Human society is not ready to grant intelligent animals sentient or human status. It sounds like an enlightened idea, but our laws and societal norms cannot accommodate granting these rights without significant and fundamental change.

Take any law that governs the interaction between two humans and apply that to a human verses say a dolphin and you immediately run into serious and unworkable situations. Imagine having to grant a dolphin the right to confront their accuser in a court of law. Really? What about applying laws concerning manslaughter or murder or accidental death? What about representation in government?

Yes, I know the New York case was not about all of these things, but once the door is open you can never close it. Just look at the legal ruling that corporations are legal persons to understand what I mean.

Basically, this device is causing the car's computer(s) to crash. So, during low speed tests, in a wide open area, the car slowly glides to a stop??? I wonder what might happen if this were applied on a narrow highway, with lots of other vehicles on the road, at highway speeds? And what will happens when this device is used by the disgruntled (postal) worker, or some teens (not picking on teens, I used to be one myself) out for a mischievous time?

What if occasionally the computer's crash in a less expected way -- say for a moment the computer thinks you're trying to "park" (using your computer controlled parking assistant) while traveling at 60 miles per hour?

There are so many things wrong with this that it boggles the mind.

Do you mean the paycheck received on a weekly basis? Do we count stock options or awards? Dividends from preferred stock not available to the average worker? Annual bonuses? Perks (such as the use of a company paid private plane)? Corporate "gifts" of all sorts?

Steve Jobs famously worked at Apple for a one dollar annual salary. However, does anyone here really think that he only made a dollar per year?

The idea has merit, but it is a foregone conclusion that people in power will figure out how to work around the "ratio".

There is way too must current content that is still not transmitted in 1080p. Buying a new (expensive) TV just to display most shows in standard resolution makes no sense at all. Yes, I know live broadcasts are usually in high def, but one can only watch so must sports on TV. To be fair, I think it is actually a legacy problem. There is so much good legacy content recorded in standard definition that it is tough for new content to compete, at least from a percentage perspective. Best excuse for a good movie or TV series remake that I have heard...

Actually, it kind of fits if you bring all of the intelligent guesswork together. I read somewhere that the tiny tiny tiny black holes (possibly) created by the LHC would evaporate (due to Hawking Radiation) at an exponentially accelerating rate -- the more mass they lost the faster they would loose more, ending in a quantum sized obliterating explosion. If true, and if this new idea is correct as well, that would imply that there is a perfect point where the mass evaporation from Hawking Radiation would *just* equal the mass accumulation from consuming quantum foam. If the black hole mass starts out greater than this point then the black hole grows, less and it shrinks. Someone ought to be able to calculate (roughly?) the magical amount of mass needed to produce a pseudo-stable black hole...

Long answer. Most of my TV channels, even the HD channels, still show well over 50% of only SD quality shows. There is no compelling reason to update perfectly good hardware if it will be years before the content will take advantage of it. It may be a chicken and egg thing, but at this point it looks to me that the smart thing to do would be to wait a hardware generation or two before spending any more money on TVs.

Definitely shocking, and likely unconstitutional. According to the ACLU, about 197 million (or nearly 2/3rds) of the US population live within 100 miles of the US border. It is highly unlikely that the newly proclaimed 100 mile wide "constitution free zone" would hold up in court if it essentially permanently suspends constitutionally guaranteed rights to 2/3rds of the population. Not even the US Government can get away with that (at least, not yet).

Sorry, the problem with the declaration The free market has fixed this problem is that it only fixed it AFTER I spent my $500 on a really crappy phone...

Please, I'm not being critical of your post. But I am very definitely saying that IBM's methods of moving those jobs overseas is entirely immoral. It is big business at its worst. IBM, like many mega corporations (Apple, Microsoft, Google, to name a few), lie through their teeth when it comes to stating the reasons they do what they do that affects many thousands of US jobs. The so called immigration bill passed just yesterday illustrates the problem most vividly. A quote from Yahoo news: "But Corley insisted that the tech industry never had agreed to the restrictions in the original bill and was only trying to ensure the H-1B program would be workable for an industry that's good for American workers and the U.S. economy." Seriously??? The H-1B program is a cheap training program which not only displaces US jobs overseas but also keeps countries like India poor in favor of more profits for US corporations now. If companies like IBM were required to follow all US laws in those outsourced countries -- something I believe they should be required to do -- it would help raise the standard of living in those countries that US corporations are currently exploiting because of cheap labor and eventually help them reach parity with the US and other Western economies, making outsourcing far less appealing, and consequently improve ALL local economies. But as long as corporations can take advantage of poor economies, business practices like these will continue.

Actually, there is a significant moral problem here.

Point 1, IBM is taking money promised to their employees (401k contributions) and using it to fund the company’s cost of executing the layoffs.
Point 2, in many cases IBM is laying off the US employee and keeping an H1B employee, which is probably illegal.
Point 3, IBM is telling their soon-to-be-laid-off employee that they have 30 or so days to find a new job in IBM, else they will be laid off, yet managers in IBM cannot hire the soon-to-be-laid-off employee, another lie.
Point 4, in many cases employees (primarily US contractors) are given zero warning, literally no advanced notice of being out of a job, making it very tough on some individuals to support their families.
Point 5, IBM is routinely lying to their customers about their SLA performance and the effect the layoffs will have on the SLA, with IBM’s own customers literally being the victims in this situation.

I could go on. Read through all of the comments on the job cuts site.

I have worked for mega-corporations most of my 40 years + career. In truth, this is just business as usual for companies like IBM. All I can say to the younger population is: Never trust a big corporation. You should always be ready to move to another job. Keep your resume up-to-date and skills current. Then keep current with your job market situation. When the company you work for starts talking about mergers and acquisitions, or cost cutting and downsizing, or new ideas for keeping competitive, be ready.

...rights given to their citizens...

I agree with your statements and sentiment, but here's the real problem...the United States Federal Government (and state governments) do NOT give rights to the citizens. In the US it is the other way around. The US citizens, through the Constitution, gives LIMITED rights to the government. Granted, the issue here is interpretation of the Constitution. But if we continue to let the government make self serving decisions and thereby continue to weaken the Constitution without doing anything about it then shame on us.

I agree. An old saying, one I believe originated in World War 2 while fighting the Nazis: "The end results do not justify the means used". If the US government breaks the very laws they are responsible to uphold, then it is wrong, regardless of the results. A government that ignores its own laws when they are inconvenient is NOT a democracy and should not expect its citizens to uphold the law any more than they do.

Not sure how any serious engineer or scientist works at NASA these days. NASA's mission changes quarterly (or more frequently), subject to political whim. I think our only real hope in the practical exploration of space lies with commercial enterprise. Which, truthfully, isn't that bad a deal. Of course, we still don't have any viable commercial enterprise working yet (lots of startups but nothing concrete at this point). A friend of mine is a scientist who worked at NASA for 12 years. He bailed about 10 years ago because of the political interference and now works at a university on the west coast. Smart man.

There's an app for that!

Let's check out the fine print (is unlimited data really unlimited? etc., etc.) but if T-Mobile is honestly offering unlimited calls, data, tethering, and text without a contract then NOW you can vote with your dollars and switch. If you miss this opportunity to support them on this and send a real message to the other carriers, then you have no right to complain about the state of cell phone service in the US.