I don't know. Does Finland have a lot of spy satellites?

I looked it up and found this on Wikipedia: Finland's Aalto-1 Cusesat-satellite (3U) with solar panels is a funded by student nano-satellite project of Aalto University and Finnish Meteorological Institute [2]. When launched (plan was to 2013), it would be the first Finnish satellite. Launch has been procured for the summer 2015.

Unlike 'Chris' I find the TE very good for coding. I recommend it. Adventurous types can reprogram the keys, too.

50 wrongs don't make a right. Consumers have always expected the manufacturers of their products to give them honest advice about how to care for their products and not to use their position as the manufacturer to force you into situations that actually harm your own interests. The fact that most businesses abuse that expectation does not make it any less egregious that Google has followed in their footsteps.

One of the best examples is Transmission oil... The differences between Manufacturer and After market brands is simply patented detergents the manufacturer refuses to license to after market suppliers. The viscosity, temperature expansion characteristics and ware modifiers are all identical, yet they'll void your warranty if you use them. The OEM brands sell from $12 to $50 a quart compared to $5 for an aftermarket, and are clearly a way to further gouge the customer. It's disgusting that these sorts of scams are allowed to continue, but they are, so the best we can do is call attention to them. At least with Google there are alternatives.

They have a monopoly over the search bar that's dead center at the top of phone that I'm not allowed to remove under penalty of law. So yes, they are.

Note how this legislation continues to be directed at you and me. The solution to corrupt policians involves threatening *us* with fines and prison for not doing our proper bits. It's not as if our elected leaders can help it, they're practically victims! Just going on with the system they've been given by a degenerate populace. No point in cracking down on the way they behave. But eventually in spite of us they will obtain their utopian society, I suppose -- just have to keep restricting us until we get into our thick heads to behave the perfect way they have envisioned for us, and then everything will be swell.

To properly understand what Obama means by the undue influence of money, you have to unpack the political dialect a bit. Obama was ushered into his latest term on a >$1 billion campaign, and has turned his back on statements about lobbyists and public financing, so it's not that he abjures the influence of money in politics. But it is bad when money is wielded to effect by the other party. (The other party is in fact the only one capable of corruption, one's own party might have some rogue individuals who make regrettable decisions, but their political principles are, if anything, redemptive.) This statement comes on the tail of the 2014 election, in which Obama's party was routed, due largely to poor turnout. In general democrats fair better from greater voter turnout. So this would be a nice fix to that, and probably would decrease the influence of money in politics, at least in the sense that it would not longer be needed to mobilizing voters and could instead be spent in focus on telling them which way to vote.

Of course, any electoral change is going to benefit one party or the other, and they will decide their allegiance to it accordingly. But I think it's sound to say any idea that comes out of party leadership is not going to be about "reform" it is going to be about consolidating their own power. Changing election mechanics is not going to be the means of rebuffing them and kicking them out of power. It is going to be the thing to do once we've built up the spine to kick them out ourselves.

Do you even know anything about cab service here? I live in the very centre of the city, the densest area there is. Still, under 15 minutes, less than 10 minutes for most calls. Cab companies have car age requirements just as Uber does. The company I use - 6 years max (after yesterday's trip I just wish they would also ban overuse of air fresheners, the guy must have had a non-functioning nose). I don't even know what a Crown Vic is (now I do, thanks, Google), this is Europe. And trip time is really a small part of the price, distance is far more important (in my experience traffic changes the price by at most 10%).

In other words - thanks for confirming my point, your license system is broken.

Then your license system is broken. Where I live, the average waiting time is - in my experience - well under 15 minutes. The driver knows the city well (2M city, over 500 km^2). The fare is posted on the door, clear and predictable. The quality of the car depends on the choice of company - more pricey ones tend to have much better cars, the cheapest are not so good, but still, average. No room for Uber in my opinion.

There are pathologies, of course. There are ways to cheat the system and operate without a license (you need to do this "occasionally"), so a bit like Uber. I've tried those a few times, they are indeed a bit cheaper but only one driver knew how to get to my destination (a fairly well-known street) without a GPS and most of them drove extremely carelessly and, when traffic allows, way too fast. There are also some licensed drivers tampering with meters (they are risking very high fines). Some (non-company) licensed taxis have prices set to the official maximum and hunt for foreigners in most popular places - fully legal, but not really moral. But if you know all that... Why Uber? Get rid of the knowledge of the city guaranteed by the exam, the requirement of a good car, etc?

"What other industry can you release an unfinished product and then charge for the finished bits?"

My cell phone came without apps and without a case.

My car came without those little blind-spot mirrors.

When I met my wife, she couldn't cook.

"Something changed pretty radically."

Business majors got ahold of the company. I'm not kidding; I think most of what is wrong with worldwide business is because of American business school ideology.

Seriously I've been waiting for this headline since Bill Clinton was President.

I make a point to make this comment every time I see a story about this. The number of people from all across the internet that jump on me and freak out is insane. Mars One is a cult.

You can crack WPA-2 in a trivial amount of time. I've got a friend in school for security right now... he pulled an app off a public website, got it running on my computer in minutes and before we were done with dinner he had my wifi password. I knew it could be done, but I had no idea there were public tools for doing it, and it would take so little time. The tool even played a little "TaDa!" sound like vintage windows when it had the password. And this wasn't an easy password either. 12 characters, alpha-numeric, special characters, etc...

"Copyright is for dullards who add a few more man-hours to a few million man-hours of cultural development then mix in an egomaniacal sense of entitlement."

If you can help shrink this idea down to fit on a t-shirt, I'll send you the first t-shirt I sell with it.

I don't have time to read entire sections of government statutes. Luckily, though, the army of conservative reporters and activists do have that time! And yet, none of them have pointed to any broken laws. Huh.

And in fact I did go read one statue quoted to me by my super-conservative lawyer friend. It was his best effort and yet he himself agreed it was a stretch to apply that statute to this situation.

When Fox News quotes the broken law, including the text of the law which clearly applies to this situation, then I'll stop being skeptical of the claim that Clinton broke a law by using a personal email server. Until then this is just another Benghazi Death Panel Government Takeover.

I've had long conversations with my lawyer friends about the exact statutes you claim she violated. The text of the law doesn't support that claim.

Think about it, if she violated a specific statute, then why hasn't Fox News quoted that statute? Because they're too lazy? Because they can't read? or is it because the statute doesn't actually apply?