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just to add: alcohol comes off as even worse than illegal drugs:

The U.S. Department of Justice Report on Alcohol and Crime found that alcohol abuse was a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes committed in the U.S.
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/costs/a/aa980415.htm

quick question: do your figures actually include legal drugs?
  "under the influence of drugs at time of their offense" could include people who are on legal drugs like proscribed medication when they commit a crime so a schizophrenic who commits a crime after an underdose of his medication would add to those figures.

Actually, yeah. The original complaint was that she said that Paul Revere warned the British, which was fact. Here are some links:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/b/2011/06/03/sarah-palin-paul-revere-gaffe.htm

As any elementary school student can probably tell you, Paul Revere was not attempting to warn the British when he rode around crying, "The British are coming." Nor was he ringing bells and trying to protect gun rights.

Apparently Palin learned nothing at any of the five colleges she attended.

http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/06/03/sarah-palin-paul-revere-warned-the-british/

This certainly gives us an entirely new point of view to consider when examining our nation’s founding.

While I had been led to believe that Revere’s historic ride was actually for the purpose of warning our forefathers that the British were coming, it turns out that his midnight ride, complete with ringing bells and warning shots, was really all about letting the English know that we were armed.

http://www.huliq.com/3257/sarah-palin-paul-reveres-midnight-ride-warned-brits

Former vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin has never been accused of being a brain surgeon, but her latest gaffe is another cautionary example of why she is, many say, unqualified to be a Presidential candidate: Paul Revere's ride was not to warn U.S. Revolutionary War patriots, but instead to warn the British.

The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.

The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.

Can you cite any studies or well known facts to support these statements? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd just like to see something other than some anonymous person's assertions on a tech chatboard.

Private schools can and do kick out trouble-causing students, and there is a direct correlation between the presence of such children and the overall performance of a class. This is probably a larger factor than merely selecting the academic elite, who themselves may come from abusive or otherwise troubled homes and who may bring such problems into the classroom.

However, the academic elite by and large tend to follow their economic class's trends. In other words, affluent parents spend more on their children's education, give them better tools and more opportunities to do well, and effectively can buy a smoother pathway to the top with fewer obstacles. SAT scores are correlated with wealth.

To argue that private school teaching "is probably inferior to public schools" is a broad and unsubstantiated claim. Leaving aside the fact that some kids attend private school for non-academic reasons (their parent went there, it's smaller, it's more prestigious), we can ask--do private schools really help kids perform better? It's controversial, according to this Time blog, but a separate study shows that Catholic schools do a better job overall.

There are many excellent public schools in the U.S. and Canada; Montgomery County in MD for example, and Middlesex County in Massachusetts are superb--well funded, high academic standards, good support for the arts, and involved parents. The high performing schools in these districts, though, are in the affluent areas like Belmont and Newton and Lexington in Massachusetts. The lower income Middlesex schools in Waltham and Watertown are down a rung or two.

As for the quality of teachers, it's disputable that private schools hire inferior teachers at lower pay, at least in the U.S. This was more true decades ago, but in recent years private schools have had to compete for a shrinking pool of good teachers and they have raised salaries and benefits nearly to union scale. Nonetheless, private schools have remained a desirable destination because the students tend to be better behaved, the troublemakers are removed, and there tends to be more parental buy-in. This only makes sense; when you're paying $16,000 a year for your child, you tend to have more and stronger opinions about how the school is run.

I had questioned the E/I as well. From the following page: http://tv.about.com/od/frequentlyaskedquestions/f/EI_CTA1990.htm Answer: EI stands for Educational and Informational programming. It is a result of the Children's Television Act of 1990, which mandates broadcast stations to program at least three hours of educational programming a week. EI is often seen on Saturday mornings. In creating the Children's Television Act of 1990, Congress was reacting to a FCC report that recognized the role television plays in a child's development. The CTA essentially reduces the amount of commercials during children's programming, and increases the amount of education and information in each show.

I believe truth is a defense in in US libel cases, which is where the case is apparently being tried. According to the Journalism about.com article: "Libel is by definition false. Anything that is provably true cannot be libelous. " I'll grant you that "about.com" is not he most reliable source ever, but I doubt they'd get this wrong. I realize that in the UK truth is not a Libel defense (which makes no sense to me at all, but no one asked me), but in California it almost certainly is.

