The abuse of the patent system is beyond repair. I say we completely overhaul the entire system and only grant 10 patents per year. There are not even 10 things that are patent-worthy invented in an average year. Not anymore. Combining a cellphone and a pen is not unique and nonobvious and should not be patentable. Give the 10 best, truly innovative inventions one of ten patents after an exhaustive review at the end of the year. No genetic patents, no "business method" patents. Only truly novel inventions should be patentable. Frankly I can't think of the last invention that I've seen that is worthy of a patent. 10 per year is still allowing at least 5 crap things to get an unfair monopoly that is completely undeserved.

The views expressed by your employees on their own time do not represent your company unless you take the time and energy to point it out and MAKE it so. No reasonable person would think that a Walmart employee's ranting on his/her facebook page represents the official views of Walmart. Of course, nobody should say who their employer is on Facebook or any other such site. But we know that's not going to be a prerequisite for firings. People have and will be fired for their online content even when they don't mention their job/employer. What's to stop Domino's pizza from firing an employee because she is pro-choice?

There is going to come a point where the First Amendment will need to be incorporated onto the actions of private actors like big corporations. Frankly I think we're well past that point.

Yes, exactly. You're the first person to say what I was thinking - the cops and the family want to find this purportedly missing person and none of them is willing to cough up a mere 20 dollars? There is no privacy right in having your phone turned off or turned on, and many courts have held the police don't need a warrant to locate a cellphone (though some have, as I recall). Regardless, the issue is over a corporation being cheap. But the people looking for him were equally cheap. Now, maybe the tried to pay but were told "sorry, only the account holder may pay" or "sorry we only accept money orders for overdue accounts, you can't pay by credit card on this account" or some other bullshit like that. In THAT CASE, with someone missing and maybe in danger, the company would be in the wrong. But nobody should ever have to shell out $20 to help the police (also known as the government). Plus this time they say it's a missing person, next time they say it's a missing person but it's really just some arab guy they want to spy on. The company is certainly not guilty of murder/manslaughter (had the guy died) as some people are saying here. That's ridiculous. Nobody has any duty to assist in an investigation beyond providing information you actually know.

Closing a loophole to require owed taxed to be paid is not equivalent to "raising taxes" though that's of course the same pathetic argument the Republican-Christian party is making. "It's a substantial tax increase to force us to pay the taxes we've been dodging." Why should I, a normal citizen with a normal job, pay more in taxes than a huge company like KBR? It amazes me that anyone could side with tax cheats, and actually argue that not only should be be permitted to continue to avoid paying their taxes, but that it's bad policy and immoral to require them to pay such owed taxes. Unbelievable. Meanwhile a lot of the companies doing this tax dodging have been receiving bailouts from those taxpayers who do pay their taxes. Nobody wants to pay taxes, and everyone wants their tax rate to be lower. How about some consistency, though - like everyone who owes taxes should pay them.

I am a person who entirely believes in science, and as an atheist I greatly disapprove of anything resembling faith. I hate to say it, but so much of this superstring, 11 dimensional stuff sounds more like faith, or religion, than actual hard science. None of what's talked about here sets out a testable hypothesis, and it sounds like they're just making up stuff the way religious people do, though using words like "dimensional" instead of "power of Christ" to explain what otherwise can't be explained (or explained within the bounds of their own premises).

I mock religion all the time. I have to hold science and scientists up to the same standard. I'd be a hypocrite to accept unprovable scientific mumbojumbo, interdimensional whatnots and all. at face value while discounting unprovable religious mumbojumbo all the time.