biff

Good point. He's probably suffering more now with his paranoia over being identified than he would be after his identity was released.

The worst things he's likely to face from being unmasked, given his targets, is a book deal, a handful of right-wing TV and radio interviews, and a sweet computer security gig.

In a practical sense, sure, people do this everyday.

In an ethical sense, it should disturb us that we are being required to lie as a matter of course to lead our everyday lives.

I've only ever been able to think of two directions we can go in.

We can strip away pensions, insurance, environmental regulations, unions, OSHA, and every other advantage the U.S. workforce retains. Or we can add some friction to offshoring and free trade.

The former approach means that we'll lose our stronger buying power and eventually become a less attractive market. The latter means there's less profit to be made and we'll become a less attractive market.

I personally favor the latter approach because retaining our buying power means we're less likely to be shocked by rising energy and food costs down the road, fewer people will be injured and out of work in a system with no safety net, less garbage and pollution gets pumped into our environment, etc.

But right now it feels like we're going halfway down the former road, chipping away at our workers' infrastructure while still remaining uncompetitive on the world market... and continuing to reduce friction on trade.

While true, I'd worry that arguing this point carries the risk of shifting the discussion away from "Should the U.S. begin censoring the Internet?" to "How can the U.S. effectively censor the Internet?"

There's an easy way around that, though: speak, act, live and think in a manner that's patently inoffensive to anybody.

* I guess I'm being too subtle with my sarcasm, huh. Well, I'll be Larry Literal from now on.

Looks like E-PARASITE (nee PROTECT-IP) may fix that oversight.

Ah, looks like they finally fixed The Tudors problem anyway. Good news.

The problem with Netflix is the problem with a lot of companies: the customers are taken for granted.

If you have a Netflix account, look at reviews of The Black Tower or The Tudors. For weeks they've been broken -- out-of-sync audio/video on The Black Tower, mislabeled episodes of The Tudors season 2, I guess Whale Wars was also mislabeled (http://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/i74kw/after_a_few_c...). Use the standard form to notify Netflix of the problem or even complain directly into the reviews... you might as well talk to a brick wall. Same thing if you're upset that they constantly wait until right before a series is about to be pulled from instant streaming to post a notice.

None of that would take any significant investment to fix, just a commitment to deliver an excellent customer experience. It's obviously not the reason why the stock price halved itself lately but I feel it demonstrates the sort of lazy arrogance towards the customer experience (as does the Quikster saga) that will ill serve the company when it faces some real competition over the next couple of years.

(I did keep my 2 DVD + streaming plan through the rate increase though.)