I wonder where someone could find and run QDOS (DOS 1.0 that Gates bought and sold to IBM). "The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.

QDOS was based on Gary Kildall's CP/M, Paterson had bought a CP/M manual and used it as the basis to write his operating system in six weeks, QDOS was different enough from CP/M to be considered legal.

Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM deal a secret from Seattle Computer Products." - About.com

Buy a device on which to test

Practically everybody that is going to be writing mobile applications is going to have a cell phone.

My current cell phone is an Audiovox 8610 from Virgin Mobile USA, which doesn't run Android, and the phone you recommended (Nexus S) costs $549.99. Can you recommend anything cheaper? Virgin Mobile USA carries the Samsung Intercept and LG Optimus V; are those any good?

I'm currently using the Optimus V from VirginMobile, and it works wonderfully. It was a little hassle rooting since you need to install several SDKs and what not. But still fairly easy ans straight forward. Make sure you get your number ported over and anything that will involve contacting VirginMobile (like activation) before rooting your phone and installing something like Cyanogenmod. I made that mistake, but it was still just as simple as backing a full backup of the CM install, reflashing the backup I made of the stock "rom" (always make a backup before flashing a new rom, just in case something goes wrong) doing what I needed to in the special menus of the stock rom and flashing back to CM.

If you absolutely must have a physical keyboard, go for the Intercept, otherwise go for the Optimus since it is a much better buy in terms of hardware.

Don't expect to have a Nexus S level of quality with the phone though. Some games will lag and other things might not be as fast you may see on higher end phones. When I got mine, I went into thinking "this is just another phone", making everything else it can do with android gravy. Angry Birds is playable, along with mostly every other game I have tried and it is really nice being able to tether to my phone for 3G internet along with getting emails on the phone.

Buy a device on which to test

Practically everybody that is going to be writing mobile applications is going to have a cell phone.

My current cell phone is an Audiovox 8610 from Virgin Mobile USA, which doesn't run Android, and the phone you recommended (Nexus S) costs $549.99. Can you recommend anything cheaper? Virgin Mobile USA carries the Samsung Intercept and LG Optimus V; are those any good?

Definition: When a game is said to have "gone gold," it means that the code has been finalized and is ready to be duplicated for distribution. The term goes back to the days when recordable CDs were manufactured using gold film, leading the source CD to be called the "golden master." Unlike the music industry, it is not a reference to the number of copies sold. It will typically take several weeks for a game to ship to stores and become available to consumers after it has gone gold.

http://internetgames.about.com/od/glossary/g/gogold.htm

In 1945, somebody flew an airplane into the Empire State Building, but they weren't trying to.

Alchemy does work; Lead to Gold was done in the 80's.

Unfortunately, creating gold from lead requires the building of a particle collider first. Kind of a downside, economically.

Have to respond to you. It's not heat from the Sun that warms earth's interior, it's radioactive elements in earth's composition, and they are actually wrapped around the core like an "electric blanket".

From http://geology.about.com/od/mineral_resources/a/geothermal.htm

Earth's Heat Source

OK, so geothermal energy is heat from underground. But why is the Earth hot at all?

To a first approximation, Earth's heat comes from radioactive decay of three elements: uranium, thorium and potassium. We think that the iron core has almost none of these, while the overlying mantle has only small amounts. The crust, just 1 percent of the Earth's bulk, holds about half as much of these radiogenic elements as the whole mantle beneath it (which is 67 percent of the Earth). In effect, the crust acts like an electric blanket upon the rest of the planet.

Lesser amounts of heat are produced by various physico-chemical means: freezing of liquid iron in the inner core, mineral phase changes, impacts from outer space, friction from Earth tides and more. And a significant amount of heat flows out of the Earth simply because the planet is cooling, as it has since its birth 4.6 billion years ago.

The exact numbers for all these factors are highly uncertain because the Earth's heat budget relies on details of the planet's structure, which is still being discovered. Also, Earth has evolved, and we cannot assume what its structure was during the deep past. Finally, plate-tectonic motions of the crust have been rearranging that electric blanket for eons. The Earth's heat budget is a contentious topic among specialists. Thankfully, we can exploit geothermal energy without that knowledge.

