There's a lot implicit in that sentence.
Which freedom is "provided" by our military.
Which freedom specifically are we all basking in?
What freedom has been preserved or provided by invading Iraq or Afghanistan?

Post 9/11 laws have done more to take away our freedoms than anything the military has done to recover or preserve them.

Is freedom from terrorist attacks more important than freedom from warrantless wiretaps, loss of due process (hello terrorist watch list), freedom from enhanced interrogation, National Security Letters, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, freedom from assassination (sorry, targeted killing), freedom from secret courts (separate from the loss of due process), and I could keep going.

If you went back 50 years and told someone this is what the USA would become,
they'd laugh and say that you're describing Soviet Russia or East Berlin.

I recall reading a paper which studied market behavior and it concluded that even 4 or 5 companies that aren't colluding can still naturally behave like a cartel.

It's not just enough to have competitors, you must have meaningful competition.

In ireland, you get 20 days vacation and 9 paid holidays a year.

The average Irish working week is 39 hours and the legal maximum 48.

I was forced to work 83 hours at my last employers. On salary.

Then a year later, they laid all of us off and replaced us with indians.

Then we found out through leaks they had been PLANNING to lay us off when they ordered us to work those hours.

People had heart attacks, divorces.

It's evil and society shouldn't tolerate it.

1 Luxembourg $4,089
2 Norway $3,678
3 Austria $3,437
4 United States $3,263
5 United Kingdom $3,065
6 Belgium $3,035
7 Sweden $3,023
8 Ireland $2,997
9 Finland $2,925
10 South Korea $2,903
11 France $2,886

So basically, you get better, less expensive, more effective* mostly free national health care, better social security, better standards of living, shorter working days (8-4/9-5 vs 8-5/9-6), and 6 weeks vacation.

For that you surrender $387 a month. In france.

It costs you less in Sweden, Belgium, and UK. I think working conditions in Ireland are currently worse than in the U.S.

It costs you nothing in Luxembourg (atypical), Norway, and Austria.

*While exceptions exist in the U.S., they are usually for very expensive treatments. In general, the mortality rate, child and infant mortality rate, and lifespan are better in the listed countries. U.S. health care outcomes for the bottom 80% are worse than 28 or 29 other 1st world countries.

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More generally (not in response to your post), you can't negotiate vacation in the U.S. It's a benefit- it's hard coded in the software. I did it once- getting a week without pay- after five years my new manager just arbitrarily cancelled it when I got my paid 3rd week. There was no one to appeal to if I wanted to remain employed.

You are really quite mistaken. The attitude you are displaying is actually quite recent- it developed after 1980. "Business" is purely a social construct. If you look into the history of corporations, the legal constructs were explicitly created for the benefit of society in general in mind.

If all businesses had no employees- then no one could buy any products.

Money is just how we agree to swap things around in society to prevent violence.

Whenever things get too unbalanced, the violence is waiting around just under the surface. It's happened over and over throughout history. Even the wealthy are starting to be openly concerned about the imbalance of the distribution of income and wealth in society.

If we reach a point where business practices benefit well under 50% of the population, I assure you that things will change.

And yet we always here how it's women's genitalia that has the power.

I think men's power were in their arms, backs, and their greater aggression.

Dicks really had little to do with it.

Cultures which didn't procreate quickly got wiped out for most of history. If you had 3 baby boys and they had 1 baby boy, then in 20 years, your culture took over (either peacefully or violently).

Any kind of culture that supported a low birth rate wasn't really practical until the invention of guns and machines.

And people get mad when I say NASA has devolved into a collection of risk adverse mid-managers loosely connected to a rusting theme park endlessly replaying clips of their glory days. Their best days are behind them and it's time to think about reorganizing the entire agency.

All this talk of level playing fields ignores the entire point of subsidies.
The idea is to foster a new industry whether it's through loans, grants, or University research.

"Level playing field" ignore the fact that the fossil fuel industry is an established multi-trillion dollar global industry.
Last year, the oil industry spent ~$700 billion just on finding new oil.

Cutting everyone's subsidies is not leveling the field, it's taking green energy out back and shooting it.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

College gender gap remains stable: 57% women

Just how much longer are we going to keep our foot on the back of young men's necks?

Free money, education, assistance to females even tho they are closing on 60% of the degrees.

Yes- from the beginning of time until about 50 years ago, men were in control of most societies. But things have changed rapidly.

At my last job, the supervisors and managers were 70% female. And they did things which would have resulted in lawsuits if a male did the same thing.

Are you shooting for fairness or retribution?

Roads belonged to pedestrians and they had priority, not horse carriages, bicycles, or eventually automobiles.
The status quo, where you separate pedestrians and drivers, is entirely a concoction of the automotive industry.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

Roads were originally a shared space and the thinking is moving back towards that direction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

> If only tablets had on-screen keyboards

They're dreadful.

> Bluetooth keyboards or keyboard docks!

A decent bluetooth keyboard costs a lot of money. Keyboard dock? Why not just buy a laptop?

> All you're doing is reducing the impact of the point you're trying to make.

But i'm right though. That's what this story is about. Using a laptop, not a tablet, when you want to do something other than consume. How many people use laptops to write books, code etc. And how many use tablets. Thank you.

> It's entirely possible for a kid and with iPad to produce their own podcast or video
> presentation for a class.

Sure. It's posssible to use a Raspberry Pi, and enter text via a morse code key. Wouldn't that be fun?

It depends on how bad your vision is.

If it is 20/400 as mine was, after 18 years my vision is still clear tho I'm probably down to 20/40 from 20/20. I don't wear glasses or contacts and haven't since the operation.

I was unable to scuba dive, down hill ski, play racquet ball, and playing ultimate frisbee was impossible when the humidity was high.

When I went to the ocean- I had to leave my glasses on the beach so everything was a blur.

I experimented with disposable contacts and they were fair.

Lasik cost me $500 ($250 per eye) and it took 32 seconds and 39 seconds for my left and right eyes.

If it is dry and I don't drink enough water my eyes will turn fuzzy until I rehydrate. Eyedrops usually fix it instantly but sometimes not.

The surgery gave me a tremendous amount of freedom.

Texas has uniquely dumb laws that let you suck up whatever water is underneath your land.

So if you own a couple acres on the edge of a giant underground reservoir that spans several counties, you are allowed to drain the entire reservoir from your property.

Texas tried to mitigate this by allowing for local water boards, but they get bullied/sued if they don't allow the resource extraction.
Read more here: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/who-stole-the-water-20140623

>This proves that all the Slashdot talk about software freedom is thinly disguised
>Microsoft hate since everyone here seems to be pumping up heavily locked down
>iDevices and Chromebooks.

Many people - especially Slashdot readers - don't use Microsoft products unless, perhaps, they'd paid to use it at work (either as end users or developers). They're just not relevant to a discussion about tablets (they don't make any that have any impact on the market) or Chromebooks (which are usable in seconds, are free from the `you've moved your mouse - better restart your pc, oh, and don't forget to install todays set of patches for Windows and Java` crap to which Windows users subject themselves).

Chromebooks beat tablet hand's down because it's possible to do anything on a bloody tablet except surf or watch netflix. Students might want to..you know...type something in?

Look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorefractive_keratectomy (PRK)

PRK came before LASIK and doesn't involve cutting the cornea.
The recovery time is several days and, like LASIK, it takes months to see the maximum benefit.