OK, someone finally hit on an issue that I face every day in my job. I work on a web-based application so my job is a mix of client-facing HTML/JavaScript and backend vb.net / SQL. At best I'm mathematically middleweight -- I know my way, albeit clumsily, around trig and algebra but my brain freezes up at the first mention of integrals and derivatives; calculus is completely alien to me.

Frequently, optimizing those SQL queries to ensure the user's page doesn't get a script timeout error makes a lot of difference. How would a better handle on math beyond the high school level help me find a more efficient SQL query? This is genuine curiosity, not a cloaked setup for arguing the point. I always assumed when we hit delays it was because the servers were overloaded (we have thousands of customers) or because there's just no way to speed up a query that returns 50,000 records.

Webcam support? Are you insane? Never mind worrying about what the guy working out of his mom's basement in Bangladesh is wearing (or not); *I* don't want to have to close my bathrobe just to call tech support!

You'd think that the login system would eliminate the initial exchange of information, but in my experience with tech support that's rarely the case. Put in my name, my product info, a brief summary of the problem, and invariably it's "Hello, my name is Mary. How can I help you today?" Well, "Mary", you could help me by reading the information I just took five minutes to look up and type into the login page before I got here.

That's exactly why my daughter prefers chat/email over phone support. She's a CSR for a retailer, not IT, but the process is similar. Get the relevant customer info, get the question, look up the answer, lather, rinse, repeat. And yes, she has hotkeys out the wazoo for the routine responses.

She says with chat, she can keep 4 or 5 conversations going at once -- sometimes in different languages, thanks to her college Spanish and Google Translate -- and close out far more calls than her peers.

The other advantage from her point of view is, the online CSRs aren't required to upsell like they have to on the phone. "Would you like a nice parka to go with those skis?" She really hates that.

How on earth is this censorship, or controlling a market? Unless Apple can stop her from distributing her book in any form in any marketplace, all they've done is stop somebody from going into Walmart and putting up "Shop at K-Mart" signs.

People keep throwing around the word "censorship" like they think they know what it means, but it's obvious they don't. Censorship is when the government restricts your speech. Even if every single one of her claims is true, she is not being censored.

Disclaimer:I am most certainly not an Apple fanboy; I have loathed Apple ever since Woz left. I think they have horrific business practices, terrible design, and don't get me started about proprietary-everything with no user servicable parts inside. Despite all that, I think this is a non-story.

Now that I think about it, it was more like 3 weeks but to answer your question it was because the contractors who did the initial work had squeezed us in between larger jobs and moved on to their next job in another state as soon as they got their truck unloaded, and everybody else within a hundred miles (it's a rural area in Wyoming) was booked months in advance. Once the original contractor was able to send somebody back to do the handrail, we had to wait for the inspector to come back out for the followup inspection.

She will also never, ever be able to use those stairs under any circumstances. But that's beside the point. I'm saying it's intrusive and counterproductive to deny occupancy of our bedroom because of an outside handrail. Yes, all the things you cite are potential hazards and it's quite conceivable that some poorly placed item or loose fixture could someday hurt me. Our choice of placement of chairs and the exercise bicycle in the living room are tripping hazards (ask me how I know). The stupid cat who parks herself right in front of my office door in the unlit hallway at night before I go back to the bedroom is a safety hazard who is, at this point, lucky to be alive and that only because she made it out of reach before I could find an axe.

But all of that is my problem. If I get hurt, or somebody decides to sue me because they got hurt, on my own property due to decisions I made; if a future buyer refuses to make an offer until I change the layout of the stairs, I bear the consequences of my actions. I don't need every minuscule aspect of my life safety inspected, protective helmeted, or compliance regulated. I shouldn't have to stop by my building office and speak to inspector to manage my property to my specifications. If they want to offer advice as to what they think is the best way to approach things, I think that's great and I'll seek out such advice and take it into considerations; making me legally bound to adhere to every jot and tittle of that advice goes beyond helping me make my home safe and becomes an unreasonable intrusion into my private life.

Sure, using a CMS is fantastic... if you want your content to look exactly like the content of everybody else who uses the same CMS. I know, I know... "But mine is unique! I have a totally different font and background wallpaper! And I put my menus on the RIGHT side instead of on the left! And I can choose one, two, or even THREE columns in my layout!"

No, thanks. I'll take the time to do it right, with no unreadable / unmaintainable garbage to wade through when I have to make changes and complete control over every byte that goes into or out of my site. The times I've used Joomla or Wordpress took me longer to configure the design to my specifications than it would have to just do it all in HTML to begin with. It was like trying to... perform a delicate, intricate task with some obviously unsuitable oversized tool.

Sorry, my analogy engine seems to be broken again. I'll have it back up again as fast as... something that occurs surprisingly quickly.

Wire a house? Right this way, citizen. You have the right to remain silent...

A few years back the county commissioners in our area voted to apply city building codes to construction anywhere in the county. Not only do you need permits out the wazoo if you so much as want to bang two rocks together, but the odds that you'll actually pass the inspection the first time around if you're not on the commission or screwing somebody who is on the commission are somewhere between jack and squat.

We had a basement foundation put in for a modular house and jumped through all their hoops; when the inspector came out we failed the inspection because the front porch light was loose and there was no handrail on the concrete stairs leading to the basement OUTSIDE the house. Because of that -- and that alone -- we were not permitted to occupy our own house on our own property. Apparently he felt it was safer for my handicapped wife, my dog, and me to live for six weeks in a leaky motor home in our driveway with no running water in below-zero winter than to sleep in beds in our heated house because of that porch light and handrail.

Do I sound just ever so slightly bitter? Six months later we're going through the same Kafka nightmare trying to be allowed permission to use the interior stairs we had installed. Our builder submitted plans to the commission, those plans were approved, and still the jackass tyrants wanted us to rip out the stairs and install them in a different place because the treads were 1/2" narrower than his arbitrary building code prescribes. No, I'm not saying arbitrary because I'm angry; I'm saying arbitrary because they didn't have a problem with stair tread width five years ago before adopting those building codes, and the width they decided on isn't a standard for anyone, anywhere -- building codes other places recommend different widths, so there's nothing magically safe about the width he wants.

This time around, we do have a friend-of-a-friend of one of the commissioners so we were at least able to get the stairs themselves approved. But we still can't get final acceptance of the construction until we rip out the lighting we put on the stairs ("you might bump your head on the bulb if you grow to 7 feet tall"), put up safety mesh over a window at the foot of the stairs ("if you're drunk and you trip going downstairs, you might break the glass and cut yourself"), and replace a steel beam we had to remove in the first place because it really was too low to go under without smacking into it.

So why bother learning how to use tools? I'll never be allowed to use them anyway; it's for my own good that I leave all construction to licensed professionals.

Bearing in mind that I *agree* with decriminalizing marijuana, you apparently don't understand how studies like this work. If 10% of people who use Substance A end up with Problem X but 80% of people who use Substance B end up with Problem X, there's reason to suggest a link. Yes, correlation is not causation and those aren't actual statistics; I'm speaking hypothetically here. My point is they didn't just randomly pick two events and abitrarily decide they are connected.

They could still be totally wrong, of course, but that's what they do the studies to find out.