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I keep promising myself I won't post to Slashdot, but someone has to say something so inaccurate it really needs a correction. The gerrymandered presidential vote system some Republicans are proposing would take away a lot of votes from the people. Don't believe me? Fine. Here's a clue.

Sheesh.

That, to be clear, is because (like the last Obama-Google+ copout that I remember hearing of (and seeing, in that case)) this is a mutual promotional vehicle for the President and Google's social network.

If it were an actual exercise in journalism or even executive-branch outreach, there'd be more tough questions from the people, more focused answers from POTUS, and less "Look at us, we're YouTube and this is a Google+ hangout! GOOGLE PLUS!!!"-ness. It's grand puffery all around, even by propaganda standards.

Perhaps that was the only way Obama and Larry Page would let YouTube get the former to say anything, but I suspect that I didn't miss much when I missed this.

I think that you're underestimating his acting skills a bit. Some of the original Star Wars scripts would be a slight bit dull if not for Ford's unique "alterations"

For example, changing "I love you too" to I know in Empire. Acting with personality, and knowing when to override the script, is a much bigger skill than being an "Action Hero"

That has always existed, yes. But in parallel with that has been the idea that "the kids should get a real education so they don't end up with a crap job like mine". What if 50% of the working class families reasoned that way in the past, and much fewer of the OP's "recent immigrants" do now?

Why focus on immigrants? It's a major cultural problem even for Americans who have been here for generations. How many parents take their kids to play sports, dance, or other activities for 3-4 hours after school, then travel all over for club events on weekends? The parents are more worried about the kid making it to practice on time so he doesn't ride the bench than whether they finish their homework. At the same time they tell their kids not to believe their science teachers because the Bible is the truth.
I'm pretty sure the lack of math and science education in the worst peforming states - Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Alabama, is not heavily influenced by new immigrants.

Amazon looks at this and says, if I'm going to be taxes as if I have a physical presence, then I might as well have a physical presence, and they have begun building "micro warehouses" in major cities across the country. Now, you will be able to order online, get the vastly superior inventory storage options that a warehouse provides, and get same-day shipping to the customer, so the customer can have the item in hand by the end of the business day.

Best Buy could have had the best of both worlds by setting up something like "BestBuyOnline.com" as a completely separate company, with no point of presence anywhere but states with no sales tax (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon), and then have some sort of deal where the physical Best Buy stores act like Amazon's Locker so that you can still order online and pick up in store. Instead, they have chosen to keep doing business as usual with 20-50% higher prices on many items and hope that they can get back in the game when the less than 15% difference caused by sales tax is removed.

Failing to understand their customer will lead to their quicker downfall, as the one advantage the B&M had (instant gratification) will now be wiped out. So, will I buy from Amazon/Monoprice/Newegg even though I will pay 6% more than I do now? Absolutely, because I will still pay less than at most B&M stores, and will likely have the item in my hands almost as fast.

Disclosure: My wife is a 3rd party merchant through Amazon's Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) program. I guess I'm her "CIO".

The online retail space has been evolving over the past couple of years, as we all can tell. Since 1992, when the US Supreme Court ruled that sales tax could not be collected from a state where there was no physical business presence, online retail has operated in an essentially un-taxed environment. You were always supposed to track online sales made to customers in your own state, but there was a competitive advantage over brick & mortar (BM) retail stores. Companies like Amazon could locate their warehouses in Arizona and do business in California without being taxed in California; the Californian citizens were supposed to calculate their tax and remit it on their tax forms. You can probably see that individual citizens wouldn't report this, and the states felt they were losing out on a lot of revenue.

So, the BM stores lobbied the states to implement collection policies; it would become the online retailer's responsibility to collect the sales tax and remit it to the state. Additionally, many states have been changing their nexus laws, such that 3rd party sellers that use Amazon's warehouses to hold their products, a transaction is taxable if it is shipped from a warehouse to a customer in that state, even if the object owner is out of state. This will make online retail less competitive on the pricing side.

But, what BM retail stores forget is that they have a competitive advantage too, they are located closer to the customer at the point of sale. When someone goes into the store, they can check out and walk out of the store with the item in hand (no 2 day wait on getting your item). Additionally, they can impulse shop from the store's inventory. Amazon looks at this and says, if I'm going to be taxes as if I have a physical presence, then I might as well have a physical presence, and they have begun building "micro warehouses" in major cities across the country. Now, you will be able to order online, get the vastly superior inventory storage options that a warehouse provides, and get same-day shipping to the customer, so the customer can have the item in hand by the end of the business day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/09/kroll-show-drones-video_n_2653407.html

So, if 46% percent of America believe in creationism, then what value is a poll like this?

