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This measurement is bullshit, and I expect it'll cause more harm than good.

Apparently 14% of Americans are on SNAP assistance. On the one hand, yes, that's terribly high and it'd be great to have every American be able to support themselves... but at the same time, it's pointing blame at Amazon for daring to offer low-paying jobs. Again, 14% of Americans are on food stamps. Those 14% are going to need help with or without working for Amazon, so I, for one, am at least glad they're employed and partially offsetting their expenses.

I'd be happy to see studies about how many folks are employed full-time and still need SNAP, or the impact of SNAP participation on economic recovery, or the like, but this seems like a hit piece against one company in particular. Apparently in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the SNAP participation rate lowers to only "around one in 10", but it's phrased like a bad thing to be better than the national average.

Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.

From TFS, a perfect example of poor research... How did this result compare to the lists of top employers of non-SNAP recipients, or the count of employees for each company? Amazon is a huge company, and they employ a lot of people. I expect they'll be on the top of a lot of lists.

Swiss watches are a very small piece of the market. Japan took over once quartz watches become a thing. Most watches that are sold are probably made in Japan or China. The number of watches sold each year is around 1.2 billion. there's a lot more non-smart watches, which for the same year was only 36 million smart watches. This was for 2016, but I don't think things have changed that much in under 2 years.

Perhaps,

No, not "perhaps".

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Statistically the majority of trips are well within the range of electric cars.

if you can charge them in between (within a 10 min timeframe) or at the end of the trips

Huh? No that has no effect. The average two way commute is much less than the average electric car journey. Charge it when you get home. Problem solved.

Also, the car had many advantages over the horse, while the electric car has almost none over a combustion engine one.

Apart from the massive lack of nasty emissions in precisely the places where people want to breathe and fuel economy?

Chrome is one of my primary browsers. It's nice that we both recognize that there is a market for streaming video on computers.

However, that's not the entire market by a long shot. Roughly half of all Netflix usage is via Game consoles. About 42% use a computer, and 6% use a smartphone. The statistics are from March 2017.

Neither of our usage is at all unusual. Claiming I'm somehow "out of touch" because I'm in the 50th percentile is disingenuous.

That does not follow from what I said. I said that out of the entire population of registered sex offenders there will be roughly 6% of them that sexually reoffend within 10 years of release from incarceration. For 700,000 current registered sex offenders in the US, that's 42,000 of that group that will sexually reoffend at least one more time within 10 years of release...which sounds like a pretty big number until you look at the population count and realize that this group of statistically certain recidivists is only 0.129 percent of the US population and suddenly the actual risk is more like a stupid joke. Over the same 10 years there will be 300,000+ fatal car crashes, 1/3 of which are caused by drunk drivers. Just by those numbers, you and your kids are more than twice as likely to be killed (that means dead, not harmed but still living) in a car crash by a drunk driver than sexually assaulted by a registered sex offender.

The more interesting question is this: how many registered sex offenders were not registered sex offenders before the first offense where they were convicted and were then required to regsiter? The answer is 100 percent, obviously, and that's the point to take home here. You'll spend all your time trying to force the sex offender across the street to move away while the gym teacher or the uncle is repeatedly fucking your daughter in the ass right under everyone's nose. Actually, forget the uncle; women who molest children are practically never caught because no one suspects them, so they can molest with abandon. Your wife might be diddling the neighbor's four-year-old in the bathroom for all you know, and you'll never think anything is suspicious because she is female.

You evidently didn't even bother to search for any kind of data to back up that claim. Trump voter, perhaps? Might want to take a look at this.

An article that uses the false fact that a goldfish has an attention-span/memory of nine seconds complains that it's harder than ever to know what articles can be trusted. It's not even good irony. It's just aggravating irony. The attention span statistic is cited to an article from Time, which cites it to a "study" by Microsoft, which cites it to some source called "Statistic Brain", which doesn't cite SHIT.

That don't help you much either:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Only 23% of Americans drive more than 20 miles one way to work.

