Why is the parent post moderated flamebait?

The comment is statistically accurate if a bit understated. Lots of charts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

There are countless articles anyone on /. should be competent to find on their own, such as this:

The punishment falls disproportionately on people of color. Blacks make up 50 percent of the state and local prisoners incarcerated for drug crimes. Black kids are 10 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes than white ones -- even though white kids are more likely to abuse drugs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

As for the "war on black people" comment, see the book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Once a person is convicted of a felony, like for having an ounce of pot or whatever, huge swaths of civil and privacy rights are just taken away for life, finding employment becomes very hard, and they end up never being financially capable of escaping the ghetto. This is just as effective as "whites only" laws.

Here's an example of how one company apparently applies that "no American available" policy:

Now I am working in an American multinational here in the United States, and I find that every last person working for me is an H1B temp work visa holder. There are zero Americans on my staff. In addition to that, we recently had to fill 3 more headcount in my group. My boss instructed me that due to 'budget' that we were to go to our India sourcing department and they would arrange for contractors to be sent in from offshore (India). It would take about 1 month for their visas to be arranged and for them to be on site (in Raleigh North Carolina). Though our Applicant tracking system is overflowing with applications by Americans (including probably some of my own old ones), we didn't even look at those before bringing in the H1Bs. The corporate law firm arranges this, gives the 'no Americans can be found' stamp of approval and the temps are flown in with expedited Visas (H1B or other temp type visas that they use until the H1B is approved). I mentioned this to a couple of my coworkers, and I was discretely told to be quiet about it if I knew what was good for me and didn't want to 'expire' myself.

What to Do When My US Company Won't Hire Americans?

That's cool. I guess I should upgrade.

with a manky top menu bar

In olden times when the entire monitor had a resolution less than that occupied by side-bar advertisements today, the top menu bar made sense. It really did save space over putting the menu repetitively inside every app window.

But ... today it is very common to use dual monitors (at minimum) with pretty extreme resolutions. Moving the cursor from the right side of an external monitor to the left side upper corner, often feels like walking across Montana. With real estate to waste nowadays, I'd really like to see the menu go into application windows. One of the joys of X11 apps in OSX, is the fact that the menu is contained in the window.

But the private key leaves your system? Even if the private key is encrypted, unless it is encrypted by a different private key on your system, you've just given away your private key (e.g., LastPass has the decryption key to your private key which means LP has your private key, albeit in a convoluted manner). I don't know anything about LastPass, but if this is true, it isn't confidence inspiring.

Is there a reason you don't let your email client and a GPG plugin handled the encryption/decryption?

Like you I have no qualms with the "unlimited" description. Back then, when you wanted to use any network service, you dialed in, probably on your only phone line, which before voicemail service (or as an expensive extra charge), meant people got a busy signal if trying to call you. When you were done online, you'd disconnect to free up the phone line for yourself as well as the ISP's modem for other users' use.

What was cool about an "unlimited" plan, of course, was that you didn't have to worry about racking up hourly charges -- $3hr back in the early 1990s was close to the minimum wage at the time, so for a poor college student, that could be quite substantial and acted as a heavy limiter of use.

Even today, we hear "unlimited broadband" but if someone wanted to be pedantic, even at the record 50+ tbs rate, there is a limit to how much data can be sent or received in a month. I think people still get that -- kind of like how "all you can eat" doesn't mean you can eat a whole cow -- somethings just aren't possible.

Although certainly not the first ISP, I think Delphi was one of the first commercial online services to offer internet access (maybe late 1992, definitely by 93). Delphi was totally text based, but if I recall, it only cost $20/month for 20 hours while AOL, though snazzier, was something like $3/hr. The one good thing about AOL discs in the very early 90s, was coming bundled with a version of GeoWorks that ran on DOS.

Anyway, I finally got actual internet through a dial-up ISP in late 1994, then DSL in 1999. And now, I toy with the idea of cutting the cord completely from time to time, as I get too tired to cuss at the punks on my lawn.

Masterfully crafted after being purchased by lobbyists for the companies. The financial return of lobbying is massive -- more than making cool products people love.

We find firms lobbying for this provision have a return in excess of $220 for every $1 spent on lobbying, or 22,000%.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

That said, I think the nature of the parties in this instance is clouding /.'s judgment. Let's say it was a secure email provider who stored all data offshore, but was a US company. Would /. in general really be so willing to side with the Feds? I doubt it, and I see a lot of potential problems that could hurt real people as a result of this decision surviving appeals.

I have a "debt" in collections right now. Comcast claims I owe $95 to them. Last winter I moved to a place where I could not only get other service, Comcast doesn't even serve (thankfully). So I told Comcast I'd be terminating my service effective Jan 15. Comcast had my credit card to auto-bill for it's "service".

Then in March I started getting collection calls from companies Comcast hired to get this from me. Nobody will prove to me that I actually owe this money. And what's odd is the amount: $95 when my monthly bill for internet-only service was about $60 or $70. I just got another call yesterday on it.

I could easily pay it and never even feel the hit. But fuck that! Comcast sucks beyond the ability of science to measure and I'm so sick of being taken by them, they're going to have to take me into small claims court and get a court order for this sum.

And yeah, I get that this will harm my sterling credit rating, but what a great means of extortion. Bill people small amounts under the threat of losing their good credit rating and even when people don't actually owe the money, they'll pay up to save their rating.

How lame -- your thoughtful post with an understanding of the history gets modded troll. All of the "Dem Ruskies Arr Evul" posts get modded up.

The media is doing such a great job inciting people, I'm sure we'll get another useless war in a dispute that isn't about us soon.

Oh, and for all of you all upset about the plane: USS Vincennes. We have our sins and getting up on that high pedestal looks really stupid when we do it. We should leave the condemnations of Russia to countries who haven't done the exact same thing.

The US and Russia are equals. I bet you never heard of the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 665. It's cool, I'm sure you'll figure out a way to lie to yourself or rationalize that shootdown based on trivial differences in order to maintain the lie you tell yourself that the US is not also a terrorist organization.

Not to mention too dumb to know what an Airbus looks like ... oh wait, that's us.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Not even extreme sports. Football, skiing, golf, jogging -- they all have dangers and people have suffered from accidents or repetitive stress injuries. Of course, sitting at home safe in your Lazyboy has its own health risks. Or driving -- that is probably one of the most dangerous things we do.

All of these people saying "I shouldn't have to pay for ...." fundamentally fail to understand that insurance about spreading risk, not concentrating it. Besides, there are risks in everything one does, and even risks in things one chooses not not to do -- attempting to fully regulate that through insurance coverage would mean everyone would be excluded for one reason or another, and only the extremely wealthy would be able to be fully free. Alternatively, by partially regulating activities -- choosing which risks to accept and which to exclude -- that is just a way for the powerful to exert control over those who have less power. Finally, there are financial costs to exclusion -- lawsuits and such. Any time litigation ensues between insurers (*) about who should pay, that is a pure unmitigated waste of resources. Better to just accept that through insurance, you might contribute a dime to a cause you don't like, but in all likelihood, someone else is going to contribute a dime to you for a reason he/she doesn't like. In the end, over hundreds of millions of people, it's a wash, and cheaper to just accept it than bitch and litigate and regulate.

(*) This could be Ins. Co. v. Individual Person (consider the individual a potential self-insurer)

This is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and GWB's drug czar and in it, reference to Portugal and studies related to that are made. From there, you can do your own searching:

http://vimeo.com/32110912