The FTC governs anything that involves anti-competitive practices. The FCC govern communications. It is not the FCC's job to determine if a particular entity is engaging in anti-competitive practices, however it is not barred from doing so. The FTC however is given the responsibility of identifying such violators and curbing that kind of behavior. So while nothing is stopping the FCC from identifying the anti-competitive practices of a communications company, they don't have to. The FTC however has to. It is true, not all monopolies are anti-competitive. Sometimes a monopoly is a monopoly because there's simply only one agent willing to engage in that particular business in that particular region.

That's all beside the point though. He was talking about the fact that he has only one ISP available to him, and my comment still stands. It's either because no other company wants to come in there, or his local government is actively preventing (either directly or through taxes and fees which make it cost prohibitive) competitors from coming in there. Neither of these are the FCC's fault.

You are confusing the regulation of the business itself with the regulation of their status as a monopoly. The FTC handles monopolies or rather it would be more appropriate to say it handles anti-trust law (not all anti-competitive behavior is from monopolies and not all monopolies are anti-competitive). The Bell System was a government sanctioned monopoly, and it's business was regulated by the FCC because it was a communications business. Had Bell System been a government sanctioned pharmaceutical monopoly, it would have been regulated by the FDA. It still would have had nothing to do with its monopoly status and everything to do with the type of business it dealt with. Furthermore, the government sanctioned the Bell System monopoly in 1913, whereas the FTC did not exist until 1914. So it's a poor example.

The FTC handles monopolies, not the FCC. The fact that you are forced to a single ISP is either due to a poor choice of location (e.g. some place only one provider is willing to spend the money to give access) or due to local government enforcing a monopoly (e.g. most towns in New jersey which enforce cable monopolies). None of these are the FCC.

I'm gonna take a modpoint hit for this probably but....

1/5 in binary is: 1/101 = 0.001100110011 ... repeating. That's not 1.

2/5 in binary is: 10/101 = 0.011001100110011 repeating. Also not 1.

3/5 in binary is: 11/101 = 0.1001100110011 repeating. Not 1.

4/5 in binary is: 100/101 = 0.11001100110011 repeating. Again, not 1

BUT! When you add 1/101 to 100/101 you get ... 0.11111 repeating, which actually equals 1. Which is correct. Nifty.

Depending on where you launch from, even conventional fission explosives wouldn't be too bad.

The absolute worst estimates had something like 1 or 2 people getting cancer for a single launch. I may sound callous, but seeing as how the result would be something capable of transporting thousands of people not just anywhere in the solar system, but even viably on a multi-generational trip of interstellar travel, I think a few lives is a small price to pay.

We sacrifice far more lives every day for things that are far more petty.

Why the need for a GPS tracker??

Just require a yearly inspection that records odometer reading. Last years km - this years km = total km traveled that year. Then get taxed based on that. The thing is, contribution to road maintenance isn't just mileage it's weight. If you are going to tax people based on the amount of damage they do to the road, then the tax rate per km should be influenced by the weight class of the vehicle.

A modern firearm cannot kill you if you drop it. Unless of course it has a bayonet attached and it was dropped from a ladder or something. Then you were technically killed by a bayonet and not a gun. Modern semi autos have firing pin safeties and modern revolvers have transfer bar safeties. The firing pin can only be engaged by pulling the trigger, even with the hammer down.

The only guns that go off when you drop them are for the most part curios are relics and those aren't seen as tools they are collector items. I just don't see someone using a vintage Colt Single Action Army revolver as a personal defense weapon. Or even something more recent like a Tokarev TT33 for that matter.

Heck, even the old 1911 has a grip safety; it cannot fire unless the grip safety is depressed. That means someone has to be holding in their hand. Some firearms have trigger safeties; the trigger can't be pulled unless the center of the trigger is depressed. Some firearms also have manual safeties that lock the trigger and the firing pin when engaged.

