And? What's your point? If it furthers the public good, and won't get funded any other way, isn't it a good thing that the government steps in?

Stupid building codes, driver's permits, garbage collection, always making ME pay for them.

Why shouldn't the government pay for all of those things? Would we get better compliance if it did? Would that lead to improved quality of life for our citizens? These are testable hypotheses.

Would you really expect capacity to run out linearly? Write balancing means that you should expect every bit of flash to be written roughly the same amount on average. That means once you start losing the ability to write to some cells, you can expect more cells to fail in short order.

I mean the 4th amendment. And no, that's not a sidebar. When our leaders break the highest law of the land, that's a crime. How are we supposed to hold those criminals responsible and ensure that no similar law breaking occurs in the future?

The law as written was meant to ensure companies are responsible for the archaeological costs incurred from digging up their land instead of saddling the taxpayer.

If the tax payer is interested in archaeology, they should be willing to pay for it.

As a result, they would quietly fill any 'gaps' they found with concrete (sometimes truckloads) just to avoid finding any inconvenient remains

All in all, the effect of the law ran exactly opposite to the intent of the law

Which is stupid, because it's trivially easy to make a law that works the way it's intended. Don't force the landowner or construction company to pay for archeology that's supposed to benefit society as a whole. If they find ruins, they should stop production, receive a stipend for their time, and the government should hire the archaeologist.

Sony throwing root kits onto CDs

Throwing rootkits onto CDs is a federal crime that would have gotten any of us a decade in jail.

Anyone is free to make a Scrabble clone as long as it doesn't look so similar to the original that people would think it is authorized by the company that owns the original.

If the board doesn't look like a Scrabble board, if it doesn't have the same number of squares, and the same bonus tiles in the same position, then it's not a Scrabble clone at all.

Society has been pretty much unbearable since more than one person has been in a group. Before that, loneliness was unbearable. And yet, most people aren't clinically depressed.

I said depression is a rational response to an unbearable society. Most people aren't depressed because most people aren't rational.

Depression can be cured, or let's call it remission if you want.

This is a big lie promoted by psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry for their own profit. Many of them probably believe it, but it's not supported by the evidence. Antidepressants can be effective in partially alleviating some of the symptoms, but only for extreme cases of depression. And in those extreme cases, the benefit is only marginal. The vast majority of people on antidepressants can be expected to show no clinically significant improvement.

Nothing psychiatry has to offer can be clinically shown to make depressives feel normal. They only make the extremely depressed feel marginally less shitty, if they're lucky.

Sadly, a lot of the treatment plans for depression seem to be keep throwing things at it and see if something sticks.

Or you keep throwing things at it until it gets better by itself and the psychiatrist takes credit for it.

And that kind of reasoning is exactly why there is no hope for America. If you keep voting for what you don't want, you'll keep getting it. You have to realize that the differences between the two parties are negligible. Then you will be free to vote your conscience.

How the hell do you expect Democracy to work if you cannot tell The People about the activities of the government they're supposed to be in charge of? It's not a very difficult concept to understand.

I don't believe anyone has ever claimed that the NSA, CIA, whatever other alphabet soup agencies need to disclose everything they do.

I do. Everything every government agency does should be open to the public. If there's a need for operational security, some secrecy may be appropriate, but it should be extremely limited in scope and duration.

No one argues that the need for secrecy is warranted in most situations.

I do. How do you know that the need for secrecy is warranted? Only because those who want the secrecy tell you it is. That's a pretty profound conflict of interest.

how do you propose to keep the country safe

How do YOU propose to keep the country safe from criminals who cannot obey the Constitution?

If you can't do it without oversight, it's too dangerous to allow. Our own corrupt government is a bigger threat than any foreign enemy.

The American people have a right to know about all the activities of their government, for reasons that I feel should be unnecessary to explain here. But since you don't get it, I guess I have to.

If the American people aren't informed about the activities of their government, they cannot exert control over those activites. The rightful seat of power is with The People.