How often do you listen to the following people?
Glenn Beck
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity

I hope your answer is somewhere in the neighborhood of "Not at all". Because if it's not, then you are blind to the problem.

Yes, outside of a few nut job average joes, nobody talks about Obama's color. But you'd have to be blind to miss the hints. "Did you know he's really a Muslim?" "He wasn't even born in the USA!" "All he wants to do is let Mexicans come here illegally and become citizens." "Obama wants to make you pay for healthcare for illegals." "Notice how he can't find a white male to nominate for the Supreme Court?" "Obama is a citizen of Kenya and has never been a US citizen." I mean if you do not detect the hidden, racial subtext between all of those comments, there's not much I can to help someone who is that blind.

As an American, I can say the following. Those of you who don't live in the USA need to understand that everything is different here. Sometimes in good ways, but maybe most of the time in bad ways. Few Americans travel internationally so the demand for unlocked phones specifically to use them in other countries is quite low. For years, even after you finished a contract AT&T and other providers were rather infamous for refusing to unlock your phones. T-Mobile was an exception to this at the time as they had a policy to unlock your phone if you asked them to do so after your contract ended. Maybe it is different now and everybody unlocks when your contract is up. But perhaps 7-8 years ago, AT&T would tell you to suck it if you asked them unlock a phone after your contract ended with them. By keeping the phones locked, they were able to prevent people from moving to other carriers. Many people keep their phones for years after the original contract is done just to save money and by refusing to unlock them, those people found it cheaper to just stay with the carrier that locked them in than to get a new phone and possibly a new carrier. Also, those of you who don't live in the USA would not believe how much all the phone carriers bitched about being required by law to allow customers to move phone numbers to other carriers when their contracts ended. For years this was not possible, so some people also didn't ever change carriers just so they could keep the same phone number. So all this led to a situation where there was little demand for unlocking.

Yes, you have nailed it. It's not racism, it's Zero Tolerance. It provides a theoretical way for the schools to enforce discipline and standards on all the students by setting out a policy and making no exceptions to it. The only problem is that life doesn't work that way. For example, it's one thing to shoot your ex-spouse just because they made you angry and something else entirely for a policeman to shoot an armed robber at a bank who is holding hostages and threatening them. Zero Tolerance in those circumstances would require the policeman to be charged with a crime because he "killed someone". To me, this is just symptomatic of how American schools have failed and continue to fail. Zero Tolerance is the answer for everything. Just this week, a principal in (I think) Kansas City had to apologize because he refused to allow a student's solder brother to escort her to her prom because he was "too old" (he was 21). They had a rule that established a cutoff age for non-student escorts, and he was above that age. The only problem was this decision went viral and thousands of people gave the principal and the school district hell about this for "dishonoring an American hero" and the superintendent of the district made the principal apologize to the soldier and the policy will be changed to allow exceptions. But that's how America has decided to handle everything in the schools - These are our rules and they can't be changed. No exceptions. Oh your kids need to learn? Sorry, our business is enforcing the rules.

I know you are joking, but unfortunately according to the horrible decision in Capitol Records vs. Naxos of America, Inc. those Alexander Graham Bell records are technically still under copyright.
http://http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050412225604578

To summarize the court case, Naxos, a classical music label, was taking old 78 RPM vinyl records and using modern technology to clean up the surface noise and putting them out on a budget label they run. This was perfectly legal in the EU and Asia as the recordings in question were over 50 years old and not under copyright in those places. Unfortunately they got greedy in the USA and released a CD of Pablo Casals' famous recordings of the Bach Cello Suites from the 1930s. There was never any doubt that these recordings were still covered by US copyright law and I remain amazed to this day that Naxos somehow believed that they could get away with this reissue in the USA, but Capitol (the US copyright owner of the recordings) found out about the release in the US market and sued them and won. In my opinion the court decision was far overreaching, ruling that every sound recording ever made in the USA before 1972 was still under copyright protection through state law and would remain so until the superseding Federal law covering copyrights allows those copyrights to begin to expire, which will be 2067 at the earliest. The case is somewhat involved but basically after realizing they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Naxos resorted to some legal trickery in arguing that the Casals recordings (they were all made in London, England) were not covered by US state copyright law since they weren't made in the USA. The court didn't buy it and ruled that everything ever released or recorded in the USA is still under copyright and since Naxos had no real way to argue the case any further (they did indeed violate US copyright law), this crazy decision remains the US law on the matter.

Arrested Development is in the same boat as Firefly. It has hard core devoted fans, but there have never been enough of them. If it was really and truly as popular as its fans seem to think, it would still be on the air and it wouldn't be having to rely on Netflix to get available again. I watched the show a few times and it just didn't work for me at all. I really do not get what the big deal was. Let me put it another way - All you guys who posted about how Futurama sucks, so you're glad it's off the air - yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about Arrested Development. I will say that I really cannot think of any other show that Fox tried for so long to shove down its viewers throats despite plenty of evidence that most American TV viewers really did not care at about it and never were going to care about it no matter how long they kept it around and how many promos they ran for it.

