You may keep telling parents to be more responsible but the fact is that a given percentage of them will NOT be. That's a fact. If you are a child of irresponsible parents, how does that help you? This law is to protect the kids of irresponsible parents, not the parents themselves. This is much like the mandatory usage of infant seats in the car - it is enforced for the sake of the CHILDREN of irresponsible parents. You (and other libertarians) are basically saying: "if you are not responsible, live with the consequences". That's good if the consequences are affecting only the irresponsible party. When it comes to drunk driving or usage of infant car seats, it is not just you who suffers if you act irresponsibly. The case with the McDonalds toys is exatly the same. If you leave that to paren't responsibility, you are basically saying that the innocent children must suffer because their parents are irresponsible.

I live in Toronto and I don't have a car. I live midtown and use the public transit to go to work. Here is what I pay monthly for transportation: - public transit pass - 109$ - 2-3 times a month I rent a car or use services like autoshare.com for shopping - 100-170$ Total: 209-279$ If I owned a car, I would pay per month: - approx. 300$ for insurance (I don't have an insurance hostory in North America and the premium will be ridiculous) - 85$ for parking in the building where I live So far 385$ just for having the car and not driving it ;-)) - If I use the car to go to work, that will be another 120-200$ monthly for parking at work - Gas, repairs, maintenance + the cost of the car itself are all extra. In my case it does not make any sense to have a car. That's because I live and work in a city with a relatively developed public transit system. Now, if I moved to a suburb, the situation would be very different. Then the cost of commute might not even be considered as driving would be my only option.

"... because disturbances in its structure can upset satellite communications and radar"
They say nothing about disturbance in the Force. IMHO a disturbance in the Force can cause much greater damage than some petty disturbance in the ionosphere ;-)

I liked one of the comments under the original article that charging 52K for long distance is crime itself. Are we still living in the dark ages of pre-internet where telcos being monopolists could charge whatever price they wanted for pnone calls? Another thing that bothers me is that there are sooo many voip solutions out there that allow you to make calls to Europe for as low as 3 cents per minute. It's not worth the risk of hacking if you have that option.