My partner got caught by one of these bill collector scumbags. They just troll through credit histories and call folks with delinquent balances and browbeat them into giving them a debit card or checking account number to "settle" it. Any amount of verification will show that they have nothing to do with the debts they're trying to collect (which we, thankfully, did). Very frightening experience.

Oh, so it's just the slippery slope fallacy: "seizure of internet domains now = legislators will do anything for political leverage at the expense of US customers and suppliers" Yes, SOPA is misguided. It does not mean the US Congress has a death wish for our country, but rather they are bumbling, and largely paid-for, fools.

The real problem, as I see it, is the "accusation = guilt" and extra-judicial enforcement methods of these laws. It just floors me that our congressmen, sworn to uphold the constitution, thinks that laws where all you have to do is file some paperwork and "poof" the website gets blocked without having to present compelling-enough evidence to a judge under penalty of perjury (and with oppposing counsel's arguments) for him or her to issue an injunction to block the DNS entry. It shows they have absolutely no respect for the Constitution or even knows what "rule of law" means.

And this is the brainwashing the AMA has done to us in the last century.

Sure, but "deservingness" is rather subjective. Which is why it's good to get a diversity of opinions, so you can find the organization that _you_ find the most deserving.

I don't normally find such slant in Slashdot summaries (except when it's pro-open-source, obviously, which is part of the reason I come here). Using the word "illegal" and "criminal" repeatedly to describe one side of a labor dispute is just beyond the journalistic pale. I know this is "citizen journalism", but it doesn't have to read like some anti-union blog.

On their own roads? ;-) They never mention who builds the roads...

And this is provably safe, because nobody's boiler in the basement _ever_ blows up today ;-)

No private insurer will insure a nuclear power plant, due to the extremely large (albeit with rather small risk) amount of damage that they can do (and insurance companies are designed to measure risk (not as-calculated, but as-observed) and turn it into profit). Insurance is necessary to avoid externalizing the risk of a nuclear power plant in a "true" free market system. Therefore, there's no such thing as a "free market nuclear power plant". They're _all_ backed, implicitly or explicitly, by governmental insurance.

Next up: modified hantavirus that can solve the Rubik's Cube in less than 21 moves.