Isn't weight proportional to cube of height?

It matters because if it was released open source and free of patents, then it can't be patented. This is perhaps one of the greatest contributions of OSS in the current software patent environment.

So what is fundamentally wrong with a wealth tax?

Actually, only the rich avoid a "wealth tax". For most people, their house represents the bulk of their wealth, and it is taxed annually at a percentage of its value. So effectively, ordinary people already pay a hefty "wealth tax". In some ways it is doubly unfair, because it also taxes the mortgaged part of that wealth that really belongs to the bank, not the person paying the tax.

Why do we accept this wealth tax but not one on other assets? It is just another unfair loophole that benefits mainly the rich. If people were taxed on their net worth rather than just real estate value, people stressed out by their mortgage would see their taxes go down while rich people who can afford it would pay more.

In Argentina, people are taxed a certain percentage of their net worth above a certain amount, so a "wealth tax" on all assets, not just real estate, is not unheard of.

The reason they don't use port 80 is likely very simple: this "news site" is probably run from someone's home. Cable providers (at least in the U.S.) - Verizon and RCN I know for sure - block port 80 to prevent home users from (easily) putting up their own web sites.

Historically, this practice probably traces back to the early days of the internet when they wanted to prevent home users from using excessive bandwidth that a web server might consume. However, these days a typical home hobbyist site probably uses miniscule bandwidth compared to a typical user's video streaming, P2P, etc. usage. So basically it's just a ploy to extract another $50 or so per month to get port 80 access with a "business account". The business account also provides a fixed IP address, although in my experience my dynamic address lasts for a year or more as long as I keep my router powered up.

The Debian webserver at my house uses port 88 for this reason. Some users, particularly in Europe, can't access port 88. Curiously, my ISP doesn't block port 443 (the normal https port), so I also alias 443 as an http port to allow these people access. (There is no confusion with https because they have to use the ":443" domain name suffix with http.)

I also have a port 80 mirror off-site, but my home site is more up to date until the rsync cron kicks in, and some people don't want to wait.

the uncertainty limit isn't a limit on measurements. It's a limit on what the universe is capable of representing.

Only partially true. What many people don't know is that Heisenberg's derivation was slightly wrong because while it modeled the thing being measured with quantum mechanics, it incorrectly modeled the measuring device classically.

A rigorous analysis using qm for both was done Ozawa in 2003 (see http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1833 which shows the correct uncertainty equations on p. 2).

From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095529.htm "In order to describe the fundamental uncertainty and the additional disturbance due to the measuring process, both particle and measurement device have to be treated in the framework of quantum theory,...But the product of error and disturbance can be made arbitrarily small -- even smaller than Heisenberg's original formulation"

Yet if you give her a choice between a pink shirt and a blue shirt she will pick pink.

That is due to stereotypes she was exposed to, not to something inherent in girls.

A century ago, pink was a "boys'" color. From 1918 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#In_gender ): "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

In 2010, an overlay keyboard was one of the first obvious needs that occurred to me when the iPad came out. I'm surprised it took this long.

How cheap are we talking? I just built my parents a computer for about $160 .... Works just fine running Windows 7 Ultimate.

Oops, it looks like you forgot to add $319.99 for Windows 7 Ultimate, bringing it to $479.99.

If every work ever created by any organization that received government grants was public domain, nobody would ever take a government grant.

Yes, I'm sure the primary motivation of researchers in abstract mathematics, theoretical physics, astronomy, etc. is the hope of someday getting rich by selling their discoveries.

Yes, and a Windows developer has absolutely no use for the Windows source code as long as they have access to the APIs. So why would anyone care about Linux?

While you in particular may not necessarily have a use for the source code, the point is that it is unavailable to those who do wish to use it. The "use" might be understanding what it is doing (what information is it sending to the parent company), modifying it (so that it does not do this), and having the ability in principal to continue to run the API (modified to run on your own or an alternate social network) if the site owner goes out of business, does things you don't like with the information you give them, or decides to ban your application.