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If you don't allow low wages, then people will have to choose whether they still want the work done or not.

They don't. They can't compete or make a profit at the higher wage levels. Businesses don't "want" work done. They hire when adding payroll increases profits. At higher wages, that won't be happening much.

If it is important or necessary, they will pay more for the work.

It isn't. And even if it were, they'll outsource it. They'll offshore it. They'll hire independent contractors. Smaller companies that can't get around your artificially high wages will lose out to bigger companies or foreign companies who can.

Entry level is entry level, but forcing labor costs on the bottom up will generally have benefits all around - increased markets, less inequality, etc.

It causes unemployment. All economists agree it causes unemployment, BTW, they only disagree on how much.

We can see the results of your philosophy. It's Detroit.

Plus, by the time China calls in our debt, our currency will likely already be inflated so much that we'll be able to pay it off with a few freshly printed trillion dollar bills, so long as we lean on enough countries militarily to keep them from rejecting our currency...

On a side note, look at the fucking picture of the guy carrying an armful of bundles of bills to go grocery shopping LMAO

The WSJ had an article last month on the Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle. The various approaches just haven't worked at all. Try whatever tabletop approach catches your fancy but in the real world lignin just doesn't scale up to anything approaching meaningful commercial volumes, as of yet anyway. And our tax dollars go towards these attempts, keep in mind.

People have been fiddling about with these approaches for almost a century too, and making all manner of grandiose claims; I've parsed news clippings from the 1920s promising a coming era of limitless cheap ethanol to replace rock oil. It would take catastrophically high crude oil prices to really spur development here, but chances are we'd also turn to dirtier approaches like coal-to-liquids which are somewhat more profitable and scalable; or simply employ conservation to the point where the price would drop back down anyway. The International Energy Agency had an excellent document on approaches for
Saving Oil in a Hurry, which may be of interest.

I'm afraid your post is largely nonsense.

Vyacheslav Danilenko – Background, Research, and Proliferation Concerns

In the debate about the November 11 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards report, some have falsely implied that Vyacheslav Danilenko did not know anything about nuclear weapons, or that he worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career, even though he worked at Chelyabinsk-70 for almost thirty years.1 The open source record demonstrates that these statements are incorrect and that Danilenko was involved in developing and using inwardly converging high pressure explosions and diagnostic systems to measure their effectiveness vital to the development of Soviet nuclear weapons. As such, the open source record supports that when he assisted Iran in the 1990s, he was an ex-Soviet nuclear weapons expert. Given his background, Danilenko should have had reason to believe that his knowledge and expertise related to high explosive compression in nuclear weapons could be misused by the Iranians, even if he limited himself to advising on strictly non-nuclear weapon applications.

Iran Accused of Nuclear Aims

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of documents generated by the IAEA itself, from Iran and from more than 10 member states of the U.N. agency. "All of this information, taken together, gave rise to concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the IAEA report said.. . . .

Officials briefed on the report also said the IAEA believes North Korea is the foreign government named in the report as assisting Tehran in conducting computer modeling of nuclear detonations.

They said a former Russian nuclear scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko, is the official cited in the report as making a string of visits to Tehran from 1996 through 2002 to help Iran develop a high-explosive initiation system, which can be used to trigger a nuclear device. The IAEA said they were told during consultations that this work was for non-nuclear applications

Taking a stand for MegaUpload? This is a perfect example of when anonymous gives itself a bad name.
Kim DotCom is a greedy ruthlessly conniving pig of a man that makes wall street executives look noble in comparison. His success is based on the exploitation and stealing of others.

This isnt fighting oppression, this is being a crybaby because you cant download your latest call of duty game in a few clicks

Easy, there is no ocean acidification to worry about according to science: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550304577138561444464028.html#printMode

Pixar = Disney = MPAA
Lucasfilm, while not public supporters of SOPA (based on the wiki list) certainly wouldn't shed any tears if it passed (given their litigious history).

there are your keywords 'NOT public supporters of sopa' -> they did not join. stayed silent.

The "they" here is Lucasfilm, Pixar is not included. Disney is explicitly pro-SOPA. The post you replied to was pretty clear on that, so either you lied or you can't read.

It also includes non-media companies like Genentech. How does that fit into your retarded little conspiracy theory? Oh, let me guess: it's a "smokescreen" to hide their true motives, right?

Plus, the investigation started over a year ago. Perhaps they used a time machine to cover their tracks?

