Yeah, three voices all spouting the same popular opinions. Who said that having multiple copies of the same opinion was a good thing?

There is a significant difference between an unpopular candidate not finding funding for his speech to be heard and the government legislatively taking his ability to speak away. In the former, an unpopular candidate may have sufficient money of his own to pay for his own speech; in the latter he is legally prohibited from spending his own money to speak.

A more textbook example of a violation of the first amendment, and the reason why the first amendment is necessary in the first place, would be hard to find.

Those who didn't toe the party line wouldn't be party candidates, and it would be the parties who do the work to get the signatures to get the money.

I don't know why a "tighter" (closer?) election is necessarily a good thing, and you really need a citation for the ridiculous claim that limiting the number of voices in an election to the popular opinions would make it any more interesting, or that "more participation" is defacto a good thing.

Agreed and trapster and other apps do the same crowdsourced speed trap locating trick.

Trapster had better audio alerts but they don't work on my new phone so I use waze now.
It also flagged "likely" speed traps even when the police were not yet reported in the location.

Using the app to locate a speedtrap is about as productive as driving along the road and observing parked police cars then circling back around and attacking them now that you know where they are.

The police have a problem because they have been killing united states citizens at a rate of roughly 1200* citizens per year (via 528 validated trustworthy news source reported face page reports). More of those citizens killed by united states police were children than all the citizens killed by the police forces of england, france, and germany combined. It is literally (not figuratively) about 120* citizens vs under 20 citizens in england, france, and germany total per year.

Not to mention countless beatings, illegitimate property seizures, and a solid reputation of "good cops" standing aside doing nothing while the "bad" cops commit crimes.

*People who are police officers killed about 1450 citizens but 528.com found that about 200 of the killings were not related to their police status or police duties.

** I support the police and donate to the police fund but our police are out of control and have terrible community relations. We need to get them out of dealing with drug gangs and drug money and swat teams and military equipment. Move that activity to the FBI and return the police to ordinary police enforcement actions. Having a tank and heavy automatic weapons misleads them into killing 7 year old girls when they were at the wrong address.

In other words, only the popular opinions get to be heard and the unpopular ones have no chance at all.

What laws were bought?

It's hard to get upset over three politicians who wanted to support the merger and asked Comcast for help writing a letter to the FCC. I'm more upset that the politicians are writing letters AT ALL, since that's an open attempt at speaking over the voices of their constituents who are capable of writing their own letters. I.e., a city councilor or mayor who writes a letter on behalf of his city is stealing the speech from all the people who don't agree with his opinion.

Was only marks STOPPED police cars, that are also by the side of the road with someone in them. You (the person using Waze) wouldn't mark a cop parked to eat lunch, or just driving around (how could you mark a car driving around? It's not like Waze is selling GPS tracking magnets... hmm...)

So for someone thinking of robbing a bank or anyone else, all you know is where the police cars are that are in speed traps. At any given moment there are a ton of police cara simply driving all about, that Waze has no indication.

Using Waze does not mean you can speed like crazy, just that you can keep up with traffic without worrying about being singled out for a stop because of the color of your car or yourself.

Waze is also REALLY useful to know when there's traffic ahead (people telling Waze where traffic is beats every other mapping solution I have used) and also hazards like giant potholes, or cars stuck in the road.

Only because the stock price would plummet and the company would be worth only the value of the plant. At that point Time-Warner buys it from bankruptcy for a pittance and the merger happens anyway.

What significant difference is there between nobody paying their cable bill and everyone cancelling service? A couple of months into the former and service would be cancelled automatically AND the company would have a large amount of write-off for the bad debts.

What color is the sky on your world, Cliff? Why not ask for unicorns while you're at it? Who PAYS for all this infrastructure upgrade if there are no subscribers?

If he is powerless to ticket you, that means you're out of his jurisdiction and doesn't have authority to stop you.

The reason the local cop on the interstate didn't stop you for "blowing by" him was probably because he was there doing something else that he was called to assist with. There's no other reason for him to be there if it isn't in his jurisdiction.

OMG, you do NOT want law enforcement to become a guessing game of "what is the intent of the traffic signal". There is never a debate about whether you "fully stopped" or "almost", that's pretty easy for an observer to tell, and you get to debate it with the judge where that debate belongs. As well as the "intent" debate. As far as law enforcement goes, the "intent" of any traffic signal (i.e. "stop sign" or "red light") is that you stop. Period. End of sentence. If the municipality that installed the signal didn't want you to stop, they would have installed a yield or yellow flasher.

Really? I found it valuable to be able to browse the local shop to see what new magazines (or old ones I didn't know about) were available, to look inside to see what they contained. When I got interested in something, I could see what was available, and I could see covers that hinted that maybe I'd like to read what was inside. If I didn't see what I wanted, I could ask the owner and she'd help me find what I needed. In most cases, I'd walk out of the shop with what I wanted -- immediate delivery.

Compare this to Barnes and Noble (one of the "winners" in this competition.) I have an electronic subscription to a magazine. It is supposed to renew automatically, and they sent me an email a month ago telling me it would renew three weeks ago. So far, it hasn't renewed. I got the paper copy of the magazine, and BN touts that "nook magazines" are delivered before the paper versions are. I contacted support. They apologized that the most recent issue hadn't been put in my library and they'd look into it. I told them it was obvious why -- they hadn't renewed the subscription. They're still "looking into it" and it's been a week.

Even better, when the current issue is put in my library, since they've dropped their Windows Nook reader (without saying anything, it took a round of email with support to find out why it just wouldn't log in to their server) I now must rely on an Android app to download my copies, and then I can copy the file out of the app's content directory to put it where I want it to be. The only way to know which is the correct file is to look at the creation date, the name is unintelligible gibberish. Fortunately this magazine is DRM-free, so I don't have to go through the steps of uploading the file to my PC to remove the DRM and then redownload it to read it using my reader of choice.

