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The issue is how customers, particularly consumers, would be affected if the deal, or anything like it, were approved.

We've already seen this movie many times, in the telecom sector and elsewhere. Industry consolidation means rates and fees for consumers go up. Way up. While service and available choices get worse. Much worse. We already have it now but the proposed deal would make things even worse. Oligopoly means providers don't care and don't have to care. Meanwhile, their shills in Congress (including the entire Republican Party leadership, as well as many Democrats) keep talking up how consolidation is essential to enable American companies to compete in the global economy. What horseshit. What ridiculous self-serving horseshit.

Meanwhile, the good ol' boy senior management team makes off like bandits:

Randall L. Stephenson
Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President
AT&T, Inc.
Dallas , TX

Compensation for 2010
Salary $1,533,333.00
Bonus $0.00
Restricted stock awards $12,749,977.00
All other compensation $417,410.00
Option awards $ $494,731.00
Non-equity incentive plan compensation $5,050,000.00
Change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation earnings $7,096,177.00
Total Compensation $27,341,628.00

This is the kind of thing that tends to get the skeptics -- and those the GW proponents call "deniers" -- going.

Clearly, the process has problems; the data isn't as nailed down as many claim; the temperature rises not as predicted; the models flawed; the entire thing politicized to a notable degree. It certainly all seems worthy of paying attention to, when taken together.

If you look at their quarterly reports Yahoo is quite profitable actually, and they are still the third most used website on the internet. In terms of user minutes they trail only slightly behind Facebook (#1) and Google (#2).

Additionally, their patents have separate value that can be quite powerful if used offensively, as all the smartphone manufacturers are doing now.

Anyone who thinks the rich isn't paying their fair share hasn't thought it through.

You should explain this to Warren Buffett or this fellow then I guess:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewcampione/2011/10/14/warren-buffetts-tax-return-and-what-congress-already-knew/

Why should a rich person that makes $1M pay $500,000 for the same services and protections from their country that a poor person that contributes absolutely nothing to society and receives $25,000?

Well one major reason is that if you are sitting on a big pile of money then you need the rule of law (ie: FBI, Secret Service, etc) and the military to keep someone else from stealing it. The rich have far more to lose that the poor so it is entirely appropriate they pay a little more for their increased need for protection. This is especially the case with regard to our armed forces as the very rich are often not the people who actually sign up to give their lives in our defence. Even the poor who do not serve their country directly still often suffer more emotionally as they are also more likely to see friends and family go off to war then never come home.

"There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/07/15/why-hasnt-the-earth-warmed-in-nearly-15-years/

Close by? Denmark sells some of it's excess wind generated electricity to Sweden, who use hydro to store the energy and re-sell later, that's hardly 'close by'.

I never said it was feasible everywhere, but often alternatives like solar, tidal, wave, thermal, hydro are feasible.

Just found an article re solar - 99% storage efficiency!!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonyseba/2011/06/21/the-worlds-first-baseload-247-solar-power-plant/

Which was unveiled, at least in concept, in 2003.

Lockheed installed a 128bit quantum computer this year

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/10/31/lockheed-martin-installs-quantum-computer/

I have no idea of the specifics, but it sounds as if they have a working version.

Microsoft finally agreed to talk to them about the patents without an NDA, B&N's lawyers looked at them and explained to Microsoft they don't cover their devices, as the patents covered features the devices didn't have.
Microsoft came back and explained those were just a few of the patents they had, that they could go back and find patents B&N did infringe on if they didn't sign a license agreement.

Yes, same tactics as IBM used in the 80's :

My own introduction to the realities of the patent system came in the 1980s, when my client, Sun Microsystems--then a small company--was accused by IBM of patent infringement. Threatening a massive lawsuit, IBM demanded a meeting to present its claims. Fourteen IBM lawyers and their assistants, all clad in the requisite dark blue suits, crowded into the largest conference room Sun had.

The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringed [...]

After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. [...] Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.

An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list.

In corporate America, this type of shakedown is repeated weekly. The patent as stimulant to invention has long since given way to the patent as blunt instrument for establishing an innovation stranglehold. [...]

Miller has found and reported dozens of bugs to Apple in the last few years, and had alerted Apple to this latest flaw on October 14th.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/11/07/apple-exiles-a-security-researcher-from-its-developer-program-for-proof-of-concept-exploit-app/

I am for abolition of the entire patent system.

So do I! But if you want to get rid of patents, you'll need to get rid of all the big companies, as it's big companies who want patents around, and...

