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Plenty of people got gob-smacked with $50k - $100k tax bills after discharge, which is why a temporary law was put in place

People who have lost their homes through foreclosure or who have restructured their mortgage loans may qualify for tax relief under a new tax law, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007. The tax relief was extended to cover the years 2007 through 2012 under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

Prior to the law being passed, there were people who went bankrupt, had the debt itself discharged, but didn't figure on the tax liability - for example, they did a deed in lieu with the bank the prior year, so they wouldn't list the cancelled debt (since it wasn't a debt any more) when they'd flush their other debts - and if you don't list a debt when you go bankrupt, it isn't discharged. This became a big problem by 2006.

Here are the top two ways the RIAA continued to post profits despite rampant piracy:

1 - Massive staff layoffs, I've seen the _floors_ of empty cubicles and offices at Sony/BMG's New York offices, one building of many.
2 - Massive cuts in artist royalties, aka the 360 deal. Where labels used to only take a (large) percentage of retail album/single sales, they now take large percentage of everything from publishing to endorsements to merchandising to ringtones.

In short, everybody in the music industry is suffering except the RIAA executives. There is a finite amount of effective music promotions that can be done, and the RIAA owns them, all of them. There are only so many appearances on TV shows, awards shows, major tours, only so much radio listenership, etc etc. Making a good career of music requires access to that level of promotions to some degree. The more you promote piracy, the bigger a cut labels take to provide access, and the harder you make it for musicians, not the label executives.

So you keep on saying how RIAA profits prove piracy doesn't hurt anyone, and I'll keep playing gigs for the same rate musicians got in the 1970's. Nothing to see here. Move along.

There are proven benefits to drinking alcohol

No,
  no
and no.

The only truth is, there's a shitload of money made from getting people to drink overpriced alcohol-in-water solutions.

The problem is that blood-alcohol level isn't a good measure of actual inebriation. It's the wrong metric.

Bullshit. This has been researched to death and is why almost every country has a limit from 0.02 to 0.08.
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa25.htm

The problem with intoxication, is you actually FEEL more competant than you actually are.
The USA at 0.08 has the highest legal level of countries that enforce alchohol intoxication while driving.

They don't carry flags saying "Baptist" or "Methodist", they simply converse.

No, but they work for organizations with names like "Lutheran World Relief" or "Baptist Global Response," and their logos invariably feature crosses or other religious insignia. And not only that, but they network together, so that all the Lutheran and Methodist and Baptist relief efforts are communicating and working together, but they don't extend nearly the same effort when interacting with secular groups, which leads to a lot of obviously Christian evangelical groups spending most of their time together. They don't make comparable efforts when working with secular groups, and will often work completely autonomously from them, sometimes with disastrous results.

The Emperor knows this firsthand, as an atheist who has helped coordinate fundraising and other efforts for Lutheran World Relief.

And from what I've seen, athiests (and especially antitheists) continually shout "there is no god!" from the rooftops.

Of course, the only atheists you "know" are the vocal ones - that's because you'd never, ever recognize a "stealth" atheist. Get off the Internet, try to meet some real atheists (you will probably fail, due to the nature of atheism), and stop spreading derogatory lies about entire groups of people. The vast majority of atheists and agnostics will not openly bring up their beliefs, perhaps not even if pressed on the subject, because non-believers are the most persecuted and unpopular group in America, largely because of the intentional ignorance spread by people like yourself and your pastor. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IN HIGHLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, WHERE ATHEISM IS EVEN LESS TOLERATED THAN IT IS HERE. Openly identifying as an atheist is not only extremely improbable behavior for an atheist in any situation, but in a country that does not have a strong tradition of liberalism, it is actually dangerous.

(We have not decided to correct you because you have offended our fellow atheists; The Emperor defends the truth and integrity of all cultural groups, including religious groups whose faith we do not share. But we will not abide libels.)

He's no idiot, not by a long shot.

That is slimly possible, but "idiot" was the polite term for someone who spreads ignorance and libel about an entire group of people. "Bigot," "monster," and "evil" may have been more appropriate, although just "ignorant" probably suffices.

