In economics, try using the mean absolute deviation for a Black-Scholes computation. Oopsie. You just way underestimated the volatility and lost your shirt.

Using the mean deviation is kind of like kissing your sister. Nice, but it doesn't go anywhere. Significance testing is right out, for starts.

Indiana already charges its residents tax (state, county, and local) via their income tax forms, for all on-line and distance sales on which Indiana Sales Tax was not paid. Virtually EVERY state (as far as I know) collects the equivalent of its sales tax on purchases of things like automobiles made out of state and not taxed a point of sale.

So no more Apple Macintoshes running a Mac OS? Or iPhones running the Apple iOS? That is just plain never going to happen.

I thought EVERYBODY made their first post to slashdot as AC.

Several AT&T reps have admitted to me that, while this report may be TECHNICALLY true, it really isn't. AT&T makes a routine (but unannounced, as far as I know) practice of capping data transfer rates of all high users, and unlimited plan customers are at the top of the list.

Or anyway gives you two to keep crossed at final compile time as the errors come cascading out and you start to type in your patch code .

This assumes, of course, that the person can probably count above 10 with their shoes on. An assumption, by the way, which I've found is not always justified in some of the coders (and even some design engineers) I ran across during a career that spanned five decades in the business (OK, so just barely five).

No, in fact, I don't. I can tell you, however, that one of the most successful American genre writers in recent years, Robert A. Heinlein, was an unabashed partisan of libraries, and even in his years of declining health accepted as many speaking invitations from the American Library Association and its affiliates as he possibly could. He wrote several times, I believe, of his reasons for his stance on this. He did not face the issue of ebooks ... that came after his time. But I doubt that it has invalidated any of his points in favor of libraries.

I have yet to meet a debate in which I did not favor the side of the Libraries, if there was one.

Don't look at me. I donated to Senator Paul's campaign two years ago. I don't think the Republic is in any peril of falling any time soon ... unlike a number of left-wing groups, who were certain (in 1972) that Nixon would never allow an election to take place in 1976 and would make himself permanent ruler of the country. Little did they know that Nixon would not even be a factor, except as a very bad example, in the '76 election.

No, It certainly isn't Democrats today. But as I say, it easily could be in the future. Political winds change.

Can't wait until some future President (a la Nixon, and then some) declares the Democratic Party to be a terrorist organization. After all, if they persist in opposing THE President, they are obviously coming together to overthrow the established order, aren't they?

Funny, we seem to have missed that message. My senior year in high school, the lead player on the state high school basketball championship team (kind of a state religion here in Indiana), who also won the Arthur Trester Award that year as the outstanding individual player was also a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. In fact, the coach coach of that team attributed their victory at least in part to the fact that his team had the highest GPA and highest standardized test scores of any team in the Final Four.

When I lived in Chicago (until 2002) the Jewel Food chain (largest chain of groceries) had a service (affiliated or not I'm not sure) called PeaPod that delivered fresh food from their stores ... pretty much anything they stocked ... for a reasonable fee (plus a tip, if you had any sense and planned to order again). This was a GREAT service. I really missed them when we moved, and would welcome a similar service in my area.