Go back to trade secrets and keep them while you can, but don't attack me

... big companies will just attack you in different ways in the absence of patents (that's what trade guilds, cartels, etc are for). Patents is just a symptom to the problem that companies want monopolies.

I am competing with you, who already had a head start,

And big companies don't want to compete. They want to destroy you. So again, getting rid of patents is just treating the symptom rather than the disease

so the customers are again - better off.

That's just a mere coincidence. The customers in reality don't matter - demand is a trivial consequence of supply. Whether it's a monopoly or a perfectly competitive free market, customers will have to buy what's available (what companies gives them). The only way to avoid doing this is to for the customer to become a business themselves, but as said above they'll be up against all the existing companies who want to destroy them.

And at the end, the government pretends that it protects the customers by licenses and patents and copyright, but in reality it's not about customers. Customers don't pay governments all those bribes. It's about companies who want monopoly power.

Exactly. The root of the problem is the companies who want monopoly power. All companies inevitably seek this end, as it is the most profitable end, and we all know profit is the cornerstone of every company

Government granted patents and copyrights are all about creating monopolies and providing governments with revenue streams, nothing else.

Yup, and again, that's a symptom to the problem of companies. ... but something tells me people love capitalism too much to give up on having companies around.

Forbes has a much better article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mobiledia/2011/11/04/android-phone-repairs-cost-carriers-billions/

A study by wireless services firm Wireless Data Service, or WDS

Their website: http://www.wds.co/

• Imperial presidency: judge jury and executioner.
• Unconstitutional detention.
• Unconstitutional wiretapping.
• Unconstitutionally waging war and not even bothering with the War Powers Act.
• Taking credit for Iraq ending when it was Iraq that kicked us out on Bush II's timetable and Obama was trying to stay longer. Assange has a much bigger claim for the removal of troops from Iraq.
• Cut deal with insurance industry while touting the public option. In the end, we get the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Recent financial reform legislation so weak it would not have even slowed the meltdown had it already been in place. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
• Forgiving torturers Excusing them makes him complicit.
• Not even a show-attempt to prosecute fraud in the meltdown. Instead its bailouts and bonuses.
• Made deepwater horizon more likely.
• And the famous "hire the lobbyists for the industry you bow to" tactic. Good for what I don't know.
• Whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing should not be treated as Manning has been, and we don't even know if manning was responsible. He'll probably just get indefinite detention because the president says so. Welcome to Napoleonic America.

Is anyone else disappointed that it is the BBC that has to cover this rather than an American source? I'm not saying that they aren't great reporters, just that it is disappointing that there is so little interest in America.

MSNBC, Forbes, and Wired have it and, er, that's it. On the one hand it is disappointing to see such a lack of interest, however on the other hand I fear that more mainstream sources would pay more attention to the cost while conveniently overlooking the benefits or feasibility, so maybe the less they say about it the better. This is the kind of thing that congressional Republicans get up in arms about because it sounds nice and vague, something pie-in-the-sky that they can spin as "more government waste" rather than an invaluable contribution to human development.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/firewall/2010/05/25/android-app-aims-to-allow-wiretap-proof-cell-phone-calls/

When I say smaller government, I mean less revenue, less spending, and lower page count if the US Code is printed.

That's still obsessing over quantity, and that's still stupid.

Assume enough of you ask for it and they actually give it to you. Given their track record what will happen is they'll chop bits off the government/State and give the profitable bits to corporations owned by their cronies (I believe this happens in Russia and elsewhere). Corporations that can completely ignore the voters rather than pretend to listen and throw you a few bread and circuses from time to time. Look at the recent Slashdot article on the 147 companies in the world that control most stuff, or this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brendancoffey/2011/10/26/the-four-companies-that-control-the-147-companies-that-own-everything/
Do those look like they listen to US voters? Some of those companies may listen to their customers, but how many US voters are customers/shareholders they will pay attention to?

If that happens you'd have a small government with less revenue, less spending, lower page count in the US Code, heck lower page count in your Constitution too if enough of you ask for it. And you'd be as screwed or worse.

All the roads and highways could be private property owned by corporations - you'd have to pay for access. All the utilities too, but without any pesky Government regulation (just the way most libertarians like it). Your currency is already controlled by organization that's not quite government, so hey why not have a fully private corporation be in charge of it too with no regulation or one with "low page count".

When your dreams are granted you can vote for whoever you want and it would make even less of a difference.

Even if the crazy Libertarians took over there would be little they can do, since the government by then would be a weakling with no practical power over anything.

They can threaten the corporations but the corporations could then say: "You and whose army?". No revenue = no army.

