From Valve Hardware Survey

* Windows 95.49%
* OSX 3.27%
* Linux 1.13%

People are herd animals. If they think the best or most hip way is in a massively stupid direction they'll embrace it. Why pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee, right? And yet, millions do.

Some people simply can't afford to pay for their bandwidth usage themselves, though. Think of the communities that used to use BBSes and now have forum sites where they post pictures, videos, and massive amounts of text. The owners, presumably hobbyists (originally), just want to share information, not foot the bill for everyone else who has a similar interest.

Advertising has a place. Personally, I can ignore most non-intrusive ads and they really only bother me if the move around following my cursor, or blocking the real content, which is more a problem with site or particular ad design than advertisements in general. Other people have a lower tolerance.

Make no mistake, though, what you're suggesting is just elitism trying to keep "poor" people from using the internet for its intended purpose, sharing of information. I'm sure that's not your intent but that's the reality of what you just indicated in your post. "If you can't afford it without advertisements, you shouldn't use the internet" is basically what you just said.

That was one tough ELA!

No, and that misconception is part of the problem. People should get paid more for accomplishing more, regardless of how much time they spend on it. I'm no fan of long work weeks, but that just means that expectations ought to be set based on what an average employee can accomplish in 35-40 hours rather an 50-60. If you happen to be less productive than the average employee you can either put in more time or settle for a lower salary.

However, that's more or less how it already works for salaried positions. If most employees were already putting in 45-50 hours when you signed up, then you should have considered that when negotiating your salary. It's wrong to look at it as if you'd agreed to 40 hours and were later forced to work extra "for free". Even if the policy changed after you were already working there, you can always renegotiate. (And if that isn't an option due to competition for your job, it's a sign that you're already getting a relatively good deal which other candidates would be glad to accept.)

Ha! Best comment on /. today.

Very nice.

The warrant means that you have to stand aside while they perform the indicated search or seizure. It doesn't mean you have to help them. (You might choose to open the safe rather than see it destroyed when they're going to get into it one way or the other. That doesn't really apply to encrypted data.) If they want your assistance in gathering information then they need a subpoena, not a warrant, and that comes with a different set of restrictions and penalties for non-compliance.

You are confused about the context.

PS2: Plays DVD out of the box
XBox: Required the remote control.

Feel free to post links to these videos. I'd be interested in seeing how these studies defined "girly" things and "boyish" things for newborns. I suspect that will be more telling than the babies' responses. If building are boyish and teddy bears are girlish, I'm going to call bullshit on the whole damn thing.

Role models will be the deciding factor. Having a mother who programs and a father who programs, especially if you include her in your computer time, will be a major help.

Then again, some people just don't like it. My oldest, 19 now, is incredibly good at math (though she doesn't like it) and science but her focus is on the "softer" side of things. She wants to work with animals, zoology type stuff, so not a complete lack of science but not the hard focus engineering puts on it. At the same time she's grown up fixing cars and building things right alongside of me. She enjoys that but it's not her passion.

In the end, the best thing you can do is expose your kids to a wide option of possibilities and teach them to make their own decisions and that if they don't like something after a few years they can change their mind again and try a different path.

That position wasn't libertarian in the slightest. You can tell because it claimed that there was a (non-zero) "fair share" of taxes. Libertarian means the Non-Aggression Principle, which leaves no room for taxation.

As for your proposal... you do realize that you've described a flat income tax, right? It would significantly reduce taxes on the "1%ers", who currently pay much more more in taxes, proportionally, than they receive in income. That would certainly be a nice first step.

You're ignoring far more than just the cost of an office. Useful labor isn't produced ex nihilo. What about the cost of having you available at that time and place, properly educated and prepared to perform the task? That's a huge cost, even amortized across all 100,000 or so of your lifetime working hours, and you can't deduct any of it. At a minimum there should be a depreciation schedule for the cost of raising a child to an employable age, including the cost of the college education required for most jobs, on top of the $10-30k or so of basic annual living expenses.

Or we could just set the standard deduction at the median income, somewhere around $50k. That's probably a reasonable approximation for what an average employee's time is worth.