The above should have said "imploring" as if he were begging the States to fix a problem he created....

(dumb I can't edit a just-posted comment)

So - the principle that the Government had previously been and is now operating on (except during the Obama administration) is that intrastate calls and commerce are properly regulated by the State. Courts have repeatedly ruled this is the case. A normal person would think this is unobjectionable.

So, to say that Pai "caused" the present situation by returning to the Constitutional status quo ante is palpable nonsense. Further, the article states that Pai is "begging" States to take care of the problem, and presents no evidence to support the claim.

The only reason this article was greenlit on slashdot was an arbitrary shot against a Trump administration official that people don't like because of his stance on net neutrality. Remember that whole thing, the blackouts? If, we were told, NN wasn't imposed, an apocalypse was going to instantly destroy the internet as we know it? Curiously, as always, it turns out, that's not where the threats to freedom of expression came from.

There's another twist to this: why, exactly, are the regulations on the utilities, instead of on the prisons? Prisons are highly regulated already, are already under lots of constraints for what they can and cannot do, and States and the Fed executives are perfectly capable of replacing their service providers, and private prisons are already subject to contracts with the State - all problems can be fixed in a year with a flick of a pen of some mid-level executive. A perfectly coherent way of handling this would be to put the service contracts to a public competitive process like most things that are procured by the State, and be done with it.

(paraphrasing) "...is not that you provide a good or better product or service for the same or less money than your competitors. That's not important.

"The important thing is that you publicly virtue signal and work to support and promote every leftist cause proposed by the media and the political elite, disproportionately reward those who support the same causes, and be sure to give plenty of money to those causes.

"If you do not, you will be less able to do business with those of us who do, and chances are, you'll run afoul of one of the far too many laws that we can use via 'prosecutorial discression' to disproportionately impact anybody who doesn't support what we think you ought to be doing with your money.

"That's a nice company you've got there, be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

Gotcha.

I turned this off as soon as I could.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/7046/how-to-prevent-being-checked-into-facebook-places-privacy/

I get social media. I really like most of it. However, I enjoy my fancy stereo and big screen TV too much to let people know when I am out of town or out of my house.

"Oh, I know that dude. He just bought a fat entertainment system and now his facebook says he's out of town for a month. Woot!"

No thanks.

"Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content, sources say. Essentially, they say, he has gone from having free reign over the content and people involved in the websites to having the same capabilities of a low-level administrator."

Ignorance of the Masses => Democracy

Will we actually notice any changes?

Pros

Power management/Sleep work normally for the most part. The only difference from actual Apple hardware, is that you need to tap the power button to wake from sleep, as opposed to screen lid, mouse movement or space tap. Fans work properly, same as on a macbook. They kick in on heavy CPU usage and high temps. However, I must say, the device keeps very cool most of the time. Other pluses include Portability & Price. The 6 cell battery gets you around 5 hours of usage.

Working perfectly:

        * Core image
        * Core animation
        * Core audio
        * Video Out & Graphics in general
        * Wired Ethernet
        * Webcam
        * Internal Speakers
        * USB
        * SD Card Slot
        * Sleep
        * Bluetooth
        * Wifi
        * TouchPad
        * Function Keys

Cons

Not able do perform Major OS point upgrades. There is no support for this. Warranty becomes Void. You are totally on your own. Web Cam, Wifi & Bluetooth, need to be activated via the function keys before the OS will see them (very PC like). The trackpad feels a little clunky, however I prefer a small mouse (wired or bluetooth). If you try to save a few dollars by going with the 3 cell battery, you will only get 2 hours of usage.

Not working:

        * Internal Microphone
        * Microphone port
        * Headset port

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

(I would have responded to this in email, but...)

The point is that there are many fights to fight, and the fact that I'd fight your particular fight if I was directly involved doesn't mean that your fight is the only fight worth fighting.

I don't fault your reasoning, but that wasn't the contention I was arguing against - I was arguing specifically that I was a) brainless, b) reciting propaganda, c) presenting no opinions, d) ideal cannon fodder, and e) if everybody just stayed out of each other's business, things would be okay. That last is the one that gives rise to the 'cowardice' charge, since things are only 'okay' for oneself - not, necessarily, for them.

It's the implication that this responsibility is somehow more important than resonsibility to fellow Americans, and the idea that the best way to defend these people is by joining the National Guard and physically interposing oneself into the struggle that get you labelled "gung ho".

I don't object to being labeled "gung ho", that's accurate - I object to be labeled brainwashed. That said, I find 'reasonability' in the face of evil to be a...less than optimal...means of deterrence, from ethical, moral, and historical perspectives all.

It's the hallmark of the extremist to think that the best solution for him is the best solution for everyone, and your presentation implies that anyone who isn't willing to sign up for guard duty is failing to do so because he's afraid for his own safety.

I was reacting to the notion that what I was saying wasn't comprehensible ("presenting no opinions") to someone of sufficient intelligence to post to slashdot (not a high bar, admittedly). It's not "not signing up" that I have a problem with (plenty of good reasons - family, children, inability, other important work) - it's not grasping that a sane, rational individual would find it something worth doing that I have a problem with. Perhaps this is extremist of me, but I do think everybody should be capable of understanding what I expressed, and not recourse to ad hominim.