If the voters haven't been using their brains and ballots well, I doubt they'd do a good job voting with bullets either.

• Stop unconstitutional execution of the American citizenry.
• Stop unconstitutional detention.
• Stop unconstitutional wiretapping and prosectue AT&T's complicity (and that of any other carrier).
• Stop unconstitutionally waging war. From Korea onward, all our wars have been illegal, but Obama doesn't even feel constrained by the weak tea requirements of the war powers act. Our founding fathers never intended for the president to be a Napoleon.
• End the wars we are in. And please don't cite Iraq. The ONLY reason we are pulling out troops is because Iraq would not succumb to Obama's lobbying for a longer stay with immunity from war crimes. Thanks to wikipedia for that.
• Quit sucking insurance industry cock, i.e., real nice move touting the public option while secretly cutting a deal for the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. I guess they got their money's worth.
• Quit sucking Wall Street cock, and don't pretend that the financial reform legislation would have even been a mild hindrance to the meltdown had it already been in place.
• Prosecute torturers rather than let them off the hook. Excusing them makes him complicit.
• At least make a show of investigating fraud on Street. The S&L crisis was 1/40th the size and 1000 bankers went to jail. This meltdown isn't even being investigated, instead, their handing out bonuses. A big "Fuck You Very Much Mr. Obama" for that.
• Thanks for helping to enable Deepwater horizon, it was exactly the gift I wanted!
• Quit hiring Keystone Pipeline lobbyists for your campaign.
• Bradley Manning. We know you have a hardon for anyone that might stand in the way of relentless war, but Christ, grow a soul and a sense of morality.

Why should We The Taxpayers have to prop up an industry that can't support itself?

Because We The Taxpayers have an interest in weaning ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels, and (barring a miracle) that won't happen unless the new-technology companies can sell product and not go bankrupt. Your argument would make sense if solar and e.g. coal competed on a fair playing field, but there clearly isn't one -- the traditional energy sources have huge externalized costs (air pollution, war, global warming, the world's largest standing military to defend oil fields, propping up nasty dictators because they have oil) that all We Taxpayers are forced to pay for (one way or another) whether we care to or not. Those costs are not factored into the price of traditional energy. Furthermore, the traditional energy sources have mostly already paid their R&D costs, so they only have to pay for production; whereas new technologies have to pay for both research and production. Because of this, without some sort of intervention, there would simply be no significant incentive to do anything but burn coal -- its' a straightforward case of the tragedy of the commons. (If you don't like subsidies, I'm open to slapping a fat Carbon Tax on coal/gas/etc to make the prices of those products reflect their actual costs instead, but you and I both know that's not going to happen anytime soon, so subsidies it is)

Therefore, we either do something to make development of new technologies viable, or we go without their benefits until the problems with traditional energy sources become so acute that there is no alternative. But if we do the latter, we've given up the opportunity to develop the better technology until it's perhaps too late.

we lessen the incentive for private funding of development of cheaper, more efficient technologies

Err... such as? Exactly what cheaper, more efficient technologies are being held back by subsidized solar power? And what makes you think that (in a subsidy-free world) these (hypothetical) superior technologies wouldn't also be stymied by the very same problems that made subsidies necessary for solar?

The data is available. Anyone can attempt to replicate the temperature series. As a matter of fact, skeptic Richard Mueller did just that recently with the Berkeley Earth Surface temperature project. He found that warming had actually been under reported by Phil Jones. Being a true skeptic he was persuaded by the facts and now accepts that the rate of warming is very well understood. http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/10/20/breaking-news-the-earth-still-goes-around-the-sun-and-its-still-warming-up/

I have been following this lightly for a while. On the one hand Rossi's history does not give confidence to this being real. On the other hand he doesn't seem to approach it like I would expect a scammer to approach it - he does get in touch with universities and professors, and he does not ask for money, even apparently financing the contruction of this 1 MW plant himself. Also holding a large-scale demonstration with big-name media present does not seem usual. If it is a hoax, I am not sure what he would get out of it besides publicity (being in the news).

There are 3 options: (1) it is a hoax/fraud, (2) he really believes it is true and cannot manage to do measurements correctly or is in some kind of denial and interprets the results incorrectly so they fit his beliefs, (3) it is true.

