I started back in 1978 and I remember someone coming in to pitch a database technology in 2006 for which they had patents pending and it would replace relational databases. They kept describing it using catch phrases and turning rows into columns and I just couldn't grasp WTF they were talking about. I finally asked them to draw a picture and they mapped it out on the white board.

I then asked if they had ever read about IMS and hierarchical databases. They had not. I wished them good luck on their patents and sent them packing.

I dropped out of college back in 1983 but did very well in the computer science classes I took. After dropping out I started tutoring computer science students at a rate of $10/hour for a little scratch. My tutored students did very well on their projects and exams and I soon had a growing list of students interested in my services.

What scares me about these types of regulatory schemes is we are replacing the market and individual choice and responsibility with government oversight that is incapable or uninterested in measuring results. Rather than allowing the market to decide on a product based on results we are implementing entry thresholds to be sure the "right people" are delivering the services. However, when we seek to abdicate all market responsibility to the government we simply create a set of rules so that our educators look the way the government wants them to look.

Some argue that the government should have the power to regulate because some of these students are using government money and that, in my opinion, is the ultimate issue. Once we start using public funds we create more opportunity for corruption. It is not longer necessary to rip off one student at a time and hope the market doesn't catch on because you can meet some bureaucratic threshold and be fed a steady stream of students who have no personal investment in the process outside of their own time.

Once we accept regulatory schemes such as this we open ourselves up to whatever whims the bureaucrats decide upon. We'll move from meeting a threshold of requirements in order to teach to a system where the content becomes mandated.

I don't expect the government to be making ANY social economic decisions, informed or otherwise.

Expecting, or even allowing, the government to make those decisions reverses the relationship that should exist between citizen and government. If, on the other hand, we were subjects then they could probably do damn well as they please.

"Amazon, with its immense resources,"

Amazon, on sales of $2.98 Billion for the 12 months ending September 30, 2013, had net income of $130 million.

You say the budgetary impact wouldn't even be a blip. How about putting a hard number on it?

There's a difference between a company being big and having "immense resources" to spend on staffing "a 24x7 abuse desk with very senior people."

Generally speaking, Amazon has been happy incurring a lot of losses in their bid for world domination. You may disagree with their allocation of resources as a company but it's difficult to conclude they have immense, unallocated resources sitting by and "they just don't want to" fix the problem.

I'm curious as to what you think the solution is that would be so easy for their smart people to fix.

This...

If you go beyond the abstract and read the paper you'll notice that they chose a TPC-H scale factor of 1 (1 GB of data) so that the entire dataset would fit in the GPU.

The question they seem to really be asking is more akin to, "Why don't we make our datasets small enough for complex queries that it can all fit in the storage attached to a processor we like?"

They continue to answer their own question when discussing results and admit they can't compare costs of "traditional" implementations because those tests were all run with scale of 100 (100 GB of data).

They say the comparison is difficult against complete systems because of the scaling factor and "...this paper is about the effectiveness of mapping relational queries to utilize the compute throughput [of] GPUs".

So, it seems to boil down to a test of compute power on data sets small enough to fit in memory rather than an effective test of relational query processing, though they did use relational queries as their base testing model.

There are 19 states that impose some "duty to retreat".

It is not reasonable to think that deadly force, or any force for that matter, is a justified response when "any" physical act is visited upon you.

However, a duty to retreat is very complicated and requires a jury to agree with your point of view; whether you are the prosecutor or the defendant.

I teach defensive firearm classes and concealed handgun permit classes. One of the things I teach is that if you're paying attention you should never have to draw your weapon and, if you do, it is unlikely you will have to fire a shot. However, students always raise a ton of "what if" questions.

I always answer the "what if" questions by explaining that if you're able to stand there and objectively go through a check list justifying why you're in fear of losing your life or of grievous bodily harm then you are probably not justified in using deadly force. When faced with impending death or serious bodily injury you will not be analyzing legal options; you will be trying to survive. When trying to survive, the firearm becomes one of many tools available to you to aid in your survival. Another tool includes tactically retreating.

I apologize when someone bumps into me even when it's their fault. I back away from aggressive drivers to avoid road rage incidents. I tend to be quite deferential to jerks and their rude behaviors. I want to avoid trouble and I go out of my way to make sure I do. I understand that someone might be acting like a jerk because they've had a rough morning or are just having a bad life in general. They aren't my problem and I will do whatever I can to keep them from becoming my problem.

On the other hand, if someone punches me it will be difficult for me to believe it is anything other than the start of an ongoing attack and will do whatever I have to do to survive. If increasing distance from my attacker is possible then I will do so because it is the safest, most efficient way to stop the immediate threat and to ready myself to respond with greater force if necessary.

In force-on-force simulations it is not unusual to see someone "run away" from the danger presented. The analysis and de-brief after the exercise centers on whether the person being attacked ran away in the safest and most effective way possible. The de-brief doesn't include admonition on why the student should have used their gun to stop the attack. Running away safely is a valid tool to survival.

I get nervous and become uncomfortable when someone, even joking, threatens violence. I winced when I read the parent post that started this discussion where the poster said, "doesn't mean I can't punch someone in the face." That attitude of justifiable violence for being offended is what scares me and it's fairly prevalent in these comments. Then again, I suspect that most of the people advocating a punch to the face are, as you call them, "internet tough guys" and, I hope, wouldn't actually commit the act of violence they are so quick to advocate.

