Solar panels are close to 40% efficient? As in, I can buy one of those now? Tell that to Sun Power that just released a panel with "World Record Breaking" efficiency of 21.5%.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/03/5312696/sunpower-launches-x-series-family.html

Umm, I'm not sure where you got your data since you didn't provide a source, but googling produced something different. Inflation adjusted wages have been pretty flat since 2000 at every income level. I actually have graphs to back this up. The bottom shows them going up from 2000 to 2007 and then dropping as would be expected in a recession.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/census/household-income.html?household-incomes-mean-real.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_real_median_household_income_1967_-_2011.PNG

So what war did Obama take us into to produce the massive spike in spending in the last four years?

How about the probes we have zipping around all over the solar system? Messenger is collecting tons of information about Mercury. Of course, our information on Mars is growing by leaps and bounds by the month and we have a probe on its way to Pluto due to arrive in a few years.

All done by NASA. The U.S. space program has continued to do great science since Voyager was launched and will continue into the future. Name another country that's even close.

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines

Hmm, kind of reminds me of this:

http://www.atari.com/pongdeveloperchallenge

I read through the rules. It's nothing short of slave labor. They pay for only a few submissions and according to the rules every submission whether it wins or not is completely owned by Atari with all rights and copyrights included.

Oh and the "prizes" for the winners are only actually potential prizes. The actual amount paid is based on a percentage of the revenue from the game with the "prize" as the maximum.

What a f| |cking scam.

Agreed, except mine wasn't a strawman argument. Feel free to explain.

I see, it's possible that someone healthy can die from the flu. Therefore I need to be totally worried about it. Let's just ignore the statistical probability. It's possible, therefore I need to spend lots of time thinking about it and preparing.

You're part of the problem, not the solution.

Half a million? What is that, worldwide? In the U.S. it's more like 30 to 40 thousand and that includes all kinds of people who are extremely vulnerable such as the very old. Among normal healthy adults and children influenza is not nearly the killer it's made out to be in the news.

People need to start living life in reality and stop making so many decisions based on extreme cases found throughout the news.

William Wallace: "Every man dies. Note every man really lives."

Live your damn life to the fullest and don't spend so much time on this shit.

You realize you've just selected yourself out of the gene pool. Not trying to be an ass, but from the sound of it maybe that's a good thing for the human race.

We're talking about the cost to the healthcare system, not some cost to society which is completely subjective anyway.

If it doesn't cost the healthcare system more, then we shouldn't be taxing it extra to pay for it. Simple as that.

If you want to just tax bad things because it's easy to pass those taxes, that's one thing. But just don't do it under the pretext of paying for healthcare.

Actually, while smoking tends to be more expensive it is completely offset by the savings later on by dieing earlier. In fact, there was a study done a little while ago that finally proved what every health care government system hates to hear because it makes it harder to raise taxes for no reason.

Both smoking and obesity don't cost the health care system any more over the long haul.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html

You're just not getting it. Here's another analogy that will hopefully clarify why they are two completely different things.

Suppose Julian wanted to print out a thousand page book containing the classified material and sell it in Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble doesn't really want to have something like that on their shelves so they decide not to sell it. Then some protesters proceed to block the entrance to the stores, not allowing anyone in or out just because they wouldn't sell Julian's book of CLASSIFIED government documents.

And this sounds right to you? Really? Because at this point you're denying the business the right to choose how they run their business. Julian can sell his book at other places just fine, but just because this one doesn't do it, it's time to raise the pitch forks and light the fires.

Actually, your examples do in fact prove how well the process is working.

Not one of the apps you describe scammed people out of money or information. They are all examples of developers using other methods to get their apps to the top of the store list to get more people to buy them.

If that's the best you can come up with, then I think that speaks volumes to how good a job Apple is actually doing.