Temperature inversion layers, also called thermal inversions or just inversion layers, are areas where the normal decrease in air temperature with increasing altitude is reversed and air above the ground is warmer than the air below it. Inversion layers can occur anywhere from close to ground level up to thousands of feet into the atmosphere.

Inversion layers are significant to meteorology because they block atmospheric flow which causes the air over an area experiencing an inversion to become stable. This can then result in various types of weather patterns. More importantly though, areas with heavy pollution are prone to unhealthy air and an increase in smog when an inversion is present because they trap pollutants at ground level instead of circulating them away.

But hey don't let facts get in the way of your religious beliefs and prejudice.

On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama lifted, by Executive Order, the Bush administration's eight-year ban on federal funding of embryonic stem research. http://usliberals.about.com/od/stemcellresearch/a/ObamaEmbyBan.htm

Maybe you should look at your own prejudiced religious beliefs before you accuse others.

What they did was try to prevent tax dollars being used to harvest unborn babies.

President Bush opposed embryonic stem cell research on ideological grounds. He exercised his first presidential veto on July 19, 2006 when he refused to allow H.R. 810 to become law. http://usliberals.about.com/od/stemcellresearch/a/HR810.htm

That's got nothing to do with unborn babies, he opposed using the waste cells from IVF treatments.

This post is clearly inaccurate. Here's an article about the launch of the 360: http://xbox.about.com/od/xbox2/a/x360launchguide_3.htm

And as everyone will point out, up until now (5 years after launch), all Wii's had the ability to play almost all GameCube games.

If you think that carbs (McDonalds french fries and soda) are the same as carbs (home cooked pasta) then you clearly have very little knowledge about nutrition. McDonalds french fries have almost as much fat as they do carbs. The fact that you could only find one bit of his argument to nicpick, and then didn't even get that right, isn't really helping your case.

Why not rsync?

1940s? According to this about article, Steve Kordek's contributions to the modern pinball machine didn't start until 1962.

TFA says that he made a game with the flippers at the bottom of the playing field in 1948. The about.com article didn't give a date for that, but TFA says it happened right after "Humpty Dumpty."

1940s? According to this about article, Steve Kordek's contributions to the modern pinball machine didn't start until 1962.

[...]

Bumpers, Flippers, and Scoreboards
The pinball bumper was invented in 1937. The bumper debuted in game called Bumper made by Bally Hoo.

Harry Mabs invented the flipper in 1947. The flipper made its debut in a pinball game called Humpty Dumpty, made by D. Gottlieb & Company. Humpty Dumpty used six flippers, three on each side.

Pinball machines during the early 50s began to use separate lights behind the glass scoreboard to show scores. The 50s also introduced the first two player games.

Steve Kordek
Steve Kordek invented the drop target in 1962, debuting in Vagabond, and multiballs in 1963, debuting in Beat the Clock. He is also credited with repositioning the flippers to the bottom of the pinball playing field.

[...]

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/foodsavings/f/Honey.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Preservation
http://www.stilltasty.com/questions/index/128
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/04/15/why-doesn%E2%80%99t-honey-go-bad/

Any other questions?

I'm guessing you got married 2003 or later. According to this website:

http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/p/georgia.htm

It is no longer required. It was at the time I got married though.

It's very hard to find a new car in America under $10K (Least Expensive Cars of 2012).

If you want cheaper, you are stuck with a motorcycle.

There is a market for something with 4 wheels but without the safety profile of car. India has cheap cars, why not America?

Now, there would need to be some rules, including special safety rules for passengers under 18 (I would say "no passengers under 18" but motorcycles can carry kids as passengers), limits to the number of seats (I recommend no more than 1 passenger) and proof of financial responsibility for your own medical bills if you are in an accident and are at fault or the other party is under-insured.

Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to license them as "4 wheeled motorcycles with an enclosed cabin" but with an easier-to-pass license exam (in some states it's almost as hard to get a motorcycle endorsement on your driver's license as it is to get the original car-only license).

Well, at least in America you can get some good, safe used cars in the $5K-10K price range.

Only true in strict essays. In a slashdot thread? Come now. Be reasonable... or you're unreasonable. ;)

That's two statements. I'll provide evidence that the best special needs care is private. I'm actually shocked you're questioning that one. This is going to be easy.

From google...