It is not clear whether this demonstration will make it clear. There have already been 11 other smaller-scale demonstrations and apparently there has never been conclusive evidence throughout all these. It also depends on who is vetting the test. There is someone from PESwiki there tweeting updates, tweeted "Q&A just finished; reading of results; 470 kW maintained continuously during self-sustain; customer satisfied; sale made; more later." and expects to post an article on the wiki/blog in the next hour or so. PESwiki historically has followed/reported on hundreds of bogus technologies. But the customer is satisfied? Who is the customer! Also an AP writer from NY is apparently attending the demo. However, a link to the likely writer says that he covers "telecommunications, consumer electronics, etc" for the AP, so it's not likely he is knowledgeable about energy technologies.

It will be very interesting to see the reports.

Here are the various semi-high-profile news articles about this technology that have recently been published, to collect them all in once place:
Forbes blog, Oct 28th
Wired, Oct 28th
Forbes blog, Oct 17th
Wired, Oct 6th
And then plenty of other sites like blogs and physorg since January of this year.

I have been following this lightly for a while. On the one hand Rossi's history does not give confidence to this being real. On the other hand he doesn't seem to approach it like I would expect a scammer to approach it - he does get in touch with universities and professors, and he does not ask for money, even apparently financing the contruction of this 1 MW plant himself. Also holding a large-scale demonstration with big-name media present does not seem usual. If it is a hoax, I am not sure what he would get out of it besides publicity (being in the news).

There are 3 options: (1) it is a hoax/fraud, (2) he really believes it is true and cannot manage to do measurements correctly or is in some kind of denial and interprets the results incorrectly so they fit his beliefs, (3) it is true.

It is not clear whether this demonstration will make it clear. There have already been 11 other smaller-scale demonstrations and apparently there has never been conclusive evidence throughout all these. It also depends on who is vetting the test. There is someone from PESwiki there tweeting updates, tweeted "Q&A just finished; reading of results; 470 kW maintained continuously during self-sustain; customer satisfied; sale made; more later." and expects to post an article on the wiki/blog in the next hour or so. PESwiki historically has followed/reported on hundreds of bogus technologies. But the customer is satisfied? Who is the customer! Also an AP writer from NY is apparently attending the demo. However, a link to the likely writer says that he covers "telecommunications, consumer electronics, etc" for the AP, so it's not likely he is knowledgeable about energy technologies.

It will be very interesting to see the reports.

Here are the various semi-high-profile news articles about this technology that have recently been published, to collect them all in once place:
Forbes blog, Oct 28th
Wired, Oct 28th
Forbes blog, Oct 17th
Wired, Oct 6th
And then plenty of other sites like blogs and physorg since January of this year.

If that were true, these multinational tech giants wouldn't have such valuable brands. As it stands now slapping the MSFT logo on something adds perceived value and credibility to it. Like it or not, people think locked-down platforms are great! http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/28/apple-google-microsoft-ibm-nike-disney-bmw-forbes-cmo-network-most-valuable-brands.html

have you seen her?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/10/25/virginia-rometty-named-next-ibm-chief/

if that doesn't get the fapping noises going in your basement lair, you're no kind of nerd

A holder of a bond may “buy protection” to hedge its risk of default. In this way, a CDS is similar to credit insurance, although CDS are not subject to regulations governing traditional insurance. Also, investors can buy and sell protection without owning debt of the reference entity. These “naked credit default swaps” allow traders to speculate on the creditworthiness of reference entities. CDSs can be used to create synthetic long and short positions in the reference entity.[7] Naked CDS constitute most of the market in CDS.[13][14] In addition, CDSs can also be used in capital structure arbitrage.

Iowa Oregon Forbes article

The 54MPGe estimate takes no account of inefficiencies in electricity generation and transmission.
The true look-though fossil-fuel consumption is closer to 19MPG.

Put in standardized units:

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

He does, consistently talk about slashing the military budget, closing over sea bases and brings our troops home.. you must live under a rock, or like most people, ignore Ron Paul because you think he's "nuts", when in fact, he's the smartest "republican" to run in the past 20 years if you'd just put down the pipe, focus and pay attention to him and THINK a little.

Put in standardized units:

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

Chrisb you uninformed. Ron Paul talks about slashing the military all the time. It's even in the same plan you didn't read. How do you think you get to cutting a trillion in a year?

Put in standardized units:

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

1. While the proposed is eliminating many departments. many of the functions will be moved to other places. Cost savings. (Note no one mentions that, I wonder why)
2. If you had *ANY* clue about Dr Paul's stances you would know he wants to close almost all over seas bases, end all the wars, bring our troops home. Seriously, have you even spent 5 seconds looking into Dr. Paul's plan?
He also wants to get rid of the Patriot Act and other crap like that, seriously cutting DHS spending. Also, no more intrusive TSA; go back to *sane* security screening.
Imagine the cost savings.
Imagine the Freedom.

...

