Each state is going to have differently worded laws in this area. The Mass one sounds like the first case where it was worded to prohibit company owned outlets of specific manufacturers to protect only dealers of the same brand.
Whether you like or dislike net neutrality, you should NOT like government regulatory agencies setting public policy unilaterally without legislators involved. Name one person at the FCC you can vote out of office at the next election based on your feelings over how they rule on this issue.
OK, solar storm I can understand protecting against. But nuclear weapons EMP? Better to use the data center as a bunker in that case and never mind the data.
It's funny, you speak of "no meaning" as if you have a scientific basis for this. Unless you do, your opinion is no more valid than the guy strapping a bomb on himself to get 72 virgins, and no less dogmatic. Not everyone defines "meaning" is as narrow a manner as you.
For starters, deism isn't a religion, which makes the rest of the comment not worth bothering with.
I've been deistic for decades. It discounts the idea that god is an old man on the mountain, but maintains the idea that there is purpose and meaning to everything, not just man.
Celsius is arbitrary too. There is nothing inherently connecting temperature and water.
Kelvin is the only scale based on something fundamental.
Fahrenheit is based on the coldest you can get brine before it freezes and the approximate human body temperature. Both of these make great sense for telling the weather as 0 is dangerously cold and 100 is dangerously hot.
One might argue that a lot of people don't live in the temperate zone where 0 and 100 occur regularly but C's water boiling and freezing points are only good for people at sea level and no one's weather on Earth ever involves boiling water.
As you point out, not all birds of a feather stick together. I'm not a Tea Party guy. I'm just not closed minded enough to judge a friend by their politics. If you only have friends that agree with your politics, you are probably narrow minded or take politics too seriously.
Has the United States of America become a member of The Totalitarian Club ?
Yes. Each President has been moving in this direction more and more, but Obama has managed to overreach even more than those before him. Take the IRS, for instance. I personally know of people who have been getting involved with Tea Party politics and now are getting audited. Like their politics or not (it doesn't matter), that is totalitarianism, which means the next time a GOP'er gets in, he can do the same thing. It isn't a good time to be an American.
However, it takes a really fast car to stay on the other side of the planet.
1. Vote Libertarian on November 4th
2. Vote Green on November 4th
When will the Libertarians and Greens learn the lesson from the Teas? If you want to get elected, work from WITHIN the establishment. There are multiple Tea candidates in office via running under the Republican umbrella. The Libertarians could do the same except all they seem to want to do is siphon votes away from a potentially winning Republican. The Greens need to work from within the Democrats the same way instead of siphoning off. Then we COULD get real change but it's doubtful either the Libs or Greens can get off their ideological high horses.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
