There are cases of government initiatives working really well though. Take, for example, the anti-currency DRM they have installed in every (?) consumer-grade printing device.

When it *really* matters to them, the government can be highly effective.

Don't just *have* the sextant. Make it a habit to take a daily noon sighting and record your distance logger.
Always assume the GPS is wrong until verified by hand.

I'm interested to see if this counts as a true error and thus deserving a check.

I want a Portal device

There's a real difference between the expected level of writing quality of a "for credit" English course at university, and a forum comment on an online news site.

Sheesh.

You got a response from Google about a technical problem with one of their products?

How the hell did you accomplish that?

David Brin's short story "The Giving Plague" (from the 1994 collection "Otherness") uses this idea as a central concept.
The idea was that, over LONG periods of time, viruses form symbiotic relationships with humans. In some cases, even integrating themselves directly into our DNA.

I love it when science fiction writers guess correctly about the future. (Though I hope that's the ONLY part of that story he got right... the rest was double plus ungood)

Speaking as a Canadian...I think we should tell those paranoid xenophobes to go fuck themselves.

Jean Chrétien had a lot of flaws, but at least he had the balls to tell the Americans to stop pushing us around.

If they are concerned about passenger security then they can damn well set up more of those "you're guilty until proven innocent" security-theatre checkpoints on their own soil and search people getting off the plane. Hell, they can even build special security airports at the borders to inspect people's shoes and water bottles.

(Sad to think that would probably be a better use of their funding than most of the stupid crap they've wasted their money on in the last 9 years)

Go ahead and mod me down American nationalist zealots ... I have karma to burn and I'm tired of putting up with America's bullshit.

[/rant]

Trust /. to nitpit the neologism and skip discussing the merit of the rest of the sentence. :-)

That would make a great name for a "They Might Be Giants" tribute band.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu

Because it would be political suicide to let those particular ones go?

I see a lot of people on the slickdeals.net and other "hot deals" forums using bing to take advantage of it's cashback ads.
(That is, you buy a product through a bing search, and you get a certain amount of money returned to you)

That's fair. Firefox's search defaults to Google. *shrug*
Yes, you can change it... but seriously... who does?

You assume that the legislature is willing and capable of passing simple laws. I think the evidence is against you there.