Right now the provider with the most expensive plans is Verizon. I know as I switched a little over a year ago. AT&T was cheaper over time than Verizon and had better support where I live (East Coast) in some places. This is for "just" phone service with text messages rather than a data plan as none of us has a smart phone. For data plans it makes no real difference - they all cost too much.

Do I think they need to buy T-Mobile? Hell, no! The whole idea stank from the get-go. If this causes them to raise prices I'll switch again. Two years is over at the start of next year and I check other plans at the end of every year. I rolled over for Verizon and they did their jolly best to roast me. I won't go that route again, ever. They might get my business again but I'll keep my eye on prices regardless. Too many of my friends seem to just stick with them out of inertia like I used to.

I'm an openSuse user and have been on some version of Suse Linux since Redhat 6 turned out to be such a personal disappointment. I picked up a commercial copy at CompUSA at some point in the '90s and have stayed with them for both school and work ever since. For most of that time I was dual-booting some version of Windows starting with Windows '98 and then moving to XP Pro which we keep alive on my daughters' PC now. Theirs is used mostly for games until the beginning of the year for about 14 hours when I use Block's tax software. That is the one reason we have a fairly carefully maintained and upgraded Windows machine in our home. I've used what was originally "Kiplinger's Tax Cut" since 1997 or so and I doubt I will change because the program seems to work so well.. When the requirements require a newer OS I'll upgrade their machine to Windows 7. They understand why I do it and I make sure they have the hardware and software they need to play the games they like. I would keep the PC up-to-date regardless since I have nothing against Microsoft or gaming and every intention of supporting my daughters interests regardless as long as they keep up with their chores, clean their room and keep their homework up-to-date.

"I slapped a 750 gig drive in my Lenovo over a year ago for about 80 bucks (Newegg)."

I bought a 3.5" 320 GB hard drive three weeks ago from there. The drive was roughly $42 shipped to my home. I'm using it now. Due to the recent flooding in Southeast Asia recently the same drive is priced at $85 or thereabouts now. My advice would be that unless you have an absolute immediate need for more space to wait a few months before even considering buying a new hard disk.

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

This, Citizen, is how World Federal Government is Protecting You!
Would you like to know More?

"You won't be laughing when a terrorist hijacks a train and crashes it into the White House.

Or smashes a Ferry into Mt. Rushmore."

How do you smash a boat into Mount Rushmore?
As to the first point: I would not be surprised since the agency seems reactive in the extreme. They have become very good at reacting to the last attack rather than working on ways to protect us from the next wave of reasonably creative terrorists.

"You should have known when the Democrats at their convention in Boston herded demonstrators off the street, and restricted them to a "free speech zone" surrounded by barbed wire, that the free speech wouldn't be the Obama Administration's greatest accomplishment."

No to mention the recent events outside the exchange on Wall St. Sure we have free speech and the right to assemble. Just not both at the same time. You can say whatever you want in private but don't be public about it or in groups as that is too much of a threat to the current power structure. If you find a place to speak publicly we'll move the police line so we get a better chance to arrest you or to give you the pepper spray treatment.

This has happened before. Then it was 1968 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was shown on national television and those watching at the time were fairly evenly split between blaming the Mayor of Chicago and the hippies being beaten by the Chicago PD. Personally I blame Mayor Bloomberg for what happened on Wall Street. If he had not wanted the violence to occur and made it clear to the leadership of the NYPD that they would be investigated independently and there would be firings as a result then none of what happened would have happened. It is fairly clear from here that he either ordered the violence or encouraged it through the upper management ranks of the NYPD.

Must be. The tinyurl link is broken but this is likely another extreme wing-nut.

Isn't that one of the reasons for the digital TV conversion? I recall that as one of the reasons to change the spectrum layout last time. How much more do they need anyway? The reason for a lack of communication before was a lack of planning as much as anything else.

They're Blue Dogs. They aren't Democrats but then they aren't Republicans either. These are congress critters that we're talking about. They are very easily confused by someone waving cash at them. It's not like they care what their votes are later when they can repeatedly lie on Fox News (just like the Republicans) and get away with it. The fact is that nobody is actually holding any of the lawmakers in either party to account for their lack of foresight now or any time in the future. The government has been on autopilot for so long that the debt ceiling fight is just yet another iceberg that this ship of state has whacked in to. Most of the country would rather let it sink than worry about it's future.

Exactly!. If the parties become exclusive enough none of us will fit in. Who do you expect us to vote for then? Likely none of the above. We're already at the point where we vote for the least distasteful choices. How far away from fascism or communism do you think that really is for a given side? Read the history of the Third Reich and you will see that the pendulum just swung too far and stayed there for long enough for the system to disintegrate. It's so simple that it should scare the crap out of you.

The moneyed interests have control and the question then becomes what do they want to do with that control? Hopefully it's simple profit but in practice profit can cost lots of lives. This isn't conspiracy. It's just the way the world works. It works for the rich at the cost of everyone else as it always has. The difference is the comfort level that the middle and lower classes are allowed to achieve. In class warfare the rich, everywhere, always win.

It's hard to overstate this. Most people seem to think that if a new party runs for the Presidency it puts them into the game. In order to consistently have a new party in a position to win anything of import that party has to be able to get the signatures to have a candidate enter a race but more important have candidates with local records, decent verified backgrounds, consistent funding and a history of winning at least some races. Without local support there will be no national support without massive astro-turfing which seems an awful lot like what this effort is. It sounds possible in the abstract but, from a practical standpoint, that is not how politics actually works. If you can't run and win dog-catcher then don't expect to have any reach at the national level because it won't happen. For a President, even if this group had one elected to office, to effectively govern would have to have at least a reasonable block of it's own party in Congress and the Senate. Considering how the current parties treat each other do you really think they'd give an independent a break?

In Europe there are groups of parties that vote together after lots of haggling over individual laws that then vote as a block. I find this to be fine in practice and their multiparty setup seems to work great. Over here there seems to be too many egos in the way of making progress and too many special interests that are able to take advantage of the current broken system. The loons run the asylum. It's unfortunate that these folks seems to want to take advantage of that fact to trick us into voting for those who are likely no different than the ones currently in office. This is especially true considering that they are being held up by yet another moneyed special interest in the financial industry.

What my Dad once called "the best system" has turned into a has-been free-for-all of idiotic showmanship trumping the combined social and societal interest by the clods in Congress. I am a Democrat but I owe nothing to extremists on either side. The worst that will happen during the next election cycle may be that I won't vote since I really don't have anyone to vote for this time around. Both parties have become way too extreme.

No Linux version!

While NASA is supposed to be a civilian outfit it should be noted that the first astronauts end even the first missiles started out as military rockets. Back in those days the crossover between the military and NACA (which later became NASA) was sort of into just about everything. The same contractors, test pilots and even some funding was shared by both. It was the cold war and there were other issues going on. The Russians had decent rockets and we needed to catch up. When the agency separated from the military and went on it's own budget without military help or working on military issues along with them the agency was slowly starved to death ever since. I suspect that if the military didn't believe in a need for NASA it would soon cease to exist.

Your argument does not really hold though since military R&D is extremely inefficient. NASA does an awful lot of research with that tiny budget compared to the current version of the "military industrial complex". There is a hell of a lot more pork in military R&D (thanks to the current political process) compared to the work NASA does and the way they do it.