That's the kind of message I'd like to get through.

Seriously, I don't... I still have my keyboard from 1993 because these new ones stink.

More seriously - I use my computer for work. Not kids, not watching videos, not games, WORK. Windows XP/7 is better at getting work done than Windows 8.

Hopefully microsoft pulls their heads out of their butts on this and allows a quick setting change to "I have no use for metro, thanks."

Best decision I ever made (well, apart from marrying my wife).

Your wife reads your slashdot posts, eh?

There's certainly a continuum. But in Illinois, many teachers are compensated VERY VERY well... many make over $100,000 a year in a job that only has 38-40 work weeks.

Of course, some teachers in Illinois, especially in rural areas, are paid very poorly.

But you can't assume that just because there are good pension benefits that there were not good salaries as well.

Congress is NOT adding a new tax. They are giving the states the ability to collect sales taxes on goods shipped into their states.

It's up to your state legislature whether your particular state actually decides to do this or not, not Congress.

This just puts a state's domestic retailers on equal footing with foreign retailers.

Several people in my lifetime have mentioned to me that I might have Aspergers.

Fortunately I figured out how I could cure myself.

I just stopped caring about anyone else's feelings.

Now I'm just an asshole!

The Civics lesson is that when the government enters into a contract with an individual that it cannot then decide later on that it doesn't liked the contract and legislate to undo it.

Why not?

There's this thing in the world called bankruptcy. It's a backdrop to contract negotiation. It basically says that if I make a contract with you that is so bad that you can't sustain the contract, you get to get out of honoring the contract.

Just because, 10, 15 or 20 years ago, a group of employees managed to convince a politician to give them a contract that no reasonable party could expect to be maintained doesn't mean that now, 20 years later, we can't say, "That was ridiculous. It's going to bankrupt the state and we have to undo it."

Illinois is a particularly good (bad?) example of this. Many years ago teachers convinced politicians to set up a state-paid teacher retirement system. And they put in things like a formula where the school districts pay into the system based on the salary of the teacher that year, but the retirement payments paid to the teachers (and administrators, superintendents and others are in the same plan) are based only on the highest-paid 4 years of each participants career.

I'll give to 15 seconds to figure out what happened.

That's right, unions and administrators all started negotiating contracts where the school district gave participants huge raises in the 4 years before their retirement. Didn't cost the school district much in retirement plan contributions (they're only paying the higher rate for the last 4 years of a 30-year career) and the participants get a huge benefit - a much larger pension for the remaining 20 to 40 years of their lives.... paid for by the state aka the taxpayers.

When you get down to it, it's just a short step away from a conspiracy to steal money from the taxpayers of the state, and at some point the taxpayers are going to put a stop to it.

No, I don't get it.

A socialist can point to successful models of socialism. A libertarian can not point to successful models of no government. Your options are democracies of varying degrees of socialism, totalitarian regimes, or, as you put it, local control.

That's not a straw man argument.

BTW, local control doesn't mean no taxes. The warlords want their money too. Probably less likely to build roads with it though.

Well, you could also visit Great Britain or Germany. Existence of a totalitarian regime doesn't preclude the success of a social state, when there are several successful social states.

Are there any small- or no-government countries you'd like to live in?

Before the government declared they needed to do it, private people and corporations created all the roads that weren't post roads.

Before the government declared they needed to do it, how many roads were there? What was their quality?

Some efforts are just better done by the government. Roads is one of them.

While it is true that the ratio of guys to girls at schools like that is 4:1, what you have to factor in is that because it is a tech school, 3.5 out of 4 of those guys are socially dysfunctional, making the eligible male-to-female ratio closer to 1:2.

So, if you did not have much romantic success, you first have to figure out if you were in the 3.5 or the 0.5. If the 3.5, it's unlikely that going to a different school would have helped.

Shredding paper reduces average paper fiber length and thus also reduces the value of the paper as a recycled material. Also makes the paper take up more volume in transport. Additionally, if you don't trust your recycler to securely handle your intact paper, shredding the paper before you give it to them is a minimal improvement for the same reason shredding the paper before throwing it all over new york city wasn't very secure, and there was far more randomization there than shredding paper into a bucket.

So there's significant practical reasons to not shred the paper before shipping it out - increases costs, reduces value, minimal security improvement.

One, your accounting gimmick doesn't shield you from prosecution. It MAY make prosecution more difficult, but the company - and you personally - are absolutely criminally liable for paying the bribe, no matter how you attempt to obfuscate it. All you need is affirmative knowledge of an intent to influence an official's duties with some sort of compensation.

Whether the FCPA covers your example of paying to get your laptop back out of the bin is less clear. There's actually a case or two going through the system now that will define who, exactly, counts as a "foreign official", specifically, does every employee of a government count as a foreign official?

It's unlikely that a conviction for paying a bribe to get your laptop back would survive an appeal, as the payment didn't secure your business an advantage, it just got your property back.

When I was in school, I was incredibly academically talented, and marginally athletically talented, and skinny. Very, very skinny. And socially underdeveloped. And initially, I got a lot of unwanted, negative attention.

But here's the thing - I realized I was doing some things to earn that attention.

Think, for example, about joining the football team as someone who is not athletically talented. It's going to be embarrassing. You're not going to be able to catch the ball. You're not going to be able to throw the ball. You're going to look embarrassingly inferior to everyone else who is playing and is athletically talented. The coach is going to give all his attention to the best players. Someone is going to take the ball, knock you on your ass, score the touch down and, well, you're not going to feel so good about it.

So, what happens? Well, you DON'T JOIN THE FOOTBALL TEAM! Problem solved, embarrassment avoided.

Now, let's turn this around. Let's say you're not academically talented. You go to class, but you just don't get it. Every time the teacher calls on you you're not sure of the answer, and there's this other kid that's raising his hand all the time answering all the questions right. He does well on all the tests, gets all the recognition from the teacher, and is having a good time while you struggle.

So, what happens? Well, you HAVE to go to class, so there's no escape. Day in and day out this kid is rubbing your face in the fact that he's smarter than you. And there's no escape. It would be like a nerd being forced to play football every day.

I think we all understand that bullies are usually acting out of a place where they feel bad about themselves. So the first step, if you find yourself on the receiving end of a bully, is asking yourself, "Am I behaving in a way that makes others feel bad about themselves?" If so, stop doing that, and you might find your situation improve. I know it did for me.

I'm not saying you have to stop being smart, but you should make sure you're not "spiking the ball" as it were. Don't answer every single question in class. Don't show off your test results to people who didn't do as well. Be nice when people ask you for help. Recognize other people's achievements - even if they are not in areas YOU think are important. Tell somebody they played a good game or whatever.

A lot of "nerds" don't realize that all the behavior they resent the "jocks" exhibiting on them about sports or what not, we often do the EXACT SAME THING back, just different things. If you don't want people to treat you like you're different, then you can't make them feel like you think they're different - or at least not inferior.

So, if someone you know finds themselves being bullied, make sure you check that it's not just because they're being a pretentious ass to others who are not talented in the same areas that they are.

Build it, and if the environmentalists don't want you to use it, volunteer to meet at their place to discuss their concerns.