can tell that Amazon sold a lot of Kindle Fire HDXs by the after market which has sprung up to support them in cases specifically fitted for them. Amazon did sell a ton of these last Christmas with their brilliant marketing strategy of one... offering them for 100 dollars cheaper than the equivalent IPad and Two: letting you pay them out for a year with a no-interest loan so the only up front cost was $129 dollars for the 16 gb wifi 8.9 inch tablet. It's why I bought mine. While the iPad has a comparable display, the Kindle wins out overall for serving entertainment because of it's superior audio output.

all in all it was that Xmas deal that moved the product out so well.

Because the original non-Android Kindle was the best book reader in the pack. It still is because it doesn't try to be anything else. It doesn't have the overhead of a large operating system, a color display, the infrastructure to run a bunch of applications that have nothing to do with book reading. And you didn't have to worry about charging it on a daily basis because it just sipped it's battery, not drank it like a man dying of thirst. It was just a plain effective book reader that magically received books from the Amazon server when you ordered them.

It costs money and facilities to run Spitzer. The ESA and the Canadians probably don't have the budget for it.

Blame it on Slashdot. To actually use paragraphs in this outdated composition system you have to insert commands in your text.

Jefferson's idea of the "yeoman farmer" was the slave holding Southern plantation owner, being one himself, not the moderate family farmer you might be thinking of. Jefferson was more attuned to old style feudalism than democracy.

Very stirring, moving, and utter anarchist bullshit. Freedom and liberty have never been absolute rights, not even the Founders intended that extreme.

We all compromise somewhat on our liberty. That's why we build this thing called civilization instead remaining belligerent apes howling over water holes. We accept traffic lights so we don't run our cars into each other at intersections, and that pedestrians can have a reasonably safe method of crossing the street.

Your "right to do with what your own property" stops when your pollution starts causing others to sicken, or impacts the long term health of the community. Your right to free speech ends when you call in fake bomb threats or yell "fire" in a movie theater.

We are all temporary residents on this planet. Maybe your libertarian values demand that you don't give two beans for the welfare of your descendants, but they are the ones who are going to bear the consequences of our choices, for good or ill.

Anyone who thinks that the southern ice cap has been increasing must be ignoring everything that's been coming out in the news on the West Antarctic ice sheets this week.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed. However we can choose to do something about how badly change is going to impact us and our descendants. Nothing we can do now is going to prevent a good deal of Antarctica's and Greenland's ice from sliding into the ocean. The only question now is whether any of that ice is going to be unmelted before the next two centuries pass. The only question is whether we're going to keep ocean rise to some level or are we just going to let the bulk of our coastal cities drown, our agriculture cycles go to heck, and pretend that we had nothing to do with it.

The region locks are not "ridiculous". Media and goods are sold for different prices per region. If you're looking for a reason for any move made, there's usually money involved.

"This would only be true if said gun owner started taking his firearms out and handling them carelessly, which is so rare that you stand a better chance (by at least an order of magnitude) of being hit by a car driven recklessly (yet for some odd reason, no one is calling for a ban on automobiles.)" No one's calling a ban for guns either, but I don't think that you're looking to have all regulations lifted on auto safety, are you? The NRA gets into a frenzy whenever ANY regulation is brought up, or even any technology that might restrict the free use of a firearm. They're apparently in a major panic on smartguns because they assume the existence of them will lead to mandated confiscation of non-smart weapons.

A large part of illegal guns in tight control places like New York, originate from legal purchases at gun shows which are specifically exempt from the tracking and controls that would be done elsewhere. Likewise there are gun stores in Pennslyvania which are ONLY legally allowed to sell to people coming in from out of state. The problem is that loopholes like these are deliberately created to make end runs around gun control laws which show the problem of leaving this thing to the states. We need a Federally imposed standard of gun regulation which can't be circumvented by gun shows and Pennsy gun shops. We need to stop deliberately inhibiting the AFT from doing the job it's supposed to do.

They can grant or refuse licenses to operate, but they can't tell Comcast or Verizon to take a hike on the basis of net neutrality. They don't have the authority to override the FCC on these issues. People want their cable when they can get it. They certainly do not have the money to provide broadband access on their own. With a couple of exceptions most attempt to provide civic internet access have failed rather spectacularly. The Internet has entered it's inevitable evolution of becoming another public resource turned into a commercial property which has been sliced up and sold to the folks with the money for as usual pennies on the dollar. Asking on what can be done is like asking your ship's departure time when the aft lights are already fading below the horizon.

That's not accurate. You could be an American in London,and you're still not allowed to watch. You could be an illegal alien living in San Diego, and they couldn't care less. The requirement is the restriction of broadcasting, not viewership.

Because the only reason you're using a VPN to watch Huluu is to bypass the regional restriction, which they are REQUIRED by their license terms to enforce.

You do realize that in that stance, you're not being any different from the Christian or any other brand of Fundamentalists, who condemn movies or other artwork sight unseen? I don't plan on seeing it either, but I also don't plan on publishing an opinion about it, one way or another.