So you live outside Vegas? How come more people aren't lobbying to legalize prostitution nation wide? It seems like it would solve a lot of the worlds problems.

That you know of. Maybe a sufficiently advanced scientific-technological elite's control of public policy is indistinguishable from no control at all.

If several of the larger states in America had proportional voting with the electoral college, America would also have to be worrying about coalition governments or in that case a coalition president taking over the White House.

How so? As you allude to later in your post, anything short of an Electoral College majority throws the election of President to the House (with the vote to be taken by states), and the election of Vice-President to the Senate. But, once elected, the President isn't subject to Congress (impeachment excepted) any more than the Congress is subject to the President. So, I am unclear as to what your "coalition" idea would mean.

Here's another idea:

1) some bunch of technically skilled people with a lot of spare time put together a proposal for a linux based tablet system
2) those people ask for funding (for example on http://www.kickstarter.com/
3) slashdot crowd starts donating money
4) people start developing the device
5) profit!

One more question I hope you can clarify. I believe there is a lot of misinformation about this case in the media. But the most critical issue goes like this (quoted from sfgate):

Newsom testified that the city had been "in peril" because officials were blocked from access to police records, payroll data and other information.

The idea is he has brought down the city network and cut off certain department from access. But a conflicting account from more technical source is that the city network is fully functional, only that IT is unable to administer the network. Which one is a more true picture?

This probably won't change the verdict. But the public (and the mayor) should get a clearer picture on the actual extent of the problem before making their judgement.

which, btw, until 2016, is essentially FREE except for large media companies that already pay for that for general video encoding (not hosting, think TV studios), and for companies with over 25,000 paying subscribers.

Applegets no kickbacks from people using H.264 other than they don't have to cross-code support for other formats into quicktime (which they chose not to do for 15 years, so why would that change anyway).

Very true, but let's not forget another detail: many folks seem to think building video games == playing video games. I'd be willing to bet that while initial interest may be high, the drop-out rate will be through the roof. With a flurry of video game buffs enrolling in these classes (many of which are likely to be non-programmers), there is bound to be a lot of students caught like a deer in headlights when they learn that game development is one of the most difficult forms of programming in existence.

Of course, those who are artistically inclined might actually have an easier shot at making it through: as they could get into the art-design aspects of game development. I'd further suspect that most of the graduates will fall in this category -- and hence, will get the chance to experience the game development industry in it's full glory.

Did Dell remove the ability to run OS/2 from existing systems, and force that change on you, blocking your ability to access the internet untill you accept the loss?

Its purely symbolic, because you cant build in unincorporated land, it becomes automatically incorporated.

Uh, wrong.

Unincorporated land in a California county only becomes incorporated when a new city is created including the land at issue, or when land at issue is annexed to a city; either of which requires action by the county's Local Agency Formation Commission, and neither of which is a prerequisite for building on the land.

In Arizona the law states that you only have to give your full name.

Let's imagine someone suspicious is hanging around a vacant storefront and the LEO thinks they're casing the joint (a la Terry v. Ohio). The LEO has reasonable suspicion to detain him. The LEO asks the person to identify himself. He complies and with a heavy accent gives his name as Juan Gonzales. He declines to furnish ID. A frisk doesn't reveal any contraband.

The LEO observes that in the strip mall where the stop took place there is a Home Depot and illegal aliens regularly gather to solicit work as day laborers. In conjunction with the man's ethnicity and accent this enables (requires?) the LEO to ask the man about his citizenship status. As is his right, the man refuses to answer any further questions. Can the LEO arrest him?

I'm reading over the law again and it says, "a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person." We know that if you're driving you are required to present a drivers license, but in any other situation, what happens if you refuse to answer immigration status questions?

Lets say that the LEO arrests the man. Eventually it turns out that Juan is a US citizen. Were his rights violated?

I am confused though...I thought I had my router pointing to OpenDNS and my machines taking their settings via dhcp from the router...but I still occasionally get those search pages from my ISP (RCN).