I think the lowest-hanging fruit is to sandbox the various CA's to certain domains. The Tunisian gov't shouldn't be able to make certs for paypal.com. They should probably only be making certs for *.tn, so why not have the browsers enforce this? Have the browsers only trust Verisign and the big DNS registrars for .com certs... etc.

I realize that this is a really low-tech fix, and it doesn't go far enough to really solve the problem completely. I also realize that there's a lot of political hand-wringing to be done over which CA's get trusted for domain ".xyz", and there's going to be a lot of whining and bellyaching from the small players who get sandboxed to a small subset of domains. But the advantage is that it doesn't require that users or webmasters out there change their certs or implement DNSSEC or whatever. Basically, all of the browser developers could implement this in their next release... quite easily, too.

Right here, for one.

Now, granted, I haven't actually seen the app, but I'm not hearing that it bashes gays, or says that god hates them, or whatever. I hear that it's supposed to be a support tool for any gays out there who (erroneously, IMHO) think that they can be "fixed" through some kind of therapy. If this were an app claiming to help left-handed people "become right-handed" or turn lead into gold, we'd all just laugh it off. But because this involves an issue that is usually accompanied by intolerance, I think the knee-jerk reaction here is to lump this app in with intolerant viewpoints about homosexuality. But, like I said, I haven't heard anybody say that the app engages in any intolerant or hateful rhetoric. True, the authors are probably bigots and homophobes, but the app shouldn't be judged by its authors.

Frankly, I don't see it as really hurting anybody. Yeah, it's misguided and dumb, but it's not necessarily hate speech.

First off, the columnist starts off with "Laptop beats Tablet", and then proceeds to list limitations of the iPad; one particular tablet. Some of those limitations (iTunes, replaceable battery, no multitasking) are not issues on other tablets. So, I think I consider these to be marginal arguments against tablets.

Next, the guy lists the advantages of a laptop (ports, storage, keyboard, DVD player/burner). Well, these are all things available (in even more abundance) on a desktop PC. So, I could make that same argument that my desktop beats his laptop. It all comes down to what problem you're trying to solve with your laptop. For me, it was portability. And a tablet gives me more of that than my laptop does.

Until a couple of weeks ago, my laptop was my primary weapon. It had, pretty much, stopped using my desktop, except for big computing chores (or when I needed my two-monitor setup). I also thought that the iPads were pretty pointless when they first came out. However, since then, I've noticed that, many times, I'll be laying in bed at night and I'll want to check my mail really quick, or go look up some website, etc. My two options were: 1) Do it on my iPhone, or 2) Walk across the room to get my heavy laptop and either wait for it to boot or come out of sleep mode, sit up so that I could use it while it was on my lap, etc. So, usually, I'd just do it on my iPhone.

So, I figured I'd get an iPad to see if it would "hit the spot" as far as what I was looking for: an always-handy, quick-on mail-reader, web-browser, media-player. And, as it turns out, it was. Since I bought my iPad, I've gone from only using my laptop to using a combination of my iPad and desktop. The desktop is used for coding, heavy web surfing, and preparing content for the iPad. For everything else, I just take my iPad with me. All of that stuff the columnist gripes that he needs (DVD burner, USB ports, etc), I use the ones on the desktop.

Now, one of the unexpected things about my iPad is that some of the apps (Facebook, Match.com, eBay, eTrade, and Weather Channel immediately come to mind) are actually better than on my PC! At first, I didn't understand how this could be. And then it dawned on my that, on my PC, the interface was always through a web browser. On my iPad, I had a custom app for each of these sites, so the UI was uniquely designed to give me a better user experience. I wasn't expecting that at all. In fact, I actually prefer to use the iPad app for some of these sites over using a PC.

So, all in all, I think the columnist is being a bit unfair (in that he's using limitations of the iPad as an indictment of tablets, in general, and also by not acknowledging that, in all of the ways that laptops beat tablets, desktops beat laptops). But, hey, nobody said that tablets (or laptops, for that matter) were for everybody. So, he's not one of the target market. So what?

I agree. At first, I was just going to toss in a snide comment about this whole scam being a tax on the stupid... evolution at work, but it's true. It's tragic that someone can be that lonely and have no idea how to fix it. If this person were in chronic physical pain, there are thousands of ways that modern science can help. But, for this chronic emotional pain... what solutions are there for him? "Buy a Russian bride", "Just be happy with yourself", "Just hang in there. You'll meet someone, someday...". Platitudes.

