I would totally want Robocop in my local PD. That would be epic.

I agree completely. They already know these things. I can pull a 'soft' credit report on anyone with all that information on it. Given a budget of $10k, I could bulk pull credit reports for everyone within a specific geographic region that has all that info on it. Pretending you are special and they need you to put in that information to "complete" their records is asinine tin foil hattery. If you think they needed YOU to come along and attach an email address to the last 4 of your social...well...sorry, you're wrong.

I signed in to see what information was gathered by their robots, and it was very interesting to read through it. Most of the information on me I could easily track back to where they might have gotten that information. I get direct mailers all the time about refinancing my home because bank notes on homes are public information (at least in FL, maybe everywhere). They only had me down for 1 kid, but they nailed his age. My guess that is because Toys-R-Us shares info and my son recently had a birthday. They had my salary way off. I actually corrected it for them. If that means I get fewer ads for Wal-Mart and more for Bass Pro Shops then so be it...I like Bass Pro Shops better anyway.

One neat thing they know is that I am/was a smoker up until recently. Until this post, I hadn't mentioned that on the internet (Facebook, G+, etc...). The only thing I can think of is that they knew I was recently doing heavy research into the drug Chantix, and then I stopped researching it. Maybe search engines and research portals sell your information as well as use it for themselves.

Neat stuff.

You mean the guy that took the financial risks of founding a company and running it like there was no tomorrow got to enjoy the spoils of his labor?

I'm not sure I understand how that is wrong. When you are forced to give others the spoils of your labor, that's approaching slavery.

I think you're trying to imply something is wrong when the AS/400 programmer that didn't update his skill set over a 20 year career and got let go, while the guy that worked his ass off to be a more versatile developer was making more money.

I don't think you're making the point you're trying to make.

If you go to work for the money, you will probably cap out at the 80%-90% percentile in your given field. Which isn't bad, but you won't set the right-edge of the curve.

Inspirational speak Zig Ziglar had a story that illustrates this point pretty well. I'm going to try to recall the details, but the gist is pretty simple.

Some railroad laborers were out working on a track one day when a luxurious single-car train pulled up. A voice called out from the car and said "Dave! Is that you?". One of the laborers looked up and said "Yea, I'm Dave. John, how are you?"
Dave was invited into the car and the two were in there for nearly an hour before Dave emerged and the two men embraced as old friends would do.
When Dave got back down and picked up his tools to begin working again, the luxury rail car pulled away. One of the other laborers asked Dave, "Was that John Abrams, president of the railroad?" Dave replied "Yes, sure is. He and I started on the same day in the same job 30 years ago." When the man pushed a little further and said "Well, if you two started on the same day in the same job, why is he running things and you're out here with a shovel?"
Dave thought for only a moment before answering.
"When I went to work for this company 30 years ago I went to work for $3.25 an hour. When John started, he went to work for the railroad."

Maybe a tad cheesy, but the point is pretty simple.

#3 - The passenger door has more fingerprints on it than the driver-door. It is no secret.

Thieves would not "obviously" prefer to rob rich people, because those people will have better security through dogs, alarms, safes, etc... No, the poor rob the poor again and again, and poorer neighborhoods are MUCH more likely to need constant police patrols to keep the level of riffraff low. If your argument is to make the people that benefit from it pay more for it, then you are essentially arguing for regressive taxes on police, fire departments, hospitals, schools, etc...

Standard Control Buttons on a PC are the keyboard....If someone used the "standard control buttons" on a keyboard on a PC to steal money from a bank account by planting or taking advantage of an existing vulnerability we would plainly see the problem with that. But, if you take those keys off a keyboard and print simple icons on them, it becomes OK to do this?

This is the best thing I've ever read on the entire Internet. Hands down.

PBS Sprout. Better by far than Nickelodeon, and our tax-dollars are paying for the content anyway, so I doubt it costs that much for the cable company to keep it.

This is not true in my experience. Often times people have been making a perfectly viable living doing a certain thing, and then excessive regulation pushes them out of the market so the big players can take over. Larger players are the ones with the lobbyists to help define the red tape, and the money/lawyers to spend on navigating it.

Go try to harvest oysters or clams in a Florida harvesting area. The startup capital is a bucket and some mud-boots. The regulatory hoops you much jump through to get that shellfish harvesting certificate are insane. The direct costs paid to the State are only a couple hundred dollars, but you have the cost of inspections (for the "washing facility", aka a sink), the cost of training, the cost of the government mandated tags that denote the area, condition, and purpose of the shellfish (different requirements for raw, on the half-shell oysters vs the ones for cooking vs ones for freezing vs ones for personal consumption), then the cost of yearly assessments. These costs can easily add up to dozens of thousands of dollars, and are considerably higher than the startup costs.

With all due respect, people that say things like that don't seem to have any experience doing something that is regulated, and therefore talk out of their ass.

He didn't assault a federal officer, I did. 18 U.S.C. 111.

I say let the drug companies advertise all they want, buy the doctors whatever swag they want, and buy them all the vacations they want, but there needs to be oversight to make sure those expenditures do not influence the doctor's diagnosis or treatment in any way. I want the pharmaceutical companies to have freedom of speech like every other company in the country (excepting tobacco and a tiny few others), but when it comes to the actual prescribing of the drugs, that needs to come down to cold-hard facts on efficacy and side-effects. It wouldn't take long with serious oversight for the doctors that are gaming the system to get caught prescribing anti-depressants to house-wives to stay skinny (welbutrin), or viagra to frat-boys. Once that problem is taken care of, the swag and fancy vacations won't have any utility, and the pharmaceutical companies will see the value approach 0, and will stop. Regardless of where you come down on free-speech, the pill-mill issue needs to be resolved for this to work.

Brad

I would rather be crazy than correct in this regard, but unfortunately I'm right. There are special laws that prohibit using force to preserve your rights against government or government agents. Treason comes to mind, also assaulting a federal (or state) officer. The government may be populated by people like me and you, but those people hold powers that you & I don't hold. The power to levy taxes, the power to close businesses, the power to imprison people. I can't build a jail and start populating it with people that I have found to be in violation of laws, only government and government agents can do that.

Go punch a guy in the face at a gas station...you will get 30 days in jail for assault. Then, go to a local IRS office and punch an agent in the face..in five years when you get out of prison you can tell me about how he's just a person like anyone else.

The difference you seem to forget is that the police not only has a literal gun, he has the figurative "force of the law" behind him when he's doing the violating. If the beggar starts to use force to keep you from your freedom of movement, you can use force to stop him. If you use force against the "gubmint", you lose...every time. This is the point you missed.

I have as much power as the drunken beggar or the store detective, but I don't have as much as the officer. If you want to dig a little deeper, the constitution lays it out pretty clearly. "Congress shall make no law" or similar language is found throughout the bill of rights (and the same concept is implied to the infinite other implicit rights not enumerated). It doesn't say that your mom or your priest or boss will keep you from saying certain things, just that congress won't keep you from saying certain things.