As to who exactly I am, I'm your equal. Did you forget for a moment that this is the ideal you're fighting for? "All men are created equal" applies to both of us, which gives me just as much right to call you brainwashed as it gives you to call me cowardly.

And you haven't shown in your response that you _are_ cowardly, since being cowardly, in my earlier expression, was contingent on finding nothing greater than oneself to fight for.

As to the "who are you?" comment, I was specifically reacting to the dismissive tone and tenor in what I was responding to, in a "who do you think you are" - that one is qualified to assert what is going in my head, sort of way, which is more what I intended to convey. I was reacting to the criticism-by-deconstruction inherent in the post to which I was responding. Deconstruction(which asserts there exists no meaning to communication, only pretext and subtext) universally resorts to the power dialectic and ad hominim (if you damage the messenger, you destroy the message), whereas actual (constructed, for lack of a better term) criticism answers the meaning, of which there was plenty (such as you are doing, I am quick to add - you and I are talking policy, he and I were talking about character).

I presume, anyway, you aren't actually calling me brainwashed - the rest of the tone and tenor of your article belies it.

Sometimes the biggest threat to what I hold dear isn't something that threatens my safety, and sometimes I have more to fear from the president than from a terrorist.

And I think the prime difference between you and the previous poster is that you aren't attacking the underlying value of what I've stated or chosen - we're disagreeing on policy, and on that we may respectfully disagree.

For instance, I would disagree that the Patriot Act hallmarks the end of civil rights in America, for instance. I disagree that the government should give a rat's ass about 'personal dignity' - life, liberty and the persuit of happiness has nothing to do with 'being made to feel good'. I think doctors make mistakes like everybody else, and such accidents are more a 'malresult' then a 'malpractice' (now, a _pattern_ of such things is definitely grounds for revoking a license, no question - but one occurrence? You have no 'right' to perfect care: all our rights derive from 'natural rights', and in nature (and in most countries, I might add), you have the natural right to die horribly in a ditch. Anything better than that is a privilege of you being lucky enough to be born in one of a few of the greatest countries in the world). I don't disagree on the DNA thing - that seems on first gloss to be an abuse of power (but who knows what the truth of the situation actually is - it's not like the media has any reason to present us with it, and most people don't act irrationally - randomly asking people on the street for DNA is somewhat irrational).

America isn't falling to tyrants - although it's in the interest of certain groups to make certain other groups believe that is true, but, in my best understanding from reading _many_ different sources and my familiarity with history (our own, and western history in general), again from multiple sources, it just plain isn't.

Think about it: if Bush _was_, in fact, Hitler (or as Hitleresque as he is made out to be), then many a _sane_ person would be gunning for him. But he's not - you know it, I know it, everybody knows it (although if you listen to the rhetoric, you wouldn't actually know it), so the only people who are likely to be gunning for him are the objectively insane. (What disturbs me is that this might be a policy: people attempting to get the insane to take matters into their own hands, for the good of peaceloving people everywhere, just like we should have done with Hitler).

Anyway, in my estimation, which I am sure is different than yours, what is different now than in the history of America is that lawyers (the ACLU) in collusion with activist judges are _much more_ capable of damaging our day-to-day freedoms, and making us less secure than either al Qaeda can, or John Ashcroft ever was. In fact, the courts could make us much less secure (but not enforcing the law, creating a greater or lesser state of anarchy, like this last supreme court ruling did, to a lesser degree) than any other branch of government (by enforcing law 'too harshly' - short of actually killing citizens). If it weren't for the judiciary, anything that Congress does, or that the Executive would do (short of killing someone) can be undone by elections. But a judiciary which respects no separation of powers (in effect, which legislates from the bench without regard or deferrence to constitutional construction or congress), has no checks - and our society is no longer under the rule of Law, it's under the rules of Lawyers. It seems insane to me that depending on which judge, which appeals court, and how much money you have, you can get a different result out of the judicial process - it indicates a fundamental flaw.

So, between now and the destruction of our democracy, we've got a perfectly good first amendment which you can use to your hearts content, and if that ever fails, the second (which I would - and this is where we part ways intellectually, I think: we are so very very far away from having it come to that that it's basically unthinkable I would, in my life, ever have to. Thus, in my mind, things really aren't particularly bad or dangerous - we're in a process of negotiation, prioritization - aka politics as usual. It has no greater importance now than at any time before. There are vastly more important things to worry about - all this is just relatively trivial (in the scheme of things) dancing around the edges and fine-tuning.)

But, and this is where my thoughts go to - there are others who do not have a perfectly good first amendment. There are others who do not have a perfectly good second amendment. There are others who really _are_ living under a modern Hitleresque regime. Maybe, just maybe, it's important we do something for them too. And, reasoning with people who want to control the world, and are actively working to see every one of us converted to Islam, dhimmis, or dead, I think, somehow won't work.