Exactly. That Twitter of Facebook are "public" is irrelevant.

First of all, they are privately owned and operated services, subject to the whims and policies of their owners.

Second, SEC has certain requirements for disclosure, not necessarily because it is "public", but because it is a clearinghouse. It is not reasonable to expect traders, investors and analysts to keep track of the 100s of thousands of Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, company blogs, CEO/CFO/CIO/etc blogs, even if they are all "public". That's not disclosure.

It's all on-the-job training and work experience anyways. Just do the minimum to get the piece of paper admitting you to the club.

If you're into "a few hundred terabytes", you're not dealing with Oracle anyways (or even SQL) because you've already hit the query performance wall around 10 terabytes and had to look for alternatives, such as NoSQL and Hadoop and Cloudera.

I like how this is modded funny, because overriding the status bar is something even Google does with its search results to hide that every link is actually a redirect.

Objectively, that's just common sense. If you're ever in the position where you're seriously hurting someone or fighting for your life against an intruder or attacker, you're best off to finish the job, so to speak, so there is no witness/victim to contradict your lies, or to supply lies of their own. This outcome has nothing to do with stand your ground laws.

I don't get it... do you normally hold your pants up with your hands?

There's ALWAYS pressure on the household budget. This is not unique to any particular time in history or geographic region. Fact is we've been compromising our principles (supporting free speech and independent media) for a perceived short term gain. This is classic slippery slope. Doing the right thing is always hard. This is entropy in action. Consistently doing the right thing, or taking the easy way out, has a compounding effect over time that gets more difficult to reverse. But the default is the easy way out, because it requires no thought, no action and no effort. The flip side of other people doing things for you "for free" is that they're not free at all; their agenda takes over, and you get consideration for table scraps.

0. We're too cheap and now all our media is funded by advertisers, while we wonder why it's not accountable to the public anymore.

Jupiter having moons has nothing to do with distances.

Microsoft doesn't have to do anything right. In fact they don't have to do anything at all, just wait, until technology miniaturizes enough that you can run desktop business apps in a tablet or phone hardware format. The portable device space has been all about device and feature consolidation, and I don't expect that trend to suddenly reverse because Google excluded Microsoft from some list they made up.

You got the "Tea Party" think backwards. They got co-opted by Republicans, much like the Green Party was absorbed by Democrats and no one takes Ralph Nader seriously anymore.

Why are they voting on stuff then? Aren't they just figureheads?

The average politician does not read the bill he is voting on, and he certainly doesn't write it. And that's fine, but I don't think the average voter realizes this.

That's BS. Cars today can be way lighter than decades ago, except for all the safety gear that has to be put in (and yes comfort, such as AC and power everything). A friend of mine built a kit car recently. Virtually no creature comforts to speak of. The required safety systems and mechanics and buffers that have to be put in by law comprised a significant percentage of total weight.

Should it? Yes. Is it? No.

When your project is invariably 50% over budget, maintenance simply becomes the next guy's problem.

Alas, north Americans really do not know how to live in apartments. Mostly, apartment dwellers are regarded as second class citizens. When the common wisdom tells everyone the road to middle-class wealth and financial freedom is through house ownership, people will buy the biggest one they can afford, with the highest leverage they can get away with. Apartment dwellers are regarded as those who do not have such drive and ambition, ie, they are lesser humans.

I would love to find a nice, small, comfortable, upscale apartment in the city, that has such 21st century luxuries like sound insulation, laundry, and common area cleaning services, and is inhabited by people who are socialized and civilized. But, monster houses are for people with money, apartments are for people who have none. The quality of the accommodations reflect that.

High gas prices aren't gonna fix anything, unless they double or triple.