I think it's supposed to be classic Keynesian economics, that a government should run a deficit by cutting taxes and spending more when the economy is slow, then cut back on spending and raise taxes once the economy improves.

The only problem is that when the economy is doing well a "Less Government and Higher Taxes" platform is a pretty hard sell for a politician.

Here's a chart showing a very strong correlation between health care costs and wages. For a period in the 90s health care costs grew very slowly and wages shot up, and when health care costs started rising more sharply during the 00s wages became stagnant. It makes sense that an employer would spend less on an employees wages as the cost of their benefits go up.

Like a ban on thundersticks? Yes, yes I would. Those things are horrible.

The thing is, with near 10% unemployment and having just come out of the worst financial crisis since the great depression, Apple is doing well.

If a company that specializes in expensive, high-end computer products is doing well in a weak economy... what happens when the economy improves?

The catch is, while manufacturing is actually increasing in America, employment in manufacturing has fallen because of increased productivity per worker.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/us-manufacturing-is-not-dead.html

So while it's not true that the USA doesn't make stuff, it can seem like it because there are fewer jobs in manufacturing.

Actually that's a good question because the first day Portal came out there was a bug where the voice giving you instructions wasn't audible (for a few people). That happened to me, I played the first few levels and I never heard the voice, then the next day Valve patched the game and the game worked for me.

It was a subtle bug because all the other sounds were there, I never realized the best part of the game is missing. Luckily I hadn't gotten too far into the game.

You know, a lot of what you're proposing, (aside malpractice reform), sounds an awful lot like Obamacare (if the Senate bill passes).

The problem isn't capitalism, it's just bad management at that specific develooper. Here's part of interview with someone from one of the most successful developers right, Infinity Ward (who did Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2).

I'm not a executive, but I would think Rockstar would be better off by hiring the best, paying them well and not overworking them so they can have a low turnover. I keep reading the same articles about "crunch time" and underpayed employees then later I read about the same companies having financial problems (EA in particular but also Rockstar).

I googled that quote, expecting it came from someone like Solzhenitsyn or Orwell, only to find out you're quoting "Revenge of the Sith"... ugh.

An 80% piracy rate doesn't mean 80% of iPhone users are pirates.

Now my math might be little shakey, but let's say, hypothetically, for every 1000 iPhone users there are only 50 who pirate games. If only 5 out of 1000 buys a game, but 20 out of 50 pirates download the game... you would have an 80% piracy rate even though only less than 5% of users are pirates.

In case that sounds familiar, it's similar to the plot of a memorable short story from the 1940s, A.E. van Vogt's ‘Far Centaurus’.

As I vaguely remember it , Astronauts get frozen and go off for hundreds of years and find out that faster than light travel has been invented and the Alpha Centauri system had already been colonized.

What I wonder is why the designers of DNS put the name in reverse?

Berners-Lee regrets that as well, from back in 2000...

I have to say that now I regret that the syntax is so clumsy. I would like http://www.example.com/foo/bar/baz to be just written http:com/example/foo/bar/baz where the client would figure out that www.example.com existed and was the server to contact. But it is too late now. It turned out the shorthand "//www.example.com/foo/bar/baz" is rarely used and so we could dispense with the "//".

The Internet makes it a lot easier to "detect" plagiarism, all you have to do is quote a few words from an essay and Google it, or use services like Turnitin.

Personally I think plagiarism in schools may be declining, it just appears to be increasing because a higher proportion are getting caught.

Or that have the dumbest students (easier competition).

...of Freeman Dyson. That sounds about right.