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Comment Re:Changes require systematic, reliable evidence.. (Score 3, Interesting) 336

He's right: idiot.

Read this before you comment more:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

Essentially, these companies claim Title II status whenever they want to build something because under Title II they don't have to pay for right of way to government or private entities, get to use poles and tunnels without having to pay, etc., -- in other words they get a subsidy -- but when it comes to charging customers, they disclaim Title II status.

This is a corollary of "Privatize profits, socialize expenses" -- "Privatize profits, socialize business expenses."

Comment Re:Methinks that (Score 5, Insightful) 191

Exactly. And now the government must be stoked that it will have a test case to bring to the Supreme Court so that the Supreme Court can twist out some "logic" to say parallel construction is OK. They say that bad facts make bad law, and Ubrecht is fairly unlikeable, what with the attempts to find a hit man. From a "destroy the 4th" perspective, this case is even better than Smith v. Maryland: http://www.google.com/url?q=ht... (*). The Feds must be creaming their pants in anticipation of having parallel construction deemed constitutional.

(*) This is the grandfather of our massive indiscriminate surveillance policy. The short summary is that the police were too lazy to get a search warrant that would surely have been granted, simply had the phone company set one up. And although it dealt with a single individual, with specific facts sufficient for a warrant, and covered a specific and short time period, the Third Party Doctrine took on a different character after that, being applied to all people, in the absence of any evidence, for all time.

Comment Re:Update to Godwin's law? (Score 1) 575

"-- pushed forward with NSA surveillance of all Americans;"
vastly stripped down surveillance. BTW, that's their job.

Where do you get the idea it was vastly stripped down? Snowden waited to do his leaking because he was hopeful Obama would change things. It was when Obama changed nothing ...

Snowden said he thought about disclosing the program sooner but was hopeful the election of President Barack Obama would change things. But "[Obama] continued with the policies of his predecessor," Snowden said.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/th...

---

"-- seeks to make such surveillance inescapable;"
wanting to be ab; to execute legal warrants is no making surveillance inescapable.

Really, after everything we've learned in the last year about how utterly ignored the 4th amendment is, you think this about warrants?

"-- tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan over the previous "conservative" administration"
there wasn't enough troops to deal with the war. What would you have him do? All this shows ois the the previous administration underestimated needed capacity.

He could also have just left. NOTHING is going to fix that region EVER.

"-- redefined "collection" to mean "reading" in order to avoid following the 4th Amendment (would that work for filesharer's who didn't listen to downloaded music? Not a chance.)"
and?[Emphasis added]

I not you skipped the due process free execution thing, but anyway,with respect to the 4th Amendment: see STASI: http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/0...

Also, why do you hate the Constitution? It makes you seem very unAmerican when you publicly crap on the 4th Amendment.

"-- has killed thousands of innocent people with drone strikes in numerous countries."
which is far fewer if they used none drone weaponry. Civilian deaths is tragic, but historically it's a lot less now then any other war.

This is your defense of the Nobel Peace Prize winner causing thousands of deaths?? "well, he could have caused even more." Serial Killer Defense attorneys should take note -- "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, it was only 52 victims he hacked up, imagine what he could have done if he was President!"

"-- destroyed the War Powers Act by engaging in war in Libya without Congressional Approval."
He has congressional approval. More specifically, the office of the presidency has authorization. YOU might want to ask yourself why the pubs scream about this, but don't actually talk about removing the power congress gave him?
too wit:
"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

Last Sunday was the 90th day of bombing in Libya, but Mr. Obama â" armed with dubious legal opinions â" is refusing to stop Americaâ(TM)s military engagement there. His White House counsel, Robert F. Bauer, has declared that, despite the War Powers Act, the president can continue the Libya campaign indefinitely without legislative support. This conclusion lacks a solid legal foundation. And by adopting it, the White House has shattered the traditional legal process the executive branch has developed to sustain the rule of law over the past 75 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06...

----

"-- let every single bankster off the hook."
fasle. several are in jail, and most DID NOT VIOLATE THE LAW. Why is that hard to understand?

Citation please. Until then, recall that over 1000 Banksters did jail time in the S&L Bailout and that was something like 1/40th the size of the recent one. I think we'd see some news on a 1000 banksters doing time -- we don't because they aren't. Till then, consider William K. Black (he helped prosecute S&Lers including the Keating Five): Zero Prosecutions of Elite Banksters Is Too Many Prosecutions for the Wall Street Journal

"-- enacted Nixon's health care plan with the liberal parts stripped out."
So you don't remember what Obama originally wanted? What we have in a compromise. Do try to remember history.

