As much as I disagree with the kid's comments on Twitter, I think that there is a dangerous double-standard at play there: If Citizens will be arrested for just saying things like that in public, 90% of the population would be in jail, because at one time or another, most of us have said foolish things. I will argue here that the issue is that the offensive comment was posted online. If a police officer would have overheard the same comment made in a public place, I argue he would not have been arrested. Then, we ran into the situation where the government is fostering self-censorship, because you can talk about certain things or express certain opinions privately but cannot print or post publicly out of fear of being arrested. This is what a totalitariam regime would do, and it is not good for the UK.

The idea of a browser to be fully HTML5 compliant sort of dissapears with a 'live' standard. This may be convenient for a standard body, but I do not see how this is a good thing for the people actually developing for the web. How can you guarantee a web application will work well on a browser if the standard keeps changing, other than to have the developers not using the newest features of HTML5? So while the standard evolves, deployment will be possible or not depending on whatever your browser devs decide to implement, and instead to refer to one standard document, the application developer will need to keep track to what is implemented on which browser, and having to compromise with the minimum common feature set, or falling into using middleware libraries to make the web application work the same on all browsers. How is this different than having to support legacy browsers such as IE6 and IE7? We all know what a pain that is.

I think you are not understanding my original post correctly, and are reacting emotionally - no need to do ad hominem attacks here. Answering your questions, I do purchase a lot of stuff online, and I am not trying to convince you of anything. I am just expressing my opinion on the topic. I also purchase on my local farmers market whenever is open, and in my local grocery store, and get products from local shops whenever I can. Even if they are a bit more expensive. Let me tell you why: if a single company destroys all competition, we end up with a monopoly, and that is not good for us consumers. A "better business model" that works just for one giant company is usually not a good thing for the local economy either. In the online model, there are no "workers" if they can be avoided. Do not fool yourself: Companies are doing their best to eliminate job positions, not to create new ones, to maximize profits, and to funnel every cent they can grab to their executives and investors. Then, I want the money I spend to keep around my community. Even if delivery is local, the local providers will have to make do with whatever terms Amazon sets, because there is no way they will have any leverage against a company the size of Amazon, and given enough time, these local providers will not be able to afford a store front either. So at the end, if we choose to neglect local business, we have convenience and lower price at first, but in the long run we end up being locked in with a single vendor, with prices completely out of consumer control (no competition, remember?), and a weakened local economic ecosystem, with less cash and jobs.

I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term. By the time you figure out what is going on, they will own the market, and the small shops will be long gone. You will have no option but to deal with a single merchant. Good luck with that. Be smart. Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive. That will keep things in relative check.

I think your post is shortsighted. While it may be convenient in the short term, the price we may have to pay for a single company providing pretty much all consumer goods may be outrageously expensive in the long term for society. By killing the small business, Amazon is not helping the economy, but actually bankrupting small shops for its own profit. Low prices today are not always a good long term strategy, because when there is no more competition, there are no more price restrictions, and we are stuck with a gigantic company that controls the market. Remember what happens when Walmart sets shop in a small town. Protect your local economy. Do your part to help the small guys - they will be your Plan B when the big company decides to screw you over.

Abusive governments do not care about people liking them or not. They care about nobody organizing anything close to a resistance.

Mod parent up. He is right on the money.

Not only that. Somehow we have grown into thinking that the only requirement from the employer to the employee are decent wages. It is not. Most workplaces make "The Office" working environment look like a paradise.

Yes, I read what I type. And no, it is not an insult. I love dogs. Do not be so angry and self-entitled to speak for all dog owners, because you are certainly not speaking for me. The commonality is that cockroaches and dogs are both alive. And that in both cases, there is nothing for the person to win in doing these things.

It is not just that, you need a clear purpose too. If you just do this kind of things as a hobby interest, you are doing harm for free. Nothing is gained. Respectfully, I think that you saying "go live in a cave and eat sand" is an extreme reaction to the parent's post. He has a good point.

Exactly right. Thank you. I cannot believe some some of the people on this thread. Doing mindless "experiments" with anything living is fundamentally wrong - there is nothing a common person will gain from purchasing that product and using it for electrocuting insects. This is not different than a 5 year old stabbing a dog to see what happens.

If you want to know how neurons work, hit the library, or better, take a class at your local college. Torturing living things just because you can is cruel, mindless, and will not likely give you any serious insight.

Of course he did. That was the whole point of this IPO: they wanted to cash out before it burst. The money to be made out of it was already made by the original owners, at expense of the investors. There was not a single reason to believe FB was priced fairly and not overvalued, and no clear indication on how FB could make enough money in the future to justify a 100B valuation. After the market experiences in the last 15 years, I cannot believe how many bought into the hype of this.

I think investing in Facebook does not make any sense. I am the only one? For what I can tell they do not have a clear way of making money other than getting $ from people interested on speculating about their future (all I have hear so far about how they will make money is completely unsupported by any reality check), and it will be increasingly difficult for them to grow their user base or to get money from their current user base. Since their business model is not clear, as it is not clear why do they need the money now, the only reason I can see they did an IPO is to cash out. My guess is that the money to be made by FB has already been made by the original owners, and it will be loss for investors from here on. I would not touch their stock with a stick.

How about applying the same sort of treatment to companies that resort to similar manipulations to obtain tax benefits? That should have been evident years ago... seems to me that congress has a biased agenda here.