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)...

Yikes! Are those numbers correct? If they are, then I've lost all respect for American people. Yes, even the poor and middle-class.

YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW!! If you people haven't figured that out yet and voted accordingly, then I don't even want to know you let alone help you. I know you Americans are bad at math but jeez guys - FIGURE IT OUT!!

Put in standardized units:

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

Actually, he does talk about the military and reducing our overseas presence.. which is exactly why everyone was pissing all over him LAST time someone wrote a slanted news article about him. But hey, what's long term memory for, anyways? Is that a bagel? Omg I love bagels. What were we talking about again?

• Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science = 2.5 days of the military
• $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration = 2.25 days of the military
• $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology = 9 hours of the military
• $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey = 13 hours of the military

(Based on Forbe's estimate of the cost of being U.S. military policy being $2 billion per day If you want units solely in terms of the war in Afghanistan, that figure is $300 million per day. Adjust for other wars etc. War: it isn't cheap.)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

My understanding is that the opposite is actually true. Silver for example has a lot more industrial uses than gold but the market is much more volatile. Admittedly part of the reason is that the silver market is much smaller than the gold market, but another major part has to do with the business cycle.

Your data about the silver market has been corrupted by JPMorgan and HSBC, acting in league with the Federal Reserve. Backstory here and many other places. Only recently, after their activities were exposed, is the silver market calming down and returning to the historical 15:1 price parity (arising from the metals' 15:1 geologic ratio) with gold.

I think he's thinking of federal plans to tax all road travel by requiring special GPS devices to be installed in cars.

No, wait, that's the United States of Freetopia that's planning on doing that. Note that article's from this month. You might remember that the US at a federal level and a whole bunch of states keep on trying to sneak this through and keep on failing to suppress public outcry long enough to pass it, but it's never been killed once and for all.

No idea about programs like it in Europe, but it's definitely happening in the US. The only question now is when.

And maybe even:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/

I'm sure that one's a scam. The ones needing a "secret catalyst" always are.

There's tons of free energy out there, the problem is we're not aggressively exploiting it. It's called sunlight. All we have to do is build power stations in orbit to collect the energy and beam it to earth. Big investment obviously, but after that energy will be cheap.

There are plenty of resources to go around though, especially when you consider we could support quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system.

True again, except that we have to build giant structures with radiation shielding and artificial gravity, no easy feat. Like before, it's a huge investment (much bigger than orbital solar power stations), but with great yields. Or, we could stay (mostly) on earth and just build better habitats for ourselves here, with denser cities where space is better utilized. Unfortunately we haven't figured out the social problems yet, because this usually leads to ghettos.

We'd probably do well to start terraforming Venus. It has the same gravity as Earth.

"Obviously, in China, young people carry their old people like burdens while they're trying to manage their own families. That's not so great, either."

When people have six kids or so, it is not as much of a burden when the kids carry the elderly. Part of the problem is we are experiencing a "Peak Population" crisis.
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

But Japan aims to solve that with robotics...

Thanks for being part of making the 1980s happen!

My wife and our little "labor of love" venture in the 1990s:
    http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/

Sorry about your loss.

Health tips by me, the most important of which for most technology people is curing vitamin D deficiency (and which I could only learn about by hypertext-supporting networks and Google):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208

There are plenty of resources to go around though, especially when you consider we could support quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system. But some causes for optimism:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm

And maybe even:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/

If we had any real resource problems, why are so many people out of work? :-)

Real solutions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#

The human imagination is truly the "ultimate resource", so the more the merrier IMHO: :-)
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

You've of course read "True Names" no doubt about what an older woman is up to on the net: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names

On #7, Chinese is becoming the single most dominant language on the web (you just probably can't see it). Also, diversity can be good in big enough systems. Currencies work better generally when they are managed by accountable organizations; Jane Jacobs suggested that ideally each city should have its own currency; why not now, with computers it would be so easy to convert between them?

Cold fusion may be happening:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/

More of a problem is addiction to "supernormal stimuli":
http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

We need a "basic income" and other changes (gift economy, better local subsistence with 3D printing, better participatory governmental planning) to deal with the changes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Right now about 50% of US land goes to produce animal products which are overall killing us with bad fats:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

And we can always grow food indoors using cheap energy and rock dust:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt
"Why is the Food Outlook Made to Seem Gloomy?"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

In general, people living longer is not going to have as much effect on the population as how many kids people have -- and that amount is falling with industrialization; in Italy, every woman has about 1.2 kids but would need to have 2.1 kids to keep the population from declining. The entire industrialized world has this problem (but not as bad as Italy in most places).

