> I live in Raleigh, NC, and for those who have a jaundiced perspective of the south I would like to say that this region is booming in terms of technology-centric business

You know, maybe it's because I've always lived to the south of you (Atlanta), but I never really applied the negative southern stereotype to North Carolina, not until you amended your constitution just a couple weeks ago.

It will be interesting to see how that decision affects the state in the medium term... stereotypes and reputation like that can have a lot of impact on whether companies choose to set up shop there.

This isn't flamebait. Parent is referring, sarcastically, to the common analog of the "blame the victim" argument the grandparent is making.

> Put the same equipment in a manned aircraft and it's a snoozer.

Interesting point. I guess on some level, we're hoping that with a manned aircraft, an egregiously and obviously illegal order to target U.S. citizens might be disobeyed or even made public.

> I dunno if we should mandate it on men. Then again, I don't think it should be mandated for women either, at least not without parental consent to opt in.

The problem with that approach is that the anti-vaccination kooks don't just make themselves and each other sick, they incubate diseases that affect everyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversy
http://www.skepdic.com/antivaccination.html

As long as we can get Nimoy to do the voice work I'm down.

> It's also why they didn't put Hitler in, as to many people he's just a misunderstood guy who tried to do his best against the forces of Zionist-Communism.

Well, that and he was a Roman Catholic, so it would weaken the point they were trying to make. The superior morality of religion is one of the few arguments that cannot be successfully Godwin'd. =)

It also teaches that if a man rapes a woman, he has committed a property crime against her father and will be forced to marry her as part of her punishment.
Are you really sure these are the old books you want to use?

> Discarding the moral teachings that have been handed down over thousands of years is equally ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous; moral philosophy has been advancing since the bronze age, just like science. There's a reason that religions founded in that era endorse slavery, regard women as property, and practice scapegoating, to name just a few items; they are only as moral, could only possibly be as moral, as the men who founded them were. We can do better today.

> as a practicing physician before the Feds got involved he never saw a patient left to die

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but even so, that can't POSSIBLY be true. I'm only 32 and two people close to me have died because of an inability to afford treatment; one a few years back from melanoma and one just last week from breast cancer.

I suppose it's possible that Ron Paul managed to work as a physician and never notice the poor dying all around him, but is that really the most likely explanation?

> the generally accepted definitions do not preclude the use of hard disks

And THAT, if anything, is what is killing netbooks.

When Asus came out with the EeePC 701, it was something truly different; 9" body (only a 7" display in that first model), SSD only, cheap. It had Linux, but even being the zealot that I am I don't consider that a requirement for a netbook. The 9xx series (full 9" display, same size body) was the pinnacle of netbook evolution from my point of view. (Arguably surpassed by the Asus T91MT, but that one had a crappy GPU which wasn't useful in Linux).

Nowadays, there are "netbooks" up to 12" in size, you almost can't find a 9" anymore, and SSD are uncommon. Basically, the term "netbook" has come to just mean "crappy laptop".