All the arguments based on classical economic theory only work if the assumptions of classical economics hold, particularly the assumption that there is a free market.

Amazon is arguing for its freedom to set prices it charges in its ebook store; that would be no concern of the publishers if we lived in a world where ebook users could simply buy books in non-proprietary formats from any Internet storefront they wanted. But we don't live in such a world. We live in a world where most ebook readers are controlled by Amazon and inextricably linked to its store. It wouldn't have been hard for Amazon to build the Kindle that way. Define some public book trading protocols, bootstrap the standard by building those protocols into the Kindle and Amazon's online store, and instantly the world is a better place for everyone except printers and bricks-and-mortar bookstores with no Internet presence. But Amazon didn't do that, because the Kindle is designed to tie the user to Amazon, the way the iPad is designed to tie the user to Apple.

So what we're looking at is a maneuver by Amazon to corner the market on books *in general* by killing off the traditional paper book trade. Preserving the ability to buy most books from someone other than Amazon seems like a legitimate reason to me.

1. Israel can prevent civilian deaths.

During the course of the past twelve days, Israeli air strikeshave killedover 1000Palestinians—mostly civilians.

Israelsaysthe deaths are a result of Hamas using ordinary Palestinians as human shields, and the gruesome toll has been met with a shrug.

It’s an issue thathas come upduring past operations in Gaza.

Back in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, the president of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann,condemnedIsrael for violating international law in Gaza by targeting civilians.

Brockmanncalledthe offensive “a war against a helpless defenceless and imprisoned people.”

Noting the Israeli military’s “long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties”, Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitsoncommentedthat Israel “would never accept an argument that any Israeli home of an Israel Defense Force member would be a valid military target.”

IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner also couldn’t provide any evidence of houses being used to command in control rocket attacks, when directlyqueriedby reporters.

2. The three Israeli teenswere killed immediately after being kidnapped.

Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal recently revealed that the Israeli governmentknewthatthe three missing Israeli teens, whowere abductedin June from Hebron in the West Bank, were murdered almost as soon as they were kidnapped. However, this was not revealed to the public, and insteadthe search forthe missing teenagers unleashed to a brutal crackdown on the West Bank.

Blumenthal says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used outrage around the kidnapping to whip up enough support to justify the aggressive military campaign that has ensued.

3. Gaza is basically an open-air prison.

The economic blockade of Gaza is a form of collective punishment which residents say is likelivingin a prison. Though the military checkpoints, strong IDF presence and high walls lend the Strip a prison aesthetic, the cruelest element of the “prison” is the lack of economic freedom imposed by Israel’s blockade.

Israelcontinuesto maintain complete control of itsborder crossingswith the Gaza Strip, and the air and sea space of the Gaza Strip – limiting the transfer of goods and people. Though they claim to have withdrawn their troops and that this leaves Gaza “not occupied,” they still maintain control over the tax system.

As a result of these restrictions, 68% of residents live on less than a dollarper day. In contrast, your average Israeli live oneighty fivetimes that.

Inside their prison, Palestinians can’t get access to adequate health care, to education or to employment because of the internal controls imposed by Israel. They need permits from the Israeli authorities to gain access to land and crops, to medical facilities, to schools and universities, and even to visit family andfriends.

4. The Iron Dome isn’t protecting Israel from rockets.

It’s a defense systemhailed as“a game changer”, and the Senatejust approved$351 million to support the military programme, designed to intercept rockets fired by Hamas into Israel.

No matter how much U.S. Senator Dick Durbingushes aboutthe defense system, it looks like the country’s missile defense system justisn’t very good.

Theodore Postol, a physicist andmissile-defense expertat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,estimatesthe interception rate at just 5%. Working with Dr. Mordechai Shefer, formerly of the defence company Rafael, and another researcher, his team analyzed dozens of videos filmed during the “interceptions.”

Their verdict? most of the explosions which appear successful areactuallythe self-destruction of the Iron Dome’s own missiles.

Might want to pass along a note to U.S. taxpayers.

5. Israeli forces has killed over 1,500 Palestinian children since 2000.

It is a number that continues to climb, as Operation Protective Edge rages on.

Since 2000, approximately 1,500 Palestinian childrenhave been killedby Israeli security forces.That’s one child every three days for thirteen years. Within that same time period, Palestinians have killed132 Israeli children.

