Fines would mean crap to companies and individuals alike if they were levied as a percentage of income instead of a flat amount. Is there any good reason why it isn't done this way?

Anyone who hasn't seen the wonderful things the Freespace 2 Open Source team has done over the years should really check it out. The game itself is $6 on GoG, and since Volition released the source code it's seen a complete overhaul for everything from AI to graphics. The classic campaigns are still there (and are well worth playing through), and there's been some really great fan campaigns released over the years too.

I'd highly recommend the Blue Planet campaign. Part 2 (War in Heaven) is especially noteworthy for really giving you the feeling of being on the losing side of a war, something you don't see very often in games. Part 1 has full voice acting, with voice acting for part 2 still in progress.

Let me tell you about endangered species...

The "War on Drugs" is just as pointless and ineffective yet we're still fighting it almost half a century later.

I'd been wondering who keeps 'liking' videos on porn tubes.

I saw this back during the SOPA trial. During the hearings the people on the left did everything they could to try to push it through, the people on the right were more or less the only ones speaking out against it.

One has to wonder why the $2 trillion+ in taxes we pay every year don't buy us as much influence over the legislative process as $100,000 in campaign contributions by various corporate interests. Why aren't election campaigns funded by tax dollars instead of private donations?

There's an important difference between "knowing" these things while being labeled paranoid or a conspiracy nut and "knowing" these things in relation to hard evidence that you can show people.

It'd be perfect... until you drive into a hail of tiny rocks a few times.

Independent film makers get similar treatment from the MPAA. And unlike musicians they really are forced to deal with them to have their film rated for release.

Maybe you can, so long as you pay the right people. I guess we'll find out soon enough!

My ISP charges 3â to mail a monthly statement in the interest of cutting down on waste paper and mailing costs, so I switched to online billing a long time ago. I don't really miss it because they were kind enough to keep sending an extra envelope with advertisements and "tell your friends" incentives every month, completely free!

And if you liked Stephenson try Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is another one of my favorites, plus Accelerando by Charles Stross, A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge and almost any book by Alastair Reynolds for some hard sci-fi. Last but not least, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is not bad, Vacuum Diagrams is a nice introduction to the universe and its 5 million year timeline.

Don't forget you're also developing the F-35 JSF, which seems to be a more versatile F-22 at the cost of some air superiority (which is already far superior to every other nation's air force). The bill for that program seems to be around $380 billion.

I'm sure that would work, but it's still disgusting considering the people already pay taxes for just that reason.

The problem is because the bill is so broad and vague it opens the door for selective enforcement, both in who you target and how you target them. This was brought up a few times at the hearing, and dutifully ignored. Out of all the amendments I saw proposed the only one that was voted through allowed ISPs and other institutions (like universities for example) to block an entire website rather than just the infringing content on it, if it's easier or cheaper for them to do so. A few congressmen pointed out that most websites these days run on user generated content, and that it's unbelievably stupid to encourage ISPs to block the entire site on the actions of a few of its contributors, but nobody listened.

Never mind the fact that under the bill non-profit entities like universities (which often have their own internal DNS system which qualifies them as "service providers" under the bill) would have to block websites just like an ISP would. Someone introduced an amendment to give non-profits the same protections from this clause as commercial entities get in the bill, but of course that was voted down.