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Oh, no doubt, my primary concern in that post was refuting the common statement that netbooks are just about cost. But as for the market for small tablets and "netbooks" being not worth it I've written about this market twice before, though I focused more on keyboarded devices and, in short, having actually done quite a bit of research on this, some of it as an IT director for big enough departments to get honest answers out of the manufacturers, I'm pretty damn sure that the markets are more than big enough to justify the cost. They didn't get withdrawn from lack of users. They got withdrawn because of Microsoft sabotage and corporate groupthink. To go broad, the fucking MARINE CORPS was looking into the Newton when it got canceled. Doctors loved it and were starting to get it specced for hospital use. Insurance companies were handing them out to their agents. Plenty of users there to pay for a product line that's already up and running and has no real competitors. This wasn't rational behavior. Seriously.

It's dangerous to assume that because companies did something, they should have done that thing. Companies do stupid shit all the time. That's a large part of why U.S. automakers are in such trouble right now. They do what is best for the executives making the decisions. Or what their friends think is cool. Or simply what's easiest to understand. I've done corporate workflow consulting and I can tell you that there's a reason that the Nobel prize in Economics went a few times back to a guy (Thaler) who specialized in articulating repeated patterns of irrational decisionmaking. One of the hottest management books right now is something called The Innovators Dilemma . Personally, I think that it wusses out on some key factors, but it shows that even in "c-level" offices they're starting to figure out that the current management paradigm frequently leaves them with their head up their asses. And, even worse, telling each other how sweet the smell is up there.
 
Go ahead, prognosticate. It can be fun. But don't succumb to the assumption that just because a product went south, that kind of product isn't viable.

Some facts that might get in your way:

* Newspapers have experimented with specialty devices -- and premium/pay services -- for years. Doesn't work. Generalized computing devices and free services have flooded the marketplace and there's no turning back.

* Newspapers are already dropping print editions all over the country. Gatehouse itself announced yesterday that it's killing the printed Kansas City Kansan, and going online-only. I have yet to see a case in which this is anything other than a desperation move by a failing business. In the case of the Kansan, I think they only have 7,000 monthly unique users on the Web. That's not a viable business, regardless of what you might "save" by not manufacturing and distributing a printed product.

* Gatehouse's complaint -- and I've read it -- contains a laundry list of issues, some of them in direct conflict with one another. But there is one charge that isn't easily dismissed. The Boston Globe is essentially creating a derivative product to enter hyperlocal markets where it previously had no presence. Gatehouse points out that nearly all the links on the local Globe products are Gatehouse content. That may flunk the fair-use test. (On the other hand, that argument effectively puts Gatehouse in a position of claiming it's entitled to preservation of a monopoly.)

* Gatehouse licenses its content under a Creative Commons no-commercial-use provision. Defining what's commercial use is a big hairy mess, but it's not possible to argue that the NYT company is a noncommercial effort.

Other perspectives:

Mark Potts: http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/12/gatehousegate.html

Dan Gillmor: http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2008/gatehouse-v-ny-times-co-not-so-simple-after-all

If public urination leads to

Because the sharks writing the laws aim to make them impossible to decipher without $400/hr assistance, I can't tell you for sure that it does, but I have found that gay sex is apparently still a sex offense in Georgia, and that someone thinks that public urination counts.

TypePad Antispam is an open source project and a commercial (but free) service. The core is released as open source (GPL2) so you can install your own instance of TypePad Antispam in your servers. It has an Akismet compatible API and plugins already exist for Movable Type, WordPress and other CMSs. The free service is what TypePad uses, and has some extensions not released in the open source version, so has some advantages to a single installation.

TypePad Antispam is an open source project and a commercial (but free) service. The core is released as open source (GPL2) so you can install your own instance of TypePad Antispam in your servers. It has an Akismet compatible API and plugins already exist for Movable Type, WordPress and other CMSs. The free service is what TypePad uses, and has some extensions not released in the open source version, so has some advantages to a single installation.

