I guess it depends on whether you see your memory card as half empty or is you see it as half full, though I am not sure which option you choose to reflect which world view. I have more than ten so the choice was easier.

I would like a rule that requires political ads to be played a significantly lower level than programming. A person can dream, can't they?

Isn't it just a matter of scale? Monkey security agents just have it easier. Authorized monkeys, only the monkey security agents and humans, of course. Unauthorized monkeys all other monkeys. Think of human security agents as secondary screening.

One amendment... News Corp doing business with North Korea is a-ok. They would roast any other company doing so.

Think about how Fox News would treat a company that has significant ownership by a Muslim stockholder with that stockholder donating to the group building the Cordoba Center (the one Fox News called the "gound-zero mosque"), and deals with North Korea. My guess is that their description would hint at terrorism. If you have not guessed what corporation might fit this description, that's right, News Corp.

Shouldn't every company be barred from misleading their customers?

As someone who has evaluated a lot of resumes, I thought it was common practice for programmers to just list every coding/scripting language regardless of exposure to it.

Perhaps, but there has not been major press on every news network about the secret android prototype as the next version of the Droid. Compare that with the press circus around the apple prototype. I have not seen android news pushing much beyond tech press.

The new iPhone rumors began in January, and culminating in the massive leak last month. I think this had a big impact on sales. Since Apple does not do constant incremental upgrade like other manufacturers, I think it more likely to be subject issues of waiting and pent-up demand. And, unlike with many Apple products and update cycles, the general public is pretty well informed on the new iPhone to come.

As you said, every day you read that is a slightly faster/better android phone, so some people might wait, but if upgrades are constant, it would argue for less seasonality. You buy when you need that new phone. That is not the case with the iPhone, there are big surges with the new models, which come yearly. That is seasonal adjustment that needs to be modeled into the time-series.

Take a look here http://www.worldchampioncheese.org/_apps/contest_results/ Wisconsin almost always has a maker in the top 10.

They should have named Saccharomyces pastorianus the state microbe.

The summary says, "...used in an unarguably fair-use manner," but the problem is that there are no definitions of fair use that can't be argued. There are guidelines, but the only way to determine that a use is fair is to argue it in a court and prevail. Sure there may be uses that are so clear cut that a reasonable person would agree that the use is fair, and prior case law helps guide decisions, but try asking a lawyer to confirm your use to be fair use, and you'll rarely get a clear answer.

I'm not saying this is not a case of fair use, but in having a system where the one way to be certain is to go to trial is going to lead to conservative behavior in users of content.

I would go for sky burial, if I had a choice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

It is only flattering if you acknowledge the one you imitate. It is not only the honorable thing to do, but in scholarship a necessity. It avoids sloppiness of thinking and provides linkages to the origins of the original thought. For example I hight doubt the author of the quote "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" was a Zen Master as the person who wrote it, Charles Caleb Colton, was a 17th century English Cleric (Wikipedia).

While I do believe there are original thoughts, unlike Jim Jarmusch, I do believe that knowledge in our civilization advances by our building on the works of others in all aspects of the life, science and art. There needs to be reasonable respect for IP (the incentive to create for some but still less than life+70 yrs), and even more reasonable terms of use (the incentive to make things even better). Still, when things enter the public domain, I see no less of an obligation to attribute the content to the original source.

Much of the standing on the shoulders of giants we do may be way of inspiration, which can be hard to attribute, but it does sound like this is the case for the author in cited. She is an unrepentant plagiarist, and deserves scorn heaped upon her.