Nice try, but the only irony is that all of those are indeed aptly named:

French Fries
For also in the 1840s, pomme frites ("fried potatoes") first appeared in Paris. Sadly, we don't know the name of the ingenious chef who first sliced the potato into long slender pieces and fried them. But they were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.

Frites spread to America where they were called French fried potatoes. You asked how they got their name--pretty obvious, I'd say: they came from France, and they were fried potatoes, so they were called "French fried potatoes." The name was shortened to "french fries" in the 1930s. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2033/whats-the-origin-of-french-fries

Salisbury Steak

In the late 19th century, Dr. James Henry Salisbury came up with chopped beef patties to cure Civil War soldiers sufferering from "camp diarrhea." http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/groundbeefhist.htm

Pizza
Pizza is a type of bread and dish that has existed since time immemorial in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza

And for good measure:
Belgian Waffles
Vermersch started making waffles from a recipe of his wife's when living in Belgium before the outbreak of World War II. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_history_behind_the_belgian_waffle

Even the name Hamburger has its origin in Hamburg, Germany:
Hamburgers
In the late 18th century, the largest ports in Europe were in Germany. Sailors who had visited the ports of Hamburg, Germany and New York, brought this food and term "Hamburg steak" into popular usage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger#18th_and_19th_centuries

It sure was like a game of packet hot potato there for a while... Fortunately they cleaned off the old packets on Internet cleaning day.

Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.

By Osama? Why would you count from 2001? It spiked a bit shortly thereafter and then dropped for several years straight before spiking far more dramatically 2008-2009. Remind me again what it was Osama did to hurt our economy in that time frame.

Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.

By Osama? Why would you count from 2001? It spiked a bit shortly thereafter and then dropped for several years straight before spiking far more dramatically 2008-2009. Remind me again what it was Osama did to hurt our economy in that time frame.

Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.

Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.

No good will come of it.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

This was my exact feeling regarding the Iraq war!

And then someone can post or make sports picks or whatever my site does masquerading as someone else?

Yes, post. Posting as someone else can invite trouble with the law if one posts pornography, infringing copies, financial scams, etc. as someone else.

If I'm just running a hobby site for some friends that I can show off why do I care if someone hijacks their session for my podunk site?

For one thing, leaving link spam up can get you penalized.

Some interesting links there, however I'm unable to see how it was the Atheism that lead to the killing of others.

Islamic Jihad or the Old Testament have calls to violence. Is it fair to link 9/11 to religious zealotry? I'm not sure and I didn't make a claim, but it must be said I think most people would agree it is linked (rightly so or not). I'd be interested on your view.

No, that conclusion does not follow. Atheism itself isn't a principle, cause, philosophy, or belief system which people fight, die, or kill for. Being killed by an atheist is no more being killed in the name of atheism than being killed by a tall person is being killed in the name of tallness.

http://atheism.about.com/od/isatheismdangerous/a/AtheismKilled.htm

This sounds almost akin to the Venus Project, although a little less 'revolutionary'.

Venus' concept is a massive global supercomputer network that monitors the worlds resources, allocating them only where they are needed and in reasonable quantities, eliminating waste and misuse, but being auditing and controlled by human-elect. A different future society (although it is debatable between dystopian and utopian) could automate everything, doctors, lawyers, manufacturing, almost absolutely everything once the infrastructure is in place, and people could live simple, happier lives and not be wage-slaves. Granted it would probably a century or two of automata innovation to make something like that happen, but it would beat having such excess waste, such as cars/drivers ratio. It would be pretty neat to do what you love and love what you do without a lot of the extraneous worries.

And no I am not a communist/socialist, just saying it might be a cool alternate reality.

YOU have 3 from the original due date file/refile and claim a refund

the IRS has 3 years from the due date, or 3 years from the date you file a return if filed late
UNLESS they suspect fraud... then it is longer

some states already have longer
http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/tax-audit-statute-of-limitations-by-state.htm

You ever hear of Paul Gottlieb Nipkow?

And it's cute that you got snarky about it, considering you one half-addressed one of my three rebuttals - nothing indicates that Charles Francis Jenkins invented television on the government dime. And saying you half-addressed it is me being generous - he is given credit for introducing it in America, but he wasn't the first to create it.

take this: a mosquito is capable of walking over a small water patch: can we walk over the ocean?

