Are there any Tea Party candidates who aren't running as Republicans? This isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious. As far as I'm aware, the Tea Party isn't an actual political party. It's just a marketing tool for a certain segment of the Republican Party. Supporting them only reaffirms the two-party system.

Thank you, that was very helpful. Can you tell me what the German word for "Whoosh" is?

Government spending as a percentage of GDP.

But who in politics today is actually in favor of small government? A lot of politicians pay lip service to the idea of small government, but none of them actually do anything about it. The government continues to grow.

It's been a very long time since I've heard that phrase used as a compliment. More often it's code for "He's got a huge stick up his ass," or sometimes "He's a recovering alcoholic."

Look around at all of the objects in your room and ask yourself "How could I turn this into a bong?" Then put the same question to someone who's high.

And it's really sad and frightening that their reaction to this is "Keep people from recording stuff" rather than "Stop shooting people for no reason."

Actually, it's even worse than having a universal database. The database will largely exclude the people who create and enforce the law, along with those they favor.

If the DNA database were universal the legislators and their friends and families would also be included. That would dramatically increase the chance that there would be meaningful limitations on how the data was used.

I just knew that if you rambled on long enough you'd eventually get something right.

Dr. Cory Doctorow said, "keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall." This was in his presentation to Microsoft about DRM. It's an excellent read: http://www.authorama.com/microsoft-research-drm-talk-1.html

Pirates will pirate regardless of DRM. The content owners will never get their money. This is why DRM as a response to piracy is idiocy. Any company that designs its products around people who will never pay for them is incompetent. Putting restrictions on your paying customers because of the actions of pirates is like kicking your dog because your cat pissed on the rug.

This is, in fact, the opposite of true. I don't pirate. As a result, I have to deal with DRM. If you don't want to deal with DRM, pirating the content is the best way. The main reason I'm so vocal in my opposition to DRM is because I'm an honest user.

Please don't assume that anyone who speaks out against DRM is a pirate. I'm not a pirate. If I were, then I wouldn't care about DRM. I would just get a DRM-free copy of just about any movie I want from one of the various BitTorrent sites. Remember, only people who purchase legitimate copies of the movie have to deal with DRM.

Could you please explain how DRM reduces movie piracy?

DRM isn't going to keep those children from going hungry and naked. DRM did nothing to keep these cyberlockers from being set up. DRM isn't keeping movies off of any of the P2P networks. Nobody who pirates a film is affected by DRM because pirates distribute DRM-free versions of the media.

DRM isn't about preventing pirates from getting media for free. It's already proven to be an abysmal failure at that. It's about controlling what honest people can do with the media after they've purchased it.

Mine does. USB + HDMI ports. Not quite a docking station, but it works.

I recently bought a new laptop. They've come a long way in the five years since I bought my previous laptop. It was a bit more expensive than my desktop was (now three years old) but it's superior in every way except the monitor and input devices. These I can plug in. Right now it's sitting on my desk plugged into my 22" LCD, keyboard, and mouse. When it's time to hit the road, I unplug it and go.

When I bought my other laptop, I couldn't find one that was reasonably priced and could hold its own against a mid-range desktop machine. It was actually cheaper to buy two separate machines than to buy a laptop that could do both jobs. That's changed.

It certainly has some drawbacks. I can't upgrade the video card, so playing the latest games will probably be a problem in a few years. While I can run both the laptop display and the external monitor at the same time, it's not as good as having two full sized monitors like my desktop could handle. And (though this is probably a blessing in disguise) I now back up regularly because now I don't just have to worry about hardware failure, I have to worry about theft a lot more as well. But overall I'm really happy with this setup.
   

Our software can handle eight of those. Possibly nine, I don't know how long Sri Lankan's names get.

The company I work for gets paid to make software. If someone wants to pay my employer to support certain features, then we'll build in that support. If the client says "Anyone without a last name can suck it" (and that has happened) then the system won't support that.

As a hired gun (keyboard?) whether what i believe about names is true or false is irrelevant. I believe what I get paid to believe.

[Citation needed]

I'll help you out. Here's the full text of the law: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

I couldn't find any mention of a driver's license being sufficient proof of legality.

The problem isn't the "lockin" part, it's the "Windows" part.
Apple wants is lock-in. But they recognized that the mobile, tough interface driven platform was a different world, so they didn't use OSX for iPhone, iPod, or iPad. They built a shiny new cage for their customers, specifically tailored to the new environment.
The folks at Microsoft don't just want to trap the customers, they want to do it using the same shackles they use in every other dungeon they run. But the shackles are ill-fitting for this purpose.