What about the share holders who sold out before the leak was discovered? What if the owner died and the money was passed on to heirs? What about the ones that moved to another country? Let's say the leaking pond contaminated your drinking water, and coincidentally two of your children have mental development disorders, which of course you can never prove came from that leak? How much cash is worth that?

So we think, now, 30 years after the fact, that the large amount of lead being released into the air from the automotive industry was responsible for the drastic increases in violent crime in the 1960s and 1970s.

Even supposing we hadn't banned leaded gasoline, how exactly do you think the oil and gas industry would take to new efforts to tax their products today? Do you think consumers would enjoy it? Can we ever prove 100% that this was the cause? How many years back would we need to try to retroactively collect these taxes? Can we even legally do so? Just exactly how much do value do you assign to damaging a baby or young child's brain so that you can appropriate tax gasoline for the effect?

Now take everything I just said and apply it to carbon dioxide and global climate change and see how well it's working.

When applied to the commons - primarily the environment - unregulated capitalism is an absolute failure. Attempting to apply more market forces to it only works if your goal is to hasten the revolution that swings things too far in some other direction.

The fashion industry would like to respectfully disagree with you.

In all seriousness, apparently some change does matter. I read about a study (on phone and too lazy to find link) where heterosexual women were asked to decide which of a group of photographs of men were more "striking" or somesuch. When the group was almost all people with beards, those without we're deemed more striking. And vice versa.

So, if everyone does something one way, being different stands out. Not everyone is creative enough to find their own own way, but they can jump on the coat tails of the actual creative innovators. Eventually the whole market moves and "change" has happened for "change's sake", but it's roots are justified in human desire to appreciate the unique and innovative.*

* a desire that is not shared by all, and often misguided, admittedly.

"Blinkers" are both turn signal and hazard indicators. Cars I have owned manufactured in the past 20 years have had at least three distinct control methods to turn on and off the hazard indicators. So no, "blinkers" haven't been standard for 35 years.

From the video, it looks like the Google car did leave some space in front of it. It should have realized that the person approaching from behind was not stopping fast enough and might rear end it, and, prior to impact, applied a quick burst of gas then brake to use up some of that buffer space. That would give the approaching driver additional space to stop.

Then again, when I do that, it's because I see the panic in the eyes of the driver approaching from behind, and I can also tell that he's trying to stop and just doesn't quite have enough space. It's been successful a few times. Were I to see that the approaching driver is way too fast and, for example, looking at his phone, I would assume he wasn't going to try to stop and me eating into my buffer space would just make it more likely my car would have front-end damage, too. I'd be better served trying to drive out of the way. Fortunately I've only been in this situation twice and the driver behind me both times decided to drive into the shoulder/ditch instead of rear end me.

As shown in the video, the Google car both stopped short (leaving space for it to move up a few feet and brake again when it realized the driver behind wouldn't stop in time, giving the driver behind more space to stop) AND wasn't the first car at the light, so even if it used up its buffer space and was still shoved, it would neither be driving nor likely get shoved into the intersection.

Mathematics isn't a science any more than fashion is a science. They are just off the scales at different ends.

- The halloween emails represent typical corporate strategy;
- MS is still a corporation;

So the burden of proof is on those who say MS has changed.

Signs of changing would include:
- Support for old systems, instead of the endless unneeded costly and toxic upgrade cycle. You cannot have volunteers like debian to better support old stuff than a billion tier corporation.
- API stability and openness, instead of pushing and retiring flavours of the month. Ask people who invested in silverlight.

- Acknowledging the billion hours, and dollars, spent just because MS thought your computer was marketshare. I think many wars have costed less to society than MS, the other corporations, and the entire system of IT based on planned obsolescence, incompatibilities, NIH syndrome.

tldr: go on trusting MS it worked so well for those before you.

It appears that the problem is assuming that taxes paid went up because tax rates went up. Greece has a huge problem with underpayment of taxes.

A study by researchers from the University of Chicago concluded that tax evasion in 2009 by self-employed professionals alone in Greece (accountants, dentists, lawyers, doctors, personal tutors and independent financial advisers) was â28 billion or 31% of the budget deficit that year.[1]

Property records are essentially non-existent. Taxes are difficult to assess. Corruption is extreme.

> I guess they should just wear them in the field.

What? As soon as they see your AIMBOT the enemy cries "CHEATER!!!" and you get disqualified, worst idea ever.

What's wrong with being classified as a rather violent but otherwise perfectly fine animal like an ape?
What about white men who risk being classified as Bill Gates, or Poettering? That would be really offensive.

Well, it's definitely troubling that the F-35 is getting its ass kicked in short-range battle but you're right. We're relying on stealth and advanced sensors along with next-generation AMRAAMS and ASRAAMS to get you the victory long before gun range.

Iran has enough centrifuges to make a nuclear bomb but not enough centrifuges to make nuclear fuel. Iran has also been caught making uranium purer than required for energy purposes.

Based on the nude male bicycle gang that passed us near Golden Gate Park when we were there on vacation a few weeks ago, I think the correct verb is "is".

because of control. It's control that drives innovation, not people's best interest.

So, while any sane person reasoning in a vacuum would eventually decide that the internet should be about sharing data on open protocols with a wealth of different clients so that hackers have no monocultures to study and attack, we have web browsers happily executing js from sites whose url is gotten by executing js (possibly to make noscript users give up) and the government of elbonia able to tell you that that yourbank.de certificate is legitimate.

This generation has to go through the same hell through which the previous one went with windows, and given the nature of the notifications in my sis' smartphone, we are near.