The military seems to classify by default. There are probably a few simple reasons for this:

1. "I don't have authority to decide if something should be classified or not. That's up to my superiors."
2. "I don't have time to read all these documents and watch hundreds of hours of video and still do my main job. Just keep them classified."
3. "What if I un-classify something sensitive by mistake? I'd get in trouble, so screw that."
4. "Who the hell would want to read all this crap anyway?" (i.e. 99% of the leaked Afghanistan documents)

I'm sure there's occasions where something sensitive (or bad looking) is deliberately kept classified, but that's a minority of the time. Just remember that the military is an enormous bureaucracy first, and a fighting force second. (Or it just seems that way sometimes.)

Boy, some people just buy the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. The Cuban government has the motivation and the means to lie about those statistics. Do you believe everything that comes out of North Korea too?

Pro-tip: Many countries play fast and loose with infant mortality statistics. The US has the strictest standards when it comes to this - babies we try to save here would be written off as late-term miscarriages elsewhere.

Except there are multiple governments in the world, so unless you can get them all to agree on the same regulations, then they're going to pretty much act like players in a large regulations market.

Corporate personhood is a red herring. It's mostly a matter of convenience, like if you wanted to sue one, or regulate one, etc. Heck, part of the reason that laws can ban corporate donations is because corporate personhood exists.

If it was abolished, nothing much would change. There'd just be more paperwork.

Also, since when isn't iPhone jailbreaking associated with piracy? There's been plenty of stories lately about developers complaining about rampant piracy of their iPhone apps. Let's not discuss the merits of those claims, but it does show that "jailbreak" isn't some pristine term.

I thought it was when you break your device free of the parent company's control. (e.g. Sony, Apple, etc.) Mostly for the purpose of running unsigned code. So I'd say the PS3 and iPhone are perfectly analogous.

Whereas the Xbox 360 piracy hack isn't Jailbreaking, since it doesn't allow you to run unsigned code. It just circumvents the disc copy protection.

That brings up a good point.

10 - New President gets elected
20 - New President keeps Old President's policies
30 - New President adds a couple more bad policies of his own.
40 - "At least he's better than the Old President, because he's in MY political party."
50 GOTO 10

There, I've just summarized the presidential electoral process.

I'd do Congress next, but it'd require 3 trillion lines of spaghetti code.

Because that video clip wasn't nearly as controversial as you believe it to be? The most controversial thing about it might be the editorial title that Wikileaks gave it.

I'm not going to bother trying to explain that to you, though. It's been months since the video was released, so you clearly must have avoided or ignored every analysis of it that challenges your worldview.

I keep seeing that repeated, but I'm not sure it's actually true. I mean, he might be center-right when compared to Cuba, but I'd say he's center-left with regards to Western Europe, for example.

The ruling didn't change campaign contribution laws. It was about 3rd parties buying political advertising during a campaign. And yes, an individual can buy political airtime too, if they have enough money. If they don't have enough money, they can form or join a group.

Not since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
Not that the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea in the first place.

If labor unions had to ask their members before performing an action, I don't think they'd get anything done.

And then they eventually fixed the design flaw and recently redesigned the product from the ground up. Trial by fire.

Hell, you even forgot their other big problem, which was quality control at their production facilities. Another hard lesson to learn.

It is possible for a company to get better at something over time. Crazy but true!

The new Xbox 360 redesign seems to indicate that they've obtained the requisite experience. And by all accounts, the Zune and Kin were fine hardware devices at least.

The Kin even had great battery life:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3814/microsofts-kin-a-eulogy/4

I'm not saying that making phones is a good idea, but it's certainly possible.

I presume he's talking about the Zune Pass music service, which got good reviews but is pretty much doomed due to poor marketing.

In PC games at least, there are a lot of things you can tweak or hack. Either with the game or with your display drivers. It's a different skillset, and probably easier overall, but here's a few real-life examples off the top of my head:

• Increasing foliage density - this is often just a slider that can be turned up or overridden
• Turning on or off light bloom, motion blur, etc.
• View distance (how far you can see)
• Alternate rendering styles (cel-shaded, watercolor, etc.)
• Filters like film-grainyness or sepia, though I suppose these could be added in post-processing
• Finer shadows, brighter lights, more realistic darkness (many games add a minimum amount of "lighting" to characters or environments, regardless of how many lights actually exist in the virtual space)

And this is all without altering the game itself on a basic level. Honestly it seems interesting now that I think about it.

You can still load whatever apps you want, so it'll never be locked as tight as an iPhone.