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Atheists are absolutely not knowledgeable about "many" religions, or even one. Briefly browsing the wikipedia page doesn't count.

I'm sorry, but you're completely and demonstrably wrong. Studies have shown atheists to be the most knowledgeable about religion: see here. Some quick items from the study: atheists top the religious knowledge survey, with an average of 20.9 correct responses out of 32, followed by Jews and Mormons with 20.5 and 20.3 respectively. White mainline protestants only managed 15.8. Atheists score second only to Jews in the knowledge of world religions, and far above white evangelicals. Also, an interesting quote from here:

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

  "These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

>>There are many real world places that won't allow you to enter with a gun.

Yes, it's called "California."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/10/local/la-me-brown-guns-20111011

>>They are not in violation of the 2nd amendment

Yes, it is.

I ANAL though.

Maybe it's not the automobile, but Los Angeles that is unsustainable...

You're only saying that because LA has a 70 year backlog of sidewalk repairs http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/local/la-me-sidewalks-20111128 and is looking to borrow $1.6billion (with a B) for repairs while teetering on bankruptcy http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/villaraigosa-warns-of-bankruptcy-if-la-council-blocks-power-rate-hike.html ...

Maybe it's not the automobile, but Los Angeles that is unsustainable...

You're only saying that because LA has a 70 year backlog of sidewalk repairs http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/local/la-me-sidewalks-20111128 and is looking to borrow $1.6billion (with a B) for repairs while teetering on bankruptcy http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/villaraigosa-warns-of-bankruptcy-if-la-council-blocks-power-rate-hike.html ...

"Already demonstrated" how? To my knowledge, NO app has ever been remotely killed on iOS, though they have said they have the ability to do so. However, both Amazon Kindle (with the unlicensed "1984" edition) and Google (repeatedly to nuke apps that turned out to be trojans) have done so.

It's been demonstrated by the guy who found the URL for doing it. I'm not sure if he had to add a fake root certificate to the phone to do it though. I also thought they had done it with the fake driving license app but I can't find a way to prove that even after having searched hard so you are probably right and I should have been clearer and Apple has never actually used this feature for its intended use.

And then, when the people start to band together and unite to recall the governor and the rest of the filth following the rules of recall here in Wisconsin,.

I realize that recall is in the rules, but you guys have to be the sorest losers ever. "We lost, but let's not wait for the next election. Let's start organizing a do-over right away and force our opponants to campaign for the length of their term." Oh yeah, that's a recipe for good government.

well hell, let's just change the rules! Let's redraw the districts to be totally favorable to the Republican party and then sue to try and force the recalls to happen following the new districts! And if that doesn't disenfranchise enough people, let's pass a voter-ID law so that students can't vote (they're all dirty socialists anyway, amirite?) and not only that, but the elderly, gotta keep them from voting, too, since they're furious at Paul Ryan and the Republican plan to destroy Medicare.,.

There are rules for redrawing districts. It isn't just done randomly. Of course, both parties try to draw districts that favor themselves while they're in power. You're pissed that the Republicans didn't just leave the Democrat-favoring scheme in place, but had the sense to revise it while they could. Cry me a river--that's not disenfranchisement. And a voter-ID law--what? students don't carry school photo IDs and/or driver's licenses? You can't cash a check or board a plane without ID, but a voter-ID law is "disenfranchisement"? Sounds like Democrats *really* hate anti-fraud measures. I wonder why.... And you don't explain how the elderly are being kept from voting. They can always get IDs if they need them. And I'm not even sure that the Republicans are frightened of the elderly. In case you didn't notice, Obamacare raided Medicare badly and the elderly are terrified of it--and angry at Obama and the Democrats for it.

That laser focus on jobs, meanwhile Wisconsin has lost jobs for the last 5 months, Scott Walker says "no thanks" to a billion dollars in Federal Aid to beef up our rail infrastructure prompting that money to go to California instead (Here's an op-ed from the L.A. Times rubbing it in.)

Living here in Wisconsin for the last 10 years, I never expected the depths to which politics would sink here in this state. Scott "dropped the bomb" all right, they're on a scorched-earth campaign. If there is civil war in this country, I fully expect Wisconsin will be where the opening shots ring out. Everyone is at each other's throats now.

