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Comment Re:Trolls are the lowest form of life. . . (Score 1) 489

Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.

Your response demonstrates that you failed to read and understand my points. There will always be limits to freedom of speech, but those limits are much more restrained in the US than the UK, just to go down the list:

I'm not going to even bother than the rest, because you clearly missed the point. No right is absolute, but the US Supreme Court guards the freedom of expression in the US much more fiercely than European Courts do.

It sounds a lot like you're walking back from "near absolute"

And just for the sake of pedantry, it's worth mentioning that no one has a Constitutional right to free of speech.
Our right to free speech is natural and the Constitution limits how the Government can infringe on it.

/I'd also be interested in seeing your citations on the fighting words doctrine being overturned, the Supreme Court doesn't really agree with you.

Comment Re:Trolls are the lowest form of life. . . (Score 3, Interesting) 489

Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.

I can't help but think that anyone who believes this is anything less that wildly ignorant about the Constitution and Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Here are some broad exceptions to the constitutional right to the freedom of speech:
1. Libel, slander, and various forms of misleading statements
2. Inciting others to violence
3. Fighting words
4. Disturbing the peace (offensive words can be considered a breach of the peace)
5. Intentional infliction of emotional distress
6. Copyrights & trademarks
7. Obscenity
8. Commercial speech

I may have forgotten one or three, but I think that suffices to make my point that there is nothing remotely like a "near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech."

Equally important to the point I'm trying to make is that at least 5/8 of those exceptions were well established as law when the Constitution was written.

Comment It's finally happening (Score 1) 52

The FCCâ(TM)s notice talks about frequencies as high as 90GHz. Anything over 30GHz is classified as âoemillimeter wave frequencies,â which are blocked by walls. Indoor coverage is going to be tough.

âoe[W]hatever licensing regimes we adopt should take into account the fact that signals from carriersâ(TM) outdoor base stations will rarely be able to penetrate into the interiors of buildings, where around 75 percent of cellular data usage occurs today,â the FCC wrote. âoeReaching such spaces will almost certainly require the deployment of indoor base stations.â

The original concept for the cellular network was a series of big outdoor towers which talked to indoor base stations.
Of course, building owners didn't want the expense of (retro)fitting small indoor cells, which led to a lot more outdoor towers than envisioned.

Comment Re:how do SSD's compare to HD's? (Score 1) 109

Anyone who actually needs a 5k display should already have a backup system in place.
It's only real purpose is so graphics designers can work on 4k media without dual screens and for industrial/medical fields where high res images are normal.

The truth is, if you want to watch 4k media, you're better off with a 4k display.
Upsampling &/or stretching to fill a 5k display is less than ideal.

Comment Re:The essence of enterprise (Score 1) 148

We agree that in a environment where people do routine work, so many people share the required skill that identity of who provides this skill no longer matters. And that's where vast majority of the working population is employed.

You seem to completely ignore the value of institutional knowledge.

Maybe in your world, everything is documented, but everywhere else, knowledge of certain critical business processes is only retained in the memory of a few employees.

Slashdot even had a nice conversation about it a few years ago
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/04/1742211/institutional-memory-and-reverse-smuggling

Comment Re:20 million out of 50 million stolen? (Score 3, Informative) 59

The hardest part of getting a new SSN is gathering up originals/certified copies of the documents you need to support your application.
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0248-do-you-need-new-social-security-number

Applying for a New Number or Replacement Card

The SSA may assign a new Social Security number to you if you are being harassed, abused, or are in grave danger when using the original number, or if you can prove that someone has stolen your number and is using it. You must provide evidence that the number is being misused, and that the misuse is causing you significant continuing harm.

Please don't spread misinformation.

Comment What the f*ck? (Score 2) 77

Also, Cheerios overcame a common problem in growing fungi. Standard growth media varies in composition from batch to batch. These small variations can alter fungi growth, meaning researchers canâ(TM)t consistently produce the same set of metabolites with each experiment. However, one Cheerio is the same as another, box to box, batch to batch, today or years from now.

"Standard" media that isn't consistent sounds like a massive failure of quality control by the manufacturer.
Does no one make a quality growth media?

Comment Re:If you want to be sure your words are not overh (Score 1) 180

We're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people would not sacrifice fundamental liberties and allow worthless government thugs to search everyone at airports in the name of safety.

You might want to re-read the 4th Amendment and then pick up a history book.

The Founding Fathers have always considered border searches reasonable.
The first Congress passed a law about it in 1789.

To avoid summarizing 225 years of jurisprudence, I'll give the broad outlines of what isn't a reasonable border search.
1. Anything personally invasive or painful: strip searches, body cavity searches, x-rays, surgery
2. Destructive searches of property
3. Lengthy detention

And that's pretty much it.
You've never had an expectation of privacy at the border.

Comment Re:Let me get this right (Score 5, Insightful) 839

Everyone essentially pays no taxes on necessary food/housing/etc... So it's actually better for the poor than the middle and upper classes.

Better for the poor, better for the rich, worse for the middle class.
http://www.factcheck.org/2007/05/unspinning-the-fairtax/

Americans for Fair Taxation rejects the Treasury Department analysis, objecting that Treasury considers only the income tax. By leaving out payroll taxes (which are actually regressive) Treasury's chart makes the FairTax look worse by comparison. We found that including all the taxes that the FairTax would replace (income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes), those earning less than $24,156 per year would benefit. [David Burton, chief economist of the Americans for Fair Taxation] agreed that those earning more than $200,000 would see their share of the overall tax burden decrease, admitting that "probably those earning between $40[thousand] and $100,000" would see their percentage of the tax burden rise.

Show me an alternative tax structure that doesn't lower the tax burden for corporations or high earners by passing it onto the middle class and I'll support it.

Comment Re:It's not competition. (Score 2) 232

Defacto monopolies exist when only one company decides to compete.

You might want to re-read your Econ 101 textbook.

The most important aspects of a monopoly is its ability to raise market prices (abnormal profits) and/or exclude competitors.
Technically a company with 50% market share could do this, but for practical purposes, the threshold is considered 70%~80% of the market.

Markets with very few competitors (oligopolies and oligopsonies) can behave like cartels, without any formal collusion, giving everyone a chance to earn monopolistic profits.

Cable tv and utilities (power/water/gas/phones/sewage) are considered natural monopolies, but they weren't always.
If you dig around in US history, competition for utility infrastructure was tried and it failed miserably.

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