As for the issue of "if you think it's unloaded", the very first rule of firearm safety is "treat all guns as if they are loaded." Even if you don't follow that rule, if you follow the others you'll be fine. Rule 2 is never point a gun at something you are not willing to shoot. Rule 3 is keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. Rule 4 is be aware of your target and what is behind it.

As for the "kill your pregnant stepmother" bit, you can do that a lot more silently with a socket wrench than you can with a gun. If you're arguments held any weight we would see record deaths because firearm ownership is at an all time high. Firearm sales have been through the roof lately yet somehow people are NOT magically deciding to turn into murderers just because they own a gun or 2 or 10. Guns ARE tools. They do not inherently alter your psyche. They do not change your personality any more than a utility knife does. If you are not a murderer, buying a gun isn't going to change that. You are not going to shoot someone in a heated argument any more than you would beat them to death with a wrench or stab them to death with a kitchen knife or even strangle them with your bare hands.

Interestingly enough though, defensive uses of firearms ARE increasing and crime rates are down in areas where gun ownership is increasing.
On a side note, I have a Ramset and a nailgun that very much could kill me if I dropped either one. Both are intended as construction tools and certainly not meant for killing. They are not as safe as modern firearms.

Around 1:45PM give or take 10 minutes our office building did a nice little shimmy. It was enough for them to evacuate the building for a couple hours.

Cooridnates: 40.611916, -75.537497

The role of PA AG is very limited. Corbett's ability to prosecute is limited mainly to corruption in state government and organized crime. He cannot prosecute violations of state law committed at the local level; that's for local DA's. In fact ironically, municipalities in violation of state pre-emption laws cannot be prosecuted for that violation until the local DA takes them to court. Since the local DAs are usually the original source of those laws violating pre-emption in the first place, good luck getting that to happen.

In fact, the AG's lack of prosecuting violators of state pre-emption is a huge source of criticism from people in the Republican party against Corbett because few people understand just how limited the PA AG's powers are with respect to prosecution. The AG office is actually a fairly new one in PA. The office didn't even exist prior to 1980.

I live in PA and I've been following the Bonusgate scandal for a while. There are numerous Republicans and Democrats getting nailed for corruption in this case. The current investigation is into politicians who have been using public funds (read: taxpayer money) to fund their own campaigns and to pay campaign workers (usually friends and relatives). Millions of dollars stolen to fund campaigns, nevermind how much of that "campaign" money was then pocketed. This is stuff that makes Ted Stevens look saintly. Both sides of the isle here, this is a rather broad corruption scandal. The guys involved are VERY high up on the totem polls of their respective parties.

Corbett is making a lot of enemies during this process. What you are seeing here is not a violation of PA law, not an infringement of free speech; it's a spinjob by the very very powerful scumbags that Corbett is nailing in this case. The Twitter accounts are being used by defendants in the case (and those working for the defendants) to poison the well for the trial. That's illegal. Corbett is issuing subpoenas for these two. If it turns our they are in fact defendants or working for defendants, then that means the law is being broken. If not, then it just means an investigative line was incorrect; it happens.

What is sickening is how much the media has bought into the whole freedom of speech violation bullcrap. These are agents of corrupt politicians who have been stealing from the public for years and have been using Twitter to mess with the jury pool and derail the investigation. These are not noble people voicing their political opinions. These are corrupt scumbags breaking ANOTHER law in order to get away with breaking a hundred others. And now that the AG has caught wind of what they are trying and is doing what is in his power to stop this new illegal tactic; they are fighting back with a spin campaign against him.

There is a very serious corruption problem in Pennsylvania right now. The AG is making a huge breakthrough in eliminating a large chunk of that corruption. Given the power and influence of those being brought down, any attacks on the AG and the AG's office should be viewed with intense scrutiny and suspicion.

I expect to be modded down for this post. Corbett is a Republican and Republicans don't seem to be too popular here on slashdot. Hopefully there are people who can see through the smokescreen and understand what is really going on in this situation. This media story is a load of spin from very powerful and extremely corrupt politicians who are looking for every single trick in the book to avoid being convicted of the serious crimes they've committed.

