And as it relates to any topic, a person writing a story or an article can always find a slant one way or another to meet their own political views or agendas.

As far as new taxes, have you looked at your bill recently.. all those lovely below the line fee's disguised as taxes of some sort, or regulatory recovery fees, you know things that should be included in the price because they are the cost of doing business, but instead are disguised as creative taxes and fees which are not mandated by any gov (state local or federal) entity, just so the company can keep it's base advertized price the same and claim they are not raising prices.

Under regulation, this would hopefully go away. Also, the feds have said they do not have to apply all of the Title II regulations (and they specifically call out the tax portions) to ISPs.

Reading comprehension fail... I completely missed what you had in parenthesis...

I will take my beatings

Easter egg.. sorta...

Look at the first letter of each paragraph :)

If they are cycling those kinds of distances without a support vehicle, they are stupid and let Darwin have his shot. The statement is correct, very very rarely will a cyclist be without the ability to obtain water, even when riding distances. And as has been previously pointed out numerous times, the amount of fluid you would need to take in to generate water in this devices, far outweighs what this device can produce. You are screwed either way

Not to mention when out on the trails, you inevitably come across a rider who did not bring enough water, and you have to share (well you don't have to, but you would be an ass not to)

We use thinks like NUUN, Gatorade powder (this stuff sucks and makes you more thirsty, but is not the same as what comes in Gatorade you buy at the 7 11), and dozens of other brands. basically fancy salt tabs with some additional stuff. Some of them are tasty.. some not so much.

I'm a cyclist. So I can safely say, that serious cyclist spending $5k+ on a bike are doing so for weight. Those are the same people who spend $100 for a carbon bottle cage that weighs only a few grams less than a $5 plastic or metal cage. They will most likely never purchase something like this for any serious use. Those that do, are those who have more money than sense, and buy expensive bikes so they can ride down the trail at 5mph on their expensive bikes in their expensive clothing blocking the paths looking like a cyclist. As for me, I do 100 mile rides regularly, for events, there are always rest stops every 20 miles or so, for non events, rarely are you going to cycle any place that you won't be able to find water to refill your bottle at least every 40 or 50 miles (I can go 40 to 50 miles on 2 bottles of water). And if they are in areas like that, odds are they will have a camelback or something similar for water, and additional supplies (tubes, tools, nutrition etc).

I drive an AMG C63.. slightly higher risk car :)

They cannot switch off the recording and monitoring equipment. However, there is nothing stopping them from tampering with the equipment to cause the monitoring to fail (which I would hope is a firing offense.. but probably not)

I'm sorry, $5 a month (the Progressive Snapshot thing) discount on what is typically a $100+ monthly payment is not worth them tracking my driving habits.

And yes, I read the article, and I know it says the exact opposite about population density, I disagree with it.

Sure it does, right to privacy, right to vote, right to not self incriminate. Whether through the original, or amendments to the Constitution, those are all rights.

While politics and profit, lack of competition all are major factors in our crappy broadband options, we have to keep in mind that the US is vastly greater, and far more spread out then many countries we are being compared against. The cost to wire up rural areas, hell even some of teh suburbs of major metro areas is significantly more that it is to wire up more densely populated areas. These are businesses after all, they are out to make a profit, and honestly, I do not have an issue with that. What I do have an issue with is companies lobbying for anti competitive laws that prevent local governments from doing what the for profit companies won't do. Trying to wring every last cent out of us. They make billions, yet refuse to upgrade because that will eat into their profits, and the lack of competition between what is essentially a duopoly. And while there is no concrete proof (ie written documentation), it appears that collusion between those duopolies is the name of the game, prices never come down, only go up. Then there are the un fees, below the line fees made to look like regulatory and gov fees, but really are just a way of jacking up the price, without actually having to hike the base price. Almost 30% of my bill is just fees. I could go on, but you can go peruse dslreports/broadbandreports if you really want to know more.

Yes, contractors do maintain sensitive data, but it is usually (I say usually because some people get lazy, and then dinged by audits, quite often) stored in a SCIF, or a secured section of the datacenter that is secured in the same way as a SCIF.

Actually, anyone traveling legally in the US is protected by the US Constitution. Note I said protected, not afforded all the rights, like right to vote. So yes, a foreign person traveling on US soil is still protected by the 4th Amendment. The US gets around this by declaring a person an enemy combatant, and then all protections go out the window.