EPA ratings, which is the standard in North America to measure against is not the absolute IDEAL situation, you can actually get much higher range in ideal conditions. But the EPA range more accurately reflects the typical range that you would see in regular driving conditions. But you are correct that the actual mileage can be less in the worst conditions (winter, which requires cabin heating & traffic jam, which requires a lot of accelerating/decelerating). If you are unlucky to drive in these conditions, you'll get about 50% of the EPA range with a Leaf and about 66% of the EPA range with a Tesla. You can mitigate this to a certain degree by heating your cabin while it's still plugged in at home and rely more on heated seats than heating the air of the cabin.

100 miles is still pretty good, since according to this site, only 8% of the American population commute 75 miles or more in a day. Which means that, 92% of Americans still have at least 25 miles of wiggle room for detours or errands.

There is battery degradation to factor in, but this varies based on battery chemistry and cooling systems (or if there's no cooling system, your climate). So you can have pretty bad degradation as in the case of a Nissan Leaf, which has no battery cooling system (degrades to 70% in 8.3 years in Syracuse NY, in 3.4 years in Houston TX), or in the case of a Tesla, which has an active cooling system, has been shown to lose only 5% after 50,000 miles and about 8% after 100,000 miles.

I would imagine (or hope) that Ford would be smart enough to make their battery system more like Tesla's and less like Nissan's, leaving your friend with 132 miles of range even in the worst conditions.

There were 3.78 billion packages delivered in the U.S. in 2013. Judging by the trendline we're probably over 4 billion by now. If 10 million were stolen, that's a theft rate of about 0.25%. FedEx reports a lost package rate of 0.55%, so they're actually losing more packages during delivery than are stolen.

125 million households in the U.S., so on average a house gets a package stolen once every 12.5 years. If you figure the average package value is $50, that's a cost of $4 per year due to theft. A small enough amount that most people would just shrug and let the retailer's/shipper's insurance take care of it rather than actively try to combat it.

Most iPhone users just use the ones that came in the box. And they'll do the same with the Lightning ones.

84,000,000 headphones were sold in the US in 2015, 64% earbuds. Do you really think they were all bought by Android users?

Well clearly this tech wouldn't work for you in your specific profession yet. Maybe there are other people it might work for? Like almost everybody: http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

> If you charge every night and drive an average commute (30-40 miles/day)

Average daily commute is a fuckton less than that.

51% of US commuters have a round-trip commute of less than 20 miles. That's less than 100 miles per week.

If they charge on weekends they are set

You really are not getting the point. Stating it takes you less time to charge in the context of day to day is stupid.

Comparing the amount of my time it takes to keep my car charged on a typical day to the amount of my time it would take to keep a gas powered car fuelled is stupid?

I guess that your time is worthless, so you don't count it.

An example would be a trip greater than your ev range. In a car you are at a gas station for 10 minutes and done. In an EV at best you are at 2 hours

1. We can use my wife's car.

2. A fast charge is only 30 minutes, not 2 hours.

A lot of people commute 80+ miles per day. The avg is 70 to 120 miles for suburbanites.

Well if your opinion is based on falsehoods, there isn't much hope for you.

Indeed, this is just cherry picking

The Bible has sold more than 6 billion copies; Agatha Christie books (they're including all the iPhones models as one lump quantity, we can include do the same with her books) has sold 2 billion books. Using the same logic, the Beatles have sold 2 billion albums. And these are just off the top of my head (stats all taken from statisticbrain.com, I've no idea as to their accuracy but assume the numbers are within a reasonable margin of correctness ;-).

1 billion iPhones is an impressive achievement true, but its nowhere near "most popular product evah!".

That depends on whose numbers you read, of course. Netmarketshare still has XP at over 10%, with 10 now up to around 15%. Even if you question the Netmarketshare stats (and I would agree there are reasons you might), another source I've seen cited a few times that puts XP much lower still agrees that 10 has only around one third of the market share of 7 and that 7 retains around half of the desktop/laptop market.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/c...

Keep in mind that you can measure marketshare in many ways, so the various sites don't have to be wrong and be different.

That one says Windows 10 hit 20% of the market after 8 months. That actually strikes me as good, considering that it is competing with Windows 7, which also was quite good.

Keep in mind that Windows 10 has 300 million users after 8 months. How many Apple Mac users are there total?