There has been precedent.
(Although the Sea of Galilee is fresh water while the oceans are salt water, so the lower surface tension can come into play).

That strikes me as an overstatement. Either that, or my search parameters meet my needs better than your search parameters, or some such nonsense.

From time to time, I do notice trash crop up in a search. Sometimes, the first 5 or 10 results are pretty obviously noise accompanying the signal. But, ten pages of results? Never. Not even a full page. Crap - I'm going to check something - some stupid term - UTERUS!

http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=uterus&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

I clicks the first ten links:
wikipedia - not good, not bad, it's informational
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/19263.htm - looks alright, educational, I guess and seems to lead to other educational material (didn't check)
www.medicinenet.com/uterine_cancer/article.htm - looks alright again - educational, but there are links to what look like practitioners sites.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/226-hysterectomies-in-6-months-in-rajasthan/149579-3.html - news article, appears to be about forced sterilization, or unethical doctors
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/17/2171976/south-florida-activists-pen-the.html - 'nother news article about an activist group
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/prolapsed_uterus/article_em.htm - looks like a mirror of medicinenet above - same adverts, different article
http://www.nuff.org/health_theuterus.htm - you'll note I'm not digging deeply - looks like a nonprofit concerned with women's health?
http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/uterinehealth/a/abouttheuterus.htm - looks like what the name implies - educational
http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/uterus.html - lots of links, looks like it's educational, but again, I'm not digging deep here
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=5918 - another medicinenet mirror, this happens to be yet another related article

Somewhere, somehow, perhaps my settings tend to show pertinent results? I don't know - maybe you're trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

In standard usage, saying X is a Y language refers to the canonical implementation of X. So Python is an interpreted language means CPython is interpreted, and doesn't refer to any of the experimental JIT versions.The Python that everyone actually uses is an interpreter that works with an intermediate bytecode representation. The Java everyone has uses a just in time compiler. The difference is kind of hazy sometimes, but there is enough of one to talk meaningfully about Python being interpreted and Java being compiled. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreter_(computing))

I say that in "standard usage," a compiled language is one whose implementation produces an executable, native code file. By that definition, Java is not a compiled language (unless you use GCJ or another non-canonical native code compiler). Which standard are you using?

If you want to say that an "interpreted language" is distinct from a "compiled language," where does that leave Java? Most implementations involve both compilers and interpreters. The most commonly used implementations currently use Java byte code interpreters, with JIT compilers that generate native code from some of the byte code. They are completely functional with the JIT turned off, but can't do anything without their interpreters. While it is useful to describe a language implementation as using a JIT compiler, to simply call it a "compiled language" is not, since an increasingly overwhelming majority of source code is compiled at some point.

Since you mention "canonical implementation," what is the canonical implementation of Java? Is it whatever you can download from Oracle at the moment, OpenJDK, IcedTea, whatever comes with your OS, or something else? The early releases of Java from Sun did not have a JIT compiler. Did Java suddenly transform from being an "interpreted language" to a "compiled language" when Sun started including the HotSpot JIT compiler?

Don't forget to read to the bottom of that PyPy blog article. PyPy is certainly an impressive tool, but you can get a big improvement with something like Cython that lets you give the translator hints. The actual benchmarks:

CPython: 59.593 s
PyPy: 8.947 s
Cython: 3.5 s after adding a few types

Adding a few types in Cython means statically typing a few heavily used variables. His other (approx. 26 s) result with Cython I can only assume involved just Cythoning his straight Python code, which isn't really what Cython is supposed to do. The beautiful part of Cython is that you CAN give it straight Python code, or straight C code, or anything you want in between.

Yes, Cython clearly does have great advantages in speed over pure Python code and I shouldn't have implied that it didn't. I certainly will consider using it if I find some Python code that's running too slowly. However, that blog post also didn't compare an implementation in RPython, PyPy's Python-like language which also executes much faster than full Python.

Verbal contracts are still legally binding: http://biztaxlaw.about.com/b/2009/04/02/are-verbal-contracts-legal.htm

Now, lawyers will have a field day with it, but there is plenty of case law on the subject. Don't promise something to someone and then not deliver or purposely mislead them. There can be hell to pay.