But when half of your sample can't follow science, your opinion poll is just random noise.

I bet half or more of Americans believe all sorts of stupid shit.

Well, didn't Sarah Palin trademark her name?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/sarah-palin-trademark-name_n_880554.html

See also
https://www.ohiobar.org/forpublic/resources/lawyoucanuse/pages/lawyoucanuse-268.aspx

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/celebrity-trademark-watch-marilyn-elvi-23734/

I didn't realize he had gone after the families of the bad cops. I agree that that is not just wrong, but pretty sick.

Not in America it isn't sick -- certainly not according to Obama administration's explanation for why it killed Al Alwaki's innocent 16yo Colorado born son: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html

So, if it is the position of the President of the United States, that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, how could it be sick for Dorner to believe the same thing? If it is sick for Dorner to believe as Obama does, is Obama sick?

Yes.

I didn't realize he had gone after the families of the bad cops. I agree that that is not just wrong, but pretty sick.

Not in America it isn't sick -- certainly not according to Obama administration's explanation for why it killed Al Alwaki's innocent 16yo Colorado born son: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html

So, if it is the position of the President of the United States, that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, how could it be sick for Dorner to believe the same thing? If it is sick for Dorner to believe as Obama does, is Obama sick?

myself for years (with and without a little 'extra').....pepsico just finally catching on

mixed-up in store at taco bell for breakfast since at least last spring....

http://consumerist.com/2012/05/29/taco-bell-where-mountain-dew-am-is-a-breakfast-drink/

mention of it (as kickstart) going retail here...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/mtn-dew-am-taco-bell-breakfast_n_1847250.html

if these are priced as "energy drinks" (i.e. expensive as hell) and not regular soda pop, I'M NOT BUYING. i miss the orange dew they had awhile back but i won't pay three bucks a can for this.

Ubiquitous surveillance isn't necessarily a goal we want to aim for as a society.

The outrage seen here isn't about surveillance. It's about hating law enforcement.

We are quietly setting ourselves up for open-ended scrutiny by government minders. Most of the same people here today getting wrapped around the axle about drones in this manhunt have nothing at all to say about the surveillance that is implied by Obamacare.

Selective outrage among malcontents. That's all it is.

From the article:
> “We know how to fix many of these problems; we just need to make the decision to do it.”

From this article, U.S. CO2 emissions are at a 20 year low

Combine the two ideas and you have to wonder if there are people with an agenda to kill fracking no matter what the facts are as opposed to ensuring fracking is done sensibly.

...that, contrary to the moon and tides, Bill O'Reilly can actually explain this.

It's not that they aren't competitive. It's that the demand for their entire industry has dropped, and their bosses are actively trying to screw them up.

There's more package traffic than ever. What has dropped is the sending of junk mail (in letter and catalog form). What has increased is the sending of packages. USPS has now upped its rates on those, and can't even do that right. Amazon just changed our local delivery from USPS to Fedex, and according to the user support person I talked to, they'd had a lot of issues with USPS. Packages go missing on a routine basis, where they don't with UPS and FedEx.

In the meantime, let's go down to our local post office. At any hour of the day, there is one person on duty at the desk. Laughter, music and conversation flow from the back room. Checking my PO box, I refile yet another two misdirected envelopes.

The problem with USPS is that it can't reduce its cost. There are many anti-business factors here, but the two biggest are (a) unions and (b) feelgood government regulation.

Here are mainstream published sources that agree with me and which would be voted -1, Troll here on Slashdot by the feelgood social emotions hive mind:

Free the Post Office!, by Joe Nocera

Postal Service To Default On $5.5 Billion Payment As Congress Heads Into Recess, by Dave Jamieson

Notice how these are both consistent with what I posted.

I realize that unions and affirmative action are sacred cows around here, but from a business standpoint, that's nonsense. Unions raise costs and make it impossible to fire employees who need to go. Affirmative action makes it impossible to fire employees who are from any protected group, which includes homosexuals, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, gender minorities (women/trans), and probably many more. Attacking affirmative action does not say "these people are incompetent," which would require all of them to be incompetent, but by the same token it says that neither are they all competent, and we need the ability to drop the incompetent ones.