6.Hamas accepts two states based on the 1967 borders.

7. Hamas has been provoked by Israel

If we are to believe right-wing rhetoric and Fox News, Hamas is provoking Israel’s mighty military campaign in Gaza.

House Speaker John Boehner condemned Hamas recently for “aggressive, unprovoked acts ofviolenceagainst Israel.”

Congressman Eric Cantor concurs: “Hamas’ outrageous and unprovoked war against Israel mustend.”

Although Hamas tactics are abhorrent, their actions are predictable and have been provoked.

Israel does not allow Gaza to have a port or airport, nor is it allowed to export most of what it produces. Palestinians cannot work about a third of their own land, reserved by Israel as a security buffer.

A cruel economic blockade ensures thatten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under five have had their growth stunted by malnutrition. In 2010, Save The Children foundthat two thirds of Palestinian infants and one third of mothers were affected by anemia.

As British Prime Minister David Cameronsaidin 2010, “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain aprison camp.He added “People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison.”

It’s not a moral endorsement of prison riots, but prison guards will tell you: riots happen.

8. Unity between Hamas andFatah is a good thing.

Back in June, a joint government between feuding Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah was sworn in.

While the U.S.cited concernsover the involvement of militant group Hamas, it said that it would be prepared to work with the new government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuwould not recognizethe new government, because of the inclusion of Hamas. The leader called it a “step backwards.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham greeted the news with disgust:

“This is a provocative act by the Palestinian Authority which runs counter to serious peace negotiations with Israel. It clearly demonstrates the Palestinians have little fear or respect for the Obama Administration.”

Perhaps Bibi should have a chat with his friend Tony Blair. As Prime Minister, he architected the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

“The Troubles”— as the violent thirty-year conflict in Northern Irelandis known—claimed the lives of 650 civilians, mainly at the hands of the terrorists in the The Irish Republican Army. But they eventually entered into politics, and that is a goodthing. When terrorist groups choose to talk instead, it is a sign of moving forward.Netanyahu just hasn’t been prepared to admit it yet.

9. Israel isn’t a strategic asset.

Just underhalfof Americans regard Israel as an ally.

Republican Senator Trent Franks is one of her most eloquent supporters, pledging what he“our arsenal of freedom”to defend “our most precious ally on earth.” Knitting the friendship bracelet, he’s alsosaid“Israel is here to stay forever.”

In Spring 1948, standing in the Oval Office, U.S, Secretary of State George Marshall gave his counsel to President Truman, regarding whether to recognize the recently created state of Israel. His view was that backing the Jewish state would harm relations with the wider Muslim world, thereby jeopardizing American access to oil in the region. He also warned of a wider destablising effect.

Truman rejected the advice, but Marshall showed remarkable prescience. According to Pew Research Center in 2013, ninety percent of Jewish Israelis have afavorableopinion of the U.S., but only forty two percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizensfeel the same.

With Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East, America’s reputation is equallyputrid.

Eventually, a despicable band of terrorists, led by Osama Bin Laden, took offence to America’s support for Israel (amongst other grievances). These terrorists have committed themselves (often literally) to killing Americans.

After successful attacks on U.S. Embassies, warships and civilian targets, nearly three thousand Americans died on one day, when Al Qaeda took down the World Trade Center. So is Israel a strategic asset to the American people, or more aliability?

Zionism == Fascist Genocide
"Children killed in their sleep by Israel"

Israeli military fire hit a United Nations-run school in Gaza today, killing at least 20 people and injuring an estimated 90 people. The school under attack, called the Abu Hussein girls’ elementary school, is located in the densely-populated Jabaliya refugee camp.

The United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA), the group that serves Palestinian refugees, issued a stern statement placing the blame for the attack on the Israeli army.

“Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced,” said UNRWA Secretary General Pierre Krähenbühl. “We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge.”

Krähenbühl added that the Israeli attack violated international law, and that UNRWA had informed Israel of the location of the school 17 times. The Palestinians who were sheltering there had been told by the Israeli military to flee their Gaza neighborhoods, only to be hit by Israeli shells at the place they thought would be safe. An estimated 240,000 displaced Palestinians are being sheltered in UNRWA facilities.

Israeli army spokespeople claim that Palestinian fighters fired from near the school–a claim they have frequently made when confronted by their attacks on civilians.