Um, what? The people that get to sell first will not be impacted by the mass sell off of the others.

Why should they be? What is the problem exactly?

The insider trading restriction allows for all parties to have the opportunity to sell when the news is released.

No, it doesn't. It allows for people who have political pull to sell before the public has knowledge. All politicians, for example, are exempt from insider trading laws, and can make fortunes by dumping/buying stocks before passing new selective legislation.

In a free market, all parties make decisions based on all information available and is assumed to be perfect.

A free market protects individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, against force, threat of force, and fraud, and provides judicial recourse when such rights are violated. There is no right to perfect, equally-available knowledge.

Except Republicans, conservatives, Christians, people who respect the constitution. They're all free game.

You almost had a point there until you got around to trolling with the "people who respect the constitution" part. And yeah, a lot of people hate a lot of the so-called values that many Republicans, conservatives and Christians have been pushing these days. But that coin has two ugly sides to it, so let's not pretend like there's anything unique going on here.

If you put Conservatives, Republicans and Christians in one group, and "people who respect the constitution" in another group, then I think you've covered everyone. (with very little overlap)

Then your thinking is very, very wrong.

They didn't just want to shut down the site! They wanted to prove that the operators knew that what they were doing was illegal, and that they were taking deliberate steps to hide the money! That is central to the indictment, that they knew (because they were told!) that they hosted infringing content, and that they did not comply with removing (very specific) items from a (very specific) server. There's a lot more to the indictment, which I encourage everyone to read before they take an activist position.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171180266957116.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

A central piece of evidence is the storage of a significant number of full-length feature films on a server in Virginia. There is other evidence that the accused utilized US banks for money laundering.

Read the indictment. They are accused of violating US law in the US, whether they were physically in the US or not.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171180266957116.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

"What law was MegaUpload breaking?"

The indictment is quite specific, and not a difficult read. I wonder how many of the people who are already in full protest mode have read it?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171180266957116.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/05/06/sams-club-justice-stevens-praises-justice-alito/

Anthony Watt's work in photographing the locations of the various weather stations used to create the temperature record and discovering them located in places like parking lots.

Investigated by "instrumental temperature record skeptic" Richard Muller, who finally concluded that the instrumental temperature record was in fact ok... Following his reversal, deniers now say that Muller was never a "true skeptic" because he accepted some tenets of global warming, completely missing the point that he was skeptical about the temperature record and he named Watts's survey as part of the reason for his skepticism:

A careful survey of these stations by a team led by meteorologist Anthony Watts showed that 70% of these stations have such poor siting that, by the U.S. government's own measure, they result in temperature uncertainties of between two and five degrees Celsius or more. We do not know how much worse are the stations in the developing world. - Richard Muller

But apparently being skeptical of the instrumental temperature record (ala Watts) is no longer enough to make you a "true skeptic" - you have to be all in, and deny everything, or else you aren't a real skeptic anymore.

the hockey stick will create a hockey stick of any random data.

Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

climategate emails and the various inquiries into practices at UAE CRU

You mean, the leaks and practices that have been investigated by several different independent science groups, all of which concluded that there was no fraud? The "discredited" researchers who have been backed by every science journal that has commented on the matter?

Do you have any evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons ? Because as far as I know, all they are doing is producing fuel for nuclear power stations and medical isotopes production reactors. It amazes me that after the lies in the lead-up to the Iraq war people still takes U.S. propaganda at face value.

Well, you are in luck, on more than one count.

Iran Accused of Nuclear Aims - U.N. Agency Cites Work on Weapons Technology, Raising Stakes for Washington

WASHINGTON—The United Nations' nuclear agency said Iran has developed technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons, a finding that puts new pressure on the Obama administration to act more forcefully against Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in its first public airing of such charges, said Tuesday that Tehran appears to have conducted advanced research on a miniaturized warhead that could be delivered by medium-range missiles. The watchdog agency also cited evidence that Iran has worked to develop the uranium metal used for warheads and said it has conducted computer simulations of nuclear detonations.

We're just a couple of days out from the /. post about DHS X-ray Car Scanners, where the summary suggested "the cancer risk of CT scans can be quiet high". A commenter suggested that chest (heart) scans were an even higher risk because they required imaging the heart as it beats.

Saying that it's 2 CT scans total isn't comforting. According to:
        CT Scans Linked to Cancer

One of the studies, which examined more than 1,000 adult patients at four hospitals, projected that the dose of radiation received in a single heart scan at age 40 would later result in cancer in 1 in 270 women and 1 in 600 men.

