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Sorry there are plenty of non-cheap forgeries floating around, being passed off as real. To ignore this is idiotic.

And of course there are some examples of things like fake pharmaceuticals that have led to death of their victims.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/health/living-well/falsified-medicine-bate

So no, it is not a benign problem.

Run the numbers yourself, if you don't believe me: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

Another reason for the lower cost of living is that Texas has no state income tax, so you see more of your paycheck than in California.

The American Association of Pediatrics believes the benefits of circumcision outweighs the risks.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/health/aap-circumcision-recommendation

Keep in mind that this is a trade organization looking out for the interests (profit) of its members. They also are willing to conveniently overlook the fact that performing surgery on non-consenting minors to remove normal, healthy, functional body parts violates medical ethics. The vast majority of the world's men have their entire dick and aren't in poor health as a result. Regardless of whether you buy into the circumcision hype, the bottom line is that men should decide for themselves what happens to their OWN penis. After all, they are the ones who are going to live with ramifications.

Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital

The American Association of Pediatrics believes the benefits of circumcision outweighs the risks.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/health/aap-circumcision-recommendation

Because it turns out there are good health reasons for circumcising babies.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/health/aap-circumcision-recommendation

Calling circumcision "violence" is like saying a doctor using a scalpel to cut off a person's overgrown mole or cyst is violence.

It indicates you, and the rest of the anti-circumcision freaks have no idea what the word "violence" means.

So, at what point do we wake up and realize that current models of hardware and software development are fundamentally flawed in terms of having products which by their very nature introduce unacceptable security risks to store any data or information?

- at no point, because it's not true.

There is nothing flawed about our hardware and software models, nothing more flawed than for example our own replication machinery built into each one of us, and it is complex and it sometimes produces unfortunate results.

It is all a cost benefit analysis and basically if we were to scrap our current models and to throw away the hardware and the software and to start from scratch (or whatever you are talking about), the results would be similar to us giving up all of our technology and going back to the caveman ages because we don't have the perfect technology and perfect outcomes and perfect solutions.

Cost benefit tells us that we put as much energy as we can to build up these systems and we are getting a very good use of them and that if we tried to spend every waking moment of every day just trying to build the most perfect solutions, the benefit would be very marginal and not actually worth the effot (not that we would succeed, by the way, that's not a guarantee at all).

when you send Dennis Rodman as your CIA agent/ambassador to NK.

Precisely. How much credibility does Holder have left, after essentially saying the 5th amendment does not exist?

Yeah, gunwalking. That sounds really bad. The facts, however, are a bit different than had been reported initially.

This is an illuminating read: http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

--AC

You are right. Apparently there are a lot of people fooled by the post 9/11 security theater and are complaining about this change http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/06/travel/tsa-carry-on-changes/. These people (air marshals, flight attendants) should know better, but I guess the US government has managed to drop the average citizen IQ by about 20 units in recent years.

What is interesting is that while I have lost numerous swiss army knives and pocket screwdrivers (I always have a multi-tool with me and I often forget to leave it home or check it in when flying), I have had the added insult of being given metal cutlery (fork & knife) in the flight! The TSA yelled at me "THIS IS A KNIFE!" for a tiny 1-inch blade and then they give me a 4+ inch knife to eat my lunch... I don't remember the airlines with the metal knives, but I think it was Lufthansa once that had these flags nailed on the head-rests. The flag-poles where about 20inches long with an extremely sharp point (that could actually nail the head-rest) and were, sadly, a much better weapon than my foldable screwdriver the TSA had confiscated a few minutes earlier...

little googling

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/13/technology/intel.eu.fortune/index.htm

http://www.justice.gov/atr/icpac/chapter5.htm
"According to economists who have studied the issue, non-European firms that make telecommunications equipment do not have an equal voice in setting European telecommunications standards. The European firms use their influence inside ETSI to choose standards that have been developed by European firms and disadvantage technologies developed by non-European firms."

Just 'cause they target their own, doesn't mean they don't preferentially target foreigners.
US fines local companies too.

Like WTO disputes. Each country has a knack for finding practices by foreign companies to be anticompetive, while ignoring their own.

