Why shouldn't the Senate be connected to the states? The House of Representatives is. Unless you are planning on getting rid of states completely (and all of the state-level laws, regulations, taxes, public representation, correctional facilities, etc.), you have to ensure Congress consists state representatives. Our entire country is built on the concept of different levels of government with different levels of authority. By removing state representation, you are essentially talking about a fundamental recreation of our government.

You say that it is insane that New York gets the same number of senators as North Dakota. Why is that insane? We have the House of Representatives to ensure that people are represented in terms of population. We have the senate to ensure the needs of the less populated states are not simply ignored. Because the Senate and House represent the population in different ways, different needs can be addressed, which forces compromise. The conflict between the Senate and House also will delay bills and limit heat-of-the-moment and knee-jerk bills from being passed to quickly... this does not always happen, but it does to an extent.

You want an automated system to create districts that ignore states. Well, even if you ignore the concept that our entire federal legislative system is built on the idea of state representation and such a change would mean a recreation of our country's government, how would you create such a system that was fair to all? It would obviously have to be dynamic to change as the population changes. But a change in the algorithm to create the states could have just as much of an affect as intentional gerrymandering. In many cases, large cities have very different needs than the rest of the state. If an automated system made a put a large city in a single district, then you have 1 district that will view things a certain way. If the automated system split the city into quadrants and included a little bit of area around the city, then you will have 4 districts that represent the city that will also override the needs of the areas surrounding the city. What type of automated algorithm can be created that is fair to all? Gerrymandering is typically done by parties. An automated system could potentially be far worse, IMO

I don't know much about tax laws and financial laws other than they can often be complex and confusing. I suspect the complexity grows substantially with non-profit organizations (such the Linux Foundation, in which Torvalds is a key person). Perhaps by accepting tips for what is essentially his job, he is opening up a can of worms that he doesn't want to touch.

That is just wild speculation, though.

According to the article the UAS is completely autonomous. This means the sub can simply 'listen' to what the drone broadcasts without giving away its location. The drone may indicate a sub is within listening range, but it does not give away its location.

Perhaps the grades are lower because the notes are not as helpful.

When I was in college, I always found that laptop notes were of little to no use when taking notes for anything other than text. If I wanted to copy a graph, I couldn't do so without wasting time or taking my focus away from the prof. If I needed to draw a diagram, I couldn't do it very well on my laptop's small touch pad. And finally, if anything involved non-standard text (subscripts, mathematical symbols, etc), then I encountered even more difficulty. Using a stylus and a tablet may be easier than a laptop now... but that is still just writing and I would rather do it on paper in most cases.

-Me

Correction: TFA says they can apply for REIMBURSEMENT. I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay $5000 now and then wait several months to get my money back.

I don't care what laws are meant to do nearly as much as what they actually do. Isn't that part of the reason why /. loves to bash things such as the Patriot Act and SOPA? Please do not defend laws by saying they are meant to do something good.

What do they mean by "physically impossible geometries"? Are they talking about things that have a higher or lower number of physical dimensions (eg: a 4 dimensional object or a 2 dimensional object)? A weird combination of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry?

30,000? And where did you get that number?

The key words in that are " large businesses'". Small and medium size companies often try and prevent from getting tech that is completely outdated, but they often have small IT budgets and departments. This means they have to choose what is more cost effective... spending ten's of thousands of dollars maintaining a system that meets their needs works or spending hundred's of thousands upgrading a system simply because it is old. Those upgrades do happen occasionally, but not often. One of my friends works in IT a large company... he is still a relatively low ranking employee at his company, and yet, the number of employees that he has working directly under him is about the same size as the entire IT department at my country. When we talk, we are greatly amused at the differences in the working environments and problems we face. When an IT guy says they cannot understand why a company still uses technology X or has not upgraded to Y when X still works, I can tell they have never worked for a small company that views technology as little more than a necessary evil (as far as budgets are concerned). The smaller companies usually recognize that upgrading to various things could offer definite advantages... but most times, upgrading is not economically feasible. I know budget plays a role in every company, but It seems to play a much larger role in small and medium size companies that do not produce IT related products.

My $0.02

That is a big thing. Other departments that use systems hate any changes that disrupt their work. Learning new systems takes work and slows them down and often takes away what they see as advantages. On our old green screens, many users have key sequences memorized so they can carry out various actions (such as data entry) with only occasional glances at the screen. Forcing them to use a new tool takes that away that ability until they relearn it. Even if the new tool offers new feature or options, the user will consider it to be an inconvenience unless it benefits them, personally. If they can see how it benefits other departments, they will usually (grudgingly) accept the changes. If it only improves things on the back end (that only IT people see), they will avoid using it until we force them to use the new tool and take away the old tool.

Not only that, but many users will often use applications incorrectly unless it has checks to prevent this. If a new application implements something to prevent that misuse, the user will complain that the program has a "bug" because they can no longer do something. From their perspective, this is an inconvenience and a disruption because it forces them to change the way they do things without providing them with any benefits. For example, an old version of one of our apps lacked certain data entry checks. So the data entered by one department would often end up creating new data records because one of the users was too lazy to look up an existing record. This meant we would have multiple data records all representing the same supplier or multiple records representing the same customer. While this would occasionally affect other departments, it did not cause that department many (if any) problems... so they didn't see any problem with their way of doing things. When an updated tool was deployed, those users complained that it didn't work right or it was forcing them to do extra work (just a couple seconds), when in reality, it was preventing problems in other departments and saving another guy from spending time every week cleaning up data.

"Don't want a gaming console that requires a persistent internet connection? 'Don't buy it.'"

There, fixed it.

Your description of time is to general and relative.

Similar things can be said about those that believe the government has to regulate everything or constantly increase the national debt in an attempt to stimulate the economy, while ignoring empirical evidence that says it won't work.

The thing is, economics is not a hard science in which you can come up with a theory, test it and find you have a plausible theory or an error in your theory. One theory or model will not always work in every case and, if you look, you can find instances and empirical data the contradicts most models at some point. If there was a perfect model, you would have a lot more people that know exactly how to invest without risk. Faith in a free market is not some delusion as your post implies.... it is just not the cure-all solution that.

You ignored a key part of his argument. Hey said most albums only have a couple song that people want. I happen to agree with this. I haven't bought a lot of mp3s from amazon, but the ones I have seen have an average price of about $1.29. If you actually want an entire album, then I agree that it is worth a little more to get a physical item. However, if I only want 2 songs for a total of $2.58, I cannot justify spending $16.79 + shipping to get several songs I do not want. I added shipping to the cost because I don't have amazon prime and that price doesn't qualify for super saver.

The bar must be empty because the work never ends.

<sarcasm> And I am sure that by comparing this country's statistics related to one subject with the statistics of other countries with different populations densities, cultures, stances on various political and moral topics, availability of mental health treatment, demographics, crime rates (in crimes that are often related to gun violence and crimes that are not), gang activity, methods for punishing crime, and economic climates, you will get you perfectly accurate results. </sarcasm>

Correlation or Causation?