Well, I use both all the time and I must say that VNC is superior to X11 network transparency in one important instance: if the connection between client and server goes down, the whole session is gone. Any applications using the now unreachable X server are killed and of course any unsaved data is lost. That one reason just pretty much rules out using X11 over a remote link like a VPN connection from home to work.

Well, the numbers I believe come directly from the IRS and from the 2006 year, if you take the time to compute the ranges, you can see that about 10% of tax payers either didn't pay taxes or received some money back. I really have no idea where the huge numbers that you used came from, although in fact I have seen some websites claiming that 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes (those outrageous claims are erroneous). When using the authoritative source for this particular statistic, progressive taxes don't seen so bad in the US.

That is really interesting, in particular because Nature magazine (where the paper will appear) used to have a policy of not accepting submissions that are being or have been patented.