Oh, this Nook App has the wonderful property that it shows only a few characters of the name of the content along with the cover. So, unless I know the cover image of the issue of the magazine I want to read, I get to see "Asimo ... 2015" as the identification. Which month? That info is contained only on the cover icon which is unreadable because it is so small. The "competitor" free app does much better, and B&N don't give a damn how hard it is to identify content.

So, when you say "the best competitor won", that's your opinion. It may be the opinion of many people, but it isn't a fact. What is more likely is that "the most convenient" or "the cheapest" competitor won, but that's not always "the best". Were it "the best", then why do people go to brick and mortar's to browse for things to buy before they buy online?

It was a technological "revolution" that allowed a company in Seattle, Washington to become a competitor with the Borders store in my town (and in all the other cities). If you want to claim that "competition is good" and then limit your definition to "competition that is only the same sized business located in the same city doing things the same way", you've lost all basis for your claim.

And a competitor can get those same "sweat" deals by signing a franchise agreement. That agreement will cost them a few percent of their revenue. That's not enough to stop them.

Of course they would. What they scream about is irrelevant. The grocery store on the corner isn't happy when another grocery store opens across the street, either. None of the grocery stores in town were happy when Walmart opened their grocery store here, and none of the general merchandise stores were happy when Walmart announced plans for a superstore here.

Because people on /. love to guess about details when those guesses can be used to ridicule or embarrass someone.

A group I know recently took three quads to a beach to do some scientific research. Bought with limited funds so they aren't just toys, they're tools that need to be used properly and maintained for multiple uses.

Only one came back. Two of them wound up in the ocean.

Low battery return functions only work if they trigger far enough in advance that they can make it back to safety. The one I have (a $500 DJI) has such a function. The last time I flew it to "low battery", it had about enough battery left to make a controlled descent from directly overhead. Even if it had sufficient battery, the return algorithm is to climb to 20' and then fly to home and then descend. There's no sensors in the quad to notice that there's a 30' tree or building betwixt it and home.

Except as a proof-of-concept regarding GPS jamming around a sensitive target, or to determine the security response to such an event. Not every 'proof of concept' has to deal exclusively with the specific hardware being tested, it can be a "proof of concept" for the entire process.

I'm sorry, but you're assuming the security around the whitehouse is run by morons who couldn't imagine the use of a simple quad. I'm going to guess that they probably already know about the possibility.

You're assuming that the pre-planned response if someone shines a laser pointer through Potus' window is to have the President of the US hide for the next few days. Somehow I doubt that's the reaction you'd get when you try it. For a bad guy, it would be valuable to know what the response IS to such an event, so that during any potential confusion some other method of attack can be used to accomplish whatever goal is desired.

You know, if you're going to try to do something bad to someone who is well defended, it is important to probe the responses so you can determine weaknesses or what other things you'll have to deal with.

As far as the size of the drone, I recall an episode of one of the recently ubiquitous gun-shop television shows where they designed and built a quad with a gun. It wasn't a huge quad they needed to carry that weight. They were also carrying a lot of extra weight since they were using a stock handgun. Get rid of all the useless stuff, like the stock, the magazine, etc, until you have a simple tube with a firing pin and it would weigh a lot less. A single-use barrel, thermal firing, you could probably get it down to weigh less than a GoPro. You could probably 3-D print the thing as part of the quad's chassis.

In the 1700s, printing presses were owned by people who had money to own such things. It has always been the case that people who have money have more ability to express their speech than someone who doesn't. The founders weren't ignorant boobs, they were people who had printing presses or access to them.

This "equate money with speech" is a fiction. The truth is, money is a prerequisite for ANYONE to have effective speech, especially today, but still true in the 1700s. By cutting someone's access to money, you cut his access to effective speech, thereby limiting his right to free speech. I'll point to the use of "free speech zones" at political conventions as an example of the technical existence of free speech but the practical effect of limiting it severely, which is what saying "you can say whatever you want but you can't spend money to buy TV or radio advertising to say it..." is equivalent to.

The case you are probably alluding to was just one example of PEOPLE who banded together to pool their money to buy airtime to exercise their right to free speech. Yes, they incorporated, but that's a red herring. At the base, they were people, and people are the ones who have the rights.

A lot earlier than that, if you block expenditures by people who pool their money, you will GUARANTEE that the only people who can speak effectively are those who are rich all by themselves. The government already has free (as in beer) speech -- it's called "franking", or "spending taxpayer dollars on advertising", or "town hall meetings".

Those are called "laws", and we have a Constitution that limits what laws the government is supposed to be able to enact. One of the bits of our Constitution talks about speech and the limits on laws regarding such. Telling ten people that they cannot put their money together so they can buy a radio ad that none of them can afford individually, while allowing one person who can afford such an ad to buy time, is a fundamentally flawed and ethically bankrupt attempt at silencing people you don't agree with. Nobody complains about Citizens United when it allows unions to buy airtime, they only complain about the "corporation" that wanted to buy airtime for an anti-Hilary movie.

Ha! That's an old one. After you find the golden rivet you can hop in your F-35 for a little snipe hunting.

In the past the oil industry was a much bigger part of the Texas economy than it is now. It's still a large part, but there is a ton of high-tech stuff all around Texas - Apple is building all of its Mac Pro units in Texas, for example...

They also have a lot of international trade, including a major airport and shipping port too. All of that adds to economic diversity.

they simply found pak'ma'ra toilet habits to be utterly repulsive

Ah, so the pak'ma'ra used German toilets then.

Sliders started the best, but then fell apart. If it could have continued and ended as strong as it started, I would have voted for it over the others.