Australia says you're wrong. Many Aussies bitched a storm when the conservative Howard government said enough with the mass shootings and introduced wide ranging gun control. Now, they see the world didn't end, and you can still buy (most) firearms. Aussies attitudes aren't really that different from Americans, so I call BS on the other posts suggesting it's apple (pie) and oranges.

As for criminals and laws: 1) we have laws against murder, yet murders still occur. Thus, we shouldn't regulate murders? 2) criminal gun ownership is a dynamic process. Unlike law-abiding citizens, criminals engage in conduct which puts them in regular contact with the legal system. About 700k guns are recovered from US criminals annually. *If* the US required an adequate gun safe (like Oz), *if* current gun sales laws actually got enforced, and *if* there were adequate registration of sales, the main conduits for criminals' firearms would dry up: sales from gun shops, and thefts from homes.

If the US Senate isn't reformed to get it out of the legislating process as much as constitutionally possible, or at least remove most of its inane veto points, thinking of other reforms is pointless, no matter your politics.

It wouldn't surprise me if much of what the DPRK has put on display are mockups. A bit of craftsmanship and just enough engineering to keep the suckers from visibly shaking and flexing during a parade is a lot cheaper than the real thing, and does 90% of what you need a missile to do.

On the other hand, it's possible that the newer stuff are all custom one-offs. SCUDs they probably have an assembly line for. I'm not sure if they've really had enough launches to wring the bugs out of anything higher performance, a point at which they can freeze a design and say this is the definitive [cobert]Type-O-Dong[/cobert], model X.

With industry average gross profit margins around 65% and operating margins around 14%, I believe there are funds available to cover the tax.

Slashdotted? I happened to catch the story just as it went live, and hit the link to the service. After scrolling the map and getting a couple of updates: Database is down for maintenance. The front end may not be as high performance as the back... or it may have been coincidence.

TFA was fine, until the writer threw this in:

And you have to remember that medical professionals are already reeling from a huge medical equipment tax courtesy of ObamaCare. One physical therapist told me of 14 medical centers that shut down because they couldn't handle the tax. And that's in Orange County. This area isn't exactly poor.

I call BS. That huge tax is 2.3%. The "14 medical centers" is an offhand rumor that doesn't pass the sniff test. In related news, a number of medical device manufacturers are blaming the device tax for their decisions to move existing and/or new plants overseas.... a tax that falls on all devices, regardless of where they're made. If Mr. Patrizio (or his Network World editor) don't like the PPACA, they can go to town. But, some research would have been nice.

Addressing the topic of the upcoming SCOTUS ruling first: the trend towards "patenting" human genes is bizarre. I'm sure there's a fine article out there providing a succinct case history, but it's nutty on the face of it. Using traditional standards, patenting a test to detect a genetic condition would hold water. Patenting the genetic condition makes as much sense as patenting an organ. Is there time for me to patent the human heart, if I come up with a new way of detecting it?

Regarding the parent comment: at first, patenting an artificially created sequence within a human gene seems patentable. However, I seriously doubt it could stand for long, since: a) if it is passed on to offspring, it becomes "natural", and any case law that developed to the contrary would be tantamount to Dred Scott, and b) unless the gene invoked non-organic chemistry, over time it would become difficult to determine whether an instance of the sequence were "licensed", or a natural mutation.

I wasn't commenting on AS in particular, but making a general statement (eg. because someone takes a plea doesn't mean they were guilty, and vs.). That said, your points are spot on.

> If he didn't commit to a crime, then he should have gone to trial, and made the prosecution make the case that he broke the law.

That's the theory. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. In practice, when a defendant goes to trial, the stakes go up, way up: you're either going to walk, or the judge is going to impose a sentence more severe than the plea... and given Federal sentencing guidelines, that means *considerably* more severe. In addition, a defendant not of means is going to be at least broke, and likely deep in the hole.

Even down at the County level, that's why a lot of innocent people plead out. They can't afford to lose, can't afford to defend, and probably don't have anyone a judge/jury will believe to witness on their behalf. Instead, they do their six months plus years "in the system", plus a criminal record, rather than risk years in the can.

Corporate boards glad hand the execs for the same reason as boards and executives in utterly unrelated lines of large businesses hang together as a lobby if one is threatened by labor/regulation/public vilification that would help the others: class solidarity. They by-and-large see the interests of their peers as identical to their own, even when they're objectively not. An excellent recent example, fighting attempts by the US Federal government to bring the major banks to heal after they nearly dragged the world economy into a depression.

I've been using MailSteward on OSX. The starter version handles 15k or so entries using SQLite before it starts to bog, while the trade up is a front end to MySQL.

To be honest, the sort of libertarians that approve of executive pay pathologies - particularly in the US - are "libertarians" shilling for the man... the sort of folks who post on Megan McArdle's blog.

"Jealousy" eh? The mating call of libertarians whenever the subject of who's getting paid to do what comes up.

From hard won experience, I know that attempting to debate this directly with a lib is as productive as arguing with my cat about it pissing on a wall. So, strictly for others who may be listening:

The pay of top executives is usually determined by a supervisory board. Getting on a board doesn't require much work, in exchange for which members enjoy a number of benefits determined by executives. Getting onto and staying on boards in the first place requires staying in the good graces of company executives. Thus, a positive feedback loop occurs, resulting in executive pay and departure packages determined not by metrics that benefit the owners, but by friends doing each other favors.

It's usually very difficult for the diffuse class of owners to organize themselves to bring company executives to heel. What the Swiss have done is to make life a little bit easier for shareholders to exercise their rights.

It may be "expensive" to live in Sydney, but you can survive. nobody can survive anywhere in the US on minimum. If you do the math, you'd note you wouldn't be making less than a McDonalds worker in Oz. In addition, "student loans" are structured differently there (non-interest, 25% upfront fee), so it's unlikely you'd be paying as much.

Before Chu and Coble get too far into this propaganda exercise, they should educate themselves about the background for the culture they're presuming knowledge of:

If the terms of the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 were instead enacted in - say - 1920, a good portion of our current legacy of movies and music likely would not exist. Example: Walt Disney & company borrowed liberally from the works of the Brothers Grimm. If the brothers' estate had retained rights, would Walt been able to afford it? If the Grimm tales had become orphan works, with the rights holders unknown, would Walt have been able to proceed at all?