At least the Canadian border is close by. If the shit truly hits the fan, I'm throwing the family in the car, running north, and claiming refugee status.

Obama and the lousy National economy are as much to blame for the ongoing jobs loss as anything Walker has done. And turning down Federal money-wasters like rail projects is entirely proper. If he had accepted the money, you'd probably be criticizing him instead as a hypocrite--and rightly so. The "civil war" in Wisconsin is being promoted almost entirely by Government "Unions" who have managed to get benefits and contract terms over the years that private employees could only dream about. Now that a reasonably responsible administration is in place, they are trying to rein this in and bargain reasonable terms. As you said, the unions have decided that a "scorched Earth" policy is the reasonable response. They will fight to the death before giving up any of their taxpayer-funded largesse.

You are clearly a Democratic ideologue or extremely credulous or both. In any case, feel free to jump into your car and leave. Don't let the border gate hit your ass on the way out.

And then, when the people start to band together and unite to recall the governor and the rest of the filth following the rules of recall here in Wisconsin, well hell, let's just change the rules! Let's redraw the districts to be totally favorable to the Republican party and then sue to try and force the recalls to happen following the new districts! And if that doesn't disenfranchise enough people, let's pass a voter-ID law so that students can't vote (they're all dirty socialists anyway, amirite?) and not only that, but the elderly, gotta keep them from voting, too, since they're furious at Paul Ryan and the Republican plan to destroy Medicare. That laser focus on jobs, meanwhile Wisconsin has lost jobs for the last 5 months, Scott Walker says "no thanks" to a billion dollars in Federal Aid to beef up our rail infrastructure prompting that money to go to California instead (Here's an op-ed from the L.A. Times rubbing it in.)

Living here in Wisconsin for the last 10 years, I never expected the depths to which politics would sink here in this state. Scott "dropped the bomb" all right, they're on a scorched-earth campaign. If there is civil war in this country, I fully expect Wisconsin will be where the opening shots ring out. Everyone is at each other's throats now.

At least the Canadian border is close by. If the shit truly hits the fan, I'm throwing the family in the car, running north, and claiming refugee status.

Well I'm sure *something* happened, but yeah, it was probably written down years later, and obviously with plenty of mistakes, omissions and embellishments. This is pretty typical of war stories to this day.

It would take some serious kool-aide...

Don't 'drink the Kool-Aid'

The original LA Times article says the drone belongs to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. No military involved.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,72624,full.story

It's poorly identified at the story link. The original can be found at latimes.com.

Jury nullification is also a great way to enact tyranny of the majority. How many white people went to jail for lynching black people in the thirties? And then there's this case where it's kind of hard to avoid the implication that the jury thought it was okay to kill gays.

Jury nullification yes, can be used to fight oppression by the system, like the Fugitive Slave Law. But it's also great for trial-by-popularity-contest. The entire point of jury nullification is "screw the rules, I'm going to do what's 'right'". Sometimes that works, but jury nullification makes no distinction between good parts of the system, and bad parts.

Many parts of the system are there to protect the fair interests of justice. Juries can nullify them too. The rules over what evidence is admissible, for example - most juries aren't physically sequestered in a room with no phone and no internet the entire duration of the trial. They can easily search the internet for all kinds of half-baked "evidence". The judge is supposed to keep all that out of court, because it's unverified, or scientifically dubious, etc.

Jury nullification is an incredibly dangerous thing. It is not justice at all, because it is fundamentally capricious in nature. Justice is supposed to be the same for everybody.

...b4 I am too old to launch...

You are never too old to launch . . . http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-space-burial-20111209,0,993488.story . . .

Ask the ashes of "Scotty" . . . they almost made it . . .

Well looks like you called it correctly. Iran appears to have already blocked it barely a day later.

Multiple source for your browsing pleasure:
NYT: Iran Blocks American ‘Virtual Embassy’
Radio Free Europe: Iran Blocks U.S. 'Virtual Embassy'
LA Times: Access to U.S. 'virtual embassy' blocked in Iran
Fox News: Iran Blocks New U.S. 'Virtual Embassy'

Funny how little details like that can make a story seem more sensational: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/mythbusters-cannonball.html

RIM also announced that Mobile Fusion is in early beta testing and will be released in "late March". Not trying to flame here, but does anyone seriously believe RIM's ship date projections any more? Have any of their devices or software packages shipped on schedule in the last two years? Here's hoping that they've learned how to calculate an appropriate Scotty Factor.

Anything on EA's conditions?
I haven't heard anything about the working conditions at EA aside from jokes.

I haven't seen much lately, but in 2004 it was alleged that EA sucked the soul (or at least any semblance of work-life balance) out of its employees... http://news.cnet.com/Electronic-Arts-faces-overtime-lawsuit/2100-1043_3-5450316.html

They settled a couple of years ago for millions, no word on whether conditions have improved. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/26/business/fi-ea26

Fun Fact: The Solyndra loans were approved of during the Bush administration. Have fun with your partisan pissing contest.

I'm sorry, you seem a bit short on facts. Here are some facts from the left leaning New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Preliminary approval under Bush, final approval under Obama. Then financial analysis was skipped under Obama and warnings were ignored. Plus Solyndra's owner was a top Obama campaign contributor. Plus the Obama administration structured the deal so that investors would get paid before taxpayers if the company failed.

"George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., was a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and the backer of a foundation that is Solyndra’s leading investor ... during the period when Solyndra’s loan guarantee was under review and management by the Energy Department, the company spent nearly $1.8 million on Washington lobbyists, employing six firms with ties to members of Congress and officials of the Obama White House. None of the other three solar panel manufacturers that eventually got federal loan guarantees spent a dime on lobbyists."

""“It was alarming,” said Frank Rusco, a program director at the Government Accountability Office, which found that Energy Department preliminary loan approvals — including the one for Solyndra — were granted at times before officials had completed mandatory evaluations of the financial and engineering viability of the projects. “They can’t really evaluate the risks without following the rules.” The Energy Department’s senior staff has acknowledged in interviews the intense pressure from top Obama administration officials to rush stimulus spending out the door. “We had to knock down some barriers standing in the way to get these projects funded,” Matthew C. Rogers, the Energy Department official overseeing the loan guarantee program, said in March 2009, just days before Solyndra got its provisional loan commitment. Mr. Rogers said Energy Secretary Steven Chu had been personally reviewing loan applications and urging faster action on them.""
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/us/politics/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?pagewanted=all

"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB."
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/26/nation/la-na-energy-loans-20110927

"Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-obama-and-rahm-emanuel-pushed-to-spotlight-energy-company/2011/10/07/gIQACDqSTL_story.html

They are critical of the people behind it, but they still support it: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/04/opinion/la-ed-train-20111104

Sorry, boneheaded the link about the results of the Mythbusters bike versus car episode in my original post.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/06/local/la-me-fullerton-20111106
Don't worry their pensions are safe even if its permanent damage.

Microsoft are already aware of sex-themed software for Kinect, and have rejected licensing and support for that purpose. As others have pointed out ad-nauseum, it's very hypocritical - You can massacre a whole room full of innocent bystanders in Modern Warfare 2, but you can't pinch a virtual tittie?

It's a shame, because Microsoft and its licensees are missing out on so much potential revenue. Your idea would be well-suited to those minigames between stages where both players have to hammer both buttons as fast as they can, and the first one to inflate the balloon or destroy the car won. Except, instead of pressing the buttons, you're jacking off. Against another man, who is standing right next to you. That would be a cool arcade.

Maybe the guy cares about the environment.

A recent Mythbusters episode says Motorcycles are pretty dirty.

In the United States, it's clear that the government just doesn't care about false advertising any more

Wow, you are very misinformed. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Example 4. Example 5. All this year (most in the last month), all from the FTC, all just a small fraction of recent efforts. There are also several other federal agencies and at least 50 state agencies that go after false advertising.

You mean like the deep solar minimum of 2008/2009?

Yeah, kinda like that. 2008 2009 2010

Here's why:

Take a look around your house and count the items that were manufactured in the USA. In mine, it's the toilet! Imagine, the toilet bowl. Everything else was manufactured in Mexico, Taiwan, Canada or China.

Now, there will be those who say: "Well, but that stuff was designed in the USA." To them I say, "nonsense."

Being designed in the USA is almost irrelevant if we spend all our cash abroad, servicing our debt. Banks are able to make profits because they 'enslave" us in debts and fees. That's how they make money. With our spending getting out of hand, foreign powers will only have to sit back and live on the interest we as a nation pay them while servicing our debt. It's insane.

That's how American academics dismissed the Japanese in the 70s and guess what, in a few years, you could not find an American (100%) made product.

We were a once proud nation with corporations like Zenith. It was the inventor of subscription TV and the remote control in addition to being one of the first to develop HDTV in USA. Where is it now? History.

Our car brands are non sellers abroad. Talk of GM and Asians will laugh at you. That's where the market is at the moment.

The latest frontier in electronics in the OLED with the AMOLED variation. No American patent is relied on in OLED technology. It's all Korean. How did it start? Yes, factories moved abroad...then the cash followed.

It's bad folks. When it comes to airplanes, an increasing percentage of these are foreign made. The new Boeing 787 Dream-liner has at least 30% foreign components. These will increase and when they get to more than 48% all manufacturing followed by research will be abroad.

I am waiting to see where America still shines. Worst of all, we're broke!

Maybe then don't smoke joint?

I'll bet you'd tell Ai Weiwei, "Maybe then don't make subversive art?"

Sony was quite public about it, what are you talking about?

They may have been public about the fact that there was a breach, but they were incompetent in their handling of it. And based on my e-mail archives, they never fully informed their customers of the extent to which the intruders compromised their servers. Specifically, Sony only sent out two e-mails related to the PSN outage to all of their customers: one on April 28th to say that accounts had been compromised, but that there was no evidence of credit cards having been compromised at that time, and another on June 5th to announce the Welcome Back package. From what I can tell, there was NEVER a mass e-mail to inform their PSN customers that credit card information had, in fact, been stolen, nor did they ever send out a mass e-mail to announce their identity theft protection program (or maybe I just didn't get it because I signed up for it before they sent it?).

Here's a complete timeline including other announcements besides e-mails:
January or February 2011 - Sony is told by security experts specifically why their server security sucks
Early April - Various PSN outages, some because of planned Anonymous DDoS attacks
April 17th-19th - PSN compromised (source: Sony's April 28th e-mail)
April 21st - PSN goes down as Sony realizes something is up
April 23rd - Sony blames outage on external intrusion; makes no mention of compromised accounts
April 24th - Sony starts "rebuilding" PSN after attack; still no mention of compromised accounts
April 26th - Sony admits that someone may have some account information for their 77M accounts
April 27th - Sony confirms that some data was stolen
April 28th - First e-mail to customers gets sent; says there is no evidence yet of credit cards having been compromised
May 1st - Sony confirms that 10M users had credit cards compromised; promises PSN up by week's end (spoiler: it didn't happen); doesn't send an e-mail
May 2nd - SOE goes down after they realized it was compromised too
May 3rd - Sony admits 24.6M SOE accounts were compromised
May - Lots more drama as Sony makes promises to have PSN up but then reneges on them repeatedly
June 2nd - PSN finally comes back up
June 5th - Second e-mail to customers gets sent; tells them that the Welcome Back package is now available; makes no mention of credit cards, identity theft, or how to sign up for their free identity theft protection program

I'd hardly call it a model to follow, and I'm still hoping that Valve will make a point of e-mailing their users in the next few days. It's fine to take a few days for something like this while you track down the details, but it does need to get done properly at some point. Sony never did it properly.

Last week Time Warner announced third-quarter profits of $822 million. If the little people working on Warner films (i.e. those who aren't stars or executives) aren't being paid enough, and are "suffering", it isn't because of copyright infringement. And that's before you take into account the wonder of Hollywood accounting. The little person is likely to be screwed whatever happens, if their employer is bringing in $3bn a year and doesn't have a conscience.

If the video had shown her inconsolable for 20 minutes after the beating, hardly able to move because of the pain, I'd be more inclined to feel some sympathy for her. As it was, she had a dick father, and a dick mother, but as soon as they got out of the room, she was cool as a cucumber, walking around like the beating was nothing to her.

I'm sorry to hear that you were maltreated so badly. But don't jump to conclusions too lightly, even emotional abuse without any physical harm can scar people for life. I suffered emotional abuse and neglect at home, and was physically bullied by classmates for 5 years. While I got used to just ignore the pain after a beating and go on as if nothing happened, it took me, looking back, about 18 years after it stopped to get what I know now were very obvious PTST symptoms out of my system. It never seemed a big deal at the time because it was dwarfed by what the emotional rejection I got from my parents did to me. I'm nearly 50 now and still working on leaving that behind me.

Some time back I talked to a guy about my own age about this and about his past. He suffered 10 years of frequent sexual abuse by both his parents in his childhood. We were both surprised at how very similar the effects on our lives had been.

Recent studies have found that physical and emotional pain, especially social rejection, show a large amount of overlap in how the brain handles them. Here is one of them. Don't think that the abuse needs to be physical to cause pain, and don't think you can judge the severity of the pain caused by only looking at the severity of the physical aspects of the abuse. There's more going on.

I think that social rejection is part of any kind of abuse, physical, sexual or emotional. When your own parents, the people you automatically trust as a child, do it structurally the consequences are huge, regardless of the type of abuse. You are brought up with the assumption that being rejected is normal. While you may be able to see that many other people are different in this respect, without ever having experienced anything close to the social confidence they have it is extremely difficult to understand how different life can be, let alone set it as a goal for yourself. I've advanced far enough on that path to begin to understand that the difference really is huge, people really live in fundamentally different social realities. That difference in perspective is much harder to overcome than the more direct PTST-like consequences, which are serious enough by themselves.

I, my siblings and the other guy I mentioned have to deal with mothers who are in total denial about what happened. My mother was the main culprit, the other guy's mother was both victim of her husband, who forced his whole family to enact his sexual fantasies, and co-abuser of her children because she did take part in it. While they can't undo what was done, dealing with it is made much more difficult by this denial, the air is never cleared and you don't get the chance to establish a better, even a neutral relationship with them. Judging from the video Hillary's mother's story is that she was both her husband's victim and forced to be his co-abuser, and Hillary accepts that. Perhaps they are as rotten as the father, but it could also be true.

...This limit means only very large banks make slightly less obscene amounts of money on debit cards while smaller banks still make a good profit on them.

There. FTFY.

Oh, and...this.

• Imperial presidency: judge jury and executioner.
• Unconstitutional detention.
• Unconstitutional wiretapping.
• Unconstitutionally waging war and not even bothering with the War Powers Act.
• Taking credit for Iraq ending when it was Iraq that kicked us out on Bush II's timetable and Obama was trying to stay longer. Assange has a much bigger claim for the removal of troops from Iraq.
• Cut deal with insurance industry while touting the public option. In the end, we get the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Recent financial reform legislation so weak it would not have even slowed the meltdown had it already been in place. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Forgiving torturers Excusing them makes him complicit.
• Not even a show-attempt to prosecute fraud in the meltdown. Instead its bailouts and bonuses.
• Made deepwater horizon more likely.
• And the famous "hire the lobbyists for the industry you bow to" tactic. Good for what I don't know.
• Whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing should not be treated as Manning has been, and we don't even know if manning was responsible. He'll probably just get indefinite detention because the president says so. Welcome to Napoleonic America.

What could possibly go wrong?

As it happens atheists know more about religion than religious types do. I assure you, we've been exposed to religion almost constantly our entire lives. But if you really think there's something more to it than make-believe, go ahead and try to explain it.

The whole statistic stinks of Miniscribe shipping fraud

• Stop unconstitutional execution of the American citizenry.
• Stop unconstitutional detention.
• Stop unconstitutional wiretapping and prosectue AT&T's complicity (and that of any other carrier).
• Stop unconstitutionally waging war. From Korea onward, all our wars have been illegal, but Obama doesn't even feel constrained by the weak tea requirements of the war powers act. Our founding fathers never intended for the president to be a Napoleon.
• End the wars we are in. And please don't cite Iraq. The ONLY reason we are pulling out troops is because Iraq would not succumb to Obama's lobbying for a longer stay with immunity from war crimes. Thanks to wikipedia for that.
• Quit sucking insurance industry cock, i.e., real nice move touting the public option while secretly cutting a deal for the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. I guess they got their money's worth.
• Quit sucking Wall Street cock, and don't pretend that the financial reform legislation would have even been a mild hindrance to the meltdown had it already been in place.
• Prosecute torturers rather than let them off the hook. Excusing them makes him complicit.
• At least make a show of investigating fraud on Street. The S&L crisis was 1/40th the size and 1000 bankers went to jail. This meltdown isn't even being investigated, instead, their handing out bonuses. A big "Fuck You Very Much Mr. Obama" for that.
• Thanks for helping to enable Deepwater horizon, it was exactly the gift I wanted!
• Quit hiring Keystone Pipeline lobbyists for your campaign.
• Bradley Manning. We know you have a hardon for anyone that might stand in the way of relentless war, but Christ, grow a soul and a sense of morality.

the LA times says http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/10/consumer-confidential-netflix-shares-plunge-subscribers-food-prices-grocery-bill-meat-grain-halloween-masks-recall-target-fro.html they lost 800,000 ending with 23.8 MILLION subscribers.
so they went from 24.2 to 23.2 million subscribers... and the rate change -huffington post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/12/netflix-price-subscription-plan_n_895779.html was from 9.99 to 15.98?

so before, they had 24.2 million at ten bucks a month, now they have 23.2 million at 15.98?

It looks like all agriculture produce is pumped full of insecticides (an other poisons) at US:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/30/opinion/oe-meyerhoff30

Industrial poisons not regulated and frankly I am more scared about ourselves than bees.

The Department of Labor has turned this over to Facebook - http://www.myskillsmyfuture.org/
See http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/10/facebook-labor-department-job-seekers.html for the details.
I think this site has no future.

In fact budget cuts are a very potent motivator for public sector bodies to get more productivity out of the same resources, and that shows.

You didn't look up baseline spending. The DMV doesn't get budget cuts. During this economic downturn everyone is tighting their belts, except the government which has spent 33% more than it did just a decade ago.

I'll figure out the lose vs. loose and you figure out economics 101. If you can't figure out why the public sector bodies improve I think you have a little more analysis to do. I'll help you out here: the only reason the DMV improved is because of legislative action, not a sudden interest in customer service. There were angry voters at the gates with torches and legislators put their nose to the grindstone. Not the DMV. And so what if DMV has improved their service - it still sucks when compared to a private company. The whole "service" the DMV provides is nothing but a cash cow for state government, a non-service, so their goal is to take your money and give you a card, pretty simple, and for this it takes 20 minutes of waiting in line because they didn't have enough wits to open more windows. Or maybe the problem is that they can't afford to hire anymore civil servants because they get paid at a base rate almost 2x what their private sector counterparts get paid, once again proving that the government is inefficient and couldn't care less where your money goes.

The more you analyze this the more obvious it will become to you that the government can't be as efficient as a private company because they are the government. Do you think a private company needs permission from the shareholders to fire a worthless employee? (no) Have you ever heard of how difficult it is to fire a tenured teacher at a public school? School systems usually just put bad teachers on permanent paid leave of absence rather than try to fire them - some even just let them continue to teach. Does that sound like good customer service? I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Ron Paul is (or at least has been) in favor of marijuana legalization.

Just wanted to point out that the bailed out banks DID pay them back, with interest, a good while ago. A quick google search turned this up as the first article: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/04/business/la-fi-tarp4-2009dec04

I completely forgot about their stores and didn't realise any opened. I tried looking on the net and there isn't much being said about them. The only thing I found were these.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/26/business/la-fi-microsoft-stores-20101126
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/11/26/lost-in-translation-microsoft-retail-stores-not-matching-apple/
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/229401433


The gist of them seem to be that Microsoft is copying Apple so they have the same look but unlike the Apple store the MS stores aren't a good value because they don't carry as much stock and can't compete on price with other shops carrying Windows based computers.

That's always going to be a problem for them. They aren't a hardware company (for the most part) so unlike Apple they don't have a ncie small set of hardware that they can offer at the best price available. Apple computers may cost more than Wintel machines but when you go to an Apple store the price of the Mac is the best price you can get for a mac without a student discount.

You go into a Microsoft store and you see PCs that you can get elsewhere for cheaper. Where's the incentive to buy from Microsoft? Imo, their stores will die out quietly or they'll just sell them to someone who can offer a better deal and probably ask to keep the branding.

The foundation invests the assets that it has not yet distributed, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty.[55] These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[56] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.[57] It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[58]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

What good is curing Malaria for those people when in order to get there you help turn their environment into a complete mess? Also while Apple did certainly cut back on charity they didn't give it up completely and had with charities like Red.

http://www.apple.com/uk/ipod/red/

http://www.joinred.com/red/

The (RED) team would like to express condolences to Steve Jobs' family, friends and colleagues today. Mr. Jobs led Apple into its partnership with (RED) in 2006 and that partnership has helped to save the lives of millions of people with HIV in Africa. We are forever grateful for his leadership.

Global indeed

The University of Phoenix does NOT work well. In fact, these private distance learning schools make up the vast majority of student loan defaults in the nation. Kaplan institutions have a repayment rate of about 28%. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/aug/16/business/la-fi-for-profit-colleges-20100816 . Why? Because their goals are to use "students" as vehicles for tapping into student loan money. They don't care about the education. They care about MONEY.

Moreover, NO ONE values an online learning degree. They may be accredited institutions, but they've never proven equal in quality to in-person education.

And here's the kicker for your "Business 101", when you're running a public institution, you should never look to "increase profits". It's not a business. The big focus should be on reducing administrative redundancies and capping faculty salaries. Everyone making over $150,000 should be targeted for wage reductions or outright freezing of all wages about $150,000 permanently. It's education- a public service. Not a means to wealth.

Gotta love the massive web of the Libertarian propaganda machine that has managed to infect slashdot with not only garbage propaganda but a flood of dunderhead commentators.

If you manage to dig your way through a google search and make it past all the Libertarian alarms warning of the teachers union led commie pinko take over of the world you might stumble upon the actual UC-AFT web site where they specifically state "we will use our collective bargaining power to make sure that this move to distance education is done in a fair and just way for our members".

Thats right, the union is not blocking online courses, but they do intend to do their job as a group representing the employees and try to retain jobs, pay and benefits as the online transition occurs.

Or you might stumble upon the OP ED in the LA Times where an instructor who will be affected by the changes gives a balanced and skeptical view on the subject at hand. The instructor admits that "I have lectured by live videoconference when an unavoidable business trip left me the choice between teaching by videoconference or not at all. Each time I do this I am struck by the near miracle of reaching across time zones and miles to see and hear my students in a sunlit classroom in California. I speak and write on the board; they take notes and ask questions. Business as usual."

Oh well, let the Libertarian dunderheads flail their arms and scream their factually incorrect headlines from the roofs.

Best yet: How about we as a people take a stand against unreasonable search and seizure like our founding fathers intended with that little thing called the fourth amendment?

Am I the only one who is indignant that we're already trying to come up with ways to circumvent this rather than to fix it properly? Let's stop trying to use band-aids to patch up these "little inconveniences" to the Bill of Rights.

Damn, call me an idealist but I'm getting sick of this. And not that I'm a gun nut - but isn't Gov. Brown the same guy who just said that it's illegal to publicly display a firearm in his state? Who the hell does this guy think he is? Why are you standing for this, Cali? /rant

I agree with you on questionable patents but again, the patent system is broken so just because a company can game the system and get a patent on gestures just makes good business sense. The whole "i" trademark thing is one example. If you think they're alone, try naming something "Olympic"
for example.

I also think your comment

will never be more than a niche marketing firm

is a bit misguided considering their current market
valuation.

I know, Ethics in Business? Humm, that's one of those discussions that's like Religion and Politics; it never ends well.

Business exist to make money and publicly held corporations have shareholders to answer to. That means profits have to be obtained and just because a company protects its interests doesn't mean that it is non ethical. Tim Cook will attempt to keep Apple as profitable as possible and maintain shareholder value, that's his job. If that is somehow in mis-alignment with "Free" then we need to outlaw corporations and go back to banging rocks together to make primitive tools.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Roemer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/141453-scientists-put-aside-politics-and-focus-on-climate-science

http://www.servirglobal.net/tabid/409/Article/497/nasa-to-focus-more-on-studying-climate-change.aspx

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-03/local/me-29585_1_animal-science-curriculum

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/29/yale-to-greens-abandon-climate-change-focus-on-energy/