NASA incompetence? Nothing in engineering is truly bug-free. Unfortunately with NASA the consequences can be dire; doesn't make them incompetent. And your analysis is off the mark - you need to understand that what we got from the money spent on the shuttle [since Challenger] was 20+ years of grunt work. Are your preposing that NASA should've stopped at the Challenger disaster and wait 20 years until SpaceX has the technology to start doing things 'better' ? Getting something done, as the parent says at 95% well, is better than not at all and waiting for the perfect vehicle.

But the difference is that in the US you can think that and say so; in China you can't.

What a load of tosh. American and European economies and business practices ethics] are pretty much the same. You quote the US unemployment rate but not the EU - why? Is it because they're just about the same and that collapses your arguement? Just in the same way that companies use recessions to shed jobs, individuals use boom times to insist on signing bonuses and benefits up the wazoo. Quit ya whining.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union/

Well that WHO report is from Y2000 - a little out of date don't you think? You would do well to read this - it clearly is a case of statistics gone awry. I would even go as far to say that ranking countries in healthcare is pointless at best, deceptive at worst. Its as flawed as the order of 100 Best Songs of All Time on MTV.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/14/paul-hipp/rocker-viral-video-mocks-us-37th-best-health-care-/

Now, a real world test : I've had children in both the UK and the USA. There are some differences, but in an interesting way each system reflects the mindset of each culture. For instance in the UK the resources were more frugal - I didn't even know what an epidural was until I came to the US - my wife was only offered gas and air in the UK. The US had doctors and midwives on standby and the facilities were much better. However in the UK my wife had someone come visit her 2 or 3 times a week for a while whereas in the US she had to go for checkups.

Its horses for courses and some arbitrary ranking system concocted by health administrators / politicians looking at tables of spreadsheets is meaningless.

British too (and Dr Who is great) - I don't think American acting is better or worse; its just that theres more American "stuff" to pick bad examples from and highlight. Now if you want to see bad acting you should see TV from Latin America. So that begs the question : why is it so popular? I think its more about the culture that surrounds it. One talks with family / friends / work colleagues / radio / internet forums about these shows and it makes you feel part of something. The bad acting or the cardboard sets then become irrelevant.

So unless one agrees with your POV they're horribly biased? Everyone is biased in one form or another - the question is not whether they have bias but did they use that bias to unfairly alter the outcome ?

This is not stealing. This is wanting something bad enough that you're willing to pay interest on a loan to get it. This is a basic economic premise regardless of whether one is poor or rich. And btw you haven't answered how the rich person became rich in the first place?

Is it in poor taste when that happens? Sure. BUT you're picking a news worthy item about some CEO lying, wealth grabbing, bastards and forgetting this is perhaps 1%, if that, of CEOs out there. You're condemning CEOs and Execs out there with a very few rotten apples. Most *don't* have golden parachutes. Most *don't* have massive bonuses. Basically if you don't want to be laid off then sink your life savings into an company, become a CEO, pour every last minute of your life into it, and then never fire anybody you hire. That was the point of my post. People are hired and fired irrespective of the salaries / bonuses of the higher ups. Now, when government money is involved, then sure, thats a different matter of course.

You're using an extreme or non existant example to try and defunct the parents point. If a typical entry level worker is on say $20K, 100K x that would be $2 Billion a year. At best x1 K as you approach a tiny fraction of high profile companies. A much bigger fraction are on x50 of an entry level job. Most CEOs, by no short margin, would agree with you. The CEOs that are typically making the big bucks (at least in the tech sector) are the ones that started the company and took the risk.

Would you care to list all the "ubiquitous companies" you've created where you've given the average Joe a great wage and yourself, as an exec, very little? Thanks.

Actually it *is* the first thing you learn, from a technical POV. If you have spent time to code a website up, you have time to create a form of backup. I have always taken the view that when I save a file, or make a backup that is the last data checkpoint I know I don't want to lose. And .5 TB isn't much and it doesn't take time - heck it shouldn't be much more than a copy-paste.

Now, there are a billion things with a new venture, that is very true, but one has to prioritize.

Well when the press overwhelmingly describe themselves as liberal (or slanted in a particular direction) its a serious concern: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1919999
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1001/campaign-media

The problem is, that those that are liberal think of themselves as centralists \ moderates to validate their opinion and that becomes pervasive in their reporting. Now on the left we have MSNBC with their inspiring "worse, worser, worsest" mantra and on the right we have the ever forgiving O'Reilly from Fox. There's also Rush on the right but on the left is Rather, Bill Maher, Moore and a whole slew of other commentators. And in pop culture, SNL \ Daily Show \ Colbert Report \ The View as obvious examples, that are so left leaning. Was there a Lil' Clinton show on Comedy Central that I missed? Perhaps they're going to be adding Lil'Obama...'cos if they weren't biased they'd have done it right?

So you can bleat on all day until you're blue in the face about the liberal bias "myth" but it doesn't make it any less true. Now obviously anyone is entitled to their opinion, that I'm ok with - just don't tell me its not biased.

And why do you see it in terms of dollar / Iraqi life ? Do you think the US government is somehow saving up to kill people in Iraq ? If you want to start that game we could easily say that chances of being killed by Hussein infinitely reduced down to zero. Like yours, its a ludicrous factoid that completely obscures whats going on.

I would have to agree...whats marring the inauguration is this constant venom and hatred for the previous administration. One might disagree and thats perfectly ok - but a facebook heading I saw "wish there was a statue of Bush, like there was Sadam, that we could knock down and pull through the streets". I also asked my brother-in-law what is it that you hate about Bush and where is the evidence to support your opinion...he replied "my opinion is evidence". Now there are some that can talk intelligently about what Bush has done wrong and cite evidence, but the overwhelming populace is riding on this hatred and when asked they don't seem to know why.

So its upto Facebook and Myspace to do what they want [legallity aside] since it is their website after all. However isn't the counter argument the one used here on /. all the time - that if you don't want to listen or watch things on TV or radio to use the Off button ? I mean who and in what circumstances are nursing mothers thrusting pictures in front of you?