While I agree that having a felony record is cruel baggage to a recovering addict, being stripped of rights for a time is effective when other things fail. My state has a program that is only open to 'use' type drug prisoners. It's hard to get into, it's strict, it focuses on changing habits, breaking away from toxic relationships, and skills needed to hold down a job, plus the usual drug treatment and 12-step program. It has helped a few people I know.

Back before Reagan, institutionalization was similar. It was reviled for some pretty good reasons. But there has to be a midway that takes control of people wanting/needing help but doesn't label them felons. Oh, and that doesn't break the bank: not everyone can afford Betty Ford. This is another time where money can buy you out of a hellish fate: "I know I need help, your honor." "Well, you're broke, so if I send you to prison for a year to 18 months, in 14 months you should get into the program. Hope you survive being labelled a Felon." vs. "I know I need help, your honor - I've booked myself into Betty Ford Center." "Well, I think we can go with a suspended sentence, which I'll expunge from your record if you stay clean."

> I work where you need an ID to get into the parking lot, so that's out.

I like the mental picture of a brown van with a boom doing 70mph deliveries into your car trunk, hollywood-style!

But processes exist for this. Delivery agents get vetted then bonded and issued limited-access badges to make their deliveries (either to Receiving, a loading dock, or the front office). Worst-case: your stuff goes thru that old channel, just like it always did. Intermediate: on days when you expect a delivery you park in a designated area they are allowed to access and deliver to. Best-case: that courier gets a badge, then makes this car-trunk delivery just like in any other parking lot.

And keep in mind just how narrow your use case is: If nearly EVERYONE had this problem, the idea would fail. But for a newegg delivery to a prison, military base or the likes, nobody really expects generic stuff like this car trunk delivery.

BTW, Travis Snyder's euphemism 'exposure' is commonly heard by any photographer: GIVE US YOUR WORK AND WE WILL USE IT AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CLAIM WE USED YOUR WORK.

The unspoken next sentence apparently reads "After which, magical fairies and flying unicorns will shit rainbows and gold out of their asses and make your second gig insanely profitable -- profitable enough that you should THANK us for demanding you let us use stuff for free, just for the exposure."

Fuck that noise.

Also, while $2-3000 for use of photos is 'common', copyright isn't in any way tied to compulsory licensing in the US. The artist controls all use. Period. They can choose an unreasonable price, especially punitively if they're negotiating against $150k per infringement.

Personally, I'm in favor of compulsory licensing - we're long past the point where I think copyright, patent and trademark laws would be saner if they had them. A mellow, tiered compulsory pricing structure could simplify a lot of 21st-century art creation: enhance mashup and reuse culture, make life easier for events and presentations, for indie films and animators and artists, and in general let people focus more on art than on copyright law. But that's just my opinion.

Sorry, not even that is 'fact'. It's a conservative contention that has plenty of disagreement.

Also, I'm immediately suspicious of any round numbers, so where did this magical
'Firing 10% helps' plan come up with that 10%? Another conservative meme: fire some people = save money, make everyone else work harder out of fear, and claim success.

As for resenting a factory worker getting $75 an hour, I vaguely recall that being bullshit, too. Something akin to the anti-USPS accounting tricks conservatives like: the shopworker gets far less, plus overtime bonuses, decent benefits and a pension, which with some seriously questionable math tricks is ginned up to a thrice-questionable estimate.

Last of all, if a union lead (decades experience plus management plus education, in other words) before reaganomics was getting $30 an hour, they SHOULD be getting $75, just due to the more-than-double cost of living increases over 40 years.. That people aren't ever seeing that sort of money nowadays is not his fault. Everyone else is getting screwed. Dozens of studies show wage stagnation problems.

TL;DR: lots of words, fundamentally wrong. Seems oblivious to First Sale, purchasing copies of copyrighted things, changing terms after agreement or all the other counterarguments.

Also, a bad analogy on the car. Buying a book is similar. Getting a license to drive a car is not. The word License has different meanings in the two contexts.