I suspect you are right. See John Robb's stuff about "Super Empowered Individuals" http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/01/catastrophic_su.html

One big difference is that parrots developed personality, but octopuses didn't.

One of the reasons I believe parrots have such a remarkable intelligence is that they live in an ecosystem bloated of food. I live in Peru and have seen the Amazon Jungle and you won't believe how rich it can be.

http://askpang.typepad.com/relevant_history/2008/12/octopus-watch-tv-have-no-personalities.html

Read his Sourcewatch article and think about his ties with the DCI group.

Here is another one.

I didn't see Mike a lot in the past year as everyone just hunkered down on the roles for the McCain campaign. Mike did take time out of his day to give me a call when in the summer I was a little worried about what was going to happen post election. Win or as we did, lose, everything was coming to the end and I had so many other pressures at the time that I was ready to pack it in. Mike got on the phone and with his reassuring voice told me everything would be OK and it was hard not to believe him.

They also have a donation website ready for his family.

Texas private investigator legislation is causing problems for robo-cop traffic enforcement. A Texas judge said the company running a red-light camera was acting illegally because it did not have a private investigator license. On the basis of this ruling, motorists are challenging traffic tickets. The problem started when the legislature said computer forensics experts needed to be licensed like private eyes. See deails: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/12/e-discovery-forensics-private-investigator-license-for-computer-data-collection-and-assessment.html --Ben

I've been amazed by the extent to which this issue has permeated the mainstream media - here in the UK it's been home page material for the BBC, The Guardian, The Times and a number of others.

One - this is really terrible PR for Microsoft. Two - this is really good news for the web as a whole (obviously not including anyone affected by the exploit), as anything that increases public awareness of security issues and alternative browsers has to be a good thing. I just hope it makes a difference.

Actually, in aggregate, house prices have risen pretty much continuously in recent history.

This depends strongly on your definition of continuous and recent history. Check here.

That means that investing in a bunch of mortgages was a good investment plan.

If your definition of recent is less than ten years, and your definition of risen continuously includes the occasional dip here and there, then yes, it would be an excellent investment.

However, I hesitate to call anything that looks no further back than ten years a good idea.

That is to be expected, with the investors flushed with cash from expansionary monetary policy, and 8 years of pro supper rich government structuring.

They have more money then the market can bare them spending, or even saving, While the common man lose their jobs.

The question is, what caused this? I side with perverse incentive structures and a tax policy thats borders on regressive.

Last I checked we had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A kid with down syndrome would die rather early without help, I would say that is denying him the right to life and most certainly liberty since he inherently has to rely on others until he can come into his own for the most part. That's also just one use of social security.

How is the concept behind graduated rates arbitrary. Are you disputing that it is not easier for someone making a few million a year to pay 35% than it is for someone making 38k paying 18%? I would be interested in how you arrive at that conclusion. This is not anymore tyranny than taxes are in general. You are benefiting more from society so you should have to pay more back to society.

Just from your posts that you referenced again and again which don't actually define socialism, they only demonize it with a libertarian slant that the strong should survive like they have over the last couple billion years. Libertarians often forget that when 38k a year people struggle to pay rent they quite often turn to crime as you can see with the sizable increase in crime-rates of late. Don't take my word for it. CNN Source.

It is the same all over the world, when people are desperate they take desperate measures and that isn't good for anybody including the rich.

I don't see another method of fair distribution, wealthy people can't get that way on their own, they have to rely on public funds in one way or another whether it be through roads, telecomm, or power infrastructure which was all publicly funded while it got off the ground.

Socialism is not a dirty word nor a dirty concept, as long as it is applied appropriately it serves the vast majority of people's interests. As you like to keep saying, you give up a little liberty so that there isn't chaos.

Here is some more material. more evidence.

So you agree that police and fire are necessary evils to prevent chaos but you ignore that financial causes of the crime that needs to be prevented. They are intrinsically linked.

