Then explain why an American worker today can be more productive than his or her predecessors, yet paid a substantially smaller fraction of the proceeds from his or her labors?

Greater productivity per worker means less demand for workers. Less demand means lower price. Thus, more productive workforce means worse-paid workforce.

Yay capitalism.

but finland, we can just copy their system wholesale

sounds like a deal. we get a good system AND we avoid paying full retail.

The real question, to me, is, why was the flight attendant not on the flight deck while the pilot was away?

Because you can regulate anything, but in reality the pilot is not going to announce every time he has to pee. Nothing has happened before, so nothing will happen this time.

Except when there is a terrorist threatening the pilot outside, asking him to enter the code...

But that terrorist will be bum rushed by everyone on board and beaten to the ground. Even the hostage knows his best bet is to take the knife between ribs - better odds surviving that than the destruction of the plane.

Terrorists - or anyone - stopped hijacking airplanes the second such hijackings stopped meaning a delay and started meaning everyone aboard dying.

People don't lose their humanity just because they work for (or own) a corporation.

But neither does it extend to the corporation. Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC doesn't have a religion even if its owner(s) and employee(s) do, and thus can't refuse anything on religious grounds. An employee of Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC may feel servicing sexual, ethnical, political or other minorities is unacceptable, and if so Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC must deal with the issue as it sees fit within limits dictated by law; but Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC is not that employee.

You don't get to put down your corporate shield whenever that suits you, yet hide behind it the rest of the time.

Russian made cars might get 13,000 miles to a tank of gas, but us capitalist pigs have to stop every 400 miles for gas. Even if it was a train tunnel, no train on this planet can go 13,000 miles on one load of fuel. Then you have the pesky problem of ventilation.

"hat are we left with? keep the door open and we have murderous hijacking? "

Yes we have to accept that 0.001% risk of a MURDEROUS HIJACKING

You have a better chance of dying in your bathtub at home by a terrorist hiding behind your shampoo.

"Any method of getting in from the passenger compartment would be vulnerable to coercion."

not if you have an air marshall with an AA12 shotgun full of beanbag rounds right there. There are very simple answers, the airlines are whiny bitches that claim they cant afford it, and that is the center of the problem.

3 crew on flight deck for all aircraft, Let the pilots rest and get good sleep, and2 very well armed angry air marshalls on every flight. Solves 100% of all "terrorisim" problems.

Sadly the people in charge of security that have zero clue as to what to do, and the airlines whiny executives disallow the correct answer.

Ot that they haven't slept. I know several airline pilots, they are told to fly even when they are very tired or when sick.

It's a single switch. Dont make it sound like he pushed a dresser in front of the door.

Sexual orientation is usually not a choice. There are those who claim to be "bisexual": they'll choose a man sometimes, and a women other times.

One friend of mine hates onions but is fine with tomatoes. I hate tomatoes but am fine with onions. But one weirdo we know eats both.

That ability to change indicates a choice.

I guess wrinkly skin is just some kind of fashion amongst the elderly, then.

It's much more debatable whether society has, for example, such an interest in forcing you to participate in a gay wedding.

You aren't participating in a gay wedding. Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC is. Corporate veil doesn't disappear whenever that happens to be advantageous to you yet shield you the rest of the time.

If you respect the right of gay people to choose who to marry, why not respect the rights of others to choose who the associate with also.

And Gen Con has this right too, does it not?

The issue at stake is not religious freedom (since businesses don't have religion), or even freedom of association (since businesses don't have that either), but using the quirks of current economic system and corporate law to bully people into submission. Which, apparently, is fine as long as it's done to gays, and bad when the favour is returned.

But then again, crying foul when someone hits back is pretty typical bully behaviour.

for the trs80, there were 35 track floppy drives and the (ohh, cool) 40 track drives. I think it was 80MB per side and generally only used one side of theh floppy.

we called drives that could write to both sides 'flippy'. you would eject the floppy, fip it over and reinsert it. you'd often get sector errors, as the 2nd side of the floppy disk was the 'reject' side, from the vendor. best side goes the 'normal' way. but we could often get use out of the 2nd side. rarely were there drives that used dual heads, so the usual thing was to write to the first side, wait for it to fill up, then eject and try writing to the 2nd side.

you would also have to punch a hole (the write-protect tab) in the other side of the floppy so that you could control read/write off each side. a tape was placed over the hole to allow writes; removing the tape made the floppy write-protected.

I think there was a max of 4 floppies you could chain. the filespec was "file.txt:drive", eg "file.txt:0" or "file.txt:1" for floppy 0 (first one) or floppy 1 (2nd one).

sigh. fun times. 48k should be enough for anyone.

can you write into the house buying contract, the requirement for inet connectivity?

I know, no one does that; but maybe it needs to be done, from now on.

in my area, at least, comcast is a per month basis; so if a house sale was hinging on this, I guess I could -install- comcast, verify it in the empty house (sigh) and then move forward with the purchase.

sounds like a drag - and if the market is a seller's market, then your request is probably going to kick you out of the running (unless your offer is that much higher than the rest).