granted the franchise for that area).
The problem exists because our government created it. The cable monopolies did not start with the cable companies (although they worked to encourage it once it started).

Comment Re:Awesome quote (Score 1) 232

Comcast and Time Warner did not "voluntarily" choose not to compete. They were each given monopolies in certain areas and then bought up the other companies which had been given monopolies in other areas. Back when cable TV was new, local governments were given the power to limit who could provide cable service int their area. As a result, most local governments (if not all), issued only one permit to provide cable service. The justification for this was that cable TV was a "natural monopoly". Local jurisdictions which faced push back on the "natural monopoly" argument, argued that by granting monopoly status to a cable provider they could require them to give service to the entire municipality (or portion of the municipality in larger cities, some of which initially divided the city up between providers...long since all bought out by the same company in most cases).
While Comcast and Time-Warner could possibly have overcome this restriction to compete with each other, why would they? What would they gain from spending the amount of money it would take to overcome the regulatory obstacles to competing with each other? The likelihood of smaller profit margins and the significant possibility smaller total profits.

Comment Re:A bit early (Score 1) 279

Yes, the hospital retracted its claim. However, the questions is, did they retract their claim because the EHR system was supplied by a powerfully connected company, a company which has the majority market share for EHR systems, despite not following the laws requirements for inter-connectivity to competitors systems (at least according to several sources I have come across. I have not taken the time to confirm the information).

Comment Re:Ok, but (Score 1) 580

While you are correct that the person running the test may interpret the results based on their opinion of you, most of the time, the test is used to determine how nervous you are when answering a question. The assumption being that if you are lying you will be more nervous than if you are telling the truth. So that even if the person running the test is genuinely attempting to get an accurate reading, it does not actually mean anything. This means that anyone with sufficient self-discipline (and in the case of a polygraph test, "sufficient" is a fairly low bar) can pass an honestly administered lie detector test while lying through their teeth.

Comment Re:yes, let's "zoom out" (Score 1) 213

I did not say "it pre-dates fracking". I said that the article said that it pre-dates fracking....to be exact, the article quotes the researchers behind this discovery of saying that it pre-dates fracking. So perhaps you should accuse them of talking about things which they know nothing about rather than myself, who merely relayed (and made clear that I was doing so) what they said.

Comment Re:yes, let's "zoom out" (Score 4, Informative) 213

Of course, the "hot spot" mentioned in the article is NOT the result of fracking, since according to the article it pre-dates fracking. The article tells us that the methane in this "hot spot" is the result of old, leaky fossil fuel infrastructure (I am going to guess that this is primarily old pipelines and storage tanks, that have developed leaks over time, or were not particularly well-sealed when first built at a time when it was not worth the extra effort and cost to prevent such leakage).

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