Perkele.

Care to explain how this is true? I think I have an idea, but using "a healthy combination of certain areas of comp-sci (databases, machine learning, NLP, AI), statistical methods, and, quite often, improvisation" seems to be an even more obtuse approach than going about it the old-fashioned way. I'd much rather hear that people are using what we already know or (still better, but probably not as plausible) the latest mathematical advances regarding nonlinear systems rather than just ad-hoc'ing methods because... computers! I believe that this is at least partiallly Nassim Taleb's objection to the entire field of data science as well. How many 'results' coming from data science are the product of sound and rigorous methodologies, and how many are just due to chance/data dredging?

Correction: Science is not an Elsevier publication. Seems like I'm slightly naive as well...

Nature was established in 1869. Science in 1880. To state that it "would take a while" to beat that prestige comes off as slightly naive (I offer a litotes to your understatement).

Mais maintenant j'ai Google.

But what Amazon is doing is not free market economics- they are using their previously accumulated profits to artificially distort the market by selling at a loss and not taking a profit. This doesn't encourage competition, it stifles it. The French government is essentially reacting to ensure that some semblance of a well-regulated free market is preserved by compensating for Amazon's chicanery.

Parisian book stores (Gibert Jeune, Shakespeare and Co) are not ridiculously expensive. When I was a student at Paris 3 I was able to buy all of my textbooks for under 100 euros (compare to prices paid for American textbooks; also note that some of those textbooks were unnecessary supplements that I bought out of curiosity). Most individual books range between 5-10 euros, and, scaled for the cost of living, most bouquinistes (you know, the people who sell used books) had decent prices (especially considering that some of the books in their selection were rare and/or out of print). The used bookstores that you speak of very much have an analogue in the bouquinistes.

If you want to stay out of France, France will not miss you.

Whatever. I'm personally a fan of a lot of the hip-hop coming out of the Bay Area these days. It's definitely qualitatively different from the stuff you find in New York though- I would never really compare the two. This stuff's pretty good. Same with the Crown City Rockers.

Namely Donald Trump. Who is revered by American society for... absolutely no good reason whatsoever.

Okay. Maybe it's not always *directly* funded by the US government, but I wonder where most of its other clients get *their* funding. I know MDA for sure has won some major contracts from NASA in the past, and they definitely get quite a few contracts for the CSA. How many of these SpaceX missions would continue to exist feasibly without funding from NASA, the CSA, and the ESA? Maybe SpaceX is not a contractor for a single government, but I can easily see it working for multiple governments (in the same manner as Lockheed Martin).

Bell Labs being part of a government-supported natural monopoly that has languished miserably in the post-Ma Bell world. Not the example I would choose if you were trying to make the case for private enterprise. The Bell system seemed non-governmental in only a nominal sense.

Hey mate, that's 75k in revenue. Time to get on 1500dollarwardrobe.com. Did I mention that we plan to have deliveries made personally by Sara McLachlan for an extra $3000 fee?

Now we just need to clone a keyboard too.

Read the subject title. Memorize it. Meditate upon it. Realize that even if people are watching you, they are probably bored stiff because you aren't actually that interesting. Move on with your life.

Put more succinctly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Also, for our edification and amusement: http://www.infoworld.com/t/sql/mr-sulu-steers-facebook-mysql-solution-188269