Before you say people are leaving Windows, look at the totals. Apple sold less than 5 million Macs in 2015, total. Windows 10 gained 300 million users in 8 months. Most companies would love to have Microsoft's "failure". :)

Well, firstly, you're assuming that everyone needs to replace MS on the desktop. With the variety of devices available today, it's quite possible that a significant part of the market simply won't buy new PCs at all, preferring other types of device such as tablets for some applications.

That has happened, to some extent, with tablets and smart phones, a market that MS clearly waited too long on. However that market has cooled off a lot in the past year as well, due to people finding that they don't need new versions of those devices either.

The obvious answer for those who do want a more traditional PC set-up is Apple. You say they cost way too much, but plenty of businesses I work with routinely equip their staff with Apple laptops. The TCO isn't so very different, and with Windows 10 the TCO of Microsoft's platform doesn't look nearly as attractive as it used to.

Except, they don't... see the above numbers...

In 2015, 238 million PCs were sold, less than 5 million of which were Macs. It isn't even close.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Otherwise known as algebra and geometry and formal logic proofs.

Unless they're seriously attempting to advocate that high school graduates be conditioned to join the programming workforce with their diploma, in which case I'd laugh out loud and say "good luck with that -- having a high school diploma isn't even a guarantee you can read!"

Your points would be fantastic, if any of them were true: 1. I live amongst more educated people: While many in California feel you are better than everyone else, the rankings say...not so much. Tenth worst, actually.
http://247wallst.com/special-r...

2. Most welfare mouths are in the midwest: Here is a list of the states with most welfare population compared to working population. 1. Ca 2. NM 3. HI 4. MI 5. Al 6. SC 7. IL 8. KT 9. Oh 10. NY. Now, two of those are midwest, and because IL and OH enjoy large, urban centers.
http://brandongaille.com/welfa...

3. Most are white: Slightly more welfare recipients are black compared to white (39.8 vs. 38.8) but, black people make up 13% and white are about 63 percent, to say most are white is such a torture of reality it borders on a sickness.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/...
4. The one you did get right is that most welfare people did not finish school. However, when you look at graduation rates, places that I am fairly sure you would say are "educated" i.e. coastal meccas, are not exactly nation beaters. Ca is middle at best and New York is near the bottom. Br> https://www.washingtonpost.com...


I know making such statements are cool in some circles, but facts and links make for stronger arguments, better policy, and more honest discussion. You simply can not fix problems without this. I for one, want to fix issues, not play blame games.

If by that, you mean "union", then I doubt it. You'd never get enough support from the folks that are still getting paid very well (like me, who lives in Ohio), and aren't being outsourced. There's no business case to do that for anything but level 0 and 1 helpdesk jobs, and not even all of those.

Read TFA:
"Cengage...had outsourced accounting services earlier in the year"
"The layoffs affected workers across IT, including networks, desktop support, database administration, developers, data warehouse and other systems."

Also have a look at this, which lists the 33 jobs most likely to be outsourced...noting that many of them pay quite well indeed. Or did. They probably don't anymore.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/sta...

To put it all in context, you may want to consider the quantity of jobs being outsourced - which is in the millions:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

people say this a lot. Got any data on that. And citation if you will.

Just for speeding tickets: 6 billion dollars: http://www.statisticbrain.com/... An average of $152 seems a bit low to me.

If you look at parking meters in San Francisco http://priceonomics.com/san-fr... you'll see they get about $50 million for paid parking, and get $80 Million in parking violations per year.

RAM has some of the slimmest margins in the computer industry (typically around 1%). So its price is highly sensitive to supply and demand. Manufacturers try to predict how much demand there will be 3-6 months in the future and produce an appropriate amount of RAM. If they underestimate, there's a shortage and price increases. If they overestimate, there's a glut and prices will actually drop below manufacturing costs. But the long-term trend has still been towards lower prices.

Sure. And you are an outlier:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

15 miles one way, 30 miles round trip is the 70th percentile. That's well within the range of a Leaf not to mention a Volt.

And there are some extreme outliers out there, but that shouldn't set either perceptions or policy:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

sPh

Here you go:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Since Coca-cola currently sells approximately 1.8 billion bottles of coke per day, perhaps they could increase the unit price of their main product by one penny (break even on $6.5b is roughly 0.989 cents / unit) and make ~$74.45 million more instead?

http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Fuck off...