It was the second time in two weeks that an attack on a UN school caused deaths. Israel denies it hit the UN school in Beit Hanoun it bombarded last week, though Gaza-based journalists like The Daily Beast’s Jesse Rosenfeld have cast doubt on those claims, writing that the evidence appears to indicate Israeli fire hitting the area. The attack killed 16 people. UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said last week that three other UNRWA installations had been fired on by Israel, injuring five Palestinians in one incident.

UNRWA has also had to contend with Palestinian rockets being stored in schools that were abandoned. But there is no evidence that the schools hit by Israeli fire have rockets in them.

The attack on the UNRWA school in Jabaliya came after another night of heavy Israeli bombardment. The Gaza Ministry of Health said that over 70 Palestinians were killed since midnight. That brings the death toll to well over 1,200 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians.

Israel declared what it called a “humanitarian window” for four hours today–but also said it would continue to operate militarily in areas where soldiers were already firing. Hamas called it a declaration meant for the media and did not halt its fire. Israeli shells killed at least five Palestinians during the “humanitarian window, Ma’an News Agency reported. And another Israeli attack on a market in the Gaza neighborhood of Shuja’iyeh killed at least 15 people.

Nobody's book is so incredible that people would buy them no matter what the price. If my only way to get Shakespeare was to pay a ten thousand dollar license fee I'd find a way to do without.

You really shouldn't assume that anyone who disagrees with you does so because they're stupid. Publishers know their marginal and fixed costs and certainly have a pretty good idea of the price elasticity of their books. The situation is more complicated than you know.

You can't compare Hachette to Valve, because Valve owns the whole Steam ecosystem, and delivers its services to users' commodity PC hardware with no intermediaries (other than Internet service). In the case of Hachette v. Amazon, we're looking at a situation where Amazon owns the point of sale, and has more control over the users' devices than the user himself has. And yes, you can read ebooks on a PC but few people will want to do that. And yes you can download ebooks in non-proprietary formats like epub from sources other than Amazon, convert the format to .mobi, and use file transfer to move the converted file onto the kindle; but that's a significant barrier for most people.

So what we're looking at is a move by Amazon to take control of the book market in a way it cannot as long as paperback and hardback sales remain strong. Amazon *looks* like a friend of the consumer because they're calling for lower prices. If they get what they want, then ebooks may well make a significant market share headway against paper books.

You might think that's fine, but it's not *generic* formats and *commodity* hardware we're talking about. It's formats and hardware controlled by an inextricably linked to *one* company. And that may mean lower prices today, but what will it mean ten years down the pike when Amazon corners the market on books?

Survivors of massacre in Khuza’a say Israeli forces used Palestinians as human shields

Khuza’a is a village in the very eastern part of Khan Younis adjacent to the border fencein the southern Gaza strip. Its farmers have faced death almost on a daily basis in the past 7 years as Israeli gunfire has become the norm along the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel.

Following the Shuja’iyehmassacre, Israeli forces invaded Khuza’a withaerial strikes targeting any moving object. Survivors recall with horror thatseemingly heavy random tank fire led to the killing of dozens, injuring dozens others.

Over 150 of its residents were arrested by Israeli forces. Most of them were released, others are still in detention. Rescue calls were made live on the local radio stations, as many residents were besieged in their homes, unable to leave. Those who managed to leave came under fire as they were fleeing.

Ayman Abu Toaimah, 32, a resident of Khuza’arecalls,“As Israeli invading troops advanced to the village they besieged it and used residents as human shields. When the Israeli army arrested people and then released some of them, they were told they are free to go back to the village, but as they were fleeing they came under fire and some of them shot dead. These people were used as human shields.”

Abu Saleem, 56, a resident of Khuza’aechoedAbu Toaimah,“Israelis claim that Hamas is using us as human shields– how? This is a lie, we do not see fighters in the streets. It’s them, the Israelis who used us as human shields in Khuza’a and Shuja’iyeh. They turned our houses into military posts, terrified residents in the houses. They attacked innocent civilians with their bombs, and missiles, they attacked chicken farms, they burned our crops, they have no mercy.”

