Have both parties pay into a pool managed by the court, legal bills need to be addressed to the court and each party can only spend half of the pool. Frivolous cases can still be reimbursed as with the current system, but you need to think more carefully about any money you spend since that money also helps your opponent.

Whoops it cut out part of my statement because it thought I was trying to insert HTML code. That should read:

If you're outsourcing things because it makes sense -- i.e. not every country can produce their own (insert specific niche agricultural product here) efficiently -- then that's not a problem. Doing it for the other reasons is what causes vast problems.

It's the intention and effect that outsourcing to other countries usually has. Namely:

Intention -- searching for those who will work for the least, in countries that have more relaxed environmental regulations and to avoid taxes
Effect -- increased localized unemployment, a "race to the bottom" on wages, damage to the environment and government budget crises

If you're outsourcing things because it makes sense -- i.e. not every country can produce their own efficiently -- then that's not a problem. Doing it for the other reasons is what causes vast problems.

Oh and for extra bonus craptasticness -- it's unsustainable in the long run.

I'm still waiting for it to be on their orbiting brain lasers.

* I can't use it on any of my many Linux machines.

Pipelight: Use Silverlight In Your Linux Browser To Watch Netflix, Maxdome Videos And More

I was with you until:

I don't think that's something that's particularly easy to measure. I agree that pretty much every country has a large number of stupid people and a large number of intelligent folk. To suggest however that the ratio of intelligent to stupid is better is in the US than everywhere else however is pushing it a bit.

Well this is rather unfortunate. I had my complaints about it, but those were allegedly being addressed. This necessarily raises questions about what's going to power the sync for Ubuntu phones.

Then clearly the world would be a better place.

Not the person you're replying to, but I felt I should step in here...

My wife always paid her fair share when we dated. I honestly felt a little uncomfortable about it at first, but she insisted.

She loves it when I buy her flowers and jewellery, but she'll buy me stuff I like too; so that seems even to me.

I'll hold doors open for her, and she is happy that I do. But she'll hold doors open for me too, and I'm happy that she does.

She most certainly would expect me to defend her in a fight; but equally, I'd expect her to defend me in one. (neither of us is particularly physically inclined, but we're also not really the types to get in to fights; so thus far it hasn't been a situation that has arisen)

Basically my point is that just because a woman expects some things from the guy, it doesn't mean she's asking for unequal treatment... she may be willing to do all those same things too.

We haven't had any major technological investments in propulsion of any type for a long time now, so going by your criteria we haven't had anything interesting happen in about 40 or 50 years now related to vehicular transportation.

That's not quite right. Fully 8 hours in advance of the storm hitting (i.e. before everyone started their morning commute), a very direct and confident warning went out that Atlanta was going to get hit. Al Roker did a timeline of the warnings and there's just no way you can watch that and not conclude that the authorities were asleep at the wheel.

At the risk of drifting to one side or the other -- I think you're oversimplifying. While gentrification is not a new phenomenon, this is one of the first times I've ever heard of people reacting so viscerally to it. I think the reason this stings so badly for existing non-Google employee residents is because it's not happening due to a new employer opening their doors nearby. If that were the case, existing residents could potentially get jobs there and afford the new normal.

In this particular instance, you have an employer that is NOT nearby making the fact that this location is not nearby a non-issue for its employees and causing gentrification in a way that mostly leaves current residents out of the loop since it's not likely the average resident could get a job at Google. The results can be devastating situation depending. Some residents might only be getting by or barely getting ahead. Having to relocate could completely upset their financial balance in a way that they can't rectify.

At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.

The protesters are part of a group that are upset about gentrification. In the event that you don't know what that is, I'll explain since all the posters so far clearly didn't read the actual article (another day on /.). Quite simply -- it's when people with significant wealth and/or income move into an area of people with less wealth/income and thereby drive up real estate prices beyond what the established population can potentially afford. Hint: property taxes start going up and the established population can't afford to buy/rent a new place in their current neighborhood and possibly can't afford their current residence anymore and will be forced to move potentially far from where they currently live. For families, this is a non-trivial challenge.

They've been protesting Google buses because this has put gentrification onto the fast track by making areas more attractive to Google employees that otherwise wouldn't have been due to transportation headaches. Getting a company funded ride straight to work is not a small deal.

Note I'm not taking a side on the issue, just pointing out what's going on. Essentially you have people that can see the time coming when they will have to move and it's directly the result of Google and its employees. I won't use the word "fault" because that implies wrongdoing.

The tactics of the protesters are clearly questionable, but I'll leave that up for the ensuing discussion.

I believe it's cultural/dialectal. In Australian and New Zealand English (at least), men can also be cunts - in fact, in southern New Zealand 15 to 20 years ago (I can't speak for today), it would have sounded very strange to call a woman "cunt" whereas greeting your male friend with, "hey you old cunt, what's up?" wouldn't be unexpected in some social circles.
I'm well aware this doesn't really make much sense, but language often doesn't.

The same almost certainly applies for "douche", "asshole", "whore" and so on. Sometimes male, sometimes female, sometime both.

And that mentality isn't necessarily wrong, given that you accept the premises they're working under.

Imagine you know that if you don't make it to a place in the next 5 minutes that a man will gun down a room full of schoolchildren. In order to get there, you have to speed and in doing so greatly increase the risk of killing a single innocent pedestrian. Even if that happens, it is a better outcome than the children being gunned down.

Now, that scenario is dramatically oversimplified. Decisions about national security concerns are however made on the same basis. The belief is that the loss of a small number of lives is worth it in order to prevent the loss of a greater number of lives or extreme suffering to a great number of people (one death is better than a million on the edge of starvation; even if no-one dies directly).

I'm not saying I agree with them - I actually don't, because I don't believe that most things they refer to as 'national security' are in fact validly so - but the logic makes sense given that you accept the premises.