By no means am I advocating China's behavior here, but the US has a rather lengthly track record of similar nasty abuses.

Take for instance, the Tuskegee syphilis study.

Or, if that isnt your cup of tea, and you want 1:1 correlations-- How about the US's forced sterilization procedures it enacted for awhile?

Then you have the whole government neglect in the Monsanto chemical contamination horror-fest...

The real difference between the US and China, is that in the US there is government interest in keeping up appearances. Not so in China.

The 2011 Federal budget is $3.83 trillion. The cuts just made to pass it are $38 billion. It doesn't get much easier to do the math and realize that the cuts are just about exactly 1%, not 0.025%.

Interest on the debt in the 2011 budget is $240 billion. That's 6.3% of the $3.83 trillion budget. But the projected receipts are only $2.627 trillion. The average effective tax rate of Americans in 2010 was 26.9%. The percentage of the average American's income spent on taxes paying debt interest was about 1.7%.

You should see an exorcist to get Glenn Beck's voices out of your head. Or just shut off the TV and do some research for yourself.

I've always thought it rather obvious that Science is a Faith. If a word cannot be used to define itself, than how can Science ever be used to prove itself?

There's this thing called meta-physics and while the "meta" part is allegedly accidental, it is very fitting.

Silly me. Of course, I only speak of some hypothetical dystopian future. I'm not saying there's any observed tendency of things like making unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of fairness, or enabling them to collect millions for indecency violations. And of course this is America, not some dictatorship like Canada where they might ban a song from the airwaves for sarcastically quoting a politically incorrect statement as a way of criticizing it. And the American government would never try to extend its broadcast control into paid content mediums like XM radio or cable tv either. I guess I'm just being paranoid. People who seek and attain authority are usually content with it; at least they don't continually try to expand it. I mean, when a government starts out just establishing official weights and measures, it is nice that they stick with just that, and they don't go expanding their purview to include food labeling, cigarette packaging (and even what can and can't be used as a brand name) or fat content. I'm also glad nobody tries to enact outright bans on fast food.

I'm sure someday excessive regulatory authority could lead to officials engaging in crony capitalism and abusing their authority in ways that happen to favor political allies, exempt favored groups from the more onerous requirements of their regulations, and/or handicap their friends' competitors, but you're right, that's not the kind of thing that regulatory authority has been known to open the door to in the past.

Sorry for bringing my tinfoil hattery into this.

Silly me. Of course, I only speak of some hypothetical dystopian future. I'm not saying there's any observed tendency of things like making unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of fairness, or enabling them to collect millions for indecency violations. And of course this is America, not some dictatorship like Canada where they might ban a song from the airwaves for sarcastically quoting a politically incorrect statement as a way of criticizing it. And the American government would never try to extend its broadcast control into paid content mediums like XM radio or cable tv either. I guess I'm just being paranoid. People who seek and attain authority are usually content with it; at least they don't continually try to expand it. I mean, when a government starts out just establishing official weights and measures, it is nice that they stick with just that, and they don't go expanding their purview to include food labeling, cigarette packaging (and even what can and can't be used as a brand name) or fat content. I'm also glad nobody tries to enact outright bans on fast food.

I'm sure someday excessive regulatory authority could lead to officials engaging in crony capitalism and abusing their authority in ways that happen to favor political allies, exempt favored groups from the more onerous requirements of their regulations, and/or handicap their friends' competitors, but you're right, that's not the kind of thing that regulatory authority has been known to open the door to in the past.

Sorry for bringing my tinfoil hattery into this.

Except that it's not and no one was apparently allowed to turn them on since they aren't fully functional (meaning the tablets they claimed were thinner were non-functional)

http://technologizer.com/2011/03/25/is-samsungs-new-galaxy-tab-fibbing-about-its-figure-and-about-those-galaxy-tab-fans/

The battery is closer to half of Apple's 10 hours (if you turn the brightness down).

http://portables.about.com/od/ipadslatetablets/fr/Review-Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-Android-Powered-Tablet.htm

If something doesn't have a keyboard, I expect it to fit in my pocket. Even my 2005 Sprint Pocket PC (Audiovox 6700) cell phone had a full (and large) keyboard built in.