What happened in Khuza’a was a massacre. Civilians were killed in their homes and while they were fleeing. Even ambulances were not immune. Paramedics report that Israeli forces stopped ambulances that were trying to reach casualties and tried to arrest a number of wounded. Ambulances came under fire despite the coordination by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Scenes of dead bodies scattered in the streets reminiscent ofthe Sabra and Shatila massacre that took place in two Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 have begun to leak out of the village.

Abu Ali Qudail a resident of Khuza’a said: “When the ICRC told us that ambulances are waiting usat the entrance of the village from the western side, about 1,000 people rushed to leave their homes, some of which were used as a hideout for Israeli forces. As people were leaving they were surprised that the ambulances were not there, and as we were waiting tank shells rained down on our heads.”

Many people were killed, many others injured. Survivors say they could not help the wounded, many were still under the rubble, homes were destroyed and the smell of smoke and bombs was everywhere.

Abu Ali Qudail continued: “I was watching members of my family dying in front of me, some of them were torn to pieces. Rami, Ibrahim, Alia, Haj Abed died..we had to leave them behind, as soon as we reached one of the Khan Younis schools we entered it to seek shelter but it was very crowded with people who fled their homes. It’s hard to see people dying and you do not know what to do. One of my relatives’ homes were struck while they were inside.”

As the all-out Israeli assault on Gaza entered its 19th day, John Kerry announced from Cairo that he proposed a one week ceasefire, but Israel’s PM Netanyahu refused the offer and only agreed to a 12-hour lull.

Ma’an News reports on one family thatfled Khuza’a andwas then killed by an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis as the ceasefire went into effect:

Minutes before a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire went into effect in Gaza on Saturday morning, an Israeli airstrike left at least 20 members of a Palestinian family dead in Khan Younis refugee camp.

The al-Najjar family had fled their homes in Khuzaa, just east of Khan Younis, earlier in the day after Israeli artillery shelling there killed dozens, and they were hoping to find shelter somewhere further from the border.

Their refuge in Khan Younis, however, turned out to be anything but, as missiles fired from Israeli warplanes just before 8 a.m. completely leveled the four-story building they were sleeping in.

The airstrike killed eleven children, four women, and five men from the family, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The killing of the al-Najjar family brought the death toll in Gaza since the beginning of hostilities 18 days ago to 940.

Following the attack on the UN school in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza in which 17 people were killed and over 200 injured, 29of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47 members voted in favor of creating a commission of inquiry to look at possible war crimes committed by Israel. Only the United States voted against the resolution, while 17 states abstained, 10 of them European.

The vote was taken after Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights commissioner, said “there seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

Survivors of massacre in Khuza’a say Israeli forces used Palestinians as human shields

Khuza’a is a village in the very eastern part of Khan Younis adjacent to the border fencein the southern Gaza strip. Its farmers have faced death almost on a daily basis in the past 7 years as Israeli gunfire has become the norm along the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel.

Following the Shuja’iyehmassacre, Israeli forces invaded Khuza’a withaerial strikes targeting any moving object. Survivors recall with horror thatseemingly heavy random tank fire led to the killing of dozens, injuring dozens others.

Over 150 of its residents were arrested by Israeli forces. Most of them were released, others are still in detention. Rescue calls were made live on the local radio stations, as many residents were besieged in their homes, unable to leave. Those who managed to leave came under fire as they were fleeing.

Ayman Abu Toaimah, 32, a resident of Khuza’arecalls,“As Israeli invading troops advanced to the village they besieged it and used residents as human shields. When the Israeli army arrested people and then released some of them, they were told they are free to go back to the village, but as they were fleeing they came under fire and some of them shot dead. These people were used as human shields.”

Abu Saleem, 56, a resident of Khuza’aechoedAbu Toaimah,“Israelis claim that Hamas is using us as human shields– how? This is a lie, we do not see fighters in the streets. It’s them, the Israelis who used us as human shields in Khuza’a and Shuja’iyeh. They turned our houses into military posts, terrified residents in the houses. They attacked innocent civilians with their bombs, and missiles, they attacked chicken farms, they burned our crops, they have no mercy.”

What happened in Khuza’a was a massacre. Civilians were killed in their homes and while they were fleeing. Even ambulances were not immune. Paramedics report that Israeli forces stopped ambulances that were trying to reach casualties and tried to arrest a number of wounded. Ambulances came under fire despite the coordination by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Scenes of dead bodies scattered in the streets reminiscent ofthe Sabra and Shatila massacre that took place in two Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 have begun to leak out of the village.

