One problem with the way things work now is that some companies use deceptive means to get "likes." For example, Duracell sponsors ads saying "Love Star Wars? Click 'like' here!," with "sponsored by Duracell" in small type at the bottom. I'm sure if someone clicks that they'll soon show up on their friends page in ads that imply that they are endorsing Duracell.

I'm not sure where the original quote is from, but I've seen variations of it before in reference to the US Army in Europe. My information is from a variety of sources that I've read over the years, both books and articles. On the superiority of the Soviet T-34, I can point to Robert J. Kershaw's War Without Garlands, which includes a quote from a German officer that "our tanks were able to defeat tanks that were quite superior in firepower and armour" due to each tank having a radio and a crewman to operate it, allowing for more coordinated tactics. The main deficiency of the T-34 being a small crew and lack of a radio in most tanks.

A similar quote that DOES refer to the Soviets is "quantity has a quality all its own."

Actually, the quote was about America. While the Soviets had lopsided tank kill ratios against the Germans, it was due to the quality of their organization and tactics, not their tanks. Their tanks were in many ways superior to the German tanks. In fact, the Panther and Tiger tanks of Germany were developed in response to Soviet T-34s and KVs (the Panther being in many ways a copy of the T-34).

American tanks were designed to be superior to the German tanks that began the war, but by the time they actually saw combat Germany was fielding tanks that were far superior in terms of armor and armament. This was a surprise to the tankers, but not to the production planners, who were well aware that the Germans were fielding heavier tanks, but they made a conscious decision to go with quantity over quality, as switching to heavier tank production would have led to manufacturing delays as factories were re-tooled. That in turn could have delayed the invasion of Europe, something that the US wanted to achieve at the earliest possible date.

"Associate Justice Donald Corbin wrote 'because of the very nature of Twitter as an... online social media site, Juror 2's tweets about the trial were very much public discussions.'"

A discussion, by definition, requires the participation of more than one person. So, Justice Corbin is incorrect. The juror made a public statement, but did not engage in a public discussion. It may be mostly a matter of semantics, but in this case it's also the difference between something that could have changed the outcome of the verdict and something which obviously did not.

The juror behaved inappropriately, but not in such a way that could have influenced the outcome of a verdict, so the verdict should have been upheld.

That's like saying that the thief wouldn't rob you if you simply gave them all your stuff to begin with!

Exactly, because we all know that it took martial law to break the backs of the mafia in post-prohibition America!

It's true that the cartels wouldn't disappear overnight, but they would eventually follow the same path as the mafia. The smart ones would diversify into legitimate businesses and eventually leave most of their more disreputable past behind. The dumb ones would either fail to diversify, or else attempt to apply their violent methods to legitimate business. Either way, they would present a problem that could be more easily handled by law enforcement given that there would be fewer of them, and they would be, by definition, dumber.

This is essentially what happened in post-prohibition America, which is the best model we have for what would happen should drugs be legalized.

Why should they then get the benefits of tax revenue generated from California citizens? North Dakota is one of the biggest beneficiary states when it comes to the ratio of Federal spending to taxes, while California is one of the biggest losers. The reason? It's the UNITED States of America. We're in it together.

Maybe, but I think that what they'd already done was sufficient. Dividing into separate plans was a good decision, it was just handled poorly from a PR perspective. Dividing into separate companies is simply a poor decision that compounds the previous PR blunder.

What happens now is that they have pissed off nearly everyone they didn't already piss off with the price increase. A lot of people who had decided to go ahead and keep both services despite the increase will now end up dropping one or both because they no longer consider it to be worth it with the separation of queues and inability to do a single search for availability.

They're throwing away a working synergy in exchange for what? Game rentals? They could have just added that to the available plans if they'd wanted to, and given the way things are going in the gaming industry, the physical copy of a video game could go away before the physical DVD does!

This move won't kill Netflix, but it certainly isn't going to help it.

My guess is you first saw this with the tagline "Dice Age — Indie Gaming Project vs. Hollywood", otherwise I doubt you'd have made the connection. I've been aware of this project for at least a couple of months, I even considered supporting it, yet I never once thought of the movie "Ice Age" in relation to it until I saw this story.

That's kind of a bad example given that WoW's subscription numbers continued to steadily rise after the release of Burning Crusade. If "nearly everyone" was upset with the changes made back then, it certainly wasn't affecting Blizzard's bottom line.

Having never owned a PS3, I was not personally affected by this breach, but I have friends who were. The offer by Sony to provide free credit protection is admirable, but the offer came too late for those I know who were affected. They signed up for their own credit protection plans as soon as they became aware of the problem, while Sony did not offer protection until some time after. They might be able to switch over now to Sony's free plan, but they should be compensated for the money they were already forced to spend on their own credit protection. Given the difficulty in determining who paid how much for what, a blanket $20 payment for everyone affected would not be unreasonable.

The difference is that McCain's birth was questioned, the question was resolved, and people moved on. Since then the only questioning of McCain's birth has been as a counter-example to the questioning of Obama's birth. On the other hand, Obama's birth was questioned, the question was resolved, and people continued to question anyway.

Simple disagreement with Obama is not racism, but continuing to question the circumstances of his birth long after any reasonable doubt on the issue has been removed (which happened long before the release of the long form birth certificate), indicates something far beyond simple disagreement.

Because it's a substantial price increase for an incremental upgrade in quality and often a downgrade in convenience.

Thanks for supporting my point that teachers aren't the problem.

I disagree that because parents are part of the problem that it lessens the responsibility of society/taxpayers/voters, but I'm at least glad that we can acknowledge that it isn't all the teachers' fault!

Even were I to admit that teachers teach half as much as they did 25 years ago (which I don't), it would only be to point out that it's because they have twice as many non-teaching responsibilities as they did back then. As budgets have been cut more and more non-teaching responsibilities have been put on the shoulders of teachers. Janitorial services in many districts have been cut, making teachers responsible for cleaning their own classrooms, and sometimes even common areas. Lower level administrative services in many districts have been cut, making teachers responsible for filling out paperwork that used to be handled by school secretaries. Special education programs have been cut, making regular teachers responsible for handling special discipline problems that were previously handled by specialists so that the regular teachers could get on with teaching the regular students.

Of course, class sizes have increased, making the amount of teaching per student go down significantly, but that's not the teachers' fault, and gives the teacher a bigger workload in terms of grading and the like, without any positive return for the students.

Stop blaming teachers for the failure of our educational system and start putting the blame on those responsible: politicians and voters that set policies and refuse to allocate adequate funding.