I'm not a big supporter of complete Laissez-faire capitalism, so don't take this the wrong way... But this story is about exactly the opposite of what you seem to think it is. The problem in this case is the franchise law -- which is government interference in the free market, which is anathema to true capitalism -- not with capitalism. Of course dealerships are going to sue -- they've got a nice racket going on, with government backing.

Wouldn't that be 'take a byte'? Sorry, couldn't resist.

I thought loan wolves all worked in the banking industry.

The Honeywell / GE Merger in 2001, for one. That was stopped by the EU, not the FCC, but the idea is the same.

Seriously? Of course indulgences were sold -- under the guise of 'charitable contributions'. If you are told that a contribution to charity can reduce your sentence in jail, and that the charity that you're supposed to contribute to is owned, operated, and controlled by the warden, isn't that basically selling a reduced jail sentence?

Indulgences were sold for the construction of St. Peter's basilica. The church investigated, and downplayed the role of the priest at the top of the chain -- instead, those that played up the idea to the poor were blamed. Those involved were not 'counterfeiting' anything, they were just misrepresenting what was needed for an indulgence (a prayer was just as good as money). However, the idea of giving indulgences to rebuild the basilica certainly started at the top, and is 'selling' no matter how you look at it.

Actually, you're completely correct -- in that Google is your friend.

According to wikipedia (I know, downmod me for using this as a source), abuse of the sale of indulgences was a major point of contention, and one of the reasons why Martin Luther started the protestant reformation. I can't imagine that wikipedia is any MORE biased on this subject than the official Catholic web site.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

Yes, but it should be the default, with an option to ENABLE script support for specific documents, not a system-wide setting. Like noscript lets you mark specific pages as trusted.

Well, gee -- how about creating the equivalent of noscript for Adobe, then? That way, the user can decide for themselves if they want to run scripts in what they THOUGHT was just a formatted text document.

While I'm almost definitely not in the same area as the OP, I do have direct, relevant, recent experience with this. This year, on our property, we had a complete leach field failure. Not exactly unexpected -- this particular field has been in continuous use for 40 years, and the tank has been pumped ONCE during that time (keep in mind, you are supposed to have your tank pumped out every 5-7 years). The total cost, including a new distribution box (the old one was cracked) for putting in an entirely new set of lines under a different part of the property -- $1700. That included excavation, having the tank pumped, materials, everything. While not cheap by any means, this will probably last us for another 40 years -- at which point the original field will almost definitely have returned back to usable condition, and we can have the distribution box switched back over to the original field.

Man, I think I need to get glasses. I looked at the headline, saw that Spring Design was suing Barnes and Noble over Nookie, and thought that maybe I was in the wrong business.

Obligatory... Without pictures, it didn't happen.

I think that what this actually demonstrates is that it isn't the size of the accelerator that matters -- it's how long you can keep it running before it explodes.