I find your viewpoint interesting... if you wouldn't deny money sent from God, but would deny your parents, how do you know God didn't influence your parents? That's tangential, and hopefully not offensive. In any event, I fully admit that I have a more collectivistic tendency than most Americans, and I'm okay with…

But we were talking specifically about taxation, and the claim was made that some people are taxed a majority of their income. So far, this hasn't been borne out by any of the data presented.

You know, I've never lived in a state with an income tax. What do the brackets run? Medicare and SS withholding seem like red herrings, at 6.2% and 1.45%, respectively (and SS is only collected on the first $110,100 of income). Likewise, since insurance isn't provided by or paid for by the government I have a hard…

A stereotype need have no basis in fact, and the etymology of the word has no connection to the truth of the belief (it comes to us by French and Latin and means "firm impression"). Many stereotypes are demonstrably false, such as that women are lousy drivers (insurance companies charge men more because we get in more…

This sounds like we're treating OWS as one homogenous group. Those with smartphones must, by some extension, have student loan debt? There are a lot of statistics my university has compiled about student loans - most significantly that over time a greater percentage of reimbursement has been shifted from state funds…

I'm not sure where you're going with this. So you talked to some people who had no concept of what it meant to be in the 1%, and...? The message of OWS is about government policy - or at least, the OWS protestors with whom I've spoken. Bailing out banks (to the tune of $7.7 trillion dollars, we recently found out) who…

I'm not sure why your judgment of them is consequential to the validity of the movement. Is the argument that people who disagree with the political system but who aren't dirt poor aren't allowed to be pissed off? What, exactly, are the ground rules for who is and isn't allowed to protest government malfeasance? The…

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about the protesters as a whole. I find it difficult to have a rational discussion when your argument is based entirely on speculation ("they're protesting things they barely understand," "they're idiotic and useless," etc). While it may be easier for you to dismiss them by…

I guess my only question is... do the 99% have to live like a third world country before they're allowed to protest policies and actions that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest?

But the protests aren't about getting stuff for the protestors. They're about the outsized influence that corporations and the extremely wealthy have on politics... that's where the whole 1%/99% thing comes from. The charge of OWS is that 1% of people wield more influence over politics in America than the other 99%…

I had my bike stolen from work one time. I filed a report with the police, gave them the serial number (when you buy a bike at REI they give you a packet with the serial written down for you), and promptly went out and bought another bike. Who's ever heard of police recovering a stolen bike? Comedians make jokes about…

One issue is the question of how much of your CPU/RAM/battery Carrier IQ is using. If it's having a detrimental effect on your experience by making the phone run slower or die faster then it's a big enough deal to bitch about, IMHO. ;-)

According to Carrier IQ there are a lot of things it can do. The most obvious is that it can record your location and network/data status at the time of an event (i.e., what was happening and where when your text failed to send or you couldn't load a webpage?). This gives them information about signal, congestion, and…

"Of course we're not sexting, mom. We're too busy talking about HAM radio!"

Well, first, the writers here were probably in elementary school or junior high when there was no internet, so the answer to that was probably, "not much." Second, why are you reading a tech blog if you have little interest in reviews of tech?

Sweet. Time to Occupy Your Girlfriend's House.

Megapixels aren't necessary for sharp images or good color. A good CCD can give you sharp, vibrant images at 5MP. I don't mind the smaller CCD as much as the quality of the color and the low light noise... that's really disappointing. Especially since I'd hoped this would be my next phone. Ugh.

I don't know what kind of diabetic your dad is, but I'm a type I diabetic (insulin dependent - I don't make any insulin of my own) and it would take weeks of high blood sugar before I fell into a coma. This isn't to downplay the seriousness of hyperglycemia (which can cause blindness, kidney damage, loss of…

Are you from the city of Bellingham, WA? We're referred to as Bellinghamsters... I've been a hamster for about 6 years now.

The ITU expanded the definition of 4G to include HSPA+ at the same time they included LTE and WiMax (worth noting that they mention LTE and WiMax specifically, but also agree to regard as 4G, "other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the…