Hardly. They did not even get 50% of the market in 2012 Q4.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/31/technology/mobile/android-tablet-market-share/index.html

This kind of thing happens whenever you have an opinionated celebrity with controversial views that are at odds with a lot of their fan base.

Erm... no. No it doesn't. It "happens" when celebs fail to be politically correct. When a celeb with a cohort of degenerates says something politically correct it is celebrated and rewarded. No media drama. No discussion about precisely how far we need to bury the reprobate.

The phenomena is not symmetric. There are social check valves through which we stratify each other. Those valves are arranged by wealthy, urban multi-culties and their many well trained aspirants.

Sorry but that's just confirmation bias.

Here's one among many Google fails, Google's calendar missed having the December of 2012.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/19/tech/mobile/google-december-mistake

Simply put, customers already are voting with their wallets.

How's that working out for you?

His severance package is $378.36. not $378 thousand or $378 million, Three Hundred and Seventy Eight dollars and Thirty Six cents.

Now, I won't defend the Army's treatment of Manning after his arrest. But he shouldn't have been surprised he was charged with the crimes he is accused of.

This is different from the Ellsburg case, in that Ellsberg did not have an active clearance at the time he acquired and distributed the Pentagon Papers.

This false. Ellsberg had a clearance while working at DoD and then RAND Corporation, during which time he both contributed to the Pentagon Papers and later copied and distributed them. See, for example, here.

Bradley Manning was an active-duty serviceman, and as such was subject to the restrictions imposed on him by his security clearance. Every person with security clearance is required to sign a document stating that if you ever disclose classified material acquired in the course of your duties to anyone not entitled to have it, the government will prosecute you to the hilt. It's not an ambiguous or hard-to-understand document.

The above link explains that during Ellsberg's trial, the government did attempt to use the fact that he'd signed a security statement, like Manning.

Beyond these details, your broader suggestion that Manning's actions were different from Ellsberg's is contradicted by no less an authority than Daniel Ellsberg himself, who has said, among other things, that "I was Bradley Manning."

While it doesn't seem that it was stated that they are the greatest threat it was stated that the DHS views them as a threat. After it came out there was massive backpedaling from that statement though. For sources see:
The Washing Times
CNN
The actual DHS report courtesy of Fox News
The actual DHS report courtesy of FAS if you don't like fox
CBS news

When was the last time N Korea arrested visitors saying they were CIA spies? On the contrary, N Korea is very welcoming to foreigners, including Americans.

Charges as CIA spies? How bourgeois. It is much simpler and a better reflection of North Korean socialist morality to just hold a trial.

2 U.S. reporters get 12 years in N. Korea - June 08, 2009

Two American television journalists today were convicted of a "grave crime" against North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor, a move that increased mounting tensions between the U.S. and the reclusive Asian state.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced by the top Central Court in Pyongyang in a two-day trial that started Friday as U.S. officials demanded the release of the two women.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the court "sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor" but gave no further details.

Because the pair were tried by the nation's highest court, there can be no appeal.

Of course the North Koreans are not especially shy about grabbing Americans.

North Korea says it has arrested American citizen - Sun December 23, 2012
North Korea arrests American; continues shelling near disputed border - January 28, 2010
North Korea arrests US man - December 29, 2009

And foreigners? The North Korean government loves foreigners. . . in a sort of "collect them and trade them!" kind of way.

Japanese kidnapped by North Koreans return home in tears
Kidnapped by North Korea
Armed North Koreans kidnap Chinese sailors
Jenkins Photo Proof Of Kidnapping? - ". . .she is a Thai national who was kidnapped by North Korean agents. . ."
Did North Korea Just Kidnap Two American Journalists?
Kidnappers Incorporated
Japanese families fear that North Korea is still abducting - North Korea had kidnapped nationals from at least 11 other countries, including France, Italy and the United States.

It seems they want to impress them, not arrest them.

Impress them in a Potemkin village sort of way, yes.

