One quibble, Class II & IIIa lasers,which is the highest power laser that can legally be marketed as a "Laser Pointer" in the US and UK are under 5 milliWatts, not 1-1,000 MegaWatts,

You make quite a few good points, I disagree that SCOTUS is completely in coo-hoots with Congress, there is nothing congress can threaten SCOTUS with to enforce compliance with Congress's will. This point I don't think we could resolve with discussion.

For the red herring you have misunderstood what I have said. I agree that the most populous states would want to legalize marijuana. However you over look that that 50% of the US population is in 11 states, that leaves us with 39 states (the less population a state has seems to correlate to how conservative the state is) that I would bet WANT marijuana to be illegal and thus would not end allow the repeal of such laws.

While this Obamabill, as you put it, is being pushed on all of us by Congress, Mass. has already pushed it upon its citizens, nothing stops your state from doing the same.

I am quite upset myself with being forced to purchase a product from a private company. Being taxed and having the proceeds go to line the pockets of shareholders leaves a horrible taste in my mouth. But the States just may do the same thing. I'd be much happier with a socialized health care than handing my money over to wall street. I like a little bit of honesty in taxation. At least the system seems to work reasonably well in other counties.

No matter what you, and I, will have limits placed upon us by the government. Pushing all the power into the hands of State Legislatures will not change this.

~Zehaeva

Not all States had direct representatives, a few pushed for it, and to be honest I think thats okay, if the people in the state are okay with that then I'm okay with that.

I think you maybe a bit blind with the thought of "Only my way can save the Union!"

If you wanted all legislation to abide by the US Constitution then you could force ALL legislation passed by Congress to be reviewed by SCOTUS allowing only legislation that passes Constitutional muster to be signed into law by the president.

There, yet another alternative.

Pushing the US into a Heinlien (I love heinlien and his ideas but I don't think "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" style government is good here) sort of government probably wont work out the way you think.

There is a reason why the Articles of Confederation were abandoned. If you give the Federal Government too little power the Union will fall apart, Too much and the States themselves become nothing more than puppets. We need a real balance. Giving the 25 least populous states (which accounts for less than 25% of the population) the ability to remove any and all legislation that the 25 most populous states want is not what a democracy is about.

What we have now is not terribly better, those same Senators can hold up most legislation as it is now, but they are not repealing every law they can.

I think you may want to think about your solution a bit more.

~Zehaeva

Why not then just repeal the 17th amendment? Give the State Legislators the ability to choose the Senators to honestly represent the State's rights and then there is no need for some silly NEW amendment to the constitution.

At least I am not the only one who thought 'cousin' as another meaning for the abbreviation 'cuz'. I wish I had mod points for you sir.

~Zehaeva

Why is this really necessary for the UK? Don't you folks have like 1 camera for every 10(or is it 15?) people? Is that not enough? Do you really need more surveillance? Why not better utilize the surveillance you currently have? Why add under utilized surveillance on top of under utilized surveillance? I don't understand. ~Z

As an avid blackberry user and enthusiast on Verizon, in an office full of blackberry addicts, I will tell you you are dead wrong sir.

I can not change the default search provider on my Storm 2, I have tried.

I did not install it either. When I purchased the Storm 2 Google was the default search engine, literally over night it was changed, with out my permission and against my wishes. The same happened to every single blackberry in my office.

The only option I have is to type google into my blackberry's browser to use it. That is hardly an option at all.

Also I did not want the Bing application installed to my blackberry and yet it was done for me over the air. I have not been able to uninstall it either. It does not show up in the applications in the options at all.

What option is this?

~Zehaeva

Founded by deeply religious people? Like Thomas Jefferson who rewrote the bible and removed all mention of the divinity of Jesus? Why would these deeply religious people write explicitly in their founding documents the requirement that religion play no part in their government?

You may want to go back to that school of yours and learn a bit more about American history. I know it may not be the most exciting thing on planet earth but at least you will stop making false assertions about some of the greatest free thinkers that any land has known.

I am interested in your equation of a progressive to socialists and the assertion that neither allow multiple view points.

Are you saying that the Chinese Socialist Party is progressive? Or just that all progressive parties are socialists(and then that not all socialists are progressive)?

Does this preclude conservative parties from being socialists?

Are you implying that conservative parties always allow multiple view points?

I'm curious.

Given that up until recently this is was how pretty much all music was made, I believe that you have reduced the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach to creating merely stifled and uninnovative music.

I'll agree on the point of big budget movies being thrown out with all this. Games and books however I don't think will be.

I would like to state that I don't think a system that relays on patrons in this day and age would work. But the donations thing may.

I myself would like to see a more sane copyright term. Something like 25 years or so should do it.

There is no reason to let those who make "Intellectual Property" have such a huge monopoly on their works. Other Intellectual Properties, like Patents, expire on a term of 14years. Could you imagine a world where patent law was guaranteed for life +70 years?. I believe the Air Conditioning (invented in 1902) would still be covered. Imagine a world where only Carrier Corporation could make AC systems. Good news would be that in this weird world the patent should be up in 10 more years! Assuming it doesn't get extended any more.

Just imagine the LACK of innovation that would have been brought to the world if this were the case.

There was a time when Patent Law and Copyright Law were in lockstep and now they are not. I think its time that we bring them back together, for better or worse.

~Zehaeva

wow, I never thought i would see what i think is one of the most innovative mmo ideas on /. . I'm really quite impressed. forgive me if i ever make/design an mmo and you see these features in it. mea culpa.

it would be more apt to say that a black hole sucking stuff in is more akin to taking everything in a very messy room and giving it all to the "Will it Blend?" guy, having him whip up a "messy room" shake and compacting that into a very tiny ball.

while your room is indeed clean, everything that was in your room is now in a small ball of disorganized matter where as it used to form nice neat polymer chains and crystalline structures and other such organized molecular structures. now its all just a large amount of goo which is defiantly less organized than a bed room set, sheets, clothes, your favorite plushies and whatever other junk there was there.

~zeh

Let us take this to an insane extreme.

Do you honestly believe that all of the works of Shakespeare should still be controlled by his great great (how ever many) grand kids? Should everyone need to ask him(or her) for permission to use, or modify, 400(ish) year old plays? Should we have needed to track down the scion of Homer to make that movie Troy?

When is the story old enough that it can be in the public domain? Do you see where treating copyright as an eternal property that can be passed down through the generations would cause the world trouble in the future? all you have ot fdo is imagine what the world today would be like if 500 years ago they implemented perpetual copyright. If you honestly don't think there is something wrong with that then I don't think you have anything else to discuss here.

I agree with you that an opt-in is better than an opt-out .. however if it were opt-in then we'd be in the same position we were before google even tried, making the whole exercise moot. we'd still have millions of books that no one could publish because the authors have orphaned the works, either don't care or have dropped off the face of the planet or died and didn't leave any clear manager of their estate, if anyone even cares about their estate.
i'm pretty sure that i saw even google say that this is pretty much a hack, the only way to get around it is to reform copyright law. push it back to a sane limited term and go back to registered works rather than automatically covering every scribble on the back of a napkin for the life of the author + 95 years and allowing 100+ years of time for a work of art(visual or otherwise) to fall into the cracks of cultural oblivion.
its a raw deal but we have it because some aging people have a hard time dealing with the idea that maybe someday in the future some bollywood hotshot will remake their great novel into 10 things i hate about you.
its what we got, until people realize that things like the berne convention are hurting our culture the problem will only become more serious and more out of whack.
~z

that's a very small window to be 11 years old ...