I can't get real worked up about that. You sound like a guy I know at work. You did forget the obligatory quote from Jefferson or another founding father containing dire warnings about giving up liberty.

I've just heard too many people rant and rave for years about how the Constitution is being ignored, destroyed, etc. to get worked up about this. When George W. Bush was president, we heard that he was going to declare martial law and suspend the elections. Yet the man obeyed every Supreme Court decision that came down and when he stepped down, as required by law, the people who swore he never would give up power had no answer. Then the other side started to claim that Obama doesn't care about your rights, blah blah blah. Despite the hysterical ramblings we get here, the US legal system has remained independent as always. In fact, the only place that I've noticed where rights really and truly do seem to be disappearing is Western Europe, but nobody complains about that. You can still express distasteful thoughts in public in the USA and not be put in jail as long as you don't make threats against individuals, but Western Europe is at a place right now where you can get serious jail time for saying things that in no way invoke threats on anyone.

I can't say that my experiences are typical, but among people I know, I don't know any married people who are hardcore gamers. The only people I know who play games a lot are unmarried. Anyway, what are we talking about here? It's one thing to have a spouse who doesn't care if you play 1 or 2 hours a week (especially if you're not telling us that you play while that spouse is gone) and something else entirely to find the 1 in 1000 or fewer who don't care if you play 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Unfortunately your post is full of a lot of points in which you are horribly mistaken. First of all, you make the old Republican/Libertarian/US Military (yes them) argument that everything is better when done by the private sector. I agree that DHS isn't perfect, but I think it's illogical to assume that the US airline companies would do better. You are probably aware of how most if not all of the airlines have had baggage handlers caught red handed stealing stuff from passenger's checked luggage or running drug smuggling operations using the airlines as unwitting carriers. All it would take is one compromised low ranking employee in the right spot and suddenly there's a plane that blows up this time because a guy got compromised and let a terrorist sneak on a bomb. Yes, I do feel that having DHS run security makes this less likely. Arguing that it's not in the best interests of the airlines to have bad security hasn't stopped them from hiring dishonest luggage handlers and that's certainly not in their best interests either.

I'd argue that yes, the US does need military bases overseas to respond to threats. China grows more menacing every day with their patently absurd claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. And just yesterday it was reported (bet you didn't hear it though) that China has advanced further than ever into Indian territory that they claim and have their soldiers camping under tents in Indian territory. India protested and the official Chinese response was something like "I don't know what you're talking about". Every year the US and Taiwan report that China puts more advanced weaponry directly aimed at Taiwan. You might ask yourself why they are so obsessive on putting a small island of under 24 million people under direct control, but it's because the CCP is obsessed with controlling every Chinese person there is. Did you know that ethnic Chinese people who are born in foreign countries and are not citizens of the PRC are under special rules should they ever wish to apply for visas to go to China? They have to fill out special forms that only apply to them. I know of no other nation that has such a requirement. There may be some redundancy in the bases in Europe, but they are also there to quickly respond to problems in Europe or the Middle East. It's pretty easy to just go "Sucks to be YOU" to every country in the world as China becomes increasingly aggressive and is now in the early stages of talking by force what they think is theirs, but at some point if you don't stand up to the bully (and yes, I get that to Chinese military eyes the US is the bully) it sets a bad precedent. And we're the only guy able to stand up to the bully. Taiwan just wants to be left alone. That's all they want. Yet all it has gotten them is a China that obsesses about taking them over at any cost, preferably sooner rather than later. You either stand with your friends or you don't and I guess you are one of those "don't" people. By the way, that kind of thinking got us into WWI and arguably into WWII as well.

The problem is Futurama is a lot better than other animated shows that Fox pays every year to bring back or start from scratch.

Does anybody in America actually think Bob's Burgers is good other than apparently Fox and the series creators?

Fox made a big deal out of Allen Gregory but I could tell from the trailer that it would be a big fail. What was it? A big fail.

Napoleon Dynamite was actually good and outdrew Bob's Burgers but Fox could not give up quickly enough on it and kept Bob's Burgers instead.

Just today I read The Cleveland Show described as a show so bad that its star isn't even missed on the show he left. The best I can say about it is that now it's merely so-so instead of being awful as it was when it started.

Every now and then I will watch a new episode of American Dad and it's never funny any more. Even Family Guy is hit or miss. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's not even a little bit funny.

It seems obvious to me exactly what is going to happen. If I'm wrong, well, good for all those who got into bitcoins.