Welcome to Lenin Disney: North Korea’s otherworldly tourism experience

The surreality of visiting North Korea begins at customs. Officials in full military dress — and there are a lot of them, judging by this clandestine video shot by a Canadian tourist — announce that anyone carrying a cell phone must surrender it, to be returned on leaving. The experience gets weirder from there, based on the numerous travelogues and reports that have emerged since the country lifted many of its restrictions on American tourists in 2010.

Tourism is an opportunity for North Korea, whic

The "sequestration" cuts are $85B out of $3.6T, or ~2.4 %. This has motivated politicians from both parties, and loud-mouthed political actors of all stripes, to make wild claims about terrible consequences if the cuts were to be made. The implicit claim is that cutting 2.4% across the board would result in an "unready, hollow force", 9% unemployment, and all sorts of other horrific things (which I'm sure you've heard of by now).

Is it even true? From cutting a measly 2.4% of future spending? Or is it yet another shock doctrine exercise to distract us from other things we should be paying attention to instead? There's a book, BTW.

• How did we get de-industrialized over the past 40 years? Was there an upside for someone, and if so, who?
• Why does petroleum cost over $100/bbl when there is no shortage, demand has been decreasing since 2008, and it costs a small fraction of that to produce?
• Who supports "Al Qaeda"? (Hint)
• Why is wealth distribution becoming more and more polarized?
• Do wealthy companies, individuals, and organizations control the world's governments through (surprisingly affordable) "lobbying"?
• What will you retire on?
• How will climate change affect you over your lifetime?
• Where will your potable water come from 20 years from now?
• Why do we continue to eat such a massively unhealthy diet? What fraction of "out of control" medical care costs are directly attributable to that?
• Will your job or a job like it still exist in 2025? What will you be doing then?
• Why did we invade Iraq? Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we rattling our sabers at Iran if our "allies" in the middle east are by far the greatest financiers of terrorism?

etc.

We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.

At some point this evacuation of our industrial base to China will emerge as a moral issue. It's already an employment issue for the working class and a fiscal issue for the nation, but neither of those seem to comfortable office people and the ruling class.

Maybe the shame of all this will.

Importing from regimes that do not have equivalent regulatory rigor is exploitation.

Not all of the figures are in.

While this suggests a declining crime rate, those are figures from 2008-2009.

Violent crime is in fact experiencing an upturn, the biggest since 1993.

Regardless of whether it's going up or not, you can see the burglary/robbery rates are relatively high.

Did you miss the point? Americans who take all of their allotted vacation days face retaliation from their employers, including layoffs.

It amazes me when people are treated like criminals or animals and they don't become infuriated, or even react.

Who says that? You're marketing fodder, something that can be collected and used as data for monetary gain. Are you that Naive to assume that everybody out there wants to be your friend and just give you stuff for free? Free Services, step right up, get your Free Services, get your Free software right here. Yes, there are a *few* who have good intentions however there's a lot of folks out there making a buck on every click, every preference and every search you do. You use a credit card, the banks, the vendor, the credit card company are all tracking you. You buy an airline ticket, the same thing happens + the airline + the government and anybody else they'll sell your information to.

http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/a-rare-peek-at-homeland-securitys-files-on-travelers,10313/
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/06/pf/banks_sell_shopping_data/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Do you drive a car? If so your government is probably selling your information to dealerships, insurance companies and others.

http://blog.newsok.com/politics/2010/04/05/oklahoma-brings-in-millions-by-selling-personal-data/

Did you download that free app on your phone? It's tracking you.

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16530607-a-shock-in-the-dark-flashlight-app-tracks-your-location?lite

If you think that's treating you like a criminal then we're all criminals.

That has what to do with this?

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/creepy-graph-searchers/

Now you can have pedophiles stalk your kids all with the neat, new graph search!

The point is, you don't get something for nothing. Not in this day and age when every innocuous thing you do is tracked, mined and analyzed 100 different ways. In the case of Ubuntu, they're just following the crowd.

This article says differently.

Specifically, a lot of the honey (75%+) in grocery stores doesn't have the expected amount of pollen that pure honey would have. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's adulterated, of course, but since pollen is completely harmless and does nothing to affect longevity of the product, maybe one should be a bit suspicious about why they're removing it (note: the filtration is a process which increases production cost), if not to cover up fraud.

