You can get a basic phone for about $100 without a contract, or you can get a $600 phone for $100 with a contract, or you can just pay the full $600 without a contract.

I agree. I don''t know about Verizon but the AT&T stores clearly list the full price of phones without contract and with a contract. If you don't want to pay a termination fee then don't "finance" the $600 phone for $99, pay full price. Even my grandma knows this. I still have a 3 year old smartphone and while it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the new smartphones, I'm not locked into a data plan and I can terminate my service anytime I want. The problem is entitlement, people want the latest and greatest for the cheapest and they don't care what they get into as long as they get it.

Power is an addiction; the more you taste the more you want.

There have been numerous reports of people being fired for relatively innocuous facebook pictures which didn't really have much to do with their work. One particular case had a Quebec woman lose her disability insurance for depression, because she had a facebook picture of her going to the beach. These may be an exception, but it demonstrates how an employer or the government can get into your private life in a way that wasn't previously possible.

I have a facebook profile but I rarely post and when I do I make sure it is information that could never harm me in any way.

I have. I can't find the video but someone posted on reddit a video of a refrigerator TV ad from a mom and pop shop which had an an enthusiastic asian guy talk about how to pick the best refrigerators (insulation, how to tell cheap models that cut corners, etc) and in about 1 minute I learned more about fridges than I have ever known. If I lived in the same area I have no doubt I would have bought a fridge from them if I needed one.

It seems like I'm being bombarded by propaganda from both sides and the only way I'm going to find the facts is if I become a climatologist and study the data myself.

There is a giant frustration with fantasy authors that just can't seem to close a story. Tolkien got it right: create 3-4 main books, then a couple supplemental. Jordan couldn't do it in >12 books, and George R.R. Martin seems to be heading in the same direction.

My biggest regret has been using steam lately to purchase a few games (including Empire Total War which requires it). I remember the days of loaning games to other people, finding out about genres you otherwise wouldn't play. Now you can't even sell your used PC games anymore. When games didn't require a nagware/adware internet check to play a single player game. Now you have to investigate if games come with additional rootkits (Securerom/TAGES) before you buy them. When games came with extras like huge detailed manuals (Baldurs Gate II) which now require you to buy the "collectors edition" if you want any extras.

The big publishers took all the fun out of buying games and I will not mourn their loss.

...plus free mobile to mobile and nights and weekends, which the prepaid plans do not have (that I am aware of).

length and width depend on the perspective :)

Hence the word probably...and finland is about ~200 miles E->W, the same direction as the I10, if you would have spent five seconds looking it up.

I pay $29 but then I guess I'm not a phone whore and only need 200 minutes/month. It does make sense though, the stretch of I10 going from Phoenix to Los Angeles (where nothing but desert stretches for miles) is probably the length of Finland itself.

Unless the people retesting are the same ones who submitted it in the first place (either via ghost writers, sham corporations, etc). Then it becomes like artificial sweeteners, where you have a mountain of evidence stating that it is safe (from the corporations, or people funded by the industry) and some research stating that it isn't safe, and the end result is people are confused and no one knows what to really believe.

Yep 60% total load on a core2duo 6400. 1080p video uses less than that so I don't know what the hell they are doing.

Thanks RIAA.