Quite right, I have failed to show anything substantive. And yes, I am too lazy to do the measurements on my own, since I have nothing vested in this topic and plenty of other ways to spend my time and money. It was simply my goal to point out an obvious set of factors which appear to have gone unaddressed in his methodology, and the ways in which they may (as I believe) have impacted his results and invalidated his conclusions.

To go off of what you said, not only do I believe—without having the numbers to back me up—that people who have used slide-out keyboards will correlate heavily with those who preferentially chose them at some point, I also believe that that idea is self-evident to most people. And I also believe—again, without the numbers—that the class of user who has considered and rejected slide-out keyboards without ever having used them is significantly larger than the class of user who at some point has used them (i.e. the ones allowed in the survey). In failing to consider those factors, I also believe that Bennett inadvertently weighted the pool of surveyed users towards those most likely to favor slide-out keyboards.

All of which is to say, you're right that I have no factual basis for my assertions (and I'm glad that folks around here still take people to task for valid reasons such as yours), since I haven't done the surveys or pulled together my own results. Even so, that doesn't change that Bennet failed to consider two factors that have the potential to heavily skew his results, and that, as a result, he lacks a solid basis for concluding "that the near-extinction of slideout-keyboard phones in retail stores is probably not in proportion to what people actually want" (unless by "people" he means "people who used slide-out keyboards"). The only thing he can reasonably conclude, based on his methodology and results, is that among users who have used slide-out keyboards, more than half prefer them. That's it, nothing more, and that remains true whether or not my assertions are correct.

CSS3 is not a programming language. No more then HTML is.

Of course they are. They can be used to tell the computer to perform some task (render a logical structure with a particular formatting). They just aren't Turing complete.

A _web developer_ maybe, but a _programmer_ surely isn't.

JavaFX insists on setting component attributes by feeding them Strings containing CSS fragments rather than using setter functions. True story.

Anyone have other theories why this number is so much higher than the 5% of people who are just "late"?

The first window lasts from 0.08 years to 0.5 years, while the second window lasts from 0.5 years to 7.0 years. The relative window width is (7.0 - 0.5) / (0.5 - 0.08) = 6.5 / 0.42 = 15.47. So if each person only had zero or one debts, and no debt was ever paid off, you'd expect there to be 15.47 times as many debt holders in the second window as in the first. 15.47 * 5% = 77%. So the fact that it is at 35% means that there is some combination of people being in both categories and people paying off their debt while it is "In Collections." If it was 5%, or 77%, you'd be able to make a pretty solid guess that something was hinky, but 35% is in the "could be perfectly reasonable" range.

I'll also echo the sentiment that some creditors do a horrible job of billing. I had a large outstanding debt for years before finding it on my credit report. The company had a typo in my address from the original signup, but had been getting copies of my credit report which had my correct address. They sent all the bills to the incorrect address they had on file, never once contacted me at the address on file with the credit reporting company they had been contacting.

I'd argue that they also cross the line when the spend valuable tax dollars on very low level risks, and when certain foreign governments have volutarily cooperated with needful investigations and are now being treated as though that doesn't matter, as we can get the info whether they work with us or not, so screw international cooperation. American agencies that don't really see any difference between Australia and Afghanistan probably should concern you. Contributing to international accords and then ignoring them probably should concern you. Spending tax dollars that could go to rebuilding much needed infrastructure on building up the threats before we spend more to take them down definitely should concern you.
          Recently declassified documents have revealed that there were years in the 1950s, 60s and 70s when the whole funding for the National Endowment for the Arts was being spent on CIA disinformation campaigns. That''s never been officially investigated by Congress or in any way restricted, and could still be going on now, seventy years after it started.With that as their history, the only thing that concerns you is crossing the domestic line? Doesn't that even suggest they are spending way too much of your taxes on nothing?

They already have to include non-Slavs, though. Remember that Russia is like 10-15% Muslim (depending on who you ask), and most of these are non-Slavs. Then of course you have a bunch of other guys like Yakuts or Buryats.

The overarching ideology is actually Eurasianism; Russians are seen as the "core nation" in that model, the one that binds everyone else together around it. Not dissimilar to how Stalin described USSR after WW2.

Party D uses Party A's code, but locks it up a la TiVo.

Party E uses Party C's version instead of Party D's version because Party E gets more rights that way. (Party F, G, H, etc. ad infinitum keep more rights that way, too.... and that's the important part!)

The grandparent AC was trying to say that "allegation" has a negative connotation compared to "assertion," so the latter would be fairer to say.

You mean, limited to writing for any platform that uses something other than a web page as its UI (including embedded development, server-side development, regular PC applications, mobile, video games, etc.)? I think I can live with that limitation!

(Actually, even if you do write things that use web pages for their UI, unless you're the "UI guy" you still might not have to know much CSS!)

I can't find words for how much I hate Congress and the President for this.

I can. But I'm afraid that if I use them in public, I could be put on the secret watch list and have to face extra scrutiny in every LEO encounter when "possible terrorist, report to FBI" pops up on their computer.

Of course, that chilling effect means that the peaceful feedback mechanism that is supposed to moderate government overreach is being attenuated. When that moderation system is weakened, excesses grow. Fortunately, as The Declaration of Independence notes, "accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." So we have time.

But time grows short; The Declaration does not end with that phrase.

Welcome to 3 years ago with OnLive and Gaikai.
The compression and latency make it a fucking terrible experience.

Well then, Iranian homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else there: they can avoid gay sex or die. And Jews in Nazi Germany were perfectly equal: after all, they could live if they weren't Jewish.

If you must lie to yourself, shouldn't you still have enough self-respect to use a bit less transparent bullshit?

The behavior isn't legal at all, it's completely unconstitutional.

Decentralized Internet is badly needed

Very true, that is the only real solution to this problem. Whether corporations, governments, or criminals, the value in surveillance is too great to be resisted. The only solution is increasing the cost and detecting it when it happens. Decentralization will both make it more expensive to do generalized surveillance, and make it harder to do it without getting caught.

and nothing seems to be in works...

Not as true.

OwnCloud lets you host your own dropbox, mobile-to-desktop sync, etc.
MediaGoblin lets you host your own replacement for YouTube.
Asterisk lets you host an end-to-end encrypted replacement for Skype.
Tor and I2P let you slip past your ISP's surveillance net.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more at Stop-Prism.org.

Israel is sure doing a good job in that area creating more enemies, if that is their intention, the plan is working.

They've spent decades - most of their existence - surrounded by enemies. At this point, an end to the hostilities and siege mentality would be a threat to established powers that be. Just as happened in the US after Cold War, really.