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CONSUMER tech wasn't necessarily affected( and as others point out automotive and camera production was adversely affected), as the only PC parts still produced in Japan are a small % of hard disks, a significant though not overwhelming amount of SSDs, and some batteries and screens for notebooks. However to say the computer industry wasn't affected isn't true at all. Japan still makes a very large % of the world's embedded chips, used in everything from portable media players to factory control systems. And some of those factories were in Sendai and other areas affected by the quake.

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer

The inventors of Siri, NOT Apple implemented 'attitude' for Siri, when Apple bought them out they didn't undo that decision.

Not, they didn't.

"There were many conversations within the team about whether it should be gender neutral" or "should have an 'attitude,' " said Mr. Winarsky, who didn't go to Apple, and still works at SRI. The result, before the software was bought by Apple, was "occasionally a light attitude," he said.

When Apple began integrating Siri into the iPhone, the team focused on keeping its personality friendly and humble—but also with an edge, according to a person who worked at Apple on the project. As Apple's engineers worked on the software, they were often thinking, "How would we want a person to respond?" this person said.

As we just found out this year, that's not entirely accurate.

football is also stretched out

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406.html
also note how little you miss and how much faster the game is via DVR

I don't personally know anyone who has an iPad, but I know plenty of people who bought netbooks in 2008 and wouldn't be able to afford one now. And while I'm not saying at all that having an iPad or even a netbook should be a human right, I think it's misleading to say "consumers want tablets instead of netbooks" when the number of tablets sold are only 50-60% of what netbook sales were and still are (note the headline: "Sales of Tablet computers such as iPad outshine netbooks").

Say what you want about Apple, they *do* spend billions researching new technology. And they should be allowed to recover that money.

You're ignoring the fact that they already have. Apple is about as far from losing money on the iPhone as you can possibly get, and the patent lawsuits have had nothing to do with that.

They were told by their lawyers not to create Dalvik without a licensing agreement with Sun, but they ignored the advice.

You are referring to this email by Tim Lindholm, who is not a lawyer. Moreover, the context of the email is not 'if we use Dalvik we will need a license to Java,' it is 'I think we should just use Java.'

And now their getting their ass handed to them in court

Any evidence of that?

Inequality statistics are the easiest to manipulate. There are all kinds of trends that matter that make a huge difference. The statistics in the article you mention are deceiving in two ways: first, they don't take into consideration total compensation. Especially over the last decade, more and more of what people earn goes into company provided healthcare. Healthcare has gotten more expensive as it's improved.

It also fails to take into consideration immigrants. Median income could be easily going up for everybody, but the constant supply of new low wage workers makes it appear to remain the same. After a while, those immigrants make more, but there are new ones to replace them.

Anyway, I'm not saying your point is wrong, just that you have to be very careful to not be tricked by statistics when talking about inequality. Here's an article looking at similar statistics from a different point of view.

There's a theory that some chronic back pain is due to low-virulent bacterial infection, and you can cure it with a course of the right antibiotics: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/12/969.full

I won't be surprised if that's true. Periodontal bacteria has been linked to heart disease, and antibacterial mouthwash reduces the risk of preterm deliveries ( http://www.thehealthage.com/2011/02/anti-bacterial-mouthwash-reduces-risk-of-preterm-deliveries/ ).

It took a while for people to find out and prove that helicobacter pylori was responsible for many cases of chronic gastritis and gastric ulcers.

Not all bacteria are harmful and not in all cases. It can get quite complex - the same bacteria might be fine in one person or fine when with other bacteria. Nowadays some doctors are even resorting to fecal transplants to cure certain gastrointestinal problems: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/fecal-transplants-work/
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/31/fecal-transplants-have-the-ick-factor-but-research-suggests-they-work/

Hence many of these chronic problems actually being caused by bacteria or an imbalance in bacterial ecosystems would not be surprising to me.

Really? Half the members of the US senate have been convicted of serious offences that are punishable by time in jail?

sigh... I thought this was common knowledge:

60 Minutes
Wall Street Journal

Congress is exempt from insider trading laws.

Samsung smartphones outsell Apple smartphones

+ Having multiple phone products increases complexity and cost. There's an argument to be made that with a dozen major phone vendors, and with some of them offering dozens or even hundreds of different phones, these companies may be pumping out lots of competition to the iPhone, but they're not doing so in a way that is sustainable long term.

This doesn't make much sense to me. Do you have an example of a market in which alternatives are bad? Why is it unsustainable?