I can see how a tablet would be cool for playing Scrabble or serving as a picture frame or as a GPS or as an e-reader, but not for composing substantive e-mails or documents. And even for those uses a tablet is good at, its lack of pocketability limits its usefulness.

Using Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts, for an example:

CEO Cleve L. Killingsworth gets 26% raise to $3.5m(citation)

Blue Cross Financial results for 2010: $13.4m profit on operating loss of $100.7m and investment profit of $111.4m

BCBSMA % of revenue going to administrative costs: 10%. (Presumably, this includes CEO wages.)

BCBSMA enrollment: 2.9 million members in December 2010.

The thing to remember about soaking the rich is that you're peeing into a very big pool. If you claw back the entirety of the CEO's salary, each member gets just over $1 more of coverage (or rebate) for that year.

Assume for the sake of argument that there are 30 CxO officers getting that same salary. There almost certainly aren't, but we'll pretend for exaggeration purposes. So to be 20% of your insurance premium, you have to be spending no more than $150/year on health insurance. (~$30/year / 20%).

$150/year health insurance is a fantasy. Average annual premium for an individual is over $2,000, for a family, $6,000. (cite)

Could BCBSMA have used a good portion of that $3.5m for coverage? Sure, they could have. But you would not have noticed the difference.

last i recall, a public figure classifies under celebrity status which protects any member of the public from being sued for publishing content about said public figure. the only way this can get you in trouble is if you publish it with the intent of actual malice. i believe the video was published just to reveal the truth. http://journalism.about.com/od/ethicsprofessionalism/a/libel.htm if i'm wrong, please let me know.

Oh wait, is "make it thinner" innovative?

Sure isn't. That's why I just upgrade my original laptop instead of buying new ones with slimmer form factors and bigger screens. I mean... what a fucking scam... upgrading the battery life, thinning down the form factor and increasing the screen size... and then trying to call that "innovation"

The things these arsehole companies try to pawn off on the savvy consumer these days...

I can relate to this guy as a musician too, the guys that actually make the music are last in line at the money trench. It's a lot like being a developer actually in a funny sort of way. Indie artists are not weeping any tears over the industry one bit, so we really don't give a fsck. Sell your own CD's and T-shirts, the profit margins are WAY better.

Now if only there was some method of changing the parts that are arcane, and should be removed. Some kind of procedure for amending that document.

If only.

Both certificates will generate a site that cannot be read by third-parties. The data sent over an https connection or SSL, will be encrypted regardless of whether the certificate is signed or self-signed. http://webdesign.about.com/od/ssl/a/signed_v_selfsi.htm

> Specifically what about American tax policy is resulting in the income distribution shift?

There are three major factors I'll address here. It is pretty complex for a forum post, but I'll hit the highlights. I'm also going to avoid going into the statistical analysis of whether this is "good" or "bad" -- that will be in the paper I'm working on -- for now I'll just address three of the major mechanisms that are causing the shift.

First is the distinction between legal and economic tax incidence -- specifically as it relates to corporate taxes and capital gains taxes. The Congressional Budget Office uses legal tax incidence, which states that 100% of corporate tax incidence falls on the shareholder. Economic tax incidence -- the math of how the money actually flows -- places the incidence according to the distribution of changing corporate revenue. That is, not 100% on the shareholder.

The problem with the CBOs misrepresentation is that it is the primary basis for our low long-holding (over 1 year) capital gains tax. Capital gains tax distribution is extremely skewed towards the top fractiles of the income curve. This results in a lower economic tax rate than the legal tax rate for the very high income range.

More in tax incidence here, with a section near the end on corporate tax incidence:
http://economics.about.com/od/incometaxestaxcuts/a/economic_inc.htm

Second is the period from 1973 to 1983 -- the high inflation years resulting from the oil embargo and the subsequent questioning of the energy-sensitivity of the American economy. Prior to the late 80's, the tax brackets were not adjusted to match either inflation or changes in the income curve. The income curve based changes are too complex to go into here, but the inflation part is a bit more straightforward.