I also think you need to read the comments on your graph more carefully as they state why those numbers are misleading. No one was disputing that the rich put more dollars into the pot but those graphs don't add up. The author himself contradicts himself with his graphs. He presents different numbers with the same title and then his other graph shows that the bottom bracket pay 96.93% while the top bracket pays 39.38%

I find that whole page very poorly written.

How do the high income levels pay higher tax rates?

By filling out their tax forms and sending in their money. Here's a chart. The top quintile pays a MUCH higher tax rate than the rest.

I'll agree the total dollar figure is higher but the percentage is much much smaller

No, it's really not.

The fact is a flat tax is quite unfair to the middle class as it is harder for someone making 80k a year to pay 30% in taxes than it is for someone making several million a year.

You misunderstand. All serious flat tax proposals drop the marginal rates to under 20 percent for everyone, but with fewer deductions, so there is a much smaller difference between the marginal and effective rates.

the rich don't pay as much percentage wise in taxes even though dollar wise they do.

They pay significantly more in both measurements.

You also don't state why police and fire are bad examples of socialism.

Yes, I did. In detail.

They are imperfect applications of socialism as they are publically funded using the threat of force through tax dollars.

It is not possible for everyone to enforce the defense of their rights on their own. It requires the government's authority, else we have chaos and anarachy, which are even MORE destructive to our rights. So in order to protect individual rights, we give up a small amount of liberty, and cede a significant portion of our power to protect our rights to the government.

Because the focus is on government protecting our rights it is distinct from socialist acts that have no such aim, such as Social Security.

They are most certainly socialism to the truest definitions.

Nope.

Do we really want to saddle ourselves with more debt?

The counterintuitive but economically sound answer is yes.

An economic downturn is precisely the wrong time to be balancing the federal budget. On a personal level, yes, right now individuals should absolutely be preparing for difficult times to come. But as a matter of government policy, the government should spend during bad times, to buffer the effects of a sluggish economy. The time to save (pay down the debt) is when things are going well in the private sector. (And if recession-era spending is done wisely -- for example, investing in infrastructure -- then the benefits will carry into later boom times without new money being spent.)

It would be a little easier to stomach spending now if our current president had been following this advice and running surpluses during the boom (like his predecessor did). But that doesn't change the fact that balancing the federal budget right now will make things worse.

Geeks hate Second Life because no one requires them to use it. It's great : ) Reuters didn't leave SL, their island is still in place. They seem to have lost interst, and Eric, a cub reporter just out of j-school, found a real job. But before that, he got a girlfriend, who probably hated him being on Second Life. http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/12/eric-reuters-got-a-girlfriend.html

Good! This is a good discussion to have, even if started by a paid hack. The gamerz and script kiddies here need to realize that the general public cannot go on paying for their WoW patch downloads and pirated video downloads and YouTubes and whatnot. Bandwidth is a scarce resource and has to be paid for, just like electricity -- come to think of it, it *is* electricity at the end of the day. I fail to see why telecoms have to shoulder more of the load, or "the government" (i.e. taxpayers) have to pay for people's Bittorent habit. If there isn't a feasible pay-to-play model, then let's look at how Google might pay more of its share for the *traffic*, not just the path to the backbone. After all, those websites that it says are all user-paid and on somebody else's dimes are hosting their AdSense, duh, so they are getting paid without paying for the cost of doing business. I see an enormous amount of aggressive insolence on Slashdot by geeks who don't seem to grasp that we are not required endlessly to pay for their energy consumption. The Internet is a form of energy, not merely a media. The entire Net Neutrality fandango should be renamed Net Congestion. It's not about free speech, it's about *consumption*. http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/12/net-congestion.html

Or listen to a particularly annoying song, as Alfred Bester suggested.

Ten, sir, said the Tensor
Tension, apprehension
And dissension have begun.

http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/03/a_word_of_expla.html

I think Kylie's 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' would work pretty well today.