This society does itself a disfavor by producing myths and illusions that are then viewed as an attack on The People if they are broached. This makes us just as much lock-step conformist as a totalitarian regime, and makes us unable to view the realistic solutions we need to in order to save things like our Postal Service.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-cancer-fraud-university-research_n_1273264.html

Yeah that's been done.

You're so, like, subversive.

Yeah. And the reason why there is a declining number of blacks seen in science and math, that's just because white boys enjoy that kind of work/challenge. Why is thinking that there is a fundamental difference between the colors and that they are better suited for different hobbies/challenges/activities so wrong? Why do we push for equality for equality's sake? It doesn't mean that black mathematicians are stupider or worse than whites, it just means they think differently.

Or, you know ... it might, just might, be due to something else. But let's just accept that it's innate, because hey, vive la difference, right?

How about illegal appointments

But I'm told they are ok as well since Obama did it.

Yes, the $22.5 billion profit came from AIG's stock price going up, because AIG's looking like it's a viable company that's doing just fine again. No, it's not because the government's sneakily manipulating its own balance sheet (this time). AIG's stock price went up along with the whole market in general because the economy's doing better. This is a result of everything the government and private companies are doing, including stimulus, investments, and regular growth.

The AIG stock was profitable because the recovery program worked.

The founders of the United States banned a state religion in the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof") because they realized churches were competing power structures.

Nowadays, we have the new church, corporations and specifically corporations of the financial sector.

You really want to know who runs this country? Here are four data points from which you can draw your own conclusions:

1) The head of Goldman Sachs goes before Congress and admits he was selling bad products to clients, products which he was betting against. A classic swindle. Nothing ever came of it. Or any of the other revelations.

2) There was a PBS show called "The Untouchables" which chronicled why Wall Street executives were never prosecuted for fraud.

3) However, someone you'd think was powerful and connected, a former Michigan state Supreme Court justice is facing jail time for lying to a bank which she was working with in order to get a short sale completed for a house she owned. Her crime? She tried to hide another asset, a paid off house, from the bank.

4) Another person you'd think is powerful and connected, the chairman of the Washington DC City Council, Kwame Brown, was removed from office and convicted of a felony for lying about his income on a pair of loan applications, totaling around 200,000 dollars. Absolute small potatoes. Also a very common practice in the mid-to-late 2000s, on home loans.

Noticing a trend? If you're a financial sector executive, you run the show. It doesn't matter that you've swindled billions of dollars from the country, nothing is going to happen to you.

However, If you cross the financial sector, even over relatively trivial matters and sums, it won't matter if you're the elected head of the city council or a justice on the state supreme court, you will be removed from office and suffer significant consequences.

The financial sector runs this country.

Basic "student" visa, yes. However, there are exceptions/special cases that allow work outside the school. One whole school in the SF bay area was shut down for visa fraud; see this article and this article.

First: To label any government monopoly as "non-profit" is misleading; it only means that they aren't incorporated, really, and have no investors to grovel to. Most government-run monopolies are behemoths that only passably serve customers if all profits are channeled into large parasitic private interests - most of which wouldn't exist if the government hadn't bloated them to gross extremes. Example: the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, education, agriculture, energy, telecommunications, etc. etc.

Second: you seem to largely believe that I'm a "Bug". Let me clear the record: I'm not a gold bug. Tying any currency to a single commodity is disastrous, and the reason for a lot of our problems in the late 19th century. The silver act I was talking about? It put us on a de facto gold standard, and that is what ruined us. Multiple commodities - and I mean 50+ strong, stable commodities (think energy, or agricultural staples, or heavy metals - or all of the above) - would tie currency into the very web that it is supposed to represent, preventing shocks and fluctuations without apocalyptic economic conditions (in which case, we'd all have bigger problems to worry about anyway).

Third: I'd like to dispel some misconceptions: Glass-Steagall wasn't completely repealed, and those parts of it that were had absolutely nothing to do with the financial crisis.

Hoarding does one thing: it allows prices to rise. This only becomes a problem when suddenly someone is dumping things back into the market. However, this isn't a problem if you have a currency based on multiple, stable commodities. Hoarding would only cause a rise in a particular market (and a loss to the hoarders), while providing an advantage to competitors that use the rise of demand to elbow into the market. Hoarding doesn't make sense to any businessman. Anywhere.

Debt-to-asset ratios are nothing to the Fed. The expansion of their books? That's like writing a ton of zeroes at the end of their listed bonds, and for some reason they don't think this will create wild changes when those bonds spread around... sigh...

