You seem to think the institutions are racist because they wanted some "very sharp" kid to get a GED ?

Not at all. I don't think the institutions are racist at all. I think they saw talent.

And because of (and in some cases, despite) the efforts of people who have fought these fights for many decades, there are now such opportunities. There was a time, not that long ago, in my lifetime in fact, when this young man would have not gotten the opportunity because of the color of his skin and his station in life.

Now his job is to make sure he gets as much out of them as they get out of him. That is the hard fight.

No dude, your books are not so incredible that people will buy them no matter what the price. There may be a few people who are like that, but most aren't. Price matters in entertainment. Turns out, when you make something cheap enough so that people don't need to think about spending the money and even more so they feel like they are getting a "Great deal" they'll spend very freely.

Steam has figured this out with videogames and siphons tons of money out of people's pockets, and has people thank them for doing it. People get drawn in by the "savings" of the sales and spend tons. I should know, I'm one of them. Not only do I have games I haven't played, I have games I haven't installed. I see something that I'm interested in that is a good price and I say "Oh man, I should get that," and I do. If they are more expensive, I think about it more, I wait until I really want a new game, I go and replay something I already enjoy.

Cheaper books will lead to bibliophiles just collecting the things. I know my mom would. You get them cheap enough and she'll drop hundreds a month on stuff she'll never read, just because she wants to have it.

Authors/publishers/developers/etc need to get over this idea of their digital goods being "worth" a certain amount. No, you need to figure out what you need to do to maximize your profits since there is zero per unit cost. Usually, that is going to mean selling cheap, but selling lots.

Yeah, hate that $13 billion *developers* have made so far.

That money's been spent a long time ago. A lot of it on development of more apps that have not been profitable.

Assuming your figure of "$13billion" is correct, of course.

Anyway, this article is about the marketplace, not about the relative handful who have scored big on an app, then hired a staff, invested in their businesses, took venture capital and private equity and now are well and truly fucked.

Why, in theory, build out municipal fiber when internet service is already offered by two respectable private businesses?

Because places have done it and saved the population money and provided better service?

If there's been consolidation to the point where there are only two providers, I completely understand a municipality providing the competition. I lived in a town with municipal power generation. It was cheap and the service excellent. Until a group of Koch-backed corporatists got elected to the county board and privatized the service without public hearings or comment.

Home energy bills doubled within six months.

Oh, of course not. It just demonstrates the hypocrisy of the accuser.

If you look up the definition of "madam", you will see that Lucianne Goldberg fits the bill rather well.

As a former government worker, I can tell you: no. Its far and above closer to the 75% mark in the public sector.

It just looked like 75% because you find black people so scary.

Fact is, in many government offices, what you're actually seeing is a more representative workforce for the community in which you live. You're not used to seeing that because racism is so pervasive in hiring.

he wants to shakedown businesses for money for his organization and those of his cronies.

Unlike the Chamber of Commerce or the "Club for Growth"? Or "Americans for Prosperity" or...what's the name of Karl Rove's PAC that had like a 8% success rate..."American Crossroads"?

Cracker, please.

If Jesse wants to wage the next race war, he should start by getting more black kids interested in STEM and education in general

I would keep an eye on that space. Since January, I've visited two very impressive inner-city STEM programs. One's run by the University of Michigan and is in Detroit, of all places, and the other is right here in Chicago, at Lindblom High, run by a friend of mine.

The real interesting part will come in a few years, when these incredibly smart and capable kids start showing up in tech jobs. Then we'll see how many cries of, "affirmative action" we start to hear when a young black kid who grew up in a rough neighborhood gets promoted. We'll learn a little more about whether racism is a thing of the past or not.

Seriously. At the Detroit place (it can't really be called a "school" because it's more of a maker space with a bunch of very sharp faculty), there was a kid who was coming out of the program and he had some very impressive schools recruiting him (but they wanted him to get his G.E.D. first, for some reason). He ended up getting his G.E.D., but then took a job with a well-known tech firm, because why would he go all NCAA, when the pros were calling, you know?

It's going to be an interesting time.

No. The MagSafe connector was never designed to eliminate cable strain. It was designed to break away from the laptop should you trip over the cable, preventing the laptop from being damaged.

Cable strain can come from many sources. The cable can simply be bent in a funny angle repeatedly over a long period of time. A MagSafe style connector isn't going to protect against that. Yanking out the cable by gripping the cable and pulling (as opposed to holding the connector directly) also causes cable strain, and again -- MagSafe won't help you here (other than by ensuring you can't also accidentally yank the laptop with the cable).

Even the very ad you linked emphasizes this -- the whole point is that the "PC" is damaged -- not the PC's power cord. Apple has never claimed you can't damage the cable by straining it inappropriately, and MagSafe was never designed nor marketed to prevent such damage.

Yaz

I had never seen this done prior to a trip through the US earlier this year. Of course, it wouldn't accept my Canadian postal code (which is a six character mix of alternating letters and numbers). I had to cancel the transaction and go in and have the cashier run everything manually, and then go in after filling up to complete the transaction.

Not the end of the world, I suppose. I suspect we don't bother with doing that here in Canada due to a) stronger privacy laws and b) near global use of chip-and-pin for credit cards. At the time, my natural first thoughts were "why on EARTH would you need to even ask me that???". Now I know why, and will know better the next time I'm down that way.

Yaz

Socialism is fascism.

This is the theory of Jonah Goldberg, who is a half-bright propagandist who got his job through nepotism, his mother being a famous madam. It has gained some currency among people who are outraged that they are required by law to have health insurance, but nobody else.

And I didn't think it was possible to misrepresent as many citations as in a single post as you have. Believe me, I've tried.

Yeah. What you said.

As wikipedia likes to say [citation needed]. You are right they report usage. You are wrong that zero is bad. Look up how FICO works.

Depending on the card it may not matter. I haven't used my amex card in years and they don't seem to mind keeping it open. I have had other cards close due to inactivity.