- Build rocket ship that gets to the edge of space - DONE - SpaceShip One, 2004
- Own a company named after Star Trek universe - DONE - Vulcan, Inc is mine, all mine!
- Lose $8 billion when cable company goes bust - DONE - Charter Communications, 2009
- Build the world's largest trebuchet - IN PROGRESS - Stratolaunch, ~2015

(Info on bucket list from WSJ article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203518404577096493595261190.html?mod=djemTECH_h)

See?

I can't understand how Slashdot would pass on mentioning that in the headline.

I was already prepared for creationists building their own Disney-world themed Large Hadron Collider to travelling back into time when dinosaurs and men did dance together for God.

For the Highest Fliers, New Scrutiny: Messrs. Page and Brin, the Google co-founders, operate at least four aircraft registered under various companies that aren't connected to Google, FAA and other aviation records show: a Boeing 767, a Boeing 757, plus two Gulfstream G-V's. During the four-year period, the jets' most frequent destinations outside of their northern California base were Los Angeles, New York and Washington. For last year's eclipse-viewing journey, the 767 and a Gulfstream V each made two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti. Those flights used an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and in total cost upwards of $430,000, according to calculations by Conklin & de Decker Aviation Information. The research firm is hired by some public companies to provide aircraft-cost estimates for regulatory filings. A Google spokeswoman confirmed that the Tahiti journey was for the eclipse, saying the pair brought a group with them on the planes. Messrs. Page and Brin have mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets, she said. They also frequently lend their planes for philanthropic and scientific missions.

This is some PR marksmanship, if you can convince people that the impact of maintaining and using a fleet of 7 (8 with the fighter) private jets for 3 company execs (including a 767 jumbojet for crying! this is oil baron style gluttony) is 'mitigated' by paying a little extra carbon offset.

For the Highest Fliers, New Scrutiny: Messrs. Page and Brin, the Google co-founders, operate at least four aircraft registered under various companies that aren't connected to Google, FAA and other aviation records show: a Boeing 767, a Boeing 757, plus two Gulfstream G-V's. During the four-year period, the jets' most frequent destinations outside of their northern California base were Los Angeles, New York and Washington. For last year's eclipse-viewing journey, the 767 and a Gulfstream V each made two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti. Those flights used an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and in total cost upwards of $430,000, according to calculations by Conklin & de Decker Aviation Information. The research firm is hired by some public companies to provide aircraft-cost estimates for regulatory filings. A Google spokeswoman confirmed that the Tahiti journey was for the eclipse, saying the pair brought a group with them on the planes. Messrs. Page and Brin have mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets, she said. They also frequently lend their planes for philanthropic and scientific missions.

That's the way to legally cheat, consistently make a profit, and not have your bones broken.

One of the articles you referenced cites NASDAQ "flash orders" as a blatant mechanism for cheating. Fortunately for everyone, flash orders were shut down within months.

Even if this sparks patent reform (which it almost certainly won't)

Don't be so sure, this has the mainstream media taking notice of patent problems. There was even an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that was complaining about patent problems. Their solution is different than the one I would choose, but at least they are thinking about these problems now.

Judges are generally rubber stamps in most SEC cases with a notable recent exception. I was responding to the statement, "In the US, judges determine everything," and that is simply not true. We could use more judges like U.S. District Judge Rakoff, who seems to believe that there should be more accountability on both sides of the regulatory equation.

That's speculation. What evidence can you provide to show that the communication protocols used are anything more secure than off-the-shelf consumer grade? This kind of crap makes me highly suspicious.

Really? November 2009 - $26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq

This was reported that people were able to capture the video that was sent out by drones: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

Hopefully they encrypted the control channel and just sent the video in the clear? Honestly, I've tried to think how they got their hands on this drone and hacking the control channel seems like the only possible way. Since the drone was undamaged they didn't shoot it down and it didn't just run out of gas. Even if they jammed the GPS receiver, there's no way the US would just land the drone. They would have it pre-programmed to circle until it ran out of gas then crash itself into the ground to make sure no one recovered it completely. They would just hope that they it either re-established a GPS fix and followed way points home or the control channel came back online and they could remotely control it before it ran out of fuel. So the only plausible explanation is that the control channel was hacked and it was safely landed. But in order to do that you would need to jam the satellite broadcast but allow your connection to be received by the plane. Maybe they have a plane flying above the drone that creates destructive interference with the satellite signal and then broadcasts it's own signal to the drone below? This would basically be a man in the middle attack against the drone. If you just jam the satellite, then the drone's receiver will also pick up the jammed signal and will have a hard time receiving your pirate broadcast. Or maybe you just send a set of spoofed commands to the drone, like land at xyz, then you jam the control signal so no one can cancel those commands.

