Feel better now that you had your little tantrum?

I understand perfectly well how income tax works in the US. I did not say that progressive income tax brackets were the reason any state was out of money. I also never suggested that a business owner would be taxed on gross income.

My point was that tax brackets stop rather abruptly. That small business owner who nets $80k per year isn't necessarily a whole lot better off than his employees, particularly when you factor in the employer share of social security, medicare, and unemployment that he must pay personally. Yet he is lumped in with multimillionaires because there are no higher tax brackets. Even at the federal level things max out at $373k. There isn't a $500k or $1M bracket. And then some people are shocked when there is not overwhelming support to "tax the rich".

I think to future historians, the most baffling thing of all will be how so many of the middle and lower class cheered on deregulation, defended the rich

Perhaps this is because the middle class gets tied in to the "rich" when it comes to taxes and regulation. In my state the governor wants to create the highest tax bracket in the nation on the "rich". Which he defines as $80k salary per year.

While someone at level is living comfortably, they are not flying around in private jets and relaxing on their yacht. Many are self-employed and have no guarantee that next year won't see their business collapse.

But that is the cut off. The local hardware store owner is put in the same group with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. And then people act surprised when a large number of voters aren't in favor of "taxing the rich".

The two words that will characterise this period of history will be "corruption" and "unaccountability".

As opposed to when? Industrial-era robber barons? Monarchies and imperial charters? The medieval Catholic Church?

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Winston Churchill

I believe Penny Arcade said it correctly. Anonymity + Audience.

In this case, people are getting hit with the reality that they aren't really that anonymous (or private) on the internet.

Yes, you are quite right. Singling out only the men (and often only the white men) does us all a great disservice.

Yes, it does. But wouldn't the proper response be to ensure a history lesson is inclusive of the society, rather than further divide the topic? Otherwise it implies that History is "mens history" and shall remain that way.

Personally, I find that many of the people in such fields are at least a generation behind. Was there a need in the 1960s to explicitly break with convention to look at underrepresented groups? Probably. I don't know. I wasn't born yet. By the time I was in grade school we were certainly being taught about the colonization and exploitation of the American continents by European powers (and, later the US). Slavery. Voting rights. The Civil Rights movement. Etc.

And then some aging hippie professor would come along and act like we didn't know there were people here when Columbus landed. Just because you were taught that shit during the Eisenhower administration doesn't mean that's how I learned it.

Correct. Melting can be more efficient than hauling the snow somewhere in a truck. Also, snow removed from parking lots and roads isn't exactly clean. It is full of trash and pollutants. The snow-melting rigs will filter the water before discharging it.

As long as the browser works, I don't see how the app store model has any impact on "internet freedom".

Don't discount the impact of the masses. If all the kids and Grandma switch primarily to using apps on their phone, then it is not unreasonable to think the web would begin to stagnate and languish. Certainly people could continue to operate web sites, but the significance might be greatly diminished. Gopher is still around.

Back in the 1990s I remember that people used to cry that corporations wanted the internet to be "tv with a 'buy now' button". The app model seems to be much more in that direction.

How many universities did you attend?

I agree that there are universities which do a poor job with computer science, or abuse the term. But I would be interested to know how many of them actually do it, and whether they are using a different name for their curriculum. My degree was most definitely in computer science.

Although I'll readily admit I often did not appreciate it as a student. It has been after a decade of working that I now am grateful to have been compelled to learn software and hardware theory, not merely programming.

My guess is that most schools with solid science and engineering programs still know the difference between comp. sci. and programming.

I like how the first dozen or so comments are just about the browser compatability, and not the biological fidelity.

That's because most of the /. readers would have absolutely no idea whether it was an accurate representation of the female body.

Because the media networks don't want you to. Not only do they sell a bunch of channels packaged together, but they insist that their channels be included on a sales tier with everything else. They don't want to have a "NBC package" as an option... you might not buy it. They want their entire lineup to be included in the base cable package.

To make this happen they typically blackmail the cable company and (more importantly) the customers by withholding the one channel everyone wants. Usually a channel that carries major sporting events in the market they are negotiating.

If you are simply going to ignore all the research that shows hands-free to be as dangerous as hand-held, and more dangerous than in-car conversations (except for teens) why are you asking for a citation?

This is the equivalent of declaring that the Earth is flat and no amount of research will convince you otherwise.

It's the University's network. They can basically do whatever they want.

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/rule.html

Section IV of UCF policy clearly states they can monitor the content of individual communications without advance notice to protect "the integrity of the University".

As for students being dumb enough to use their school's email system to pass around evidence of cheating, I'll bet plenty of them do.

It isn't always that easy. Look up "Think Point".

I was using Google image search (looking at farm machinery). Clicking on an image (from Google) my machine (Win 7, MSE running, firewalled) paused and then Firefox disappeared. I was left with what appeared to be the Microsoft Security Essentials screen, stating the site had a trojan and it needed to look up the solution.

A second later the MSE screen says it found the solution and click next to clean the system. At that point I became skeptical. Using Task Manager I found it wasn't MSE and killed the processing generating the fake (but realistic) screen. Found the .exe files that were already downloaded and set to run on the next boot. Deleted new registry entries. Shortcuts in the start menu and taskbar.

So, having done nothing but navigate to a page through Google - using Firefox - I already had .exe downloaded and registry changes. Neither Firefox nor Google had it flagged as an attack site. Where did that vulnerability come from... Flash, Media Player ? I don't know. The point being that it isn't always that simple anymore. And I would not expect the average user to drop to the Task Manager and find it in progress.

If you're going to reply about using Linux, save it. I've run plenty of *nix systems where I can. But in the real world a lot of business simply must be done using Windows.

Ummm... no.

World series origin