We'll trade media, art, and novelties. No seriously. That's about all that would stand the test of time, so that's what we'd trade. It's also all we'd purchase from them, since by the time the traders get back to Earth, that's all that would be valuable. Since trips to far off planets cost so much, the items they bring back would definitely be highly prized by the rich and wealthy of the Earth.

So traders will bring them Gone With the Wind, recordings of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, and Yankees bobbleheads. They'll bring back Yagblorts book of poetry and some hood ornaments from a Froznoz 7000 series hovercraft.

We have the technology to go 1% the speed of light. Maybe even 10%. But the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prevent us from using that technology. It's called nuclear propulsion. We had the technology in the 1950s to create a ship capable of transporting as many as 10,000 people to anywhere in our solar system in a relatively short amount of time. Just look up the Orion Project. It involves using small nuclear bombs to propel a ship and tests were quite promising. The test ban treaty put an end to the project.

Project Daedelus and other similar more recent projects have looked/are looking for ways to bring back nuclear propulsion using "bombs" that produce no radioactive fallout.

Anyway, the point is that we have the technology NOW to do it, but we have political barriers preventing us. It seems somewhat unlikely that all civilizations who have developed such a technology would be restricted by the very same political barriers.

Wireless alarms at all windows and doors. They are amazingly inexpensive and super easy to install. The only way to get in without tripping an alarm is break through a wall. My house is made of brick and stone so I imagine the noise that would cause would wake me up as well. For intruders that are not deterred by alarms or the homeowners being awake, I have some hollow point 357 rounds with their name on them and a Castle Doctrine which allows me to legally act with lethal force in the event of a home invasion. My wife and I both have a lot of range time with the Ruger to ensure we know how to use it in the event we have to (it's also a TON of fun).

Of course none of that matters if I'm not home. My primary concern is the safety of my family though, so the system I have takes care of that. In any event, the alarms are loud enough you can hear them a block away. It's quite deafening. The neighbors would be alerted in the event of a break-in and they're all the type that would call the police in that situation. We'd do the same for them.

The total cost of the alarms was under $100. That's total. The maintenance is the cost of batteries which have to be replaced once every couple years. It took about 30 minutes to set all of them up and required no technical knowledge. Heck, installing them was about as brainless as it gets. I'm surprised more people don't have a similar setup.

In any case, sadly England does not afford its citizens the same liberties to defend their house and home. I'm very glad to hear the police got the culprit. It could have ended much worse.

Deficit: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You cannot allocate money towards the deficit since the deficit is defined as the amount of money we are spending that we are not collecting. You don't "apply money to deficit reduction", because that's simply "not spending money." i.e. it's called cutting spending.

Deficit neutral means that the deficit stays the same. So if you cut spending from one program and increase spending to another program by the same amount, then you're being deficit neutral. If you cut spending to one program but increase spending to another by a GREATER amount, you are increasing the deficit. if you are increasing spending to the other program by a LESSER amount, then you are decreasing the deficit. The debt is still going up, but the deficit is smaller.

Let's draw a personal budget analogy. let's say you make $5000 per month. Let's say you spend $6000 per month. You have a monthly deficit of $1000. You're debt could be any number at all, but your monthly deficit is $1000. If you cut your monthly barhopping budget by $500 and increase your monthly food budget by $500 you are being deficit neutral; your deficit has not changed, you are still spending $1000 more per month than you make.

Interestingly enough, there are already laws on the books which call for this but they aren't being enforced. The Clayton and Sherman anti-trust acts make it illegal to bill different amounts to different groups for the same product or service in such a way as to give one group a serious competitive advantage. Since the difference between what a private insurance company pays and what an uninsured person pays is usually an order of magnitude, I'd say that qualifies.

Too bad anti-trust laws haven't been enforced seriously in decades.

Sometimes the answer isn't more laws or more regulation. Sometimes the answer is simply enforcing the laws you already have.