Another reason is that many states cannot afford to have the tobacco companies lose too much revenue. After the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco companies, the FDA, and the states was agreed upon, many states underwent a securitization process of the anticipated future revenue from the settlement. They issues bonds that were backed by the future payments from the tobacco companies, which are determined a some percentage of those companies' revenue. The emergence of e-cigs has put a much larger dent in tobacco company profits than expected, hence the required amount of their payments under the MSA has dropped. This means the states are now on the hook to pay the interest to the bond-holders to the tune of billions of dollars. The states are actually rooting for the tobacco companies to be more profitable so that they can get off of the hook.

Ya, but the guy that died of emphysema took himself out of the pool early. If he didn't smoke, he may have died of Alzheimer's disease or Diabetes or CHF and hung on for much, much longer, costing more money in health-care costs. Plus, he paid the onerous taxes on every pack of smoke he bought, actually putting money back into the pool. See, his smoking may have actually saved you money!

This is the story with me as well, it has become more of a hobby than an addiction to nicotine. If you mix your own liquid, there is an element of chemistry involved (PG/VG ratios, nicotine content, flavorings, all mixed with pipettes and beakers), if you roll your own coils you need to be aware of Ohms law and battery discharge rates, and there are all the new shiny new mods to buy, collect, and trade with your friends. Even if you run around buying all of the latest mods, tanks, and atomizers out there, you are still saving a ton over smoking just due to the outrageous taxes placed on tobacco. It is the perfect hobby for a nerd that wants to consume nicotine in a safer manner. Being around longer for my kids, the health benefits, and cost savings over smoking tobacco products were my main reasons to switch initially, but I find that I am simply enjoying the activity of vaping as well.

I know you are going for funny, but e-cigs actually use either propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine, or a combination of both. Both of these substances are listed as GRAS, generally regarded as safe for consumption by the FDA.

Ya, me too. The usual tip off for me is that they are driving a Nissan Maxima or Ultima. I don't know what it is about these two cars that turn normal law-abiding people into road-rage inducing jerks.

A bit off-topic, but I have found that using a very mild dish-soap and water to clean my glasses and drying with a soft cloth or paper-towels helps to preserve the anti-glare coating. I used to use Windex to clean them but found that it just ate up the ant-glare coating. The worst thing you can do is to use your shirt-tail to wipe your lenses clean, might as well take a piece of steel-wool to them.

It's not just the consumer old-school copper phone line workers that were striking, but those from the FIOS and Business (phone, data) areas as well. Both of these are VERY profitable for Verizon, but the spin the company put on was "oh noes, we are losing money because people are moving to wireless". The workers involved are key in these two areas and Verizon knows it. The two unions involved are well aware of the drop in land-line plan old copper and have negotiated in the past to move workers from that part of the company to the FIOS/corporate areas as they have seen tremendous growth in recent years. Don't believe the corporate hype.

I believe he means fuel for non-over-road use such as farm equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc.) Wikipedia link.

No, he is correct. Hefeweizens are lighter wheat-based beers, but they are unfiltered so there is a good amount of yeast and sediment in the bottle, making the beer quite opaque.

Link please, I had not heard of anyone being killed in Boston. There were some vague rumors of a Bruins fan being killed in Vancouver, but that seems to be unfounded as well. The Boston police did respond in force after the win, which seemed to keep things relatively calm in the city. Calling them jack-booted thugs is a bit over the top. Boston police do not put up with any hooliganism since the Victoria Snelgrove incident in 2004 and will preemptively quell anything of the sort. It seems that the police in Vancouver were ill-prepared, hence the situation getting out of hand so quickly.

Jonathan, how does it feel to have you site slashdotted just minutes after your slashdot interview goes live? Does slashdot or Geeknet offer any sort of compensation to replace your poor little melted-to-slag web server?

Playing Blu-Ray discs, for one.

Center click (default action _should_ be open link in new tab) is also disabled and double-center-click does nothing either (FF 4.0).

Same with ASP.NET, parametrized SQL queries are built into the ADO.NET model. Of course, some dumbass developer could be concatenating a SQL command using the raw input data without scrubbing it and running the command against the DB. Old school Active Server Pages have no such feature and any data-scrubbing had to be done in a separate function.