Why does it matter how much water a dishwater uses? The water comes from a river, goes through the water treatment plant, is piped out to homes, is piped back to the sewage treatment plant, then is returned to the river. If it's cheaper to just process more water than it is to decrease water usage, why not just go that route? This is very different from agricultural uses where much of the water evaporates or is transpired by the plants.

So, what is the problem? I don't get it.

What happens if they enter 'inf' or 'nan' as the quantity?

As a percentage of GDP, federal tax revenue has been lower than 2001 spending for every year except 2006 and 2007. Expenses have, of course, been even higher. But this suggests that even sustainable spending at 2001 levels requires raising federal tax revenues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png

Or, keep your budget balanced during the good times so you can easily afford to take on debt in a crisis. If the US didn't do into this recession with debt already shaping up to be a serious long-term problem, there'd be a lot less to worry about.

Are CO2 concentrations actually so localized such that it matters where you're trying to remove it from the atmosphere? I thought this was a global problem.

This has been proposed a lot recently. It was the real hope for a grand bargin between Republicans and Democrats. However, the sticking point was whether the change would be revenue neutral. Republicans demanded it be dropped by at least as much as was saved, Democrats wanted to drop the tax rate by less than what would be saved in exemptions and credits.

Though, they might not appreciate you crushing the drive before you send it in for warranty repair/replacement.

There are plenty of non-profit corporations. Incorporation is fairly common among charities.

Put 'report bug' as an option in the help menu. And make sure your bug-reporting mechanism is the best-tested portion of the entire piece of software.

Bill Gates has built up a lot of wealth, but I'd be surprised if he has much income. I thought he had reached the point where he is now mostly just coasting away on his savings.

They did that. Hence why Stars content will no longer be on Netflix.

Given how the Netflix stock nosedived after his announcement of exiting the DVD business, I don't think this is an accurate assessment.

You should not, however, be allowed to make minor changes, recompile it, and then sell it as your own.

A lot of video game companies teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. Sometimes it isn't corporate greed, but a collective failure to develop products that can sell enough to pay the real costs of producing it.

There are a few clever ways you could get around tagging produce items individually. One would be to put an id tag on bags, and track the contents of the bags in the store computer system. You could integrate that with the weighing process, perhaps, to streamline it.

You're right that there's a few tricky spots, and it's not perfectly clear how it would best be handled. Nevertheless, I think if you can get tags cheap enough, it would be a great application.