I and many others would disagree with you. Estonia and Greece have legally declared internet access a basic human right and the UN is pushing to do the same.

The internet has dramatically increased the efficiency of our society. No long does a person have to reserve a specific hour out of their day if they want to get the news. One does not have to go down to town hall to get the forms to renew their driver's license. The term, 'surf the internet' used to mean aimless browsing to entertain one's self, and while it still makes up much of internet activity it's not the sole function of the internet. Much like in the early days of electricity, the internet isn't a survival necessity, but it is certainly a necessity to the continued progress of our society.

Are there any countries left that has citizens? I'm tired of being a subject.

In other unrelated news Jack Thompson has accepted a position at Take-Two.

While that would have been nice there may have been more coercion there that we heard about. Qwest was the one company that told the NSA to come back with a court order. Qwest the lost several government contracts and their CEO went to jail for insider trading. Maybe those events are unrelated, but considering how Bush ran the Justice Department I doubt it.

First to NewYorkCountryLawyer, thanks from all of us for fighting the good fight!

And a question, what is the impact of these sanctions? Could this cost the RIAA enough to really act as a deterrent? Also, if at all how is this relevant in future cases?

Am I the only one who's tired of hearing that buzzword being thrown around like it actually means something?

http://www.xkcd.com/526/

Pagan FUD

[citation needed]

As a Pagan I'm very confused by this statement because I've never heard of such. I don't even know of any proactive Pagan initiatives educate outsiders on Paganism (possibly a FUD engine based on your point of view).

Like any religion we have our share of members who are attention seeking louts (our's scream "I'm a Pagan, deal with it!" yours scream "Your going to Hell for X!") but we tend to have few members actively recruiting. Paganism doesn't have a Dogmatic philosophy and hence we have no real motivation to recruit others.

Much as I'm doing in my post I understand wanting to correct a misconception about your religion but lest there's grounds for it don't blame those misconceptions on opposition propaganda.

Controlled Unclassified Information isn't the blank check that "State's Secrets" and "National Security" are nor did to allow more information to be hidden from the public (although it did obscure the reasons what some information was withheld). CUI just unified "For Official Use Only" and "Sensitive But Unclassified" into a single category. FOUO I've mostly seen applied to training documents such as tests (you don't want someone to cheat the tests on how to run a nuclear reactor) which is certainly a legitimate use. Sensitive But Unclassified generally deals with Operation Security issues i.e. DEA moving half a ton "evidence" of from point A to point B on Tuesday. I haven't worked in said field for a while, so if anyone know better correct me, but I don't believe Controlled Unclassified Information can be used to deny a FOIA request.

What's more appalling about this is the official reason for said exception has no need to exist. Something that we've heard very little of in the past eight years when being denied information is that it's classified. Lest it's changed since I was in the service, the government has eight different types of classified that covers every possible legitimate reason to withhold information from the public. Any reason the government gives for withhold information that doesn't have classified in the sentences is an outright lie.

I personally love my Iliad from IRex. It's the most expensive eReader on the market, but the hardware is the most feature advanced (16 shade grayscale long before the Kindle 2, stylus touch screen).

On the other hand, what I think will end up being it's biggest strength is currently it's biggest weakness, it's OS is Open Source. Near as I can tell, IRex basically launched the product with only the bare minimum features and is looking to the Open Source community to help polish it off. Though they do have their own staff developers working on features what they currently have doesn't make great use of the Iliad's hardware.

All the same I'm much happier giving my money to a company that doesn't try to tell me what I can do with the device after I've paid for it.

Seconded.

The fact that you have to offer incentives to get employees to make suggestions seems to indicate your current environment is not conducive to suggestions. Rather than try and think of ways to get get employees more involved, you may want to be asking/posing the question to your superiors: Why aren't our employees more involved?

thieving hypocrites [citation needed]

If you agree with copyright law and think this is wrong that's fine but I'm having trouble understanding how you find them to be hypocritical. Their basic philosophy seem to be "Okay big content industry, you want to hold our culture hostage, let's see you try it!" Basically exhibiting the Ragnar Danneskjöld school of though.

Doesn't work. Michael Moore has tried it when auto-plants were closed in Flint, Michigan. When he, as a stockholder, started to speak the chairman said something close to "And you are sir? Michael Moore? Alright folks is there any further business we need to attend to?"

I like the idea of trying to change the system from within it but sometimes the system is just too corrupt.

Dell probably should have phrased it in a more neutral manner.

Dell probably should have exhibited a lot more humility. There's a big difference in stature between a company figurehead and a countries figurehead. This is about on par with a the head of a 50 person consulting company seeing Steve Balmer at a tech conference and saying "Hey I think we could help you get Microsoft back on track."