Either that or this is a fake.

Fukushima:
1. had its operating license extended to 2021 5 weeks before.
2. had ignored earthquake warnings.
3. had ignored historical precedent and repeated warnings of the risk of tsunamis.

It was and extremely avoidable sequence of events that the reactors should have been designed to withstand.

During the incident, the poor operators on the ground did the best they could, while their bosses ordered them not to.

When Microsoft starts to dip down to 80% of the Desktop market it'll be due to Apple's OS X and it's child, iOS

You're high. When Microsoft starts to dip down to 80% of the Desktop it'll be due to Google/Android. Same goes for the mobile space. Cheap hardware, and 90% of your needs satisfied. Take a look at Firefox. They're not losing market share to Microsoft. And they're certainly not losing it to Safari.

It's the hardware that's becoming ubiquitous, and Apple is at its heart a hardware company. That makes it a dinosaur. Everything is moving to the cloud, whether you hate the buzzword or not. It's just too much of a pain to have to transfer your entire life over every time you get a new "iShiny" to quote the GP. And in the cloud there are two players: Google and Amazon.

I think you picked a bad example city for your thought problem:

Chicago Mayor Trashes Politics of Waste Removal

(I hope that's not a paywalled link.)

According to the link in TFA, the US majors with the highest unemployment rates are

• Psychology, 19.5%
• Fine arts, 16.2%
• US history, 15.1%
• Library science, 15%
• Educational psychology, 10.9%

The first computer-related field is "computer administration management and security" at 9.5%. Whatever the heck that is - sounds like a wannabe-degree.

Anyhow, it's an interesting table, because you can sort by unemployment, earnings or popularity...

At&t is still pursuing through the DOJ. They are probably dropping the FCC application since it won't go through and they can wait until the DOJ review goes through. I think they are dropping FCC application so if the DOJ passes it they can argue that the FCC should follow suit and any of FCC's arguments would become weaker as the DOJ didn't have a problem. Wall Street Journal has a more informative article. According to it T-mobile is not doing so hot and the parent company is interested in exiting the US market. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204452104577057482069627186.html

Most of the encrypted radios in use have an opt-in/out feature. The problem with that is the users can't tell which is which or forget to switch.

There was a study just a little while ago that sampled the failures of feds to properly use encryption: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/p25sec08102011.pdf

You've confused the debt and the deficit, please stop posting until you actually understand the issues.

No, I chose to use the debt numbers as the debt is what really does the damage, not a single years' deficit.

But, let's play it your way.

From the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703361904576143253522341850.html

Mr. Obama is proposing $3.73 trillion in government spending in the next fiscal year

So, forcibly confiscating the entire $3 trillion of wealth from the top-1% wealthiest still leaves a $730 billion deficit.

Then after that, there's nothing left to collect for following years.

Oops.

Again.

Strat

It's not like the 1%, 5% or top 10% of the income brackets are just hoarding their cash.

Actually it's exactly like that. They were sitting on $10 trillion about a year ago:

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/07/13/worlds-rich-are-hording-10-trillion-in-cash/

Why are they hoarding so much money? Because there is no good place to invest it. The mattress is seen as a better investment than anything else on offer.

Businesses are making profits but aren't growing. Don't want too much exposure there. Governments are issuing bonds, but are all sliding into bankruptcy. Greece is just the first of the next wave. Too risky for the payout. Gold? Silver? There's only so much of that a rich person can stomach. Too volatile.

So they sit on their money waiting for something good to happen.

Of course, this is meaningless with a Constitution that is not just routinely ignored, but at this point completely dead. Although the Constitution has been dying for the past century, the watershed moment for me came last month when a U.S. judge nullified the War Powers Act and put the capacity for declaration of war completely in the Executive Branch. Worse than the actual court decision, is that no one noticed or cared.

Except, per your reference, the judge did none of that. He simply stated the lawmakers bringing suit had no standing to do so; they did it as private citizens. The case was not a test of Constitutional powers (which would go to the supremes) but yet another simple case of individuals using the courts to further their agenda.

