CableCos are already monopolies.Stand in line for a half hour at any service center, if you need to be convinced. Any company that has to compete actually has to take care of their customers in a timely manner.

You'd think the community would remember history and not repeat it. Fredric Wertham, in _Seduction of the Innocent_ ,destroyed a genre of comic books in the 1950's making much the same fallacious claims that are now being made against the video game industry. Is this bozo going to be allowed to rise from the dead to wreck another generation's fun in an attempt to destroy the first amendment?

I hope not.

More convincing is that the Neanderthal metabolism required more meat. They were not as omnivorous as H Sap. Neanderthals suffered and lost children when H Sap flourished and had many. They were out-competed that way.

Since that is how they sell their own bundles to their customers.

Having the plaintiffs in a false claim pay 1.5x to 2x the defendants costs would be better. Perhaps the assessing of higher costs could be left up to the court, if the lawsuit was determined to be egregious.

So when life is found there, those wheat germ sucking, soy loving vegans will have to give up their appellation and let it go back to the real Vegans -- the the freindly neighborhood aliens from Vega.

Make that immortal insomniac sheep counters.

In related news, big number mathematicians are considering whether to dispute the .google TLD. Many consider the corporation to be moving in on their turf and want to reserve the domain for the public and insomniac sheep counters.

You exercise broad control over people by making policies so inclusive that everyone can and should feel guilty. You exercise specific control by picking out examples to be persecuted and vilifying those that are already unpopular. This puts the fear of retribution in the back of everyone's mind and makes them easier to control.

And, of course, the Democratic Party is also not for this. It is a an indictment of the system that a group that poor mouths itself so much (rights holders such as RIAA MPAA) can afford to keep the leadership of both parties so much in their debt. You'd think they could start paying an intellectual property tax.

A simple change, an assuage to the libertarians, would be to allow taxpayers (income tax, specifically) to specify where where they want their payments to go. Of course, Congress would never allow this. They are the only holders of wisdom enough to allocate other people's money.

I know there are a lot of people who make their livings out fear mongering and over-hyping threats. And like Y2K, cyber attacks is one of them. So stop it.

Notice to screw-ups, midnight to 8 am shifts have now opened up in hacker hunting squad. Get your act together or you will be assigned.

There has been a flurry of new models (or significant variations on the old model) suggested recently. They include a smaller than Mars impactor that hit at a higher velocity and a slower impactor that was approximately the same size as the newly formed Earth. Both were inspired by studies that showed that the evection resonance of the Earth-Moon-Sun system would allow for a greater slow down in the rotation of the Earth getting to the contemporary 24 hr day. (see http://io9.com/5952497/further-evidence-that-the-moons-explosive-birth-was-weirder-than-we-thought et al)

What a bunch of cry-babies. They cry about global warming and then when someone tries to do something about it, they cry about that. Either fish or cut bait. Whining is the wrong option.