Personally,I have a sneaking suspicion this guy is involved http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/squirrel_nuts_1.jpg ..Squirrel Nuts

The Finance Committee added an amendment which provides that a man will receive this annuity only if he has retired from regular employment. This was based on the belief that no person holding a regular job should retain this job after 65, receiving an annuity along with his pay check. Rather, he should retire and make it possible for others to obtain work.

It certainly doesn't cover retirement fully, but it's wrong to say that retirement wasn't part of the original intention.

Scott Adam's (the Dilbert guy) take's it and did a write up on his blog a while back: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/who-will-kill-a.html entertaining if nothing else.

Afaic, we should be shipping dead bodies to Mars as fast as people will pay to do it. They're excellent biomatter, they provide useful colonies of microorganisms, and they give rich people a means to contribute to the settlement of other parts of the solar system. Same goes for shipping bodies to the Moon and, for that matter, the more stable Lagrange points.

Undoubtedly, the quantities of materiel for a Mars base would be huge. What I can't understand is why nobody is ramping up to spread that job around. Seems to me that there are plenty of companies, states, countries, and so on, who would be delighted to get the chance to spend millions of dollars to have their stuff being used by a Mars crew. And it seems to me that we now know both how to get missions to Mars and how to have them work together.

Why is nobody trying to convince Wisconsin to start their own Mars mission to send five kilos of cheese into Mars orbit along with some clothes from Lands' End and fifteen or twenty kilos of brats and cheese bread? We know that UW Madison has some kickass space scientists and plenty of engineers. Or what about having developing nations pay a fifty or sixty thousand dollars a kilo to get their signature products added to a vessel to then be built and launched by one of the umpty-dozen New Space companies? There are plenty of options.

The smart thing to do at this point is to start pushing non-federal entities to start their own launch programs to launch their own payloads to Mars orbit where they can either wait for landing instructions (safely a few hundred miles or more from the base) or to be ferried down by some purpose-built vehicle.

Not all supplies are high tech. There is no reason that we need to wait years and years before we'll be ready to send low-G cheese, for crying out loud. The vacuum sealers sold in every supermarket today are more high-tech than the gear used to prepare consumables for the Apollo missions. Thousands and thousands of kilos of supplies would fit into this category. Clothes. Food. Bedding. And on and on. And, frankly, there are plenty of ways to structure the contracts so that Mars crew aren't obligated to use what is sent. Something would have to be pretty damn bad to get left in the cold but there's no reason that option can't be included.

And think about it. This way the logistics work is spread around, too. And the cargos can launch at high-G, travel at near-ambient temperatures in low-atmosphere vessels, and in a dozens of different ways, be a hell of a lot cheaper to send then trying to get everydamnthing shipped in a human-capable vessel. Sending everything in one vessel is like shipping a package by buying an airline ticket for it. This would provide the option of "parcel post".

Well of course, after all, republicans find plenty of ways to rationalize their own use of tax money while throwing a hissy fit about anyone else using it. That's one of the reasons red states more tax money than they give.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html

If they're men without guns, or women and children it's still okay to detonate the explosive as long as they're Islamic savages.

Let them live and they'll eventually mutilate your filmmakers and bomb your citizens.

Of course, the climate models have failed to correctly predict global temperate going forward. In particular, James Hansen's most famous prediction has failed miserably -- see http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/25/hansen_forecast_1988.jpg , which calls into question Hansen's and Saint Gore's doomsday predictions.

Curve fitting are easy; prediction is hard. Given the lack of prediction success of the climate models, true global economic models will probably have the same issues.

You keep throwing out the bull but fail to back it up. Show me any solid evidence that the McCain/Palin camp was pandering to racists or get a fucking life.

The whole point of coded appeals to racists is that they're deniable. Their effect, however, is not. For instance, the "Obama's not a real American, if you know what I mean" line of attack coincided with a surge in threats reported by the Secret Service.

