Why do scientists need to "serve citizens"? Scientists aren't in the service industry, scientists' primary mission is to DO SCIENCE.

CITIZENS on the other hand, can better serve THEMSELVES if they bothered to understand more science.

Journalist can also "better serve citizens" by learning more science and do better science reporting, but of course, journalists better serve themselves by continuing to report junk science and stir up drama. Guess what journalists are doing?

You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?

My washing machine, fridge, rice cooker, air conditioner, TV, HiFi, radio, electronic alarm clock, etc, ALL comes with "all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities" and I can't take them apart without voiding their warranty. Most of them have logic circuits, or even CPU, running inside, which I have no way to download ANY software into them.

I have no way of knowing if I am able to utilize EVERY bit of their physical capabilities. Can I, say, tell my rice cooker to heat up beyond its preset safety limit? I would think its heating element should be capable of reaching temperatures way more than cooker normally allows it to before shutting it off. Hey, that's a "restrictions on its possible physical capabilities"! Can I download software into my of PAL TV so it can accept NTSC signal? Can I change the software of my electronic alarm clock to do more?

Gee, so now instead of every lazy journalist just rerunning old stories by add "... on the Internet!", now they rerun old stories by add "... on the smartphone!"?

How about the simple fact that most tourists staying in a place for just a few days usually won't bother to go to authorities if there is something wrong with their rooms? As such, to protect the reputation of a city, they have to regulate the hotels that primarily target tourists?

If you are going to stay in the same place for a month or more, it is likely you will find out anything wrong in the first week, and you would more likely report it to police as you still have to stay for weeks there. Plus, people usually do more research when spending more, such as where to spend the money to stay a whole month or more, including possibly a prior visit in person for longer stay.

Not so for a hotel you probably going to stay just one night. Any problem you found in the night, you are leaving the next day and not coming back to that city again anyway. That would allow bad hotels to stay in business for quite a while, damaging the reputation of the area and hurting tourism for everyone else.

America being as it is, doing more to drive away tourists than promoting it, it is not surprising that most Americans have no idea how important it is for tourism to maintain a certain minimum standards on the hotels in the area. Next time you go on a trip to another country, talk to the hotel manager how many regulations they have to comply, you would be surprised how regulated they are for your safety and enjoyment.

So you also think we shouldn't have laws against buying/selling organs by adults, selling yourself into slavery, and prostitution? All of them are voluntary transactions between consenting adults.

Which is the entire point, which, it seems, everyone rebutting GP missed.

If you are an American, working in country X, and paying $Y tax in country X. If $Y is less than the tax $Z you would have paid in America, then you need to pay American Govt $Z-Y (i.e. Z was deduct, which is your point), even though your work, your job and your company have absolutely no relationship with America. You paid $Z-Y just for the privilege of being an American citizen.

If you were from most other country in the world, working abroad in country X, then you pay $Y tax in country X, and then END OF STORY.

Most of countries in the world don't tax their citizens working and living abroad at all, which was GP's point, there is nothing to deduct.

I find it quite hilarious to see so many posters complained about the ads in Facebook, in the /. forum that have ads a hundred times worse.

OK, maybe not 100x, be definitely worse. On my phone, I get pop-over ads to blocks 1/4 of the already small screen, with the (X) so small that the phone would register as a click on the ads instead (not the intended result, I am sure, LOL).

Then when clicking on articles, half the time the page opens at the bottom to immediately show the ad, so I have to manually go back to the top, the other half of the time I can read normally, but once I reach the end my music would stop because the ad at the bottom is a auto-starting video ad. So I have close the page to stop it from wasting MB in data plan.

(On my PC, I have plug-ins to block all the ads already)

With FB on the phone, at least I can turn off video auto-playing in the settings, and I then only occasionally see an ad when scrolling in the app. No pop-over ad, no auto-playing video ad, no jump to the ad when I open any page. Yes, 100x better then /.

On the other hand, I have encountered plenty of managers who literally do not know how to take "no" as an answer.

Takes two to make a pair.

posting to undo mistaken mod

You DO noticed that the "rebuttal" is the typical deflection you see from politicians and large companies after getting caught doing something naughty, right? "Hey, you lied and cheated!" "No, what I did was about ...." (a long answer that never denied the lying and cheating part)

"No, TOR was a project about ..." noticed that the rebuttal did NOT mention who created TOR? The entire first sentence NEVER contradicted OP's point even though it started with a "No" -- "TOR was made by the US Navy specifically to anonymize the traffic of government spies. "

And what is the long term impact of MS Office changing their UI every couple versions?

Not to say open sourced software don't have this problem *cough* Firefox *cough*, but the point is these things happen all the time, and cannot be avoided just by sticking to MS Office. You just plan the migration at the right time in the cycle then it won't become an additional cost.

Wrong. You have been fooled by HR drones if you think this way. Negotiating something out of the norm is done ALL THE TIME. That's why it is called "negotiating" your compensation (every part of it is open to negotiation), and not just "haggling" over the price (only).

That means you failed to sell yourself as a valuable money maker with a unique combination of skills and abilities during your interview. If the hiring manager thinks you are unique and you can help the company's bottom line that no other candidates can match, even if you got extra time off, then a competent hiring manager WILL twist HR's arm to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

If you sold yourself as just another replaceable cog in the wheel, then of course don't expect anything special.

In other words, any current or previous programmer in the development team could manipulate the vote results if one wanted to.

Any reasonable man would conclude that should be enough reason to stop using it.

Unless you found loans that have negative interest rates (i.e. pay you to borrow money from them), I don't see how you can beat 0% rates you can get from a credit card and pay off every month.

Maybe credit cards from your bank work differently, but for the cards from my bank, I get a statement every month for the purchases I made in the month, and then if I pay the full amount before the deadline (a few weeks after the statement), then I don't have to pay any interest. That's FREE loan from the moment I made the purchase to the time I pay.

"Foxconn Beings Replacing Workers With Robots"???

Have our editors been replaced with robots already?

You don't know how iPhones got into China before Apple started selling them there, do you?

The scalpers, or more appropriately, dealers just stand outside Apple Stores (wherever iPhones are available) and offer to buy from people who just bought the phone in the store, for a small profit. Soon enough, people aiming for that small profit started going to the store, buy an iPhone with credit card, then immediately sell it to the dealers for cash (and repeat for every credit they own, apply for more when all cards have been used). The dealers then hire other people to carry (i.e. smuggle) the phones, a few each, across the border into China and sell it for a larger profit.

How's that for crowdsourcing, heh?

That happened for every iPhone release until Apple officially started selling in China. No more profit == no more scalpers.

Simple economics, demand greater than supply, then the price increases. If the manufacturer won't increase the price or increase production to meet the demand, then some of the lucky few who got the goods will sell to someone else willing to pay more.

Hey, isn't that's what Free Market and First Sale Doctrine are about?