The morning after pill is not an abortifacient, point of fact.

It prevents pregnancy, it does not abort nor induce a miscarriage. Fertilization and implantation (ie, a pregnancy) does not always or even usually happen immediately after sex, it can take hours or days to happen which is why it "may" work -- the morning after pill prevents pregnancy from happening, it doesn't abort a pregnancy already established.

Did you miss the point?

I think you did.

Its not about what its OK to be offended about: its that THREATS of EXTREME VIOLENCE are not okay.

It is quite possible to define a set of rules that do not include committing violence, particularly here, sexual violence, against someone. If you can't get behind that, you're part of the problem.

This isn't about made up offense and political correctness and differing cultural norms. We're talking about threats of rape and extreme violence here. Its not okay to threaten to rape someone. Its not okay to threaten to murder someone. The topic is not a joke. You're the problem if you think otherwise.

If your debit card is a Visa/Mastercard, you get the same protection as a CC unless you use it 'as' a debit and enter the PIN and someone steals your PIN, I suppose. Then again I don't ever use it as a debit card, always over visa/mc.

I've had my debit card 'stolen' online twice. Once I got a call from Visa and had it reversed by them once before I noticed, and the second time when I noticed and called my bank, they reversed it all with no problem at all.

No need for 'proof', except that the bank mailed me an affidavit I had to sign -- but they reversed the charges immediately including all bank fees caused by these transactions (granted, provisionally; if I didn't sign the affidavit and get it back to them I'd probably expect to see the charges re-appear).

I think you're overly paranoid about debit cards.

That said it's a cold day in hell where I let anyone have direct access to my bank account.

For one thing, you're only counting the middle steps.

First, you have to get your wallet, get your card from wallet, swipe it, wait, then either sign or enter a PIN, put card away, put wallet away. You're ignoring the setup and teardown steps.

With Apple, its pull out phone, hold it near device, tap, put away phone.
I am not familiar with the Google Wallet version of NFC-compatible phones but I assume it is quite similar (since Apple Pay is mostly a NFC device except how its setup and the arrangement with the banks to secure the transactions)

More importantly though, the regular credit card use leaves that number everywhere you use it, just begging to be stolen which has happened repeatedly of late.

With Apple Pay, the credit card is not stored on the device, instead its a per-device number arranged with your bank when you set it up -- and when it transmits it also transmits a dynamic authentication code and that pair can only be used once. (I don't know what it uses to generate that code but I suspect its something like a software time based token).

They don't get your name, your credit card number is not vulnerable, they don't get any of your personal details. They just get paid.

Eh? How is it not renewable? Every day it starts anew. You don't ever run out, it never stops producing. Sometimes its production is lower and sometimes its higher, but it never runs out.

Granted, coal is sorta technically "renewable" but only on a geological scale that renders the term pointless. We'll mine it all and run out of it all long before any more comes.

All of them. Apple always reports actual end-user sales, not channel movement.

These things don't really apply to a specific company-- they're written like, "a company building a factory of X size employing Y people [doing Z sort of activity]" doesn't have to pay these range of taxes. The conditions are just specific enough that in practice it probably only applies to one company, but gosh darn if their competitor wants to come in and build the exact same thing they'd probably qualify for the breaks, too.

But why is this surprising? Government giving incentives (be they tax breaks or subsidies-- what's the difference, really? Forms of special protection/privilege is another form) to businesses they think will improve their economy is common everywhere, even throughout Europe. Its a question of just what form and how you do it.

Its only a bad thing if the state is acting in bad faith (ie, if the legislators are corrupt and taking bribes-- which they largely are the way elections/lobbying are working currently, admittedly). The state is doing a calculation. Take in a certain amount of reduced revenue usually for a temporary period to create X direct jobs, Y secondary jobs, and Z boost to the economy -- is the overall economic benefit to the state outweighed by the reduced temporary revenue YN?

It benefits everyone in the state for the state's economy to improve, after all.

Also, this has nothing to do with America/USofA. The states are sovereign within the fairly broad limits of the Constitution. Short of a state applying import duties to stuff coming in from other states (which is the right of the Federal Government to regulate via the Interstate Commerce clause) the federal government has very, very, very little it could say about how much or how a state taxes anyone.

I think "african hospitals are not quite the hermetically sealed, pressurized clean-rooms like the CDC facilities" is a pretty glaring factor you're leaving out. And that factor is precisely why its safe to wrap these guys in plastic by people in plastic suits to take back to the plastic catacombs in Atlanta.

The reasoning you're unpacking is in your head -- the fallacy you point out exists entirely in your restatement of the argument, not the argument itself. Amazon has many documented examples of selling for a loss, a willingness to ignore short to medium term losses if it means control of a market.

Amazon is not being merely efficient; Amazon is engaging in predatory pricing and other market-manipulations to try to control a market. That may mean their prices are lower right now, but if their other markets can cover that loss and can maintain that for long enough that they can run the loss until those businesses are destroyed, is the market well served? Is it efficiency? What contains that price after the competition is destroyed and drives efficiency then?

The fiction that our second amendment rights are "under assault" is a kind of strange delusion bordering on mass hysteria that has no relationship to reality. Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

Read it. Its just a booster. It makes intellectual property violations considered 'willful' if involving a fraudulent domain name, and takes on extra penalties if you commit a crime involving a fraudulent domain name.

It doesn't make anything illegal, nor does it give ICANN force of law.

Sorry, no; its used by a lot of people all the time.

By, "almost no one uses it" you mean "I don't personally and assume my anecdote speaks for the many".

It doesn't.

If you're an iPad developer, you're a sad one. The iPad has supported bluetooth for years now and shows signs of INCREASING and not decreasing support. Not only for simple things like keyboards and headphones -- things used often by iPad users for years now -- but AirDrop, a new and major feature in IOS is based on Bluetooth. Then there's the fact that Apple is totally behind supporting bluetooth, and *expanding* their support in things like Bluetooth LE which Apple's SDK's calls "iBeacons", which is a major new feature in the OS too.

I don't know what world you're in, but it isn't the real one.

I have had no issues ever using random bluetooth keyboards bought from radio shack with my iPad. It works totally fine. I don't usually use a keyboard because I don't need one -- but in an emergency situation where I need to code/fix something on the run, I've stopped by random places and bought a random keyboard -- and it works perfectly.

I don't have a first generation iPad -- and never used a keyboard with one, but from at least second generation on -- no issue whatsoever.