By contrast, every honey they sampled at farmers markets had the expected pollen. Again, this isn't an exhaustive study, but in contrast I see absolutely no support for your claim.

Get your honey from Trader Joe's then. Another article reported on testing of honey from major super markets, and pretty much all of it was fake with the exception of the honey they got from Trader Joe's, co-ops, and farmers markets.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/11/09/most-honey-sold-in-u-s-grocery-stores-not-worthy-of-its-name/

... And we in the U.S. really need to put some teeth in the FDA's inspection process.

I completely agree, but now this: http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/17/news/economy/federal-worker-furloughs/index.html?source=cnn_bin

Even the styling of their signature products has been directly copied from other company's work from the 70s.

....they copied Sony http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2012/07/27/apple-prototypes-show-iphone-inspired-by-sony-and-kickstand-ipad/index.html

Bwahhahaha. That's a good one. Reality check: no iPhone looked like any Sony product ever. The near final design for the first iPhone predates the Jony phone by quite some time - which is actually the result of an article about Sony's latest Walkman whose design was inspired by Apple design according to it's designer.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/01/the-sony-device-samsung-claims-inspired-apples-iphone/?source=yahoo_quote

What next, "the iPad is a copy of that thing in 2001"?

No. They predicted a >0% chance of an earthquake but told people it was a 0% chance, resulting in people who were already preparing for an earthquake to stop their preparations.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/23/world/europe/italy-quake-scientists-guilty

The experts determined that it was "unlikely" but not impossible that a major quake would take place, despite concern among the city's residents over recent seismic activity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/italian-scientist-earthquake-condemns-court

But [Claudio] Eva insisted neither he nor his colleagues had given any reassurances in their brief, 40-minute meeting. "We always maintained it was not possible to predict or exclude an earthquake," he said.

Now who do I believe, some guy named Rary on the Internet, or Jethro Mullen from CNN and Tom Kington from the Guardian?

Ouch CNN just accomplished it without a problem
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/index.html

John Broder got some explaining to do

CNN Link: http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/index.html Any decent driver (read: Probably your grandma) should be able to make that drive with range to spare. Regardless of the motivation of John Broder, this pretty much proves it can be done. I'm surprised Tesla let him try it! However, the first time you drive a Model S you aren't going to take it easy, I can tell you that much! (So fun!!!)

"My kids having a seizure! Wait, I know! I have an app on my phone that will tell me what to do." - Said no one, ever.

Mock and laugh you may, but when you are trapped by an earthquake in Haiti. you will wish you shilled for a company that makes proper phones.

I have points and so want to give them to you, but you're damn insightful and the funny will just drown that sense out. The thing is, if Dotcom was so forward with his 'desire' to be transparent, at least he'd say how much he paid out. I know Google does, and may not credit direct names, but did for a pseudonym. $60K is a nice haul for one bug!

HTC's problems werent from Microsoft.. HTC was the target of the opening salvo of mobile patent lawsuits, initiated by Apple.

N.B. I'm not saying that Microsoft's patent attacks directly went against HTC. HTC's poblems seem to be largely from redirecting R&D in the direction Windows Phone. Have a look at exactly when the competitiveness of their phones went down and it's exactly the time when they must have been directing a large effort to porting Windows to their hardware. What I'm saying is that it was partnering with Microsoft that damaged HTC. That at least partly will have

When the first wave of the mobile lawsuit armageddon geared up, the three companies distinctly absent from either end of these lawsuits were Google, Palm, and Microsoft (citation.)

A long time ago Microsoft even opposed patents. That attitude, however changed much earlier than people realise. Please remember that Microsoft v. TomTom took place in 2009 noticably before Apple started suing HTC.

To accuse Microsoft of being somehow a big offender is ignoring the history of these battles. Patent lawsuits wasn't how Microsoft operated, and to a large extent still isn't because nearly every lawsuit that targets Microsoft or is initiated by Microsoft ends in a (cross)licensing deal rather than a judgment and that includes Microsoft taking the short end of it (ex: licensing from Acacia Research.)

