That link does little to refute what the parent posted. The article refutes Elizabeth Warren's claim that GE paid "nothing – zero – in taxes", not the parents assertion that they paid no corporate income taxes. The article does have a quote from a GE spokesman that says they paid a small amount of corporate income tax, but there is no data to back that up. FTFA: 'GE chief spokesman Gary Sheffer told Pro Publica: “We expect to have a small U.S. income tax liability for 2010.” How much? The company wouldn’t say.' When pressed on how much they paid in taxes to the US they refused to break down the numbers, only giving worldwide tax numbers. I don't necessarily believe that GE dodges all tax liability in the US but I don't think they are paying their fair share. The article says they paid 7% total worldwide taxes in 2010, that's a lower rate than I pay in sales taxes alone. Their total tax for property, income, excise taxes and a bundle of other things is at a lower rate than pretty much any single tax that I pay. This problem is certainly not confined to GE, most corporations pay a much lower rate than their nominal corporate tax rate. The article says "Again, the company has clearly been aggressive in reducing its tax burden through various tax credits and deductions created by the federal government" but what it doesn't mention is that those various tax credits are a result of lobbying by these corporations (and in some cases, the lobbyists wrote the bill). It's just another example of how the powerful are able to game the system while the less powerful end up footing the bill for the system. The powerful receive benefits from this system that is incommensurate to the amount they pay.

It's nearly a 13% margin. That's not stellar, but it's not peanuts either.

The fashion industry has IP protection and there are regularly lawsuits regarding fake merchandise. For example, here is a story about Coach being awarded $8 million for trademark infrigement and unfair competition. I think your point is valid but your example isn't.

OK, I'll go ahead and correct myself before the "fact nazis" can. [shakes tiny fist at those who require facts] I misread the summary as saying they would be spending the 50B next year instead of over the next 8 years. Currently, 1/2 of the Russian space budget goes to the ISS, hopefully this additional money will allow them to expand some exploratory programs that have been cut.

Funny how broke-ass Russia can afford to spend 50B next year on their space program but the much richer USA pleads poverty and will spend less than 1/3 of that. No wonder Russia/USSR has consistently had a better space program than the Americans.

If the Texas legislature has its way you WON'T be able to do what you are describing. There is a currently proposed bill to make hobby flying with a camera a crime. For authoritarians, letting the police do it == good, letting the public do it == bad.

Except that Virgin Galactic has NEVER launched anything into orbit, and they don't currently have any plans to launch any people into orbit. The Spaceship One/Spaceship Two craft are SUBorbital. There is a world of difference between "Going up 100 miles" and "Going fast enough to stay in orbit". Virgin Galactic has announced plans to create an orbital launch vehicle but they currently have no hardware and it isn't going to be "fairly cheap", they are saying 10 million dollars per 100 kg payload, so once they actually build something count on it being about 20 million for a 50 kg payload.

If space electronics have to be so hardened why is NASA sending satellites running on Android phones to space?

Yeah, I known what you were saying, but you originally said 2 couples, not 2 people. Two couples is a different ball game.

What am I talkin' about? I'm talkin' about sex, boy, what the hell you talkin' about? I'm talkin' about l'amour! I'm talkin' that me and Dot are swingers, as in "to swing." I'm talkin' about wife swappin'. I'm talkin' about what they call nowadays open marriage. I'm talk...

Sure, this is how individual file encryption works but with partition or whole disk encryption (which is what the article is talking about), there is a symmetric key that is encrypted to either a passphrase or a asymmetric key on a hardware token and the disk is encrypted to this symmetric key. When the computer boots, it prompts the user for either the passphrase or token which it uses to decrypt the symmetric key located in the boot sector. It then puts the symmetric key into memory and uses that key to decrypt blocks of the disk as they are read.

In this case it doesn't cache the decrypted key, it caches the passphrase. When it need to access the key again it will load it from disk and decrypt it with the passphrase. If you always purge the cache after decryption, why not just turn the caching feature off?

So your "gut feeling" is more relevant than peer-reviewed studies because you "feel" that the researchers are biased? Please refute the data with data, not emotional reactions to the "stoner brigade". For example, here is a study on driving under the influence of Cannabis that cites several other studies, if you have a problem with the data please point out the problem instead of resorting to logical fallacies.

http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/2/222.full.pdf

The conclusion certainly isn't from that paper, I read the study and its conclusion was that Cannabis may decrease the risk of fatal accidents.

"There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks."

Nope, it has what plants crave

And that's a major issue that the politicians face - when people are doing better they believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is because of their hard work but when they are worse off they blame the government for their woes. I think the government does not have as much of an effect on the fortunes of individual citizens as the people or the government believe.