Seems to me that any ISP that redirects browser HTTP requests becomes liable to suit from the customers - for substantially more than $20.

Microsoft now likes to act like they are an open source company that believes in open standards.

But they DO. It's step one - embrace:

1) Embrace
2) Extend
3) Extinguish
4) Profit.

Well, they cannot become martyrs by just dropping dead. At least they have to kill some unbelievers as well...

Actualy, they CAN become martyrs by dropping dead - after deliberately NOT leaving the area of a plague and thus avoiding the spreading it, at the cost of their own lives.

Martyrdom doen't just come from being killed in a religious war.

Another way to become a martyr, for instance, is to die in childbirth.

Yet another is to die while defending your home and/or family from robbers or other attackers (as my wife pointed out to a crook who was trying to extort "taxes" for a local gang.)

According to a report I saw (following a link from the Drudge Report yesterday):

1)The early symptoms of Ebola are very similar to those of Malaria, to the point that people with malaria are being thrown into the ebola quarantine camps. (Also: Many of the people who HAVE ebola, or their support network, may THINK thay have malaria.)
2) The camp ran out of gloves and other protective gear - leaving the staff and patients unable to clean up after and avoid contagin from the body fluid spillages of the actual ebola patients. Come in with SUSPECTED ebola and you soon have ebola for sure.

That, alone, would make it rational for someone not yet sick or mildly sick, incarcerated in the camp, to break out and hide out.

3) Stories are circulating in the area that ebola is a myth and the oppressive government factions/first worlders/take your pick of enemies are using this story, plus the odd malaria case here and there, to create death camps and commit genocide in a way that gives them plausible deniability.

That idea, of course, can lead to mass action by some of the local population to "rescue" their fellows and sabotage the camps.

The whole think is a real-world example of the cautionary tale "The Boy who Cried 'Wolf'". When the officials lie to the people for their own benefit, repeatedly, until the people come to expect it, the people won't believe them when they are telling the truth about a real threat - and all suffer.

Ebola is one mutation away from being airborne transmissable. It already happened with Ebola Reston -- fortunately for us all, that turned out to be transmissable to monkeys but not humans.

I've heard reports that it may have happened with this one, too.

It doesn't have to be as GOOD at doing airborne transmission as, say, the common cold, to be a BIG problem.

The same can essentially be said for cat shit coffee...

Like file downloads vs. interactive sessions, some power loads just need a long-term average and can be adjusted in time, without noticable impact, to shave peaks and get a closer match to generation - even if some of the generation, itself, is uncontrollably varying.

In fact, this is already being done. A prime example is in California, where a large part of the load is pumping of irrigation and drinking water. California utilities get away with far less "peaking generation" than they'd otherwise need by pumping the water mostly at off-peak hours. Cost: Bigger pumps, waterways (and in some cases "forebay" buffer reservoirs, below the main reservoir) than would be needed if the water were pumped continuously. This is practical because it was cheaper to upsize the water system than build and run the extra peaking plants. (Also: The forebay-to-reservoir pump generates when water is drawn down. It can also be run as a peaking generator, moving reserevoir water down to the forebay during peak load hours.) Similar things can be (and are being) done with industrial processes - such as aluminum smelters.

But there's a limit to load flexibility. Sure you can delay starting your refrigerator, freezer, and air conditioning for a few minutes (or start a little early, opportunistically), to twiddle the load. But you can't use such tweaks to adjust for an hours-long mismatch, such as the evening peak, or an incoming warm front leading to calm air and overcast skies on a chunk-of-the-continent basis. Try it, and your food spoils and your air conditioner (or heat-pump heating system) might as well be broken, or too small for your living area. Sure you can tweak factory load some. But do it too much and you reduce the production of billion-dollar factory complexes and workers who are still getting paid full rate.

Renewable energy actually helps - because its large-scale variations are driven by some of the same phenomena that affect heating and air conditioning loads. More wind means more heating and air conditioning load due to more heat transfer through building insulation. More sun means more air conditioning. Solar peaks in the day and wind in the evening (due to winds driven by the "lake effect" on a subcontinental scale), so a mix of them is a good match for the daily peak. But it's nowhere near "tweak to match generation and load without waste".