There is nothing obsolete about the design.

The M1911 was designed well before 1911 by John Browning and was a standard in U.S. military forces until the 1970s when, some would argue due to political pressure, the U.S. and NATO adopted the European standard 9mm round.

The standard 1911 fires a .45 ACP bullet and is remarkably elegant from a design perspective. Many would argue it's still the best defensive pistol out there. I'm carrying one on my hip at the moment.

The design has been reliable enough that I can take the parts from my current 1911 and put them in a 1911 from the era when they were initially introduced and have a very functional firearm. Today, one can pay anywhere from $400 to $5,000 for a 1911 depending on the manufacturer and I would gladly carry any of them to defend myself.

Just because it was designed over 100 years ago doesn't make it obsolete in any way, shape or form.

I never said it should be either zero effort or zero cost.

My original comment was related to your request for a list of other "regulations" that make it difficult to start a business in the US.

My example pointed out that 60% of our start up costs were related to government regulations. I followed up with the fact that states find regulations so burdensome that they've adopted organizations designed to guide people through those regulations. I also replied that a market has been created to provide services to make it easier and, finally, I pointed out that the IRS is the face of unmanageable regulations.

I never argued for zero regulations or cost but to claim that there's little to no regulatory barrier to starting a business is a bit of a stretch.

Multiple jurisdictions doing things differently. One state demands one set of documents and another state demands another. Same thing happens at the county/parish levels and at the town levels.

The $1,500 wasn't spent to "figure out the gov't stuff", it was to expedite it. Any particular regulatory requirement is easy to understand and, with time, compliance isn't difficult. Getting ALL regulatory components managed in an efficient manner and, in particular, making sure none are missed is another story entirely.

If the regulations weren't a burden then why do the states need to establish the SBTDC organizations to begin with?

A company that provides a service for money I consider a business. I've built more than one and fully understand the IRS issues.

But then again, isn't the IRS is just the face of more regulations making it difficult to start a business?

This is a common argument that stems from, I believe, not only a lack of historical context but also the absence of actually reading the plain language of the Bill of Rights or in understanding it's underlying architecture and design purpose.

Most people don't know the preamble to the Bill of Rights which starts:

"The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."

For some reason, there exists a widely held belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people when, in actuality, the Bill of Rights places specific restrictions on the government. The plain language of the individual amendments support the preamble:

Amendment I - "Congress shall make no law..."
Amendment II - "...shall not be infringed."
Amendment III - "No Soldier shall..."
Amendment IV - "...shall not be violated..."

The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights retained by the people but is rather a list of prohibitions placed upon the government so they don't misconstrue and, therefore, misapply, the powers the document granted to the government.

The overall architecture of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights does not in any way support the argument that the second amendment is a grant of power to state militias. In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court finally acknowledged as such.

You should take this opportunity to read the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. You may gain an appreciation for the beauty of the document and what it actually means. You may even gain a better appreciation for the argument many of us espouse about the presumption of liberty.

We just started a training business last year.

It cost us about $10,000 to start that business. $4,000 was spent on the material we needed, web site, logos, etc.

$6,000 was spent, mostly on legal fees, on licenses and making sure we adhered to government regulations at multiple levels.

Those things we needed to build the business that came from private parties (bank accounts, uniforms, office supplies, etc.) could be satisfied in a matter of days. The longest and most difficult was getting an extended validation SSL for our web site - that took two weeks because we needed a letter from our attorney.

Anything we needed from a government agency took months with multiple calls.

All items that came from the private sector came from companies that wanted our business and we had choices of providers. This created an incentive for good service and responsiveness.

All items that came from regulatory agencies generally came from organizations that said this is how it is, live with it and you better not fail any of the steps or you, literally, won't be in business.

I can say that there was one agency that approached the problem like the private sector and that was a state agency responsible for issuing state-level trade and service marks. This particular state had a web-site and 24 hour response to our applications.

We used a particular service to walk us through the various government regulations at a total cost of about $1,500. Without that service it would have taken months and months just to figure out what regulations we needed to follow and, frankly, we probably wouldn't have even attempted the exercise.

Living in the US I may or may not keep the Vita depending on how much future business I wanted to do with the company and probably some other vague emotion I happened to be feeling at that particular moment. I would look at my returning the product about the same as returning too much change given to me at a cash register - I generally return that stuff. If the company threatened legal action then they could just fuck off. I don't take to kindly to a company screwing up and then threatening me because of their error.

However, whether or not I kept it, I would demand that I receive the product I did order or a refund.

If I ordered product A and paid for product A I expect to receive product A whether or not the company sent me a different product I didn't order.

The only incentive I can think of to simplify the tax system is to require all elected officials to personally fill out their own tax returns - no paid preparers allowed, no advice allowed.

I actually think this should be required across all government agencies. We might see a different attitude towards the structure of the government if members of congress had to wait in line at the post office, the passport office or the immigration checkpoints.

The IRS is filled with humans as employees. The government has created a tax system that is overly complex which makes it easy to find simple errors in any complex return. Combine the potential for abuse with the scale of the system and it doesn't become too hard to find a large number of people who have had negative experiences.

You'll never reach 100% honesty on either side of the equation and in a system as large as ours it doesn't take a large percentage to correspond to a large number of individuals.