That could explain why my freedom tasted a bit funny this morning....

Again, there's no good reasons for non-encrypted traffic. No one should be having to decide just what bits of their online life they are ok with businesses and governments picking over for information to use against them, and which things they are not ok with that. Especially since humans are the worst at recognizing in the short term what will be relevant to those malignant interests. At what point did we decide that governments have the power to decide whether or when people are allowed to have private communications between themselves?

There's an 'r' in there?

Considering the slave/subsistence wages paid by Wal Mart, I wouldn't risk my autonomous vehicle opening itself up to their employees. Who knows what other items might go missing (first aid kit, etc.), and what other "extras" might be deposited (empty fast food wrappers, vomit left over from last nights drink-to-forget-our-jobs-suck bender, snot from omg-I-can't-afford-to-miss-a-day-of-work-if-I'm-sick-they'll-fire-me, etc.)

>Information costs time and/or money to produce.

The information you speak of wasn't produced through the time or the money of the journals, but of the researchers that performed the studies. The "information creators" you speak of get zero compensation for their works being sold by the journals.

Mother Theresa is a poor choice if you're going for contrast, she was a fairly sadistic and hypocritical person who denied seriously ill people actual medical treatment in her "hospitals", denied the sick contact with their families, and got nothing but the best medical treatment for herself when illness reared its head.

This does seem like the best policy, and what consumers really need to harshly strong-arm ATT and VZW into: zero throttling or data caps until the tower you're on is congested, then the highest users/abusers get throttled first/most. There's no reason to put up with throttling of your connection when it's 2AM and you're one of only 2 people using the local tower. If there's no actual congestion at that moment, then the practice is just them pressuring you to pay for a more expensive plan and really ought to be outlawed by the PUC.

> The neighborhood my parents grew up in went from German to Irish to Jewish to Black to Puerto Rican to Mexican over the course of the last 150 years.

Damn, you got some old parents. How are they doing now?

Google makes its income off of advertising and can offer programs and services for free. MS wants to compete with Google, so they're sticking their feet in the water of offering the OS for free and making their income off of advertising. Likewise, plumbers are going to fix your bathroom for free, but your toilets will start playing advertisements when you sit on the pot or step into the shower. You'll see toothpaste and mouthwash ads when you use the bathroom sink. You don't want to know what will pop up when you use the bidet.

Can you really call it paranoia when your opponent has a long and sordid history of doing exactly what you are afraid they are going to do, and have publicly stated they're out to get you?

Is shooting up your school this year's version of the "27 club" fad?

It's located in an "officially unincorporated" portion of the county called Paradise. The city tried to annex this area once... once.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The further ahead we detect such things, the less effort it will take to solve the problem. A 1% course change when it's inside the Earth's orbit won't do anything to help, but that 1% course change when it's still out past Mars would be all the change needed to save us.

Also, the countries that get the highest number of American visitors didn't require a passport to visit until after the 9/11 fiasco. I've been to Mexico and Canada several times each where all that was needed was a drivers license. Today you need a passport to do the same.

What do you think of the idea of mandating that workers on H1B must be paid at least 3% higher salary than domestic workers - just to offset things affiliated with relocation costs. This would get rid of the motivation to import foreigners for no other reason than finding someone that will work for less, and could motivate the companies to invest in training the employees they have in the skills they need.