The hate on both sides has created a very serious divide in this country, and the propaganda about Obama somehow being Arab or the next Antichrist from the Far Right is just as bad as the Far Left throwing around propaganda that the GOP is the party of racists and that they will do anything to make sure a Black man does not get into office.

Oh, please. "From both sides"? This is the false balance that makes David Broder such a baleful influence on American politics. I'm pointing out a very real pattern which has been part of Republican politics for decades, and you're comparing that to trivially-disproved rapture-compliant fantasies.

But I guess attacks on Obama because of his relationship with his former Pastor were all about race, right? They couldn't have had to do with a man (his Reverend) who obviously hated his own country and the fact that despite the constant barrage of hate this man spewed in his church, that Obama attended the church for longer than a decade.

It might give one pause that Obama was apparently a radical Christian and a Muslim and a (presumably secular) communist. But if the point is to make him out to be some kind of scary Other (and black people are this country's standard scary Other), it makes more sense.

Feel free to read the entire "God Damn America" sermon; if you think patriotism requires that people bow and scrape before a nation that has grievously wronged them, even as they try to reform their little piece of it, then that's your business.

As far as my comments about accidentally appealing to racists, what I meant (and what you tried so hard to distort) is that you can appeal to people who are racist without trying to do so.

If it only happened occasionally, the it's-a-coincidence argument might hold water. But it's been a consistent pattern lasting decades, long enough to enable profound shifts in the nation's political map.

In other words, many southern white racists happen to be pro-gun rights. So, if you as a candidate are pro-gun rights, is it fair to then call you a racist?

Whoa, there. Perhaps I should explain in more detail. Sending coded appeals to racists doesn't make the people doing so racists. It just makes them craven political opportunists bereft of principle.

You simply think blindly that the GOP is the party of white biggots and will spin the debate as you see fit to try and fit that argument, all while bringing zero facts and plenty of FUD to the debate.

Zero facts? The explicit Southern Strategy, the demographic shift in Republican voters, the specific loss of the Latino vote in recent years--these aren't facts?

Look, again, before you get your shorts in a knot. I'm not saying that being Republican makes you a racist. I am saying that the Republican Party has become the party of white racists.

Oh, and by the way, people who illegally enter this country are referred to as illegal aliens because they, you know, illegally circumvented the immigration process [... snip...] but that doesn't make it right to break the rules and hop the fence, so to speak. I guess because of the high number of people who are having trouble

Letmeguess, this is the weapon.

+5 informative?! You might want to look in a mirror and check out your sampling of six out of 22 million consoles for a skewed perspective. Here's a sample of 1040: a failure rate of 16.4% after six to ten months. This doesn't include returns directly to Microsoft or problems other than hardware failure. 60% of the failures were RRoDs and 18% were disc reading errors.

That doesn't apply to the newer 360s. They have a lower failure rate, but it's still a much bigger problem than it is with other consoles and PC parts. It seems to me that Microsoft could easily fix the two biggest problems by spending more than 50 cents on the 12x DVD reader, and investing in better cooling so the motherboard doesn't warp and break components off it. Let's face it: if Sony can do it right first time, any retard can do it.

As for the Nvidia cards: it was chips made with a specific process - less than half a generation - and the cards in question cost between a fifth and half the price of a 360.

I think the idea of being able to exit an aircraft before it incinerates, or craters, is a good idea. But I think that the Engineers have missed a major flaw in Land-To-Space design. Burt Rutan's solution allows for a more simple, graceful recovery of malfunctioning LTS Assemblies. Half the cost of an LTS project is the cost of Insurance for a second chance. By lifting parts of the project, and applying Final, and Trim Assembly in a stable earth orbit, one can reduce the overall project cost, and handle the issue of Module Replacement at lower cost levels. I know ISS was not designed for this type of mission. But an Space Assembly Yard in a parallel flight path of the ISS would give the Project Assembly Cost a smaller foot print.

