I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS.

The same way anything is implemented in FOSS. It'll be written into the source. Lots of people will modify the code to disable the backdoors. People will post versions of the software with the backdoors missing, many of which actually still have them or have different backdoors installed. Governments may lead an automated search for software without the backdoors, or may simply ignore it uniless they have a reason to target the individual using it.

In other words, what a fucking mess.

So Jehovah's Witnesses were right about something for once?

How was it the "cover story" if that's almost exactly how it's worded in the constitution of Slashdot's home country? Let's compare:

"To promote the public good by protecting the interests of creative people for a limited time" --bdwoolman

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" --Framers

Eventually authors will run out of distinct works to create. See "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson.

In the diatonic scale, there are seven distinct intervals between pitches, and rhythm can be approximated as either a short or long time from one note to the next. This leaves fourteen possibilities for each note but the last, as the last note has no next note to make an interval or duration meaningful, or 14^(n - 1) distinct melodies of length n. But a song was deemed an infringement for having matched eight notes (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the "My Sweet Lord" case). This sets n = 8, or 14^7 - 105 million distinct melodies. There are already far more people than that on this planet.

My former employer used to get dinged for stating in item descriptions that other payment methods were available.

I'd say yes, it's a bad thing. But then I like commenting on articles occasionally.

You're going to have go into more detail. At the very least:

1. Explain how having to reload the page (Jump to Disqus and then bounce back) going to be positive for the user's experience. I certainly don't see how it would be remotely positive.

2. How is this going to work without the host installing something on their server? As I said, a selling point of Disqus is that it doesn't need anything on the hosts' server at all, just some boiler plate HTML that inserts the Disqus Javascript script.

I don't see your solution as being "How they should have done it all along". It's inefficient, kludgy, and fails the ease-of-installation test.

And what would the media be without shills adding to the mud-slinging and muckraking?

Tolerable.

Well, I actually fit in an Amtrak coach seat (I'm 6'2", which, as I understand it, is ridiculously tall in America, nobody could possibly be that tall, and that's why airline seats are designed for people no more than 4' high, which is presumably normal.)

That's a good reason to begin with.

Also: the ability to get up and walk around, the view out the window, and the fact I can arrive at my destination relaxed. Show me someone who says they're relaxed after a long distance bus or air trip, and I'll show you a liar.

For a little over a dollar a day, users of Wi-Fi-only device can buy a cellular radio with a Wi-Fi router. You could think of it as a cell phone that doesn't make calls because it's only designed for tethering.

The bankrupt Penn Central was then reconstituted as Amtrak and Conrail

This is poorly worded. What I meant was that Penn Central's assets were divided between Amtrak, and Conrail, the latter being a new government corporation specifically created to take over the bankrupt entity's assets. Amtrak, of course (as should have been obvious from what I'd written earlier) already existed.

Historical accident, not politics. The NEC is the only part of the national rail system Amtrak actually owns.

Amtrak exists because a giant railroad company that operated most trackage in the North East called Penn Central was going bankrupt. In the early seventies it went to Nixon and said, essentially "We might survive if we can get rid of passenger service. which costs lots of money and isn't covering its costs for us. Hey, whatsay we make passenger service a government program, and then you guys can screw it up even more and close it down after two years? Then we can sell all the track we no longer need, cover our debts, and just do nice profitable freight in future."

(You probably think I'm doing a dig at Amtrak there with the "government program" and "screw it up" bit, but actually, that really was the plan. I'm not kidding. A few years after Amtrak's creation, Louis W. Menk, the then chair of the Burlington Northern, actually blurted it out in public, saying that the government was making a mess of screwing it up. Look it up.)

So, anywho, the other railroads were also invited to join, as most (but not all) were having similar problems. Amtrak was formed. Penn Central went bust anyway.

The bankrupt Penn Central was then reconstituted as Amtrak and Conrail. Amtrak got the NEC. Conrail got the rest. Conrail became amazingly profitable, was privatized, and finally split between CSX and NS. Amtrak has finally gotten the NEC to be profitable over the last few years, though the rest of its passenger service is still technically "loss making". But the non-NEC services suffer from not being under its control. It can't run Acela Express services on CSX tracks, for example, because it would need massive upgrades to lines that Amtrak would barely benefit from.

I took Joe_Dragon's comment to mean that the vast majority of rail service outside Boswash is freight, not commuter service.

It's time for Sarten-X's semi-weekly anti-media rant.

The reason the news stories you read about are always us-vs.-them is because you're reading news stories. It's not what's really going on. In a newspaper, the story about the big technology company donating millions of dolalrs in products and support to a third-world country takes a nice little corner on page 12. Meanwhile, the front-page big headline is a story about the company that sues another company for just as much.

People love controversy, and the media is happy to supply it. It doesn't matter how good your company is or what your corporate charter's stated mission is, you're still portrayed as a Big Evil Company that's out to greedily gather money and decimate your adversaries. On the off chance that you keep your dealings clean enough to not get sued (and don't sue others), you can bet that the media will invent an adversary for you, combining the markets of your closest competitors into a shady conspiracy, just for the sake of a story.

Sorry, Larry Page: News-media viciousness is here to stay.