All private in dallas... at least according to ehow :D
http://www.ehow.com/info_7899398_schools-learning-disabled-dallas-texas.html

schools explicitly for learning disabled kids...
http://privateschool.about.com/od/schoolsneeds1/tp/toplearning.htm

I have to wonder, what would you consider as evidence here? Do you honestly think the federally mandated programs at the public school serviced by teachers with no special training in dealing with such children is going to compete with institutions that are set up from the ground up to address the problem?

You're basically arguing McDonalds is better at making sushi... then a sushi chef. I don't know if there is a study for that either I could quote, but it seems like a hard argument to argue.

The private schools hire specialists and have customized programs.

Another thing that is great about private schools is that they're incredibly diverse. None of them are the same. They're all different. And rather then a weakness that's a strength. Because while ALL public schools seem capable of showing degeneration the private schools have successes and failures. And that's something we can learn from. IF everyone fails that doesn't tell us very much. It just tells us what we're doing isn't working. But if we have successes and failures then clearly we need to stop doing what the failures are doing and do more of what the successes are doing.

Ultimately, I like the voucher system because it gets the government out of education, gives parents more how their kids are taught, makes the parents more active in the child's education, and solves all the silly political battles we've been having over education for years.

If we go full voucher then all the political problems with education are gone. Pick the school you want. Don't like that school? there are five more to take its place. And unlike the existing system where they won't let you leave and will keep bad schools on life support. In the Voucher system bad schools that no one likes die. No life support. Dead. And from the ashes new schools... hopefully wiser then their predecessors.

"Each year, the flu is reported to be responsible for almost 36,000 deaths" http://pediatrics.about.com/od/kidsandtheflu/a/0607_flu_update.htm

So, H5N1 was responsible for 1% of deaths... Why are we so scared of this flu again?

Bananas good? WTF? It's all starch with a bit of sweet-tasting sugars and some potassium.

Worse than that: radioactive potassium. The school was completely in their right to prevent that kid from eating what essentially is nucular waste!

Fortunately for me genetics diluted the problem and I don't get one more than once a year usually. I've tried to tough it out, load up on decongestants and expectorants (due to drainage) etc and all that happens is it gets my throat torn up like hamburger from the infected runoff combined with coughing. Lucky me, I'm going through my yearly round of that right now actually. I started myself on decongestants immediately and have been pounding down pepsi almost nonstop to try to keep my sinuses and throat clear, but it still looks like the throat version of red-eye in there. I might actually beat it without antibiotics for the first time this time since I've jumped on it so aggressively.

As someone who has similar (but milder) seasonal issues, I'm wondering... do you rinse [1] your nostrils? Do you keep your house air clean (HEPA or whole-house filter)? How about cortico-steriods [2]?

I've also found much relief with some anti-allergens like cetirizine, which also reduce inflammation.

[1] http://www.neilmed.com/usa/sinusrinse.php
[2] http://allergies.about.com/od/noseandsinusallergies/a/nasalsprays.htm

Are you refering to the Amish? Because they get vacinated.
http://autism.about.com/b/2008/04/23/do-the-amish-vaccinate-indeed-they-do-and-their-autism-rates-may-be-lower.htm
The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue," says Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC. "We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it's very busy." He says Amish vaccinations rates are lower than the general population's, but younger Amish are more likely to be vaccinated than older generations.

Fortunately, Mr. Toews gave a lot of wiggle room on this. For instance, I can state unequivocally that I stand with this convicted child molester: http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2007/10/28/georgia-supreme-court-releases-wilson.htm.

There is no such thing as "the real value of the asset". Only a price a willing seller and willing buyer agree to.

What is the "real value" of Elvis Presley's pink jumpsuit? Well, for me it is pretty much exactly zero. But somebody paid ten grand for the thing.

If there was only one autographed Babe Ruth baseball bat in existence, how much would that be worth? More than a million bucks? Maybe, perhaps even likely. Now, suppose that I have a secret stash of 50,000 Babe Ruth autographed baseball bats. If I mark-to-market them based on the sale of the only known bat at Southeby's, you'd say I have a $50,000,000,000.00 collection. But as soon as I open that vault to convert my vast wealth into hard cash, the value of that million dollar bat will plummet - perhaps by more than 90%, or even 99%. So did I ever in fact have 3rd world dictator levels of wealth? Or did I have a room full of old baseball bats?

