stealing

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

That's the exact response I had. More importantly, any competent gastroenterologist should have tested for Crohn's disease after seeing her initially.

I'd watch what you call an 'Official Response' as many corporations have very strict rules about talking to the press, or making any binding claims to a general audience. Are you authorized for such communication?

Yes she is. She's handled one of my responses before. Recently corporations have started hiring "social networking" types to answer questions on places like twitter, facebook et al. It would Slashdot is another one of these venues.

Flamebait: This is pretty low content, even by Slashdot standards.

Admins and help desk folk have been whining about clueless users for as long as there have been computers. It takes a few generations for people to hit an equilibrium level of tech savvy. Everyone loves to cite the car as an example of minimum mechanical competency. This comparason falls flat for two reasons:

1. Cars cost a lot more than a computer, therefore there is much more incentive to understand how they work. Mistaking windshield wiper fluid for antifreeze can cost you $10,000. This isn't the case with a computer (cue the anecdotal outliers like some virii stealing $10,000 from your mom's bank account). Moreover, this article mistakes the basic level of competency of most computer users. Most of them are reasonably proficient at any day-to-day operation of their PC. Beyond that, just as with a car, they'll take it to a professional.

2. This is the most important point: everyone grew up in a world with automobiles. Your parents understand how cars work because they had to own and maintain them. Personal computers as a universal device are less than 20 years old. Give it a generation or two and people will understand, as a rule, that the hard drive lives inside the computer.

Honestly, this kind of generic holier-than-thou geek wankery is really annoying. It's a sign of an immature perspective, coming from the type of person who is insecure in their knowledge.

If you are stupid enough to give a $300k loan to someone who makes $15/hour you should not be bailed out.

You should look more at the Great Depression and the Asian crisis of the late 90's. Waves of bank failures after exogenous market shocks caused everything from soup-lines to massive riots and famines that killed tens of thousands. These are real effects from hard landings. In the case of the banking industry it's been known for two thousand years that, if you can mitigate a financial crisis, you should, lest the repercussions from a seizure of the financial system kill the real economy.

This isn't to say that the government should run around throwing cash to everyone who asks for it. But the laissez faire ideology that we can quickly (i.e. within 5 years) recover from bank failures of the highest magnitude, such as that of BoA, is just as silly. Yes, a market will always reach equilibrium. But it's getting there that's the killer, or as Mr. Keynes so aptly put it, "In the long run, we are all dead."

Please don't say things like that because, if true, the people of this country will almost certainly vote in factor of prevention rather than freedom

The last 30 years have pretty much proven this to be the case.

There is plenty in 9/11 to blame Clinton for... Most in fact...

Actually, I think you can blame most of 9/11 on Osama Bin Laden and the hijackers.

Honestly, your post is flamebait. This kind of prepared terrorist attack is nearly impossible to prevent, particularly in a reasonably free nation. I blame neither Clinton nor Bush for 9/11. Also, with regard to this:

Clinton was a lawyer and rejected the offer [wikipedia.org], because there was no grand jury indictment against Osama (yet)

The source for your link is an LA Times opinion piece. Please don't do that here.

Finnish is considered to be one of the hardest languages to learn, while english is considered one of the easiest.

Bwah? The only people I know who think English is an easy language to learn are native English speakers. Our structures are complex and arbitrary, many of the words have not just two, but several different meanings dependent upon context. The only real advantage English has over some other languages is that we don't have masculine and feminine objects, but sadly that's not enough to save it from being a hideous language.

However, Pig Latin seems to come very easily to many English speakers.

I wish economists would call this phenomenon with a better description. If a government starts printing tons of paper money, it doesn't cause inflation of prices. It causes *devaluation* of the paper until soon people are walking around with wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread.

They do. It's called nominal price vs. real price.

Where the fuck was the outrage when these bailouts were first suggested? I've been outraged since the beginning, because the whole game plan has been obvious to me since they robbed us of that first $700B. And yet polls suggest that Americans STILL think this is going to work somehow.

Repeat after me: The alternative is worse.

We say "Fuck you" to all those big bad Wall Street fat cats! => AIG Fails

so then Citi Fails

so then Bank of America fails

so then Credit markets freeze (commercial paper, interbank lending, consumer and business credit lines). The Fed is unable to use monetary policy effectively since the current discount rate is effectively at 0.*

so then Most every other bank fails (these two are really interchangeable)

so then businesses are effectively unable to acquire capital on anything but cash. Also there are massive runs on the rest of the banks, though thankfully consumer-grade savings are kept intact due to the FDIC.

The rest is pretty obvious if you're able to follow the logic. The absolute seizure of the credit markets (Last October would have looked like a tremor) leads to runs on banks, massive layoffs, and the worst depression seen since at least the 1929.

*If you are thinking about commenting on how we need to either a)contract the money supply by raising interest rates or b)go back to the gold standard immediately, kill yourself.

Proper capitalism should mean that you try and maximise your profit by lowering the price and increasing sales.

Sort of. Video games are subject to monopolistic competition. Each producer has something that sets their product apart from others. For example, Halo 3 and TF2 aren't exact substitutes. As a result, producers have some say over the price of their product.

The long and short of it is that because of the way the game market is structured, it doesn't make sense for a video game producer to price their product as low as possible. Product differentiation means that firms will gain more profit by pricing their products above what would normally be the efficient price.

how'd you like to live with someone for 40 years and lose your house when he dies because you can't automatically inherit the place of residence?

You don't need new laws to fix that. You need a better lawyer and/or real estate agent. If you establish yourselves as joint tenants with rights of survivorship then whoever dies first leaves the property to the other. Unmarried couples do this all the time.

Put another way, the problem involving gays and lesbians not being able to visit each other in the hospital or other rights of survivorship is a contractual one. Most gays/lesbians want to address that issue via marriage and its surrounding privileges. By redefining the classical definition of marriage, they hope to bring about the implied contractual changes that come with it. Without stating my beliefs on gay marriage (for or against), I think these particular issues are better addressed in the realm of contract law itself. As an adult, I should be able to leave my house to whomever I choose. I should also be able to specify hospital visits from whoever I choose. Marriage has got nothing to do with it.

He's the head of the government.

You must be British.