Microsoft has repeatedly spun off or supported companies like intellectual vendors which are archetypal patent trolls. Microsoft funded SCO in several direct and indirect ways (see groklaw.net for details) and it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that soon after Microsoft funding SCO started talking of patents. Microsoft claimed in 2007 that "Linux violated 235 of their patents" and it took years to prove that they were lying. They are circumspect; they do attempt to do most of their patent extortion behind NDAs. However that does not make things better. The opposite in fact. Microsoft is trying to use patents to set up a system where it alone has control of all software. Companies like Google which stand up to this should be seen as heroic.

I do understand that Microsoft is one of the only companies that have gone after Linux, and its probably unforgivable, but that doesnt make them one of the big offenders in mobile patent lawsuits. Making that claim just doesnt hold up to reality.

Microsoft extorted more from Android vendors than they charged for Windows 7. Most of this action was done under NDA and it wasn't until Barnes & Noble exposed this that it was clear how outrageous and ridiculous Microsoft's patent claims that they managed to get away with elsewhere are. Even then, Barnes & Noble were forced into selling off part of their E-reader business to Microsoft and investigating windows for tablets. Where Apple is a street punk, Microsoft is a mafia don. You hear more noise from Apple's legal action than Microsofts simply because the level of intimidation is lower and so people are more likely to stand up to them.

Why not? He bought the car with his money. They're stealing the hours of his life that he would have to work to buy another one. By what right is it theirs instead of his? I wouldn't think twice about killing someone who tried to steal my car or break into my house. If it turns out they're unarmed, well, that's a sad thing, but there's no way that anyone can know that the perp isn't armed. If they are, and if it turns out their goal is to gang rape your family instead of stealing a TV, can you kill them then in your "civilized society"? And if so, then how do you know what they're thinking?

Read the article: the man came out of his house (which means opening the door and crossing the distance to the street) with a loaded gun. Thirteen shots hit, which sounds to me like the little piece of shit was aggressively coming toward the clearly armed man. (Why, you ask? The article isn't sympathetic to the victim of this crime, and so if he had shot the thief in the back I'm pretty sure the police would have leaked that and the paper would have reported it.) When you're carrying a gun and someone tries to attack you, it's pretty hard to pretend that they don't have deadly intent. The thief got exactly what all thieves deserve. I oppose the judicial death penalty because I find the criminal justice system in the US to be untrustworthy at all levels, and you can't bring someone back who's been railroaded, but someone shot to death in flagrante delicto got what was coming to them.

If the victim in this story had been armed, he would still be alive and a couple of murderous redneck teenagers would be dead, with the added bonus that nobody would have to pay to incarcerate their worthless asses.

Yet, the manufacturer of the trip relay says "Based on the onsite testing, we have determined that if higher settings had been applied, the equipment would not have disconnected the power..." Based on Entergy's incorrect initial claims that "it wasn't us," I tend to think they're not being honest.

How does that work exactly ?

For this guy, something like this, so far:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/us/lapd-attacks/index.html

Google employees weren't reading the email

Actually, they were. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/15/google.privacy.firing/

And it's happened more than once. http://gawker.com/5638874/david-barksdale-wasnt-googles-first-spying-engineer

Relative to the cost of a soldier this seems reasonable, assuming British soldiers have a similar cost.

Again you don't get economic power, they don't have to physically remove money by force or even take value in the form of money, there are other ways.

They can pollute and make you suffer with it rather than paying for cleanup (where people can actually be killed in the long term) - and I just ran into this article on that very problem while writing this. Collude or form cartels to force prices up. Abuse their monopoly as Microsoft did. Assault your senses with ads that are loud, intrusive or dangerous - for example a restaurant near my office has a sign on the sidewalk that greatly reduces visibility for cars coming onto the main road. Some people's cars get wrecked, they get better advertising. A user car dealership near my house does the same thing, parking their cars on grass near the road's edge, greatly reducing visibility. There's also the issue of loud ads on TVs that were regulated away recently, they exchanged TV viewers' comfort in their homes for their own advertising power. Selling private information in the lack of privacy regulations - see how Facebook operates in the US vs. Germany.