Systems only wipe out everyone in interdependent webs of finance. If you have your own backed currency with controls based on contracts with private interests, your currency is essentially tied to its own micro-economy, and truly earth-shattering effects would have to be felt across the board in order to shake it.

If our universities are producing engineers with much worse scores than our counterparts, then I will worry.

Umm.. the US does not seem to be producing[0] engineers like other countries[1] are. You could probably start that worrying you speak of.

[0] - www.freep.com/article/20121017/BUSINESS01/310170028/Reuss-U-S-lags-in-producing-engineering-grads
[1] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/polands-universities-turn_n_2285849.html

Obama renewed the Patriot Act: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/27/patriot-act-extension-signed-obama-autopen_n_867851.html . I couldn't believe my ears, but he did.

Yes, let's step back into the real world:

1. Being held liable for guest's actions: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/24/unsecured-wifi-child-pornography-innocent_n_852996.html

TL;DR - Man was accused of downloading child porn after a neighbor used his AP to do so. He was cleared after some time, but not after being raided by SWAT; arrested; and having his name and reputation smeared all over the media.

2. ISP TOS: http://ww2.cox.com/aboutus/policies.cox Part 1 "[...] You may not use the Service to: [...] Resell or redistribute the Service to any third party via any means including but not limited to wireless technology." Break the TOS and I break the contract, which is terms for Cox to drop my service. Get another ISP? Well, maybe you have a surfeit of broadband choices in SF, but in my neck of the woods, there's only two -- and the other has the exact same TOS clause.

Every bit of this comes back to my main point. There are risks and rewards associated with running an open AP. I've detailed the risks. Are the rewards worth taking those risks? For you -- yes. For me -- no.

However, the law says that you must inform users they are being tracked.

Which is the case here.

It's an astroturf movement. Apple getting at Google for Android.

[...] PS to use the BBC website, you are required to accept cookies or the site won't work. Mostly for technical reasons, but you still have to allow cookies.

They DO tell you "We use cookies" and that is all the law required.

It was a pretty useless law.

Amazing that your post is rated so how while being so wrong. First of all, there is no information to the user that they are being tracked. The BBC doesn't require you to allow third party cookies to work. Google and assorted Advertising scum does. And remind me why Google has to pay a record fine to the FTC for doing this (which the summary so cleverly avoids telling by calling it a settlement)

And? It's THEIR money. As long as they earn it legally, pay the taxes and fees that are due, comply with all other laws ( antiterrorism, money laundering, etc[1]), what's the big problem with them sending THEIR money to their families and friends elsewhere? Especially if you're not going to let their families and friends come over.

I suppose you only buy products that are >50% USA made to prevent most of your precious money from leaking out of your precious country?

[1] If you want to complain about people sending money out of the USA, you should complain about the Banks (Wachovia, HSBC, Bank of America, etc) illegally helping mobsters launder billions of money. Mexico is in a shittier state than it would be if the banks didn't help send billions of money to Mexico and help fund the drug mob armies and wars there. And the crappier Mexico is, the more Mexicans want to leave Mexico and go to the USA. Whereas if an illegal Mexican worker in the USA sends money to his family in Mexico, that makes their life less shitty and they are less likely to try to move to the USA.

You might also give the US Federal Reserve a call. For some reason they gave trillions of dollars worth of cushy loans to _foreign_ banks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/02/us-federal-reserve-bailouts-multinationals
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/federal-reserve-gaddafi-owned-bank-disclosures_n_843400.html

Lending money at low interest rates is practically the same as printing money. And that affects YOUR money. Printing money = inflation = making your money worth less compared to the goods you want to buy.

You're on the wrong website, dude.

You belong over here.

Here's another Taibbi explanation of why you should care:

Taibbi said in the "Democracy Now!" interview that ordinary Americans are victims of the Libor scandal because lower interest rates probably contributed to forcing state and local governments to slash spending.

"If you live in a town that had a budget crisis, that had to lay off firemen or teachers or policemen, or couldn't provide services or textbooks in their schools, you know, that might be due to this," Taibbi said. "Basically, every city and town in America, to say nothing of the rest of the world, has investments that are pegged to Libor."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/matt-taibbi-libor-cnbc-larry-kudlow_n_1688797.html

I guess you're extremely ill informed about the Taliban and the war in general. SAM's aren't improvised explosive devices. The US military does extremely well against the Taliban when the Taliban are on their own. But most of the time they're hiding among civilians, which makes it a much tougher job for the military.

"But as mesmerizing an expose as the book is, I doubt that this will be more than a speed bump to Scientology's growth and fund raising."

