It certainly doesn't cost $0 to pass a bill... especially one which Hilary Clinton tried to pass when her husband was in office, and got completely and thoroughly shut down on. And how was it treated?

People who say that business should be free of government competition are full of crap, because they pretend that the government should just regulate. Except they don't like regulation either.

I was going to tell you that all of these professions are mostly self employed, since that's the impression I grew up with, but I looked it up, and it's actually around 6-9% for each field who are self employed.

I guess you're right. Pity.

Wow... you just made me a (hopefully vocal) supporter of sexbot companies. I mean, I had nothing against them before, but it never occured to me that they could provide a massive social benefit.

This is gonna lead to some weird conversations.

bullshit.

I've got a lot of family members who work various positions in local hospitals, and my sister just went through a medical lab assistant course, and agrees with what I'm saying here.

Saying that men aren't interested is BS, because they're high paying jobs and you spend every class surrounded by ladies. it sounds like a great scam. But when you get there, everyone thinks you're 'just precious' and you end up being the damn bouncer and guy who picks up heavy things in an emergency room, which isn't exactly a job with good promotion potential.

There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.

I've got a family member and a substantial number of friends just entering the teaching profession, and they all agree with this strongly. Why is this modded troll? In fact, I thought this was common knowledge, that private schools refuse to deal with the troublesome, disabled, and malnourished, and so don't face most of the problems which plague public schools.

Yeah, JK is rollin in the dough. she's also the most popular author on the planet, for about 8 years straight, and basically introduced half this generation to reading as a pleasure activity. She might not deserve as much as she got (about $200 million last year), but she still deserves a big stinking load of money.

There's plenty of fat which ought to be cut, the copyright system is broken horribly, I agree with the rest of slashdot on that. But JK Rowling is the shit, don't pretend otherwise.

No, while I haven't read the papers either, I can confirm that gravity will not be the force pulling objects apart, at least not directly, as it is an attractive force. Also, the forces that make planets are generally agreed to be massively more powerful than anything going on in the rings of saturn, although if they are also just gravity is beyond me.

By simple logic, the rings will settle into something resembling an equilibrium, as they haven't all turned to dust or clumped into one piece over the many eons they've had to float around. Maybe asteroids are a significant force in breaking up the debris?

actually, canadians mostly consume american pop culture over their own. Since non-local canadian music is a fringe market, that is unelss I'm listening to a band play in a bar in town, they're probably not from this country), copyright protection laws really don't do much for canadian artists. It's not like the average small-gig playing band I've heard of minds if you pirate them, since they desperately need all the publicity they can get to drum up ticket sales.

I think the field is much wider than you're imagining. I study at a university which is mostly filled with ladies. The engineering department is mostly filled with lads. This isn't a disparity I like, but it seems to promote a lot of males clustering together in the faculty. As a result, I know a fair number of lads interested in lads in the technical fields, and the way to meet them is the exact same. Go to events which interest you, whether that be renn faires or technical conferences, and try to stumble into a few gay dudes there, then network from them. There's really no better way to do it I'm aware of, certainly not dating sites or clubs, as neither of those are too conducive to technical discussions. Maybe start up a conversation about analog filter design on a dating site and ignore anyone who can't hold there own, but that'd be a bit more exclusive than you probably want. I'm aware that homophobia is also widespread in the technical fields, but hey, did your mom ever tell you life would be easy?

I've got a hot tip for you: if you've seen this multiple times, move somewhere that isn't a hellhole.

Abandon your worldly possessions to do so if needs be. A place where this happens is not human-friendly.

I think you just equated taiwan and mainland china. let's ignore politics, because it's got no definitive standards, but you simply must face two simple facts. Taiwan and Mainland China have massively different industrial complexes. Taiwan's makes higher end electronics.

So am I, because then whoever is business-savvy will change their business model to reflect the changing times. here's a tip, the AP isn't going to die this way, because if every newspaper in the world went belly up tomorrow, half the governments on the planet would pay to keep them in business. This is because the value of the AP is internationally recognized, and anyone funding it gets the kind of good reputation Britain does for hosting the BBC. The same with Reuters, the same with Al Jazeera, not that AJ relies on print copy revenue of course...

hahahaha... that's awesome. Incidentally, so does your mom. no wait, I mean my mom.

oh, they may darn well try. And I kinda wished they succeeded, at least once a decade or so. My high school science textbooks, and math and a few others besides, were older than I was.

You're right. This is what's going to happen. This is what most people do.

That said, what kinda idiots do this? Why do so many people believe they shouldn't have any contingency plans in life? Next month, I could be hit by a bus. If I do, I live in Canada, so medical costs will be okay, I have credit card insurance to cover a year of interest payments on that (it only costs me $5/month), and I save enough money that I'll be able to live, if miserably, for at least 6 months. Why don't more people do this? And don't say they can't, because the people who are going to be missing their mortgages had enough money to buy a house, apparently, so they should have gotten a cheaper one or continued to rent until they could *actually* afford a house. gah!