Gosh... I own a house in Idaho, and was planning to sell it, but maybe we should just move there!

(What's the job market like in Gooding?)

So you avoid Hawaii like the plague?

I'm guessing that's what they meant also, but really, there's no confirmation of this theory anywhere in TFA. It's simply the most sensible interpretation of their fumbling attempt to discourse.

I doubt it's either of these. A very low percentage of emails give much geographic information about their associated users, so even if Idaho was the Spam Sucker Capital of the Universe, the spammers wouldn't know how to target Idahoans. And I think that, even if it's true that Idaho adopted email later relative to other worldwide locales, by now it's been long enough since widespread adoption that the n00b effect is diminished to statistical insignificance.

The most likely explanation (if, in fact, the phenomenon poorly documented in this article bears any semblance to reality) is that Idaho has a lower rate of email-based commerce than other states, due to lower population density and an economy that is largely rooted in agriculture (no pun intended). A larger percentage of email is probably personal rather than professional, and personal email use patterns are more likely to engender large spam-to-useful ratios.

yeah... I actually read TFA because I figured the summary was just garbage. But no, that's how the article puts it, too, without EVER explaining what on earth they're trying to say.

I would be too, since it works if you visit a website in IE, but doesn't work if you visit a website in Chrome.

What I wonder is... does the Chrome Frame counter this particular exploit? I could see it doing so by either negating the "visit in IE" requirement (by using the Chrome rendering engine) or the "Chrome not running" requirement (by running the Frame).

Of course it can! It could, for example, immediately upon launch, enroll you in a roster of botnets, search your drive for 9- and 16- digit numbers to send to an email address in the Czech Republic, and post all pictures it finds on all connected drives to Flickr.

Sure, it's plausible. But the least plausible part of it is that the cops called the perp in the first place.

What makes you think that I'm using data that isn't taking that into account?

When you break up the US trade balance by region, you find that every region EXCEPT the one that contains California (I think it's region 9, but I could be mistaken) has a huge trade deficit. That takes into account where goods are shipped after they arrive at the ports, and where they come from before they depart from the ports. Unfortunately, my lecture notes are stored away somewhere obscure (maybe they're in the cabinet under the cable modem and router), but the percentage of goods that go through the California ports that are not from/to other states is pretty large... definitely a majority. That's not the case for any of the other large ports in the nation (such as Seattle, the one in New Jersey, etc.)

It helps that the state contains over 10% of the entire nation's population, of course.

Because they could... what? Go to college? Not if they couldn't get into college-track courses in high school. Not if they can't earn a scholarship. Learn a trade? Even that is expensive; during apprenticeship (such as for plumbing) you make almost no money, and it's often competitive to get into one. Just what do you suggest as the method(s) that really anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Because I have yet to learn of some path that is truly available to *everyone*, regardless of their resources.

Oh, wow. That's just... wow.

What's the poorest *you've* ever been? And what are these opportunities you speak of that don't require special training, a high degree of literacy and/or numeracy, or physical prowess? because some people don't have ANY of those things, or any way to get them.

And why? Why has she? Do you ever think about that?

Sure we do (at least, a lot of us do). We're just not willing to, and we have enough acquired power (see Hobbes, or was it Rousseau?) that we don't have to.

You know, my housekeeper makes $90/day to come to my house every other week and clean. That comes out to more than $10/hour, but that is NOT getting paid "really, really, really well" in this area. Not only that, but she's 66 years old, and can't work as physically hard as she used to. She's never had an opportunity to save for retirement, though, and her son barely makes enough to support himself and his daughter, so she can't quit. She doesn't speak English very well (some people are good with languages, but she's not one of them), and though she's very intelligent, she's not well-educated, so there aren't many non-physical opportunities for her. She's taken some jewelry-making classes, and I pay her $10-20 to fix broken necklaces every now and then, but she doesn't have the resources to start up a full-scale jewelry business.

What do you suggest for her? What are her options to make money? She's a US citizen (if you're over 65, you're allowed to take the exam in your native language), but doesn't have much else in the way of natural or acquired power.

What about the friend of a friend who, having lost her eligibility for Medicaid when her kids moved in with their dad (because she was about to be homeless), can no longer afford her medication for bipolar disorder? She's slipped farther and farther into depression and dysfunctionality, smokes too much weed and can't be a good parent, pay her rent, or keep a job. But she also can't afford mental health care or substance abuse treatment, which aren't easy to get even if you *do* have Medicaid.

If she does lose her job, she may be able to get her insurance back, but then if she regains functionality with treatment, she could lose it again. What's your solution for her problems? What's she just not doing right? Most of her skills tend toward backstage grunt work for community theater.

I've thought about it, but I'm not sure they'd really fit in. Maybe we could work out a sort of West Berlin corridor with Las Vegas... but probably we'd just have some sort of passport card to travel easily.

Oh, shoot. I'm sure that it came FROM Texas, though!

Sure! It'll be a whole West Coast party. (Think you can talk Oregon into coming along? They're still mad at us over the Gold Rush or the Lakers or something.)

TRADE deficit. Our country (the USA) imports vastly more than it exports. If we were embargoed on any large scale, we'd be utterly screwed.

California, however, has a trade SURPLUS. A large one. Two of the three largest seaports in the US are in California, as is the busiest freight airport. And while the East Coast ports are finding it's not worth the expense to ship back empty cargo containers, in California we just fill them up with locally produced goods and rake in cash.

We just don't like taxes, so our government is broke. That is a problem I will remedy as Benevolent Dictator of the People's Republic of California. (Shhhh, don't tell them yet; I've been saying it'll be a democracy.)

As he was being detained elsewhere at the time, I doubt it. But maybe so. Maybe the cops on the scene called in to wherever he was being detained and asked him "Mind if we bowl a few rounds while we're here?"

Ok, I'm not a lawyer, I just hang out with lawyers sometimes... but...

How about tainting the warrant by arguing that the *real* reason the cops wanted in the guy's house when he wasn't there was to play with his toys? Especially if the probable cause is at all weak or disputable, the attorney *might* be able to get the warrant thrown out, thus invalidating all evidence gathered.