Put Salmon Khan in a classroom with 25 third graders and see how well he does.

I'm not saying you need a degree in education to teach, but different sets of skills are required for different students in different settings. Degree programs prepare teachers to succeed in a variety of situations many of which are more challenging than making videos.

Perhaps Developer D created app A for iOS because iOS provides a market and a platform in which app A can succeed. You don't think there was work involved in that?

Clearly iOS came before the apps. I'm not saying that applications haven't contributed to the success of the iPhone but Apple invested a ton of money and time to get something right that other smart phone venders at the time were getting wrong. And Apple's success did not prevent Android from also succeeding even though they don't have the same API. Google embraced some of what Apple did and created their own mobile platform while Blackberry was still in denial.

Obviously this is very important to you and if you want to get the last word in that is fine, I'm done posting after this. But I have to wonder though if you meant to post a link to something else because the first line under the heading "Socialism" in your link says this:

An economic and social theory that seeks to maximize wealth and opportunity for all people through public ownership and control of industries and social services.

Perhaps I do have a simple mind, but "public ownership" would seem to be part of that definition. While the word "control" is also used, it refers to control of industries, not just economic decisions.

Look, if you'd prefer to put countries on scale with "Capitalist" on the right side and "Socialist" on the left, I'd agree that Germany and many Scandinavian are further left than we are. However, if you are going to label them either capitalist or socialist, they are definitely more capitalist. More to my point, any mainstream US Democrat or Republican is definitely to the right of center on the scale.

Homebrew is a decent enough package manager for my purposes.

I am a software developer and my main OS is OS X but I have VMs that I use with various flavors of Windows and Linux. OS X comes with a lot of OSS stuff built in like perl, Postgres, PHP, Python, and Apache. The problem is that they're not always the version you want and haven't necessarily been compiled with the options you need. It was especially rough early during the transition from 32 to 64 bits.

Personally I like OS X enough to deal with some minor hassles but I can see why other people might prefer to install Windows or Linux. Having choices is good.

Depends on what you mean by "Nice guy". Doormats finish last. People that allow themselves to be taken advantage of finish last. Those who are nice out of fear finish last. Being respectful, kind, generous, and willing to help are qualities that can get you places in this world provided that you recognize there are times to dispense with the charm.

It also depends on what kind of results you're talking about. In my experience being a jerk in and of itself does nothing much other than create enemies. Being especially talented might mean that bad behavior will be tolerated as long as you are successful.

Since "Nice Guys Finish Last" is a phrase often used when talking about success with women, my observations with both my high school friends and my son's high school friends doesn't exactly bear that out. Sometime we equate "nice" with shy. In that case it is true. Guys who are shy around women really need to have something else significant going for them or it's going to be a lonely existence.

I prefer to think of "nice" as people who have a genuine charm and treat most everybody more or less the same way. Someone like "Steve Jobs" could be very charming, but apparently only to people he cared about charming.

Your Spouse? Your Kids? Aren't THEY going to want their kids to Iive that long?

There aren't many parents around that are going to want to outlive their kids. So whatever expensive medical procedures are required to make this happen, they're going to want to fund it for them too. Of course, the kids aren't going to want to work until their 100, so you're also going to have to cover their living expenses for 55 years. Probably their spouses as well.

From the more long lived people I've known, it is sometimes a little sad. Their friends have all died or are close to it. They've lost a lot of family over the years including some of their own descendants.

What also seems to go hand in hand with extending life is extending the years of poor health. I think I'd rather have 80 or 90 years of good health and drop dead one day, then 100 years of good health and 20 years of living from one doctor appointment to the next. Maybe it was a slashdot article but somewhere I saw something about a guy who decided he wanted to be done at around 75. It's not that he'd off himself at that age, just that he'd refuse treatment for any disease that he acquired after that point.

Norway and Sweden are social democracies - mixed economies. Germany is less so (but more than the US is). Germany is very much a capitalist country.

Public ownership of the means of production is a central tenet to socialism. Look it up.

Communism is a utopian evolution of socialism, - a completely classless society. There's not money, - not even a state. No truly communist country has ever existed. Stalin's version of Communism or "Marxism-Leninism" was really neither and not Communism.