If you have a small population of people, say 500, and the rest of humanity disappears, what 'rights' do they have? Does one person have the right to live in peace, without one of the other 499 attacking him/her? There is no such right in the natural world where lions attack zebras or hornets attack bears. Do people have that right? Personally I don't believe they do...

Now let's say that one of the 500 is a general practitioner, and has the knowledge needed to treat common conditions the group will face. What if he doesn't want to do so? If he decides he wants to be alone to contemplate his own beliefs for a while, in light of the disappearance of the rest of humanity, does the rest of the group have the right to force him to be their doctor? If he wants to move away, start a small farm to raise vegetables and forget all his medical knowledge, does the group have the right to force him to train someone as an apprentice/replacement? If he will agree to see some people but not others, for whatever reason, do the others have a right to force him to see them as well? Do they have the right to follow him around begging for his attention? Do they have the right to force him into their hut to care of their ailing mate? If he refuses to do so, and fights his way free of such an action, is he to be punished for hurting the person accosting him?

In response to all those questions, my answer would be that the person with knowledge that may be essential for the survival of the group does not have the obligation to act on or dispense that knowledge. Or, in terms of rights, the group does not have the right to force the (former) doctor to do something he is not willing to do anymore. They don't have the right to violate his rights of not being attacked, personal beliefs, or privacy.

So, in conclusion, no I don't think people have a 'right to healthcare'.

That's odd. Because based upon the premise of your argument, people do have a right to healthcare (assuming that the doctor does not wish to die).

Yes, if you strip everything back to the law of nature (Locke-world), and create your own positve law, you can eliminate a right to healthcare. Or, you can enact a positive law creating a right to healthcare. That's the thing about positive law - it is whatever you construct it to be.

But don't argue that there is no natural law right to healthcare. The moment you rely purely upon natural law, there's a right to anything that the stongest dictates, because the strongest (the one with the most power at that instant) can attach that to the only right that matters in that system -- the right to exercise force to obtain what one wants.

Consider this an object lesson in a 'philosophy fail.'

I heard a story about another "killer building" near Chicago. (Haven't checked the claims for truth - just repeating it as I heard it.)

Seems there was this nice commercial builing next to O'Hare Airport. Curved walls, lots of lawn, nice walkway up to the door in the middle. Great view through the space over the airport runways.

There was this one spot on the walkway where more than one person was found unconscious or dead of apparent heart failure. There were enough that somebody looked into the coincidences.

Turns out the building's curve was parabolic and it faced a runway. If you happened to be at the focus when a jet taking off crossed the axis, the building concentrated the sound of the engines on you...

When you are in another country, you abide by that countries rules. When you play in a football league, you abide by that leagues rules. Suarez abided by neither, and thus deserved his punishment.

And again I suggest you actually investigate what he said, because "negrito" is far from the sole term he used, and it most certainly was not used in the same manner as his grandmother apparently uses it.

It might not even apply in the US - "fair use" is a defence, not an exception, and showing only the goals or other significant action in a football match could violate the "substantial" clause depending on how well the arguments are made to the judge.

A violation of clause 4 is also a potential due to the resale value of goal footage for round up sports programs etc.

You still aren't allowed to distribute a derivative work without the original copyright owners permission outside of fair use or expiration of copyright.

Also note my other posts on performance rights in the UK.

"Blackie" in the UK is a racist and offensive term - he is employed and works in the UK, so he is subject to UK laws and levels of standards with regard to his actions in the UK. Oh, and he said a lot more than just calling Evra a "blackie" - I suggest you refresh your memory of the incident...

Besides, Luis Suarez should be permanently banned from professional football for his various issues over the years. He is uncontrollable and has absolutely no conscience with regard to his past actions.

Standard terms of copyright for a performance in the UK - if you video it, you own the copyright on the video, but the performer owns the copyright on the performance so you still cannot legally distribute your video without infringing on the performers copyright.

The legislation existed before Uber but they ignored it - there is no elimination of competition going on here, there is competition failing to compete by the same rules and restrictions as their competitors.

Imagine a company being founded along the same lines as Uber, but their service being "build a house" - they may be cheap, but they get there by ignoring local building codes... No one is going to bitch about local government enforcing those pre-existing codes, so why should they bitch about pre-existing transportation laws being enforced here?