TFA doesn't mention whether or not the serial # was specified in the will(my guess is that it wasn't), so how can the family even prove that the ipad they are holding is the same one given to them by their mother? While it more than likely is, if they cannot absolutely prove it's the same device Apple does have a plausible reason for denying the request.

Um, research isn't oil, i.e. it's not exactly fungible. You can't take X amount of research in field Y and apply to field Z instead.

A lot of the barriers to better treatments for diseases aren't financial. For example, at any given time there are only a limited # of people willing and able to participate in clinical trials. Do your friends volunteer for these trials? Have you?(You don't have to actually suffer from the ailment to participate in phase I trials) There are also limitations to the # of researchers who can specialize in certain fields, as the resources to train them and bring them up to speed on the latest techniques, equipment etc. is limited. So yeah, not all research goes to areas you deem more important than others. Also, the tooth fairy isn't real.

Like you've never been drunk and desperate enough to do it.

One other thing that Apple did very well is not only asking, but making sure that apps can function as well as can be expected when they get denied the requested resources. Compare this to Android where apps will often times crash if you deny them any of the requested permissions.

Substitute decade with 2 centuries then get back to me.

This, exactly this. Having worked on a military base I can tell you that for a lot of teenagers, the military is the only way into what resembles a middle class lifestyle. If you look at the entire benefits package, the military pays more to an 18 year old then they could possibly get anywhere in the private sector save for *maybe* oil rigs or the energy fields of North Dakota. It's also the only chance many of them will ever get to see places like Europe or east asia(Of course a large # of them treat those places like their own personal playground, but that's another story)

That means if you deduct the wartime finding for Iran and Afghanistan

Um, do you know something we dont?

And yet you didn't actually read it, now did you?

. While this is true, food retailing(not really going to go into production, which is a separate story) is actually one of the most competitive industries in the US. Competition forces companies to provide decent service at very low margins(1-2% in some cases). If the broadband industry were more like the food distribution industry then we wouldn't even have to discuss a government take-over.

I specifically mentioned food production as a separate issue, I was merely talking about the distribution network(ie grocery stores) being very efficient because they have to be. Margins of 1% on cheap stuff is in a lot of ways even more impressive than margins of 1% on more expensive items.

Yup, the government should step in when private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide essential services at a reasonable cost, the keywords being essential and reasonable. Case in point roads.

The macroeconomic costs of having all roads be private would be huge. There would be a lot of lost productivity(not to mention fuel wastage) just on the collection of tolls. And of course anyone who owns property anywhere could find themselves at the mercy of a private interest who can essentially blackmail them by cutting off access to their home or business. Another example of an essential service where the government should, and in most rich places in the world, has intervened is insurance. The fact that the US pays so much more for getting so much less than countries with private health care systems has shown that private industry is either unwilling or unable to provide insurance at reasonable cost, and thus it must be taken away from them. Same with broadband, if US providers don't prove they are capable of *gasp* actually providing a decent service at a decent price then the government should step in. Broadband is in the new economy an "essential service", essentially the "roads" of the internet.

The classic straw man argument is of course "well then why doesn't the government run food stores? Everyone needs food!". While this is true, food retailing(not really going to go into production, which is a separate story) is actually one of the most competitive industries in the US. Competition forces companies to provide decent service at very low margins(1-2% in some cases). If the broadband industry were more like the food distribution industry then we wouldn't even have to discuss a government take-over.

If it was an NSA bug why does it only affect the newest version of the OS, the version that still comprises a minority of OS X users out there. If the NSA had the power to insert a bug like that into Apple's codebase don't you think they would have made it work on more computers? 10.8 has had security updates come out after the release of Mavericks, so if the NSA was so powerful as to be able to get buggy code into Mavericks, why didn't they backport it to older versions of the OS?

Yet another reason not to use windows. The other commercial OS has supported multiple languages for free for over a decade.... Windows UTF-8 support is a joke and it causes me a lot of grief. I really wish my company would go all Google and ban windows but alas they have not. Using windows really is like jumping in a time machine, you can see what computing was like 15 years ago.

Um, if you are measuring an engineers output by the # of hours he works then you are an idiot, pure and simple.

From TFA:

"Expanding the currencyâ(TM)s reach is also a potential win for Amazon, which wants to create an end-to-end ecosystem for app developers."

Um, no, that's not the main reason Amazon created the coins, esp. since the app developers see the same amount of cash regardless of how the user paid. The reason Amazon likes the coins instead of making a bunch of 99 cent charges to a credit card is simple:
1. Charging $10 once to a credit card is cheaper to Amazon than charging $1 10 times.

2. Lock-in, this is the traditional "gift card" route, any money put into the Amazon coin ecosystem will eventually have to be used on an Amazon good/service. If you buy $100 in coins but only use $80, well tough. This has nothing to do with creating a huge ecosystem where the coins can be traded freely for goods and services that have nothing to do with Amazon.

And your basis for saying this is what exactly? You seem to state your case like it's fact, when you just seem to hate a group of individuals with different preferences than you. Guess what, not everyone has the same priorities you do, and you are not the smartest person on the planet. I know you think you are, but you aren't. Do you claim that all food you don't like is worthless garbage for the unwashed masses? If you do, my guess is you eat a lot of dinners alone. Get over yourself.

I knew I shouldn't have ejaculated all over the display model before stealing that TV.