It's more fun to suggest they get a job. They either leave you alone or get uppity and provoke a confrontation that ends with them on the receiving end of pepper spray. Either way you win.

Repeat after me: "I'm sorry for the hassle officer, I was afraid he was going to hurt me."

Why even restrict the choice of representative to someone in your state? I'd just let anyone interest in the job apply to serve as a representative, provided they could meet some minimum number of votes nation-wide—perhaps 0.1% of the eligible voting population, so there could be at most 1,000 representatives. In practice it would probably be much less than 1,000, with a few individuals representing the major factions but plenty of room for minority positions. Each eligible voter gets three votes, and thus up to three representatives, which they are given the opportunity to change at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly, or when one of their representatives steps down). The votes are persistent until changed, and can be concentrated or spread out according to the voter's preference. A representative's influence in the House is determined by how many votes he or she currently holds.

This would, of course, be separate from the states' representatives in the Senate, to be appointed by the state legislatures. Popular representation is all well and good, but someone has to look out for the long term. Under my system the House would be able to approve any short-term (discretionary) expenditures unilaterally out of existing savings, but a 2/3 super-majority in the Senate would be required for anything requiring new debt (to include any increase in the money supply), speculation on future revenues, or a commitment of more than a few years. Finally, all laws would be required to maintain the approval of a simple majority in both the House and the Senate or face immediate repeal following a call for a vote.

NASA's an agency of the Federal Government, which brought you the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. This is one of the reasons why you can't take Republicans seriously when they say Government is no good at anything. Could you come up with a backronym that good? I doubt it.

First they came for the power users...

They aren't doing this to improve the user experience with the software. They're doing it to address the perception that "new and shiny" is what people want -- not functionality per se. They're aiming at the user experience of getting something new.

You know that marketing slogan, "sell by showing what problem you solve"? The "problem" that marketers have identified is the public's disinterest in things not new and not shiny -- and lately, not thin.

In my view, incompatibility is a sign of poor vision, poor support, and a lack of respect for those people who have come to you for what you offer. Speaking as a developer, if I come up with new functionality that is incompatible with the old, I add the new functionality without breaking the old. There are almost always many ways that can be done. I never did find a worthy excuse not to do it, either.

It isn't Google, or Apple, or whatever vendor that needs to learn a lesson. It's the public. I don't think it can be taught to them, either.

Squirrel!

Did they teach you how to be a smug superior asshole there or did you learn that on your own?

That would kill many churches. Property taxes alone would have bankrupted the UU churches that I've belonged to. That's a bigger deal than Federal taxes for most small churches; Federal corporate taxes generally apply to earnings, not revenue (did they teach you the difference in college?) and most churches don't run a surplus. Whatever comes in goes back out. Of course, having to file a Federal tax return would impose a non-zero cost, even if they didn't end up owing any money.

The ones that I belonged to were. They did good work in the community, without proselytizing (which is a protected activity under the free exercise clause, but never mind that) so I'm disinclined to support a public policy that's going to burden them with additional paperwork and expenses that they can ill afford.

It's one of the largest cities in Finland, which is the home country of Nokia....

I guess I have a problem with the unapologetic part. The United States is founded on a tacit respect for the belief structure of one's neighbors. Do we always live up to that ideal? Hell no. That doesn't mean we stop trying though. I would summarize my personal philosophy as "Live and let live."

Frankly, in the meat-space I try to avoid conversations about religion. They're like conversations about politics, whatever position you adopt is invariably going to piss 50% of the room off. When the conversation happens despite my best efforts I try my utmost to keep it respectful. Equating someone's faith with a belief in alien abductions is anything but respectful.

The United States has a history of successfully prosecuting Mafioso, including the highest echelons of leadership. Is it easy? No. Of course, it's not supposed to be easy to take away someone's freedom. :)

If Scientology is truly the "big fat global scam" (apologies to South Park) that its opponents believe it to be, well, RICO would seem to provide an appropriate solution. There are a non-zero number of people who actually believe the tenets of Scientology (hell, the Branch Davidians still have members) so the trick here would be separating the wheat from the chaff.

I honestly don't know enough about Scientology to say whether or not their activities rise to the level of RICO offenses. If the worst about them is to be believed it would seem that they do.

Several problem with this. First, the claim to communal ownership of the entire country is extremely suspect. Was it homesteaded from unowned land or purchased? If purchased, did the seller have the right to it? Governments generally move in to a country by conquest, i.e. theft on a grand scale. They don't homestead the land they rule, or purchase it from the rightful owners (though sometimes they do purchase territory from another government). Second, unlike shareholders in a company, citizens can't cash out if they happen to disagree with the direction taken by the board of directors. Citizenship is non-transferable, and even abandoning it is very heavily penalized. Citizens are opted-in involuntarily at birth and aren't allowed to opt out in any practical sense—being forced to give up everything you've earned, move to another country, and never see your family again doesn't count. (And even then the U.S. will try to keep claiming you owe taxes.)

Right. You don't have to be a charity to be a non-profit. Anyone can form a non-profit so long as the organization itself isn't intended to make a profit (i.e. to enrich the owners/shareholders or pay dividends—paying employees is fine, but they do get charged income tax on that pay). You do need to be a charity to allow your donors to write off their donations as charitable expenses on their taxes, but that's all that's really at stake here.

That's not entirely correct. While there are some minor differences between non-profit charities and other non-profit organizations, the real point of having tax-exempt non-profit organizations is to avoid double-taxing the income of organizations which aren't structured as profit centers—in other words, those which don't accumulate market value for their owners or shareholders, and don't pay dividends. There are plenty of non-profits which have nothing to do with charity and are only intended to benefit their members, e.g. industry organizations like the RIAA or MPAA. This is not a loophole; the system is working as intended. It's all a matter of simplifying the paperwork, really: if the associations were forced to file as for-profit organizations they would still pay little or no income taxes, because—by design—they have no net profit. They may keep some savings on hand to facilitate cash flow, but everything else they receive is channeled directly into expenses related to their charter.

The significant advantage charitable non-profits have is that their donations can be written off on their donor's taxes as charitable expenses. If you donate or pay dues to a non-charitable organization you're still on the hook for income taxes on that money, unless you can classify it as a business expense.

I think the motto is pretty silly myself but if it truly drives you insane I think you need some perspective. I can't recall the last time I even noticed the motto on the greenbacks in my possession. All I've ever noticed about them is the sad fact that I always seem to have Washington and Lincoln in my wallet never have Mr. Franklin. :(

Come back Ben, I miss you.....

The way you deal with an organization like Scientology is by bringing criminal cases against its membership, where applicable. False imprisonment, fraud, and so forth. Don't attack the religion itself, that's a recipe for disaster, but where members thereof break the secular law they should be held accountable. If Scientology is the big fat global scam (apologies to South Park) we all think it is, well, it shouldn't be able to survive its leadership going to jail.

The point is that having a superior product (which is debatable in the case of Nokia's OS, but whatever) is no guarantee of market success. Google had the critical mass to make their OS work and it's a mystery to me why Nokia couldn't see that. Or, for that matter, why Blackberry and Microsoft still can't.