Something not mentioned but will probably become an important factor for Azazon: A nieve (newbie) employee may be easy to find and burn them out in 90 days. But they are not likely to come back ever. At some point Amazon will have burned through that available pool, only to find the ones that were burned won't even bother applying ever again. That could be a long term serious issue.

The requirement for an additional "App" also somewhat breaks the deal. SMS text has been built into phones for a very long time even including feature phones. If I need to use an "App" to use this then it is no different than just using one of the 100's of other offerings already available.

VS 2013 $499.00 direct from Microsoft. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Visual-Studio-Professional-2013/productID.284832200/

Confederate States of America? Gosh you should be supporting this (and are also very old).

After 20% down payment the mortgage on that house would be nearly 4,000 a month (at 4%, a good rate). That's not counting insurance and taxes. He's NOT poor by any proper definition of that word.

You keep mentioning how they "get paid" but never refute it. You also cleverly do not include my mention that I don't use the service. The copyright holders that get extra clicks should be paying google for the adsense , not the other way around. you are quite simply incorrect on this matter. I do not work for google company. (disclaimer)

I've never seen a single advertisement on Google news. It may be different in Germany, but otherwise I don't see how they are making money. It's a free service. Perhaps re-enforcing their brand image, but not 'making all the money'. I am far more likely to read more details (even with the 3-2 score type of thing you mention) than to skip. (Haven't used Google News in a long time, had to re-check just now to confirm the no advertisement thing).

NASA peaked at 4.41% of federal budget in 1966. That is nowhere near ~5% of GDP. Also what other than Apollo 1 disaster are you referring to as "sheer amount of failures"? It was overwhelmingly successful by most any reasonable assessment.

I had a big ISA card with POTS plugs on the back in a new (at the time) computer with Windows 3.1 that could receive and print faxes. Gosh that was a very long time ago.

Wow, way to move the goal posts!
Your original comment was:

Now you claim 47% of ALL debt is

While ignoring UK, Brazil and about 30 other countries!
Whee! you got called on the carpet and keep shifting around what you said to keep your own piece of mind!

This is fun!

There's only one thing learned from the Shuttle debacle. Namely, don't let NASA build and fly its own launch vehicle.

The shuttle was a bit of a boondoggle, but you are blaming NASA, when in all honesty it had many congress-critters and Air-force fingers involved in its design and deployment. It's rather disingenuous to place all the decision responsibility solely in the hands of NASA.

Guess I'll jump in and say my goodbyes as well. Been a long time lurker from almost the beginning. Truely a day to remember. Thanks for the good times and memories taco.

P.S. As the reactors in Fukushima demonstrated, the pilots don't even have to target the reactor building to achieve their objective.

I wasn't aware Fukushima was hit by a Cessna. I'll have to try my Google-foo to find more info on that.