that domestic part is where it gets kinda muddy methinks.

3. Old people are awesome. I've taken some community college level college classes, because apparently my major at university was playing fast and loose with requirements, and it was horrifying. I suck at english, i've sucked at english, I love reading but i'm horrendous at producing volume... but at least i can spell, and my diction is strong. Anyway, I shudder at the thought of a future in which new novels are written in a common tongue, to better cater to a population divided between those who know how things are correctly spelled, and those who do not.

i already shudder at the quality of the writing of some popular contemporary works...

but if they fix it, what will they do tommorow?

i think people would be a bit upset if a charity turned away a person because they weren't the correct race. Or if a catholic charity that distributed food to the poor turned away non-catholic homeless. not only don't i think it'd be legal, i think it'd just be wrong. I don't think many charities of that nature, turn away any needy person comes to them.

:) because i'm a gaming elitists, my argument was more along the lines of, those are things that i have known to generate enthusiasm for programming in my own life and among my own friends. i'm sure there are others, but i refuse to credit casual gaming with anything positive :).

and gaming in general is a good gateway drug for programming, because it's nifty and fun. and because nobody dreams of growing up to program database management systems... unless they're hella atypical.

i responded because i don't check that widget very often, and was surprised that i got a response, then further surprised by the responses, and wanted to use the thread as a private communication, because i'm not entirely familiar with the messaging system, and it's easier for all involved.

in any case, my argument was improperly worded for brevity, it should have been worded "it's only illegal if there actually is collusion." which is the gist i was going for with the rest of the response.

my premise being that, 3 percent might be the natural intersection of cost, risk and negotiating position. no collusion involved.

you have costs associated with processing, costs associated with bad credit, costs associated with marketing, costs associate, costs associated, costs associated.

i apologize for not expressing my point adequately... and provoking a good bit of anger.

best regards

why is gender parity a goal at all?

anecdotally, in highschool, some of the top math students in my classes were female, they were also some of the top science students... at least in terms of grades. truthfully, none of them wowed me, but then i've only really met a handful of people who really wowed me, and almost none of them in HS. anyway, females were represented in non-insignificant quantities in the maths and sciences, but non-existent in CS. You had maybe a handful in VB, but none of them made the leap to c++ and java.

they were not disincentivized in any way from taking those electives, the boys were not incentivized in any external way. We took programming classes, because they were fun, and we liked computer games, and the movie hackers, and, and, and... if my experience is even moderately representative, then the disparity is cultural in origin.

In highschool I didn't take classes with an eye to the future, i took classes because my parents told me too, and I took electives that looked hella fun, or hella not as un-fun as the other classes in that time-slot.

gimme a generation of girls that want to sink 2 hours a night into q3 or sc:bw, and i'll guarantee a higher turnout of female programmers a generation later...

absent that...

monopolistic price fixing would be illegal if they could prove collusion. as it stands now, i'm not convinced that they aren't making a fair profit at their 3 percent. i'm certainly no financial expert, but i'm sure the IRS has some on call. risk is risk.

they are not allowed to market at a lower price and tack on percentage fees at cehckout. they are largely allowed to offer cash discounts. and they are contractual limits, not really legal limits. the vendor agrees to play by these rules or not play at all.

i'm wondering now, if you can get the placebo effect through extensive education of patients about the placebo effect, and not giving them an actual placebo? convince people that being convinced of the efficacy of a treatment positively impacts health, even absent actual treatment. can you improve people's health outcomes simply by talking them into better health?

purples and orange are the places to set up, the alley of hate that resides outside the jail...

you've flipped deism and theism, theism is generally considered religion that includes a knowable or partially knowable supernatural entity, whereas deism only really subscribes to a supernatural entity of some kind.

IE) god loves me vs god did it

if you want to get into the BS "spiritual" stuff, i'd just call bs, but apparently some people call buddhism non-theistic religion. whatever, but yeah, people tend to temper the claims of the christian right on the US founding fathers, by pointing out that jefferson and his ilk were better classified as deists; or the belief in the great clockmaker, setting up our existence but not giving a damn about it thereafter.

and some americans eat raccoons, and they have people hands.

not so much rooting for whalers, as rooting against the anti-whalers. an altruistic act does not make good a completely wretched person.

for example, being a dick doesn't invalidate what assange did, but at the same time, what he accomplished doesn't make him less of a dick.

you do understand that purchasing things with a little piece of plastic is not a right right? they offer a service to their customers ie) allow for access and convenience to the customers of those customers. Last I checked, Amex charges a higher rate, but is also still present and profitable.

3 percent is what they charge retailers for being too small to demand something less, getting access to a larger customer pool, giving their customer pool more convenience, and assuming any and all risk associated with buying on credit. one is certainly not precluded from paying for things in cash or check, i believe it is quite common.