For a single individual with health issues, those odds are probably worth it. For kids just going to school, those odds are terrible and you don't get anything good in return for the exposure.

Recent studies have shown that CT scans are not completely safe.
One CT scan in a year is estimated to produce one cancer in 270 women (one cancer in 600 men) or about 29,000 a year in the US.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126082398582691047.html

Radiation is not safe and we don't really know if there is a "safe" amount of radiation. It's best to avoid all radiation as much as possible.

intended to help people who wanted to overthrow a dictator

You mean the bankers, and oil executives. Right?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42308613/Libyan_Rebels_Form_Their_Own_Central_Bank
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/wow-that-was-fast-libyan-rebels-have-already-established-a-new-central-bank-of-libya
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111122-713038.html

I have absolutely no problem with wealthy philanthropists deciding themselves what's the best way to give back to society - all the more power to them.

The point is not the estate tax but prevention of dynasty building, because contrary to you assertion it has been pretty conclusively shown that trickle down economics is not accomplishing this (once an estate is large enough that a small share of the interest allows for a lavish life style the wealth accumulation persists).

I should probably also mention that both Gates and Buffet have been arguing for a fairer i.e. higher taxes on the super rich.

Who are you claiming is hoarding capital? Be specific here. Its as if you think there are folks with billion dollar savings accounts.

"The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies had socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March, up 26% from a year earlier and the largest-ever increase in records going back to 1952. Cash made up about 7% of all company assets, including factories and financial investments, the highest level since 1963." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312104575298652567988246.html

The bottom 80% of Americans only hold 15% of net worth in the United States.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

So is hoarding evil, or is spending evil?

Participating in two wars, cutting taxes, and then making the middle and working class pay with austerity measures while the wealthiest Americans sit on top of record amounts of wealth is evil, and ultimately a detriment to our economy.

Surely those people that make luxury items dont need to earn a living, and they never spend that money...

Find a single economist who will tell you that sinking 10 million dollars into a painting has the same economic value as investing 10 million dollars in education, infrastructure, or scientific research. In fact, pushing up the values of rarities and luxury real estate does less for the economy than simply giving that money away to random people who would spend it on goods and services that create jobs in a much greater proportion.

This is super basic economics, going all the way back to Adam Smith:

When the toll upon carriages of luxury, upon coaches, post-chaises, etc. is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight, than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, waggons, etc. the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute, in a very easy manner, to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country.

who also said

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

And that's what we're dealing with: power and capital have concentrated in the hands of people who make money by destroying American jobs and infrastructure, and reaping the profit from that destruction. What Smith could not have imagined is that people like you would support the destruction of their own nation's ability to provide for itself for the benefit of a handful of producers, who are "architecting" the whole system to have their own needs "most peculiarly attended to."

Yes, Google has issued a statement and apology.

Of course, and Google apologises when they did nothing wrong.

I find that even less likely then your "likely" possibilities.

Google runs the same operation in other countries as well. Based on the fact that all the "Get <Country> Online" campaigns have only Google as a common factor, I'd say they are driving it. See:

1. India Get Online
2. Getting Irish Business Online
3. Getting British Business Online
4. Getting Aussie Business Online
5. Canada Get Your Business Online
6. Texas Get Your Business Online
7. Get Nigerian Business Online (Isn't the problem with the internet that Nigerian "business" is already online?)

There's hundreds of other "Get * Online" that Google is running, so claiming that it's not a Google operation is flat out incorrect. Also, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google has already issued a statement and apology, so clearly they accept responsibility for the issue whether they or contractors authorised to act on their behalf were responsible.

How is this different

How is this different from when Google uses open source? There's a great article about the supposed openness by Google here

Some good points from it:

Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum & destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm.

- At the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).

- When planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google's blessings. Then, after he wrote the book, Google revoked permission to publish it!

- Android is open but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.

- The Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled & YouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year!

- In spite of not having permission to do so, Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn't be used against them.

If you only had to manage competing against other market competitors & staying inside Google's editorial guidelines then investment isn't that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google's guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters & destroys the market it is far more difficult.

A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On
When Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, use predatory pricing, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, violate IP, scrape 3rd party content, work with sketchy advertisers & publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above.

They are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as "a beta" and "just a test." They promise to "act appropriately" & you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it.

Google can bundle themselves into markets, but when others do the same it is a big no no:

A Google spokesman said "applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users' experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole."

