Alternatively, it supports the assertion that the country enjoys one party rule--The Progressive Party. Those understanding that this route only leads to European-style collapse, and opposing it, will be crushed.

Oh, so I don't agree with you, and thus I'm being disingenuous?

If /. was put in charge or anybody who thinks the way an average /. user does, then all sorts of things will qualify as trolling. All of a sudden difference of opinion qualifies as 'trolling' on a government level and is punishable by jail time. Vast majority may find it wonderful, that opinions of a minority are qualified that way, however everybody is in minority opinion on some things.

The Chevrolet Suburban was quite possibly the first SUV, and do you know how they built it way back in the 1930s when it first came out? With a "stationwagon body on a truck frame", just like what you're describing. It was built that way for reasons entirely unrelated to what you're describing here.

The reasons SUVs became popular in the '90s and 2000s is because the big three American manufacturers were, for various reasons, no longer competitive with the Asian manufacturers in the small cars market. Because the margins were either negligible or negative for small cars, they decided to refocus their efforts elsewhere, and SUVs made a good deal of sense, since their margins there were significantly higher.

Also, you're rewriting history a bit. Sociologists actually study the whole SUV phenomenon, since Americans largely didn't want big cars before SUVs became popular. A huge amount of marketing went into convincing people that these bigger cars were more protective than the smaller Asian cars, gave you a better view of the road, and were generally just safer to drive, leading to a massive change in the public's perception of large cars. It may be hard to remember now, but when SUVs were first getting pushed on consumers in the '90s, they were perceived for quite awhile as being utterly ridiculous. It took a few years (and the realization that they were a "cooler" alternative to the minivan) before they were widely accepted or even viewed as being desirable.

Here is my take on it, I have a number of people from well known schools, same number of people from schools that nobody heard from and in some cases people from unknown schools who dropped out and started working for me when I offered them a job. I have a number of people that had no formal higher education at all and a couple of guys that didn't know much about computers before they started here.

AFAIC I care about the attitude, I care that the person can work within a team, that I can work with the person, whether they are eager to learn. This is a starting job for all of the people I hire, very few of them worked in the field before, I do not pay much but that is also part of the equation. The people that do not have student debts do not have the same problem as those with debt, they don't need to try and get a highly paid position right away and so they can afford to work with me, where they are gaining more than enough experience so that eventually they are propelled to better paying jobs.

I will say this: I have about equal number of good coders, whether they had any formal computer science training or not, but I go through many people to find good ones but it does not take much time at all to know who is who. Just in the last 2 months I interviewed about 15 people, 3 of them ended up with me, 2 are going to be excellent developers. Out of the 15, 4 decided it was too hard in the first 3 days. 2 decided that they made a mistake and shouldn't be in this field right during our meeting.

In the interview all I do is I show them what we do, how we work, ask them what they like to do and explain the structure here: you are studying here before I put you on an actual paying project. I teach you what you need to know and while I am teaching you, I am not paying you anything. Normally takes 2-3 weeks for a developer to go through training and start being productive. This is my way of doing stuff, I do not care where you studied, what you think you know, I only care to figure out if you are OK for the team and if you can learn and have the right attitude for this company.

They do do that already. Their prices are what they are and not 2 times what they are now for a reason as well. Of-course actually building Apple hardware products is a costly endeavour, nobody else can really afford to do what they do to achieve the save level of user friendliness and beauty. I don't buy Apple products (not because of price, I just do not like their software), but plenty of people do. Their products are priced to satisfy demand of a specific set of population, however if their revenues did not cover their costs and did not make them good profits, they would have lowered prices by lowering the cost of production and very likely by sacrificing build quality to gain market share, however their customers are used to certain degree of quality and shine, and so Apple spends more than anybody else delivering just that.

If Apple could actually cut their production costs in half, while delivering the same quality of product, their prices would go down to increase market share, but they are in business of providing top quality systems (even with some problems, like the new phones that probably bend much easier than some others).

If you in fact believe that you could provide similar quality of the product as Apple for half the price, you yourself could do what you are talking about, but apparently it is not as easy as you say, since other companies do not provide the same, shall we say 'shine' in their hardware so far, while being able to charge much less than Apple.

Quick self-correction: I was bothered by my own lack of specificity regarding the use of Helvetica and its variants in iOS, so I just looked it up and found out I was slightly off. Helvetica was used in iOS 1-3, Helvetica Neue was used in 4-6, and Helvetica Neue Ultra Light has been used since iOS 7. I apologize for the incorrect statements earlier.

You managed to pack a lot of factual inaccuracy into such a small package.

Geneva—the font you linked—was never used as Mac OS' default font, was not a rip-off of Helvetica (though it originally shared the same classification as Helvetica), and never had its metrics in common with Helvetica (unlike Arial, which does). The Geneva Wikipedia article linked to a great PDF file as source material on the subject, and you should definitely take some time to read through it, since it's a fascinating read. But, to make a long story short, the differences back then were still apparent enough that even a layperson could have easily told the two apart. Suggesting the one was a rip-off of the other is patently untrue.

With the introduction of TrueType to Macs in 1991, Helvetica itself was licensed for inclusion on all Macs, so Geneva's design was moved away from what little resemblance it did have to Helvetica such that it could fill a different void. During that entire time (all the way through '97, in fact), the actual typeface used by the Mac OS was Chicago, not Geneva, though the two do share the same creator (who also designed many of the iconic Apple icons from the early days). That's about all they share though, since they look nothing alike.

Moreover, your assertion that Apple only just now licensed the rights to use it for a system font are also wrong, since Helvetica was used as iOS' system font at least as far back iOS 2 or iOS 3 (possibly from the very beginning, though I haven't managed to verify that), before being switched to Helvetica Neue with iOS 7. Apple's move to bring Helvetica Neue to OS X now seems to be in line with maintaining a consistent design across their platforms, and has nothing to do with only just now securing the rights to the fonts after having ripped them off for decades, as you claimed.

Frankly, I find it absurd that you're seriously trying to assert that a company with over $100B in the bank and a strong presence in the design industry has been too stingy to pay for the rights to Helvetica this entire time.

They've testified under oath to the contrary during some of the recent patent litigation. Your whole comment is predicated on an untruth.

This.

I just wish they'd compete on audio fidelity instead of who can be more petty, since that's one thing that both of those brands are sorely lacking.

For some purely subjective definition of 'conservative', which actual conservatives would reject, sure. It's your 1st Amendment right to be daft, and you do exercise it with flair.

Great question. It's not clear that mortal terminology applies much, but I await some news in eternity.