When Barack Obama is president, Slashdotters will finaly have girlfriends!

No. The UKian Government has proved beyond doubt it is incapable of looking after sensitive personal data. The Government employs these private companies without any recourse for penalties, with massive rewards for the Boards, and no comeback for us proles who pay their wages. If you're interested, here's some googlewords for you: Devil's Kitchen, LPUK, Guido Fawkes. I understand that Bastard Old Holborn and many others will be taking an interesting walk on the 5th of November.

Hello Mr Grumpy-pants. Please put a smile back on your face with the happy news that Cute Overload is dating Slashdot.

It's some shit I made up - kind of. We do know that at least 24% of female inductees to one academy were raped, we also know that only a tiny percentage of rape allegations are false and that rape is underreported. Meanwhile, there have been many charges of rape and murder against US soldiers, and many US servicewomen in the mideast have been going mysteriously missing with no explanations offered as to the reasons for their disappearance.

In addition, the military is getting desperate. Drug crime conviction rates have been going steadily up since the Clinton days - specifically among the 18-35 set. These "criminals" are increasingly offered suspended or even revoked sentences for entering the military. Pretty typical. More worrying however is that induction standards have generally fallen off across the board; the military has increasingly been willing to knowingly recruit white supremacists, and white supremacists are actually recruiting current and ex-military as well! When you train people to violence, they become more violent. Does this sound like a good idea to you?

James H. Kunstler, is that you?

According to The Big Picture, who is a well-respected and gathers data from multiple sites, the CRA was certainly not a principal factor:

• Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the CRA;
• Only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.
• Mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.

From here:

" Among the articles of faith of "progressivism" is the theory - which never yields to experience - that you can fill the sea with enormous quantities of fresh red meat and then, Moses-like, successfully command the sharks not to devour it."

"As long as Uncle Sam continues to stock the Potomac by ripping from the body politic such enormous quantities of flesh and muscle - now more than three trillion dollars worth annually - sharks and vultures will inevitably swarm throughout Washington in a competitive struggle to gorge themselves on this unfortunate feast."

That actually does happen though, because the federal income tax brackets are X% on all income, where x is dependent on what your total income is. It doesn't set rates for dollars from y to z. My state income tax is painstakingly set so that it's continous, but federal just isn't that way. The marginal tax rate is really quite jumpy (taxfoundation.org was down when writing this, so I had to find a blog that referenced it, sorry) when you factor in cutoffs for things like EIC.

All the more reason to A.) use inflatable modules, and B.) not ship things assembled. If (and this is admittedly a big "if") a good robotic "mule" is brought along or is there already, then it should be pretty straightforward to move components/materials a mile or less. And, frankly, given how little we know about things like Martian microclimates and ease of digging into whatever they land near, we would want the humans there to be making those final placement decisions anyway.

But to me this is yet another reason to get a robotic mission on the way ASAP with some kind of device that will start making bricks or digging a tunnel or otherwise get the job of shelter and materials well on the way while the work for a human mission continues. Even if the final settlement ends up being hundreds of kilometers from the site of the initial shelter building, far better to have supplies and a hidey-hole a few hundred miles away than all the way back at Earth.

On top of everything else, this allows a more efficient division of labor. Have NASA promise a certain minimum guaranteed minimum price for bricks or water or shelters of specified characteristics and give organizations permission to do whatever seems best to them to get those things there for delivery. No materials, no cost to NASA. Not to mention that this frees NASA from management distractions, micromanagement by legislators, and so on.

Stop spreading someone else's talking points around. It does not reflect well on you when it turns out that those talking points are wrong.

http://chuqui.typepad.com/chuqui_30/2008/10/camcorders-and.html

Maybe I'm missing the joke - but, I'm calling you out.

Lest anyone misconstrue this to be a factual writeup concerning what the future (from a 1950's perspective) holds, let me bust this photo all to hell and back.

