You don't get to decide when a word is pejorative to a group that's historically been targeted with it. I agree strongly with George Carlin when he talks about the ludicrousness of "bad words." There are no "bad words." But you know what there *are?* There are words that have been used offensively against a minority group so often that they've become hurtful *to* that group of people.

You have a right to use those words anyway. You have a right to not care. You have a right to claim that because YOU don't find the word offensive, no one else has a right to do so, either.

You also have a right to decide that decades of discrimination against a particular group were so awful, you'll avoid using a word or two -- not because those words are "bad," but because they serve as reminders of abuse, insults, and ignorance. You have a right to decide to change your speaking habits *ever* so slightly as a way of demonstrating to this person or persons that you don't agree with the way those words were used against them.

You have a right to decide that empathy and acknowledgement is more meaningful than saying a certain collection of phonemes.

Or not to.

What are you going to do with a slice of spectrum? For that matter, what would *I* do with a slice of spectrum? And what would "public" ownership even mean in this space?

"Why is it that folks still have issues when a "Free" service suddenly is removed?"

Because having a service yanked out from under you is annoying? Furthermore, your use of the word "free" is somewhat limited. Google makes money off of users. It monetizes your search traffic, your emails, and tracks your site visitation patterns. It monitors which ads you click on, which you don't, and how to best use that data to better sell more ads. It leverages its share of the search and web services market in a number of ways to support these endeavors.

When you become part of the Google ecosystem, you are agreeing to share data with them that is incontrovertibly *valuable*, even if they never put a value on it, and no money changes hands. So you're right. No such thing as a free lunch. But when I use Google services, I'm paying them with my own personal usage data -- and they're obviously quite happy to use that data in a great many ways to "enhance" product offerings.

I'm not arguing that Google SMS deserved to live, or that Google is morally or legally in the wrong for closing it, but Google is compensated with information when I use its products. It may not cost me any money, but if I give you something you find valuable in exchange for a good or service, there's still an exchange taking place.

I'd like to propose two changes to how we talk about pretty much everything.

1) No more use of the phrase XXX-industrial complex.
2) No more attaching the "gate" suffix to scandals.

We can talk about the growth in surveillance technology and *all* of its associated problems without resorting to a term that was originally coined to discuss the complex relationship between Congress, the military, and the industrial base that supported both. According to Wikipedia, the industry covered by the "military industrial complex" was worth some $600 billion in 2009. Surveillance, while no doubt a booming business, isn't exactly in this league.

As for the --gate thing, it's just plain stupid.

The top 1% of the US captured 121% of the wealth generated during the "recovery." The bottom 99% actually got poorer.

http://boingboing.net/2013/02/13/economic-recovery-in-the-us-ac.html

That's why, despite record stock gains, real wage growth is flat. Improvements in the unemployment rate overall are much smaller once you count the number of discouraged workers or consider the underemployed. The jobs being generated don't pay as well as the ones people lost, and they don't include the same level of benefits.

Facts. They kick ass.

Is there any chance of seeing the B5 episodes remastered? Modern rendering, even on consumer hardware would hugely improve the visual effects. This would go beyond a simple re-issuing of the show in HD / 4K, and I imagine the models and renders could be time-consuming -- but there are fans who'd definitely contribute to make this a reality.

Even a modest cluster could deliver a vast improvement over the show's original visuals.