You can build simple apps with only basic math skills (such as adding ints together where necessary, etc.). Stuff like that is mostly logic anyway, and it's more important to know how to plan ahead and when/how to do each subroutine to accomplish the larger job. On the other hand, anything low-level usually requires a far greater math understanding. For instance, you aren't going to invent a new crypto algorithm/implementation without a mastery of the underlying mathematical concepts.

Same here. My own homemade antenna I built for around $10 (simple dipole loop design, I wanted to keep things simple the first time around) works fine. There's a whole lot of shit on local TV but at least I don't have to pay for it.

Credit where it's due: Obama has done a pretty good job, in spite of the unprecedented obstructionism he had had to put up with every step of the way.

Except Hovind actually deserves to go to jail. Tax evasion is more serious than running a torrent site. Also, the guy is a creationist, for fucks sake. He makes his money by bullshitting gullible people like any other con man.

Yep. My carpal tunnel got a lot better when I started using my Model Ms. I have one at home and one at work. My coworkers laugh and give me shit about my "ancient" keyboard but I'm never going to give it up.

The worst one was where they advertised a guy who took out a loan to fill up his car. Yes, the car he probably just hocked the title to. I actually yelled "Are you fucking kidding me?!?" at my TV.

I built my antenna out of about $10 of scrap metal, a coax splitter/balun, and some solder. The most expensive bit was a 20ft coax cable needed to reach my TV. The one-time cost is nothing.

You forgot to mention the commercials where they advertise going to those godawful payday or title loan places to get money to pay your bills. Yeah, it's a fucked up world.

The cocaine-huffing media executives don't think that way. They're still living a few decades ago when they had a captive audience they could gouge with impunity. Back then, the only real piracy of live events going on was the occasional guy with a dodgy cable hookup.

Can Open/Libreoffice edit Docx files without breaking them? That was a big problem for me a few years ago.

I suppose everyone else is a "liberal" to extreme right-wingers. Clinton was a moderate by USA standards, but he was a right-winger by world standards. If the USA political spectrum were a football field (with the moderates at the 50-yard line), the repubs would be situated down past their side's goalposts, through the bleachers, and somewhere out in the parking lot. It's fucking scary.

Don't blame Clinton for the shutdown. I'm not sure what was in that budget, but it must have been terrible since as a moderate, Clinton was willing to negotiate most of the time. You seem to overlook the fact that the repubs were the ones issuing threats. How little has changed. They're still a bunch of spoiled children, as evidenced by their last shutdown a year or two ago.

You're damn right this country was great back when we had strong union jobs and a family could live comfortably on a single income. There were strong regulations and the top tax bracket was near 90%. Things weren't great for everyone but at least we weren't fucked like we are now.

I'd like to see where you're getting your numbers.

So tell me, how do tax cuts for the rich translate into lower deficits? Repubs have been promising that for decades and it has never worked. It's fools math the repubs like to sell to folks who don't know any better. The government requires money to run. If you're not getting the money from taxes, it needs to come from someplace else. You either need to borrow it to pick up the slack (deficit) or do cuts (which affects most people rather badly). So where does the extra money come from?

The mortgage debacle was caused by corporate greed and lack of regulation. The banks would give a loan to anyone who could fog a mirror because they could make a quick profit iby reselling those shit loans and leave someone else holding the bag. Furthermore, Bush had advance warning of 9/11 and did nothing.

Except a lot of the dems don't advocate all those things. They play lip service to the ideas but they never follow through. What is liberal or socialist about that? The dems' only saving grace is they aren't as spiteful as the repubs-- the repubs have often been incredibly mean-spirited lately just to gin up their racist inbred base, and I for one am sick of it.