Just think of all the people around to pass on wisdom to the next generation.

There is a better way to collect federal revenue -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2011/09/02/guest-post-income-tax-alternative/ .

Taxing currency through depreciating its value, interesting concept. Would be impossible to implement with any existing physical currency infrastructure, however, as it is far too complicated to track. Tell me, you want to pay for a meal that's $16.50, you have a 10 dollar bill from 2 years ago, five 1 dollar bills ranging from 3 years ago to this year, 4 quarters from 1993, 1998, 2001, and 2007, and 10 dimes ranging from 2006 to present. Given a rate of 1% depreciation a year, do you have enough money for this bill? How much is your change if you do?

This could only be done in a purely electronic currency market, where the depreciation is performed in the background, transparent to the end users, and the systems would tell you exactly how much money you have at any given moment. What are the chances that the United States migrates to a purely electronic currency and kills the greenback and coins to make such a system possible? The answer to that question basically negates any reason to further investigate whether or not it'd be an effective method of taxing.

If you believe that every system has flaws, then you might be able to see when it may fail. For example, the income tax system has always been ham handed. Those who understood it well enough could always slip between the regulations to avoid some or all of it. In the early days, about 90 years ago, most people ignored them. In the 1940s, they passed payroll withholding and started collecting from those who were employed by others.

When most of the revenues were coming from a large "middle class" the system worked because it was easier to pay the government than to pay a tax attorney to find the cracks. People who were really rich could still afford to pay tax attorneys to minimize or limit their taxes, but it was a relatively small percentage of federal income tax revenues.

But as wealth began to concentrate, an industry of bright financial and legal professionals flourished, allowing more income to be shielded from the IRS. The rich, who got richer, weighed the cost of the tax verses the cost of testing the tax avoidance in tax court and decided the best return was "playing in the gray." The IRS has no choice but to go to tax court when someone challenges them. They do not have enough people to fight every rich person or company. Often, the well-paid lawyers of the taxpayers are better versed on the law than the civil servant IRS lawyers. As the rich get richer, they influence tax laws to gain a greater advantage. Eventually you have a society of people who are either too poor to pay much tax or a few too rich to need to pay tax. That is when the tax system fails. Frankly, no tax system can succeed when the money is too closely held by a few.

The irony is that we tax productivity. Imagine a company going to its most productive people and cutting their pay as they worked harder and better. There is a better way to collect federal revenue -- http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2011/09/02/guest-post-income-tax-alternative/ .

Steve Jobs was also in part responsible for a lot of bad, remember the Foxconn worker 'suicide'?

Do you think Apple should be held responsible for the suicide rate at Foxconn? Altogether, totally, completely, one hundred percent responsible?

He said "suicide", singular, not "suicides", plural, or "suicide rate".

As for the torture, do you have any evidence to substantiate that claim? I did a quick search and I couldn't find any torture articles that weren't for Apple products being stress tested by people.

Try missing iphone foxconn, which turns up a Forbes article about a Foxconn worker accused of stealing an iPhone prototype who was "illegally detained and physically abused by a security manager surnamed Yuan".

No, Steve Jobs didn't. He defended the indefensible and did his best to minimize & brush-off the problem. Instead, Apple and Foxconn just blamed the workers for the problems and made them sign anti-suicide pacts.

You may be mixing up the suicide of the worker blamed for the missing iPhone prototype and other suicides at Foxconn; as far as I know, the anti-suicide pledges and suicide nets weren't specifically related to the suicide of that particular worker.

In the case of Foxconn, I'm not really sure that Steve Jobs or Apple really deserves as much bad press as they've gotten. There are plenty of other companies that use their services to make their products that are also to blame for that. IIRC, the last Dell I had used a Foxconn motherboard. Apple at least made some attempt at improving the situation, I haven't heard of any of the other companies doing so.

I presume Luthair was specifically referring to the suicide of the Foxconn worker who was accused of having stolen an iPhone prototype and was "illegally detained and physically abused by a security manager surnamed Yuan", not to other Foxconn suicides for which Apple cannot solely be blamed.

Exactly. I will go where my friends are - and we were on G+ for a little while. And then Google killed the accounts of a dozen or so of them, and the rest of us left.

I don't need an identity service masquerading as a social networking site. Facebook's bad enough, but Google's trying to get its scary little tendrils into every part of my life.

It isn't the best tech that wins but the largest market share.

Yup. Metcalf's Law. The value of a [social] network increases by the square of the number of people using it.

