And they discarded anything not pertinent to the war effort. That's the part the NSA screwed up.

It's illegal when combined with the fact that they do not immediately expunge any information that is found to pertain to a U.S. Citizen.

To be strictly legal, they must do that even if that means ignoring non-terrorist criminal activity.

Going beyond that, it would also be appropriate if they expunged all non-terrorist foreign communications as well. That's not required under U.S. law, but it's the right thing to do.

It's worth noting that much of the cost in archiving the episodes came from the increasingly large fees the BBC would have had to pay to the various production people involved. During the 70s there was a big scare about home taping TV (the chief person at the MPAA famously telling Congress that the home tape player was to the TV industry what the "Boston stranger was to the woman home alone" or something similar) - the fear was that if people could have stuff on tape they wouldn't have to buy anything new, and if broadcasters (like the BBC) could store episodes of TV shows for decades, they would stop commissioning new works and just show endless repeats.

The UK TV industry's way out was to force the broadcasters to sign contracts agreeing to pay "storage" fees for each year they kept the films, and these increased over time. So eventually the BBC decided it was prohibitively expensive to keep them...

Of course, as pointed out elsewhere, the episodes aren't actually out of copyright - only the broadcast copyrights are about to expire. As the director of the first Doctor Who episode is still alive, it will be at least 70 years (barring reform to copyright law) until the film itself is out of copyright.

After some digging, the first episode to definitely come out of copyright may be The Smugglers (s4e1), in 2068. Possibly The Time Meddler (s2e9) in 2057 or The Aztecs (s1e6) in 2065. Copyright is complicated.

You are ignoring externalities. If an employee drops dead from starvation or drives customers away due to a homelessness driven hygiene failure, they have not been paid the true cost of labor. Likewise, if that would happen but for the minimal and tattered social safety net.

Generally, employees only accept such work out of desperation. In our society, employers do sometimes pay that poorly and depend on government handouts to keep their worker units from dropping dead. Why in the world should we be paying the maintenance costs for low wage employers? Even slaves got basic healthcare, minimal housing and enough food to live on. after all, they were expensive to replace if they died.

If not for basic human decency, we would let the 'worker units' die like flies until they rose up and looted the employer, but that's not the sort of society I want to live in. That leave us with needing a sufficient minimum wage to keep employers from using food stamps as a subsidy for their payroll.

I wish that was half as absurd as it sounds.

Given that it could contribute to the creation of an underclass, yes I think it's bad.

As for my economic views, I would be considered somewhat left libertarian.

Agreed. The sad part is that as pathetic and full of holes as it is, there are people employed by Walmart who still qualify for some of it.

Nobody was left unemployable by lack of a WC or at the times, air travel, telephone, PC, or car. That remained true until they had been affordable for quite a while. In the case of the telephone, the government did step in, but not to block it but to make sure everyone could get one.

As a likely successful program, the GOP will feel honor bound to sandbag it in order to 'prove' their rants about privatization.

Solution is obvious. Let the poor roast the rich on a spit if they're hungry.

No, he laments that the dumbest rich kid will likely get a better education than the smartest poor kid.

There's the minor matter of the cost of the evaluation in the first place. Those with an extra $30K get evaluated and get a tailored education, the rest get a one size fits all education.

Try the math again. You'll find that it just barely works so long as the $1200 beater somehow never breaks down and you don't mind if your neighbors are 'alternative pharmaceutical reps'.

Also, look closely at who did those studies. I've read studies that show that cigarette smoking improves digestion and pulmonary health (all while making you 30% cooler).

Battery life measurements should take place with the benchmark app running.

Much of the 'work' they do is what most people would call leisure activities.