So what you're basically saying is that they didn't submit to the rule of law as it existed because they didn't agree with it. There was no "American justice system" as a distinct entity because America was a part of the British Empire. They ended up making their own justice system...with blackjack and hookers.

I get what you think you are trying to say, but the truth is that Snowden does not get a fair trial. If he's lucky, he'd be shot "trying to escape" and if not, he'd be shoved into a dark hole for the rest of his life where he might be let out for a few minutes to allow for the appearance of a trial. Why should he submit himself to a lifetime (however short it may be) of torture just to make a bunch of bloodthirsty sheep happy?

Hmmm...Good point...but if they can make it smart enough to detect animals on the road and warn drivers, then they could design them to only light up the sections of roadway that are in use, which would presumably make them even more energy efficient. Side effects of this methodology would be that it would alert cross traffic that vehicles were coming and it could dovetail into smart intersections, autonomous cars and traffic flow, but that is jumping a few steps further ahead into that general direction than this product is currently positioned at.

When did this become Soviet Union?

Pack of hot dogs + Mac and Cheese = roughly $2 to feed four people.

Chicken Breast + Frozen veggies = at least $10 for four people.

Things like milk, eggs, butter, fruits and fresh meat are not cheap. And this doesn't even get into the argument about availability/convenience of grocery stores and transportation.

2 liters of Coke products are on sale here for 99 cents just about every week. I'm sure that Pepsi is on sale the off weeks and the store brands are 88 cents for a 2 liter. Milk isn't going to be cheaper than that any time soon.

It made $49mil theatrically worldwide on a $15mil budget. Profits were probably hurt by the distribution issues, releasing an independent during summer blockbuster season, negative response from vets, and (later) the lawsuit against the film. File sharing did not really impact the theatrical release. It only made $145k on its opening weekend which is before file sharing would even be able to kick in. Catching Fire opened to $161mil this past weekend and file sharing hasn't gone away, so obviously that wasn't the problem.

They sold over $30mil in DVDs in the US in the first 8 months (a DVD that was very light on features by the way.) I'm sure that the DVD sales were negatively impacted by the filesharing lawsuits (I bought it on DVD and promptly got rid of it without even watching the movie as soon as the news broke.) Even people I know who aren't in touch with such topics were aware that people were getting sued for "watching" the Hurt Locker. The lawsuits killed any and all potential that the movie had to resurrect itself on DVD and destroyed the momentum that it had gained during the awards season.

First, terrorism is not war. It is crime. War is something that occurs between nations. Terrorism has only been treated as an act of war since 9/11 because doing so allows the government to do things that they couldn't otherwise do and it helps to keep the sheep scared enough to not look too closely. If this didn't happen and we treated it like crime (as it should be and always had been in the past) then we would probably be safer than we are now and still have the rights that have been taken away from us for this illusion of security.

Second, unless my reading comprehension has gone to crap, the 4th amendment doesn't say anything about foreigners. Nor does it apply differently to citizens and non-citizens. This is because just like with all of the Bill of Rights, it is not granting rights to anybody, but limiting how the government may infringe upon those rights. Rights being something inherent in being human and not something that can be granted to you, your citizenship does not play a factor into whether or not you have them. And since the articles in the Bill of Rights do not specify citizenship, the government is equally restricted no matter who the person is (not that it stops them).

As for the immediate question...it does matter how the evidence was collected whether the man is guilty of what he is accused of or not. Those protections are there for a reason and everybody benefits from them even if it means that a bad guy gets away once in a while. The alternative is for the system to be tilted even further in the direction where innocent people get accused and convicted of things they did not do. It already happens too often.

I saved a lot of money by switching back to Sprint from Verizon and Verizon cost me a lot more when I initially switched away from Sprint even with a corporate discount.

Coverage...it all depends upon where you are. My personal phone is Sprint and my Blackberry is Verizon. I travel a lot and in my purely anecdotal experience the Sprint phone has had slightly better coverage with fewer dropped call issues. I can't say which is better for data because I don't use my Blackberry for many data tasks and frankly, 3G is fast enough for most tasks that you perform on a phone anyway.

That isn't even the immediate problem. Those are simply potential problems that will occur when the system is inevitably misused.

The immediate and very real problem is the Steve Jackson Games problem. Since they are using the overly broad data that they collect to look for connections that may or may not exist, everyone is in danger of being violated in the name of fighting terrorism just because someone they have had contact with has had contact with someone that is on a list.

How is trashing people's rights an example of human decency?

My Touchpad has had those capabilities for a couple of years now.

Not that I ever use it for that. A tablet just isn't the right platform for that kind of usage IMHO.

The cost of shipping is generally about the same as the cost of sales tax. It evens out for the most part (free shipping comes from somewhere as well.) There is no inherent advantage to it. By being forced to collect out of state sales tax, these out of state entities are being told to do something by a state that they have no dealings with, gain no advantage from and without compensation.

The idea that this will even the playing field for local businesses is extremely short sighted. A lot of local businesses have websites or sell through sites like eBay. They will also be impacted as will businesses that might be thinking about going online to increase their sales even if their intent is to mainly sell locally.

There is a reason that companies like WalMart and Amazon are supporting this legislation. It will kill off their competition, including local businesses, many of which depend upon online sales to boost their revenue.

If states want to continue to push their (unconstitutional...it is just a way to levy sales tax on sales outside of the state) use taxes, then they already have that avenue. There is no need to burden and in many cases kill off businesses because they don't want to go the even uglier route of pushing their use taxes.

Depends on where you live. People who are even a short distance from a town (talking a couple of miles) are often limited to low speed DSL on very unreliable lines if they can even get that. It may not be "average" but it is a significant percentage of people.

And you still have yet to outline anything that is an actual crime with the possible exception of accessing the networking closet that was open to the public. A few civil matters, but no actual crimes.

If I won the lottery, I'd have a couple of stashes containing large amounts of cash that are not kept in a bank. My car might not be the first place that I'd choose to store it, but a secret compartment would be where I'd put it if I needed to move it from one location to another.