The entire article is a troll's post. "The Republicans are lying, they're badly misinformed, and we the enlightened have the correct answer and must re-educate them." Then the commenters jump on and say, "Why yes! I understand the Republican position -- it's because they're anarchists who love anything done by a big corporation, and it's on this basis that I judge everything they say!" If you want to have a serious debate about Net neutrality, this kind of article isn't the way to do it. Then again, the actual politicians these days have been dismissing the ruling party's critics as stupid, ignorant, and irrational -- in nearly that exact language -- so it's no surprise that their supporters would also talk that way.

Survey-makers, your groupthink is plusgood! Having already decided that Fox News is a terrible thing (and that that's why people watch it more than rival networks), you made the double error of asking rigged questions and then inferring a cause-and-effect relationship. Good job at reinforcing your own beliefs.

"63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear)." And having decided that there's absolutely no ambiguity (perhaps you've seen the original, more-closely-guarded-than-military-secrets BC rather than the summary?), you decided that anyone who questions the official story is "uninformed". You could probably do the same thing with global warming too, or the assertion that the Constitution's "commerce clause" means Congress can force people to buy things. In other words, your ideal citizen doesn't question the official story of things.

Think that this study will be used to push for forcible shutting down of this opposition network, Chavez-style, as various people on the socialist left have actually grumbled about? Or just used for traditional media to console themselves with?

I don't think wireless modem problems in general should surprise anyone. I'm using a Verizon USB device right now, and while it usually works all right, it has random weird misbehavior like claiming to be connected yet being unable to do anything, or claiming an "invalid username and password" when no new user info has been entered. Probably just standard hardware quirkiness.

So, you draw no distinction between trying to shut down a site that exists to engage in illegal international espionage, and trying to shut down a site that (say) describes what happened at Tiananmen Square?

I've got an eeePC netbook with WinXP, and am not impressed by this Unity interface being offered. The description of it looks like Ubuntu's trying to be as much like Apple as possible. "We made the desktop look like someone spilled colorful pills all over it and hid everything but your favorite "apps", which we want you to get from our walled garden. We put everything into a "Me Menu" which you probably can't even rename, and you can, like, totally use Twitter and Facebook because everybody who's anybody uses those."

I might try the Aurora version if it ever actually comes out. Since I'd be investigating Ubuntu without a strong reason to do so, I'd need some hand-holding to avoid exhausting my patience. Haven't yet seen an edition that has a big default button saying "click here for a tutorial about where everything is and how to do stuff". And is there a way to dual-install in such a way that I don't need to wait an extra beat or use a menu when turning the computer on, to pick an OS?

No, you have libertarians and conservatives confused with anarchists. That's typical talk from the socialist/communist faction: "When you guys talk about enforcing the Constitution that means you guys don't want any government at all!"

What about the cells that opt out of this intrusive screening?

You're aware that the Democrats are now in office, and extended the USA-PATRIOT Act, and in fact are the ones behind the new obnoxious security that this article is about, right?

This idea of identifying criminals by biometric measurements like facial features goes back to the 19th century; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Bertillon .

For comparison, the original Game Boy had a screen resolution of 160x144 in four greenish shades. Still, even 38x40 is an improvement over past retina chips and starts to be useful. I wonder what aspect ratio these things will end up with.

"Squishing"!

Actually, the bottom half or so of the US population pays no federal income taxes, and the top 1%, 5% etc. pays a hugely disproportionate share. Want to see the guys dodging taxes relative to the amount of money they make? It's huge corporations like Google that give loads of money to the Democratic Party, as Google did.

I'd rather live there than in the countries that've done the most thorough job of implementing socialism/communism; wouldn't you? Those crazy libertarians you snicker at don't massacre their own people or need to build a wall to keep their citizens from escaping.

That's true, this is like the health care debate. In this case, someone chose not to buy the service, and the public outcry will be, "That's terrible! No one should have that choice!" Also, note that the fire victim was surprised that the FD wouldn't take his $75 while the fire was in progress. If it were health care he needed, he'd complain that his house being currently on fire is a "pre-existing condition" and that an insurer should be legally forced to insure him the moment he feels like paying.

The comparison to national health care doesn't quite fit though, because the question there is whether the US federal government has lawful authority under the Constitution to order people to buy things. It definitely does not, if the Constitution is still a meaningful limit on federal power.

Cool. This sounds like a variant on the "Gamma Knife" technology I'd heard about years ago, where many beams of some sort (microwaves? x-rays?) are sent through the patients' head from different angles so as to deliver massive harm to one spot only.

Unfortunately, we're seeing an advance in health care just in time for it to be taken over.