The big difference is that banks are regulated under laws and publicly-known regulations. What is applying to Google is not a law, and is secret.

Actually, it only takes one party in control of 41% of the Senate to grind government to a halt.

I don't see how people are being forced to use insecure communications. Websites can choose to get certificates from wherever they want. All this does is take out one of the certificate providers.

I'll point out that a lack of increase is effectively a cut because of inflation.

I'm not an accountant by any means, but it's clear to me that anything beyond the most basic accounting is done using expected cash flows in the future. If the budget assumes increased inflows of cash, and there is a project that assumes increased outflows of cash, do you not think that eliminating the increased outflow contributes to less spending?

You could tax 100% of the income of the rich and get about $500 billion a year more than now. Assuming they continue to work for 0$ a year. You can't balance without taxing the middle class, which won't happen.

In order to make your point effectively, you need to say how much more money than the $500 billion we'd potentially get by taxing the middle class or poor at the similar rate of 100%. (Of course, define the thresholds for rich and middle class as well).

Which car is this?

Google has quite some balls sending me an email today asking me to upgrade my personal Google Apps account to their business tier today. Only $5/month!

You know what I would pay for? Google Reader.

(For the record, the reason I don't upgrade is because I'm a single user of the domain, but have 3 accounts - one personal, one for root, and one for a separate alerts mailbox...labels don't suffice yet).

It's one thing to shut down a product that is didn't make it out of the gate (e.g., Buzz), but it's another to shut down a product that is considered to be the premier product in its space.

I've been using Google products for a long time, and have understood most of their shutdowns. I used to think that as long as the service wasn't "experimental", it'd stick around. But going forward, I have 0 trust, since obviously even having the #1 product isn't enough.

There is no question I'd pay for Google reader. One of the great properties it has is that searching for subscriptions is extremely easy.

I understand your point, but don't think we can achieve a "completely enforced reasonable law". Even crafted perfectly at the beginning, the needs for laws change, they often don't expire, and begin to encroach into unrelated territory later on.

Judges may or may not help resolve unjust situations, merely deciding that enforcement is being applied accurately instead of trying to determine a fair outcome.

I think it's helpful to realize that the US government was designed to not be efficient by having three branches. This is opposed to, say, Great Britain, where the government is more or less completely controlled by one party at any one time. The same inefficiency should apply to enforcement of laws, as to their creation.

A government that becomes too efficient will cause problems. In this case, they infractions are detected too efficiently. Catching major infringers is good, but when every slight infraction is punished, citizens will become unhappy.

We want government to have constant hurdles to overcome, because we have expectations regarding the persistence of overseers. Even though we may not be able to have the default anonymity we enjoyed pre-21st century, we can still regulate government to have stumbling blocks so that it doesn't become an efficient Orwellian machine.

yeah, but hardly a crowd.

Actually, it's popular enough that there are about a dozen or so spin-offs or ports of dwm.

http://dwm.suckless.org/patches/

Where is the "crowd" that he referred to? Who wants Linux to be "hard"?

I can guarantee such a mentality exists.

From http://dwm.suckless.org/

Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.

There is a very logical reason why random stock selection will beat a market-cap-weighted index over time.

Consider this:
1. Most studies with random stock selection create an equally-weighted portfolio.
2. Market benchmark indices such as the S&P 500 or Wilshire 5000 are market-cap weighted.
3. An equally-weighted port will have a lower average market-cap than the benchmark.
4. Historically there has been a small-cap premium, giving small cap stocks greater return, at the cost of greater risk.
5. Hence, the chimpanzees' portfolios will be outperforming due to the small cap premium, not due to stock selection skills.

Lastly, the chimpanzees have no costs associated with the picks. Actual trading incurs costs, and not incurring them gives you an edge.

Thank you for pointing me to HTTPS Finder. It definitely fits a need.