At some base level the point of health insurance is to have a large enough pool of people paying premiums to spread out the costs of health care so no individual is over burdened. Yes I know this is an idealistic and to some degree unrealistic view but it really is the basic concept. My wife's policy includes pregnancy related coverage even though she has had a hysterectomy and is NOT capable of producing a child.

Government provided services should not be allowed to make exemptions for any religious belief and it appears that this is the case here. Once you grant an exemption for one religious group where do you stop or draw the line? What about other religions that forbid the use of certain types of medicine or treatment, should there be exclusions put in place to deal with them as well?

Totally agree here.

This is what happens when you 'license' content. Disney is just exercising the management of their digital rights and this is why I strip the DRM from my content if at all possible.

And one of the biggest problems with that is that if a food has .6 g transfat per 6 oz service, the package is modified to state the serving size is now 4 oz. The transfat is now .4 g per serving so they get to put 0 g transfat per serving on the package.

I agree that the nutritional information should require transfat be declared in tenth of a gram precision to close up that loophole.

As long as there are patents on software and processes, the patent trolling will never really end.

Connecting to a computer system without the consent of the owner is still a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a felony the last time I checked.

Not sure about this. There are currently laws that say if a state is collecting tolls on a specific road then they get no federal assistance for those roads. This is why CT removed tolls on several roads a few years ago.

I've been using Parallels Desktop for several versions now but I won't be 'upgrading' to version 9 until this is resolved. Up to now, Parallels has been a great product.

This guy is an idiot and I'm surprised he doesn't get his ass kicked more often.

Unless your business was buying and selling BitCoins, then the sale would be classified as regular income.

Really depends on your contract. My standard contract clearly states that I retain all copyright to my code. If the client is paying for source code and not a finished product then I assign them a perpetual non transferrable right to use and modify the code provided that they attribute my original copyright.

Bell Mobility offers a 10% discount on voice plans if your phone is not being subsidized.

Unfortunately, because VZW is CDMA all the roaming information is in the PRL data, both voice AND data. So, if you disable data roaming you will ONLY get data in your home area. I've had similar issues in Maine where I was billed for data roaming in Canada even though I was in the US and my phone clearly indicated that it was on the Verizon network. Every time this has happened I called customer support, explained the situation and they removed the charges.

In this case: the best way to find a needle in a haystack is to tell the people that the haystack is filled with needles and reward them for giving you information on the location of a needle in the hopes that one tip will give you the location of the ACTUAL needle.

If by government, you mean State Government then yes, they do rely on sales tax. But most (if not all) states that collect sales tax ALREADY have a mechanism in place to charge sales tax on out of state purchases directly to the consumer. It's called a 'use tax' and states should be using THAT to collect the sales tax due. Do you know how many businesses I deal with that don't pay the use tax when they buy stuff from Amazon? States should have focused on collecting this tax instead of wishing for some magical solution that would drop revenue in their laps. So, now instead of auditing state citizens, states are going to have to create centralized departments to deal with basically every online company in the entire country and start auditing them. Sounds like a much more expensive solution to collect what should be the SAME amount of use tax revenue.

This is only a rough draft but in the right hands has the potential to solve the H1-B 'issues' AND help the unemployment numbers.

The businesses that are snatching up the visas claim that there is not enough local talent to fill the positions while opponents claim that the lower wages paid the visa holders undercuts any chance of locals filling any of those open positions.

First, require that H1-B visa holders are paid based on some industry standard adjusted for the region where visa holder is employed.
Second, require that prior to hiring an H1-B visa worker, the company that holds the visa must hire a local candidate, pay them at the very least minimum wage with medical benefits and then train that person to do the job they lost out to the visa worker within say a 12-18 month period.

These two rules would remove ANY financial benefit to using the H1-B program, has the potential of easing unemployment, gives people needed training and could even help with the move to off-shoring IT work which seems to be the goal of some of the 'consulting' companies that bring on gobs of H1-B workers.

Do you think this is feasible?