I'd make a significant distinction between refusing to exercise a right and surrendering a right. I have the right to remain silent. If I choose to say something it doesn't imply I've surrendered by right to stop speaking later. You can always choose to not exercise a right because you feel it is in your best interest (waiving your right to a trial for instance). Depending on the type of right choosing to surrender it may imply a future obligation. An example would be testifying in your own defense at court. Choosing to testify on your own behalf may open you to answering questions that you might otherwise have been able to remain silent.

Which leads us directly to the question of natural (inalienable, or, in other words non-surrender-able) rights versus legal rights. With this judgement our Supreme Court seems to have clarified that the right to seek justice is a legal rather than an inalienable right, and can, therefore, be surrendered. I fundamentally disagree. One of the roles of government is to foster justice, not establish it. Unfortunately the constitution disagrees:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice..."

or at least appears to. I *think* they (the framers) mean to establish what justice *is* rather than establish the right to seek justice. In that case there can be no arbiter above the government for the defining of just practice. I could then choose to waive my right to trial but never surrender it. Clearly the Supreme Court disagrees with me.

We (Citizens of the USA) don't live in a democracy. If we did our particular mechanism of repression wouldn't work. We live in a republic, and the representatives have discovered that we will vote based on our emotions about their views on a small subset of policy choices (abortion, taxation, welfare, social security, etc). Whenever we express concern over some non-emotive issue (abstract things like "justice", "equality", "fairness", etc) we can be distracted (and therefore controlled) by attacking our emotive issues.

Our representatives no longer represent our best interests, they represent our biggest interests. If we lived in a democracy corporations couldn't buy up all the representatives and "encourage" them to vote specific ways on given non-emotive issues.

The more I think about it the more I come to believe that the reasons Blu-Ray has received any negative reception can be tied to (i.e. blamed on) the presence of DRM. Think of all the actively negative things about it:

* Ridiculous disc load times: key lookup, verification, and revocation in action. Plus the decryption overhead (particularly on imperfect discs).
* Poor device compatibility with displays: HDCP is the bane of my existence, and I'm not alone
* Regular disc incompatibilities requiring updated firmware: gotta patch those DRM holes, and bump the required Blu-Ray version
* Buggy playback devices: Development and testing time wasted verifying DRM rather than *basic system operations*

Eliminate all of that crap, and you are left with a moderately improved viewing experience, a somewhat higher price, and some interesting, but supplemental features (3D, streaming, downloadable content, etc). The difference is that all those positives are just not sufficiently good to motivate a purchase. The DRM negatives *are* motivating buyers...to avoid Blu-Ray.

Just about everyone who has ever purchased a Blu-Ray player has had to fight the DRM, either with a display/TV that wouldn't work (or flickers for a few minutes on startup, like mine used to), or a disc that wouldn't play. Almost no one notices the DRM on DVDs (I'm betting the *awareness* of it is less than 5%). To borrow some Apple marketing phrases: DVD just works, and Blu-Ray is a big bag of hurt.

Colossus hums: "WX7KF9L CBL3 GZDQDD"
WOPR asks: "Shall we play a game?"
Sky-Net retorts: "Global Thermonuclear War"

Well, *they* thought it was funny.

I agree (I think) with the releases by wikileaks, but as I see it the major difference is that the New York Times is a paper of record, and Ellsberg is a US citizen. Frankly I think it just terrifies every government on the planet that a foreign national could choose to publish anything they receive with no real recourse.

In the end I do believe wikileaks is in the right, but I can understand why the US is so keen to make it as painful as possible.

Even Earth girls aren't *that* easy.

It seems to me that this discovery yielded a change in the calculated number of stars in the universe, while doing next to nothing about "the total number of known stars in the universe".

In that case give that dude a cookie and make Apple hire him. It's nothing short of magical that he could push a 10Gbps DDoS from a single 386 and a VB script, I don't care what his mitichlorian count is.

I believe if you really look into it you will find that cars are designed so that (if properly cared for) the stock brakes can overcome the maximum output of the stock engine. This is a fundamental safety feature, which, if ignored, would certainly earn a offending car company a legal black eye. Feel free to give it a try on your way home today, but, if you do, your brakes will no longer be "properly cared for". You will stop though.

I seriously thought this was about a 3D printer that could print the blocks, but instead I'm presented with a pretty unimpressive assembly machine.
1. Build Lego assembly machine
2. ???
3. Profit!

Call me when you've got something to custom fabricate Lego blocks.
1. Build Lego block printer
2. Sell one to every Lego store on the planet
3. Profit!