Google's founding research highlighted how bad ad-driven search engines were & then Google's core revenue engine of paid search was built on their violation of Overture's patent. They keep

except it very often doesn't, and sits still in quite large quantities.

Keep in mind that drone video feeds are probably not yet encrypted or even very well compressed.

Well, you don't make the big bucks solving problems that you find before you hand it over to the customer...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123871451033784579.html

Well, you don't make the big bucks solving problems before you hand it over to the customer...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123871451033784579.html

There's over 3,000,000 people in America that fall into the top 1%.

Which is about the number of millionaires in the United States. How many individual millionaires do you personally know that read Slashdot? Me... none. I'd be surprised if there weren't a few slash-millionaires but I'd be more surprised if anything like 1% of the readership here was in that list.

Look, there is no throughput shortage, at least in fiber. Maybe some wireless spectrum is literally jammed packed and "golly we just don't have anymore or other spectrum we could use or any other alternatives... just running out folks!" .

I'll let people who know comment on that ;)

Somehow I doubt it's ultimately much different than the situation we have with fiber now.

In general, throughput is not a natural resource like oil or gas for which the amount can be said to be finite in any meaningful way.

We can create more fiber throughput at will, and whats more, we could being to use the copious, in fact, excess amount of fiber optic that exists now :

Less than 50% of the fiber-optic lines buried in the U.S. are being used, up from about 3% a decade ago, estimates TeleGeography.

from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704529204576256541491117496.html

A decade or so ago I happened upon a booklet (at B and N no less) that outlined, in extremely frank language, that the way for cable providers to increase their profits without having to create value or increase investment was to create an artificial "shortage" of bandwidth by establishing a tiered system of throughput for which access to the upper tier was subject to bidding .

In this way, profits could be increased not through reaching more customers or even improving service.

Is this different than what Enron was doing when they were blacking out the West Coast by creating a "shortage" of electricity? Is this not the same sociopathic personality types and the same "captains of industry" doing what they do best- lying, manipulating consumers and scheming to increase profits without adding value?

Just so none of us forget how this scam works; from the Enron tapes: From:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml

Energy trader: "Just cut 'em off. They're so fucked. They should just bring back fucking horses and carriages, fucking lamps, fucking kerosene lamps."

And when describing his reaction when a business owner complained about high energy prices, another trader is heard on tape saying, "I just looked at him.

I said, 'Move.' (laughter) The guy was like horrified. I go, 'Look, don't take it the wrong way. Move. It isn't getting fixed anytime soon."

California's attempt to deregulate energy markets became a disaster for consumers when companies like Enron manipulated the West Cost power market and even shut down plants so they could drive up prices. ...

Consumers like Grandma Millie, mentioned in one exchange recorded between two Enron employees.

Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.

Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt hour."

Another taped exchange between different employees regarding a possible newspaper interview goes like this:

Employee 3: "This guy from the Wall Street Journal calls me up a little bit ago"

Employee 4: "I wouldn't do it, because first of all you'd have to tell 'em a lot of lies because if you told the truth"

Employee 3: "I'd get in trouble."

Employee 4: "You'd get in trouble."

"I'm just -- fucked -- I'm just trying to be an honest camper so I only go to jail once," says one employee.

Latest observations from Scripps among others have shown that the projected acidification due to anthropogenic CO2 is less than natural daily variation in some locations.
"Over coral reefs, the pH decline between dusk and dawn is almost half as much as the decrease in average pH expected over the next 100 years. The noise is greater than the signal."

Hacking stuff you own is perfectly legal.

It is until the government makes it illegal. The number of federal crimes has ballooned from around 3,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 4,500 today. wsj.com The Feds seem to make all kinds of things illegal today, so I wouldn't hang my hat on whether it's illegal or not. Where would one even look? Have you ever seen the United States Code? It's a nightmare. New bills that come up for a vote that amend an existing statute, for instance to add a crime to an existing statute, don't republish the whole statute, the bill shows the changes to the statute, and they show that they add a sub-paragraph here or remove a word there. It's really very difficult to figure out what's going on, even for our legislators.

Also never mind that lot of these countries are actually self-sufficient in oil needs too.

There is not a single country in Asia that does not import oil. In fact, without Asia, an EU ban on Iranian oil imports will not bite . What are you smoking?

