That's a cop-out if I've ever heard one. Airline pilots have everything they say and every interaction with the controls recorded on every flight and somehow they manage to execute their duties quite well even in crash situations. If a train engineer is doing something they aren't supposed to be doing then they should damn well expect to get a spanking for it. Any equivocation on this point is simply trying to weasel out of being responsible for their actions.

Pretty much everyone in retail has a camera on them all day. Anyone working at an airport too. And a bank. Airline pilots don't have a camera but they do have everything they say recorded. Stock traders have every piece of electronic and phone correspondence tracking in some manner.

Fact is that having a camera on you is not that big a deal as long as it is done above board and with reasonable privacy accommodations. They're really only going to review the tape if they think there is a problem. And if you are worried about whether you'll be seen picking your nose, then don't pick your nose.

They don't want stuff taken from other people? Bullshit. They just want the private sector to do the taking instead of the public sector. The right is all about removing restrictions from banks, deregulating industries, allowing companies to dump whatever they want into our streams, lakes and air, etc. They very much want to take things and they don't want to pay taxes so they don't have to give anything back. They are very happy to take away your rights if they don't like what you do. They want to take away women's reproductive rights. If you are an atheist they're very eager to take away your freedom to avoid organized religion. If you are gay they want to take away your right to love whomever you want. They're very eager to spend an absurd amount of money on defense and instead of taxing an appropriate amount they instead borrow the money burdening future generations.

The right doesn't take stuff? Give me a break...

Not strictly true at least with regard to being monitored by an employer. There are Federal and often State laws regarding whether recording is permitted in some circumstances. While employers usually have wide latitude they cannot legally record anywhere without limitation. Furthermore when a union gets involved then the right of the company to record may be subject to a collective bargaining agreement.

- I see, so the reasons to use PowerPoint are exactly the same reasons as the ones to ban PowerPoint.

I know, it's hilarious. These agencies/companies get hacked due to their own willful negligence... then scream "Hackers did it!" like hackers have magic hacking wands that turn servers inside out. It seems that the only piece of info that would have been remotely hard to get was filing status... which the "hackers" just guessed at. It looks like they were 50% successful, and I bet if compared with the victims filing status, they likely had a 50% chance of filing jointly or something. What a joke. This is completely and entirely the IRS's fault.

Make a new law, if you get hacked, you have to pay the person whos data you lost $100,000. Problem solved. You can then decide if spending time on securing the data is worth it, or if you just want to not store it. It IS possible to prevent this sort of thing. These agencies and companies just don't think it's profitable to do so when the penalty for losing a persons info is nothing more than a press release.

More or less yes. Monitoring is not the same as micromanaging. When part of your job is public safety (pilots, engineers, cops, etc) then a bit of passive monitoring is very much in the public interest and generally will outweigh the worker's right to privacy while performing their job.

Depends on the human and depends on the automation and depends on the circumstances. Your assertion is far to broad to be correct as a general proposition.

Already being worked on but controlling train speed isn't quite that simple. GPS has trouble in some locations on the ground so a reliable speed limiting system would necessitate something a bit more complicated. However I agree that there really isn't any good reason not to have it be a part of the technology package on trains.

Citation please? I'm an industrial engineer professionally and monitoring of workers is a pretty big part of my professional life. I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks. Perhaps a clumsy system in specific circumstances but claims of any "distracting effect" sound like union representative talking points rather than actual scientific facts. In fact in my experience the opposite is typically true. I find that people tend to be more vigilant when they are aware they are being monitored as a general rule. Some people dislike it but as long as they aren't interrupted the monitoring is rarely actually distracting. Pilots in aircraft have everything they say monitored and yet somehow they manage to operate a vehicle that is even more complex than a train quite competently.

Just because you don't pay the fee separately doesn't mean you don't pay it. And if you go to the grocery store and someone puts your groceries in the bag you had better believe their paycheck is partly covered by your bill. They aren't doing it as a charity. Some are just more clever about hiding the charge than others.

There is no such thing as free shipping or free handling. Whether you break out the charge separately or lump it all together you'll end up paying it one way or the other.

Even a 1 pound ground package will be cost something close to $7-10 and probably more if it is any distance. UPS and Fedex don't deal in weights less than a pound - they round up to the nearest pound. You don't have to take my word for it. Go ahead and try to get a better price from Fedex or UPS. I promise you that you cannot do it.

It isn't $3 and won't be unless you ship a HUGE (meaning many tens of thousands) number of packages. The only way you might get a shipping cost that low would be to ship it in a padded envelope using first class mail via USPS with no tracking. I've been shipping via UPS and Fedex for literally decades. Your perception of what it should cost to ship doesn't match reality.

High prices does not mean they are necessarily profitable and no it doesn't mean they necessarily can afford to ship stuff for free. Maybe they can but you simply don't have the information to make that judgement.

There is no such thing as free shipping. If it is "free" then it is simply rolled into the price of the item, possibly at the expense of the profit margin of the vendor. Companies like Amazon get good shipping rates because they ship an enormous volume of packages. I use their Prime service and it's great but I have no illusions that the service is actually free of charge.

You think Dice ruined slashdot and yet you are still here. Curious...

Actually that's probably pretty close to their actual cost to ship an item like that. Couriers like Fedex and UPS charge by weight (or dimensional weight) and discounts to shippers are based almost entirely on volume. Thinkgeek doesn't do the kind of volume Amazon does and won't get the kind of discounts Amazon gets. So I'd expect their freight cost to be $5-7 or so for an item like that for ground service with tracking. Then you have to consider handling. They have to pay for a box and stuffing which will probably cost between $0.50-1.00 and they have to pay someone to put the item in the box, seal it, and ship it which is probably another $0.30-0.75. Frankly $7 isn't shocking at all.

People have gotten spoiled on freight costs but I used to own a company that would ship several hundred packages a week and $7 shipping and handling for delivery by UPS or similar is pretty much what you should expect to pay from anyone who isn't a very large company that ships thousands of packages a day.

First, the merger hasn't been approved yet. Second, Comcast is larger than TWC and Charter combined. TWC+Charter is roughly the same size as Comcast and in theory could be a competitor though in practice I doubt that would be the case. Third, Comcast owns content like NBC. TWC and Charter do not.

Time Warner Cable is not the same company as Time Warner Inc. They have been separate enterprises since 2009.

The two transactions couldn't be more different. In addition the buying entity here is Charter Communications, not TWC.