Delphi was a cool tool, but VB was already entrenched when Delphi came out, which is (at least partly) why Delphi never became popular; Delphi was a response to VB, not the other way around.

Seriously ! I'm paying (when you add my employer's contribution) about 14k for a family of 4

1. Requirement that 85% of insurance money is spent on care.
2. Insurance exchanges are regulated; not all policies qualify
3. They won't, but everybody will get a *minimal* level of care, much higher than the current one.

Don't know where you live, but I think it's amazing that you can send a snail mail for less than 50c; the roads are ok where I live and my public schools are great. In the US, government is reasonably efficient and it provides a different price/performance/access point that private industry.

You want next day delivery ? use FedEx, but pay $20 (or more ?). Have you seen private toll roads ? I grew up in Mexico, where they're common; you pay about $40 to go from Merida to CanCun (about 200 miles). You want to go into a good private school ? be prepared to spend $15000/yr, and make sure your kid is really good, or he/she won't get in. I'm not saying private companies offer bad choices, but they're *different* choices, I like that the govt provides decent basic services.

I've always interpreted the living part as meaning that it can be changed; we have specific procedures to change the constitution (and I think the last amendment was passed in 1992 !), that's what living means, not that you can interpret it any way you want.

There's many talented and hard working people (much more talented and much harder working than myself), but only some of them are gazillionaires; the external environment (that I summarize as luck) counts a lot; both who are your parents (which heavily influences how you develop your talents, which schools you go to etc) and being at the right place at the right time.

If you think about it, Bill Gates was probably going to be a millionaire (his parents were very well off, he was (is?) driven, very smart and an SOB :), however, if IBM hadn't messed up, the timing hadn't been right etc he'd probably just be one more millionaire.

The problem with cheating is NOT reuse, but dishonesty; the right analogy is not to reuse *your company's* code or report, but *somebody else's* report or code, which leads to lawsuits against your company and firing. In many (most?) programming assignments in school, you are given starting code (like this one except for ....)

I don't know the exact numbers, but let's assume you change your roof every 20 years, so 5% of houses will get their roof replaced this year, lets ask/push people to use lighter shades (or white), probably same cost (just replaced my roof, color didn't affect price to me, so I assume doesn't affect supply cost), in 20 years, it's all replaced (not centuries !)

Science has taught us (me? :) many things, but I haven't got that conclusion and can't recall one example; do you ? BTW, this is how we learn in science, we tamper with things we don't understand so we understand them

As mentioned above, there's still a net gain, since there's much more sunlight in Summer than in Winter (of course, it all depends on where you are, but the research says that it works :)

Back of the envelope, if roofs last an average of 20 years, we're replacing 5% of the roofs every year; lets replace with lighter shades. I just did that (they didn't have the good shingles in white, so I chose the lighter possible shade of gray they had). Only about a month in, AC runs noticeably less now (but we'll see when the real Summer is in :)

Google will give you a free incoming number, and transfer (actually, reroute/repeat) to any number you choose (and many more goodies)

I'm in Atlanta, and our CS undergrads start at around $45 or more (now). Also, notice that the *average* salary includes NYC and San Francisco and such :)

Yes, teachers have more vacation than most, but they're definitely underpaid (with rare exceptions)

ESXi is free (although most of the 'advanced' features aren't)