I agree with you on questionable patents but again, the patent system is broken so just because a company can game the system and get a patent on gestures just makes good business sense. The whole "i" trademark thing is one example. If you think they're alone, try naming something "Olympic"
for example.

I also think your comment

will never be more than a niche marketing firm

is a bit misguided considering their current market
valuation.

I know, Ethics in Business? Humm, that's one of those discussions that's like Religion and Politics; it never ends well.

Business exist to make money and publicly held corporations have shareholders to answer to. That means profits have to be obtained and just because a company protects its interests doesn't mean that it is non ethical. Tim Cook will attempt to keep Apple as profitable as possible and maintain shareholder value, that's his job. If that is somehow in mis-alignment with "Free" then we need to outlaw corporations and go back to banging rocks together to make primitive tools.

Yeah, my current employer "bought" me from a call center, over eleven years ago, for $36k. Now, I'm making nearly 3x that salary. I come and go when I please, essentially work on what I feel like working on, and I get to be an asshole and a curmudgeon, and noone can call me on it. There are benefits other than salary.

They enticed you away with a raise, and you stayed because you kept getting fair market value for your service. That was kinda my whole point.

What he ought to do is decide whether working for the new company benefits him more than working for the old company. Whether it's worth giving up the friendships, relationships, intangible benefits, and other goodies he's built up in exchange for the larger salary and the possibility of new intangible benefits down the road. Early this year, I took a new job with a giant financial firm, and while the pay was indeed nice, the working environment was NOT what it was cracked up to be. It was a nightmare, and so I returned here about about 10 weeks. Not everyone would have this opportunity, but in my case, I'm sure glad I did.

So, let me get this straight. Talking with your boss about another opportunity could be considered disloyal, but you actually left your current job for a better offer and then came back and you're advising others on what you consider to be company loyalty?

This is not just my advice, this is the generally accepted wisdom:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/28/counter-offer-employer-lead-careers-cx_hr_0630counteroffer.html

http://frugaldad.com/2008/02/05/accepting-company-counter-offer-can-be-risky-move/

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/nov2004/ca2004114_2710_ca009.htm

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-recruiter/why-you-should-not-accept-a-counter-offer-2359

I would hardly consider these 4 links "accepted wisdom". The first link (Forbes) talks about some guy whose counteroffer was to be the CEO of a major multinational retailer. So what if he only had the job for 3 years? When your salary is $1m per year and you have a golden parachute bailout, 3 years as CEO is plenty of time to rack up some serious cash. It even mentioned that he took an early retirement. Oh, the horror. That sounds like just about the best possible outcome. CEO anecdotes are not really applicable for people working at the "peon" level.

Second link (frugaldad) is written by Jason (Frugal Dad) on his blog. His anecdote is that he was ready to receive a counteroffer, but he got laid off instead. He then goes on to contradict the belief that counteroffers are indicators of disloyalty in his second paragraph.

Third link (businessweek) is behind a paywall, or broken.

Fourth article (it.toolbox) was written by a recruiter who is obviously irritated by people who run through the whole recruitment process (thus wasting his time) and then stay with their current company due to a counter-offer. He ends the article with this:

"I hope that some of this dialoge hits home because these are some of the most frustrating issues to handle as a recruiter. I think they are all avoidable and can positively impact your career when handled in the right manner. These are principles to live by, like being honest and sticking to your word, and knowing thy self!"

And I think that speaks volumes. It's not accepted wisdom, it's one recruiter guy giving his opinion.

Whatever though. Of course, there are intangibles like the people you work with, that atmosphere, perks, and your gene

Seriously? Is anyone at your current company under the illusion that you would not leave for a high enough offer? People can pretend all they want, but the reality is that your current employer bought you from your previous employer. Every new person they hire, they are hiring away from another company, likely at a higher rate. What's the big surprise here? Of course your skills are for sale - that's why you're working. If they are not willing to pay market value for your skills then move on.

Yeah, my current employer "bought" me from a call center, over eleven years ago, for $36k. Now, I'm making nearly 3x that salary. I come and go when I please, essentially work on what I feel like working on, and I get to be an asshole and a curmudgeon, and noone can call me on it. There are benefits other than salary.

I suppose I'm rather baffled by the whole logic here; what, then, should he do? Refuse the current job offer and stay where he's at, but keep it a secret? How does that prove loyalty at all? Nobody knows about it. Or he could refuse the current job offer and then tell his current employer he was offered a job somewhere else but refused. That just sounds needy and pathetic - does that prove loyalty? Or does that prove you're too chickenshit to stand up and ask for a reasonable raise?