What I remember is the news reports that Obama sold out to corp interests and continued to PRETEND he supported a public option:
NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

"-- opposed an international treaty on banning cluster bombs."
Sigh. Did you just go to a web site and copy and paste? How about you find out why things are done, then be specific?

Why don't you tell me why Obama loves cluster bombs which tend to leave unexploded bombletes all over the place and then some random day, sometime years in the future, maim or kill various random people. Whatever the reason, it's a fact he opposed the treaty: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/1...

If you want to convince me Obama is secret liberal, good fucking luck. He's basically Nixon with a tan.

Comment Re:Update to Godwin's law? (Score 4, Insightful) 575

As counterpoint, there is nothing liberal about an administration that:

-- pushed forward with NSA surveillance of all Americans;
-- seeks to make such surveillance inescapable;
-- tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan over the previous "conservative" administration
-- redefined "imminent" to mean "maybe possible far in the future" and then used that as an excuse to deprive Americans of their life without due process of law.
-- redefined "collection" to mean "reading" in order to avoid following the 4th Amendment (would that work for filesharer's who didn't listen to downloaded music? Not a chance.)
-- has killed thousands of innocent people with drone strikes in numerous countries.
-- destroyed the War Powers Act by engaging in war in Libya without Congressional Approval.
-- let every single bankster off the hook.
-- enacted Nixon's health care plan with the liberal parts stripped out.
-- opposed an international treaty on banning cluster bombs.

Democrats: The New GOP.

Comment Re:The water wars are coming (Score 3, Insightful) 151

The water will still be there, but it will be used to benefit people and the organisms we value. There is a finite volume (*) of life the earth can support -- what we're down to is how it ought to be divided and the choice we are making is that the only organisms worth anything, are people, cows, pigs, chickens, and corn. Our population problem is an extremely unpopular topic, but by ignoring it, we will eventually destroy all the interesting biodiversity we have in the world in exchange for a monocrop of people, along with the very few organisms people tend to value, and the diseases and parasites associated with those.

(*) by weight if you will(**), not individual count.
(**) differences in body composition make "weight" not exactly accurate as some things have greater density due to the use of different minerals (hard shells or bones as a percent of body mass for example). What can be said is that there is a finite amount of stuff on the earth that can be mixed up in different ways into a finite total amount of life. The question we should ask is, what is a smart or wise percentage of that total, that we humans and the plants/animals we value, should comprise.

Comment Re:hah, thats amateur. (Score 1) 92

Exactly. Don't forget the war on toiletries in baggage. Or how something is OK when the US Federal Govt does it, for example, the way waterboarding is called torture only when done by other governments.

So, not long ago, America's major newspapers basically decided that waterboarding was somehow okay. American waterboarding, that is! In the same time frame, the same newspapers made it clear that if any other country practiced waterboarding, it was torture.

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

This sort of "Laugh at China" story is designed to make the US look smart, and the rest of the world stupid and to help people miss how stupid our own government is being. But if you look around, you'll find some great ways to spend those student loans:

"Purdue University Graduate Certificate Program in Veterinary Homeland Security"
http://vet.purdue.edu/biosecur...

Maybe graduates can work for the tax black hole that is Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/food-agricu...
http://www.dhs.gov/reference-n...

Comment Re:So everything is protected by a 4 digit passcod (Score 1) 504

"forget answer to security question" --- a security question is usually used in the context of retrieving or resetting a password. If Apple can retrieve the password (from the device, its servers, iTunes, whatever) or can remotely reset the password and somehow make your data available to you, then it isn't secure. Secure would mean that forgetting a password is effectively the same (at least for the next 5 or 10 years) as tossing the storage into a raging furnace.

Comment Re:Here's another idea... (Score 1) 243

I used to live in a city with about 80,000 people. My choices were cruddy comcast service or slower DSL. Netflix was always buffering.

I moved into the countryside about 10 miles out of town. Comcast doesn't provide service here but there is a small regional cable company. As a result, my service 2-3x faster, and costs 60% of what I used to pay Comcast.

The real issue is that cable companies are not considered common carriers. In the UK they do the common carrier thing and there is massive competition, better service, cheaper prices: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Now, about that "US is so big" bullshit. The US is like half a dozen regional Japans or Frances or Sweedens. In the middle of nowhere WY -- yeah, you aren't going to have fiber. But what about the I-5 corridor from Portland to Seattle? That's densely populated. Or WA DC to NY City -- that's major density. No reason you couldn't have 10x the speed at 1/10th the cost in any of those types of places.

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