While the question of what rights does the President have to send troops, in his role of CiC and as a furtherance of his diplomatic powers, and what powers does Congress have to limit such actions is interesting; this was not a test case for that.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

The right to assemble applies to cyberspace, not just meatspace. Furthermore, the right to freedom of press is meaningless without the right to assemble to give the person your leaflet. Even though the document is over 200 years old, already it made first-class acknowledgement of technology: the printing press, a major technological leap from the fifteenth century. The Constitution is technology-aware. The Internet is the new press, and to prevent publication on it or to prevent receiving publications from it is unconsitutional.

Of course, this is meaningless with a Constitution that is not just routinely ignored, but at this point completely dead. Although the Constitution has been dying for the past century, the watershed moment for me came last month when a U.S. judge nullified the War Powers Act and put the capacity for declaration of war completely in the Executive Branch. Worse than the actual court decision, is that no one noticed or cared.

Former East Bloc (i.e. communist eastern Europe) looked at the proportion of red/white muscles to see who would become explosive or athlete. This is an extension, but down to the family level... Even worse.

Thinking of the busy-body moms in today's China. Poor, poor kids. Jwish moms used to be seen as bad, overreacting psycho-freaks

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-sachs/chinese-moms-vs-jewish-mo_b_807569.html

but, the Chinese are worse.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

Soccer moms and Hockey dads, for what reason?

Calm down, all you mothers from Hell.

It could have been a bigger disaster, but it wasn't.

The fact that it wasn't is irrelevant because due to sheer luck. If I drunk drive, squid and by miracle don't kill anybody I don't deem my driving "safe". Fukushima showed in plain light how risky and unsafe NP as it is done today is, as all insurers, who assess risks for a living, have cautiously decided already.

nuclear would still be killing less people than coal.

You seem to be very dense. The link clearly puts in light one of the greater risks of NP, which can render a large portion of land uninhabitable for a long period of time, how hard is it to understand? Fukushima had the potential of forcing a lengthy evacuation of Tokyo, would the wind have blown in the wrong direction, thus destroying Japan as we now it. NP has the potential to destroy a whole country in case of a very bad accident, which no other industrial process has. Limiting the risk to the direct killing of people by cancer is ridiculous, as anybody who truly tries to see things at their real value can see.

and they are still profitable

They are profitable because all R&D, waste management and risk insurance are shouldered by the public, as Fukushima has amply demonstrated if it still needed to be. The fact that you're not able to acknowledge that simply shows how blinded and deluded by your fanatism you are.

i'm very very confident that a CPA didn't try to do that as a Sole Proprietorship

This is what I said: "That CPA was sole owner of the corporation". Also read the article that was in your link.

The case, David E. Watson P.C. v. U.S., revolved around Mr. Watson's low pay as the sole owner and shareholder of a so-called S Corporation

The CPA set it up as an S-Corp but he was the only shareholder thus the only owner. To the IRS, he was using it as a tax dodge and not as a legitimate S-Corp. I'm pretty sure that Apple has more than one shareholder. And I'm pretty sure that it never funneled the profits to Jobs.

... Damn I wish I had some mod points to give you. This comment is AMAZING. Well stated - I've often been at odds with some of my friends who insist that one "brand" of something is better than another - especially when you look at some of the food products, where 4 different "brands" literally come right from the same factory.

Similar link over here for those who don't want to listen to a recorded audio feed.

Oh and don't forget this one - it may be a Cracked.com article, but it's actually a great read.

As far as I know the majority of patents come out of America. Companies like Samsung copy Apple left and right, Japan hasn't been relevant since Sony's Walkman in the 80s, and China sole purpose of life is to steal other people's IP.

And if these companies decide to stop respecting America's 'intellectual property rights' what happens then? Abandon those countries and revert back to 'made in USA'? I don't think so. America needs countries like China, but with countries like China really starting to innovate it seems only natural that in the not-to-distant future China will no longer need America.

"the IEA report says why we're not building more nuclear power plants"
Are you referring to: "The public perception of risk also weakens the environmental performance of nuclear power."? If you attribute this to why nuclear power has not budged 14% of world power in over half a century, then I am afraid nuclear power has a very sad future ahead, indeed. You can thank the Japanese government's mishandling of the Fukushima accident for this, as public perception of the risks is at a all time high now.

"as you go forward in time, the estimates for total death-toll from Chernobyl are being reduced"
Funny, as the largest estimate I have seen for Chernobyl (1 million) was just published by the New York Academy of Sciences last year. Again, have you peeked into the future with your time machine to see that future estimates will be decreasing here on out?