Abu Ali Qudail a resident of Khuza’a said: “When the ICRC told us that ambulances are waiting usat the entrance of the village from the western side, about 1,000 people rushed to leave their homes, some of which were used as a hideout for Israeli forces. As people were leaving they were surprised that the ambulances were not there, and as we were waiting tank shells rained down on our heads.”

Many people were killed, many others injured. Survivors say they could not help the wounded, many were still under the rubble, homes were destroyed and the smell of smoke and bombs was everywhere.

Abu Ali Qudail continued: “I was watching members of my family dying in front of me, some of them were torn to pieces. Rami, Ibrahim, Alia, Haj Abed died..we had to leave them behind, as soon as we reached one of the Khan Younis schools we entered it to seek shelter but it was very crowded with people who fled their homes. It’s hard to see people dying and you do not know what to do. One of my relatives’ homes were struck while they were inside.”

As the all-out Israeli assault on Gaza entered its 19th day, John Kerry announced from Cairo that he proposed a one week ceasefire, but Israel’s PM Netanyahu refused the offer and only agreed to a 12-hour lull.

Ma’an News reports on one family thatfled Khuza’a andwas then killed by an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis as the ceasefire went into effect:

Minutes before a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire went into effect in Gaza on Saturday morning, an Israeli airstrike left at least 20 members of a Palestinian family dead in Khan Younis refugee camp.

The al-Najjar family had fled their homes in Khuzaa, just east of Khan Younis, earlier in the day after Israeli artillery shelling there killed dozens, and they were hoping to find shelter somewhere further from the border.

Their refuge in Khan Younis, however, turned out to be anything but, as missiles fired from Israeli warplanes just before 8 a.m. completely leveled the four-story building they were sleeping in.

The airstrike killed eleven children, four women, and five men from the family, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The killing of the al-Najjar family brought the death toll in Gaza since the beginning of hostilities 18 days ago to 940.

Following the attack on the UN school in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza in which 17 people were killed and over 200 injured, 29of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47 members voted in favor of creating a commission of inquiry to look at possible war crimes committed by Israel. Only the United States voted against the resolution, while 17 states abstained, 10 of them European.

The vote was taken after Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights commissioner, said “there seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

Scalzi is right that (entertainment) books are not necessarily interchangeable. If one wants the latest Stephen King novel, and it is too expensive, one may very well not be willing to substitute another author.

HIs error is in thinking (or at least implying, I think he knows this) that no other form of entertainment will substitute equally well for a book. If I can't afford the latest King novel, maybe I'll watch TV instead, and spend the $9.99 on some beer.

People who have enough of a passion for books to become professionals in the industry often do not understand just how little they mean to most of their customers, when it really comes down to it. Books may not be fungible by author, but entertainment overall is.

People who actually work in the industry, including award winning authors will point out that as much work goes in to turning a manuscript in to a book as goes in to writing the manuscript. That's today, with the crappy level of editing and proofreading.

What you want is no editing, no proofreading, and overall shit quality. You can get, literally, millions of books like that for free all over the internet. Enjoy.

The most profitable part of a book release is the hardcover phase for a new book. The profit margin on hardcovers is higher than on paperbacks, mass market or trade. If you undercut your own prices on the hardcovers with your ebooks, you lose the more profitable sales.

It's an outdated business model, and one that doesn't work with ebooks very well at all, but it's the one that has run the publishing industry for a century and more, and it's not going down without a fight.

I'd be interested in your source for this particular tidbit, particularly how it shows blacks are any worse than whites in this regard.

I went to high school with a lot of tough white guys from South Boston and Charlestown in Boston, back when Whitey Bulger was still a big deal in Southie. Let me tell you most of them didn't see intellect as their path into the middle class. A few did, but not many. I've also worked with PhD scientists who were black and came from urban black neighborhoods. You get a mix of attitudes everywhere, whether it's in a black ghetto or white ghetto or a middle-class white neighborhood, but usually being academically advanced doesn't make you popular unless you live in town with a big Jewish population.

