If it wasn't for the apparent age of the images when I googled the names, I swear it was just a couple of frat kids not wanting to do any extra work but still curious about the results.

I can imagine this bet taking place over a kegger.

Not when they control the nodes of access on the data network.

Well, at least in this case, they can enforce even against "meaningful ties" insomuch as if they do not play ball, they do not enter. Of course you could try a proxy and Tor but I imagine it would be a matter of time before that imposed risks on the user for circumventing their will.

It has become very easy to simply distrust what climate scientists are saying because of a large propaganda campaign to demonise them all.

Well, it doesn't help when people were refused access to the original data, methods of normalizing it and so one for the longest of time. It doesn't help when emails are leaked from one of the universities doing a lot of the work on it that indicate data was purposely ignored in favor of making their models work and so on. It doesn't help that groups like Jubilie2000 were trying to get the IMF and world bank lenders to forgive the third world debt and the first treaty attempting to deal with global warming had provisions in it that basically encourage outsourcing to third world nations (Kyoto protocals) right about the time those groups became quiet. Europe increased it's trade (imports) with India and China something like 15 fold in the 8 years leading up to their compliance dates with Kyoto.

The distrust is not all about money backing something. The distrust is also in the politicking involved.

Vote for whomever you want. Just understand that when voting for a candidate with no potential to win or little chance of accomplishing anything if they do win, you are taking one vote against whomever you want to win the least away.

That's why I think it is better to infiltrate and work from within. You do your battles in the primaries, if you win, you have both a chance of winning and change, if you lose, the one candidate you don't want in the most doesn't benefit from your vote not strengthening the most likely candidate to beat them.

But you are free to vote for anyone you want. You are free to accept logic, ignore it, make it up on the spot or do whatever. You can even close your ears when I say I told you so. Just as I can do all of the above too.

Well, for now. Soon Adtran has or will have a working implementation that allows speeds up to 500mps

AT&T has no excuses.
This technology is supposedly easily implement over existing copper.

As we get more devices connected to the network and higher resolutions become standard, we will need more bandwidth.

That's exactly correct. Even right now, we can see the bandwidth adding up. Suppose you and the misses want to relax and curl up to a nice Netflix movie in HD, Junior is downloading updates for his game so he can log in and crush some dungeons or whatever they do now, Little sally is in her room IM chatting with her girl friends about the hot new kid and the neighbor guessed your wifi password to be your phone number as that is what the cable installers set it up as and you didn't think to change it so he is trolling slashdot on your dime (BTW, can you stop your dog from shitting in my yard).

Even without the wifi riders, it adds up. Some games won't allow you to even log in without their updates installed. The days of one computer in the house and everyone sharing it are long gone for a lot of people.

No votes have more power than third party votes. Like I said, the third party candidate is either so close to the other parties that their one or two differences aren't enough to gather a majority (remember, not everyone thinks like you and no everyone will think those differences are important enough to vote outside their party) or they are so different from those parties that they appear like loons.

We have had that conversation since before 96 too. Ross Perot took enough voted from Bush that Clinton could legitimately claim he won by the highest margin in 50 years and not even get half the votes in the popular vote.

But you are ignoring the biggest problem. Until third parties take state and local elections and garner the same types of support that the two parties have, they will be absolutely powerless if the win. I mean seriously, one third party senator, what is he going to do? You need so many supporters to get a law onto the floor, so many more to have anything done with it. So in comity, which because the parties take care of their own usually based off seniority, they will be in low level committees, with low ranks. Again, what can they do? Vote no on something everyone else will ensure passes? Big whoop.. Suppose a third party candidate gets elected president, he has no support in congress, it will be just like Carter's administration when he decided he was going to clean up congress and even his own party abandoned him and voted to pass laws he vetoed.

Like I said, until the third parties actually invest the grass roots efforts and gain the support, they are a waste of voted. Better to infiltrate and change from within. Better to do the tea party thing seeing how the vast majority of positions that will crop up, you will already be in agreement with the major parties (one of the other). Corrupt and co-opt those who will lend you support from within.

*and by corrupt, I don't mean dirty illegal stuff, I mean convince them your way is better so they abandon the party line or change the party line to your way. It's easier to do when you are one of them and have their ear.

I suppose you want to pay a toll every time you leave your driveway? And another to leave work?

You do right now anyways. What, you don't see it? Ever gallon of gas you purchase has your toll built into it. You are paying that toll every time you start your engine and let it idle.