"Fukushima released only half the radioactivity Chernobyl"
Amazing, so you have traveled to the future to a point of time where the estimates have finally stopped doubling every couple of months (for instance, the paper you cite below claims Fukushima was just 1/10 of Chernobyl when it was published. . .) and the releases of additional radioactive isotopes have finally stopped! Or are you just claiming more beliefs as facts again . . . ? Oh, and you are confusing external exposure (CT scans) with internal exposure . . . really, I would have expected more from you at this point.

"Very little potassium iodide was distributed in the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl accident. In Poland, however, more than 10 million children, 16 years of age and under, and approximately seven million adults received at least one dose of potassium iodide, reducing their thyroid doses to “negligible levels”."
Interesting you bring this up, because we all know that Japan's distribution of iodide was stellar.

"comparing doses received by residents with typical CT or X-ray"
Thank you for demonstrating why skeptism is so important when trying to establish fact. Up until now, you have been making claims about the safety of nuclear energy, I assumed you understood the difference between internal and external exposure. Only many posts later do you finally reveal that you seem to have a serious gap in your understanding of the risks of fallout. Had I lacked skeptism, I too could have been tainted by your ignorance. Furthermore, any further analysis built on top of yours would also be suspect. Here is a hint . . . gamma readings are only indirect indicators of the true killers: alpha and beta emitters. Alpha radiation cannot even pass through a sheet of paper, but once an emitter is embedded within tissue it causes severe local damage, often leading to cancer. Fallout is nothing like a CT or an X-ray exam.

"is too small to give a statistically significant increase"
Nice, yes let's go back to May before the radiation release estimates were doubled at least twice (two months before meltdowns were even admitted) to quote the head of Japan ICRP, who are considered by many to have far too much vested interest in the success of nuclear to be considered objective . . .

"no other technology has proved itself in high-scale power production"
Again, nuclear is at 13% and coal is at 41%. Together, that only accounts for a little over half world production, yet you act as if that is all there is that is "proven" . . . And, again (and again and again . . .), I have never stated that one is safer or not safer than the other. I have only stated that conclusive data does not yet exist to make such a conclusion. Finally, 13% is hardly something to start screaming the end of the world over . . . I am sure we will get along just fine without it.

Or how about this nonsense. The premise of the story is that Apple opposed Flash in favor of HTML5. Adobe is now abandoning Flash in favor of HTML5. Thus this could spell trouble for Apple if everyone uses HTML5 instead of making apps. I think there should have been a "???" in one of those steps.

The article on WSJ.com (Here) consulted with several lawyers, who generally felt that since this has never been tried before, it is hard to know whether it would stand up in court. I'm going to assume Zynga consulted with their own lawyers before trying this trick.

Apparently the reason they used this trick instead of diluting the shares is because they didn't want to dilute all the shares (well, maybe they did that too), they wanted to get stock back from a few employees (it seems mainly executives, actually) who were 'non-contributors.'

Still seems like a lame move. When the money flows like it does from an IPO, let it flow to everyone. When you have a billion dollars coming in, paying the lowly janitor a million isn't going to hurt much. Be generous.

All the US has these days is ideas and 'intellectual property', i'd say soon China won't need American 'intellectual property', they will develop their own (it's already happening) and the US will fall into obsolescence. 'Made in USA' has already been replaced with 'Designed in USA'.

The good news is that if it's legal to plant devices on peoples cars without warrants, then we can track the police and politicians just as easily as they can track us. Keep an eye out for Clarance Thomas's RV in a Walmart parking lot near you. Anyone know what Scalia drives?

That is only if they drop out of the race, or don't run again. So long as they finish their campaign and run for office the entire time, they get to pocket what is left over. That money is used to repay a candidate for any expenses they occured directly. The rest stays in an account for their next campaign bid. Or they donate the remainder to the party and get a tax write-off for the donation.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2008/11/04/what-happens-to-leftover-campaign-money/

Your own citation refutes what you say:

According to the FEC, if a candidate for federal office (a presidential hopeful, say) loses and is a congressperson, he or she can roll over unused money into a re-election kitty. They can also repay themselves for personal funds used during the campaign up to a certain amount, depending on the race and when those funds were used. They can contribute the dollars to a charity. Candidates may also return money to contributors, but determining who gets how much is a delicate operation avoided by most, if not all, candidates. For local elections, state rules vary.

“The rule is that [campaign donations] can’t be used for personal use,” says FEC spokesperson Bob Biersack.