Still don't get it? Ok, why do you suppose the diamond cartel withholds a large percentage of their stash from the market? Why do you suppose they work so hard to prevent new mines from being opened? How about OPEC? Why do you suppose they set production quotas? Does holding diamonds cause the value of those assets to go up? How about withholding oil production? Does that make the value of oil go up?

Let's make it real: Two years ago I had stock options ostensibly worth about $2 million. After the financial collapse and a corporate merger those warrants are not worth the paper they were written on. Literally... they would be worth more if the paper had just been left blank, because then I'd have a few sheets of blank paper. Now all I have is some used paper. Taxing me as if I had $2 million would not only have been criminal, it would have been a silly and impossible idea, as I had nowhere near the amount of money needed to pay the tax on $2 million worth of options that I never got paid for. You can't get blood from a turnip. Although I suppose you could have thrown me in debtor's prison and forced my children to work off a half-million dollar debt to get me out.

Simply put, our credit reporting agencies are too lazy to come up with a "unique" number for each individual in the country, and really, why should they when the government requires you to have a number for services of 311,800,000 people ? At that point, you can guarantee that over 100years, you'll see the same number associated with no more than 1-2 people assuming everyone lives to see retirement, no one dies in vehicle/airline/ship crashes, and that no identity theft occurs with services provided by the same company. i.e., two Bob Walker Dole with SSN 111-11-1111 having service under 2 accounts at the same time in different addresses within the same state/city/county; normally this would be setup as 1 account with 2 addresses listed.

  This makes it "good enough" even though it's not exactly secure (google social security number generation for references). Which in turn makes SSN + First Name + Last Name, Middle Initial(or name) a good primary key for database lookups, and that brings us back to "if it's good enough for the government and everyone has it, let's use it!". So while you're being asked for your SSN, what they are really asking for is Tax id number, you CAN get these numbers separate from an SSN (I believe the IRS calls it a "Individual Taxpayer Identification Number") but it takes some work and most people just don't have time for it or don't realize that it's an option.

All that said, remember, originally, Social Security was an optional retirement program devised by the government to ensure that you were at least able to get back what was paid in at retirement, regardless of the stock market performance. Primarily a result of the great depression, so, assuming none of the money in Social Security is touched, it should ALWAYS equal 0 after everyone that paid in has be paid in full (not $-1 and not $+5) the scare factor of Social Security going bankrupt, is entirely due to the government "borrowing" money from the fund without re-paying it.

</rant>

Well... despite the ALA policy above there IS quite a bit of restriction built-in.
It's probably just the case of them not considering something as basic as a "library card" an actual restriction.
Note the language used and the ages in question.
And the burden of "thinking about the children" being placed squarely on their parents' shoulders.

As for "actual knowledge of typical librarian policies" - I could ask my friend who is a librarian. Let me know exactly what you want to know and I'll relay it to her.

But bear in mind that "typical" and "official" policies may be two VERY different things here.
Actually, considering that each canton has its own ministry of education, plus the Federal one, plus the one for Republika Srpska...
That's like... what? Twenty four different things?
And, while Tuzla may not be very fundie, situation in other places CAN and DOES differ.

I mean, every couple of years some idiot comes out against Santa Claus - cause that's Christian propaganda aimed at Muslim children.
And naturally, those are not the most serious cases.

And don't think it's just the Muslims.
It is generally understood that Croat means Catholic, Serb an East Orthodox Christian and Bosnian or Bosniak a Muslim Such logic is even imposed on the constitution through the fact that only member of those three nationalities can and may be elected as presidents. Of which we have three at the same time.
And couple of years ago when a Croat from a socialist-democratic party (as opposed to several Croat nationalist parties) was elected into the presidency as the representative of the Bosnian Croats - those from the Croat nationalist parties called for his resignation because he was not "a real Croat" in their mind and because they claimed that he was elected by Muslims.
Remember that "Obama can't be the presidn't cause he ain't 'merican" nonsense?
Well... Imagine if it was republican party that demanded his resignation cause a) he is not a U.S. citizen and b) cause only blacks voted for him.