Civil Recovery
Stores are (all states are different) allowed to go after anyone caught with civil penalty for the cost of their loss prevention measures

the amounts can readily run near a grand for items that cost well under 10... this goes directly to the merchant.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120347031996578719.html

The problem I have with your warhawk nonsense is the idea that it's the United State's who should do something about it. We've already blown over a trillion dollars on two wars, and you want us to blow another trillion on Iran? You conservatives do all this whining about the deficit, but gloss over the fact that it's your precious defense spending that accounts for a third of non-discretionary spending every year and your precious interventionist actions overseas that add hundreds of billions of dollars on top of that. It's funny that Ron Paul would probably be solidly in the #1 spot in Iowa today if it weren't for the fact that Republicans can't accept a man who won't spend trillions for us to enter into another war all by ourselves.

Sure the world would cheer us taking on Iran. China will gladly put us deeper in debt to them to fund the war. NATO will probably join in, the same way they joined in for Libya--as cheerleaders on the sidelines, letting us spend ourselves to death acting as their military while they spend the savings on universal healthcare and higher education for their citizens.

You called the above poster a "Eurotrash liberal drooler," but the European Union is playing us for suckers, just like former Defense Secretary Gates said, and it's Americans like you who make it all possible as you spend us into the ground with your wars and then try to blame the hole you put us in on America's crumbling libraries, roads, and schools.

There was a recent EPA report that found water was contaminated by fracking. Yes, it's just one report, but it has only been a recent issue* so we will have to see as more studies are done. I won't claim fracking needs to be stopped immediately, but I'm not about to support the practice without more time for research.

*So far as I am aware, they only relatively recently started fracking horizontally, the "for decades" claim people love to use seems misleading.

Global demand for solar power is still growing—about 8% more solar panels will be installed this year compared with 2010, according to Jefferies Group analysis—but it is expected to flat-line next year.

lollll....

Their point is: the banks wrecked the economy, probably criminally.

Uhmm ... I disagree. The banks were forced to give out loans to people THEY KNEW could not pay it back. It started with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ... and was reinforced by Clinton in 1994 - Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown.

They not only did not get punished, but they got 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money

And Banks did not want TARP ... because of the strings attached.

which they then turned around and used to pay bonuses to the people that wrecked the economy.

Attacking the banks is a nice and tidy class-warfare position that may get some traction among those who are not informed, the real culprit in this case is the Federal Government. By interfering with the "invisible hand" of the economy, it places pressure to do the "wrong thing". Of course, it makes people feel good that they helped out a nice couple trying to buy a house for the first time, however, if it is KNOWN that the payments would not be able to be made ... it doesn't help anybody.

The issue is the double standard - if I am a rich bank, I can do whatever I want, and if I get into trouble, I get bailed out with taxpayer dollars, and if I am not a rich bank, then I'm screwed.

I would argue that it is with the Government that is at fault ... the Government can screw with the economy and nearly collapse it, yet the people just hear "it's the rich's fault ... they're not paying their fair share" ... the top 1% pay >36% of the taxes ...how much SHOULD they pay? And if they don't pay ... they get thrown in jail. So ... in essence, you're saying that the "top 1%" has to be our slaves and give us their money that they earned.

what they want is the government to spend its money helping its citizens in need rather than banks who deserve to fail for their incompetence.

That's assuming that the banks did it on their own. NOT under the threat of former Attorney General Janet Reno

Do you argue that there is no ever increasing disparity of wealth?

Looks like we're seeing a decreasing disparity of wealth.

The number of Americans making $1 million or more fell 40% between 2007 and 2009, to 236,883, while their combined incomes fell by nearly 50% -- far greater than the less than 2% drop in total incomes of those making $50,000 or less, according to Internal Revenue Service figures.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576638981631627402.html
 

Interesting your choice of the word "ban" there. Not simply "refused to include in iOS on performance grounds".

Well they certainly banned Flash for developing apps.

They stated from the outset that Flash was a dog for performance, especially on mobile devices. Adobe belatedly agreed with them. Everyone's happy.

Everybody's happy? I think not. Adobe did end up changing from Flash to HTML5 for mobiles, but this was because it is hard to push Flash as a platform for mobile applications when the elephant in the room is that it will not work on iOS. Adobe lost the war to Apple, plain and simple. And losers tend not to be all that happy.

Ohh? Apple never had more than 30% of the phone market - why would that have any influence on Flash? If anything, its the fact that most phones (even most Smartphones) don't have any reasonable Flash support - period.

Interesting your choice of the word "ban" there. Not simply "refused to include in iOS on performance grounds".