Let's assume for a moment that you have a child going to second grade. You piss someone off, and they decide to get back at you through your family. They take you child's photo, pictures of the school they attend and your house and phone number and post it on websites frequented by pedophiles. They imply that your child is available for sex. You start getting horrible phone calls at all hours of the day and night, creepy guys drive by your house, and even knock on your door. Someone tries to snatch the child off the street near the school.

Then you try and get the information off the web, and all the sites say they don't have to do anything because "private enterprise". What then? What if the worst happens and the child is abducted and killed? Yeah, the perp can end up in jail, but what about the "free enterprise" businesses that make money off this. Do you really want to count on the civil law to protect you?

I happened to pick a hypothetical case with a child, but the equivalent happen to women with psycho ex-boyfriends all the time: set up a fake account with real contact information and advertise for kinky sex. Not good.

Remember Facebook is big.

Total number of monthly active Facebook users 1,310,000,000

Total number of mobile Facebook users 680,000,000

Increase in Facebook users from 2012 to 2013 22 %

Total number of minutes spent on Facebook each month 640,000,000

Percent of all Facebook users who log on in any given day 48 %

Average time spent on Facebook per visit 18 minutes

Total number of Facebook pages 54,200,000

Percent of 18-34 year olds who check Facebook when they wake up 48 %

Percent of 18-34 year olds who check Facebook before they get out of bed 28 %

Average number of friends per facebook user 130

Average number of pages, groups, and events a user is connected to 80

Average number of photos uploaded per day 205

Number of fake Facebook profiles 81,000,000

Remember, for the LGBT community the consequences can be as serious as grievous bodily injury or death at the hands of a complete stranger. Chanting "free enterprise" as a justification in this situation puts you firmly on the side of potential violent thugs.

And just to help you sleep well tonight, there is no way to know if all the people who were targeted were LGBT or not. Given the vile stupidity of the perpetrator, there might have been cases of mistaken identity. It's not like the person who did this is the most stable or thoughtful person around. In fact, you could have been on the list. Sleep tight.

And 77% of all self-started businesses fail within the first ten years - not shut down - fail. Even at that, self employed people, on average, make less money than those employed by businesses owned by others. And this is what you promote as a strategic choice for peoples' careers? Not to mention that many people don't have the entrepreneurial skills necessary to successfully run their business (see the first report - incompetence and inexperience are the top three reasons for business failure).

I thought probability of success figured into any proper decision calculation. You aren't a Republican by any chance, are you? Not being part of the "reality-based" community seems to be an indicator for that.

And 77% of all self-started businesses fail within the first ten years - not shut down - fail. Even at that, self employed people, on average, make less money than those employed by businesses owned by others. And this is what you promote as a strategic choice for peoples' careers? Not to mention that many people don't have the entrepreneurial skills necessary to successfully run their business (see the first report - incompetence and inexperience are the top three reasons for business failure).

I thought probability of success figured into any proper decision calculation. You aren't a Republican by any chance, are you? Not being part of the "reality-based" community seems to be an indicator for that.

And why is the biggest pool of welfare recipients actually whites, not blacks?

Absolutely not true.

Now imagine how many people could own a home and be out of poverty

redistribute their wealth and every poor person in the country would be set for life.

I'm sorry, I laughed so hard that Dr. Pepper came out my nose! Really? REALLY? Errrm, no.

Without discipline (and some help), they'd never make it. Go look up the "normal" people who instantly got millions -- almost half lost it all within 5 years. ALL. (And half didn't.) (*1)

Here are some fitting lines from (*2):

they believe success comes entirely from luck and chance. So [when] "set for life," they still don't understand success and end up losing it all

[Being given money] might put more money in your pocket, but it doesn't make you smart.

Unearned success rarely lasts.

I agree wholeheartedly with that last one. If you didn't earn it, you won't guard or appreciate it, and you won't be able to keep it going long-term.

Finally, take it forcibly from the 0.01%? Why just them? They're all mean, greedy, uncaring, smart, or lucky? Then take it from the 0.1% as well. But then why not the 1.0%? Or the 10%. Or, pushing it, the 100%? Who decides? You?

