Or a letter carrier that consistently delivers the mail in the wrong order in the housing complex.

I can count on my neighbors getting seven out of ten of my packages, and vice versa.

Fortunately we get along and have no major squabbles so we more or less resort the mail four days a week.

You're right of course.

It sort of comes down to what should we give the greatest incentives to people to pursue.

Right now, Things are very stacked towards research into drugs that suppress a problem without actually curing it.

People will always do things that they are not being maximally rewarded for economically. However, most people will pursue that path that provides the greatest chance of economic success.

Personally, I think that we should have more people than David Blech Deciding on what our national priorities are for medical research. However, I am sure others are in favor of letting the market sort it all out.

Although, it can be argued that patents cause the Medical industry to focus on drugs instead of preventative medicine.

If you have a drug that treats a condition at a cost of $100/month, and a profit of $40/month and the average usage is 10 years that treatment would generate an average of 48k profit per patient, and if the condition effects one million people a year you are looking at a predictable 4.8 billion a year in profit, with an expected profit of 96 billion during the period of patent protection and additional residual profits after the protection lapses. All that for an ante of about 45 million dollars. or an ROI of 200,000% over 25 years. (assuming that the approval process takes about 5 years, which is on the short, side but the 45 million is spread over 3 rounds of clinical trials).

While the numbers I pulled out were not based on any particular drug the are somewhat representative of the current drug development model in the US, with some anti psychotic and AIDS related drugs fetching over $1,000 a month per patient while identical generics are priced under $30 per month per patient.

The result of the current economic incentives of patented medicine has been a huge amount of research into drugs that people will have to pay for for as long as possible, with less investment into preventative measures.

The upside of this type of investment is that a lot of the failures in the hunt for a cure for aids have shown real promise for a treatment for cancer, and it has encouraged private investment in medicine.

The downside is that the potential financial upside of the treatment is considered very early in medical research.

The irony of the current situation is that it is in many ways a more extreme version of the worst case scenario painted by the critics of universal health care.

As recently as 2010 I used YUI a fair bit.

The NYT is not particularly liberal, unless you compare it to Fox news.

VOA (the news station funded by the CIA to spread anti-communist pro USA propaganda) is substantially to the left of the NYT and the rest of the media companies in the US owned by major corporations.

However it appears that Prenda Law was not representing who they said they were representing. So this could be one of those rare times that the false claims section comes into play.

One thing that is not clear from the reports is whether or not the head of litigation at Morrison Foerster's LA office made a personal appearance on behalf of Verizon or not (He is listed as one of Verizon's attorney's on the declaration submitted by Verizon).

More hated than Pelosi: Obama and Bush Jr.

More dangerous than Napolitano: Obama.

Fucked up more than Fiorina; Jason Elop

Which is probably phase 2 at yahoo.

But, getting there might well mean everyone comes into the office and then you hand out the perk.

I would expect telecommuting to return to yahoo, after the current problems are dealt with.

Or a paid update to XP. XP service pack 4 $99.99.

It would be fun to see Balmer decide that the future of the employees that worked on windows 8 depended on them outselling XP service pack 4. (Well if you are the type of person that enjoyed the war of the roses anyways.)

The problem with your theory is that it takes on average seven years to be a good teacher and most teachers quit in the first five years.

If you are going to build your own tablet or smart phone I suspect you are going to want a 3d printer to make the case, which adds a significant amount to the up front costs.

Personally, I suspect one could make ones own smart phone for under 3k, but I haven't had the time to try. Would be a cool project though.

I would argue that a smart phone is actually more of a Personal Computer than the workstation on my desk, which I use mostly for work.

I would guess that over 80% of my personal stuff is done on my phone.

My ipad is mostly for reading at night because the kindle does not have "paper white" display that you can read after the lights are out.