Exactly true. Market research shows people spend more if they are using a CC. Part of the psychology is of course that cash you are carrying around is generally a more limited asset than your CC balance limit.

There's like a hundred gazillion exoplanets in just our galaxy. This cries out for a numerical scheme like the star number from a USNO catalog plus a suffix.

Names are just wrong for this. There just aren't that many names.

They are looking for people to work on legacy COBOL apps.

5 eons experience needed.

Make Money FAST!!

I do not use onboard computer DACs. Never found one that I liked.

Yes I am insanely fussy about sound quality compared to most folks.

It used to be that I would get a sound card in order to get digital sound out. SPDIF so I could run it through a nice external DAC (typical good ones cost about $1K and up.).

Nowadays that isn't needed any more. Integrated sound almost always comes with SPDIF out, and most external DACs have USB capability. So I don't need sound cards to get the sound into my DAC these days.

The F-35 is a classic example of what is wrong with the military-industrial-political complex.

It's bloated. To an extreme nearly unimaginable. Layer on layer of bureaucracy and self interest slathered immeasurably deep. It's not possible for this to be efficient or effective.

The problem is NOT the concept of the plane or its implementation. Nor is it with the inevitable startup issues. Any design no matter how brilliantly conceived would have similar problems when constructed by the set of institutions that are in play here.

What I am afraid is that the only thing that will change this is a real existential threat to the United States. Only then will we see focus on what is really important. The sort of focus that led the United States to an economic output greater than the rest of world combined during WWII.

Normal humans are excluded from a lot of things.

1. Olympic Gold Medal
2. 5x Jeopardy Champion
3. Professional Concert Pianist
4. Bolshoi Ballet
5. Supermodel

etc.

The idea is to find your niche in life and exploit it. Not call the whaaambulance.

Less than a flea bite.

I bought about ten CFLs in 2007, two of them failed.

Two years ago I started buying LEDs. I have half a dozen of these, none of which have failed.

This is a generic problem with media reports of medical results. No understanding of the statistics.

Add in the lack of repeatability of many studies (for example just about anything claiming bad effects from low doses of bisphenol-A has proven to not be repeatable) and outright fraud (Wakefield) or attempts to push the data using questionable statistics (Séralini) and you have a giant problem with media and medical research results.

The other crap in the lines is noise. It's insane to imagine that you could reliably extract any reliable information from it.

Given the cost overruns and the fact the schedule has been already pushed out 20 years any sane person would question what is going on here.

I'm in favor of government funded R&D but this one stinks of gross mismanagement big time.

Writing off a loss generally doesn't do much for you. It might save you 30% of the charge or so.

Insurance companies have a better deal because their business often involves re-insurance, that is off-loading their liabilities to pools.

The best of all is credit cards. They charge fees to merchants to cover the losses. The merchants then bake the fees into the retail price which people pay regardless of whether or not they use the card.

So no, T-Mobile isn't quite in the same league as insurance and credit cards.

I didn't say there is no reason for it. There are in fact a lot of reasons, primarily in the tax code for such.

However the idea of 'group discount' is not one of these reasons. We have lots of other insurance programs that work fine for individual purchasers. Homeowners, auto, term life, umbrella policies etc. My experience (through CORBA) is that you can usually find coverage for LESS than what your employer is paying.

Citations needed.