I think parent is misinterpreting the cost of screen replacement (including labor) as the value of the screen. Even then, a local CPR shop replaced clumsy teen kid's craced iPod 4g's screen for $100. Wasn't willing to risk ebay fraud on a $30-45 screen and DIY it.

So, what you're saying is that apocryphal examples (a few senior engineers at top companies, highest-paying location in the country, households with two of those rare incomes) win over all the data collected via census, salary surveys, etc: $400k is pretty easy to get to. ... my ass.

Here, let me play the game. I'm a hardcore techie at the top of my game, but not in Silicon Valley or NYC. I am always above the salary surveys, and NEVER see jobs advertised for more than I make. Most of my friends are in these sorts of positions... and among us, not counting doctors and C-level management (engineers or the equivalent only, IOW), I know two with husband/wife duos. Neither gets to $300k aggregate. The difference is that in my realm, our numbers end up resembling every other bit of demographic data I ever notice.

I'll let someone else argue taxes as penalties, earned vs. unearned income (I agree, these loopholes need to close), etc.

Thank you. I ranted about this article to friends via social media yesterday; it smells like bad science writing by people that probably flunked out of science. Worse was that I ran into the article in some 'International Times' rehash ("A new york time bozo wrote that blah blah blah"). Now Bubba Pickins (slashdot's favorite regurgitator of pap for the front page) has done so, too. A thousand nitwits nattering about the incoherent blathering of another nitwit.

Bottom line: Rocket Science is hard. You can die from vacuums, gamma rays, high-speed impacts, lunar/mars dust that's abrasive as fuck, UVB (or indirect damage due to things by UVB), extremes of temperature and difficulties associated with vacuums messing with heat transfer, biological effects of zero-g. The times and energy needed to go from any interesting A to B are a problem. Gravity and speed complicate things. Unlike the boat analogy, you can't just cope if things go nastily wrong: space exploration will be relentlessly lethal compared to exploring the earth. But we oughta / gotta try.

> If ever USA becomes a place just like China, I do not know where else people can aspire to be, if they were to run away from tyranny !

Oh, if only there was another continent (or two!) of countries with the opportunities and amenities of modern cities, but with governments not as oppressive as some in Asia and North America.

(/sarcasm... also, no insult intended yet, canada.)

If you're going to be pedantic, you have to at least stick to the original quote in it's entirety: "from the early days of the Macintosh". A few months in 30 years is 0.8%, which pretty much seems like a rounding error.

Debit cardholders suffer, due to fewer protections legislated for cardholders. Credit cardholders do suffer lost time to clean up, or lost income if they get stuck with charges they either don't notice or are unable to clear. While apocryphal: my having a card stolen and abused ate about a day of my time, plus days of additional little inconveniences. Competitors get stuck with costs for compliance that Target dodged, which is anticompetitive.

And yet you're right: it largely doesn't matter... **to Target**. Look at TJ Maxx's share prices during their debacle. Try to look at Sony's downward spiral and tie any part of it to security incidents -- it's dicey. And look at Target's share price: it went down in September, not December. So, if a company can dick around with mediocre security then throw PR and bandaids at it for far less.... well, it effin serves us right for letting them. But it's not a non-issue. If security fuckups like this hurt, we'd have chip and pin, or some other securer implementation than this mess.

> why is ... trying to reduce bad consequences such as disease... not a sin?

Personally, I think it has to do with God writing doctrine before we discovered bacteria. WHich makes me want to put airquotes around the word God.

You say 'disconnected from all internet' but as Inigo said, I don't think it means what you think it means. How about 'all other internet'?

False dichotomy. Do both. Plus anything else prudent in the long-term.

Y'all can keep rationalizing, but the fact remains that the WRT54g was interesting at $120 ten years ago, and fun at $60. There is NO WAY that this is going to see similar market penetration at $300.

Besides, high profile item prices seldom go downward between the vaporware stage and release, but they've been known to go upwards: what if it gets released at $450?!

A decade later, under $200 is only slightly interesting, and $100 makes me smile. 300 just annoys the fuck out of me: I won't spend 300 when the special features it has beyond the 54g are diminished by most of USA's shitty residential broadband rate limitations.