Yes, YOU. Individually. Don't rely on "someone else and their resources" to do it, YOU do it. I've been handing out small amounts of cash to people who beg for things, and then stopped. Why? I felt like I was being taken advantage of. So I started listened to what they were asking for and then immediately went and gave it to them. No government, no tax write-offs, no church. I don't do it all of the time, and I don't do to to everyone (I've given to whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, if you must know. But they have to ask nicely, and they have to speak English.) Don't wait on a nebulous "them" to solve the problem; help directly yourself when you can. (*3)

Oh, it's a bigger problem? Then start a local group and give your personal resources and coordinate with other out-of-state local groups if necessary. Don't just gripe and take money away from the top 13% because you're the 14% and "that's where it makes 'sense' to stop." It's theirs to give away, not your to take away. And the Feds? They're trying to normalize everything and everybody, but the top of Mt. Everest does not have the same requirements as the middle of Death Valley.

After all, "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

1: Reference

2: Reference

3: I *know* I helped (just) at least one person get a job. He asked for some money to clean up for an interview the next day. I got him a shaving cream, razor, tower, toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, and a brush at a nearby Dollar Store. It was all of $10. A month later I bumped into the guy again; he had gotten a (that?) job and was doing better

Yes and the 25 Ford plants located in the US make coconuts... http://corporate.ford.com/our-... In 2013 there were 4,540,985 cars made in the US which was good enough for 5th place in the world: http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Balanced traffic in peering was originally a concern when the peering includes transit services.

There's still plenty of transit going on. Comcast owns a nation wide backbone. Netflix isn't dumping this content into Comcast's network one or two hops removed from my house. Comcast still has to get it from Point A to Point B.

Of course, we're all kind of overlooking the bigger problem: The Internet was never designed to be a point to point video delivery system. You can't deliver video in such a fashion as cheaply as point to multipoint systems (i.e., Cable television, satellite, and OTA) can. The economics of residential internet connections were geared towards occasional bursts of use, not sustained multi-megabit (double megabit with super HD or houses with multiple TVs) transfers for the entire 5.11 hours per day that the typical American watches TV.

Money is required to fund the infrastructure improvements to continue to deliver video in this inefficient fashion. That money is going to come from all parties, the content-providers and the end-users, not just one of them. And yes, the ISPs will probably try and use it to increase revenue, because (shock) they're for-profit companies and that's what they do.

Actually, you might be surprised how much of the US population still hunts for food.

The answer is a very small percentage and close to none of them actually need to do it. We spend over $22 billion on hunting which could easily feed every person in the US that actually needs to hunt to put food on the table. Furthermore there are plenty of food assistance programs available to anyone in the US should they need the help. This argument that we have people that "need" to hunt for food is an absurd and false justification to whitewash the fact that most of them do it for their amusement and no other purpose.

Your numbers seem a bit high. This source reports the average commute is about half that distance. http://www.statisticbrain.com/... If the average commute commute really is 30+ miles each way then it is time to move.

Yeah, there must be, oh, thousands of ATMs out there.

2.2 million.

Average amount of time a new ATM machine is installed --- 5 minutes ATM Machine Statistics [2012]

Automated teller machines (ATMs) (per 100,000 adults) [2009]

US 173
Canada 205

The average number of texts per phone is higher than 10, I'm guessing it's somewhere in the 20-30 range based on:

Per this Business Insider article (by age group, and why no overall average!!!):
* 18-24 year olds send 67 texts a day
* 25-34, 37 texts a day
* 34-44, 28 texts a day
* 45-54, 17 texts a day
* 55+, 8 texts a day

Here are some stats (StatisticBrain.com) on daily text message numbers, for June 2012 the count was 14,100,000,000 per day (that's right, 14.1 billion).

200 million text messages captured per day would be around 1.4%.

Given this I figure they are using one or more filtering methods such as:
1. Exclusion: Ignore "non-data" phrases such as "OMW".
2. Inclusion: Include specific keywords, terrorist stuff and such.
2. Geographically: potentially based on leads or evidence or "chatter".
3. Person Of Interest: Person's of interest and 2-3 Bacons (communication links from target)

The real question, in my opinion, is what do they do with them? No one is reading 200 million texts every day. I'm assuming they have applications that look for associations and patterns of specific keywords, probably with Person of Interest as a driver.