Speaking of Whitey, his people used to spread the myth that he kept drugs off the street in Southie. In fact he was kicking the Italian mob out of Southie so he could have the drug trade all to himself. Whitey wasn't a hero, he was a parasite. So why did people believe the lie? Wishful thinking. The people who got education and became professionals moved out of the neighborhood, so the one example of guys who rose in life that you saw every day were the mob. And you had to hope they were good lads at heart, because they had the neighborhood by the balls.

There's often a "we're all in this together" thing going on in poor, downtrodden neighborhoods. Part of that is a resentment of anyone who acts like their above the rest, and that includes people who flaunt their education or sophistication. But that's because intellectual accomplishments don't seem to be within the reach of everybody. You don't get that attitude in cultures which believe in self-improvement.

So let's *not* talk race. Let's talk education and economic opportunity. If people have a way up, see that way, and believe they can do it, they will rise.

Scalzi whines (and he's a very good whiner) that Amazon is acting out of pure self interest, with any benefit to anyone else being coincidence, but I note that Scalzi, by his own accounting, makes a six figure income from the traditional publishing industry, so by his own logic, every single word out of his mouth (or keyboard) must necessarily be assumed to be for his own pure self interest, with any benefit to anyone else, including us, the readers, being coincidence.

The bottom line is that the entire publishing industry is very, very broken, desperately trying to cling to a centuries old, thoroughly outdated business model. Amazon is the new, disruptive innovation, forcing change whether their competition, or the market, is ready for it or not. That is pretty much the only difference. Both sides are huge, publicly traded companies required by law to care more about profits than anything else, both sides are doing whatever they can to protect their shareholder's interests and CEO's egos. With the technology changes in the last 20 years, the conflict is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. The winner will be whoever is best at creating the new business model, and history says that will very likely be Amazon. For publishers, it's adapt or die.

Thing is, pretty much all that is true of authors, too. They, too, are businessmen who are out to protect their own interests. The professionals - the real professionals, like Scalzi, who make their living off writing - are not about to let the fans' interests get in the way of their mortgage payments. Those who are part of the traditional industry, like Scalzi, will naturally see the logic of their publisher's arguments. The growing handful of those who have made it big self publishing through Amazon will naturally see the logic of Amazon's arguments. And us, the buyers of books, will naturally see whatever propaganda is packed up in the skimpiest bikini with the biggest boobs.

Honestly, that's the bit that surprised me. If the payoff exceeded the potential legal exposure I don't doubt that you'd be able to find contractors willing to vivisect the homeless; but I am surprised that 'studies' on such a population(heavily weighted as it is with potentially confounding mental and physical morbidity, difficult to track over anything but the short term, etc.) would be treated as adequate.

From what friends in biology tell me, I gather that the reviewers would spit on you if you tried to do a rodent study by 'eh, we set out a nonlethal trap in the basement of the building and used whatever mice wandered in'. Obviously you can't order custom humans the way you can standardized mouse strains; but impoverished homeless people seem like about the least desireable study population you could imagine, except for the cheap and highly unlikely to sue you bit.

They want the society to change the meaning of the word "marriage" to include homosexual unions (which no civilization in the history of the world has ever equated with regular marriage).

You sure about that? Pre christian roman, ancient chinese, and ancient egypt all have instances of same sex marriages.

For example, the Roman Empire's equivalent of gay marriage was banned in the 3rd century Roman Empire, where it had previously been legal.

Your sense of the word marry as being specifically man to female is clearly proto-Christian; and quite bluntly archaic in the face of modern understanding that many *people* are neither strictly maile or female. Are you going to deny them the ability to get married too? If you are hermaphroditic? What if you are chimeric with both male and female DNA? Nevermind the transgendered.

There is no way the legal status 'marriage' in any modern country should be tied to such an archaic and religious definition. Society itself has largely moved on to understand and accept that a relationship can have all the characteristics of marriage irrespective of the absence or presence of physical appendages or genetic markers.

"Straight marriage" is just as much a tautology [..]

Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times.

The idea that it necessarily and inherently implies straight is as ridiculous as the idea that it implies male ownership of the bride as chattel, such as it did in the Hebrew bible.

What reasons? Because it isn't obvious.

Printing a fake card is dirt cheap, and the 'customer can put an accomplices number on the back. Remember, the whole scam revolves around the card not working properly in the machine; so they can pretty much hand you anything.

You must call your own merchant account provider, and THEY will look up any bank phone numbers that they might need to validate the card and authorize the transaction.

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.