If they use them in criminal investigations the usage eventually becomes part of the public record when entered into evidence. Using them for search and rescue ought to be non-controversial enough. "National Security" is of course the grey area, though there's a fair amount of overlap between National Security and criminal prosecutions, for offenses like espionage or terrorism, so a lot of that use would eventually make it into the public record as well.

"Conscription" and "the draft" are synonymous terms. Registering for the Selective Service is not actually conscription. It's registering for the possibility of conscription.

Conscription is an independent topic that has no relevance here, since it can occur whether you're in the militia or not. We already have a regular military into which we can be (and have been) drafted in times of need, and for which every able-bodied male is required to register, so we're just as many steps away from a military police state now as we were before (thankfully, there's more than one step, since you'd have to get rid of stuff like the Posse Comitatus Act first). Whether we're in the militia or not makes no difference.

But, hey, can't resist getting in a "sheeple" dig, I guess?

I don't live in the same areas as "those arrogant egomaniacs [who] achieve stratospheric success", nor do I really have a professional network at all, yet I seem to be doing just fine for myself, despite only being out of grad school (which I dropped out of, incidentally) for about two-and-a-half years. Those things you think matter? I'm living proof that they don't always.

My job doesn't pay extraordinarily well, but it's work I enjoy doing at a company of great people, and the pay is "good enough" (I was offered 50% more at two other companies, a number which was in-line with industry averages for my skill set and experience, but turned them both down for this company, which I liked more). I'm already investing, have a home on which I was able to put 20% down, am tossing extra toward my house payments each month, and have still been able to make somewhat bigger purchases for myself every few months.

I simply live within my means and make sure that the amount out is less than the amount in. I choose carefully what things actually matter to me and then put my money towards those things, while buying budget-friendly items in the categories that I don't care about.

While timing did play a part, I'd suggest it's not so much timing as it is execution that made the biggest difference, in this case.

Android and iOS tablets operate in broadly the same ways as each other and are wildly successful. Windows 8 tablets, which work in much the same way as the Windows tablets that preceded them (i.e. trying to bring the feel of a desktop OS to a tablet form factor), are failing to gain any significant presence in the market, despite having the right timing and loads of marketing. To me, that's a strong indication that the thing holding back tablets prior to iOS and Android arriving was not that people weren't ready for them, but that the tablet concept simply wasn't executed properly.

Same deal with smartphones. Smartphones were around since the '90s, but they only represented an incredibly small portion of the cell phone market. Fast forward a few years, and we get Android and iOS, which, when they first came out, had most of the same features as the smartphones that preceded them, yet they implemented and executed those in a drastically different way that made them much more compelling to users. Blackberry and Palm had the right timing, since they were there from the beginning. What they lacked was proper execution to bring it to the general population.

You're right that there wasn't a market back then, but there wasn't a market because there wasn't a product done right yet. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters.

Thanks for the link. To summarize for everyone else, it essentially declares that all able-bodied male US citizens (or men who have declared their intent to become citizens) are automatically members of the militia if they are between 17 and 45 years old, and women are as well if they are US citizens that are members in the National Guard. For vets from the Regular military (i.e. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines), the age limit is extended from 45 to 64.

So, while it doesn't protect the right to bear arms for everyone, it does protect that right for at least a good chunk of the population, which goes a long way towards protecting the purpose of the right.

Whooooosh.

If you just bought a new car and paid $2000 for an upgraded stereo, why aren't you using the Bluetooth connectivity that it doubtless comes with, rather than clumsy dongles that are apparently proprietary?

There is no service or fee associated with this feature. It's not something you subscribe to, any more than you subscribe to Windows or your Sony alarm clock. This product is simply an app that sits on top of Blackberry's QNX operating system that drives a lot of the high-end car stereos, allowing the stereo to interface more easily with iOS products. Nothing more. You're not even locked into using it, since you can exit out to the car manufacturer's QNX interface.

