Actually, there are limited places in the US that do this: Metric Road Signs in the US I think this is something that could be voted on at the municipality/state level and could eventually work its way nationally.

As many posters have pointed out, this definitely seems to be the logical conclusion of bitcoins being recognized as having real economic value. I wonder how far off bitcoin futures are from being listed on a major exchange, especially considering the CFTC is interested and has taken notice

I'd like to add a litte more along these lines:
As suggested, taking a look at Opensecrets shows that big money in politics does come, in a large part, from unions: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
So, a lot of big money in politics comes from unions and goes mainly to the Democratic party (at least the top 15 or so), which may be contrary to the only big corporation and Republicans thing most of us expect (especially from all those Obama campaign emails I get about "grassroots").
What the big unions do is strongarm you as a young person into becoming a VIP member (whose fee is eligible for political contributions) and then don't give you a say. Also, when layoffs happen, you're the first to go since the ONLY thing that matters is seniority. Sadly, when it comes to many things, the big unions don't look too different from the big businesses.

ITAR is from the Dept. of State and according to the article it was the DoS and NOT DoD that acted from the header in the letter sent to DEFCAD: "United States Department of State Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Offense of Defense Trade Controls Compliance"

Regarding the line from the article: "gently entangling their flesh by the photoelectric effect" Part of this just sounds fishy to me - I might be wrong, but the emitted electrons won't be entangled... The only things that might be entangled are the photons, before they hit the bodies, right?

Whoops... sorry I misread your reply. My original post said "shooting at" - but the quote had "shouting at" An unfortunate part of the pro-life movement is that as in any cause fueled by activism, people can get excited. Many people don't realize that yelling at people won't make them change their minds. However, I would think that most pro-life people would rather spend their time trying to find ways to get rid of abortion instead of try to silence other people who make them look bad. Whether or not that's a wise strategy, I really don't know. One could argue that getting rid of loud crazies can really help your cause.

http://prolifeaction.org/about/closed81.php http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?Id=1965 http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Catholic/2001/04/Priests-For-Life-Offers-50000-Reward-For-Clinic-Shooters.aspx http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10357

Only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, huh? Not all Christians I know run around shooting abortion doctors and tell everyone they're going to hell. Actually, none of them do... Also, Re: rights - a lawyer once told me "If you feel like someone is passing a law that's forcing their beliefs on you, that's too bad - because that's what law is." Regardless of what your stance is, he does have a point there. When someone passes a law regulating a business - are they impeding on your right to do business? If someone passes a smoking ban - are they impeding your right to smoke? And if those aren't their rights, are you then forcing your beliefs on them regarding what rights their rights are? Just some food for thought.

I think that if they did this, Verizon would lose out on a great marketing opportunity. By keeping an unlimited data plan, they can taunt AT&T for scrapping theirs. Verizon was somewhat late to the game since they didn't have an iPhone competitor for a while, so why not use this to gain an edge?

No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

Sun Rays are a nice, lightweight solution perfect for an in classroom workstation. They do have great performance and I've seen them do some pretty heavy loads. (http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop&subcat=Sun%20Ray%20Clients&tab=3) For more intense applications, maybe a lab with windows PCs would be good. That way you can expose students to both Linux and Windows, as well as applications such as Photoshop, etc...