This is a picture of a US Submarine Reactor Plant Control Panel. IAUSSSQ. (I Am US Submersible Ship Qualified - A US Submariner.) This pic is simply doctored.

First: This is a picture from a museum - not a computer museum, though - probably a maritime museum. Here's another picture from the same museum.
Ref 1: http://tommcmahon.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/maneuvering.jpg

Here's a sailor tending to the RPCP - Reactor Plant Control Panel.
Ref 2: http://www.guardfish.org/history/mid_years/images/RPCP3.JPG

Second: The 'teletype' is from the 80's - certainly not the 50's. Gotta love the paper in the teletype, too. It just magically appears!! Don't even mention the numerical keypad to the right of the keyboard.

Third: I'm loving that late 50's era TV mounted on the wall where console TVs were designed to be furniture that sits on the floor. And, anyone having owned one of these behemoths can attest, one didn't want to carry those TVs any further than they had to, let alone lift it up over their heads.

Forth: The wheel on the 'computer console.' Home computer.....a wheel? Huh!? Inner wheel: Xloc. Outer wheel: yloc. (LOL)

Fifth: The unfortunate little person cut and pasted into the photo. His size is all wrong for this picture.

This is nothing more than a cut & paste job.

I know. "Buzz kill". "I'm a lot of fun at parties." "I suck."

Move along.

A wing will not exceed its critical angle of attack in a dive.

Only pulling out of a dive too quickly can cause that.

Why would airbus build control surfaces capable of ripping a plane apart? Would Boeing ever do that?

Quote:
The Star-Telegram reported on this issue a year ago (Nov. 12, 2006) because of the potential that it could be related to the 2001 fatal crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York:

        Five years after an American Airlines jet crashed in New York City and killed all 260 passengers and crew members, questions linger about whether the type of plane involved has flaws that could imperil other flights.

        An investigation concluded that the crash of Flight 587, on Nov. 12, 2001, in a Belle Harbor neighborhood, was largely due to pilot error. The co-pilot made overly aggressive attempts to steer the Airbus A300 as it bounced from side to side in turbulence created by another jet that had taken off ahead of it.

        The pilotâ(TM)s actions put so much stress on the aircraftâ(TM)s vertical stabilizer, or tail fin, that it was torn off, fatally crippling the wide-body jet, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its final report. For a pilot to break the airplaneâ(TM)s structure in flight was unprecedented, the NTSB said.

--endquote.
From http://startelegram.typepad.com/sky_talk/airbus/

Now, can we talk about former President Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act that precipitated the current economic meltdown?

Only if you promise to bring in some real statistics, instead of just parroting this as a right-wing talking point.

Point: the trillion dollar subprime mess became the 60-trillion dollar financial catastrophe through a whole set of leveraging activities. Start blaming credit default swaps, netting, etc. for turning what could have been a contained problem into a cascading failure.

Point: The CRA didn't require stupid loans with balloon payments and variable interest rates. The CRA regulations actually discouraged that. Not surprisingly, the stupid loans are the current problem, not the FHA style loans made under the CRA.

Point: like many other things, this became a real mess under the Bush administration. They decided that the stupid loans could be used to meet some of the same goals as the CRA, and then let Fannie and Freddie do stupid things with the stupid loans.

Over the past few years, I've had to ask the same thing over and over when someone blames the Clinton (and now Carter!) administration for something ... when are the Republicans going to take office?

A principle of the Information Age: Government is wise to organize itself and its records so it can swiftly and efficiently respond to freedom-of-information-act, open records and similar requests. Resistance to such requests is wasteful and makes government look out-of-touch. Hence, a government agency is prudent to tell employees (like governors) to send all business-related messages (e-mail, text and otherwise) through the agency's central IT system so they can be archived. --Ben

East Carolina University recognized that part of e-mail management is to set a policy for the retention of e-mail by important employees. -- Ben

the dimmer / less educated members of society (those currently saying things like "Why are we paying billions to bankers when small businesses don't get bailed out?)

