Have you had much luck with that approach in a major open source software project?

Sure there is. Average car purchase or rental: X% tax. Below average: X-factor%. Above average: X+factor%. Jewelry? Always a high %. Watercraft? Never a low percent and grows in portion with the cost of the craft. Milk and staple vegetables? Always a low percent. Junk food? Always a high percent tax.

Designing a progressive consumption tax isn't even particularly hard.

Why would you presume that? Just because that's how we've done it for an income tax?

That's going in my quotes file.

Piketty's solution is crazy but to my surprise I find myself nodding at Bill Gates' comments. Consumption taxes, not labor or capital taxes.

One wonders how law enforcement ever actually worked back before electronic communications existed. God forbid they can't type a couple keystrokes and then listen in.

Can we get a "- poorly written summary" option? WTF is Juno? Spend a sentence or two for crying out loud.

The basic problem with Ebola in the US is that everybody in the US who knows what to do about Ebola is over in Africa right now trying to stop it at the source. The folks still stateside are the B team.

I'm not whining. But until and unless "classic compact" catches up with the nasty new interface, I'm not upgrading either.

And D's "broad adoption" should tell you what value folks place on removing C from C++.

All versions of Netscape had a menu bar. Firefox long since passed Netscape's degree of awfulness.

If it didn't meet the requirement to be fully compatible with C, it wouldn't be C++.

Like the man says, you're welcome to fork a new language that's C++ without C compatibility. Frankly I don't see the point. If you don't need C compatibility there are far better OO languages than C++.

How much obligation do you believe a free Internet site has to maintain the security of the data you store with them? Even banks don't promise that hackers won't breach your account... only that if they do breach your account despite reasonable and prudent security measures, the bank will replace your money.

Why did you run the red light? Were you drunk? Rushing to beat a yellow? Distracted by a conversation with your passenger? Burnt out traffic light? Brakes failed? Criminal law determines culpability with two measures: actus rea (you ran the red light) and mens rea (why you ran the red light). Both have to be proven for there to be a crime. So depending on why you ran the red light, there could be anything from murder to manslaughter to just a tragic accident.

Was I outside the crosswalk? Jaywalking? Maybe I dashed into the street as the light changed offering drivers no chance to react. That may well mitigate your culpability, dropping the matter from murder to manslaughter or even from manslaughter to civil wrongful death. No matter how badly behaved you were, if my behavior foreclosed reasonable opportunities for you to avoid the tragedy then I share culpability.

Great questions!

My answer is: belligerent invasions of privacy hurt me and people I care about just as shoplifting hurts me and people I care about. And both are common enough forms of petty disorder to merit attention by the police.

Sex crime? That's over the top. But bad guys here should be pursued at least as diligently as shoplifters are.

Just so. And this is, in fact, one of the circumstances in which your bank *will not* restore the funds to your account.

If your account is hacked despite reasonable and prudent measures to maintain its security, the bank is on the hook. If your account is hacked because you were an irresponsible idiot, you are.

It escapes me how in the digital age anyone could believe that storing nude pictures of themselves online was anything other than the height of irresponsibility. If you don't want it known, it can never leave your control. Yes the thief is wrong, but like the guy in UHF said: "You so stupid!"

Pretty sure, yeah. Producers of G-Rated shows prefer that the kids not find porn when they search google for their favorite actress. There's often a morality clause in the contract, and your nude photos' presence on the Internet tends to run afoul of it.