I grant you that in the current state of Russia. But, even the Kremlin, faced with the potential of billions of dollars of investment potential, might even jump at the chance to develop the north coast. At the moment, Russia is in essentially no position to be a manufacturing powerhouse. But with that silly ice cap in the way...

With the Arctic Polar Cap melted, entirely new lines for shipping will be opened. Shipping goods from China and Japan to Europe and New York will become significantly faster, cheaper and safer. The shipping industry will be able to cut their CO2 emissions to a tenth of their current amount.

Additionally, Russia could see an industrial boom along its north shore. Factories could be placed up along that coast with easy access to Canadian, American and European markets and put a lot of Russians to work.

One can look at the loss of the Arctic cap as a disaster, or a boon. It all depends on your goals for humanity.

Your reading comprehension is poor.

"The lazy, poor and retired." I am listing three different classes of people that dependent on government entitlements. This does not preclude an individual being a member of more than one of the above groups.

My answer has the potential to come off as a troll, but here goes: socialism.

The political elite don't care as long as the lazy, poor and retired continue to the vote them back into power. Screw the working class that is currently paying taxes.

It is a short-sighted view that cause harm to everyone in the end.

Wages will equalize across the developed nations. That $17k salary in India will be $30k in a few years. The average salary in the USA will go down. Eventually, the disparate extremes between nations will normalize into a much smaller range.

Microsoft is essentially paying a large builder like Dell to put Windows on the systems. Linux, on the other hand, has no one paying Dell, so that $50 premium probably represents the loss those marketing dollars.

Kids and their new-fangled browsers. I still prefer NCSA Mosaic 3.0. All that new fancy HTML stuff just leads to the devil.

There was an old drafters table and I turned into a stand-up workstation. Adjustable height and angle, it is simply awesome. My knees, back and shoulders have never felt so good. I stand for roughly half the day, with a tall chair for when I need it. I highly recommend that anyone with back problems give it a go.

On the cheap, you can build your own desk with a few pieces of wood. A 3/4" plywood sheet and 2x4's are all you need. If you are vain and don't like that look, you could put your current desk up on blocks.

Unfortunately, if you fly from Amsterdam to Dubai without luggage, that will mark you as suspicious. Thus, even if you have clean clothes free of doobage, you may still get questioned. Terrorists on one-way flights need no luggage.

And here I thought that having multi-million dollar punch presses being controlled by DB9 serial cable, attached to a PC running DOS was retro. An IBM 402, still doing accounting? Talk about doing it the hard way.

Stay on topic, uberhah. Your tactic to misdirect the subject won't work here.

No one forced the students to sign a student loan agreement. It was done of their free will. If they can no longer afford to pay the loan, they can file for bankruptcy. It is called being a mature adult and accepting responsibility for your choices.

Those students entered into those agreement under the false illusion that a college degree will grant them riches beyond their dreams, illusions preached by the left. And now that pretty much everyone has a college degree, it is no longer special and guarantees diddly squat. Oh no! Reality!

Maybe instead of being taught that we need more lawyers, middle managers and IT folks, we should keep it realistic and acknowledge that some people just shouldn't go to college, and that some people are just destined to work an assembly line in a factory.

Anonymous coward is cowardly. Post that again with your real account.

That's right. You agreed to a legally-binding contact, to borrow money, and pay it back. So, pay it back. Stop whining about the payments. The tax payers should not have to suffer paying for the debts that individuals purposely chose to take on, because now all of a sudden, it's just not fair to actually pay back money you said you would pay back.

This sense of entitlement to free money is what is killing America. The people want free health care, even if it bankrupts the country. Who cares, right? It's not their own money, it is the money of the 53% that pay taxes. Those evil 53%ers, how dare they want to keep their money to themselves.

I disagree. I am paying Google with my data. That data is then sold to advertisers. Instead of handing over money, I am letting Google know my birthday, when I post about cello practice and a myriad of other things I choose to post on G+.

Ergo, as a paying customer, I should have some say in the product.

...is that now they are making interfaces changes that make no sense, or add little value over the previous interface. Google has taken a page from FaceBook and begun pushing some horrible page design onto unsuspecting users. And no amount of complaint helps. Their support just laughs because they know there are no other real options to run to.