The book will inevitably go to someone who will enjoy reading it; it just won't be the person who bought it at the sale.

If the library wants to ensure the book is available to everyone, not just people who are wealthy enough to buy used books online, the obvious solution is to keep it in their circulating collection.

No, the pond is on the 49-acre property that the couple bought with the proceeds of the sale, not the 1-acre property that they sold.

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Six figures? What is this, the 1970s? Of course, the bulk of income earned by people making six figures is taxed at ordinary income tax rates: wages, self-employment income, etc. Intuitively, you have far, far more people with six figure incomes from employment than retired and drawing six figures from investments, or young people drawing six figures from trust funds; and also six figures is way below point of things like hedge fund managers arranging things such that most of their income is in the form of capital gains.

Here is data from the IRS on sources of income classified by AGI. I selected 2006 so you can't say that capital gains are low due to the recession, which started in 2007. As you can see, for the 12 million returns with AGI from $100K to $200K, 3.6% of the income was from qualified dividends and net long-term capital gains. For the 3 million returns from $200K to $500K, it was 8.1%, for the 600 thousand from $500K to $1M, it was 12.0%. A large majority of "six figure income" people hardly have any income taxed at the special 15% rate. Obviously you are correct that someone making a large portion of their income in capital gains and dividends will pay a lower tax rate than many people making their money from wages, but overall it is not until well into the seven figures that the average effective tax rate starts going down.

And sucrose is a disaccharide composed of fructose and glucose--i.e., 50% fructose. It's broken down by sucrase in the small intestine. Sucrose may well be substantially healthier than HFCS, but it's perfectly valid for a somewhat knowledgable person to want to know what the reason for the difference is. You haven't helped in that regard.

And I think you're being willfully obtuse.

When you receive a bill, there is no force of nature causing you to send payment. Here's how it works with a debit card:

1. Money is stolen via your card, coming immediately from your bank account.
2. You notice the discrepancy (perhaps because you want to withdraw money you expected to have but don't, in which case it sucks to be you).
3. You ask the bank to return or restore the money, claiming fraud.
4. (a) The bank returns the money, or (b) the bank denies the claim.

In case 4(a), you have no access to the money in the time between 3 and 4(a), which could be 10 business days (two weeks). In 4(b), it is up to you to pursue legal action against the bank.

Here's how it works with a credit card:

1. Money is stolen via your card, being paid from the card company's accounts.
2. You receive a bill including the fraudulent charge (note: the company is asking you for money, rather than vice versa).
3. You make a claim for fraud.
4. You send a payment only for the non-fraudulent amounts.
5. (a) The company accepts your claim, and that's the end of it, or (b) they deny your claim, so you keep getting bills and other collection action.

In 5(b), it's up to the company to pursue legal action against you, rather than vice versa. In all cases, the money remains in your control at least until the company wins in court. (Of course, you would lose the money with the debit card as well if you lost against the bank in court, but the money would have remained out of your control immediately.)

The point is clear: your money is gone with a debit card in that you lose actual control of it, and have to ask for it back. The card company's money is gone with a credit card because they have to ask you for it back (perhaps not entirely, if they haven't paid the merchant yet, but that's not your concern).

So, let me see if I have this straight. Suppose it is a crime to fail to disclose the existence of asbestos when selling a property (completely separate from cleanup). In that case, the authorities should charge the CURRENT OWNER, Jafafa Hots, with failing to disclose the existence of asbestos when the property was sold, since the OWNER took on ALL the liabilities when they purchase the property. Similarly, if I create a bogus company, for the sole purpose of scamming investors, and con a total of 5 investors, A, B, C, D, and E, into buying shares, they should be fined for defrauding investors A, B, C, D, and E. Should the SEC continue to exist? It wastes a lot of time "protecting" investors, even though you have proven that it is categorically impossible for an investor to be a victim of the company's actions.

Way to completely ignore the point. Your parent post was pointing out that in this particular story, where Dell is paying a fine for defrauding people who bought their stock, it is perverse to claim that the current stockholders should be treated as personally liable. You brought up an unrelated example where the victims were not the stockholders. To be clear, you are claiming that when a company is fined for using a secret slush fund to smooth out its earnings, thereby defrauding people who newly bought its stock, the penalty should fall on the current stockholders. I think quite the opposite. No publicly traded company should pay a dime in any sort of investment fraud case--any penalties should be paid by management.

Argggh. However, I think I'm right at least as to symmetric ciphers. I've never heard brute force refer to anything that doesn't treat the algorithm as a black box in that case.

It is true that there is a sweet spot in key length where brute force by a classical computer is infeasible but by a quantum computer it is feasible in theory. What people usually mean by quantum computers not being useful for brute force is that, for any algorithm with adequate choices of key length, where the time is linear in key length or close to it, if key length N is infeasible for classical computers to brute force and you're worried about quantum computers, you can simply choose 2*N. (I have no reason to think you disagree with these statements, I'm just saying what people probably mean.)

I sure as hell do not plan on reading through again to figure out the blame and/or argue about it.

The problem is the way physical laws are updated with new knowledge. Nineteenth century physics was correct in normal human situations. We know at least it was wrong at the samll scale, high speeds, or high gravity. It was the small scale issues that were technologically revolutionary (e.g., semiconductors and probably quantum computers at some point), because there are no inherent resource problems with building small things. Currently, QM really looks correct at normal small scale situations. Where things break down is high engergies and also high gravity is still not solidly understood. So, this is all very exciting for physics, but we won't end up with a Tevatron on everyone's desk. It's pretty clear I consider new computing due to new physics more science fictional than you (although it's clearly possible). Thus, I'm not inclined to say it has to be related to QM as opposed to small black holes or wormholes or the like.