Moreover, suggesting we'd see it in airplanes first makes little sense, given that retrofitting entire fleets costs a HELL of a lot more than adding a new feature to a line of cars that gets updated every single year. Besides which, some fleets actually are testing services where they offer in-flight movies free to iPad users, though that's in no way relevant to this discussion, other than that both involve Apple products.

Please stop misquoting Orwel, he was talking about war not about abusing prisoners.

First of all, whoever Orwel was talking about, I did not "misquote" him — the quote is perfectly accurate.

As for who he was talking about — you are attempting to make a distinction without difference. The idea remains the same — you can abjure waterboarding as "stooping low" all you want, but you are only able to do that, because others are waterboarding your enemies on your behalf.

Hope you're feeling all snug and cozy under your blanket of US exceptionalism.

Yes, thank you, the only drawback of the US exceptionalism is the nasty butthurt it is causing among citizens of lesser countries...

Christopher Hitchens changed his tune afterwards.

I'm sure, Mr. Hitchens, whoever he is, did not like it — by all descriptions, it feels horrible. It does not change the facts I stated: waterboarding works by fear, rather than pain. That sets it aside from "torture".

It may still be "bad", or even "outside any civilized standard", but that's not what I was saying: it is not torture.

Your opinion in the matter is completely irrelevant

Why, thank you, why didn't you say so from the beginning? Until now I labored under assumption, that I'm facing a good faith opponent...

That you happily put yourself there

Happily? Where did you get the "happily" part? Of course, I'm very much unhappy, that we — the US — had to apply the questionable procedures to the captured enemies in order to save ourselves from actions of their still-at-large comrades. But we had to — broken spirits of the handful of bona-fide terrorists aren't worth the lives of Americans, civilians or otherwise, and I'm glad, the Bush Administration had "the minerals" to act as it did.

makes my point in highlighting how far the US has fallen.

You are displaying a fantastic naivette, if you believe, the US — like all others — have not used this and similar methods in the past. That we are now more open about it, rather than being "shocked, shocked, waterboarding is going on here", is a good sign.

That argument is bogus, insofar as an employee at Verizon could just as easily leak my call logs, yet few people take exception to Verizon storing such data.

You don't even have to do that. There's Free Fillable Forms, which are exactly what the title suggests. Electronic copies of all the relevant paper forms that you fill out online and E-File. It doesn't have the logic of Turbotax but it performs basic math checks and saves you the hassle of printing and mailing the forms.

I can't understand why anyone would pay a third party to do their taxes. The logic flow isn't that complicated, even when you throw capital gains and itemized deductions into the mix. I've filed the long form 1040 by hand in years when I had to deal with capital gains and losses and was able to complete it in under two hours. Who are the people who pay Intuit or H&R Block to do their 1040ez filings?

There are all sorts of reasons why someone might not know far in advance, and if they don't want to micromanage their W-4 they'll end up with a refund at the end of the year.

Using myself as a case study, I'm at the point in my life where a lot of things are changing from year-to-year, and it's not always obvious at the start how things will go. For example, I bought a house this last year, but I didn't know precisely what my budget was going to be for the house at the start of the year, since it depended on a few other things. The year before that, I had a relative die and I donated a sizable chunk of the inheritance to charity, which ended up being a rather nice deduction. I switched to an HSA last year. I began investing a few years ago. I expect I'll be married and have kids within a few more years.

Maybe once things stabilize a bit you shouldn't have an excuse, but I'd rather not go through tax documents multiple times a year to calculate my deduction and adjust my withholding. I have better things to spend my time on. I'd rather just set something reasonable and have an expectation that I'll get back a modest refund whenever I do my taxes at the end of the tax year.

The metadata argument wears thin on me. If my phone number is two or three levels removed from a terrorist I really don't see why it's objectionable that the Government take a precursory look at my call logs. They'll quickly find that I'm a rather boring sort, whose connection with the terrorist was likely limited to ordering the same take out, and my privacy isn't significantly impacted by having someone review my call logs after obtaining a court order.

Traditional police investigative techniques would be at least as invasive, if not more so. Ever been interviewed by the police because you're one or two levels removed from a criminal suspect they're attempting to establish a case against?