What he ought to do is decide whether working for the new company benefits him more than working for the old company. Whether it's worth giving up the friendships, relationships, intangible benefits, and other goodies he's built up in exchange for the larger salary and the possibility of new intangible benefits down the road. Early this year, I took a new job with a giant financial firm, and while the pay was indeed nice, the working environment was NOT what it was cracked up to be. It was a nightmare, and so I returned here about about 10 weeks. Not everyone would have this opportunity, but in my case, I'm sure glad I did.

    Or he could man up and explain the situation to his boss. If his boss has a clue and his workplace isn't a hellhole, they might offer him a small raise. If they are hostile to the whole idea, then he's better off quitting and moving on anyway. I've never had a problem discussing stuff like this with my boss, she is intelligent and reasonable and understands that I have bills to pay and a family to feed. I don't work for the love of working, I work because I need a paycheck. If I can get a bigger paycheck by negotiating a little bit, what's the harm in that? If you work at a company that considers something like this untrustworthy, then maybe you should reevaluate the situation.

The problem is that it marks you as someone who's looking for a new job. Even if you get your counter-offer, your employer knows it's merely a matter of time. Those "intangibles" tend to disappear rather quickly at that point. If you're working strictly for a salary, then by all means, go for the counteroffer, but for the rest of us, it's not worth turning our workplace hostile for a little more money.

This is not just my advice, this is the generally accepted wisdom:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/28/counter-offer-employer-lead-careers-cx_hr_0630counteroffer.html
http://frugaldad.com/2008/02/05/accepting-company-counter-offer-can-be-risky-move/
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/nov2004/ca2004114_2710_ca009.htm
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-recruiter/why-you-should-not-accept-a-counter-offer-2359

Clean Energy, China-Style: Sex, Cash and Stolen Technology http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/23/clean-energy-china-style-sex-cash-and-stolen-technology/ The article is just a little to the left of the topic, but does show how we spend the money on R&D and others reverse engineer it / steal it / acquire the knowledge in many other ways. Can we count on our 'partners' to share with us as we share with them? I am skeptical...

Normally, the country can count on conservatives to deal in facts.

News flash: neither party can be counted on to deal in facts. I will also say with utter confidence that your party line (of which there are only two) will not determine how factual you are. There are goddamn liars among all the ranks of any party.

We base policies on science, not sentiment, we insist on people being accountable for their actions, and we maintain that markets, not mandates, are the path to prosperity.

If you based your policies on science, then why isn't it a completely open process? Anonymize the names (if any) and release the numbers (especially who pays what in taxes from which areas) behind your policy making. Of course you don't and on top of that, paltry though it may be, we have to wait until Obama to get that ball started rolling.

Oh, yeah, accountable of their actions? Yeah, you rich bastards love to hold each other accountable for your actions -- especially your financiers.

You would expect conservatives to stand with 95 percent of the scientific community and to grow the 13 percent into a working majority.

Oh, wait a minute, I see what's going on here. You're not really a conservative. You're like Zell Miller who is a Democrat only by label and paperwork.

Your proposal, though noble, is a fool's errand. I believe this has been tackled before and the real problem is that you can always find more and more ties to pollution or non-renewable resources being used to make your product and get it to the consumer and then even after that you have the whole usage of it followed by proper disposal and returning the resources. That cheap Dell computer your secretary is playing Bejeweled on? Yeah, that's a nightmare.

What if we attached all of the costs -- especially the hidden costs -- to all fuels?

Once you lay out a comprehensive and complete list of what the costs are -- especially the hidden costs -- then I'll hop on board. For now you're basically scratching the surface of a very deep and complicated rabbit hole that is hard to trace backward for many reasons. Some of them supply line problems, some of them scientific problems, some of them statistical problems and some even privacy problems for the users.

Companies already try to regulate themselves by paying a so called 'carbon tax' by being 'carbon neutral' or by planting just an assload of trees so they can say X trees for Y products sold. But you know, that's all really neither exact nor assuredly truly undoing all that is done in their dealings. And while they might tell the public one thing, I don't think they believe it.

Could someone please enumerate every true cost of getting one gallon of gasoline into my car tank? What about what happens as I use it? What about what happens after I've used it?

And the best part is that at some point, as you noted, loss of life is going to be on that list of true costs. Whether you're buying an Apple iPhone that some worker committed suicide while making at the Foxconn plant or BP's little explosion killing 11 oil well workers, you're going to have to say at some point that 1 human life = X million dollars in cost. And that makes people really uncomfortable. It gets even more uncomfortable when whoever deciding that cost considers nationality in influencing that ratio.