Newspapers implemented it a few centuries ago. If you subscribe to a newspaper, it is delivered to your door, and you get a discount off the newsstand price. You can also vary the schedule. For instance you can get it delivered everyday, or just on Sunday.

Google Translate is better than nothing, and much better than it was a few years ago, but is still no where near the level of a human translator. Go to a website written in Russian or Chinese, and translate it into English. You will likely be able to get the gist of it, but the grammar will be atrocious, and there will be some glaring (and often hilarious) errors.

I don't want, them, but I am willing to accept them because I am an adult, and I know that there is no Santa Claus. Corporations don't provide services out of the goodness of their heart. The ads pay for the "free" email, and also help pay for Google's research into autonomous vehicles, improved search technology, etc. So I accept them, occasionally click on them, and sometimes even buy something.

Expecting something for nothing is being childish. Grow up.

Why do you think the shipping company cares? The security cameras on our loading dock recorded a UPS driver tossing boxes out of the back of his truck, and dropping about eight feet onto concrete. The contents were severely damaged. When we showed the video to a UPS manager, the driver was just shifted to a different route. Apparently they can't just fire unionized employees, especially Teamsters.

Indeed. Background checks take five minutes, and an interview can take an hour or more. So you do that background check before you waste time scheduling an interview. I would never interview someone without googling them first. I also like to check Linkedin, and see if they already know someone in our company, or someone I may know in another company.

I have been involved in hiring hundreds of people, at several different companies, and I have found that idiosyncratic hiring practices rarely help. It is much better to follow the KISS principle:

1. Screen the resumes and pick the top 10%
2. Email them and set up a phone call.
3. Chat for a few minutes, and if you like them, set up a face-to-face interview.
4. If you like them at the interview, and they can demonstrate competence, then offer them a job at the end of the interview.

I have worked for companies that did much more elaborate interviewing, including multiple interviews, lunch meetings, etc. We seldom changed our opinions after the first interview, it was time consuming, and the candidate pool was shrinking as the best people were accepting jobs elsewhere.

You can break into the banks too. Just find the sites without the brute force blocks, find an id/pw that works, and then try the same id/pw at the bank. Most people (including my wife) will use an id/pw at some game site run by a teenager, and then use the exact same id/pw at financial institutions. Security is only as good as the weakest link.

I agree that Python is a good first language. But there may be a better language for him to learn: The language used in the introductory course of the college he will be attending this fall. In fact, this "ask Slashdot" question seems silly. His best option is to contact the college he will be attending, get their list of summer courses, and pick one. That way he will not only be learning to program, but he will be learning the right language, the right style of programming (where right == "what the professors want"), and he will get full college credit for the course, and have a head start over his classmates. This will also help his GPA because summer courses are graded on an easier curve since they have plenty of students that flunked or dropped out during the regular school year. He will also learn his way around the campus, and be more comfortable during the fall semester.

Your logic makes no sense. Learning to type faster is in no way going to diminish his ability to think.

I lived in China for several years. You don't have to pay bribes if you don't want anything from the government. But if you want to send your kids to a public school, and their paternal grandfather didn't live in the district in 1949, then you pay a bribe. If you have a business that requires any kind of license (and they all do), then you either pay a bribe to get the license, or you pay a bribe to the cop on the corner to ignore the fact that you don't have one. A foreigner visiting China will not normally have to pay any bribes, but that is because they don't have the kinds of interactions with the government that require bribes, and also because foreigners are treated differently. Most Chinese people don't consider their country to be corrupt either. They refer to the bribes as "guanxi", or "relationship building", and to them it is so normal that they just accept it as the way it is, and the way it is supposed to be.

Regulation, when done well, is almost impossible to corrupt. If you want to start a business in China, you will have to pay a bribe. I have started several business in the USA, and there is no where in the system for a bribe. The law says that the county clerk must issue the license. They have no discretion. When I lived in Shanghai, I had to pay a bribe so my kids could attend school. The rules are murky and unwritten, so the school staff has huge discretion of who can attend. In America the rules for admission are written down, clear, and publicly available. The system in China is designed to be corruptible, while the American system is designed to prevent it.

In America, nearly all of my interaction with local, state and federal government is through websites. It is difficult to get an under-the-table bribe through a website. When I have to deal face-to-face, such as at the DMV, it is at a public window in full view of other people. When I have had to deal with government officials in China, they often will lead applicants one at a time into private offices, out of view of the public. The corruption is pervasive and systematic, and their procedures are designed to facilitate it.

When Xi Jinping spoke out about corruption, in the very next breath he emphasized that "stability" was more important. That is understood by Chinese people to mean nothing much will be done. In the previous administration, many people looked at the premier, Wei Jiabao, as a champion of integrity, and it was a big shock to a lot of Chinese when the NY Times exposed his billions in overseas accounts. Xi Jinping's response to Wei Jiabao's corruption is not to hold him accountable, but rather to try to block the Chinese people from reading the NY times. The culture of corruption and impunity goes all the way to the top.

Most "anti-corruption" drives in China are used to scapegoat political enemies, and even execute a few people (kill the chicken to scare the monkey). But there is rarely any reform to the system that made the corruption possible. For instance, when thousands of people died in the Sichuan Earthquake because building inspectors had been bribed, a few people were shot. But the real solution (making building inspection reports into public records freely accessible to anyone with a browser) did not happen.

Okay, I just googled it, and I don't see anything false about my statement. From the wiki: These provisions can be used to restrict, through the use of injunctions and damages, the importation of goods that infringe or counterfeit registered trademarks.

Since "common law" == "not registered", I stand by original my statement.

Your link says this: Tiffany sued eBay for trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and false advertising but eventually lost against eBay on all claims. This seems to be the opposite of what you imply it says.

Common law trademarks carry very little legal weight, and there is no penalty for violating them. If GW wants to make a claim of infringement, Amazon should go tell them to go register with the USPTO first.

Btw, you need to stop posting as "Anonymous Coward" because I have a common law trademark on that term.

... and as soon as the price goes up, the "financial incentive" will return, and we will resume extracting it.

The fact that helium is too cheap and plentiful to even bother collecting is hardly evidence that we are "running out".

If you disagree, and you really think you are smarter than the market, then go invest in helium futures.