News Flash! Intelligence agencies caught gathering intelligence! Film at 11!

We live in a remote area. There are two cell towers (AT&T and Verizon) in the county seat. They cover some, but not all of the local area. At our house, AT&T cell is blocked by a mountain. We get a little knife edge refraction signal, but you can't count on it. As far as using it for 911 calls, the idea is just silly.

If they get rid of the POTS, they pretty much get rid of phone service. Internet comes in by an rf link. We're pretty much the last house in the canyon we live in to get rf link internet or cell service. Everybody else uses smoke signals, satellite internet, or POTS.

Why doesn't the FCC do something useful, like bug the White House phones, and let the free market take care of the POTS demand?

Hang him, before he convinces someone important he isn't just a traitor in politically acceptable clothing.

Since we're introducing new concepts here, I propose something I call "Daylight Wasting Time." We all get up an hour later and go to bed an hour earlier regardless of the time of year. To heck with the lawn, having time to shovel snow, etc. And oh, yes: leave the clocks alone.

How we chose to run our state is our business. Period. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

Horrors! The world is going to end. How will I know what to think today?

I have faith. The government could screw even open source up.

You bet. Just because somebody puts something in print doesn't mean it is correct, or that they are on are side. What amazes me is that the Guardian hasn't gotten nailed for violation of the British Official Secrets act.

I use the Pi as the processor/display generator for a RasPlex system. While IMHO it isn't really fast enough for all 1080 video, it's plenty good enough for 720. That makes it a cheap alternative for things like our bedrood system. Although the RasPlex software is still in development, it works well enough for the purpose at hand, and better than some supposedly mature software. It's downloadable at http://rasplex.com/ The Pi is a nice little building block when you need a small, relatively inexpensive building block. It's been criticised for requiring an extermal power supply, keyboard, etc etc. But that seems to me to be a part of the building block idea. I wouldn't really want something that committed me to too many details! And, as someone has pointed out, you don't really need a permanent display, keyboard, or mouse, since it can be controlled over the network. I think it would make a nice router, if you wanted to really customize things.

It just goes to show that if you want to do something questionable, you really need to either run for office, or work for the government.

Unfortunately, for those of us who live in the U.S., Finnish schools are not available.

Obama and his wife appear to be racists. It's kind of crow jim, though. They don't admit they are against white people and Christianity, but watch what they do!

This appears to be another of those broad, sweeping, statements made by groups with an axe to grind. Doesn't whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or home school them depend a lot on circumstances? What schools are available to the child? What can the parents afford? What is the child like? My grandson has public school available to him. He has two different private schools available. Home schooling is a possibility, since my wife (his grandmother) was a public school teacher, then got a doctorate in teaching teachers to teach (!). There are other home schoolers around, which means some swapping of things is possible.

But our daughter choose to put him in public school. Why? He is an extremely social creature, and needs the time with other kids his own age. That probably has a severe impact on the success of home schooling him. The local public schools are clean, and the teachers appear to treat the students with respect. They seem to have a genuine concern for the students' success. Frankly, we can't afford either of the private schools.

A number of years ago, our two kids went through a mixture of private schooling, home schooling, and public schooling. The circumstances and the kids were different.

Before we totally slam public schooling, private schooling, or home schooling, let's carefully consider what is availabe in that area, and what the kid(s) is/are like.

Or maybe a lot of people realize that any fast, dramatic climate change is largely nonsense.

I rarely find myself in agreement with Mr. Gates, but I may this time. The idea that people who lack health care and food somehow much have the internet shows a lack of priorities. While some of us might be inconvenienced if we did not have the internet, I doubt our world would come crashing down.