But it's pointless to pick roads. It is actually the one thing I mentioned that the US government is constitutionally charged with being involved in. Article 1 section 8 specifically gives the federal government the ability "To establish post offices and post roads". And yes, there are quite a few toll roads and bridges in the US.

You could say that it was the effects of one of the greatest busts in history, the Great Depression, that kickstarted the government into creating the PWA, an organization that has done more public good than any Wal-Mart or Microsoft. Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, Fort Peck Dam, LaGuardia Airport.. just a few of the things that we depend on still, public projects that spurred further private growth at a time when private industry was deadlocked.

The great depression was largely caused by the US government subsidizing agricultural products and jingoism/nationalism in Europe after WWI that the US government was trying to protect us from. I think you should take those rose colored glasses.

Microsoft would never have built a Hoover Dam, why would they? Where would the profit be for them? And that is the problem when you get to this Libertarian "The market will provide" nonsense. The market will not provide, and it will not provide for everyone, just the people who can pay for it.

Why would Microsoft even be expected to do something like that? Other companies might as well done it. You do understand that a private company was the first to pave a section of road right? And they did this because cars (another private development) kept rutting the roads and getting stuck.

Also, your sending men to the moon example? Back then businesses were paying about 40% in taxes and typical returns on investments were expected to be in the 5% range over a decade, not todays 30% returns every quarter and zero taxes nonsense. Because our grandparents and great grandparents respected the role of government in improving the lives of the citizens, and they had learned hard lessons from the Great Depression about relying too much on corporations. Lessons that we are throwing out as we sink further and further into corporate oligarchy.

Please explain what this little diatribe has to do with the ability to return to the moon with humans? We lost the technology.. Any funding for NASA whether taxes are at 10% or 200% will have to find people who can competently do with better tools what people in the 1950s were trying to do with lesser tools. We have watches today with more computing power than the computers that sent men to the moon, yet we have no ability to do it again. This has nothing to do with tax rates.

But hey, I'm glad you are a good liberal who thinks government can solve everything. Only problem is you missed the critique I made about where it failed and went off on left field about something.

What is your point? Eisenhower did not get involved with the schools, he sent the military to enforce law about integration (blacks being able to go to white schools). Or do you think that was the down fall of public education?

The department of education didn't happen until 1980. There was an office level ED in various federal agencies through the years, but they dealt mostly with bureaucratic issues and vocational retraining.

Well, that does raise an interesting question, did Denver receive any of the illegals crossing the border that were relocated around the country by the feds. I know they were trying to get grant money in order to do so but ran into a lot of protests over it.

You mention failures but neglect to see your own. Fox news has something going that all the other news chanels do not- even if it is only in appearance alone. Griping about Fox existing and being popular sort of ignores the falts in the other chanels that make them unpopular with most.

I happily invite you to go back to the living standards of the time where the government was not in schools,

Why would I need to go back to those living standards? Society would have progressed anyways. Some things may be a little different but many would be exactly the same.

imited themselves on the roads, did not deliver water and so on. I think you'll find that economic prosperity does not necessarily mean they were living the good life.

You mean like it does now? Nothing has changed except technology has made things easier. Technology would have happened anyways.

I sure as hell would never trust a private corporation with my water supply or education, there are way too many juicy corners to cut.

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but many water supplies are controlled by private corporations but I'm not entirely sure why you would have to trust them if government didn't get involved. You see, you could dig a well, build a cistern, tag onto someone else's well or purchase bottles of water. Three of those are still common to this date. As for education, many schools are private, some of the best and most notable colleges in the world are private. So I guess the question might be why are you so clueless about these things? Are you brainwashed and buffaloed by ideology or just ignorant of reality?

Until third party candidates take state and local offices to a point they are know as well as the R and D parties they are wastes of voted on a federal level. They are generally so close in all but a few issues that few people care about specifically that they either pull votes from whomever is closest to them and cause the opposite candidate to win or they are so radically different, only a fringe set of people look at them seriously.

Sigh.. It is only made possible by tax-supported infrastructure and institutions because the government injected itself. Before the governments injected themselves, it was sustained by private industry or the people themselves. Those costs were either passed on to the consumers of simple born by the people involved.

You act as if no one could ever function without the government hand holding people through life. Some of the more prosperous years in our history were when the government was not in schools, limited themselves on the roads, did not deliver water and so on. And even to the schools issues, the feds were hands off it when we put man on the moon. It wasn't until years later that feds got involved and now not only do we have a department of education that cannot even do the math to account for their budget at times but we lack sufficient knowledge and resources to put a man on the moon again.