You hit the nail on the head there, Lotana.

Thanks for the link. I knew user ignorance is the primary vector for malware spreads, but I did not know what to call it.

Corporations/Governments seem to love to keep underlings ignorant so they can be controlled - Knowledge is Power.

Ignorance of digital hygiene on the internet is just as risky as ignorance of bacterial hygiene in the kitchen.

A big problem is a few people profit immensely from privileged information. They will lobby like hell to keep it that way.

There was once a time I knew exactly how my machine worked, but with the advent of all sorts of proprietary protocols and formats, I have no idea of what is and is not legitimate traffic on my machine.

Can I trust even an antivirus company?

The Kelihos botnet that sent up to 3.8 billion spam e-mails per day before being taken offline by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab four months ago was created and controlled by a software developer who formerly worked for an antivirus firm, Microsoft said in a civil lawsuit updated yesterday.

I can't tell you how many times I have had rogue scripts pop up on my system, warning me I was infected and needed to "click here" to fix it - for free.

I absolutely hate this circus certain "businessmen" have foisted on us by "working with" other trusted businesses to use proprietary technologies which I cannot verify whether or not they have other motives. The simplest apps now require megabytes of code and use tunneling protocols. Its now illegal to even discuss who is using what and how to see into what it is doing. How do I know if they are honest?

As far as I am concerned, these botnets are the internet equivalent of typhoid Mary .

That doesn't always apply anymore.

As measured by dollars spent per kill, snipers are cost effective. In Vietnam the army estimated that the average soldier spent $23,000 in ammunition for every enemy soldier killed. US snipers spent 17 cents per kill. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armytrng/a/sniperschool.htm

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/forums/thread1259.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/tp/fake-adjustment-layers.htm

etc...

while probably not the be all and end all, there is a lot of stuff in a simple google search for "gimp adjustment layers"

what you're likely to find (when comparing any software) is that terminology may be different, and in FOSS sometimes ease-of-use for newbies isn't a criteria for developers (though an expert with gimp is likely more efficient than an expert with photoshop)

there is usually ways to achieve what you want with gimp though, you just have to be a bit smarter than most photoshop users

there are also a lot of gimp plugins that can help

You are incorrect. Obama came into office on January 20, 2009. By the first Monday in February, the President must submit his budget request (Congressional Budget Act of 1974). That budget takes effect starting October 1. So FY2009 was already well in effect. The FY2009 Budget was proposed to Congress by George W. Bush on Feb 4, 2008.

According to the Treasury Department, the debt ending Sept 30, 2008 was just over $10T. The debt ending Sept 30, 2009 was just over $11.9T. So the last budget from George W. Bush was almost $1.9T deficit, an increase of over $800B from the previous year. Obama's first budget (FY2010) ending on Sept 30, 2010, gave us an overall debt of just over $13.5T. That means the deficit from his budget was just over $1.65T, which is LESS than the almost $1.9T from Bush. In fact, it was a net reduction in deficit of $233B.

So yes, the GP post was correct that Obama inherited the largest deficit in history, and the deficit has decreased each year since Obama came into office. In fact, someone was nice enough to go through all the data from the Treasury Department website and show a breakdown of the numbers to make it easy to see how the budgets/deficits have changed over time.

Actually Apple did steal a lot of their ideas for the Mac from the Xerox Parc

"No, Steve, I think its more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I'd been there first, and you said. "Hey that's no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set! - Bill Gates' response after Steve Jobs accused Microsoft of borrowing the GUI (Graphical User Interface) from Apple for Windows 1.0* "

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa043099.htm

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/et-tu-minnesota-another-law-proposes-making-factory-farm-photography-illegal.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14video.html
http://animalrights.about.com/b/2011/03/23/bills-to-ban-undercover-factory-farming-videos-moving-ahead-in-iowa-and-florida.htm
http://www.dvafoto.com/2011/03/two-us-states-move-to-outlaw-unauthorized-photos-of-farming-operations/
http://www.silha.umn.edu/news/Summer2011/StatesConsiderBanningUndercoverRecordingatAgriculturalOperations.html
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/03/in-the-past-decade-modern/

Here's one quick link I found while Googling:

http://menshealth.about.com/od/lifestyle/a/paternity.htm

This article, from 2005, says that "experts agree" that the number of men unknowingly bringing up another man's child is below 10%, but that the number of men getting paternity tests for their kids is rising fast.