And to think that there are millions like this person. Not necessarily so desperate as to get bilked out for $200k, but forlorn and lonely, nonetheless.

From the photos I'm seeing of the protests, it looks like some folks are resorting to smoke signals.

Well, actually, my thinking was that the corporate malfeasance I'd like exposed is the political corruption I'd like exposed. When drug companies are sliding oodles of money to political campaigns to get congressmen to prevent Medicare from even negotiating on drug prices... then the corporate and political wrongdoings are just two halves of the same coin.

Well... I guess I'd say that some parents might want the option of letting their kid learn this lesson in a less-physical manner. In that sense, I guess I support this "kid-friendly" version of the book because it gives parents that option.

What I certainly oppose is the banning of the original. Options are, in my book, almost always a good thing.

Well, sort of.

I'll be honest. When I first read the post, my knee-jerk reaction was that this is political-correctness run amok. However, half-way into one of the Slate commentaries on it, I had a thought: What you get out of the book depends upon the age at which you read it. If you're really young, it's just an adventure book, like Treasure Island or something. The historical overtones, the clues about how racism was so innate that it was codified in the national vernacular, will be lost on you unless you're of sufficient age to understand how language changes over time to reflect changing political opinions.

Now, if you're not at that age yet, then it's just an adventure story. Also, you're closer to that age where you're still "absorbing" your vocabulary and vernacular from observing the conversations of others. In other words, if I had some kid who was, say, 5-6 reading it, I'd worry a bit that they'd think that "nigger" was, like countless other ones, just another word that they hadn't come across, yet, and start whipping it out in conversations at school.

This is kinda what the Slate article was hinting at. We abridge countless other books to make them more pertinent or digestible to different audiences (especially younger ones). In science books, we leave out the bit about Newton's law of gravitation and elliptical orbits just say that the planets orbit the sun until the kid's brain is capable of grokking the more-esoteric concepts. The Slate article questions how this is all that different.

So, even though my overall feeling about this is yucky... and that I think this is a scary path to be going down, I must admit that I can envision situations where I would choose the watered-down version for my own kid if they were of a certain age.

Regardless of who decides how it's spent, it gets spent on people that aren't him. In other words, he has decided that he only needs (or even wants) a small fraction of that money to spend on his own leisure and amusement.

Okay, so let me get this straight... he probably paid (or will pay) about 30% in federal and state taxes on his money since it's combined salary and capital gains. So, that means he takes home about 70% of it. Now, he says he's willing to give away half of that. So, he's perfectly happy to keep just 35%, actually. That's the equivalent of being taxed at 65%.

It's interesting to think about this when I hear people freak out about the idea of raising the highest tax-bracket rate from, say, 35% to 39%. They claim that, if we did this, all of the rich people would be so incensed that they'd take their money to other countries...

... yet here's a guy who's joining many other guys who are voluntarily, effectively, taxing themselves at about 65%.

There's no such thing as a "death tax". You don't get taxed when you die. Want proof? Put in your will that you want to be buried with your money. They'll let you be buried with every last cent.

It's when money is transferred to someone else (inherited by an heir, earned as an employee, used to purchase a good or service) when it's taxed.

"Death tax" is just an insidious term made up by the Republicans to make the middle- and lower-classes think that could apply to them ("Well, gollie gee wilikers... y'know.. I'm a gonna die someday... an' I shor don't want to be taxed for dyin'"). After all, everybody dies... but the tax only kicks in on people who inherit large estates... that is why it's more-rightly called an "estate tax".

But Republicans avoid calling it that because it makes it sound like it only hits the rich... and they'd have trouble selling that to the public with that vernacular.

About 6-7 years ago, it struck me that, if we had some kind of local and interstate above-ground monorail system that we could attach cars/pods to, it would solve make a lot of things a lot easier. Since everything's on a rail system controlled by a central computer, the occupants don't even need to be able to drive (or even be people at all... ), so you could have your rail-enabled car drop your kid off at school, or deliver your golf-clubs to your friend's house... 8 hours away. Any time you want to take a trip across the country, get on the monorail, punch in the destination, and take a nap, get drunk, screw, whatever.

