In theory, everyone is. States with a sales tax also have a use tax, which is a tax payable directly by the consumer to the state on items they purchase and do not pay sales tax on at the time of purchase.

It's just that nobody actually pays it.

Funny how none of the Ron Paulies seem to mind when the "partisan" Supreme Court comes out with decisions that favor their positions. If you don't like Roe vs Wade, just come out and say it - don't hide behind this farcical mask of constitutional respectability.

There is also a mechanism for determining the intent and interpretation of the Constitution: Get a decision from the Supreme Court. It really is that easy!

It isn't a straw man. It shows that the attitudes, beliefs, morals and values of the framers of the Constitution were not in line with what we now believe to be correct.

Why not just ask if they've stopped beating their wife? The way you ask the question allows for no reasonable answer. The correct answer is that the Constitution rightly endows the Supreme Court with the power to interpret and explain its provisions, that this power has been used since the dawn of the Republic, and that Ron Paul's reading of settled law as "unconstitutional" is simply a method of pandering to his supporters. And furthermore, that the US Constitution is itself a flawed document, containing provisions which are no longer supportable or even ethical in the modern age (most notably, the three-fifths of a man compromise).

I sure hope the linked article is just bad journalism, rather than a reflection of what anyone connected to the program actually said. A successful launch does not demonstrate that the vehicle is safe, any more than winning at roulette shows it to be a wise investment.

The program may be, and probably is, safe - but the proof is in the details of the quality program, not the mere fact that the rocket didn't blow up this time.

Well, I agree. And the linked study shows that we're giving federal contractors $300 billion a year, for no particularly good reason.

Fair enough, although I don't understand why this wouldn't be prosecuted as assault. And surely the union contract doesn't allow you to keep your job while not reporting for your job because you're in jail.

He is assuming that the flash memory in the e-reader is in a chaotic state and is only ordered when an e-book is written to it. This is not true. By the time you get the e-reader, every cell in the flash memory has probably already been written to at least once (either when the flash memory chip itself was tested post-manufacturing, or when the e-reader software was imaged onto the device). Because it must deterministically return the value written to it, even if the new owner doesn't know what that value was, the e-reader is already "holding stationary" all the electrons in its flash memory gates.

Also, while operating, there is a constant flow of electrons in and out of the device, with energy removed from the electrons and converted to heat (with useful functions a byproduct of this conversion). Since the flow of electrons is not perfectly constant, the mass of the device is constantly changing due to how many electrons are within it at any given moment. This fluctuation is of much greater magnitude than the alleged effect.

5.

You could just tell these people to stay at home and keep drawing a paycheck, and still only wind up costing the taxpayer maybe 5% of what federal contractor profits now cost us.

Was this intended as a reply to someone else?

The CIO can justify keeping his job if he has appropriately informed his superiors of his strategy. It is not necessarily wrong to maintain only in-house support. Transfer of liability is only an issue in organizations providing service to external parties.

CentOS is what it is, and has never claimed otherwise. If you want enterprise level support, you buy Red Hat. But if you have made an informed choice, as a strategic policy, not to buy enterprise support, then it makes perfect sense to use CentOS.

Red Hat's share price is at a 5 year high, and I believe their revenues are at an all-time high. If they are being crushed, it is in some wierdly subtle way that shows up on the balance sheet as strong revenue and profitability.

Depends on the device. There are certainly some craptastic Android devices out there. And I agree that this is a huge problem with all Android tablets I've seen. But my HTC Evo scrolls as smoothly as any iOS device.

Not at first, no. Which is why, at first, it was easily outsold by its competitors. Remember the Diamond Rio? the Riva? the Hango? the Creative Nomad? They all worked with your Windows 98 PC, which the original iPod didn't, and as a result outsold the iPod by many multiples.

Yes, that's the expected Android behavior, although some applications just ignore it.