What do you get if you ally with a women as a coder? You get better products. Think of the opportunity cost of sexism. Think of all the talent you're not getting by letting her (and by association, other women) be harassed. If I was interested in something, but kept getting shut down at all opportunities, eventually I'd move on. In this case, moving on can mean going into proprietary software development, or it can mean going into a different field entirely.

To put it another way, letting women in does not mean kicking men out. You enrich the entire community, and get skilled programmers who, for one reason or another, don't want to deal with the bullshit.

If that's not compelling enough, consider Otis Boykin. He invented an improved electrical resistor. This led to a decrease in price of home electronics, including TVs, computers, and radios. In other words, without his work, computers would be more expensive, and we probably wouldn't be in the same situation we are today. He's also black. If he had been kept out of the electrical engineering community simply because he was black, we would probably have a different world today.

So the next time some jackass starts harassing some lady because she's a lady, tell him to back off. Because you're not just helping her, you're helping every woman who stays out of the field because of the sexism.

You can get actors to work for free or very little money.
http://worldfilm.about.com/od/indieactors/American_Independent_Actors.htm
Having a project good enough they'd want to join in would be the hard part. Also the opportunity to be able to tell them about it would take effort. Not impossible. i'd say the Blender project have enough eye candy to be able to get a "star" on board if they loved the story and character enough.
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-projects/

Really? Because I see a whole bunch of new phones at CES. Do you have any evidence that innovation is being held back, or is this just a gut "but it must be so" feeling?

Given that "innovation" is defined as delivering new inventions to end customers, this becomes, in a sense a stupid question. Blocking innovation is exactly what patents are designed to do. The Magsafe connector is a really neat idea. By now, if it were possible, at least one PC manufacturer would have an equivalent. The reason they don't is because Apple has a patent and they can use that patent to block innovation. This extends simply to include all of the Apple lawsuits against Samsung which held back innovation in the new phones from being delivered to Samsung's customers. In other words;

patents just do block innovation; that's their job; if your patent attorney isn't blocking your competitors innovation, fire him.

Where does the idea that patents "further the arts" etc. come from then? Well, one aim of patents is that inventors should record their innovations so that the ideas wouldn't be lost when they die. Also the idea is that whilst patents block innovation in one area, they further it in other related areas by forcing competitors to come up with different inventions which achieve the same thing in a different way. Thus patent supporters would predict for example:

• There should be many magsafe competitors on the market using, e.g. mechanical connectors like old Nokia headphones or other methods of attachment - there aren't
• The magsafe patent should tell you things about making a magsafe connector which you could never work out by just looking at one - it doesn't
• It should reasonably easy to work around the magsafe patent by finding another different device which does the same thing - nobody has done this yet

That in its self is "evidence", but you might claim it's just a one off. It's definitely true that a number of innovations that nobody would hear of otherwise end up recorded in patents, for example very obscure and different kinds of mousetraps are continually invented even though it's not clear that actually drives innovation.

The patent apologist would answer that by claiming that "yes, in situation a, b and c the patent got in the way of innovation, but overall, taking into account all the different patents, the situation is better than it would be otherwise". It's almost impossible to answer that. Almost but not quite impossible.

Firstly we can compare places with weaker patents with those with stronger patents; we would expect to see innovation in the USA accellerating, due to it's broad patent protection, whilst China should be losing ground since patents are regularly ignored there. In fact we see the opposite.

Now, I'd like to separate out "software patents" from patents in general. I believe that if the system was reverted back to more narrow patents and lifetimes were more limited, patents on physical devices would be justified. Physical devices develop more slowly; have higher duplication costs against which patent costs are more easily justified and tend to have a much lower number of patents per device. Software patents are another issue.

As a second part of our statistical evidence there have been a bunch of different academic studies. AN EMPIRICAL LOOK AT SOFTWARE PATENTS from Besson et al does a good examination of the effect of software patents. The conclusion is fairly clearly that software patents damage innovation. Another example of this academic research A GENERATION OF SOFTWARE PATENTS ends it's abst

Canada is finally cracking down on fake immigrants. One of the biggest problems is the abuse of the immigrant investor program which this business apparently is trying to exploit, if you actually look at their web site:

About Rodolfo Martinez

I am the Executive Director of Ontario Immigrant Network, and currently we are working to connect newcomers to rural business succession opportunities.

