The Supreme Court inadvertently just gave me a reason to vote Romney. Prior to this point I was planning to stay home, because both Romney and Obama are corporate puppets & anti-Bill of Rights dicks. They suck near-equally.

But now I would like to see Romney win the presidency & appoint some limited-government constitutionists to the Court (and the lower level courts). It is a bunch of bullshit that the Congress can order us around like puppets, else punish us with a tax (fine). With this precedent set, pretty soon I'll be paying $3000 in penalties because I don't have insurance (catastrophic doesn't count), I don't drive a "green" hybrid car, don't have a tankless heater, don't have a programmable thermostat controllable by the government or the utility, et cetera.

The annoying part of this "mandate" is that my catastrophic insurance is now illegal. Why? I liked being able to pay CASH direct to my doctor, but still have the safety net in case I got a major illness like cancer. (No doubt the insurance companies don't want us buying cheaper catastrophic plans, so now they don't "count" under Obamacare.)

Possible future laws from Congress:
- Buy a Prius or hybrid car, else pay a $500/year tax (fine).
- Buy a tankless water heater, else pay an extra $100/year tax (fine).
- Smash your inefficient windows and hire a glazier to install new ones, else pay an extra $1000/year tax. (This will be called 'job stimulus'.)

"The SCOTUS labeled it a tax after the fact."

No Obama's lawyers TOLD the Supreme Court it's just a tax, and therefore should be legal. Go review their arguments. The grandparent poster was correct: Obama and his lawyers lied and said "it's not a tax" back in 2009/10, but in 2012 his lawyers argued it was in order to make it pass the court.

(quoting from memory) - "There is nothing more natural than to start with a general phrase and then limit it with a list of specifics. The "general welfare" is qualified and limited by the list of powers immediately following it. To ignore this enumeration would be to create a central government of unlimited power, minus a few peculiar exceptions (Bill of Rights), and there is a whole host of proofs that was never intended by the framers or myself.

"The Congress is one of limited powers while the bulk are reserved to the States and the People, respectively (10th amend.)." - James Madison, author of the Constitution.

If you check the Congressional record, you'll see that the Repubs made several attempts to rein-in the mortgage lenders, but the Democrats accused them of "racism" and "against the poor" and other name-calling. (See youtube; it's all there to be watched in glorious 480p.) AND it's also worth noting the reason mortgages were eased-up & made easy was because of a lawsuit brought against the administration in the 90s.

In 1998 Clinton's HUD secretary announced he would make make it easier to get a home loan & prosecute banks that said "no". Hence the start of the bubble because from that point forward, virtually anyone could get a mortgage.

Before you decide this is a "great" idea you should probably watch the Black Mirror episode where people record everything they see around them. Without spoiling the ending, a husband suspects his wife of cheating, and his eyecam provides the evidence. (Search youtube; I watched it there.)

"The 7800 was an improved 5200, a succesful game system."

Not really. (1) The 7800 used the 2600 as its base, for backwards compatibility, and then added a better graphics chip with faster CPU. (2) As for games, the 7800 ports outshine the 5200 ports in every way. Not only do they look better (virtually identical to the arcade), but they have digital controls rather than the analog controls that made 5200 games a pain-in-the-ass to play.

What kind of company uses the consumer OS Windows 98??? Every place I worked had the business OS Windows NT/2000. (Oh and yes Vista is execrable crap. When it makes your brand-new PC freeze for 2-3 minutes while it thrashes the hard drive, it's crap.)

Correct. Private BBSes were already on the rise in the 70s. There was no need for government action when the free market was already acting to meet customer demands.

The videogame "crash" was really only a crash for arcades and consoles. Computer gaming continued through 1983-86 without hardly a slump (some of my favorite games are from that era). Nintendo recognized this and shipped their NES over to America to take-advantage of the vacuum Warner Communications/Atari had left behind.

"The Atari didn't have sprites, as such. It had a system called Player Missile Graphics"

Same thing. The "player" is an 8x8 sprite and the missile is a 2x2 sprite. One trick was to "stretch" the missile sprite into a vertical line, as was done with Pitfall's swinging vines. ------ In any case the C64 had more "player" sprites than the Atari, so it was more flexible. It could create some awesome shooter games, that were not possible with the Atari 800 or console.

I'm sure the U.S. authorities are not thinking anything, but instead picking-up the phone and telling Universal, "We followed your orders. Mission accomplished." Why Universal? Those are the guys that demanded Youtube remove the Megaupload Song in december. They even filed a lawsuit, which they lost.

Then two weeks later the FBI raids and shutsdown megaupload. Coincidence? I don't think so. Pretty obvious Universal lost their case to remove the Megaupload Song, then called their buddies in D.C. and asked them to remove the company. Ultimately the U.S. government serves the corporations that donate money to its reelection campaigns.

The key word in your paragraph is "monopoly". Conservatives and libertarians have no problem with regulating a natural monopoly (water, electric) or government-granted monopoly (Comcast). As far as I am concerned the government should not only require Comcast advertise their Basic CATV and Naked-internet options, but also place a cap on how much they charge. (As is down with the electric monopoly.)

Alternatively the state government could revoke the monopoly and open the state to any cable company that wishes to come. Bring some competition against Comcast.

My internet is charged directly to the phone bill. If I "rent" a movie from my ISP it is also charged to my phone bill. That sounds just as simple as your Minitel description.

As for the wider web, amazon and other services charge me 49 cents per short story downloaded to my kindle/PC. Or I can subscribe for $12 to my favorite magazine. Or use paypal to pay the 1 cent game I just bought off ebay (plus ship/handling).

Ma Bell noticed the internet.
She tried to make me pay an extra fee for connecting a 1k modem to my line. I just pretended I wasn't using one. "Modem? What modem?" though I'm sure they noticed it was turned on 20+ hours a day (taking full advantage of that unlimited calling & downloading). I figured I was already paying ~$15 a month for the national service called GEOS... I'm not paying any more on top of that.