When "What is it with rich socialists that they hate the rich so much?" is the first line of a paragraph, it pretty much guarantees that anything before it would be in a different paragraph. ;-)

You mentioned two people by name, Soros, and Bloomberg, - the latter of which you devoted all of three words to. Doesn't it seem natural that a reader would think you were including Soros in your group of rich socialists? If you did not intend for he or Bloomberg to be included then it's not at all clear who you were talking about.

It was your post, so you should know, but it looks to me that you were playing fast and loose with the term socialist and got called on it.

I can buy a laptop from Lenovo and still get updates from Microsoft. And though I'm not a fan of Windows Phone, version 8 will allow owners of the phones to install updates ahead of the official carrier release. Doing so may be unsupported by the carriers and they may opt not provide tech support to customers who go that route. Still, it's nice to have that option.

So apparently Microsoft found a way past this problem. Can't Google?

You asked why "rich socialists" hate the rich so much, immediately after talking about Soros. To me that implied that he was one of the rich socialists you were thinking of. Now you are using the phrase "socialist-style agendas". Is providing public education or having a state run military part of a socialist-style agenda? Socialists would certainly favor those things but yet we don't think of those as socialist notions. Again, I think people on the right like to throw around the term "socialism" simply to poison the well.

As far as Soros goes, I think he has earned significant wealth from highly unethical practices. But what you are accusing him of is a bit of a stretch. When it comes to good and evil I don't see people as either one. They are on a sliding scale. So for me it is quite possible even for an unethical person to do things strictly out of generosity. So I believe that some of the causes Soros supports he supports because he genuinely thinks they will improve peoples' lives.

The same thing applies to the Koch brothers. They've contributed significant money to public defenders in our country. I don't think that it's part of some socialist agenda or a subversive means of further lining their pockets. I think they genuinely believe our system of pubic defense is grossly inadequate and want to help.

The reason why the Koch brothers get vilified when it comes to global warming is because in this case they are so clearly acting in their own self interest. They are attempting to influence public opinion and politicians via huge sums of money. And they are doing so mainly to protect their wealth, rather than for altruistic reasons.

The definition I gave is what socialism is, not an extreme one. The definition you gave could be equally applied to progressivism or liberalism and could lead to policies supported by many British conservatives (for example), - who are definitely not socialists.

Just like here though, politicians in Britain (even conservatives) will get labeled as "socialists" by people further to their right that don't like their views. For the record, progressives traditionally are very anti-socialist.

1. He favors the "Nordic Model" when comes to economic systems. It's a combination of free market capitalism with large social programs

2. He describes himself as a "Social Democrat" of which there are many definitions. Based on his favorable view of the Nordic model, he's not a socialist in the traditional sense.

3. Most importantly, he's an independent, - not a member of the Democratic party.

Michelle Bachmann was once a Democrat. You could conclude several things from that. One is that anything is possible, another is that people can change over time, and a 3rd is that fundamentally, especially when it comes to the free enterprise system, Democrats and Republicans aren't all that different.

Are there socialists in this country that vote democrat because they see them as the lesser of two evils? Probably. Are there Socialists that run for office pretending to be Democrats? Maybe, though I doubt they get very far. Belief in free enterprise (tempered by regulation) is part of the Democratic platform. If someone like Fidel Castro were to join the Republican party, would that make him a Republican?

The current trend of labeling Democrats or their proposals as "socialist" is the same tactic as calling someone a "liberal" was 20 years ago. The difference is that the term "liberal" doesn't have same stigma "socialist" does and was losing its effectiveness. What is especially ironic is when you hear someone refer to Obamacare as "socialist". A socialist would consider Obamacare an abomination (or Obamination if you prefer). It's not that the are opposed to universal health care, just the way Obamacare attempts to achieve it. As far as that goes they share common ground with Republicans or Libertarians.

Name one.

If you want to have a reasoned argument and be taken seriously then you shouldn't try to compare people like Soros to socialists. I'm not going to defend everything the guy has ever done but he did play a significant role in Hungary's transition from communism to capitalism. He's done some other very good things like donating $35 million to underprivileged kids in New York. At the same time he is something of a hypocrite, -getting rich off the very things he thinks should be more closely regulated. But he is no socialist.

A socialist believes that the people (or government in actual practice) should own the means of production rather than private companies. We're not talking just about health care, we're talking about all major industries. No current US Democrat supports such a notion. Some Democrats may have been willing to work with socialists back in the 30's but they've grown farther and farther apart since that time. People like Soros want to place greater controls on the markets, but they also want the markets to continue to exist.