It's not really the truth. If you doubt it, go to the neighborhoods in your city most thoroughly covered by "social programs."

I wouldn't go there unarmed, but that's up to you.

All of those violent neighborhoods would benefit from more of the law-abiding residents being armed to the teeth. The old saying goes "an armed society is a polite society," as nothing deters assholery so much as the sudden onset of room temperature-ness.

It's not just eye-candy, 3D effects can convey info. For example, having buttons look 3D helps to visually distinguish them from other boxy things. Same with tabs that cast shadows. Such cues are generally good (if done right).

Why not give people a choice in the OS? Have "flat", "3D", and maybe "Jewel" for those who really do want eye-candy.

Indeed it didn't. Idiots. $10M appeared to do the trick. Though they did apparently take the money and adopt the PRNG before it was realized that it was likely backdoored, and before we realized that the NSA had abandoned their mission to improve US COMSEC.

...is that they're basically taking an issue that most people either didn't really know about or didn't really care about too strongly, and are shoving it into everyone else's faces

Why don't you ask the same question of the Piss Christ guys? I don't see any difference if you think of this as an art project...

Well there is one difference, this is actually practical and informative.

I believe it is perfectly legal to make legislation that alters what powers a government department has.

There are other reasons this is horse shit but that is not one of them.

Again I am thoroughly confused. You suggest obvious and quite logical and good ideas such as "volume caps" and then act like they are evil without any explanation, just an apparent deep belief on your part that they are somehow obviously "bad".

And exactly why is "metered access" bad? You talked a lot about it but nowhere explained why it is bad, you just seemed to have made an assumption that everybody will think it is bad.

It is pretty obvious from other sales of bandwidth that the actual solution will be a fixed price for up to a threshold which exceeds what most people use, and metering after that. I think that would be an excellent way to charge for internet access.

It would also put some pressure on bloated web sites and ads if people realized they may actually be paying more to download it all.

My understanding is that the ion engine acts quite slowly. It seems that the "news" of an orbit failure would be a matter of not being where it's expected to be, and there should be a period of uncertainty when the "error" is within expected measurement noise range such that "orbit failure" would be a slowly increasing probability value instead of a one-time confirmation. I don't get the "news point" thing of today.

Town name?

What about the conduit monopoly?

Oh, let's fix that by allowing more than one conduit, maybe by making a much bigger conduit to carry them.

Uh oh, what about the "bigger conduit" monopoly?

This is the dawn of a new era in space exploration.

Can you read? The original post says "or the time window for them to do so expires". There is a drop dead date.

You have the Part 15 and ISM services for that. You really can buy a microwave link that's metropolitan-distance and legal to use.

We lost much of our 440 capability to PAVE PAWS in California. Remember, Amateur Radio is not the primary service on many bands. The military is on 440.

If you want that nearly infinite microwave spectrum, you have the Part 15 and ISM services. Absolutely nothing is stopping you. Power is not the issue with those frequencies, it's line of sight and Fresnel zones.

No, I absolutely do not have to prefix my words with anything. You do that by posting as an anonymous coward. I use my real name to indicate that I stand behind my words.