Care to elaborate a little more on her ebook and other shenanigans? All I had heard of her is that she approved of Sanderson, who finished the series, and apparently he did a bang-up job.

Regardless of who gets the money, the fact that this group has been squatting on the rights for so long and seems do be interested in doing nothing with them other than suing people means that they need to pass into the hands of someone else. I would support her case for that reason alone.

Yelp, contributing member of the Legitimate Businessman's Social Club., today initiated a lawsuit against itself announcing, "Our terms of service clearly state that developers may not compete with services already in the Yelp ecosystem."

Yelp later dropped the case, without admission of guilt, when it walked into court only to be confronted by attorneys from Yelp.

Both his presumption and assumption are wrong. Is it better to assume that everyone commenting is always foolish and wrong, or that everyone commenting is expert and right? Neither assumption is correct.

I have my own set of assumptions about the character of commenters, assumptions which are usually influenced by the site I'm reading, but even when I go into a thread with the assumption that there will be a bunch of people spouting off with an air of authority on some subject of which they actually know very little, I still find that sometimes their comments will influence me. It's a difficult situation. It's the punditry problem really - a pundit can declare some nonsensical shit to be factual and the honest-to-god truth, and you're basically left with three options: first, you can believe them because they certainly seem to know what they're talking about and they wouldn't lie outright, would they? Second, you can disbelieve them but always have this small lingering doubt floating around in the back of your head. A suspicion that maybe there was a nugget of truth in there. Third, you can spend hours fact checking the claim in order to eventually, finally, reassure yourself that yes, they are lying sacks of shit and no part of what they said was representative of the truth.

How often do you actually take the third option? How often can you, really? That's like asking someone how many EULAs they read.

The only reason they otherwise wouldn't be able to is because it would be in use. In other words, we've deferred 20 years worth of economic benefit.

The only real counter argument that I've seen is that there have been very few good suggestions for an alternative system. Although there have been some, they tend to get pushed aside for the sake of maintaining status quo.

Come on, he obviously meant a speeder bike. Think: if you're looking to ride a bike and you want something that isn't boring, what bike are you riding?

Are you kidding? We had a whole thing called "the civil rights movement" which ultimately went pretty well in terms of accomplishments. And that's not the first or the last, a few other big ones: women's suffrage, emancipation, there's a pretty strong push right now for rights for gay people, etc. Are you trying to claim that the suffragettes were conservative? They were not.

You are obviously confusing civil rights (completely unrelated to guns) and property rights (guns are property). I really doubt that your confusion is accidental, I'd be willing to bet an awful lot that you got that idea either directly or indirectly from the NRA. The NRA regularly concocts this kind of nonsense because, to a lobbyist, honesty is just a speedbump. I can't say that I have much of an opinion about guns one way or the other, but I absolutely hate the NRA and this sort of intentional spreading of ignorance is the reason why.

The article misses the big point here: regardless of whether or not what you do is actually illegal, the NFL may very well sue you anyway. It's illegal in practice even if not in the books.

At least one aspect of the cube was an example of Jobs at his worst: the GPU was originally supposed to be one of ATI's brand new Radeons, but ATI let slip to someone that this was happening and it wound up on a blog somewhere. In doing so ATI committed the greatest sin that anyone can commit against Apple - marginally lessening the surprise at one of Jobs' keynotes.

So what was the response? Apple went with an older, slower, cheaper GPU instead of the Radeon. ATI lost some money, but the ones who really paid the price for ATI's crime were, of course, the chumps who bought the cubes. Those things were outdated at launch.

We do not know any of those things. We do know that trolls are sadists, but it's taking a jump to suggest that the average abusive League of Legends player is a troll. At least by the strict definition of troll used in that study.

A lot of people act like it's just bad luck that League of Legend's player base is so abusive, or they say things like "Isn't it too bad that MOBAs attract such a bad group of people?" I hardly ever see the community blamed on the game itself, but you're talking relatively high stress game where you invest a significant amount of time and where victory means something in terms of unlockables and ranking. Further, a poor teammate not only fails to help you win but can actually aid your enemies. The game creates an environment that's just asking for abusive behavior from stressed out, frustrated players.

It's entirely possible that this stress will come out from players in real life as well as in the game, but I don't think it's safe to jump to any conclusions about whether it will happen more if they're allowed to vent more in game. What you could do if you wanted to address that is give them a little cool down period after a match... Meh. Or just get them to play a different game.

What do you mean by "bottom dwelling?" Discussions about taxes and resultant wealth distribution are not discussions about rich vs poor. They're discussions about rich vs. middle class. The argument goes: the middle class is shouldering a larger portion of the tax burden over time and is, as a result, shrinking. Arguments about taxes are seldom arguments about the very poorest people, unless you're looking specifically at sales taxes and the like.

The statement that I made and that you seem to be trying to dispute is that property taxes are regressive. Your claim that they are small is irrelevant, size doesn't have anything to do with their regressiveness. Also: they are not small everywhere. According to Wikipedia they're up to 4% in some places, that's not trivial. Also: So what? The greater point that I was making was that the United States doesn't have anything like a redistributive wealth tax. If property tax is so small, then this only reinforces my point.

I did specify two groups who are far from mansion ownership and yet often hold more property than their income can support. It's not bulletproof - someone like Bill Gates could spend his entire fortune on one giant "farm" and then complain that big government is forcing him to sell some or all of his property to pay for the taxes on it. So we generalize to people who are financially responsible.

By and large though, a poorer person has a larger portion of their wealth tied up in things like their home and their car than a richer person does, and as a result pay more in property taxes. This doesn't apply to the very poorest people, you're right, who own no property at all.

Wealth tax: 0%. Some states and municipalities in the US have a property tax but that functions in essentially the opposite way, since it hits people the most who have a large amount of property relative to their income (farmers and retirees), making it a regressive tax. There is no federal property tax.

The closest thing to a redistributive wealth tax is the estate tax, removed all together in 2001 and brought back in a lessor form in 2011. It's primarily politics which keeps us from having a proper wealth tax (though there's some question about implementation and catching tax dodgers), so we're stuck with an income tax instead. The trouble is that higher incomes are good for the economy, ideally we should be encouraging that sort of thing and not taxing it, while sitting on wealth is bad for the economy. But, like gas taxes, Americans can't seem to stomach doing things the sensible way because... I don't know, communism or something. Maybe too many people yelling "socialist!" So we're stuck with income taxes and excise taxes and sin taxes and yadda yadda.

Thanks. I'll probably get one, judging from this thread it seems like the best option available.

I think you might have the right idea. Some other people have suggested making my own mouse with a 3D printer or some such, but I could just take out the internals from one of the Contour mice, which have a really great shape, and put in the internals from something else. Something wireless... I'll think about that.

I appreciate the suggestion, the pain seems to come from the small stretch of having my ring finger off to the side and down from the other two for an extended period. It's not really RSI, though as I understand it I'm ripe for RSI pain there - I pretty well plant the heel of my hand and move the mouse with just my wrist and finger tips. I've been told that this is exactly wrong, but aside from a thick callus on my hand where it rests on the desk it's never given me any pain or trouble. As long as I've got a mouse where I can keep my three middle fingers together, that is, and not dangling to one side.