Well they certainly banned Flash for developing apps.

They stated from the outset that Flash was a dog for performance, especially on mobile devices. Adobe belatedly agreed with them. Everyone's happy.

Everybody's happy? I think not. Adobe did end up changing from Flash to HTML5 for mobiles, but this was because it is hard to push Flash as a platform for mobile applications when the elephant in the room is that it will not work on iOS. Adobe lost the war to Apple, plain and simple. And losers tend not to be all that happy.

We have a local clothier with the motto, "an informed consumer is our best customer."

Not any longer.

I love how Anonymous hates on everything related to the US, the West, police, etc., and utterly ignores things like China jailing or disappearing human rights activists, Beijing requiring bloggers to register their real names, or the over 5,000 people the Syrian government has murdered this year, instead posting tired, lame anarchist diatribes predicting the downfall of Capitalism.

I hope that Anonymous one day gets what it wishes for, if only so they could witness how horrible that world would be.

Security theater, from this perspective, is an attempt to convey a message: “We are doing everything possible to protect you.” When 9/11 shattered the public’s confidence in flying, Slovic says, the handful of anti-terror measures that actually work—hardening the cockpit door, positive baggage matching, more-effective intelligence—would not have addressed the public’s dread, because the measures can’t really be seen. Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, “Have confidence in Uncle Sam,” when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense.

After witnessing enough conversations about how TSA is worthless, or worse, yet another part of an effort to acclimate hapless Americans to living in a police state, I think it's valid to consider the reasons for even "appearances" of security, and I'm glad this article laid them out clearly. Even appearances can be a deterrent.

The other points in the article are also valid. I believe we need to ask ourselves the question that if at least some amount of "theater" is appropriate, what is that amount, and what would the damage been to the air transport sector if nothing (visible) had been done? Note I don't pretend to know the answer.

Some say that money might better have been spent "educating" people why such security measures don't work, so they won't be a afraid when they don't see it. That's a task far easier said than done. Alongside the constant drumbeat in some circles that the government is out to get them, it's important to understand there are actual legitimate reasons for things the TSA is doing, seen and unseen.

None of this means that our homeland security efforts should be exempt from criticism or thoughtful scrutiny, but it needs to be done against a backdrop of reason.

Interesting semi-related story:

Skies Are Now So Safe on U.S. Flights That Experts Turn Focus to 'Surface Threats'

...The thing is, the Roadster cost $109k, so this is already a huge price drop compared to that. That's been Tesla's strategy all along.

What!!?? Strategy?? Surely you jest. The price drop is because we (taxpayers) gave them a $465 million "loan":
    http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-through-for-tesla-with-a-465-million-loan-for-its-electric-sedan/
We will be damn lucky if they stay afloat long enough to pay some of it back. As much as we all want a "green revolution", this one is gonna be Solyndra all over again:
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596601891250510.html

Dems do it too, not that it makes it right from either, but let's get real. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204879004577106553831623714.html

1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.

That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.

Do you really think that they will use this to transport humans? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. It does not have the means to evade. About the only way that I would want to be in one, is for an air ambulance (willing to go into any situation for an evac). But yes, if shot down, I would rather it not blow me up (unless it is right in AQ territory).

2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.

Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.

On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon, the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.

Hence the reason why you get it up to say 10 mile beaming so that you can beam it at a slow flying 30K' plane and then have it relay.
Now, as to solar, you have no power at night, other than via storage. In addition, there will NOT be enough solar cells at a site to keep weapons going. In fact, with solar, an enemy can attack by simply running smoke over the area. OTH, a beam of energy can provide loads of power quickly when needed.
And the whole reason why I push the beaming of energy is because of the 400/gal fuel costs. If this was done right, the beaming of energy could then be used on tractors, earth movers, tanks, ships, etc. That would enable a number of uses that would allow us to talk away from hydrocarbons/hydrogen.

Reread the first sentence then get back to us!

I'm back.

Some balance from the Wall Street Journal:
Motorola Mobility Claims Patent Win Against Microsoft
Judge rules in favor of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc on six of seven Microsoft Corp patents
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111220-716842.html

Microsoft has had six patents invalidated and will be forced to provide clarity on patent 566 (sharing calendar events). That means other companies will be able to work around the patent without paying Microsoft's extortion fee. It's an excellent first step in pulling the fangs of their patent trolling.

1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.

That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.

2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.

Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.

On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon, the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.