Smallest tax rate???? Really????

The only reason for this is that taxes in the US are split between various level of government and that health insurance is not included in taxes as it is in most countries. When you compare oranges with oranges the tax rates are quite similar. It is for example only a few percentage point lower than Canada even through Canada has tax funded universal health coverage.

I thing there is large space for improvement. And also I thoroughly dislike the tea party they have a point.

It is a bit more complex that this. The more info you give Google or any other search engine the more focused the result will be. This can be good in a sense but it also hide from you any dissenting view that you may have discovered by accident.

Let say you are a liberal and very quickly Google is only going to present you with liberal sites which will fit with your way of thinking. Good? not too much as it will hide from you any other opinion and push you in a polarized society.

Obviously this is Slashdot and every one is talking about this they don't understand.

The reason he is not sick is because of herd immunity i.e. the rest of the population is vaccinated so there is few reservoirs of viruses. The reason people die is because of people that could be vaccinated and are not.

For the record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity): Herd immunity (or community immunity) describes a form of immunity that occurs when the vaccination of a significant portion of a population (or herd) provides a measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity.

You probably need to modulate the length depending on what the object being copyrighted is. I find it reasonable that Mickey is copyrighted as long as Disney company actively use the character and that can be for a very long time. The same should be true of any work being actively exploited (i.e. being in print or software being distributed). I think we should have a very short expiry time for out of print, probably 10 years out of print for a book should make it fall in the public domain, 3 years for out of distribution software should be reasonable.

Have you talked to commercial developers of Android and IOS applications? I know quite a few and while they make profit from their IOS apps, Android does not bring much revenues. This model just does not pay the bills.

There is just not enough user on Android ready to pay for applicationsâ¦

And what is wrong with that. I could really do with the politician doing even LESS. I like this minority government because it does NOTHING. The economy is doing very well, there is no real pressing problems and all is good. Keep doing nothing the last thing I want is an activist government. The difficulty is getting the right balance to achieve a minority government but we Canadian are getting good at it.

Actually the chain of trust is the issue, there is no way to insure that chain if you let the user install any software on the unit. Just talk to all those people trying to enforce DRM... If you jailbreak a unit then there is no way you can guarantee the chain of trust, or at least it become so murky that for all non security experts it becomes very difficult to judge what is the valid chain of trust and what is the compromised one.

There is a value in a well trusted device.

This is a lie from Adobe. Translation it does not work the same way on Linux and MacOS than on Windows and we cannot be bothered to write the code for it. If you don't make the effort why should Apple do it for you?

I really like that term technical violation of the law. So if I am over the speed limit I am in technical violation of the speed limit and I should not get a ticket , just a mention in the newspaper. Try that defense next time...

You should look harder: http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Why do you say that a jailbroken phone is illegal? The device is yours you bought it. As far as I know Apple only says that it voids the warranty not that their users are criminals...

Jailbreaking is not breaking copy restriction, at least not directly. Some people may use it for that purpose but most of them don't. In my experience iPhones are jailbroken to be unlocked. All of the jailbroken iPhone that I know of only run UltraSn0w and are not vulnerable. All of those people buy software at teh App store because it is more convenient and their iPhone is as stable as any other iPhone. After all what do you do with a second hand iPhone?

And why is the sacrifice good? Except for some extreme religious folks, most people would rather enjoy life. Presenting environment consciousness as a sacrifice may be a good way to start the environment religion but I would be surprised if this message ever gain mainstream acceptance. Finding sustainable solution that enables us to maintain our way of life is probably a better message.From everything I have read there maintaining a good and easy life while keeping the planet cool are not incompatible goals. I don't see what the "sacrifice" has to do with good engineering.

Actually we should even encourage this by giving a tax discount on the first 15 liters of fuel you pump. If you are driving a Hummer this would make very little difference you will not go anywhere with 15 liters but if you are running a Smart that is 1 week worth of travel...

This would really encourage light weight fuel efficient vehicle.

What is your point there? That Apple does a few things very well and Microsoft a lot poorly? Since when has bloat been a valid excuse for poor design?