"But unemployed morons on welfare have plenty of time to spend with their dozen children while they're not out looking for a job... or at the bar."

Where does this strange notion come from?

Oh, I guess if you are from a privileged class, you are taught that poor people are poor because they are stupid or lazy. Are you taught that there might be another explanation?

And what's this about too much free time being bad?

What's wrong with being able to spend all day idling around, looking for something interesting to get into?

Dontcha think that if humans were given more time to themselves, we might find something innovative to do?

What kind of fucking idiot assumes that humans are inherently lazy? There is a world of evidence and history to prove otherwise. What proves that you are correct, other than some malformed idea somebody gave you?

Humans create and build and invent no matter what stands in our way. Money is an afterthought, a bonus, something tangible to indicate the prestige and glory of our peers. Which is really what we are after. Never anything else.

Dunno. I rant and never look back.

Those are indeed minor policy points. Funny how those three things will be resolved as a natural result of us tackling bigger and more difficult problems, as an afterthought.

And none of that excludes you from being a conservative, communist, or apolitical religious zealot, etc... Just wealthy enough to be in a place to be able to afford nice things and not be too harried and stressed.

Not a bad to-do list tho...

"I'd gladly shell out another $300 for an android device sans phone."

Like somebody already said, there are and have been very suitable alternatives for people like you. Who are looking for a tiny little handheld computer.

You may find this odd, but you are a insignificant minority. The rest of us want a phone, need a phone, and will never be satisfied until the tiny little handheld computer also handles all our communications, especially voice. (preferably, over IP)

On a side note, I can't wait until something like Android becomes a ubiquitous embedded platform on any hardware they can think of to stuff it in...yes, with phone! Vehicles, appliances, furniture, it calls us, we call it...flying cars not far behind!

As for the rest of us, if it doesn't do phone, and do it well, we don't want it. Thankfully, we got phones aplenty...now we just need one that is a decent tiny little computer...and the iphone aint it, not even close.

Side note: google may be a predator, but its OUR predator. Big difference.

I have a side note of my own: what the hell did Microsoft ever do for anybody? (last i checked, anything that's gone right is in spite of the corporate leadership)

All you who keep comparing the two, does it make difference that google has shown again and again to be a good corporate citizen, in great contrast to damn near all of their peers? What if a corporation's default attitude was what is good for our species, not what's good for a small number of their shareholders in a given fiscal quarter?

Sure google may be very good at the corporate game...maybe one of the best...and this might lead you to assume that they are just as evil, as they compete with evil, in the same evil game.

I know, I know, no such thing as a good international corporation. But what if there were? What would it look like? How would it act? How would it be different? Are you able to recognize the difference?

Compare google to that, then compare MS. Due Friday.

Seems to me that the problem is your self-labeling.

If you let the rest of us properly label you then there is no confusion.

Just this stuff about you not being comfortable with the label that mostly suits you.

And if it does not suit you, then do not identify with it.

In other words, this seems to be a personal problem for you. Not us.

Because law enforcement need to keep themselves to very high standards if they want to be credible.

There's lots of ways an unscrupulous cop can catch criminals, if he believe that the ends justify the means.

Just off the top, when government agents pretend to be red cross workers so that they can sneak in and kill the captors and rescue the hostages, did they do anything wrong?

Well, they did save those hostages. But what about the next group of hostages? What about defiling the red cross, so that when actual red cross try to come in to do humanitarian work, they get gunned down as if they were agents?

What if you are a Washington employer looking for talent but word gets out that you are just another FBI front?

If we did not have entrenched monopolies acting like a telecom industry, there would have been some fall-out from them allowing agents to illegally and unethically capture all data through their pipes.

Just another example of lousy priorities by our esteemed law enforcement officials, all while they viciously protect their budgets no matter if they have to confiscate your property for whatever reason they can come up with to break even.

We do not have enough protection from these local para-military forces and their deeply ingrained conflicts of interest. What if crime actually goes down?!? Will they lay off police or will they figure out a new class of people to persecute to make up for the budget shortfall?

People shit on the school system, saying things like "throwing money at the problem doesn't help" but nobody ever holds the police to performance standards. Look, the worse cops perform, the more money we offer them.

There is zero accountability, laughable oversight, coupled by constant examples of incompetence and corruption at all levels...it's a sacred cow that nobody dares to consider touching...until they are the ones with their door kicked in and their dog shot down in front of them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299_pf.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/978249/posts
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/04/police_shoot_dog_during_backya.html