In other words, "buy your way into the country by buying some dead persons' business."

Nice scam - too bad Mr. Martinez isn't licensed. The Canadian government has required licensing of anyone doing immigration consulting since 2004 because of the number of scams and abuses.

As of April 2004, the only immigration and citizenship consultants who will be recognized by the federal government department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada are those who are members in good standing of CSIC or lawyers who are members of a Canadian provincial or territorial law society.

It sounds like what you want is not catch-and-release, but just to allow certain specific machines in your Sunday school to access the net. In that case you can enable the MAC address filter in the router to limit access to only those machines. Everyone else will be blocked. This solution requires no extra hardware or software, it is built into the router.

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessproducts/qt/macaddress.htm

a quick history lesson. There were thousands of french who moved in, took roles in government, took over large areas of lands, built a load of cathedrals and churches, commissioned the doomsday book, and generally did the kind of things you do when you're colonizing a country. There's a reason why English names such as "Adalmund", "Cylferth" or "Eadraed" are virtually unheard of when compared to French names such as "Robert", "Michael", or "William". Naming children in honour of your master certainly played a part, however the tradition of naming children after their parents or grandparents is another reason you can't overlook.....

Your country? Which one is it?

The UN declared it a human right.

It must be Kosovo, Taiwan or Vatican City-- the only three that aren't part of the UN.

Circumference at equator = 24901.55 miles
Circumference through poles = 24859.82 miles
Difference = 41.73 miles or .167% more at the equator than the poles.

Reference http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm

Are wheelchairs in fact carbon neutral? Even disregarding carbon during manufacturing/delivery to the point where it is at your door, can you say positively that a user does not burn more calories using a wheelchair versus other alternatives of getting around? Can you say that calories not burned by someone wearing an efficient exoskeleton will never outweigh the energy savings of a wheelchair or alternatives?

To treat your questions seriously, yes a manual wheelchair is carbon neutral.

- Carbon from manufacturing/delivery is comparable to a artisan-made bicycle - approx same manufacturing process, and style and size of business.
- Pushing a wheelchair burns about as many calories as walking. If you think about this it makes sense - you have smaller muscles called upon to do the work, but you're engaging less of your body in the effort, and you have the mechanical advantage of wheel.

Some data's available here, which puts wheelchair in the middle of light exertion walking.
http://caloriecount.about.com/activities-walking-ac17

Finally, using a wheelchairs all about sitting on your ass all day - how couldn't it burn less calories! :-)

even more odd were my results. which plainly made facebook #1 as of 2010 datasets for unique visitors. over 150 million uniques.
http://webtrends.about.com/b/2010/03/15/the-top-10-most-popular-social-networks.htm

Wikipedia
NASA*
About
Spacepen
The Space Review
BBC History Magazin

If you've done the research provide an opposing source.

* NASA admits that they originally ordered pencils for over $100 each but backtracked. Latch on to that if you want to bash wasteful government spending, but remember they did respond to the public backlash.

This reminds me about the billions that were spent on the so called space pen. The Soviets showed us common sense, (and sadly continue to do so despite their economic troubles), by employing the time tested and proven hard black (HB) pencil.

Your own link debunks you:

"Be that as it may, beginning with the Apollo program astronauts did begin using a specially-designed zero-gravity pen called the Fisher Space Pen. The nitrogen-pressurized space pen worked in "freezing cold, desert heat, underwater and upside down," as well as in the weightless conditions of outer space.

It was developed not by NASA, however, but by one enterprising individual, Paul C. Fisher, owner of the Fisher Space Pen Company. By his own account, Fisher spent "thousands of hours and millions of dollars" of his own money in research and development — not billions.

The Fisher Space Pen is still used by both American and Russian astronauts on every space flight, and you can even buy one yourself direct from the company for a measly 50 bucks."

