Free Republic

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

It is fashionable among those on the left to fantasize that they live in a police state, here in the US, and that they virtuously resist by "speaking truth to power". They imagine that they take great risks in doing so as they protest in front of the White House, and feel as if they touch greatness, modern kin of the great leftist revolutionary heroes of lore. It reminds me of something I read a while back, about Gunter Grass. He grew up in Nazi Germany, back in the day. It was written by Tom Wolfe: