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I'd hardly consider it a standard when it development died shortly after it became a standard and IE is the only one to implement it.

The flaw has been known since at least 2010 and in fact when it was pointed out that even Microsoft was passing invalid codes on their own support site. Some people get such a hard-on for ripping on Google that they're willing to defend MS as the good guy despite implementing something that was completely broken and never offered any protection.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/a-loophole-big-enough-for-a-cookie-to-fit-through/

Google certainly is not perfect but MS is the one that is at fault here and they just look desperate by pointing out that Google (like many people including themselves) have by passed their failed privacy protection.

As it turns out, Peter Gleick impersonated a board member of Heartland in order to get them to send him the documents after he "received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute’s climate program strategy." He goes on to say, "I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name." Source for both. I'm not up on Illinois law, but that might be a crime.

Please.

Microsoft created the standard *AND* implemented it. It's their own fault if they allow loopholes.

see: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114753028665775786510/posts/fuLZoEkJZNs

and NYT criticism of basically creating security loopholes: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/a-loophole-big-enough-for-a-cookie-to-fit-through/

google's fault? none, really.

title: "If you rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s privacy settings to control cookies on your computer, you may want to rethink that strategy."

What, as opposed to the 47% of citizens that now net zero federal taxes at all? That the top 1% already pays 40% of the national tax burden?

That's exactly the opposite of what the article said. Did you actually read the article you are linking to? If so, then you're deliberately misrepresenting it.

The actual headline is:

"Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer."

The article says that's true only if you define "taxes" to exclude payroll taxes. It says:

"About three-quarters of households pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes."

I really get pissed off when people try to have an intelligent, informed conversation and you have to spend 15 minutes checking the conservative sources and have their facts turn out to be wrong. Deliberately distorting facts is the worst thing you can do, IMO. Negligently distorting facts is a pretty close second.

It's a waste of time to try to have an intelligent debate with conservatives. The time is better spent reading Paul Krugman http://www.playboy.com/magazine/playboy-interview-paul-krugman and going to Occupy Wall Street to figure out how to organize politically to stop them from destroying the country.

> In an era where the rich are able to get by paying so few taxes in the U.S., ...

What, as opposed to the 47% of citizens that now net zero federal taxes at all? That the top 1% already pays 40% of the national tax burden? I'm not in either group, but even I can see that's not exactly "fair"...

Of course that 47% includes the retired on Social Security, students, unemployed people, etc. Also, those numbers do not include social security taxes which are a federal tax.

Real data suggests that the working poor - those who work 32 hours or more a week do indeed pay taxes. Of course, if they are making minimum wage and have a child or two, it is very possible that their standard deduction may negate the taxes except for social security. But then, if you want the minimum wage workers to pay more in taxes, all one would need to do is raise the minimum wage.

The whole argument is to deflect that the top few percent pay less in taxes as a percentage of their income than 95% of the country.

> In an era where the rich are able to get by paying so few taxes in the U.S., ...

What, as opposed to the 47% of citizens that now net zero federal taxes at all? That the top 1% already pays 40% of the national tax burden? I'm not in either group, but even I can see that's not exactly "fair"...

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR WORLD??

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser
Most UK Muslims will vote Labour
British Muslims recruited to fight for 'al-Qaeda' in Somalia
Hate preacher: One day we will stone adulterers
Sharia: a law unto itself?
'Record rise' in UK anti-Semitism
Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise
U.K. Cuts to Military Will Curb Influence
Iran cuts oil exports to UK and France

Much of Europe is in deep trouble.

The US might avoid the worst of it.... if it can prevent Iran from tossing a nuke at it and the EMP sends life back to 1901. The major European powers were supposed to put a lid on the problem - it didn't work out that way.

You make a good point. However I would argue that Greece's woes stem not from large government debt but from not having control of their currency. To be honest, I'm not convinced that government debt is anywhere near as important as the politicians would have us believe. As Krugman says, Britain has had a debt exceeding GDP for 81 of the last 170 years, much of that during a time in which living standards rose drastically. Greece is stuck in a situation where it cannot afford to run the country and it cannot use any of the financial tools available to countries with sovereign currencies. It must beg for money from the EU, and pay for it by taxing its citizens into poverty.

Reporters grab this story from the file every year or so. As long as it has the "ick factor", they'll continue to run it. It seems to have first appeared in 2001. Here's one from about six years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas_section2-9.html

Especially now as doctor's "margins" are getting thinner due to Medicare cutbacks and such, I'm sure this trend will continue. New tech costs money, and medical tech, even on the administration end, is ridiculously expensive.

I think the opposite: private practices are being driven out of business by large hospitals that work closely with insurers (including digital records), and more doctors are becoming employees instead of small business owners. In other words, price pressure is asserting itself and forcing consolidation, like with every other industry. Good or bad? I'm not entirely sure. We certainly do need to cut costs. There won't be many mom-and-pop shops that refuse to move to computer records any more.

The only problem with this is that there is NOONE in the US that Apple can go to for manufacturing.

Apple was, for a long time, a die-hard "Made in the US" organization. Eventually, though, they got to the point where American Manufacturing was just completely unable to manufacture their products. And it's not just the individual plants - it's the entire manufacturing chain, from mining to final product assembly. Obama even asked Steve Jobs what Apple needed to manufacture the iPhone in the US. His reply? To paraphrase: "it can't be done."

This seems to be a good writeup:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

Weylin

I don't know so much about Canada, but her in America we still have a trump card for our citizens that says you need a warrant to searching most any-fucking-thing.

Not true. Not even remotely true.

(corrected link)

this isn't the first time people have visited the plant and checked, or the first time Apple has had a code of practice.

And not the first time Apple has pretended to do something and not actually done anything about the deaths.

This happens all the time. I wouldn't wonder if US TLA's were involved.

2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html?_r=1&dbk

2001:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,100595,00.html

Japan is in worse financial condition...

You should read about the myth of Japan's failure.

The Reuters article is just one of a couple following the F.L.A.'s inspection of the Foxconn Plant. There is a slightly longer, but much more critical article by the New York Times. Looks as if /. editor's are doing is some editorializing of their own, too. From the "what-is-the-right-question" department, eh? How about from the "now-we-are-shilling-for-apple" department?

I am not sure if the story is really true or not. . .

It sounds a lot like an urban legend, so I tried to track down the source. Here. You'll have to decide for yourself if you trust Charles Duhigg.

I'd love to see a link for that. Generally NRC doesn't shut down your plant until it's physically collapsing; those guys must not have greased the right palms.

For example, the Vermont Yankee plant is so poorly built the west cooling tower literally fell apart, causing a temporary shutdown. The local electric power consumers want it to be permanently shut down, but the Good Old Boys at the NRC gave it a license extension instead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/science/earth/vermont-cant-shut-down-nuclear-plant-judge-rules.html

I appreciate your honest approach to the issue. And you're probably right, done with proper regulations and safety precautions fracking can be safe...in theory. You only saw one piece of the puzzle, so here are some more pieces.

In practice, one thing you need to consider is what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground. Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

one of the things that irks me about the nuke debate is how much it hinges on how much it costs to build a nuclear plant, while for example germany spends 8 billion euros a year in direct moneys to solar producers, and god knows how much it spent on subsidizing the panel build, added infrastructure, elastic supply to get in when solar output falls, etc.
All of this money, and I quote, "Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times." To summarize: only in transfers, NOT in total subsidy costs, Germans each years are paying themselves, meaning some taxpayers are paying other taxpayers through electricity bills, the amount of money needed to build one of finland's new reactor from scratch, after cost overruns, and a simple neat multiplication by 2. Ain't life splendid?

Point me to regulations for derivatives like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Point me to regulations for Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Hell, point me at any regulation that led to the crash. Any regulation at all. And by the way, I'm going to pre-empt your "Community Reinvestment Act" bullshit because the 30 year old law had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis.

I know I can point at some that were missing which could have reduced the impact of the crash. Glass-Steagall, for instance. Or the SEC decision in 2004 that exempted the banks from regulations regarding reserves so that they could stack up even more debt (without which Bear Stearns wouldn't have been able to implode)

Most carriers have an option to block texts from e-mail.

This kills 99.9999% of text spam.

The nanny state has gone mad and the enforcers have lost their minds due to abusive power....

Were it only so simple. I'd say lost their mind due to money coming from business interests. This infographic shows that the federal spending is even more messed up than the FDA guidelines: 78% of subsidies to meat and dairy, 0.3% to fruits and vegetables.

I blame big business buying government, not just big government acting alone. Curing this problem will take more than pruning back overreaching government regulations, it will require neutering a powerful meat and dairy industry, reclaiming various regulatory agencies, and coming up with effective ways of stopping special interests from putting junk food in cafeterias.

I could never figure out why all the websites sprouted "share" buttons. At first I could only vaguely guess what that meant. Promote? Draw attention to? Provide testimonial? Spam your nearest and dearest?

Finally I figured out that the root system for the word "share" is the soil of quasi-victimless theft. We don't really care when we lend a book to a friend that the author gains no recompense in tangible currency, since the author is almost certainly being screwed by the publisher anyway, and who wants to support that? And peer-to-peer is giving it to the man in general (which I say not entirely facetiously).

A better word than "share" might have been "perkolate". African dictators also like to distribute the goodies within their close circles of cronies. We are all alike, at heart. Now the sharing generation has no idea what an asset actually looks like and can't figure out how to draw the knife. My confusion about the word "share" was thinking it made some kind of deeper logical sense to anyone else. No, it was just a term to fudge matters all along.

So what is the problem here? There are possessions that can be either cloned (photographs) or partitioned (the $300 bottle of balsamic vinegar). For everything else, you negotiate, then sign a settlement contract. Or is the question about how to navigate these dark waters without disturbing your fudgy new-age embrace of neo-communism? If your needs go way beyond what is codified by law, you could always hire The Adjuster.

The fire scene is where her husband, Noah (Elias Koteas), the insurance adjuster of the title, comforts a new client in a manner that is not entirely reassuring. As Noah is fond of saying, "You may not feel it, but you're in a state of shock." [Noah is] "just sorting things out, deciding what has value and what doesn't." Hera [his wife, the censor] replies: "I know what you mean. It's the same thing I do."

The movie seems to turn (if one can hazard a guess) on the notion that material division tends to be far from the central matter.

Well, hopefully they all die. That way demand will dry up.

The crowd at a Republican debate cheered this approach for uninsured sick people in need of health care.

Well, one or two people in the crowd, but even at that I agree that was still a WTF?! moment.

I found it to be not a "WTF" moment, and instead more a "wow, they're being really honest about their 'fuck everyone else' attitude..."

I'm no fan of either of the major political parties in the US -- both appear to be full of unprincipled mercenaries perfectly happy to sell the country down the shitter for the right price. That said, the Republican party seems much more the party of bald-faced sociopaths, actively courting like-minded authoritarians, selling the theme of anti-social, anti-public policy, and cultivating and capitalizing upon their audience's near-complete lack of cognitive dissonance. "I've got mine; screw you!" could well be their rallying cry.

As widely reported in the US media, such as the NY Times article, "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It", the common people self-identifying as Republican are very often the very people being hurt by the espoused Republican approach to policy. More disturbingly, they've been so successfully hoodwinked that these very people have absorbed the Republican talking points about dismantling the very systems that keep themselves afloat, and happily parrot them back to anyone that asks.

That's some masterful propagandizing. I doff my cap, I really do.

So then having even a few people in a crowd, let alone a whole room, cheering for the idea that all those sick people will die off and thereby "solve" the problem of healthcare, that's just more evidence of how successful the pro-corporate, pro-wealth, anti-public idea machine has been.

All this really just helps the rest of us still capable of more rational thought to see the signs of where this might go. And it's not a pretty outlook.

you give it to them. If their symptoms go away they need it, else they don't

In fact, it is just this flawed methodology that created the false idea in the minds of researchers that speed was actually helping these children. This false idea is what has led to the current massive overprescription and probable consequent harm to millions of patients.

There's good evidence that all these "attention-deficit" drugs are only of real benefit for a few weeks, after which continued use only makes sense for avoiding the sometimes-serious withdrawal symptoms. In other words, while use of aphetamines for ADD appeared to make medical sense once upon a time, more recent research shows that they whole thing is a bit of a fraud being run for the profit of the drug companies, with no net contribution at all to public well-being, or student performance, or anything else beyond maintaining a large, profitable population of addicts. Sure if you stop taking it you feel worse for a while, and if you start again you feel better. That's what addiction is.

If you're an adult taking them yourself, make your own judgment. If you're cooperating with a school in dosing your kid though, seriously consider setting a time and place for the kid to go cold turkey. You're doing nobody a real favor by keeping your kid on speed.

The only problem with your witty riposte is it's merely a unthinking reflexive reaction to the appearance of the word Nazi. In fact for the issues addressed - the prosecution of generational-ocidal mass murderers who are relying on a legalistic tactic to evade prosecution by society, there IS no more relevant comparison.

The fact that this issue is of urgent national security concerns is indisputable by anyone who is not functionally insane:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all

I can draw further analogies, all apropo, about how a significant part of the US polity was FOR Nazi Germany and fascism , and how that part of the demographic was nearly the same crowd as the deniers today- conservative Catholics (Father Conklin et al "the one good thing Hitler is doing is killing the Jews..." ) and the conservative isolationists and xenophobes which are today's Tea Party.

McCain, Palin, Gingrich Romney all have gone on record as saying AGW is real and needs to be addressed urgently. Other Republican luminaries such as Dick Lugar of (IN), perennial Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Prsidential candidate John Huntsmann, Fred Upton (Mich.) and others to numerous to mention have all recently changed their minds on this topic not becuase of new evidence but because of political expediency.

I'll tell you this. Either our leaders will step up to this issue and lead- take all measures necessary to effect a change in the attitudes of this part of the electorate- or this nation will slide into another real civil war. What is coming at us is not going to go away. It is not a matter of differing opinions amenable to a compromise solution. If the people and institutions behind the machinery of denialism are permitted to continue to frame this as a matter of debate or as a fraud and they continue to be successful in manipulating the American populace into doing nothing, this nation will devolve into a hot civil war. The two sides will be the reality based segment of society who is not going to back down any more than a person seeing a truck bearing down on them can be convinced to stand there and do nothing and the victims of the Koch brothers and Fox News and Forbes Magazine and these think tanks distortions and lies and provocations .

This is not hyperbole at all. This is what happens when leaders are too afraid to lead but would rather just collect their checks and shuffle along into tax-payer funded retirements.

If we don't act, there will inevitably come a time when no one on this board is thinking about anything other than global warming and bearing the consequences of our society's inaction. You won't be playing Quake. You won't be updating your profile on Facebook. You won't be do anything or thinking anything about anything that is not directly related to global warming, including waiting for your food and water rations and watching people die in the streets of America like it was Somolia and hoping it doesn't come to your neighborhood.

There is one reality, not many. We all share in that reality.

King might be OK with that, but his estate... not so much

How about Southern California Public Radio?

http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2012/02/14/22523/monsanto-lawsuit

Also, New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/a-suit-airs-debate-on-organic-vs-modified-crops.html

You remember reading it, too bad you didn't remember any of the reasons.

The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

In China, it took 15 days.

... doing stretches weren't that good for the body and might do more injuries in the long run

Yes, and doing yoga can f*** you up. So a little warming up and then straight into exercise or weights is best.

What pet store would have a rent-a-dog program?

It's at least been tried:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/nyregion/30dogs.html

Though apparently they ran into problems (not due to liability, though):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/sony-says-price-of-2-whitney-houston-albums-was-raised-by-mistake/

According to the NYTimes the price raising was a mistake that only affected the UK Itunes store and nothing else. So of all the retailers and online shops only one was affected, Itunes, and only one region, the UK. If SONY wanted to capitalize on her death they likely would have raised prices across the board and just not the UK Itunes shop.

This probably was an error. Someone assigned to managing SONY's UK Itunes account royally fucked up by changing the price. And now it is basically a PR disaster because even though it likely was an accident SONY looks absolutely retarded. Someone will lose his or her job over this for sure.

Sadly I'm sure that some sneering fuck CEO from the RIAA or MAFIAA or SONY or whatever is sitting on his throne thinking of ways to capitalize on Whitney Houston's death without taking a major PR hit. They see her death as basically an opportunity for a lot of profit and a great time to line their pockets.

Unpaid internships happen to be a big issue in the US right now due to some lawsuits filed recently. Read the article; there are lots of degree programs you can't finish without giving companies unpaid labor first. Just like in China.

So the New York Times breaks down the 1%, and guess who a large chunk of the 1% so reviled is: Doctors. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html?ref=business Health isn't the issue, money is when it comes to vaccinations. I'll side with the countless intelligent moms and dads who are cautious, given the complexities of the issue over doctors needing to cover costs.

"Adults have the greatest risk for dying from chickenpox, with infants having the next highest risk. Males (both boys and men) have a higher risk for a severe case of chickenpox than females. Children who catch chickenpox from family members are likely to have a more severe case than if they caught it outside the home. The older the child, the higher the risk for a more severe case...." http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/chickenpox/possible-complications.html

Actually, about 65% of what US consumers buy is made in the US. It is a myth that nothing is made here. It's mostly the clothing and consumer electronics and other cheap plastic shit which are so completely outsourced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/business/worldbusiness/20iht-wbmake.1.20332814.html
"Thirty years ago, U.S. producers made 80 percent of what the country consumed, according to the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an industry trade group. Now it is about 65 percent."

Wait, you want to build a pipeline in the mid-west? No way! And don't try and argue that it would be 100% privately funded or create thousands of jobs - been thee, done that.

It's a good thing the military is still funded... Because who needs progress in science?

It's stunning that this post made it to plus five, and shows just how insidious misinformation can be.

Obama's budget CUTS military spending. Not reduces the growth rate. CUTS. By tens of billions of dollars. The DoD budget in 2012 was $671 billion. Obama's proposal for 2013 puts it at $620.3 billion

If you follow that second link, you can see the cuts/increases broken out by department. You'll see that the biggest cuts hit the military, the Department of Homeland Security (especially hitting the TSA), the FBI, and the ATF. There are also big scary red circles on the DOL (but that's due to decreasing unemployment and thus decreases in unemployment benefits paid out) and Federal Student Aid (but look closely and you'll see its a reduction in mandatory spending offset by a matching increase in discretionary spending). And finally, there's NASA, being cut by a whopping 0.3%.

This is like a Slashdotter's dream budget. Cuts to the military and the TSA and all the other three-letter bogeymen, increases to science spending, and a reduction in overall spending. But by focusing one single tiny program, just 0.006% of the budget, the article submitter was able to masterfully manipulate scores of people into thinking that this budget is bad and anti-science.

As americans we are all invested in the system.

The poorer people who don't pay any income taxes are overwhelmingly residence of red states and congressional districts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?pagewanted=all

Part of this is due to the lower wages and lower cost of living in many of these conservative states.

Similarly, the ratio of government spending to tax receipts is tilted heavily in favor republican districts and states.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf

Lastly, taxing poor people has little economic benefit. When such a large portion of their income is spent on goods, increased taxes only reduce their economic consumption and also reduce the amount they might be able to save. Similarly these people pay a higher percentage of their income on sales taxes than wealthier people. This is why sales tax and flat taxes are considered a regressive as it punishes poor people more than wealthy ones.

Wealthier people have much more discretionary wealth which they may choose to spend or invest.

We cannot forget that one of the main reasons we have a deficit is due to the huge tax breaks provided to the very wealthy. During WW2 we had a 91% top tax rate, this lowered after the war to 70% in the 1970s, 50% in the 80's and to 33% now, but with capital gains income that can go down to 15%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Historical_income_tax_rates_.281913.E2.80.932010.29

Another reason is that we never included the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget, and never found a way to pay for them, by either cutting spending or raising taxes. Notice the fiscal responsibility used during WW2 to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for defending our country. This is in stark contrast to the war we chose to start in Iraq.

Independent unions are currently suppressed in China

Constructing an iPad will require some learning curve no matter how much the process is broken down. Walk-outs will be costly and disruptive, especially in the gadget industry where products have a short shelf live.

The situation in China is similar to where the Western world was 100 years ago. Labor struggles will be fierce. The unions won't always win but the record in the Western world shows that overall concessions can be achieved. That is if independent organization is not violently suppressed. Not that it wasn't violent in the US as well. If you want to read up on this fascinating bit of under reported US history I can recommend you a book.

Now please, try to refute the parts about the Republicans supporting creationism or using "intellectual" as an insult. This should be a fun read.

OK, I'll try. From HERE:

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."

That help? You're right. It was a fun read!

Also note that, as a conservative myself, I do not favor the teaching of Creationism in school, as part of the official curriculum. However, I don't feel that schools should have the right to say that creationism is wrong.

It looks the same? Then surely it will be as big a "disappointment" as the iPhone 4S was according to analysts--which went on to sell 37 million last quarter. In all seriousness, while the so-called Retina Display is the thing I'm most looking forward to (especially for reading text), the most interesting rumor is that the iPad 2 will continue to be sold at $200 to compete with the Kindle Fire. While the iPad is still the most dominant tablet, the Kindle Fire had a decent run over the holidays. By selling the iPad 2 at a cheaper price alongside the iPad 3, Apple will have both the high end and low end covered. This is the same strategy they're using with the iPhone 3GS (in fact, it's often free with contract), which helped Apple close the gap with Android's marketshare in December.

The next few years are going to be really fun to watch as companies fight over this new market. I think it's inevitable that phones and tablets will become the primary computing devices for most users in a matter of years, because they let people do the things that they use PCs for--Facebook, YouTube, email--without the hassle of PC maintenance. Tablets are already outselling the desktop PC market. Some people don't like "appliance computing", but having grown up with handheld consoles, I see appliance computing as a natural evolution and something to look forward to. PCs will still be around for those who need them.

There is nothing preventing gay couples from expressing their love for one another. The government doesn't deal in "love".

FALSE

When a loved one is in the hospital, you naturally want to be at the bedside. But what if the staff won't allow it?

That's what Janice Langbehn, a social worker in Lacey, Wash., says she experienced when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed with an aneurysm during a Florida vacation and was taken to a Miami trauma center. She died there, at age 39, as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to persuade hospital officials to let her visit, along with the couple's adopted children.

"I have this deep sense of failure for not being at Lisa's bedside when she died," Ms. Langbehn said. "How I get over that I donâ(TM)t know, or if I ever do."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/health/19well.html

And stop selling weapons to these dipshits.

This is spectacular. And it reminds me of researchers Cindy Meston and David Buss' 237 reasons for sex. They similarly tried to semantically define why people have sex and along those lines interviewed thousands of undergrads. The results? The stereotype that men have sex for pleasure while women have sex for love is unfounded. Also, some great answers like one woman saying, "I'd rather spend five minutes having sex with him than spend five days listening to him whine about how horny he is." Good stuff.

The biggest barrier to success in this country is yourself. The second biggest barrier is the government at all levels, the third is your competition. Money comes in somewhere on this list, not much further down.

Statistically speaking, you're wrong.

Wealth and education are the #1 and #2 predictors of future success.
(Your level of education (#2) is heavily influenced by your family's wealth.)
This is only true because of the extensive effort that has gone into narrowing the education gap between white and minority children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?pagewanted=all

Further, social mobility in America is probably not what you think it is
Only 8% of Americans move from the bottom 20% to the top 20% of incomes.

So in a sense, the biggest barrier to success is yourself, but only because of where you were born, who your parents were, and how much money they made.
I'd gladly see this whole line of discussion marked offtopic, but I hope that facts have some impact on your bootstrappy theory of social mobility.

The biggest barrier to success in this country is yourself. The second biggest barrier is the government at all levels, the third is your competition. Money comes in somewhere on this list, not much further down.

Statistically speaking, you're wrong.

Wealth and education are the #1 and #2 predictors of future success.
(Your level of education (#2) is heavily influenced by your family's wealth.)
This is only true because of the extensive effort that has gone into narrowing the education gap between white and minority children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?pagewanted=all

Further, social mobility in America is probably not what you think it is
Only 8% of Americans move from the bottom 20% to the top 20% of incomes.

So in a sense, the biggest barrier to success is yourself, but only because of where you were born, who your parents were, and how much money they made.
I'd gladly see this whole line of discussion marked offtopic, but I hope that facts have some impact on your bootstrappy theory of social mobility.

No, they are not off. Yours are four years outdated, and I already mentioned everything you brought up.

Please site your sources.

I did. Note the use of a link to a 2010 survey covering the period I was discussing (ironically, you even quoted the link). Nearly everything I mentioned is from there, though I'll admit to having pulled a few general assertions (e.g. higher volume of patent cases) from uncited sources.

Since Ward initially joined the Eastern District of Texas, the district has seen a tenfold increase in cases since 1999.[8] There were 14 patent cases in 1999,[8] 32 in 2002,[1] 155 in 2005,[8] and 234 in 2006.[1] The district is one of eight with more than 100 new patent filings each year.[8] Ward heard more than 160 patent cases in his first seven years on the bench.[3] He had been handling 90% of the patent cases in Marshall, but later was reduced to 60%.[6]

I'm confused. I said that the East Texas district has a high volume of patent cases at the end of my fourth paragraph, and...you agree? Your quote substantiates what I said. Yes, they have a lot of patent cases. We agree! Hurrah!

Patent cases presented before Ward were more frequently won by the patent holder plaintiff than the defense.[9] One source claims that patent holders win 88% of the time in Ward's court, compared to an average of 68% nationwide.[3] Another source claims that patent cases in Marshall are won by patent holders 78% of the time versus 59% nationwide.[1] And a third source claims that in 90% of cases patent holders win jury verdicts.[8]

Recall, kids, that you should always check your primary sources. Had you done so, you'd have seen that the three sources cited in that paragraph are from 2006. Recall as well that I said that the East Texas district had "about a year in the mid-2000s where the plaintiffs won more frequently" and "when it deservedly earned its reputation", but that their activity returned to normal levels afterwards, hence why it was no longer deserved. Note that the survey I linked is from 2010 - four years after your sources - and took the outlying year into account when it said that the district's average trial success rate over the period from 1996-2009 was at approximately the national norm.

Any other questions?