Welcome to the global elite. Don't worry, thanks to geography and luck, you don't even have to be good at math.

Here is a link to a scientific debunking of the work you posted: http://www.skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html

The great thing about science is that neither you, nor I, have to believe it for it to be true. Results of actual science can simply be reproduced.

Ignorance plays a big role, but also the low-income job structure. Many, if not most, people on the low income scale don't work a fixed schedule. They may work a double-shift one day, or pick up a shift unexpectedly when they thought they would have the day off.

This in turn means they have a higher than expected paycheck for the week, and less energy for the rest of their day. The easy option in that scenario is to purchase a pre-prepared meal rather than spending the time & energy to fix their own.

Now throw in other options like working the late shift one day, the early shift another, and you run into scenarios where it is difficult to maintain a standard time of day to prepare food, since your day to day routine and schedule isn't consistent.

Even when cooking, it is easier to find the pre-processed meals in a box, since they take less time to prepare than cutting vegetables up, and for a large percentage of people, taste better than what they can make on their own.

I like how you conveniently ignore both the Nook, and the fact that they DO offer ebooks which kindles can purchase, download, and read easily. You could support them financially, you just choose to take advantage of their perks for free.

I don't understand how your statement is different from this: "I really like the local coffeeshop, and love using their free wifi and sitting around there all day. But they don't sell coffee inside Starbucks cups, so I don't buy anything from them."

Except he didn't give the info to Wikileaks ?

an argument exists that Experian would not have had any way of realizing the nature of who they were selling it to

Excuse me? You are saying there is a valid argument that they have no way of knowing whom they are doing business with?

They have permanently compromised a system that hundreds of millions of people use every single day. They have made every single citizen subject to fraud, and have no ability to fix it, except conveniently through their business model. This breach will STILL be an issue ruining people's lives 20 years from now, and we will have to beg Experian to correct the problems they caused, and even pay them for the privilege. The economic damage could reach well into the trillions of dollars, there is virtually no cap, since it undermines the entire credit system of every citizen currently alive, for their entire lifetime. Every executive at the company should be put to a firing squad.

Even HBO GO requires a cable subscription ($80 + 15 for hbo), while you can buy episodes ala cart for $3, which is roughly an hours worth of entertainment. So if you watch more than 1 hour of it every single night then it could work out cheaper to subscribe.

My objection to this technique has always been that by doing this, you essentially lose the people that have skills and can get jobs, and keep the people who don't have skills and can't get jobs, weakening your company.

I'm not sure on that point. It is the logical assumption, but the real world is more complicated. You are simply assuming that HR depts can universally identify & hire talent. There are many examples where highly qualified intelligent people can't find jobs, and underqualified people pick up jobs easily. Interviewing is a skill, resume-building is a skill, networking is a skill, even finding where to apply for a job is a skill. Being good at your job doesn't automatically mean you are good at any of those job-finding skills. It skews towards talented people having an easier time locating a job, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion. I'd wager that just about every interviewer here has found and hired "the perfect candidate" for a job, who was not, in fact, the best choice.

As another response indicated, companies have trouble evaluating their own employees, much less people that walk in off the street based on a few hours of conversations, and words written on a sheet of paper.

So somebody takes a loaded gun, points it at your head, and pulls the trigger trying to kill you. But it turns out the gun was loaded with blanks, so you survive. Was that attempted murder? It wasn't a "real" bullet, so there must not be a crime by your logic. I can assure you that the legal system considers trying to hire a hitman who is secretly an undercover agent, a crime. I know a person who is still alive because the "hitman" hired to kill him was a cop. The person who was trying to kill him was convicted and is currently in prison for attempted murder.

Execpt the only crime that appearently has actually taken place(1st "murder" was a scam against DPR? 2nd "murder" was the FBI?) is providing a service for consenting adults that enables them to relatively safely exchange goods for payment.

Hiring a hitman is illegal, it falls into the same category as attempted murder.

So if I'm concerned about security, I should switch over to an OS that I know even less about, and will probably blindly follow guides on the internet about how to configure it and get it working for what I want.

That's a good way to start. Obviously when learning a new OS, you won't be an expert right away.
I'm not convinced that a lack of complete mastery in a subject is a good reason to avoid gaining any experience whatsoever.

Telling people to not use Windows.... ever, doesn't really tell us the reasons why we should never use windows,

Well, here are two reasons-
Proven: The NSA operates a botnet called Genie that runs on Windows, mostly on machines overseas. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-spy-agencies-mounted-231-offensive-cyber-operations-in-2011-documents-show/2013/08/30/d090a6ae-119e-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html

Somewhat more speculative: The German govt believes the NSA has backdoors in the trusted computing modules in Windows 8. http://techrights.org/2013/08/22/nsa-back-doors-blowback/

Just for the record, there is a checkbox in the settings for "Allow 3rd party software", and you can download and install any reasonably compatible android program you want. I've done it many times, there is no need to root the device, etc.

You can also play almost all types of media with the free players available on the amazon marketplace. It is trivial to download/copy whatever media files you want onto the device, and watch or play it. I really don't understand where this perception of it being "locked down" comes from.

who pays $900 for a smartphone?

The majority of people using smartphones in the USA...
$199 iPhone 5S
Contract Subsidy of ~$30/month, for 24 months = $720
$919 total

Of course if you sign up for Edge or Next with AT&T or Verizon you can pay slightly less:
$30 contract subsidy + $27/mo for Next = 57 * 12 months, 684+199 = $883

And as you point out, the standalone price of the smartphone is less, so buying the phone seperately and getting a no contract service is usually the best financial option.

Yes, and that is exactly the problem. The government has so many laws on the books that they can choose one to punish a CEO with one of those laws arbitrarily. Do you think he is the only telecom CEO who has broken laws? Why do they enforce laws against him, and not others?

In addition, knowing that standing up to the government will leads to cancellation of govt contracts means those other companies have a fiduciary responsbility to their shareholders to keep those contracts in place. They have no such responsibilty to protect their customers privacy.

As AC says, ISS rotates around the earth every 90 minutes. However, the orbit it maintains in relation to the sun is variable: "For the next few days, the International Space Station (ISS) will be orbiting Earth in constant sunlight, as its orbit lines up with Earth’s day-night terminator." Taken from: http://www.universetoday.com/67280/iss-will-be-in-constant-sunlight-the-next-few-days/

Sometimes it has 24/7 sunlight, but it normally does not. Plants like conditions to simulate day and night from their region. In a sense, they have sleep cycles, similar to animals. When they have 16 hours of sunlight a day, they believe it is summer, and grow. When they have 14 hours they think it is autumn and produce veggies. During some orbits you could use window shades, and timing everything perfectly to open and shut them. If you are in an orbit that switches between sunlight and darkness for 45 minutes at a time, then your plants can probably survive. But, if you expect to feed people, then you need optimal growth conditions.