Scientology stopped growing a long time ago. All of their claims about them being "fastest growing religion" are lies, pure and simple.

They reached their peak in the 70's and early 80's. After Hubbard died and Miscavige took over, their membership's been declining steadly ever since. Ask anyone who's been around the orgs in the 70's and 80's. Look up the service completion stats in the Auditor magazine from that time period and compare to recent numbers.

Miscavige is no Hubbard, he doesn't have a cult leader's charisma or reality distortion field. However, he turned out to be very talented as a brutal dictator and a bully. He can put used car salesmen to shame when it comes to high-pressure sales tactics.

So while Miscavige has been unable to inspire people or attract new followers, he has used his talents to beat the staff into submission and extract/extort more and more money from the existing public. But lately with the Super Power scam he's taken it to a new level, and things are so bad that even diehard loyalists are speaking out.

Debbie Cook (longtime Captain of Flag) complains about the relentless money-grubbing and tells the Scientology public to disobey Miscavige's non-Hubbard-policies.

Jan. 2013 - High level public members Luis and Rocio Garcia sue Scientology for fraud

I read somewhere that it doesn't actually improve the quality of your sleep. Plus. Wouldn't you wake up with a hangover?

It does not matter if he did not agree with the laws, they were on the books and he broke them.

You're really out of touch. There are so many laws on the books covering so many esoteric areas, laws which have no "intent" requirement, that nobody even knows how many laws there are. Ignorance of the law is no excuse but it is humanly impossible to know all the laws (classic catch 22), and since there is strict liability in many situations, your good intentions don't matter. The ludicrous result is that what should have gotten Swartz a slap on the wrist, maybe a $100 fine, 30 days in jail, and a misdemeanor was charged as it was. This makes it financially and logically impossible to have a jury trial. But whatever, in your black and white world, he broke the law. Remember that the next time you roll through a stop sign. I know it isn't like raping your neighbor, but who knows, it could be punishable by a fine in your local government, and 10 years in Fed's system -- nobody can really tell you an answer to that one way or the other. Ultimately, this is about the Feds being able to take out any person they dislike. The charged crime need not be related to their hatred, but it will work just fine.

And the problem is that it's becoming nearly impossible to know what the law actually is. The U.S. Constitution outlines just three federal crimes -- treason, counterfeiting, and piracy. Various projects have tried to count the number of federal criminal laws passed since, and many have simply given up. But by most estimates, there are at least 4,000 separate criminal laws at the federal level, with another 10,000 to 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally.

In his most recent book, the civil libertarian and defense attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that most Americans now unknowingly commit about three felonies per day.

https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/myths-of-the-criminal-justice-system_n_879768.html

Welcome to stage 3 of AGW denial: It's taking place, it's us, but we don't know how bad it is. You're about in the middle of where the US is, and ahead of a few stragglers like Watts who still vacillate between stage 1 and stage 2. Questions 1 through 3 have been answered at nauseam, so I'll leave you to google that for about 30 seconds. As for question 4, here's a more recent study on it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/curbing-climate-change-world-economic-forum_n_2521275.html. There are a number of different studies on this, including some done by the US and the UK government, all of which come to different numbers as for cost. All of them pretty much agree though that it is cheaper to mitigate CO2 emissions than to just continue with our current approach.

What strikes me even more is the fact that it was the Librarian of Library of Congress who made this a crime. Seriously? The Librarian? It sort of sheds light on Harvey Silverberg's estimate that people commit three Federal felonies per day -- unwittingly but intent is no longer a factor.

See myth three: https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/myths-of-the-criminal-justice-system_n_879768.html

I though the current Uncle Tom Obama approved definition is 'No Permanent Organ Damage'. He must have approved it because there has been not attempt to prosecute for the repeated practice.

You're wrong. There was a policy of torture from the previous administration. This was rescinded. What is true that Obama explicitly decided he was not going to prosecute any of the past torture. Example article here. I could understand that point of view, and easily debate both sides, but to say that Obama didn't recognize what went on before as torture is wrong.

Notice how you're calling him a criminal, when he hasn't been convicted of anything? Do you feel bad about that, or do you think this was a cut and dry case and he was clearly guilty of _______ (what was he charged with, anyway? breaking into the wiring closet, sure, but wire fraud? what the hell is that? how is downloading JSTOR articles wire fraud? please, enlighten me, since you seem to know he's guilty of that already.)

You make it sound like the easiest thing in the world, admitting guilt to a crime in exchange for not spending your life in jail.

