The irony of someone accusing the Tea Party of "Almost assassinat[ing] an American congresswoman" in the same post that decries "[d]ivid[ing] America to the worst point since the Civil War" is painful. The former had NOTHING to do with the Tea Party, and the accusations that it did were a prime example of the vitriol that's come to dominate political debate.

I don't support most of the platform that's associated with the Tea Party, but the accusation that they've somehow been more vitriolic is ridiculous (although they haven't been less). A simple scan of the comments here is the perfect counterpoint.

Ever since I dropped cable and started buying shows individually, I've saved about 80% on my costs of video-viewing (which included cable, netflix, plus buying DVDs). Also, I watch less crap--no couch-surfing with the remote--and am happier for it. Sure, it's artificial willpower. But it works for me.

Basically, if it's not worth $3, then it's not worth an hour of my time.

Yeah, but Amazon is really clear when you buy a season pass that you're paying $(n * 2.87) for the n episodes that have already been aired and $2.87 for each future episode as it comes out. It's very clear there's a per-episode price, and splitting it into multiple seasons has no effect on the total price paid.

I have no idea if iTunes is as clear; I don't order from them.

No semicolon needed there:

Mine has a digitizer+stylus.

I went from a laptop + tablet to just a Helix. I like it. Web browsing is just so much nicer on a real PC in tablet mode than on either iPad or Android. I can access all of my docs in tablet mode. For reading, this makes sense for pretty much all of them, even using desktop apps. For some, editing in tablet mode makes sense, again using desktop apps. And I can pop it into the keyboard in a second if I need to do serious editing. It's more convenient to carry just the one item around, and I don't have to shuffle files around. And I have enough storage to get serious work done even when I don't have access to cloud storage. I never have to wish I'd copied a file to my tablet before leaving.

I wish the tablet mode were even lighter and thinner. I wish the battery lasted longer, although it's never run out on me. But it works as is, and I expect them to get better in the next year or two.

I don't use Modern UI except for a very few settings tasks. Until Modern UI Firefox comes out, I probably won't use it for anything substantive. I added a start menu that lets me boot to desktop. And Windows 8 desktop has some nice improvements over Windows 7. Win 8.1 promises even more, including different scaling factors for the device display and my desktop monitor. It ain't perfect. But neither are android and ios. For *me*, this works better.

Justice Thomas has been on the court for more than 20 years (which, yes, is technically 10+, but still). During that time, he has authored more than 600 opinions.

Reread the part where I said "bait-and-switch." In that scenario, they have broken their agreement. Company will provide educational opportunity. Intern will provide services related to that opportunity. If a bait-and-switch happens, they haven't provided the educational opportunity. Having failed to provide the promised form of recompense, they should at least provide a decent wage.

No. I'm not sure why you think it would be. I was answering a specific question, the premise of which seemed to be there were NO jobs someone would want to do for free. I have no problems with the concept of laws protecting interns from bait-and-switch like you describe. I don't know enough about existing laws to know whether they are good or not. Basically, I was not talking about interns. I was participating in a more general discussion about unpaid jobs spawned from the intern discussion.

I wasn't defending intern practices. I was answering a question, and posing at least two examples of jobs I'd like to be legally allowed to be performed for zero pay, in at least some circumstances.

There are several comic books I'd write for in exchange for zero pay. I worked stage crew for several concerts in college for zero pay, entirely voluntarily. Both examples are for-profit enterprises.

There's still useful information in that sentence: It's possible Wayland could work as intended, but cause noticable changes in system behavior. This sentence tells us that the expected behavior is no noticable difference. And the sentence also filters out some useless information: of course you'd notice a difference if it doesn't work. That's the trivial case.

And you know this how, exactly? There are lots of college athletes who have a genuine passion for their academic studies and who excel in those studies despite the "distraction" of participating in a sport.

The contrary view to the attacks of Hitchens and others of Mother Teresa deserves ahearing, too.