Either way would make it inconvenient for those wanting to follow the rules, but if they had treated it like a foreign currency at least the $200 gain exemption would have taken the burden of keeping records off of many purchases.

True, though it would've made it worse for people with large amounts. With this ruling, gains realized after >1 yr of holding bitcoin are taxed at capital-gains rates, while with the alternative ruling that bitcoin is currency, large gains would've been taxed at ordinary income rates (like forex-trading gains are).

To complicate things more, it looks like it might depend on whether you're calling from a mobile or landline. If you call from a landline, I think calling mobiles is still (much) more expensive. You can see that in the Skype rates, for example, because Skype originates its calls from landlines: Calling Finnish landlines from Skype is 0.04 EUR/min, while calling Finnish mobiles from Skype is 0.19 EUR/min (!).

On U.S. mobiles phones, interestingly, both sides pay.

On European mobile phones, on the other hand, only the caller pays, but they pay a non-neutral rate, which varies depending on the type of device the recipient has: calling mobile phones is more expensive (in some countries, much more expensive) than calling landlines.

I'd say the computer is pretty intelligent. For one, it's better at recognizing facial expressions than people are! ;-)

I mean, if you hired a textile worker, nobody would object if you talked about the worker being "good" or "bad" at sewing, even though they didn't design the sewing machinery and aren't exhibiting any particular creativity, but rather are just following instructions.

I'd say it's a mixture of the two. The computer can't discriminate these facial features without people to program it, but the people can't discriminate these facial features on their own, either, because we aren't good at applying this kind of analysis ourselves (even if we can come up with what it ought to be). The existence of a computer isn't enough, and the existence of the people is also insufficient, to carry out the task. So I'd call it a collaborative activity.

I'm not looking at highest overall pay, but highest incremental pay, vs. if you self-taught that field. CS degrees pay a lot, but their incremental value is not nearly as high, b/c self-taught programmers also get good salaries. Therefore, if you are going to do CS, the incremental value of getting a degree in it vs. just self-teaching is not that high.

Now compare people with liberal-arts degrees to people who are looking for liberal-arts jobs without having a degree. Now here you see a big differential: people looking for liberal arts jobs with no college degree don't have many offers coming.

Bill Gates himself even says that he's a dumb example of a college dropout. Not only because the odds of following his trajectory are small, but because he was basically at the point of graduating when Microsoft blew up. Had Microsoft gotten its big break 6 months later, he would've graduated, but it got big and he ran with it. He didn't drop out and then roll the dice.

I seem to recall some numbers that the differential value of a college degree is actually highest outside of STEM. Can't seem to find them again, but would be interesting to look at.

It makes sense if you think of it from the "negative" side: how do you fare looking for a job without a degree? If you are looking for tech jobs, a degree is valuable but you can still get a good job without one: CS degrees are not required for all tech jobs, not even all six-figure tech jobs. The incremental value of being a programmer vs. being a programmer with a degree is positive but modest.

But if you are looking for non-tech jobs without even having a liberal-arts degree, then you are effectively hosed. All those mid-five-figure white-collar administrative jobs in a typical Fortune 500 company are filled by people with liberal-arts degrees. Why? Because companies find it a useful filter. Not perfect, but better than nothing: if you want to select for "likely to be a decent employee, show up on time, follow directions, write English sentences coherently", and you have 50 applicants with degrees and 50 without, you just pick someone out of the 50 who have a degree.

The Queen's official car is a 1958 Rolls-Royce, but as of a few months ago the Crown Prince uses a Tesla Model S.

"The Beast" exists mostly because of Kennedy and various other attempts on American presidents

That's true, but there's some middle ground between riding completely open-air in a convertible, and riding around in a quasi-tank. All you need to stop JFK-style attacks is an enclosed vehicle that can stop bullets, like the Popemobile.

The solution is pretty clear: just implement RFC 1149 and RFC 2460 and connectivity will be fine in even remote areas.

Hey man, the Soviets gamified work and it became a worker's paradise as a result!

Mixture of things:

1. In many states, the community-college system is still heavily subsidized, while the flagship schools have been moving towards a "user-pays" model. For example, the state of California has cut its per-student subsidy to the University of California system by about 60% in real terms over the past 30 years, but has cut their per-student subsidy to the community-college system by only about 20%.

2. Community colleges typically are looser in who they'll hire to teach classes: no PhD required, can teach part-time, no research expectations, etc. Like with any field, if you have lower requirements, you can get staff for lower salaries, e.g. hiring C++ programmers vs. web designers.

3. Prestigious universities have suffered more administrative bloat, I guess because it's where the prestige is, so attracts empire-builders. Community colleges don't pay their President $500k/yr, or have an army of Assistant Vice Chancellors.

4. To be a "top school" there are higher expectations of the other resources provided besides the actual classes. A community college typically has a small or no library, while UC Berkeley is expected to have a full-coverage research library. UC Berkeley is also expected to provide good laboratory and computing facilities, dorms, security and healthcare for an on-campus resident population, etc.

Also, the pained facial expressions might be related to the lack of tacos and/or tequila drinks.

Let's not be unfair now: Comrade Dice has clearly indicated that the people's wishes are being fully consulted, and the New Slashdot will only be rolled out in such a manner as to benefit us all.