Granted, it's a pie-in-the-sky wish, but it seems to have more payoff (people would be able to ride it, and you wouldn't be as limited in the form-factor of devices that could run on it, since stuff doesn't have to snugly fit the tube) and less implementation hassle (I presume that erecting suspended stuff is cheaper than digging trenches for tunnels, you wouldn't have as many right-of-way problems since you could build the monorail over existing highways and streets, it might be easier to keep bums and kids from accessing a suspended track than a tunnel, and it's easier to maintain).

So, the tunnel idea just seems kinda like "Hey, let's do it in a harder way that has less utility".

Well, before I address your comment, I'd like to start off by saying that I agree that this is all security theater. You can't take knives on board, but you can take glass. You can't take flammable liquids on board unless they're distributed amongst 3oz bottles.

Now, having said that, I agree with the person you responded to. Flying isn't compulsory. So, you reply with "but how the hell am I going to get to Hawaii?!?!". Now, some people would reply that you can take a cruise. But I think they're missing a larger point: Going to Hawaii isn't even compulsory. The gov't isn't requiring you to go to Hawaii. But, if you do want to go, and if you want to take this mode of transport, then those are the tradeoffs.

The world is full of provisos like this and you don't give them a second thought. If you want to ride in my car, you can't smoke. If you want to smoke during the drive, then go in someone else's car. If you want to spend the night at my mother's house and you're not married to your sweetie, then you can't sleep in the same room. If you want to sleep in the same room as your sweetie, then don't crash at my mother's house. For some reason, you've selected this particular trade-off for "enhanced seething"; probably having to do with how we've all taken flying for granted.

Again, we can co-miserate all day about how this is total bullshit, and about how women get pat-downs more than men or whatever, but this indignation about being subjected to this "for the crime of buying a plane ticket"... give me a break. You could apply that to just about anything. For the "crime of getting a driver's license", you're required to drive on one side of the street and not drive too fast. For the "crime of buying tickets to a football game", you're often limited in how many beers you can buy. For the "crime of wanting to have a mate", you're required to stay in shape and not be an asshole until after the wedding.

These are all optional things, which carry ancillary requirements to do them. For some people, the trade-off is worth it, so the suck it up and deal. For others, it's not worth it, so they just go do something else.

Whoops! That's right. I meant that the income share of the bottom 90% of families (ie, just about all of us here) has gone down by 17%.

I agree. And it seems that, after that is established, every Republican I talk to waves their hands in the air and claims that it's just obvious that we're well in the downward-slope region.

I don't buy it.

I don't agree. This isn't a simple algebra-II problem where we're calculating compound interest or bacteria multiplying in a dish and things just keep multiplying over and over.

Eventually, you're going to reach the point where everybody's working and they can't make (TV's | houses | cars | lattes ) any faster. This is what boggled me about the dot-com boom; everybody thought that the "new economy" was going to make everything super-cheap to make. But I couldn't shake the fact that it still takes just as many swings of a hammer to build a house.

Unless they somehow make: 1) the house take fewer hammer-swings to build, 2) the hammer-swinger accept less money per swing of the hammer, or 3) somehow lower the cost of the materials, then the price of a house isn't going to go down. But #3 is actually just #1 and #2 applied to the materials supplier.

Now, #2 doesn't really help the economy because the hammer-swinger is going to have less money to spend on other goods. So, the only thing that really helps the economy is #1: making it take fewer hammer swings. The economists' term for this is "worker productivity". Now, the dot-com boom did give us some productivity gains in the form of just-in-time inventorying, smoother channels for ordering/tracking/paying, etc... but it didn't do much to make houses take fewer or smaller nails.

So, anyway... the long and short of it is: I don't agree that we can make tweaks that give us miniscule bumps in the GDP and that they will just keep compounding geometrically without bound. The GDP has a ceiling, determined by worker productivity (ie, how efficiently the worker can make their widget), availability of workers, demand for the widgets, etc. Cyclically, we get politicians who try to squeeze out more GDP with tweaks to the system and then we get corrections like we have now.

Specifics, please? Name me an adviser/lieutenant who was picked because of political loyalty and name the person who, clearly, should have been picked, instead.