how do little kids sing a song? do they memorize it first? don't they have to read it from sheet music in order to memorize or sing it? I suppose if the kids are driving down sales of the commercial distribution of 'little mary had a lamb...' by going into the record publishing business and making a million dollars for each child, well then I might could understand the concern.

I just read wiki about pentagon papers, and this one statement stands above all the rest, and I sure agree with it. So many here have said so much, but our opinion is trumped by the opinion of a chief justice, right? " Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. —Justice Black[16] "

"We only need to know when when there is malfeasance that is being kept secret." and do you really expect them to stand up and say to you " Ahem, we have an announcement to make... We just fucked over the president of one of our greatest allies, and by the way, we also just planted cameras and microphones at the lady's ymca because it is a known haven for islamic terrorists."

"These blanket proclamations that "the government[] has no right of privacy, and in fact should be at all times closely watched" are signs that someone hasn't thought about***** how little the government would be able to do**** if there were that much transparency." And what exactly is wrong with severely cutting back on what our govt is doing? It's not like the results thereof have made this country (or the world?) a better place to live, lately.

"Because a government is supposed to serve "the people". That's why. The government is not a person and not a corporation, it has no right of privacy, and in fact should be at all times closely watched to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to. When it starts being too secretive, that's a sure sign that something fishy is going on." how can anyone disagree with this? Until our govt proves itself, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to be working for the citizens as it should, then it has every reason to be watched constantly. Like they always say to us, 'If you aren't doing anything wrong, why would you mind?'

"Trying to squeeze a new instruction between line 11 and line 12 kinda sucked sometimes." I never wrote a basic program line-numbered by 1's, and you see the reason why. I used 10's and 100's, depending on the complexity. I found basic to be structured, like math. Learn a few simple rules and you can begin. Add more rules and go further. You didn't need to learn more rules than necessary for the job at hand. Basic's simplicity allowed me to focus on problem solving in a step by step approach, and in doing so, learned much about general problem solving.

re: In theory, sure. In practice, nah, not really. They don't answer to anyone because there is not a significant enough chunk of folk that give a damn anymore. I don't think it's about not enough people careing. We do care. (maybe we don't all care about the same thing...?) Unfortunately we have human sociological traits that are known, and are being exploited by the govt and the corporation. To fix things, ya gotta eliminate the causality behind what drives THEM. Enact the 28th amendment, remove the special status the folks in govt enjoy, and things will turn around in the country, real fast.

Glenn Beck said the nn ruling will require him and his kind to provide time for opposing views on all his broadcasts, (making the broadcasts 'neutral'), which seems like a bad thing. Others have said the nn rule will prevent folks like comecaste from throttling my internet speed if they see me watching a movie streamed from their competitor, netflixt, which seems like a good thing. Both ideas are contradictory to each other; one favors the big corporations, the other favors people's rights. Many of the posts above this one also seem to bounce off the walls about what nn actually says. When will some de-facto intelligencia put into words exactly what the new network neutrality act says? Surely everyone here who has voiced an opinion should be able to enlighten the rest of us?

That speil you gave was such a line of bullshit! The value of the things you mentioned that 'ought' to be, is no more than the actual, real consequences of violating those trusts you ramble on about. In this blessed country of ours (USA), NOBODY above the rank of civilian ever has to face any consequences for their actions against the Constitution, against the Republic, or against us, the citizenry. One day we the people will stand up for ourselves and put a stop to Washington's crap. Until we do, we will be the servants and they will be our rulers. To stop it we first need to bring Washington back down to the level of civil servants... create the 28th amendment. After that, repeal nearly everything they have done FOR themselves and TO us during the past 50 years, and maybe we'll call it a new beginning. Until then, your rhetoric only serves to rub salt into the gaping wound from which all Americans are currently bleeding out.

Wikipedia says 'terrorism' is defined by violence. Yet the 'threat' of terrorism has a similar, if not identical, effect on those aware of, but not directly involved with the violence. For example, raising the national threat level to maximum would certainly upset many or most of us, even without the existence of actual violence. So in practice, violence is not entirely necessary to disrupt a society. Maybe we need to re-define 'terrorism'??? Look how many /.'ers are 'upset' by this post... is this the tip of the cyber-terrorism iceberg? Another thought is this... what if an act of violence is perpetrated against a city, say New York. This act could be construed as 'terrorism'. But would it be only terrorism to those directly involved in the city, or would the folks in L.A. also be under the influence of 'terrorism'? My point being that the effects of terrorism are felt by those not directly involved with the violence, so maybe terrorism ought to be re-defined to include any non-violent action that has the same effect on a society as a violent action.

First, isn't NASA funded by American tax dollars? Then why is the first release of the film being done in Australia, not USA? Second, "The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that's left are VHS recordings," ... does this imply that vhs recordings aren't magnetic data tapes?

If the govt wants to use the 'free' internet, then it has to accept the baggage that comes with it, including ads, hackers, potholes and viruses. If they want something different, it's like everyone else here suggests, build their own 'in their own image'. Damn fools to hook up critical systems to the internet anyhow, but then again, that's who we elected, and who the ones we elected selected. or... maybe it's just another exercise to see if we are so dumb we won't see this as a means to further control the citizens of planet Earth. (this IS Earth, isn't it? ooops..)

For some of us less-literate folks, the problem seems even worse. When I try to find something on the web, the first thing I do is enter my quest in the search bar. Soon, a list of 28,132,667,534 hits comes up (in only .00036 microseconds, yet). When I try any of those links, thinking ya, I'm getting somewhere! instead of getting to the place I want, a zillion other websites are there listing all the responses to my original quest. It's like, if I want to buy a pound of apples, I google apples, and then click on one of the resultant links, thinking I will be taken to an apple-provider. No. It's just another site telling me they have a 'better' list of apple-providers! and i never quite get to the store to buy them apples.... (maybe i shudda used as example 'oranges'???) Want another dumb comparison? go to the grocery store, look at the signs hanging from the ceiling for 'soups and veggies'. You get to that isle, and no soups and veggies... instead, shelves lined with ads and instructions on how to get to the 'soups and veggies' isle.

pls send a few cents to the enclosed address, paypal accepted. it's only a few cents. c'mon!

I don't understand why everyone is talking about the new 'owners'. Has anyone 'proven' ownership of the dog, either the first guy or the second? Even in the most jaded locations, if I tell a cop someone stole my property, and I prove it is my property and tell him the name of someone who knows where it is, I'm pretty sure the cop will at least go to the 'end user' and demand proof of ownership. Biggest problem here is we wee folks never get all the right details of a situation, just enough of the inflammatory ones to piss everyone off.