This is a similar reason why I would never live in NYC (and think twice about Boston). Housing just costs too damned much. And worse, if housing costs a lot all the other living expenses cost more. Groceries charge more because they pay higher rent, ditto for any other basic needs..

I'm sad to say I have to agree with Curunir... Apple has this nasty habit of breaking adapters for reasons I can't understand and then failing to provide a way to intermingle the old and new ones without buying a new computer. The new magsafe adaptors come to mind.

Ahhh but it's not just because it's shiny. Apple is so easy my mom actually bought an iPhone on her own and managed to get all kinds of apps. She wouldn't have been able to do that with Android and don't get me started on what happened when she brought home a PC laptop. (She's been a mac user for probably 7 years but the salesman somehow convinced her to go with a PC, based on price, he sold her a shitty little netbook with the new windows. After 7 years of no computer questions I had to resume my role as her tech support).

They're that easy because they spend a lot of time researching how to be easy to use.

It doesn't matter if a system is technically superior if it is inaccessible to users or hard to understand.

Don't believe me? Well ten years ago on slashdot I heard similar statements about how people should start using Sparcstations or whatever technology was better than the status quo. Despite the better design of the Sparc processors, Intel won. Despite the benefits of Linux / FOSS, most people still use Windows.

Sad people are so misguided, I know, but it's an unfortunate truth about humanity.

How exactly would this work? You'd be able to airplay GPS to the screen in front of you for a turn by turn play?

While it would be great if all cars used some sort of standard system, for now I'm happy they're using any kind of standard.

In a few years time, either Android phones will start having an iPhone compatibility mode, or a standard will emerge.

(Frankly I don't know which will happen since both have happened in the past)

I live in Europe and you might find our way of managing population density a bit, well, shall we say unamerican?

In Amsterdam, the local municipality decides how much rent you're allowed to charge in flats. It goes by a points system. Say a shower will be one point, while a bathtub will be 5. Add up all the points and you determine whether you are in a luxury (free market) apartment or social housing.

If you're luxury housing, you can charge whatever the market will bear, up to a point based on the luxury apartment formula.

If you're social housing, only social housing tenants may live in the apartment. Social housing rents are subsidized and they are VERY low. Like say $400 for an apartment in city center. The social housing buildings are owned by non-profits whose sole purpose is to provide social housing.

Now you might think this is similar to the US, but here's where it gets a little different than the US (and a bit unamerican).

Social housing income thresholds are very high, something like the equivalent of $100k a year in the US. Yup, that's right, social housing is designed not just for the poor but the middle class. You might miss having a bathtub, but you won't mind when you live in the city center and don't have to pay ridiculous rent. Of course, to get in social housing you'll need to apply and wait a few years for a vacancy to open up. You can apply once you're 18, I suggest doing as the dutch do, applying once you go off to University. Then, by the time you look for a job, you'll already have a slot. Or you might find an emergency. For instance, if you were just divorced and living in your ex's house maybe you have a reason for priority.

Of course maybe you don't want to pick the city you live in when you're in college, or you made a bad choice. You still have options. "Luxury" apartment rents are capped based on a certain formula. You can get a much higher rent from a luxury apartment, but you'll never be able to charge above a certain rate. So even though you might pay a lot of rent, you won't pay as much as in America. (My 2 bedroom "luxury apartment" rent in Amsterdam, walking distance to city center, is less than the rent on my 1 bedroom apartment was when I lived in Boston -- and I could only afford to live in a suburb, Malden, almost at the end of the orange line).

And, if you were smart and applied when you were 18, you may be able to rent out your "social housing" apartment, and rent a new apartment in your new city with the money. It's technically illegal, but as any economist will tell you, when you apply artificial constraints to supply or price a booming black market is sure to follow.

And "Living Fraud" is a big crime here and there's actually police who check to see if you're following the laws.

Additionally, because of the artificial constraints on rent you can forget about property values reflecting what you could get without these controls. After all, who will pay $1 million for an apartment when you can rent an apartment for $400 a month?

Still want to import European housing policies to the good old USA? The good news is you won't need to hire new police officers you can just maybe reassign DEA agents when you get a more sensible drug policy.

Velokovsky (and Ackerman) wrote about the birth of Venus, and Mars waging war on the Earth as an actual hypothesis as to how the solar system got to how we view it today. Hogan, as was often his style, took that idea and wove a fictional story around it.

I wish I had recommendations of other lesser known authors of a similar style, but I've never encountered any. For the most part I probably read the same books that most techies do, Asimov, Gibson, Stephenson. It was just a fluke that my mother bought me the fourth book in Hogan's Giants series for Christmas one year, and despite not having read the previous three books I was hooked.

And the likelihood of such a vote is ABOUT THE SAME as the odds of TX actually voting to join Mexico.

TX would go independent about 1000x more than join Mexico.

That $400 a year pays for your helicopter ride from the embassy as it's being stormed by the Viet-con-adians. In all seriousness, being a US citizen has its perks, the biggest being access to any US consolate or embassy, but they'll also try to find you body and ship it home if your plane goes missing or your night-club is bombed, and they'll (sometimes) rescue you if you are imprisoned or kidnapped. You can officially renounce your citizenship, but good luck getting back into the US for any reason if you do that.

24.37% for me. No deductions (or at least none that add up to more than the standard), no credits, filing status=single, cashed out investments. I usually pay less than an hundred in federal, and get back about the same from state, but this year I owed about $1000 overall. I'm not mad at my rate, but boy do I miss having a house. That one deduction alone took me above the standard deduction, which along with other small deductions meant I could change my W4 to take out substantially less each paycheck and still get a return. Why the federal goverment effectively subsidises home ownership but not rent is beyond me.