That's what I would do... Probably should have posted Anon...

Agreed, the spread of the program is pretty huge. (It actually averages 14%).

But again, this may be simply because the program has been expanded beyond its target population lately. The largest growth has been under the current administration, which also happened to coincide with a major 5 year recession which threw millions out of work.

The most dramatic upturn occurred beginning 2008, with a rapid doubling over prior levels..

Its hard to know if these levels will be maintained as people go back to work. Once eligibility requirements are loosened, they seldom are tightened. So IF (just sayin) this administration loosened the requirements, then food stamp levels will remain high.

However, if the recession caused more families to full under existing requirements, then you would expect a decline in participation. We may just be looking at a huge, but temporary bump. If so, the program is working a intended, and people need to understand this, and maybe spend two minutes thinking about how proud of their country they would be if there were wide-spread starvation.

There are some interesting figures here: http://www.statisticbrain.com/food-stamp-statistics/

Certainly I was not playing games. This is the first time I've been accused of using a straw man argument, but I suspect you may be correct about it. I always thought that logical fallacies were more of a debating tactic, but now I guess they are usually just made in error. Oops. :-)

Anyway, I think my reasoning and arguments have so far been rather poor, perhaps mostly because I've been flailing around in the fog of my own opinions: something that I'm sure is more likely if you don't put enough effort into listening (or in this case reading) what is actually being said. Again, my bad.

I'll give it another try. In your first reply to me you were very clear and there was no need for me to search for analogies: "Compare parts of the US to parts of the US if you want to talk about the US statistics. You cannot compare states across national lines with any credibility." That was your apples and oranges argument all along and and I should have recognized it immediately. My apologies for the lengthy and unnecessary digression.

Instead, I should have immediately pointed out to you that I see nothing scientifically wrong with making numerical comparisons like that between countries; something that is in fact done all the time. Here are more than a dozen examples:

• List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate
• List of countries by traffic-related death rate
• The 15 Countries With the Highest Smartphone Penetration
• List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources
• Countries with the Highest / Lowest Average IQ
• Obesity country comparison
• Cancer rates: see how countries compare worldwide
• Paid Vacation Around the World
• Average temperature in the countries of the world
• List of countries by rail transport network size
• Highways > Total (per capita) (most recent) by country
• Total Water Use per capita by Country
• List of countries by suicide rate
• List of countries by incarceration rate
• Drug Use Death Rate Per 100,000
• Teenage pregnancy (most recent) by country
• Snakebite in The Americas

Why would it be unscientific to make comparisons like these? As long as the numbers are always collected in the same way, then they are just numbers and don't attempt to explain anything about differences that may be cultural, legal, socioeconomic, etc. In all cases it's left up to the reader to explain the differences ("it's a police state", "it's probably a poor country", "perhaps they

Fine, but no need to go making exaggerated claims like the value of the car approaching the value of a house.
 
Why not? You did.

"So, I am i the middle of starting my own business. I am investing virtually all my savings, while I have a baby on the way, a year into a new mortgage, etc.
So, I am going to risk everything I have to start a successful (hopefully) business and you want to limit what I can make off the business?
Simply put, fuck you."

You have a baby on the way and you're a year into a new mortgage and you're investing all your savings in your own business... Smart...
The failure rate for new businesses: http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/ or "50 to 70 percent fail within the first 18 months" according to another source.
So when you fail, please recall what your attitude was today and fuck yourself.

Annual resources averaged about $5,600 (in 2010 dollars) per enrollee for 2009 - an inflation-adjusted increase of 9 percent from the previous year's total of $5,100

$5,600 per. person. If we compare that the private insurance, it's ohhh, look at that, about the same. Except of course you also have to include the deductibles, and it doesn't account for stuff which is covered by VA but isn't covered by the cheaper plans which drag the average down.

The VA looks like a damn good deal to me.

It's not like the government has a monopoly on mismanagement and failure.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/

Success is hard anywhere you go.

