To the absolute surprise of no one.

I think fraud is simply in Florida's DNA. I mean, what is Florida in the early to mid 20th century, if not "buying swampland for cheap?" Now, it's the height of US insurance fraud, medicare fraud, mortgage fraud, and identity theft, in addition to the drug smuggling and human trafficking that comes along with major ports of entry into the U.S. It's a crazy, crazy place and reality is far removed from the Mickey Mouse and orange juice that Discover Florida is selling.

And before you blow me up, know that I say all this as a long-time Florida resident...

You know, I want to say it's for the best, due to the twitching on the gurney factor, like you say. But, really, it's not. We consumers need good competition to get the best out of these companies and a big player like Yahoo finally biting the dust we not be good for us

I suppose an alternative view is that Yahoo has been wallowing around for so long that the competition has not been there anyway. That might be true...

Right now, my wife is taking 2 courses online from a local CC, before she returns to school this fall to finish her B.A. Although we generally like it because these classes have a TON of helpful ancillary materials (video lectures, practice quizzes, practice homework, etc) and the instructors for both have been very responsive to electronic communications, there are still difficulties not associated with the regular classroom experience.

One of my biggest peeves with it is that, at times you're working to figure out the system, in addition to the school work. For example, it can be a real struggle, if the directions are sufficiently vague, to determine the desired format of an answer. One of her classes is an algebra class. Getting the correct answer isn't hard. Earning proper credit for that correct answer by determining if the program wants you to actually simplify the answer when it says "Simplify" is something else entirely. Really frustrating when you know the grading experience would be much better if this was a face to face, human graded deal.

You beat me to it. My 1st thought was "wtf is the AAPS?"

From the linked wiki, they're "a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943 to 'fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine.'"

Oh.

They don't actually *have* to respond, just because there are the required number of signatures. They've ignored many of these petitions, most recently those petitions regarding state secession following the November elections.

I read in the thread about the launch how development of tech like the launch rocket are the only way for the Norks to keep the US from fucking with them.

Commenter never specified whether it was through fear or from being doubled over in laughter.

"The good news is that Google has so far left many of the links up."

How is that good news? If the studio wants a link to their own Facebook page for a movie removed from search results, DO IT. Google should comply with the idiotic requests. I would imagine the response would be similar to those newspaper sites that have requested their stuff be removed from Google News: traffic dives and they change their tune rather quickly. IMO, the best way to show the stupidity of the DMCA is to plainly demonstrate it to the content creators.

You turn the feature on and all the ads are automatically skipped over.

Well, yeah, that's my point. Look at what it doesn't do compared to the roku, et al., at a much higher price. And for what, an amp and a "Made in the USA" stamp? I just don't see how this is gonna work out positively for google, as it sits.

Not sure how that "experiment"in American manufacturing is going to work out, considering one of the major complaints is that it is over-priced compared to similar items - roku, apple tv, xbox/ps3. I know the amp adds cost, but manufacturing overseas can be done cheaply. That's why companies do it.

From TFA:

Seems to me the customer has a right to be pissed off if the company is screwing him around and then insulting him on top of it.

I liked this article from a few days ago about using AIDS to kill cancer. http://nyti.ms/ouwqci Seemed poetic or something.

Completely agree. We use our PS3 the same way, a little gaming, but primarily as media center w/ Play On and Netflix. I just bought an LG blu ray player to put in our bedroom, solely for the streaming services. We own 1 blu ray disk and won't buy any others.

I have a piece of spam I've saved because it made me laugh:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important:
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison

*** Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
*** 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 3220
*** Washington, DC 20535
*** phone: (202) 283-7934

That was from "Departament879@fbi.com" Like the FBI has a .COM address. Fantastic. Of course, I'm sure the "attached list of questions" is something nasty, so that's as far as ol' Steve and I went.