aaaaaand we move one step closer to a world where everything is done by machines. What do we do when anything that isn't "art" is doable by (non-human) automotons? The good answer would be "relax and let our robot slaves do everything" but realistically, with our current social, political, and economic systems, soemonwe would own the machines and make all the money while the masses would be left to pursue an ever-diminishing job pool. Name a job that cannot be done by robots and software....one day your answer will be wrong. MIlitary? nope. we have predator-like systems that are automated and even use facial recognition software to pre-authorize a "kill-shot" Manufacturing? 3d printers. CAD design? not too l.ong before computer-aided becomes computer-run. Not that this is the best topic to rant on, but the japanese have nurse and childcare robots, right? If I recall, there's even a programming language written by a computer. politicians are talking about job creation when nearly every scientific and business researcher out there is actively engaged in the pursuit of job destruction and has been for nearly two centuries. How can we continue to base an economy off the idea that everyone should attempt to be gainfully employed when we continue to replace every possible job with automation?

The purest form of economic freedom exists when all forms of robbery are "legal" *f it is economic freedom to pay-for-wages what will not allow existance, it is economic freedom to secure life-sustaining goods by ANY means. The economic freedom posited by those with econmic "means" is simply an excuse to use force-of-law to procure goods via economic "violence" while other forms of procuring goods are made illegal. If it is accepted to use law to force the poor to starve their children, that becomes legally sanctioned economic violence. Just as we have laws to protect the goods of the wealthy agaist "gun barrel economics", we can and should have laws to protect the lives of the poor against "pocketbook violence". The ultimate result of prolonged economic violence is physical violence, in the form of bloody revolt. Just ask Marie Antoinette.

Hey now, every COOL C64 user ran f-15 strike eagle or arctic fox. Now GEOS just made me scratch my head until we got an actual PC. I jsut wish I'd had a modem and used the BBSs back then.

Not at all what was/is done...what is done is akin to paying the telephone company so that when someone calls 411 looking for dave's car repair, the operator is paid to say "I can give you the number to joe's car repair if you like, they're really good, it's 555-1234...oh, and if you still want dave's the nubmer is 555-1357." It's a bit shady, and to be honest, it does strike me as a misuse of a trademark...one company is profiting from the use of a trademark, and it is not the company using it.

Whereas a master's degree in business administration if often enough for a $200,000 per-year job in the private setor, a PhD in education rarely nets $80,000. We have an "industry" of low pay. When the argument is made that CEOs must be paid 10 million per year to attract the best, is it less reasonable to assume that low pay attracts lower quality educators? We have a relative shortage of teachers. If schools were flooded by applicants, bad teachers could be fired. As it is, we spend so little on education my child's kindergarten teacher asked us to donate crayons so the kids could color. No business will ever look to fire bad apples when they are already short on manpower. I worked in such an industry, and the sad fat was that the easy work was given to the incompetant, and the competant looked forward to starting their own business and getting out as soon as possible.

In the USA, there is often a dramatic difference between early morning voters (usually elderly or thos who work in schools) Mid-day voters (usually unemployed or work non-standard hours) and evening voters (usually work a regular day job) if the 2% was spread out evenly over space and time, representing a random sample, inference is acceptable, but if it represents, let's say, the several thousand factory workers who voted right after work in a district that is abuzz with fervor for a new labor-friendly candidate...yeah, you can't base that 2% of the other 98%

What's annoying to any non-jingoist is that people are condemning this as an evil agressive act....yet USSR and USA did the same thing 50+ years ago. It is obvious that the USA won't invade any nation actually capable of fighting a decent war. So long as the USA picks on weak nations and attempts to keep them down, then the first goal of any reasonable small nation will be to get their military capacity to the point that the USA won't have absolute imperial control if they so wish. The only way to achieve that parity for most small nations is a nuclear program. Once they have their nukes they will simmer down and be less agressive.

In 2nd grade we did "surveys and graphs" on juice preferences. While most kids followed the assignment (asking favorite juce and then marking it down) I added another column based on my observations, because half the kids I asked asked me "which one is winning" and then chose whatever I told them was winning as their favorite. The drive to conform exists in social animals. And as Steve-o (not fron jackass) learned of punky clothing in "SLC Punk"... It's just another uniform.

or why $100 a year is somehow worse than $9.95 a month... Math really isn't that hard, and $119.40 is more than $100

Nope. I have seen people who, confronted with a choice between stretched, grainy SD, and beautiful HD with bars on the side... at least 10% insist that the grainy, stretched picture is the HD one, and the tight, clear picture with bars to fill it in is the standard version.

Hogwash! CRT is actually excellent. Apples and oranges, because most people are comparing SD CRT to HD LCD/Plasma. Additionally, most idiot consumers thing digital = HD, and also that widescreen = HD. I cannot tell you how often I have seen HD programming with the sidebars, and then have someone complain about it being SD, then switch over to a grainy widescreen picture and say "ahhh, that's better" ...and how often I hear people who think that february '09 is "HD DAY"