Inflation, or the decline of the value of the dollar, shifts everyone up the income curve. If the tax brackets are not shifted accordingly, the tax rates for a person at a given percentile in the income ranks increases. Given that from the 1950's to the early 1980's we had a very high top tax rate, this resulted in that highest tax rate shifting down from well above the top 0.5% down to the top 5% or so -- and shifting the other high tax brackets further down the income curve.

There is a table at the following link, showing the difference between 1954 dollars and 2008 dollars, which is not a perfect picture of the high impact range from 1973 to 1983, but it gets the idea across.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code#Progressivity_of_the_1954_Code

In addition to the inhibiting effect of the 1973 to 1983 shift (and the earlier income-curve-shift), the movement of the top tax bracket into the space of the smaller enterprise executive, entrepreneur, and high skill labor resulted in a significant backlash against income taxes by those who previously had been the "American Dream" team -- the broad upper middle class -- a phenomenon largely invented in the US. This lead to the third major element:

The third major factor is the one everyone talks about: Reduction in the top tax rate during Reaganomics. Though the income distribution shift started earlier, Reaganomics propelled the shift at a much faster rate.

Those are the key elements. Again I want to stress that I'm not saying whether it is good or bad -- just identifying three of the major mechanisms that have resulted in the observed increase in concentration.

Just to make it clear that I'm not grinding an axe, though; the empirical data shows that increasing income concentration has been both good and bad, at different times.

If you can't afford them, don't have them.

A) You can keep saying that, but people aren't going to listen.

B) If people did listen, our population growth would crash hard and not walk away. Can you guarantee you'll have a job for the next 16 years so you can support your kid? Well, if you lack psychic powers, do you at least have $220k on hand in your emergency cash supply dedicated to raising the kid and not to be touched for any other emergency? No? Don't have a kid.

No they do not. The oath is absolute to the Constitution, but it is conditional to the president and superior officers under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, those semicolons make it so. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice following unlawful orders is punishable.

Military personnel take the following oaths:

Upon Enlistment: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

Upon commission, "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

Here we go: http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/02/06/ayn-rand-welfare-queen-living-high-on-government-assistance.htm

You're forgetting the part in the GP post where the questions is: What do you do if you lose track of this thing buried 90' below ground? Is it impossible to lose something like that in an earthquake, particularly as the GP pointed out, if the ground it's buried in is subject to liquefaction? At that point, you actually do have to think about rust, and a failure to do so would make you one suck of an engineer.

http://geology.about.com/od/liquefaction/a/liquefaction.htm

Forget widgets. Here's what you need.

• Beer Refrigerator (Kegerator)
• Stout faucet
• Keg Coupler
• Cylinder of Beer Gas from your local Welding Supply Co
• Regulator

And, of course, a keg of stout from your better supplied liquor outlet.

Stout nirvana awaits.

For the people who prefer Guinness, I think the investment for homebrewed draft stout is a wee heavy.

• Beer Refrigerator (Kegerator)
• Stout faucet
• Keg Coupler
• Cylinder of Beer Gas from your local Welding Supply Co
• Regulator

And, of course, a keg of stout from your better supplied liquor outlet.
Stout nirvana awaits.

Retailers sometimes mark up a product 50% over wholesale, they call it keystoning. The companies building the products have to mark them up as well in order to make a profit and cover overhead expenses, new product development and marketing. A 50% total markup is low for a new, expensive product like this because they are hard to sell. You can't just throw out a number for markup and say it's too much, you have to put it into it's proper context. If a commodity manufacturer could sell you something like the $830 iPad for $420, they would. But the reality is that no one has been able to match Apple's price, let alone beat it. The reason is Apple doesn't have to spend as much selling the iPad as the other manufacturers do, they operate their own highly efficient distribution channel, and the benefit from a lot of free advertising in the press, so they don't have to mark it up as much as other retailers have to.

How about doing some research?

I may not have had all the details correct, but as I said, it was something I heard on the radio. To be more accurate (now that I've bothered to look deeper into it) a grandmother in Iraq was part of plan to single out women, have them raped, and then she'd "console" them by talking them into blowing themselves up, rather than letting themselves be murdered by their families for the dishonor of being raped. There are reports of a similar plan being used against boys in Afghanistan where they are raped by men and then giving the option of blowing themselves up and getting into heaven, or being executed for having "participated" in gay sex and going to hell.