I've never had a problem getting the rate I was quoted. It's common that they are out of the particular car class I ordered, but that's to be expected,

I am not going to use Hertz again.

In the past, one paid extra for the convenience of an on-airport car-rental location and perhaps a nicer bus. Now, all the car rental locations are in the same building (unless you are using a small, local company) and at some (many) airports, the busses are also pooled. So the primary advantage of Hertz is gone for me.

On my last rental, I declined the navigation system. Yet on returning it, I was charged for the navigation system. Was this an accident? I am suspicious that it was not.

On this same rental, I asked for additional drivers. At no point was I told that there was an extra cost for this. Yet, I was charged extra. This may be legal, but it was deceptive.

Hertz, you lost my business.

See the Wikipedia article on the Speech and Debate Clause or read it for yourself in the Constitution. So he can talk all about the program during a speech on the floor of the Senate, and nothing can legally be done to him.

FTFY.

If a bunch of Republican senators could get together and write a letter outlining the details of these abuses, I'm sure there wouldn't be any consequences (to themselves

Wouldn't there? Ask Joe Nacchio if he agrees with you. My expectation is that certain details of the private lives of some of those politicans would somehow become public.

At this point, I believe that it is possible (likely?) that the CIA and the NSA would use (have already used?) blackmail to preserve their position.

Well, obviously if the prosecutors hid evidence, then they go on death row and the accused is set free as he did not get a fair trial.

I'll put you in the naive category. I think that is better than stupid.

There was video of a policeman hitting a handcuffed supect during questioning. Was he convicted? No. You really think that prosecutors are going to suffer for misconduct? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.

You get 1 appeal, and if denyed, you go directly to the punishment instead of back to your cell. If you REALLY didnt do it, take the chance, otherwise sit there and rot until your day

Either you are naive or ignorant. What happens when it comes out that prosecutors hid evidence? Does that justify another appeal? Why do prosecutors fight tooth and nail to prevent examination of previously unexamined DNA evidence?

The plain fact is that innocent people have been executed in the USA. And you want to speed up the pathway to execution?

Do you want to be responsible for executing innocent people? I don't, which is one of the reasons that I oppose the death penalty.

some of it is semantics. I dont see a problem with changing "choke hold" to "arm bar" is that is what the police call the move that was done.

Terminology that replaces generally used terms with those used by a relatively small group has no place in Wikipedia. This isn't about semantics, it's it's about obfuscation.

Long time ago I had a co-worker who made a mistake where he lost a lot of un-recoverable data. He went in to our boss to offer his resignation. My boss said "Hell no! I just paid $100,000 for you to learn that lesson, so now I need you to make sure that kind of thing can't happen again."

Some years ago, I got a consulting gig where the previous consultant had tried to add a RAID array to the company's main file server, but re-formatted the existing array instead of the new one!

The *only* reason I'm with AT&T is that Comcast has a ridiculous installation fee for business accounts."

Comcast once quoted us for business Internet service at our office in the middle of Silicon Valley. $99/month and $200,000 installation fee.

That's not a typo. They wanted $200k to install. Not in a rural area, but an area surrounded by Internet and networking businesses. Then the sales guy had to ask if we still wanted to go ahead....

Google probably does.

Unlikely, Google reportedly has designed its own hardware for a long time.

I've lived in Los Angeles all my life, sport. There are infinite ways to exclude someone from business in my city if the city council wants to do it. And they've been bribed to do it.

Did you fail to see my posting where I pointed out that, since 2006, municipalities don't control franchising agreements? Living somewhere doesn't make you knowledgeable about state laws, apparently.

But let's address your first point, even if it were true:

There are no exclusive franchise agreements preventing this.

There are actually. They don't permit ISPs from operating unless they agree to provide access to the whole city. You can't just provide access to one part of a city and not the rest. This prices smaller operations out of the market by default.

Requiring coverage across all of a city is not the same as an exclusive franchise agreement. Your point is irrelevant.

Imagine a thousand small local ISPs starting up around the country all just trying to serve one or two neighborhoods. These are small ISPs that have ambitions of growing but they need to start somewhere.

So tell me why this hasn't happened in California. There are no exclusive franchise agreements preventing this.

There are allways going to be exceptions. Pehaps your town is so small that the big ISPs are not interested in servicing it.

California banned municipalties from enacting franchise agreements in 2006 -- instead such agreements are at the state level. California doesn't have a significant number of places where consumers have a choice beyond the incumbent phone company and the incumbent cable company. Why is this? Probably because of the reasons in my posting that you dismiss with your anecdote.

I hate the big ISPs too. Everyone does. But the solution to them is competition. Not government regulation. Just remove the stupid laws that make it illegal for rival companies to lay cable in their territory.

You are hoplessly naive. In order to compete with incumbent ISPs you have to have massive resources. If you start with small, local deployments, the incumbents will make local price cuts to drive you out of business. Even if you have the resources to make deployments across most population centers in a short time, the result will be lower prices and no profits. If you just built out, your equipment costs will be much greater than incumbents.

The only way to get competition is to force unbundling of local loops. This means more regulation.

Also for the record, I expect that within a year, it WILL increase my monthly internet bill. I've never met a bureaucrat yet that didn't like a few more dollars of taxes collected.

I expect that ISPs will add a "fee" for net neutrality compliance. This fee will have zero connection to any taxes or costs incurred by ISPs -- it will be a hidden price increase and extra profits by ISPs.