Sometime within about 1 year from now, someone is going to hack bitcoin. Either
a) The goal will be simply to destroy it and render it worthless.
or
b) The hackers will make a lot of money before bitcoin in rendered worthless. Before anyone realizes what is going on and can stop the hackers, bitcoin will have been ruined.
The end result in both is that bitcoin will be rendered worthless. This attack or hack will be in a way that nobody saw coming, but after the fact everyone will slap themselves in the head and think "How did we not realize that this was possible?" I am not claiming to have any idea how this will all happen. I simply predict it will happen.

When this happens, people like me, Steve Forbes and others will say "Told you". The "true believers" (the anti-government nut jobs) will erroneously conclude that the entire idea was perfect and if they only fix the specific nature of the attack that destroyed bitcoin, then bitcoin2 will be able to start up and it will never, ever be compromised. Right.

You, sir, are either not a Libertarian or you represent the 1% of the party that is actually rational.

Here's what I hear all the time from Libertarians I have known.
ALL taxes are evil. Well, OK, maybe it's necessary to pay something just to support the military so China/Russia/whoever won't invade us.
There's NOTHING that the government does that private industry can't do better and cheaper. NOTHING.
Most of the taxes paid are wasted on a bloated government.
If government didn't do anything except run the military and maybe 1 or 2 other tasks, everybody would be richer and better off in this country.

I'm not going to comment on the fairness or lack thereof regarding your sister's situation. It's a long story, but I know more about immigration stuff than most Americans do. If I was a law school student, I would definitely go into immigration law. People who do that will never lack for business. I'd just like to list the following situations which I know first hand.

1) The brother of a friend of mine married a legal immigrant here on an H1B visa. The brother is a US citizen. His wife's visa was not going to be renewed and the US government was adamant that by God she was going back to her home country at the end of the employment to wait (up to a year) to get permission to immigrate back to the US as his wife. At the last minute another company was found to agree to sponsor her under a new H1B so she got to stay.
2) I worked with a guy who married a woman who came here from South America on a tourist visa and never left. She was here illegally for about 6 or 7 years when they married. As soon as they married, he went to an immigration lawyer and the guy got her status changed to legal status within days while they waited for her final and permanent status change to go through to be here as his wife. That went through within maybe a few months. You all see the disconnect, right? Someone here legally marries a US citizen and is told she has to leave because she was only here on a work visa, but someone who willingly disobeyed the law is allowed to stay simply because she's not here on a work visa but a travel visa.
3) I know a young woman in Singapore (that's not her nationality but it's where she works) whose entire family legally immigrated to the USA. For reasons she never explained, she chose not go immigrate but to watch over the family's property in their home country (her jobs sends her back and forth between there and Singapore). She cannot get a tourist visa to come to the USA to see her family because she is considered "a risk to stay". Her family is here legally, but she can't even come to visit them. I've read about cases where the parents of a legal immigrant applied for visitor's visa at the same US consulate but on different days and one parent was given the visa with no questions and the other was denied for being a "risk to overstay". US visa policy really makes no sense.

Well, I guess it worked out OK for him because he's been re-elected every election since then. This illustrates exactly what is wrong with the House of Representatives - at the House district level, voting is often about party affiliation only and nobody asks "Is this person deserving of my vote?" Voters just vote based on party affiliation. This does illustrate exactly why I abandoned the Republican Party a few years ago. I couldn't take the willful embrace of idiocy any more. Stupid people used to be Democratic voters, but somebody (Rove maybe?) realized around 2004 that the Republicans could tap into this "constituency" and make it their own. By 2008 the full on embrace of stupidity began by the Republican Party and I abandoned it, probably never to return.

This covers the same ground as a previously submitted question, but I seem to have some information that poster does not or at least failed to mention that might make this a (hopefully) better choice.

I read that you were working on a prequel to "Forbidden Planet" which really excited me because I think that the movie is still one of the all time great SciFi movies. I respect your work and I know that you would treat the subject with the respect it deserves. I read that you had a screenplay but it got leaked on the internet and after that the whole project seems to have just disappeared. Is there any realistic hope of ever seeing this project or did the leak kill it?

Where were you when we went over this in all its gory detail? Yes, this is Slashdot and everything The Man does is evil, so I get the whole simplification thing. But the real situation was actually a bit complicated. He basically tried to download every article they had, which went beyond the terms of use of the service. His downloads impacted other users of the service at the time by slowing them down because - wait for it - he was trying to download everything and chewing up resources to do it. His plan was to make all these articles available for free when access to them required a paid service. He also hid the computer doing the work in a closet and took actions to hide his face from security cameras when going to the closet to check on his equipment. From a legal standpoint, this can be interpreted to mean he knew his actions were wrong. There's a lot wrong with how the prosecutors handled this, but he was hardly some innocent school boy who got bullied for no reason.