Maybe someday you'll be past the grand jury, the prosecutor threatening you with 50 years for a crime you didn't commit, dangling a 1 year plea bargain in front of your greasy face.

And the people around you will say it's obvious, you should take the plea bargain.

And you'll say you're innocent, but they'll call you stupid for saying that, because if you keep saying that you'll go to trial with the mandatory minimums and the 50 years and the lawyer's costs, and FFS why don't you just admit to the crime you didn't commit and serve your 1 year of unjust prison?

Spend just a bit of time reading up on mandatory minimums and how they remove that small but important part of the criminal justice system:

the trial

and replace it with the simple test of (a) grand jury and (b) browbeating defendants.

Try

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21570742-how-mandatory-minimum-sentences-distort-plea-bargaining-thumb-scale

or

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-richman-cohen/medical-marijuana-montana_b_2095609.html

etc etc

You make it sound so neat and clean, giving up your right to a trial because you're being threatened with life in jail.

Abrams to direct next SW? Fuck. What's next, another hack to direct Interstellar? Oh wait ...

If Abrams is running the show, they are going to have to rename it to Lens-Flare Wars!

How would you respond if a billionaire offered you, say, $100 million to fund a lab and give you the means to create a chickensaurus with one condition: They get the first able specimen to release it on a reserve, hunt it and kill it? I know it sounds absurd but I wouldn't put it past the GoDaddy CEO.

International treaties is the key. Why do you think all copyright legislation has started as treaties? Because no voter in sane mind would force such law upon it's country. But voter doesn't understand, doesn't bother him - at least it's regular thinking of politicians these days. So they agree to treaty, then just come home and say "we done anything we could, but this must be a law now".

And? If, by popular demand, the law is amended so that gets incompatible with the signed treaty, you think is impossible for the country to walk back from that treaty? Think again

Another important distinction between a treaty and a conventional contract is that a treaty lacks any enforcement teeth.

It is not like US never broke a treaty.

tech vocational / apprenticeship are needed.

There are some good mixed vocational / apprenticeship things out there but they only 2 year plans. There is to much put on to the university system and 4+ year degrees.

There are lot's of talk of skill gaps with Colleges and part of it has to do with the system being setup to drive people into teaching and not job skills. Also there is a lot of filler and fluff classes out there that are forced to to people going to university (ok some of them are hold overs from the pass but for some one who wants real jobs skills they are worthless topics that eat up time and costs) University used to be the place for rich kids (going back to the start of them) and not about job training. Over time they did become about stuff like doctors and other higher level theory. But we have come to far with them.

We are putting to much into going to University at the cost of vocational / apprenticeships that are better setup for getting skills. Tech schools are roped into the University system and that holds them back.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-selingo/unemployment-skills-gap_b_1880423.html

including 176 children

Correction: 178 children, and that was as of August, 2012.

(and for entertainment value, let's see how many 'flamebait' points the above post gets from those who can't stand that 'their team' kills children).

Nancy Black may be a better poster girl: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120803gw.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/nancy-black-marine-protection_n_1189118.html

Dale Carson points out there are many, many cases of this going on all the time, but it's been under the public radar. Most of these people get eaten up by the system and no one cares except their family who by then are bankrupted by the lawyers if they could afford them. Public Defenders don't have time for these so-called petty cases. No one else cares so journalists don't even consider it newsworthy. You won't even read about it. Aaron is an exception.

The problem here is Stephen Heymann. He is the real zealous procsecutor here

He has been on a crusade for years for "computer crime" juicy publicty

I remember about a week or so ago Anonymous leaked some long diatribe written by Stephen Heymann about lowering the bar on what defines computer crimes etc. I can't find it now. This guy is on a crusade to make a name for himlself.

They spend 19x more on advertising than they do on R&D, so 95% of what those high prices are amortizing is advertisng, not R&D.

Of course they do.

Why bother doing your own R&D when you can just patent the R&D done by universities and public institutions.

They spend 19x more on advertising than they do on R&D, so 95% of what those high prices are amortizing is advertisng, not R&D.

Hey, if you've been watching the publishing industry lately, it looks like the publishers have been trying to remove simple math from their own industry!

Ebooks where the majority of publishing-related costs disappear, but where the publishers keep a larger percentage of the revenue from sales and pay authors a smaller percentage...

Trying to make it so that textbooks are no longer reusable, while attacking the used-book submarket...

Oh, and this gem...prosecuting someone for reselling the exact same book that was published for sale in another country.