My education taught me about the ad hominem attack in grade school, and hopefully exempted me from this one somewhere between the Bachelor's and the Ph.D. Or does the Ph.D. need to be in economics to count? I can find a few of them who agree with me too.

So rather than slandering the question, would you care to propose your idea of the "brighter / more educated" answer? Make sure it covers the followup question, "Instead of rewarding failed decision makers, why don't we let them go bankrupt so that their more responsible competitors can take over?"

> There was nothing in them that any sane person would construe as state business. Talking about election plans and partisan coverage is emphatically not state business; it's a party political matter. Sending family photos is, again, not state business.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008

According to the Guardian, who has looked at the Wikileaks data, among the emails in Palin's account were several from addresses belonging to her aides, including a draft letter to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and several bearing "DPS", the acronym for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

There's also an image with an email saying "Fw: veep talking points" It's hard to see that as a personal email, given that this was before the Tina Fey jokes.

No one is saying that the family emails were government business. That's absurd. I will even agree that most of the email was personal, but it's clear that not all of it was and the two shouldn't be mixed in the first place! I personally keep my work email on a separate account from my personal email and I don't mix the two in general, particularly if dealing with outside customers.

How is a draft of a letter to Gen. Schwarzenegger concerning government business "personal", anyhow? This becomes even more relevant when you consider that her tax returns are a bit odd. She's been getting a per diem (along with her family!) for being "away from the office" (and at home). At least some of this should clearly be reported as income. I know it's a side issue, but my point is that having one of her emails hacked by some dumbass who declared her innocent doesn't actually exonerate her. Also, we're told that the gov.sarah account was more widely used for government business and it was NOT hacked, if you recall. You can read the tax analysis here, BTW.

And the information I put up on the Alaska Public Records Act, for that matter, specifically says "There is no exception in the law for records of the governor." Yes, there are other exceptions, but it's hard to see Gov. Schwarzenegger as one of her personal advisers. And one ought NOT to be using Yahoo for government business at all.

Can you imagine if she was VP and sent Top Secret information there? I will grant that it's more shady and sloppy than anything. But I'd rather have careful leaders than careless ones.

That said, you're right that she's not hiding some major crime, just violating a few minor laws. So what I'm saying is that I don't trust her because of this.

And I will maintain again (lest someone read this and not grandparent), that the hacker here deserves punishment. I do NOT think he deserves any sympathy. He's a dumbass (which is why I don't believe that he knew anything about Alaska's Public Records laws).

To summarize:
* Palin is secretive and I don't trust her. I think her privacy should be respected, but I wish she wouldn't mix government and private business.
* She clearly breaks many minor laws, but apparently few major ones (I reserve judgment about Troopergate. That investigation was open long before she ran for VP and the guy who said it could be an "October Surprise" was just stating the obvious.)
* The hacker is an idiot who deserves punishment.

In today's terms, the founding fathers are nothing more than terrorist-loving war criminals.

Benjamin Franklin was almost tortured. James Madison opposed judicially sanctioned impalements and being drawn and quartered in public squares. His "cruel and unusual punishment" is embodied in the Constitution's 8th amendment: Cruel and Unusual Punishment. George Washington captured more than a thousand Hessian mercenaries at the battle of Trenton on Dec. 25, 1776 and ordered his troops to treat them with "respect and dignity and they will suffer no abuse or torture". Chairman of the Board of War and Ordinance John Adams wrote in a letter to Abigail Adams on 27 April 1777 of a "strong a light as the barbarity and impiety of Briton, in this persecuting war." The USA's Founding Fathers knew of torture and opposed it. It's such a shame the Bush admin has gone out of it's way to justify torture.

"Hostile workplace" lawsuits show that businesses have good reason to use technical filters and blocks to prevent the transmission of ill-advised e-mail. This link describes a case against the Chicago Police Department: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/10/filter-and-block-pornography-from-workplace-e-mail.html --Ben