And the award for Best Employee of the 20th Century goes to...

This inanimate wooden pallet!

He absolutely has the right to tell them what they should do. Presumably, MIT was making these educational materials available for the purpose of furthering the common good. Removing them does nothing to serve the common good, thus MIT is acting against its own goals (as we perceive them), which, logically speaking, is total bullshit.

It's a sound argument, and doesn't presuppose any special rights or privileges - merely the ability to analyze the purpose and effects of others' actions. Capacity for moral judgment + societal cost/benefit analysis + free speech rights = the right to tell others what they should do. We do this all the time: the US shouldn't invade Iraq, Microsoft shouldn't abuse its monopoly, the MPAA/RIAA shouldn't sue old ladies whose grandkid downloaded a song, that racist pastor shouldn't be racist, etc. etc. It's called advocacy.

He's not making a rights- or privilege-based argument, he's saying MIT should choose a different course of action that will better serve the greater good.

Side note: I see this happen a lot - someone conflates the argument "entity X should do Y" with "entity X should be made to do Y". Read arguments carefully.

Indeed - prostitutes are a communist plot to contaminate the purity of our essence by depriving us of our precious bodily fluids. Like fluoridating the water.

When moving across country (California to Florida) in 2005, I averaged 32 MPG for two consecutive tanks of gas (calculated by actual gas used at time of fill up) while driving through AZ and NM. Cruising speed was 85. Car was a '99 Grand Am (170hp 3.4L V6), EPA highway rating was 30 MPG. There was probably a tailwind.

More recently, while returning to Chicago from vacation in Colorado, I managed to average 30 MPG for a single continuous 400-mile nonstop leg while averaging 76 MPH. This car is a '05 Pontiac G6 (200hp 3.5L V6), rated at 28 MPG highway by the EPA.

Obviously, both these trips are idealized - fill up, accelerate directly to cruising speed, maintain until next fuel stop - so not representative of how the EPA tests highway mileage. Typically the G6 gets 25-28 on the highway (yes, these GM engines are woefully inefficient). Now, I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but the fact is it's possible for cars to achieve mileage better than the EPA ratings - depending on lots of things including traffic, power curve, gearing, wind, etc.

Well, he didn't specify what type of dream. There are lots of possibilities.

Whoops, that was supposed to be in reply to the comment above.

In a democracy (or representative republic), ultimately the buck stops with the voters. Prosecutors aren't kings, they answer to somebody who answers to somebody (who answers to somebody...) who answers to you, the voter.

Find out who in your municipality or jurisdiction has to power to appoint or censure prosecutors, and if they're doing a bad job, then complain, vote against them, start a public campaign; hell, run for office yourself if you have to.

The American system of government requires a populace that pays attention and holds their leaders accountable (clichéd, but true), and a press that responsibly covers the things that matter so voters are informed. Like the other cynics here, I believe that parts of this system are damaged; however I don't think they're beyond repair. People will always care about justice, and when things get bad enough, change happens.

Well, sure, there are plenty of public servants who are motivated by a desire to, you know, serve the public, but they don't make headlines or get famous so you don't hear about them much. They could very well be (and probably do) constitute the vast majority.

It runs a customized AMD x86-64 APU based on their desktop processors (including Radeon GPU), so no, not Intel-manufactured hardware; but compare this to past consoles with specialized processors. I would imagine this makes cross-platform development somewhat easier.

Yeah, come on, you're killing us here!

I was fortunate enough to hear Kongar-ol Ondar and some other Tuvan singers perform live about a decade ago. It was a special experience. I heard about Tuvan throat singing from my parents, who were huge Richard Feynman fans and learned about it from him.

I didn't include the cost of internet, since for me personally, that part would be the same either way; others may have a choice of ISP (Comcast/DSL/FiOS/Google). Perhaps you're suggesting that Comcast will raise their internet access prices, and that may in fact happen; but it's hard to factor into a services comparison like this. It's worth noting that Comcast gives a ~$20 "discount" on their internet access for also subscribing to digital cable, so that would need to be added as well. And at $10/mo for modem rental, it makes a lot of sense to buy your own - it will pay for itself in fairly short order.

I welcome another streaming service. Why? Because it increases the alternative options for cable customers. Consider:
Netflix ($9) + Hulu Plus ($8) + Amazon Prime ($8.25) + Sony ("competitive") = ~$35
Comcast's Digital Preferred (where I live): $86 (not counting taxes) + $10 HD fee + $8 DVR fee = $104

There's some overlap with the streaming services, but each one offers something a little different, and customers can get a pretty broad selection. Combine with ad-hoc Redbox rentals for hardware viewing of recent releases and the upcoming HBO Go offerings, digital cable television as a value proposition becomes less and less appealing for many customers.

The single biggest draw for cable IMHO is live sports - and ESPN currently offers a similar deal to what HBO is moving away from. I think as internet streaming reaches critical mass, content providers like ESPN may decide that their exclusive contracts with cable companies are a liability. Another important issue is advertising dollars - cable-company provided DVRs allow viewers to skip commercials, whereas live streaming doesn't currently allow that, so commercials on streaming video may start to look more lucrative than on TV.

Right, I think religions really need to spice up their offerings. Eternal happiness plus UNLIMITED VIDEO STREAMING!! Now that's a deal!