I could be wrong but he's likely talking about the 39% of the welfare recipients who are white (and clearly poor).

http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/

You do realise that there are more whites on food stamps than blacks, do you not?

No matter how many times that old canard is stated, it's still not true.

I'm with you on spending money on healthcare of all kinds, but the AMBER stats I'm finding are nowhere like what you're claiming. They look pretty effective from http://www.statisticbrain.com/amber-alert-statistics/ and http://www.chp.ca.gov/amber/ - do you have some sources for the stats and studies you're citing? It would be most helpful.

Wait. What?

Cite source?

According to this: http://www.statisticbrain.com/sat-score-statistics/ California is 34th, and Utah is 20th.

Two things. First, the difference between California and Utah is only 146 points. Second, California is a pretty big state with a lot of socioeconomic disparity. More so than Utah.

4.2% of the population is far from "so few". Heck, I know some personally (they're in my family). It's sad when people will say to your face that you're stupid for working so hard when you could be like them and sit comfortably in their trailer watching TV and let the government take care of you... They've been doing it most of their life (not a "very short time"). Those that do get off welfare are quickly replaced by others who get put on it.

Don't even look at food stamps. Nearly 20% of Americans now! And the OWS answer? Let's punish the "evil rich"! Maybe I'm unusual, but I've always been hired by either an "evil rich person" or an "evil rich corporation"!

As far as tax loopholes go, maybe we should get rid of the monstrosity that is our current tax code. Something like the Fair Tax would completely eliminate loopholes!

OWS's plan of punishing job creators will do nothing more than destroy opportunities for those who want to succeed... It is time we stop pulling the successful down. We need to pull the poor up and give them the opportunity to succeed!

Thank you for proving the point about "not having a clue".

4.1% of the U.S. population is not "so few". And I know some of these people first-hand (they're in my freaking family). They'd rather sit in their trailer and collect money from the government than work. They think I'm stupid because I bust my ass working when they can sit in their trailer and watch TV all day for the rest of their lives. And they've been doing it for the largest part of their lives (much more than "a very short time")!

Heck, we have nearly 20% of Americans on food stamps! And OWS answer? Let's stomp on those that are actually providing jobs and giving these people the opportunity to find meaningful employment and self-reliance! Oddly enough, I've only ever been hired to work by some "evil rich person" or "evil rich corporation". If it wasn't for these "evil rich", there'd be no jobs!

BTW... Want to get rid of the tax loopholes? Simplify the tax code! Something like the FairTax would be a great start. We don't need the monstrosity of a tax code that is full of loopholes!

I know it feels good to chant the rhetoric of OWS, but it is time to stop trying to drag down those that are actually creating jobs and employing people and start trying to pull everyone else up so that they can have those same successes. We shouldn't try to make the rich become poor, we should try to make the poor become rich! Penalizing the successful doesn't do anything more than stifle opportunities that the poor can use to crawl out of the assistance trap and create their own success stories.

Please PLEASE PLEASE --- slip on bar of soap in your bathtub ( http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-in-a-tub-nearly-every-day-in-1201018.php ). Seriously, DO NOT REPRODUCE. Your gene line is an intellectual dead end. If you have reproduced, please go for a family drive as often as you possibly can ( http://www.statisticbrain.com/car-crash-fatality-statistics-2/ ).

I think this goes beyond a few employees walking out with the occasional thumb drive. If they have a link inside Google* it means a sh*tload of additional traffic to their backbone provider. Or a dedicated fiber link. Someone would notice.

Depends what data they are monitoring, if they are just capturing search queries and IP addresses, it's not that much data. Google gets around 4B queries/day. If each query log entry consumes 256 bytes (should be less with compression?) that's 1TB of data per day, which *would* fit on a thumb drive. Or consume around 100mbit/second of bandwidth, which would be lost in the noise of Google's outbound bandwidth (or served by a single AT&T fiber drop that terminates at the NSA)

*Its more likely this is being monitored in real time at the backbone providers. The same people that were given unconditional amnesty for handing customer data out. Cue the movie scene where the crooked cop has all the local hoods on a short leash when he needs some dirty work done.

Depends on whether or not they want to see SSL encrypted data too. Few believe that the NSA has the compute power to decrypt billions of SSL transactions a day.