"The difference being that software, games, music, TV shows, and movies can continue working as long as you have the media"

"So, when I buy a ticket to see a musical concert, that gives me the ability to see that same concert again whenever I please? Amazing. I thought that once the concert was over, that was it."

Jackass, have you always been a douche?

I travel between Phoenix, San Jose, Salt Lake City, St. George, and Las Vegas, and I've never had an issue with ATT and my iPhone 3gs.

You and most people I know don't have problems with using their iphone, but I hate when someone calls me on their iphone - either to my landline or cell. The voice quality is terrible from the iphone.

Hell, they may just simplify and do 1!January, 2@Feburary, 3#March, ...

Thanks for posting all my work related passwords on the internet.

Well, I think you can, actually. Capitalism is often described as 'greed is good'. Socialism at least ATTEMPTS to set up a system that actively resists the greed impulse. It may not succeed, and greed will exist no matter what system you set up, but that doesn't make every system equal in terms of how much greed is encouraged.

It's not how much greed is encouraged that makes socialism good or bad, it is how greed is tolerated that makes it bad. The ruling class only tolerates their own greed.

Local radio and opportunities for niche programming are disappearing.

Dr. Demento was syndicated, not local. He is definately niche.

It is a shame that it is harder to find a place for something different in this world.

Too bad there is not some system that can allow people to connect and search for content using computers.

I live in a small town. Clear Channel is one more way to erode something unique. The corporate whores at the FCC have decide to server their corporate masters, and this is just one more sympton.

I also live in a small town and if it weren't for the clear channel stations, I'd receive no radio stations (we have weak local stations with lots of static).

I've mentioned it a few times before, but one of the major reasons I refuse to believe the sincerity of measures like this scanning technology is that one can purchase large glass bottles in any airport departure lounge. A glass bottle is a far more effective weapon than many of the other items that they'll confiscate from hand luggage, yet I've never even seen the issue mentioned.

A pen and pencil are also very effective weapons.

"The holier than thou attitude is what I am taking issue with. "Yay America" is not an opinion, it is mocking another country for its laws. It does not earn any goodwill." Yay Planet Earth!

We're Number 1!

Unfortunately, Cable TV is not a market where the "market fairy" can fix anything because the government gave Comcast a monopoly. If there were competing cable companies, Comcast may have to clean up its act. Maybe the satellite tv market will fix the problem allowed by the government? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Cable_television Comcast has 25 million television subscribers in 39 of the fifty U.S. states,[24] although the company is losing customers by the thousands. In the fourth quarter of 2009, Comcast lost 199,000 cable TV customers and in the fourth quarter of 2008, the company lost 233,000 cable TV customers.[25] As of December 31, 2009 Comcast has 23.559 million video customers.

Our government is a balance. Legislative/Executive/Judicial, State/Fed. If individual states could undo any law, where is the balance there?

State/Fed balance was overturned with the 17th Amendment - the states were cut out of the deal.

I do the same.

A car payment is what keeps the middle class middle

Without a car payment I've also found that I don't "need" credit cards because my money going out is so much less than my money coming in.

How about running a SECURE system at home? simply having the PC with logins and auto lock-out would have stopped this idiot sociopath in his tracks.

The house was locked; You can't really get much more secure than that. The lock-out procedure on the house failed, again, can't fault the owner.

People love saying government is stupid and can never do anything right, but that's not true with everything. Currency is one example: there is enough political will and a real-world need to prevent counterfeiting (fraud). Government puts a good deal of effort into preventing counterfeiting, and the penalty is quite harsh and is well-enforced. While not 100% fraud-proof, they have done a pretty good job. I have not had a problem with being given counterfeit money recently, and I don't know of anyone who has.

The problem with counterfeiting money is that it causes people to lose confidence in the "value" of the money. They don't trust the money and it loses more value. Unfortunately, our government is now monetizing debt (just printing money) and people are now losing confidence in the dollar. As more people lose confidence in the dollar, the "value" is decreased. Our money is will soon get to the point that it doesn't make sense to counterfeit anymore. Perhaps many counterfeiters are already at that point and that is why you haven't been given counterfeit money...or maybe the counterfeit money is really good and you don't notice.

So if China was to try that as a precursor at an attack, it wouldn't do any good. We'd either already know about the attack, having seen the ships on the way, or it would be way too early, since the ships would take a long time to get here, and it would be back up by the time they got here.

Suppose China disabled the USA's electrical grid via physical attack. There would chaos - transportation shuts down, cities run out of food, medicine, etc. China then sends large scale military force over as a "peace keeping mission" to help rebuild infrastructure. Peace keeping force turns into occupation.

You don't have to pre-position troops to attack and the attack can be hidden.

http://onesecondafter.com/

A long while back, someone came in on Slashdot and claimed to have consulted/worked with the IRS, and described a security culture and tolerance for hair-trigger detection measures that would make any security fascist drool. So these problems would most likely be on a purely bureaucratic level, then?

So what you are saying is that some anonymous person posted on an internet forum claiming something that couldn't be verified (and then repeated by another anonymous person) and that this information could quite possibly be wrong? Well, I assure you that when I worked for NASA as an astronaut, nothing like that ever happened!