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I've followed your work on behalf of free culture for years sir, and let me just say "Thank you".

The importance of your current campaign cannot be overstated; no country can be truly "free" it is in fact owned by a few tyrants. Corruption was bad before Citizens United and it's almost uncontroversial to say it's the worst in our history. Aside from donating money, how can individuals help? I'm sure you know this crowd has no shortage of technical skills and I'd be happy to volunteer myself.

I don't have any points today.

Until politicians stop being bought by the highest bidder, there can be no political progress in this country. While not everyone may agree with Lessig representing them, you may want to take some time to research the terrific things he's done as lawyer for the EFF.

For example, many /. may dislike the "unlimited copyright" rule where companies essentially own a copyright forever. Lessig fought the good fight in the Supreme Court.

Unless politicians represent actual people and not the Supreme Court's idea of people, corruption won't end in our political process.

much higher mileage of gasoline cars (33mpg vs 28mpg) ...and in 1993, most Fords got ~22 mpg

Wear and tear on roads is largely based on vehicle weight and time. I used to work in the Delaware Department of Transportation and we'd use wear rates based on usage and its observed current state to calculate when maintenance was needed. One of the main ways vehicles have gained mileage is by reducing weight which also reduces road wear and tear.

many more trucks used for shipping (70% more in 2007 than in 1997) ...and trucks weigh a ton more (quite literally) and thus have a lower MPG (and pay more in gas taxes).

If anything, our gas taxes are probably the most "fair" tax in the country. If hybrids become too big of a problem, it's probably pretty easy to make electric vehicles pay an "road fee" whenever you get your license plate renewed.

...and we have 5-6 cities where existing by public transit alone is reasonable (NYC, SF Bay, Boston, Philly, and Chicago). Strangely, while SF has under a million people, it's a much more walkable city than say...Houston (which, has a single above-ground rail line) population 2.61 million or LA (there's a movie about how LA lost its public transit that you've probably seen too).

Simply living in an "urban area" does not guarentee decent public transit access.

I thought the grammar police worked for the government?

No. Criminals have proven that they are not capable of self-regulation
They're not criminals until they commit a crime. Until then, they're law-abiding citizens. Many of the massacres we've seen are first offenses.

no or outside regulation and no amount of regulatory burden on the law abiding will stop that.
Yeah, if we outlaw guns, only criminals will have guns...but that's precisely the point. We now know who to arrest the person with the assault rifle who walked into a school. To wit, if regulating guns didn't work, we would expect countries with tough gun regulation to have higher gun violence.

Can you tell which countries those are?

Thank you Elon Musk.

If only every other CEO had the same courage. Also, if he's willing to do this for SpaceX, I have no problems with a private company doign space exporation.

I didn't have an argument. I was only pointing out the collective hypocracy.

And there's no one crossing the border. Please go see a therapist about your anger issues.

I totally agree.

They came over from another country and then rewrote the laws so they could stay. That's just illegal no matter how you think of it.

It's really time the Europeans go back to Europe.

As the saying goes "haters gonna hate", but really, it's a big accomplishment. To pass the Turing test, you'd need to choose some "identity" for your AI. The idea of using a kid with limited cognative skills was clever, but not cheating -- but it's also not simulating a professor. If there is truly intellgient AI in the future, it's reasonable to expect its evolution to start with easier people to emulate before trying harder.

We've traded someone who flings rascist insults to a grown man who flings chairs.

Who said progress wasn't dead?

So since there's already too many PhDs competing for too few tenure jobs, their "solution" is to decrease the effort of getting the degree, which econ 101 tells us will increase the number of teachers. With increased supply (PhDs in humanities) and the same demand (no new teaching slots), price (wages in this case) should go down.

...maybe it makes a good case for humanities PhDs taking some economics courses during their decade of school?

I for one, welcome our robotic overlords and wish them luck in the human cloning of Apple's founder -- one Jobs wasn't enough we need 240K and that should be enough for anybody!