The IRS falls under the Executive Branch, and the current executive has not been shy about using the IRS to aid his friends, and hurt his enemies.

I have to suppose he considers open source an enemy.

I was going to write a reply saying the banking industry comprises private--not government--money. But hilarity ensued as I struggled to word my post carefully enough to defeat trolls telling me I was overlooking the bank bailouts of half a decade ago. After a while I realized I couldn't make my case and decided you're right--it is government spending.

So congrats on being even more cynical than I am. Care for an ennui contest?

I'm pretty sure I've heard Guido say (in a video--not, like, at my dining room table) that the colons are indeed superfluous, but that in testing for Python's predecessor, ABC, users thought the code read more naturally with the colons in the syntax. Might have been in the "history of Python" presentation he did at Dropbox before he worked there.

Where do you see small scale chip manufacturing, up to and including custom multi core CPU's, going in the near future?

Weight.

Not their fault. Their engineer fell for some hot Klingon chicks.

Gorn chicks are hotter.

And scalier.

The other evil empire (AT&T) is royally screwing us via U-Verse, jacking up every fee, every month.

We are thinking about dumping U-Verse and getting JUST internet from Comcast (no land line, no cable).

We can get about 50 digital channels over the air, plus streaming.

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!

What celebrity did this Jenny person get medical advice from?

Free Speech took a shot to the head. Political Correctness bullshit seems to trump it, every damn time.

Frankly NOW I'm thinking of totally dumping Firefox.

I don't know about that. I mean, we try our best, but I wouldn't say we're good at it.

Hate Speech?

Care to link to that? Or did you just make it up?

PROSECUTED? Are you frakking SERIOUS, or is this some lame 4/1 type joke?

The man gave his own funds to a campaign for a proposition, and you think he should be PROSECUTED?

Didn't Heinlein come up with a similar concept? In the story with the moving roads?

Sparkfun is trying to divert at least some of the meters to other countries, where the Fluke trademark does not apply.