So the $600 pre-refund of taxes that Bush2 put in place (which made a negligible increase in per paycheck take-home) and the SS 2% rebate by Obama (which had a similar result) were useless? No, they weren't, they were identified as having an impact on the economy, even though the money wasn't even in consumers hands when it was announced/started.

Minimum wage has nothing to do with minimum ability. It sets a price floor for labor. The people who lose out are those just above the minimum wage floor who see their less skilled/experienced/tenured coworkers elevated to a higher wage while theirs remains stagnant. (This happened to me, btw, and it sowed a short period of discord in that company)

For businesses with very small margins, the costs will be transferred pretty much one for one. As the margin of the business increases, the cost will be passed on in a proportionally smaller magnitude. People are (almost) never hired because they're "cheap" but because work needs to be done to meet demand. Just as nobody hires people if their taxes go down, or fire people if taxes rise. Might it delay hiring? In some instances it makes greater efficiency more valuable, with businesses investing in machines (which are built by people) instead of people. However most of the time it's just a cost of production. If you need to make more silk shirts and the cost of silk goes up, you don't buy less silk - you buy as much as you need to meet demand.

They can't bother to keep their (required annually) admin whois contact email up to date, but their phone number is going to be a working one that connects to someone who can resolve the problem?

I use Google Apps. Spam is never an issue.

It interesting, though, that the requirement for verifying your contact information goes (essentially) entirely unheeded. Perhaps there should be a 2% audit of addresses every year, with a 30 day response time and mandatory permanent loss of domain name and $10,000 fine for incorrect information.

As soon as the industrial revolution made most manual labor jobs safe, we began to value life more. In a time when you lost 3 kids to childhood disease, 2 to farming or machinery accidents, and ended up with 2 or 3 making it to adulthood, you made babies knowing you were going to see a 50%-70% loss rate. Nowadays, you make 2 and you expect them to make it to adulthood unless some major calamity happens.

Once you expect zero mortality, you begin to covet it. Also, with all the extra free time, people think of all the worst case, outlier scenarios. Most people, I've decided, are inherently evil and untrustworthy. They imagine themselves with all the power of technology, and then figure that's what The Man (TM) intends to do from the start. And then they fear something for it's danger.

http://www.networkworld.com/ar...

Ours does. But there are limits on their copies, and limits to their purchasing budget, which means very few new books in a given year. Interestingly, they also have CDs and DVDs - yet the selection I can get for $10 through Spotify or NetFlix, available any time with no worries about the item(s) I want being checked out, is 100x as large as theirs.

Libraries are good. But if you're okay dropping $10/mo for a much larger selection (potentially...nobody knows yet) it still might be worth it.

My wife goes through 8-12 novels a month, and often the more recent ones are either not available from the local library or are checked out/reserved, so we're spending $40 or more on new or used books that generally get given away when she's done with them. She almost never re-reads, so there's no real loss in the rental model for her.

So depending on what the selection is like, it might be worth it. Even more so if it's a per-family cost instead of a per-device, since my daughter seems to be trying her best to put B&N back in the black, esp. during summer months.

Wait, no...that's a different show.

They cut off his balls and dick and gave him breasts.And it's a near certainty that we will all want to bed this transsexual. Yeah, I think it's that last one that's the kicker.

"The only thing keeping us from going truly cash free is the cost of exchanging non-cash things of value"

That, and the implied anonymity of cash transactions. Never underestimate the desire to not have a record of a purchase, even if it's just something that seems silly or stupid to someone else. Mormons will always pay for liquor and cigars with cash, for example. No need to get a (mis-)targeted mailing for the new Johnny Walker in the mail next year.

And there are times when cash is just faster. Not at a POS when change is needed, but elsewhere. If I'm running late and the waitress is dog slow, you can be sure I'll be leaving cash and just walking out the door. as soon as I get the check. I may not have 10 minutes for her to decide to come around to pick up my card and complete a transaction. And tipping a bellman for getting my luggage to my room - in a busy hallway it's far easier to give him a 5 or a 10 with my room number. Paypal/Square/... are slow compared to handing off a fiver. And, at least in the US, a discreet monetary thank-you is appreciated far more than a "transaction" that requires a 30-40 second interchange of electronics.

And, as a business owner, I chafe at car processors who bill me 3% of the gross on a transaction for the simple act of transferring a money from one account to another electronically. A transaction which costs a fraction of a cent to complete.

You still can do pretty much any of those things on your own land, just as you could in the 1800s. You can build your own gun, drive an unregistered car, and perform practically any work for your own personal enjoyment.

What part of liberty allow you to do anything you damned well please on *somebody else's* property? Cause if you think you can fire a gun or perform Shakespeare or ride your 4 wheeler in my back yard then FUCK YOU! Because that's the American way.

Possession is 90% of the law, defense is the other 10%. If you can get it and defend it, it's yours. It's the same principle on which ownership of every country on Earth is based.

No, the local cop saw someone speeding, chased him down, and then charged the person with drug possession after tossing a dime bag in the back seat after pulling them over.

The 3:2 version was better. As is the 4:3 iPad. I currently have a 16:9 windows tablet and iPhone, and they'd be much more useful as either of those two ratios. I rarely use my iPad anymore because it's so hobbled by the OS as to be utterly inefficient at anything productive, but it kicks the windows tablet's ass when it comes to reading/browsing anything. Jobs had it right, but the son of a bitch died and left a bunch of 12 year old girls running the company.

I think you were on to something with #1. What if it were hollow and came with a small funnel. It'd be a sight more useful in some meetings I've been to if filled with liquor rather than silicon and battery.