Sure, this is the basis for a police state, but only because its the basis upon which all criminal law is founded. Like drunk driving, your rights become curtailed when they may unduly cause risk to others besides just yourself. When you choose not to vaccinate, you do not simply risk your own health and safety (or more likely, the health and safety of your child). In actuality, you endanger many others--such those who are immunosuppresed or, by way of an egg allergy, unable to be vaccinated. These people depend on the herd immunity offered by the rest of us being vaccinated. By what right should their health be risked from the actions of others?

Of course its all a moot discussion anyways, because in this instance nobody is being forced to do anything for the greater good. They are being enticed--by financial incentive.

And more importantly, they might have lost potential *buyers*. They want to be bought up by someone else, and that can't happen while there's a tentative deal on the table with another company. So wasting all this time and not having the merger go through was a potential risk for T-Mobile, and they can't afford to take that kind of risk so the big player has to pick up the tab on it.

Also, it's not $4b cash, its compensation valued at $4 billion, I think like half of it is spectrum--which if you'll recall the 700mhz auction is super pricey these days.

They're pricing is amazing if you go with the prepaid Walmart-only plan. Even though you have to get the starter kit from Walmart, you can bring your own phone. For 30 bucks a month, you can get Unlimited data (throttled after 5 gigs, but still much better than AT&T's best data plan on a post-paid account), Unlimited texts and 100 minutes voice (who needs voice minutes when you have data anyways).

Buy your Android smartphone of choice, pop in the sim and you're saving ~70 bucks *a month* compared to AT&T's cheapest plan with similar features (more voice minutes, less data).

The only reason I don't dump my iPhone and do exactly that is that, because its prepaid, you can't expect to be grandfather into this plan. So if I make the switch, I not only pay an ETF on my AT&T account (which selling my iPhone 4s would cover and still leave enough for half the cost of a new phone or more) but then I can never get my unlimited data plan back. Even though I haven't jumped on it, its a pretty compelling offer.

They almost certainly contracted a private sector business to do this for them, and this was the bill they got.

But it seems pretty obvious to me that we should start treating addictions, especially "gaming addiction" as a symptom instead of a disease. In fact, symptom may be too strong of a word--coping mechanism might be more suitable. I'm not going to tell you that kids can't stay up all night, neglect their schoolwork, and seriously harm their academic futures by way of "gaming addiction"--but we really ought to be a lot more concerned with figuring out why certain kids feel like they need that sort of escapism in their life rather than just slapping some sort of one-size fits all band-aid on the situation and then patting ourselves on our collective backs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that "gaming is treatment" and therefore it shouldn't be restricted. To the contrary, I understand that it may be necessary to limit a child's access to video games in order to prevent them from entering a cycle of excessive gaming --> Failure --> depression --> more gaming ---> more failure --> etc. I'm just saying each child's situation and problems are completely different, and that no singular solution is going to fix every kid, and for some, something like this might do more harm than good. I have no doubt in my mind that for some kids, video games are the thin line between "coping on a day to day basis" and "suicidal tendencies". We may be seeing policies like this in China and Korea first, but many western countries aren't too far behind unless there's a sudden outbreak of common sense.

The tax isn't to compensate the music industry for downloads, it's to compensate the french government (seriously) for taxes the music industry isn't paying.

I don't know how you use company resources to make a twitter account, and there's no real indication that he used company time either. He used their name as a way to distinguish himself from the guy who had @Noah already, but this was in the early days of twitter so there was no company policy on twitter. There was basically "no rule against it". There's a difference beween saying "personal projects" belong to your employer, and saying "Everything you do belongs to us". If he put his employers name in his Facebook profile, would they have rights to that?

I think part of your perspective is that you're assuming the reason he got so many followers is because he presented himself as "Phonedog Noah" instead of just "Noah Kravitz" and therefore attracted people looking for "Phonedog". However this doesn't seem to be the case, as he's added another 4,000 followers since leaving Phonedog and changing his twitter handle. By all accounts, this is his personal twitter account and the only thing linking it to his former employer is simply the fact that he identified with them enough to have originally included their name as part of his handle.

Especially since they were repeatedly warned that they were misreporting files and refused to stop and it just so happens they had a financial motive in acting improperly given that the page generated by using the removal tool had links to purchase the alleged infringing work legally--free page views on free advertisements, effectively.

Not unless he shoots himself in the gut first. Without a genuine emergency, they are not obligated to treat you and will not. And emergencies aren't things that will kill you, just things that will kill you immediately. If you have cancer they don't have to do anything until you collapse on the brink of death, and by then anything they do will be too late to matter.

And whether you intend to pay for not, you almost certainly will--unless you have no assets and never plan to work again. I guess you're off the hook if you die--which is a real possibility. People can and do die all the time in this country simply because they have no health insurance--many of whom would gladly pay for it if the insurance companies would allow them to. Much as you may wish to scoff at the idea, going to jail could save your life if you are one of those people. Your non-emergency pre-existing condition can be treated BEFORE it reaches the point where it's a untreatable life-threatening emergency.

Well, let's start with the fact that PSN intrusion was just one of 23 separate incidents for Sony within a time frame of just a couple of months.

Not to mention I don't have a Facebook account and don't plan to get one. You've just told me, and probably many others, "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't want your contributions."

Allegedly? There are quite fisherman out of work because of of the algae blooms they cause. What's great for some parts of nature is very bad for other parts. How about we just agree to classify pollutants in economics terms: Any emission which creates a negative externality for another person is a pollutant. If someone ELSE has to bare the cost for YOUR actions, then you are polluting.

Your raw sewage leaks into the river, lowering downstream property values? Well you just polluted there, buddy.
Fisherman are struggling because of nitrates that run off of farms? Well then those nitrates are a pollutant.
Sulfur Dioxide from coal burning reduces crop yields for local farmers by way of acid rain? Well then its a pollutant.

I think a pretty solid case can be made for carbon dioxide emissions creating some financial losses around the world. Of course, we are all emitters to one degree or another, but clearly some more than others. So those who emit MORE than their fair share are polluters.

I just don't see what's unreasonable about asking people to bare the burden for their OWN actions. d

More like Gaming "Unfair", amirite folks?

So is shit, but try dumping a few hundred tons of that a year in your local river and see if they call it pollution.

If we run out of oil, I'd imagine we'd just start running our cars on liquefied coal.