From http://www.spack.org/wiki/SpacePen:

"I hate to spam you, but on your quotes page you've tripped one of my pet peeves. The Space Pen. There is a common email circulating that describes how much money NASA wasted on making a pen that writes upside down, in vacuum blah blah blah. You know how much it really cost the US Gov't? Nothing. Fisher developed it at TREMENDOUS cost, all of it absorbed by them. In return they got to be the sole provider. Normally this means that they would sell these pens to NASA at some obscene amount. They charged just a few dollars. Admittedly, a few dollars for a pen was a lot in the 60's, but 1/100th what they could have charged. Fischer did this out of True Faith, True Faith that knowledge and research is its' own reward. And since that day, they have sold so many of their pens to the private sector, that they have made their money back a ten times, and still never charged that much. I have one of these pens, you can buy them at any stationary store, even Hallmark stores carry them. I recommend them, they're damn good pens.

Oh, and the bit about the pencil is true, the russians did use pencils. Remember the space station fires that they had? At least one of these, I forget which, but it caused a fatality, at least one was caused by airborn pencil shavings mixing with sensitive electronics. Their solution? Mail order Fischer Space Pens."

This reminds me about the billions that were spent on the so called space pen. The Soviets showed us common sense, (and sadly continue to do so despite their economic troubles), by employing the time tested and proven hard black (HB) pencil.

They won't post that story until dinosaurs actually do go extinct.

Not to worry, we're working on it.

The problem is this: The budget is comprised of social insurance programs, the military, interest on the debt, and "Everything Else." If you cut the entirety of "Everything Else," you will not close the deficit.

The "everything else" part you're talking about is called the Discretionary Spending. This actually includes Defense, which is more than half of this. From Mandatory Spending (2012):

Mandatory spending is 57% of total Federal spending. It almost three times as much as the military budget, and 1 1/2 times all discretionary spending.

Mandatory Spending, at $2.109 trillion in FY 2012. The largest mandatory spending programs were Social Security and Medicare, as follows:

• Social Security - $761 billion
• Medicare - $468 billion
• Medicaid - $269 billion
• TARP - $13 billion
• All other mandatory programs - $598 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition and Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the Disabled and Student Loans.

and Discretionary Spending (2010):

Discretionary spending in FY 2010 was $1.3 trillion, or 38% of total spending. More than half ($815 billion) was security spending, which includes the Department of Defense, overseas contingency programs and Homeland Security.

Non-security spending was $491 billion. The largest departments were: Health and Human Services ($84 billion), Education ($64.3 billion), Housing and Urban Development ($42.8 billion) Justice ($27.6 billion), and Agriculture ($25 billion).

The problem is this: The budget is comprised of social insurance programs, the military, interest on the debt, and "Everything Else." If you cut the entirety of "Everything Else," you will not close the deficit.

The "everything else" part you're talking about is called the Discretionary Spending. This actually includes Defense, which is more than half of this. From Mandatory Spending (2012):

Mandatory spending is 57% of total Federal spending. It almost three times as much as the military budget, and 1 1/2 times all discretionary spending.

Mandatory Spending, at $2.109 trillion in FY 2012. The largest mandatory spending programs were Social Security and Medicare, as follows:

• Social Security - $761 billion
• Medicare - $468 billion
• Medicaid - $269 billion
• TARP - $13 billion
• All other mandatory programs - $598 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition and Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the Disabled and Student Loans.

and Discretionary Spending (2010):

Discretionary spending in FY 2010 was $1.3 trillion, or 38% of total spending. More than half ($815 billion) was security spending, which includes the Department of Defense, overseas contingency programs and Homeland Security.

Non-security spending was $491 billion. The largest departments were: Health and Human Services ($84 billion), Education ($64.3 billion), Housing and Urban Development ($42.8 billion) Justice ($27.6 billion), and Agriculture ($25 billion).

I'm not in the military, but found this interesting article that gives details on what you are asking: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/l/aacmartial2.htm

As for a show trial, all trials are show trials to the extent they are intended to serve as a deterrent to others. From traffic court to murder trials. It's the fairness of the trial you're really wondering about.

It'll be as fair as any other high-profile case you've ever seen. Which is to say most of those involved know they are being watched and will either be fair (because that's their nature) or at least try to appear fair, but humans screw up. The appeals system helps.