In general, just about every conference I've been to has been a waste of money. The only real benefits I have gleaned from them have been free software for development use and/or making contacts. In general, the information that I would receive from the confs. is more readily accessible online or through books. An example would be a yearly conference that I used to attend for a particular software that I develop. On average, the conference + hotel + travel would run me about $6000. It was a massive waste as, all we really spent time doing was drinking and chumming around. In 3 years, I might have had 1 or 2 actual lectures or Q&A sessions that had any real benefit.

Please tell that to the steel industry.

don't fuck with my coffee.

It doesn't, but I get the point you were trying to make.

Had we not learned from history, would we have the nation that we have today? Had we not learned from history, would we not have the sciences, art, and great works of this day? All of our greatest accomplishments in time have been based on an event, person or persons in history. History, whether you like it or not, makes us the people we are today. Should we forget about the wars our nations fought? Should we forget about the civil advancements of our past generations?

I believe it is referred to as the revolving door of government.

I would prefer the method used by, I think Denmark, where you can donate all the money you want, it all goes into a superfund and dispersed evenly amongst the contenders.

You're only partially correct. Corporations can donate directly to a campaign, but they are limited in how much they can donate. They can donate any amount they wish to a PAC or multiple PACS. Now, PACS aren't supposed to donate to campaigns, but they can. Additionally, congresscritters receive compensation from corporations in the form of "after public service" appointments, appoitments for family members, vacations, stock options and many, many, many other ways.

Aye-YA-Fahtla-Yokool

If I want to have google snitch on someone I don't like, I just send that person an email with child porn attached from an anonymous eastern europe email address and google does the work for me??

99.9% of users will click "OK" or "Accept" see UAC....

and it doesn't matter.

It is sad, the bill that was in the senate from Mccain to force cable providers to offer shows/stations al a carte died.

It really depends, some programming I watch (Daily show, Colbert Report, Castle) rarely has commercials or they have this option to watch and extended commercial first and then no commercials for that episode during the show. I agree, it's annoying. I'd rather not have to see commercials for user supported tv, but HULU is owned by the big baddies of the media industry so it's inevitable.

Use Hulu plus