Yes technically you aren't forced to use any of these things and you could avoid them, only practically that's not true unless you want to live like the Unabomber. And because people are technically free through the "Unabomber option," libertarians wash their hands of all these problems.

If people stop running red lights, you then make no money.

It then follows that you have to figure out ways to get people to run red lights again.

This is the major moral problem with trying to tie the law into money. The idea of fines is sound, but the idea of counting on the money from fines is not.

In my area, we have for profit prisons. What ever could go wrong? A company must make more money each accounting cycle, so the pressure is tremendous. There are limits to efficiency, so eventually you need more prisoners. the results can be nightmarish.

And in the states in Pennsylvania, that is exactly what happened. There were two judges who were prosecuted for sending teenagers to for profit prisons, and getting kickbacks. These teenagers had transgressions that were pretty mild. One young woman was sentenced to a wilderness camp for mocking her assistant principle - not even a crime!

http://voices.yahoo.com/former-judge-faces-corruption-trial-scranton-federal-7853240.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-02-23/justice/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges_1_detention-judges-number-of-juvenile-offenders?_s=PM:CRIME

You know what bugs me, in the U.S. there are all these cheating types who apologize AFTER they get caught, then go on talk shows to try to explain themselves away. Lance Armstrong saw the walls closing in from the Dept. of Justice, THEN he 'fesses up, to try to get to keep as much ill-gotten money as possible.

Sports Illustrated magazine pointed out that Armstrong waited until the five-year statute of limitations (on federal perjury charges) ran out before be confessed to Oprah: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20130118/lance-armstrong-legal-implications/

And he let Oprah interview him for damage control, since a lot of orginizations will be suing him for the money he sued them for when they said he was taking enhancing drugs. He even shed a tear on Oprah, crying for the money he might lose, not for the reason he said, his son's belief in him. He's a pathological liar who got caught in his web of lies, and he's probably convinced himself he can still get out of any future problems by lying. A sad example of greed and lust for fame, and nothing he says should ever be believed. I've known his type in my own life, con artists who think their sh*t doesn't stink,. Eventually people catch on to their game, and honorable people will have nothing to do with them, because once trust is blown, it's usually blown for good.

You know what bugs me, in the U.S. there are all these cheating types who apologize AFTER they get caught, then go on talk shows to try to explain themselves away. Lance Armstrong saw the walls closing in from the Dept. of Justice, THEN he 'fesses up, to try to get to keep as much ill-gotten money as possible.

Sports Illustrated magazine pointed out that Armstrong waited until the five-year statute of limitations (on federal perjury charges) ran out before be confessed to Oprah: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20130118/lance-armstrong-legal-implications/

Do you have to work hard to avoid everything that conflicts with your bizarre word view?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/28/challenger.anniversary.teacher/index.html - "The Challenger disaster's teachable moment"
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/columbia-anniversary/index.html - "NASA, Texas towns mark Columbia disaster"

But yes given Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia it takes a lot for something to reach "disaster" level for NASA.

Do you have to work hard to avoid everything that conflicts with your bizarre word view?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/28/challenger.anniversary.teacher/index.html - "The Challenger disaster's teachable moment"
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/columbia-anniversary/index.html - "NASA, Texas towns mark Columbia disaster"

But yes given Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia it takes a lot for something to reach "disaster" level for NASA.

I didn't know I really, really wanted an iPod until I saw one. Same with a cell phone, GPS, digital cameras, and palm pilots.

Exactly. People back in 2006 were asking whether or not the then-rumored iPhone would even make a dent in the market, and it was a good question to ask (then-CEO of Palm, Ed Colligan, famously said, "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in", back in November 2006). But as soon as the world saw it, it knew that direction was the future. Android came along shortly thereafter as an alternative in that same general vein (at least as compared to previous smartphones), and became wildly successful. Until we see what's next, we won't recognize it as being what's next, but it will likely come from a place we least expect.

That said, I wouldn't even argue that the duopoly is Android and iOS. I'd argue that it's Samsung and Apple, since that's where the profits are going. Google's purchase of Motorola is a long-term play to get into the more lucrative side of things (while also controlling more of the user experience), but it hasn't borne much fruit just yet. In the meantime, this has essentially become a competition between those two companies (with Amazon and Google joining the fight in the tablet space), rather than two platforms. As such, I do see believe there is plenty of room for other companies to edge in and take a piece of the pie.

