This. If you're worried about America turning into a totalitarian police state a la 1984, it is ridiculous to think that the government would pussyfoot around wiping out a small insurgency by whatever means necessary. If you think the government would treat you with at least as much decency and humanity as it has the Iraqis or the Afghans (which may not be much, but as the parent notes, still isn't on the level of carpet bombs and poisoned water supplies), then you probably don't need to worry about turning into a 1984-style police state, because that kind of restraint is incongruous with that kind of state.

Let's be honest, even if every person in America bought a gun, the government still has tanks, jets, bunker busters, and enough other high tech, high yield weaponry, armor, and other gadgets, a full-on rebellion would be almost impossible to pull off. The Second Amendment may have kept people safe from the government in 1776, but that was when pretty much anyone could arm themselves as well as the military. The handgun you keep in a safe in your closet is not going to protect from the police state you're so worried about, it's just another distraction you've been provided to keep you pacified (rather ironically).

This is absolute nonsense. Vote no on almost every new law? What about when you vote no but the law passes anyway, then later a new law comes up to repeal the old one? Should you vote no on that too? What if a law comes up to cut taxes or ease gun control? Vote no one those too, just to fuck with the system? And always vote for the nobody, never the incumbent? I know this is hard to swallow but whatever your ideology, it's a big country and there's always some incumbent out there who agrees with you and is pushing your agenda, and is running against some incompetent nobody who fiercely disagrees with you. But hey, vote against your own interests anyway because surely if every problem isn't fixed in two years it must mean your representative is corrupt and it's time to try someone new.

This part is good advice.

Because everyone automatically undercutting their competitors by a few cents over and over until everyone is selling at cost and all but a couple players eventually have to shut down because they can't afford to run a profitless business forever, whereupon the few remaining players can finally raise prices ... isn't effectively collusion or a market distortion.

It appears I'm wrong. I signed up when it was first available in the US and at the time you didn't need Facebook, but it looks like you do now. Which is incredibly stupid.

I've been with Facebook since it was only available for individual university campuses and there was never a Hooked Up option for relationship status. There was, however, a way you could specify how you knew someone (i.e. worked with [friend] at [company] in [year], had [class] with [friend] in [year], [friend] is a relative, etc) and "hooked up with [friend] in [year]" was among those options, but it was very buried in a person's friends list and certainly not something that was displayed prominently on their profile. It wouldn't have made sense anyway. A hookup, assuming all goes as it should, is by nature not a relationship status.

Not that I'm a patent lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there was prior art for a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data" in 1996. The issue some here are getting worked up about is that Apple and other companies are able to patent wide-reaching and obvious ideas like "a method for performing an action with a computer" and then use said patents to reduce competition, and consequently, innovation.

Actually the police do (other than the going to work part).

Actually they don't. I have Spotify fully disconnected from Facebook.

What? There are two choices. The woman carries the child to term or she doesn't. If a woman is pregnant, the only choice other than abortion is to carry the child to term, unless you count an unintended miscarriage as a choice, which, if unintended, it could not be. ...wait, are you thinking of that DS9 episode where Bashir transplants Keiko's baby into Kira? You know that's not real, right?

I can understand why, but I think you're mistaking the DoJ for the DoE, which, apparently, does have some problems with spelling education it needs to work out.

Since you want to bring up pharoahs and kings, we might as well bring Romans into it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso Pretty much all of the things listed in this clip are things your government provides, not your free market, and they are paid for with tax money. The free market did not give you roads, sanitation, regulated utilities, education, the order of law, etc. It gave you wine though, you've got that at least. Although it'd be hard to produce or purchase the wine without the roads, sanitation, regulated utilities, education, order of law, etc.

If qmaqdk doesn't know what the scientific community has to say about climate change already, he probably hasn't even met Google, much less made friends with it.

I was surprised, for a minute, to see all these Slashdotters sarcastically pretending this is proof of global climate change, or forgoing the sarcasm and outright denying it entirely. Then I remembered that, despite Slashdot readers being generally accepting of, and, in many cases, even excited about science, they also tend to be generally libertarian in their politics, which means denying ideas widely held by entire scientific and academic communities if it might lead to more gub'mint.

You must be new to America.

A standard cup of coffee has about 100mg of Caffeine, whereas a can of Mountain Dew has about 55mg. http://coffeefaq.com/site/how-much-caffeine

Interest on students loans is federally subsidized. For one thing, all interest is subsidized while you are enrolled, so you don't have to worry about making payments until you graduate. For another, the rate itself is subsidized, giving you a much lower rate than if you tried to get a personal loan from a bank or put your tuition on a credit card. This allows students who aren't poor enough for direct grants and scholarships, but not rich enough to pay it all out of pocket, to still get some assistance.