That's pretty good evidence that there is some relationship, you are right.

However, R is developed by a team out of the University of Wisconsin Statistics Department, lead by Doug Bates. I believe that the team at UW, not GNU, makes decisions about the direction for R's future development.

Nevertheless, your original point stands and I agree with you that I don't see that team moving from linux any time soon.

What makes you think GNU has anything to do with R (other than writing its license)?

This is about R. That would be difficult to do with a list of contributors this long not impossible, well, yeah, probably impossible.
http://www.r-project.org/contr...

The thing is that you are guessing about how it might work, not actually knowing how it does work.

On the startup podcast, one of their investors accidentally wired the money to the wrong account and they only got most (about 2/3) of their money back because the other side had withdrawn another portion. The bank and police offered no assistance in getting back the rest.

You know they are a crap tech company because the "amazon" app on the kindle is harder to use than the browser, pointed at the amazon.com website.

Why can't I make it "try again" on a book that it thinks I have that is in the 80k books you have some rights / discounts on?

I am an economist and this drivel is more like, "what I think I recall based on having taken econ classes a long time ago" than it is about economics or business. I would never endorse any of the above logic attributed to economists, with the possible exception of the first day Apple pricing which I would talk about simply in a college class even though actual economists know full well why a company might use that pricing model.

News flash: what's taught in college economics is known to not be correct, it's just part of a liberal arts education.

Not necessary on an Andriod phone where FB already has access to use the microphone without telling you--and you can't disable this without root.

I'm not so sure. I think the President (who ever that is) typically wants to keep the country safe and the NSA wants to do the same and they think that they are doing it correctly. I think people want the to be safe and it's tough as the person who is actually President to cut off the means employed by the NSA and hope that you are correct and the ends will still be there knowing that if there were an attack it could easily be your decision that allowed it and all it's nasty side effects.

All that said, I'd personally like more court involvement. In particular, I see no reason the judicial process couldn't happen in a classified arena. If the lawyers had security clearances and all judges already do, then I see no reason they couldn't just have closed proceedings without juries, but at least have some oversight from an outside body.

Another viable option for checks would be an Inspector General, covered by the Inspector General act and so truly independent from the agency itself, who could issue reports to the President and Congress.

sorry, point being, we can all afford computers.

Perhaps, but it was just a news letter. Anyways, the least expensive house in bounds for the school would be about $400,000 (and that would be a 1 BR condo that is boarded up and has a high association fee).

uh, except the unique transaction number?

I knew someone who worked for a marketing firm and he said, "we either track your purchases through your loyalty card or your CC number, it's your choice if you save the money or not." Perhaps they store a hash of the CC number, but it's a unique key for you, rest assured.

Any system that relies on a number that you cannot hide remaining private is doomed to failure. But that's exactly what we have.

Try Discover or AmEx. They both own their own networks and so the website is current almost instantly. Visa is owned by no bank, so everybody has to wait to get the info. This also lets Discover and AmEx find fraudulent charges much faster and alert you to them right away.