The reasons Microsoft and BlackBerry (née RIM) are having trouble are numerous. Windows phones were clunky pieces of trash for years, and have only recently gotten better, yet they've decided to fetter them with a take on the Modern UI (née Metro UI) that is widely panned in the press. Similarly, BlackBerry devices got left behind years ago, making it extremely difficult for them to turn public perception around without spending gobs and gobs of money. And since they don't have it on hand, I don't expect them to succeed, regardless of how good BB10 is.

Interestingly, spending gobs of money is exactly the strategy Samsung chose to employ when it brought out the Galaxy line, and even though it is currently spending more money on marketing just its mobile devices than Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola combined are spending to advertise all of their products, it's hard to argue with the results. It's tough to turn public perception around, and it's taken billions in marketing to help Samsung emerge from merely being perceived as a member of the crowd to being the front runner in the market.

For a newcomer, I'd actually argue that it's much easier, since you can come in with a splash and don't have to combat the inertia of past impressions that people carry about your products in this space. That said, you have to capture the excitement successfully and hold onto it, which few companies are equipped to do.

"We want to know explicitly how the rifle is to be used, ensuring that we are shown in a positive light... Such as the 'good guys' using the rifle,"

Bushmaster's parent company, Cerberus Capital, has decided to divest itself of Bushmaster and the other arms companies under the Freedom Group umbrella. This was ostensibly done in response to the Newtown shooting, i.e. on account the illegal actions undertaken by a deranged boy, and not even one of their customers, with the use of one of their products. Certain segments of the public blame the company itself.

Imagine for a moment that the same company had knowingly allowed its products to be used in video games for nefarious purposes. Imagine the game was like Carmageddon from the nineties and you could get extra points for shooting hookers. Or, more likely, you could use the gun when acting as terrorists in some C-Strike like bombing scenario. And then that same gun with the same brand was used in real life to do harm to innocents. What would the repercussions be then? Some will say that the requirement the gun only be used by the 'good guys' is PR or propaganda, and they're partly right. But there's another side to this. A company who can be blamed for the misuse of its products has to try all the harder to defend itself and its image from association with that misuse.

So here's a thought. Go spend two or three hours walking around your local hardware store collecting the items you will need to kill (or at least render ineffective) an M1 Abrahms. Then figure out how you'll kill the other 100+ M1's that are right behind it.

Hardware store? Just visit the gas station. When everything burns, everything burns. You don't even need to completely burn out a tank, just make the occupants warmer.

Tanks are only good vs. other tanks. If you wish to commit war crimes and just shoot up cities at range, then you may as well use regular artillery. Cheaper and more deadly.

As for the original story, this is the most fucking retarded exercise in the history of modern world. It is not like live ammo was never mixed loaded instead of blanks. Want examples?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/index.html

Or is blanks vs. real nukes not big enough fuckup?

LAPD chopper shot down, "The apparent shooter eventually was subdued by his family members, Villanueva said. A semi-automatic rifle was recovered, he said."

Then Jobs died.
Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
The high end market where you'd get an iphone as it just worked well now had stumbling blocks. It wasn't an obvious choice any more.
Then apple's share price fell.

Microsoft should have been there to take the lead. The android ecosystem just doesn't work well -- too many disparate devices, too much choice. People like uniformity and simplicity. They weren't.

The market, honestly, doesn't seem to care. iPhone 5 sales are at an all time high, and iOS is ahead of Android again inside the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/att-iphone-sales-2013-1
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/24/technology/att-iphone-sales/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-iphone-sales-for-q4-2012-2013-1
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apples-hardware-q4-2012-26-9m-iphones-14m-ipads-4-9m-macs-and-5-3m-ipods/

I mean, I know it hasn't been smooth sailing for iOS recently, but let's have some perspective here. In the US, Apple is kicking ass.

My point is, given all that's happened with Apple over the last year, it's competitors should be eating up customers. If they can't at this stage, they've got no hope when apple's back to full strength.