That's planned for next year when availability is increased. It's the only thing that's kept me from getting them. For those places that don't allow it, I'll keep an extra, normal pair of glasses in my car, similar to what I already do with sunglasses.

If it's a true story, it's possible that it was simply a coincidence. The insurance company may make the demand on random policy holders (it should be in the policy itself) and cover the cost of it if they mandate it.

Facebook has had opt-out for photo tagging for a long time. It also has the option of allowing you to approve tags. I approve a handful of them, but most get rejected.

The release of documents by Snowden put the evidence of the collection into the public light and was accepted by the courts, reviving a barely-live case by proving that the party was under surveillance. Once it's out in the open, it's impossible to get a state secrets claim approved.

The latter two have an impact on the first. The government is allowed to push the lines if there is a compelling reason, but it must do so in the most narrowly-tailored way possible. Given that there are now documents in the public domain that suggest that not only is it not narrowly tailored but technicians at the NSA itself have said that they have too much data to effectively work with. The collection, possibly even without a warrant, of a very narrow selection of information related to a documentably (or at least believably) imminent threat may be covered under probable cause, but that is likely a very, very far cry from what's been happening.

Replacement is possible though I don't know how likely it actually is. Netflix hasn't seemed to be as content to sit back and enjoy the limelight and instead has been pushing to change how they do things and the customer experience. I don't know who can seriously challenge them; there are at least a dozen competitors, but few if any have the range of content. Maybe Amazon (and I could see them trying to buy Netflix) has the architecture and the content, but I'm not at all happy with their non-rental selection. I don't see Redbox taking over any time soon, much less any of the other competitors.

At my last job, I participated heavily in the interviewing process. We had a certain perspective and requirements, and would often sift through 50+ resumes to interview perhaps 10 people to pick one person. That suggests that we were looking for the top 10% or top 2%, depending on your perspective. The only difference with Netflix is that they keep that evaluation going. I kind of wish we'd done that where I was and cut some people when it was clear they weren't pulling their weight.

I think the choice of VC-1 came because it was supported by Silverlight while H.264 was limited if present at all. VC-1 is also the protocol of choice for Blu-Ray, and the time saved simply copying the files instead of moving them to H.264 may be significant.

They're the largest in their field and have little real competition, so they must be doing something right. They're also in the process of moving away from Silverlight, provide a primary source of more bandwidth across the Internet than perhaps any other single company (not counting CDNs like Akamai), and maintain a customer satisfaction rate that is the envy of most of the entertainment industry. The executives may need to be smacked around a little, but it's hard to argue that the company as a whole has many serious problems.

Congress didn't do it. It was done in 1996 by Executive Order and encryption was largely placed under the Commerce Department. It was done this way because the relevant law (22 USC 2778) provides for presidential control of the United States Munitions List, so there was no need to go through Congress.

That poster said "corporations." There was no specificity about which, though I'm fairly certain that he meant only large corporations. But lumping them all together is stereotyping, and it ignores that even large corporations can and do perform good acts. You point out that early corporations were required to "provide some PUBLIC GOOD". True to a degree--by 1800, only a few hundred corporations existed, and most of them were expressly for providing public services. But even without this, there were means of the elite protecting their power and wealth through trusts and limited partnerships.

You clearly are trying to fill in what you believe are my values based on very minimal knowledge. I agree that many large corporations do not pay the taxes that they should, and that this impacts the government's ability to provide the services needed. I'm not at all comfortable with any non-human person donating to the political process, but at the same time, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, you cannot say that one group of people (unions, for example) can express speech in a fashion which costs money while another group (corporations) cannot. I do feel that the PACs need to be reined in, as do the 501(c)(4) "social welfare groups" that are being used to provide cover for political ads.

The courts didn't find that "speech = money", as you say. But the ability to widely publicize a given viewpoint has almost always required some amount of money. Newspapers have always taken money to run ads, pamphlets cost money to print, and advertising on radio, in movie theaters, on television, and on the Internet costs money. Restricting the amount of money that can be spent therefore may be seen as a restriction on free speech. The Supreme Court did not find that this is impossible, but that such restrictions are subject to strict scrutiny: there must be a compelling government interest, the law must be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest, and it must be the least restrictive means for achieving the goal. At the time, the arguments failed to sway a majority of the Court. With the backlash from it, maybe we'll see a new amendment to the Constitution.

Finally, whether you like me or think I'm authoritarian matters little to the conversation. Neither you nor the original poster (presuming you're different people) know anything about me other than what you've read from a couple of posts. There are a lot of things that need to change in the United States and around the world including limiting the power of the elite whether political or economic, and the world will be freer and more prosperous for those changes. But there are processes to that in the US, including engaging in debate, and juvenile ranting doesn't help get your point across.

That's your (very incorrect) perception of corporations. Your image of a corporation is Exxon, American Airlines, and Target. But it's counter to the reality that millions of other businesses in the US alone are corporations, and the majority of them are not only not involved in politics, but they're quite small. They're made up of one or more people, and without very strong reason that would reverberate through every other group, they get the same rights and responsibilities as any other group of people including free speech (including political speech), the right to petition the government, and the right to due process.

Your complaint about the origin of corporations is not only factually incorrect (businesses have incorporated for more than 1500 years with varying or even no protection for the founders), but ignores that it prevents small business owners from being personally crushed by the failure of a business, sometimes by factors out of their control. The family sandwich shop, the small machine shop, the furniture maker... Many of these are corporations. Almost everyone that isn't doing business under their own name is incorporated in some fashion. Without that protection, many people would never try to start a business.

Your complaints aren't remotely new, but they're also not remotely realistic.

The Constitution gives Congress certain powers such to coin money, but no one expected them to personally work in the mints. They draft the laws that provide for the duties to be carried out by other parts of government. Technically, they have the power to raise and spend money, but they don't have a constitutional requirement.

The Executive Branch is provided the responsibility to enforce the laws, but for practical matters require that it must sometimes decline to enforce the law due to other, more pressing concerns such as the cost of prosecution or where the effect of enforcing the law could have a larger detriment. This might include not enforcing some aspect of the health care law to allow for practical realities to be ironed out.

The Supreme Court has always had internal politics. In one extreme example, Justice James Clark Reynolds despised Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo simply because the they were Jews and would not sit next to or speak with them nor sign opinions written by them. But one does not ever know for certain how they will rule going in. One of the most stunning to me was in Gonzalez v. Raich over California's legalization of medical marijuana. The case was decided 6-3, but the dissent included one by Justice O'Connor which was joined by the Chief Justice Rehnquist and a separate dissent by Justice Thomas, the latter two of the most conservative justices who broke with their conservative colleagues who grouped with their more liberal colleagues to rule in favor of the federal government.

Finally, on the topic of corporations and politics, the argument is that corporations are groups of people. To block spending by them, every other group would have to be blocked from political spending. Maybe this would be good--it would certainly quell the protest from the right over unions spending money--but as we've seen with 501(c)(4) groups, getting that regulation right is incredibly difficult. But it may also have a detrimental effect on anonymous contribution to political dialogue, as forcing everyone behind the political speech to be named could be seen as oppressive.

Many people want a very simple, straightforward implementation of the ideals in the Constitution. But reality is messy, and political reality even worse. No one gets everything they want, at least not for long, before something swings against them.

There's plenty of malware code out there that checks for browser versions, fires off different exploits based on it, and still tries to load Java and PDF malware.

The cost moderated the usage so much that they're mostly no longer enabled even if they're present. The remaining service will be shutting down completely at the end of this year.

It is theft, but the damages involved are inconsequential. A formal warning by the officer to not do it again would have been a better solution.