And Apple had been designing Mac for a year and a half before it came out. And mopping the floor with Apple 2. Dell "reassembling" things isn't close to Apple in 1984.

That's only needed because states and federal grants to universities directly have progressively gone down. In the 1960's and 1970's most STATE schools were less than 1/3 funded by student tuition. Now most undergrad programs are 1/2 or more funded by students directly... And they treat them like cattle. Sure the Feds graciously let you borrow the difference they didn't pay from bankers at 8%...the same people they gave tax cuts to, so they could cut funding to schools. The costs aren't Undergrad professors either.. Most schools use Teacher Assistants or part-time, no-benefits staff for undergrads classes... Paid barely livable per-class wages.

Maybe not starvation, but the upper echelons are openly talking about reopening "debtors prison", indenturing people for debts (like can't pay off your mortgage, not tanking a billion $ company), while aggressively making bankruptcy harder for individuals... But bailouts for the super wealthy.

They sit on millions and openly declared war years ago over thousands that the peasants owe them.

The 1% of working incomes is only about $300k or so. The falloff at the various IRS tax brackets represents about 80th and 90th percentiles ... If you make even $150k on your own you are at the 80th percentile for wages being paid... 8 of 10 people make less than YOU. people have no concept what "rich" means.

1% highest income in the USA is about $300k and up.

Too much traffic to drive your BMW... take the Google Bus to work.

Why do stupid regular people whine about stuff?

I' think I've run into that before, but I "vented" enough to satisfy them. I won't get "mad" at work under extreme duress... I'm a scream and throw shit across the room person when I'm really angry. I have meds and therapy for that for years to behave myself. Don't poke the Bear kids. I don't EVER want to do that at work unless its to defend myself from attack.

I do agree on the point that blowing interviews is a bit pretentious. But there are a lot of times an interviewer has clearly asked questions "over the line" or that identify this company as a terrible fit. At that point it TRUELY is better to have a plan to "now out gracefully" rehearsed so you don't continue the interview and throw your coffee at them!

I've had one where it was a group interview and felt like an ambush. It ws clear after 5 minutes I didn't want to be working there. It's like planing an "escape call" on a first date.

Not really, this is more of an Axes vs Swords type thing. Not a NEW or NOVEL form of punishment. If you told an Axe trained headsman to use a sword instead, you'd get a similar result the first few times. There's nothing to see here.

The power to TAX something is the power to restrict or destroy it.

Ask why nearly ALL the device makers are so afraid of unencumbered, "untaxed", video and audio codex?

Wikimedia is at that point though. You cannot have h.264 without bowing to the DRM at some level... Even if YOUR CONTENT IS FREE. The PATENT owners around the format don't allow "free"... Fees are "differed" right now as long as you only shoot HOME video with equipment that pays the royalties they've "promised" not to charge you the per-hour/device fees as a CONSUMER of happy devices.

Ask why Apple REFUSES to play along with open and free formats if they are TRULY a company for "creatives"?

Why is it so important only patented MEDIA codec be used all the time as we hit 20 years of The Web? What if IBM still held the patent on .txt? Microsoft on .rtf? Or Unisys still held .gif? OrMOEG still held .jpeg? And they all still demanded a dime per hosted item on the Internet!! Or .html/.css/.svg were NEVER FREE?

It's not politics, its MONEY. The h.264 codec are "free to play" only because Apple, Sony, and Microsoft and a few other big names throw massive coinage in royalties up front.. And they are part of the royalty board. They don't want their device customers to know how locked down the patents really are on basic stuff like taking video on a phone. If Wikipedia puts up videos, they are too big not to get conned into paying somehow.. No matter what the "industry promises" are.

I'm normally an Apple fan, but when it comes to media formats, they're right next to the Devil. They simply refuse to support non-royalty formats, and they make it harder than snot to even use them even on Macs.

Fact is that we need FREE AND OPEN formats for creating digital libraries. That's an ENTIRELY reasonable request and good for the World, but the large media companies use formats on non-upgradable devices for their own little world-building agendas.

Things like this are how "business" makes sure "capitalism" gets its share of worship before "freedom".

The reason artists pull their playlists is that they often get less than zero royalties. While the Federal government RAISED per play royalties, the labels all cut deals for greatly reduced royalties.. And of course bottom line kickbacks from spotty directly that don't count as "royalty". Artist contracts often have clauses that mean the ARTIST has to MAKE UP the difference for the "promotional priced" materials.. Because the Label, Producer, etc get paid THEIR CUT of STATUTORY ROYALTIES before the band... Artists cannot claim the statutory royalties from the clearinghouse, and these contracts almost always have much higher payout levels than the law requires..so the can't even get paid their smaller amount of money because they didn't "sell enough".

I'd bet this is pushing bands not paying attention into NEGATIVE ROYALTIES.

Because they are corporate owned.. Do they BUY SOFTWARE for this PCs?

That is the real metric everybody cares about... That I have a fleet of windows PCs doesn't matter if the only money I spend is on AS400 apps from 15 years ago. There are probably close to the same numbers of Windows 8/8.1 and iOS 6/7 devices out there... And Windows users dont BUY SOFTWARE AND MEDIA, they keep what they bought years ago or pirate. They might give $200 to Microsoft or Adobe, but the shelves of small developer software are pretty bare. LOTS of iOS users buy Apps, games, books, and media thru the App Store. Sure it's $3-5 at a time, but the library of "must have" iOS apps that pry a few bucks from INDIVIDUAL users is greater than the 4-5 "big apps" like Office and Adobe that are the only survivors of the heady Windows "developers, developers, developers" days.

That's important and an even BIGGER issue. I'd be certain those card scanners are "rented" directly from "the bank" and not controlled by the store IT themselves. That means somebody POC certified BETWEEN the store and exchange has a really big PHYSICAL breech where CERTIFIED HARDWARE has been tampered with on their watch.

I'd bet this affects a whole model/serial number batch of devices all across the country, not just the big sellers.