Actually whether the water is reused or just discarded depends more so on where you are. For cities and towns that have river sources this may be the case, but in socal there are no such sources - most of our water is either imported or pumped from the ground. Some of the wastewater is reused for irrigation, but as far as I know there is only one plant in socal that pumps the wastewater back into the aquifer.

So in order to get around isps bitching about too much netflix traffic someone uses a vpn. They may very well use one of these "VPN providers" that you claim exist to carry "legitimate traffic."

Usage of a VPN for non-business purposes doesn't automatically mean criminal activity. If the FBI knows a VPN provider is being marketed as a service for hiding criminal activity there is nothing stopping them from getting a warrant now - loosening the restrictions is just a power grab.

If you actually bothered to read her works you'd realize that she does not fault science. In the Madd Addam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The year of the Flood, Madd Addam) she creates a world where science has run amok, but does not blame science for the disaster. Instead she pillories the hubris of the scientists, who sought to make themselves gods, and capitalism run amok, which has completely unmade the modern class system we have today and reverted it to the more stratified system of centuries past.

Have they fallen so far as to ignore proper spelling in the title?

Downvoting over disagreement is the flaw of any vote-based system (and upvoting based on agreement too). I also haven't run into too many egregious abuse cases on Slashdot. The vast majority of -1 content seems to be flamebait and spam. I agree with you that anonymous moderation is bad - it fails to discourage frivolous moderation, but I wouldn't call the Slashdot moderation system anonymous. Although individual moderation actions are anonymous, you can consider the moderator to be "the community." There are far worse moderation systems out there; compared to them Slashdot is paradise.

My sister's friend had her phone stolen recently and when she called the LAPD about it, they also refused to do anything about it and pretty much told her that it was not their policy to go chasing after stolen phones. She later attempted to confront the fence that stole her phone and ultimately was unsuccessful in recovering her phone.

Support for HDMI-CEC events would actually solve the problem of the display updating; it would know when the tv is powered off or it ceased to be the active source and could disable updating the background until it becomes the active source again.

I'm not too familiar with the supreme court decision however my guess is that because you are not forced to use library internet it is acceptable. That would not apply to a municipal network.

If local officials decided to add filters to their municipal internet "for the children" they could expect first amendment lawsuits that they will lose.

On the other hand a private isp could do that with zero legal consequences.

If I transport you back in time and drop you in the middle of some cavemen and Ug decides he wants to kill you he will not hand you a club to defend yourself with first; he will simply bash your skull in. Rights are a societal concept. For example I believe that all people have the right to be treated equally. While many would agree with me, that "right" is in fact a relatively modern invention.

Also if the Constitution simply codified natural rights and the right to own a gun was an extension of the right to self defense then gun laws today would be much more strict. There are many legal firearms today that are obviously meant to serve a much more offensive purpose. The whole Bill of Rights was designed with one purpose in mind - to keep government tyranny in check.

As for your idea that guns are the best self-defense tool, read this: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

When you say things like that I can see exactly why Bentham called natural rights "nonsense on stilts." Guns have not always existed and so therefore your argument is flawed right there. The right to gun ownership is conferred through the second amendment of the Constitution so therefore it is a legal right.

I've got a virgin mobile phone...where I am the network is so lousy that I cannot see anyone hitting the 2.5 GB "cap" without going insane.

While the signs are real, how often do they actually patrol with the aircraft?