All of those are great points, but you missed the most recent and catastrophic development in the struggle for human rights vs. corporate rights, which is that Corporations are now allowed to make unlimited political contributions, whereas private individuals are limited to $2500. Corporations now have an even greater ability to manipulate the government for their own ends than ever before, and I don't think any sane person believes that is a good thing.

Did you accidentally switch US and UK or something? Cops get away with shooting people in the US all the time. Unless the victim is already handcuffed and in the back of the cruiser, when a cop shoots someone in the US, they're put on paid administrative leave for a few weeks, then returned to duty. Maybe if it's really obvious that the cop had no business shooting the guy, he'll return to duty with a nasty letter in his file.

Why would you pick the myth of jesus as your basis for morality? There are much older holy texts out there that that provide moral guidance, and much newer. Is it simply because that's what mommy and daddy taught you to believe? If so, your entire moral system is nothing but an appeal to authority.

Is AMD hoping this impractical PR stunt will distract us from the fact that their chips have been lagging behind Intel's for the past two years?

I actually like the Sense interface they made it feels more intuitive than default Android, but it does noticably slow down the phone. I've got an HTC Evo 4G, and I rooted it for free wi-fi tether. I didn't realize how much faster the stock android UI is until I installed CyanogenMod7, probably because the phone as pretty good hardware specs compared to most smart phones. CM7 made the UI seem much more responsive, and apps don't stutter at all like they'd occasionally do with Sense.

Or you could just look at the source code for the GPS module on your cell phone and re-compile, thus verifying that it is, indeed providing you with the correct information using the method described. You really really are ignorant if you think that science has anything to do with faith.

Sounds like a wet-saw for tile or masonry would do the job.

Yeah you can, just combine fiber optics with a photo-voltaic cell. It'd be inefficent and a stupid waste of fiber, but it could be done :)

Yeah, you could do it, but it'd be WAY more expensive because each tower would need it's own generator, and it takes a lot more towers to cover to cover the same area that one POTS CO can cover. Each of those towers also consumes orders of magnitude more power to provide coverage a unit area than the POTS network takes due to the inefficient nature of omni-directional radio broadcast. Basically, in addition to backup generators, you'd need either a massive amount of on-site fuel storage if you wanted the generators to be able to run for more than a few hours, or a significant fuel distribution network (natural gas would be great, but the infrastructure just is'nt available everywhere you need it) and during Frances, you couldn't get diesel or gasoline any easier than you could get electricity.

It's a technically simple problem, but a logistical nightmare during an emergency situation.

It would take either a massive government subsidy to get it done, or your cell phone bill would skyrocket to cover the additional infrastructure costs.

It's not the case yet though, and good luck getting any kind of "make big businesses worry about the consumer" legislation passed in the current US political climate. When my town was hit by hurricane Frances in 2004, power was out for a week and a half, and the only way to communicate was using an old corded telephone on a POTS line. The cell towers were all unpowered, as were the cablemodems. I haven't done the math, but I have a feeling that it takes a lot more power to cover a given area with cell signal than to keep the POTS system running over the same coverage area, just because broadcasting omni-directional radio signals is inherently less efficient than direct-line communication.