In a purely practical and objective standpoint, you are correct. It would make more sense to have employees of the city to do it.

But this is not a practical or objective world. There are politics to be played; Backs to be scratched and palms to be greased. For those in that sort of position of authority, there is a game to be played. Who can they trade this favor of a contract (with the possibility of over-payment) for some future consideration or contribution?

This is not the world of high-school civics that we were taught. These people are not there out of a sense of service to their fellow citizen or because they have good ideas that might make the world a better place.

This is the world where people have ambitions, who want to get ahead and further up the ladder of power. This is the world where people can and do get addicted to the feeling of power that their authority gives them and want only to increase it.

This is also the world where other people, further up the chain of authority tell the lower levels to who and how a contract should be presented. And because it is their boss or their boss's boss or their boss's boss's boss doing this, they fear for their jobs and livelihood and do what they're told instead of going out and shouting to the world of the corruption they've seen.

This isn't the first time this has happened.

It also happened way back when with the start of the airline industry. Back in 1903, the Wright Brothers started one over the way one controlled a plane. Long story short, WWI started and seeing as how planes were a cool new war toy, the US government stepped in and made them make peace or else no one would get the patent money.

I have to wonder what's it going to take to get that to happen this time around.

No it wasn't. It was 9-0 decision. There were two opinions handed down which was the split --- Alito wrote the second and was joined by Ginsberg, Beyer, and Kagan. Alito wanted to go further and say that the length of time required a second, separate warrant to cover it.

See Wired's coverage for more details.

Nothing. You seem to fear the police's ability to investigate. If they find it was a child then they can hand the evidence of such to the parents and DA and let them sort it out. If it was an adult then they can had the same evidence to the DA and let see where the speech may fall. Either way, an investigation as to what happened is called for. The police are the most obvious way to see that done. It doesn't have to be a priority, it doesn't have to take away from any other duties. What exactly are you opposed to in that sense?

At the very least it is a display of ignorance which needs to be dealt with in a way that does not let it grow into something worse. If this was a teen or a child playing (to what in their mind was) a prank, then it definitely needs some sort of correction. If this was an adult then surely they are aware of the consequences of their words and how a society will and often can punish them for such ignorance.

Re #2: The sad fact of the matter is that (as someone living in the county) that it's well known that the BPU is very corrupt. As in former board members have resigned over rigging the pay of friends and family. There's a good reason that the county government ignored them and are trying to ram this through. See this for further reading.

Re #3: The incumbents did this to themselves. Before it was popular everywhere else, Kansas fucked its own ass by giving the cable and telcos state wide franchises and removing all of the local oversight boards. There might have been a chance to stop Google, but their greed got the best of them years ago.

Are we certain about that? I thought that part of the problem was the circular logic used in this case. ie, The government will not let you know if you were spied upon because they might be building a terrorism case against you. As far as I can recall, that was the whole of the initial justification and why congress had to act to pass the law.

So how do we know?

The obvious and easy remedy would be to declare the law null and let the public see for themselves what was done on their behalf. That is the only way to be certain that there was no cause for concern and that there is no other remedy needed in this and every other case brought up by such actions or laws passed by Congress.

Poor science and a century and a half of water rights wars with California.

See this fine article.

It's not that I want to hide the ads. What I want is to hide the annoyance of the ads. Keep the ads subtle and out of the flow of what I'm on a site for, and I won't want to block them.

What the marketers don't understand is that the more annoying they get, the less eyeballs they receive because of more and more people use ad-ons like Adblock to avoid the annoyance. All they seem to understand is the lazy approach. Be loud! Be garish! Be anything but smart and honest!

A new expac announcement inside a year of the last being brought out.

A race and class that's been begged for since the beginning. And was once a April-fools joke.

An additional game, gratis, for long term subscribers.

Is it just me or does this have the reek of desperation? They reported a drop in numbers earlier this year, and it makes me wonder if that drop has been steady all year long. Why else bait the hook with so much junk? It doesn't feel like Blizz has the same confidence in the game they had before.

It's simple. The companies FB has partnered with to mine that data want their jobs to be easier. So it's now up to the users to put the connections in there that they either couldn't (due to too much noise, legal concerns, what have you) or didn't want to spend the money on developing. That's what this is all about. Make it voluntary and in most instances you've made it legal. Make it necessary and you have the users doing the hard work for you.

Given how much effort it takes just to get a simple feed of stuff from friends, the way it used to be, I have the feeling that this portends the end of usefulness for the facebook. Perhaps the Oatmeal is right, by 2014 it's nothing but old women playing games who have the time to put those connections together.

If, by law, you mean someone is not prevented from doing it, then you are correct.

However, to become a HFT there are a number of substantial barriers to entry you have to overcome. Not the least of which is that many of the privately held markets require you to buy a seat on them. The price of a seat on the NYSE is currently four million dollars. Not exactly change you can find in the sofa cushions. And then there is the capital outlay for the computer systems, the rental for where to house them, the fiber to the market and whatever it will cost to hook up to their computers, and so on and so forth.

In short, it is for elites only. It is for those who can afford it. It is, in fact, something that you are prevented from doing if you are so inclined to do so.

I think they use a number of financial tools and hold a number of positions on a given stock, none of which look at the long term stability, profitability, or sustainability of the company but instead focus on the day to day noise in order to maximize when to trade which option they currently hold the most money in.

These people look for the gaps. The gaps of knowledge, the gaps of valuation, and the gaps of naivety of those just getting into that sort of trading. They at not looking at the value of the employees, the value of the products, or the value of the actual company.

Just look at the oil markets and how volatile and uncoupled from supply and demand they've become. We're sitting at the lowest demand for gasoline in fifty years but it's still being traded at two to three times what many feel is the actual value of the good. Look at what it has done to demand for the product and for the larger economy. That is what speculation has gotten us.

Why else would they be crippling themselves by making going to the movies even worse than it was before? It certainly can't be because they're making tons of money by showing the films to begin with. And it certainly isn't because of skyrocketing ticket and concession stand prices. Or that they're fighting to keep calorie counts off the menus.

They'd have a good reason for making people not want to go, right? Right?

If it works.

The real problem being is that those in charge of making decisions at the newspapers don't have the desire to go along with this sort of change. And let's not be coy about it. They need to change and we need them to as well. All of us need good, solid reporting of all sorts.

So far, these sorts of changes have been happening right along without them. This is yet another stop on the grand train to the digital future which most of them are willing to ignore in hopes of something else happening.

Let's see if this time they'll get their collective heads out of the sand.