That is only if they drop out of the race, or don't run again. So long as they finish their campaign and run for office the entire time, they get to pocket what is left over. That money is used to repay a candidate for any expenses they occured directly. The rest stays in an account for their next campaign bid. Or they donate the remainder to the party and get a tax write-off for the donation.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2008/11/04/what-happens-to-leftover-campaign-money/

A very good reason to drop the program is that it was hacked.

You want to get your hair cut, you must go to a licensed barber or hairstylist.

You don't have to. You can buy a kit and do it yourself (or get a friend/relative to do it). My mom cuts my dads hair in their kitchen.

We pay taxes to support government workers' lavish pensions. These are people who don't work. This is an artificial cost.

The "lavish" pension system for federal workers was replaced with a much more modest one in the 80s. Most state and local governments have followed suit. Yes, you'll occasionally see abuses of the system, especially on the local level. Vote next time. Or run for office yourself.

We pay enormous amounts to non-government workers to retire at 65. Many could easily continue until 68 or 70. This is an artificial cost.

Social Security retirement ages have been rising. If you start taking Social Security at 65, you'll get a fair bit less benefits than you would if you took it at 69. The biggest cost for it was that it had to pay for all the workers that were retiring just as the system came out who did get pretty much a free ride on it. Well, that and Congress raiding it like a piggy bank to fund wars, tax cuts, and pretty much everything else.

We build roads and other public infrastructure projects with rules requiring a "prevailing wage" (a union wage) be paid. This makes every government project artificially more expensive, so fewer projects are built. This is an artificial cost.

Those evil unions. Wanting to be paid a livable wage. What assholes. If you really want to complain about artificially expensive government projects, take a look at the private military contractors that we've been using as mercenaries over in the Middle East. Or the major bailouts. Or the fed's current lending practices, where it's basically giving 0% loans to banks and letting those same banks deposit that same money for interest.

We have environmental laws that protect animals and hurt people. This creates a lot of artificial costs.

They're costs to prevent companies from dumping all their external costs onto everyone else. Personally, I like not having to worry about rivers being so polluted that they catch on fire.

We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world,

Effective tax rates and statutory tax rates are two different beasts. The reality is that US tax rates are in the middle of the pack of G8 nations.

and our system creates a huge incentive for multinational companies to invest foreign profits anywhere but the US. This is a huge artificial disadvantage and a huge artificial cost.

Uhh, the reason corporations don't want to invest foreign profits in the US is because they keep hoping that they'll get the same kind of tax breaks for doing it that they did in 2004. Breaks that incidentally did absolutely nothing to help employment, yet sure did enrich a few at the top of huge multinationals.

It's just a transfer from producers to the less productive and unproductive.

I can think of nothing more unproductive than the investment bankers, hedge fund managers, CEOs, and trust fund babies who have done nothing but manipulate our economy for personal profit.

That's neither here nor there, since it has been widely demonstrated that if you actually plot his data, you will find that there has been no warming for the last ten years, contrary to the statements he has made to the press:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/29/uh-oh-it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times/

Now the denialists are denying the denialists' study because it conflicts with denialism! LOL!

Actually when I first read about this study, I thought it didn't contribute anything new, and was just repeating past experiments under Koch funding to rule out any possibility of bias due to TEH GLOBAL AGW CONSPIRACY!

But this study is actually based on a much more robust data set than any other before in history, so it at least more concretely proves the observed warming record:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576594872796327348.html

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs

Cybersecurity Issues with Predators, Reapers, and Unmanned Aerial Systems

Not Just Drones: Militants Can Snoop on Most U.S. Warplanes

U.S. was Warned of Predator Drone Hacking contains information indicating that the US knew their UAVs had insufficient security as early as 1996.

On the bright side, the command and control systems are not the same as the video output stream... but I still wouldn't rule out some enterprising hacker deciding to fling a few Predators south of the border and see what happens.

As you may or may not know, the first and second parts of GDP are way down. People are not spending money, and businesses are not investing. Moreover, businesses are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. In such an instance more tax cuts or deregulation (which, incidentally, is what put us in this mess) will not spur the economy.

I'd love to know how you think "deregulation" put us in this mess. One could argue that over-regulation was to blame, not under-regulation. The government-mandated Community Reinvestment Act, as well as other legislation and regulation forced banks to offer loans to people who were high-risk individuals for very affordable rates. This is the direct cause of the bubble, and the resultant housing collapse was a prime trigger of our current economic woes.

Peter Wallison described it fairly well in his wsj article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574475110152189446.html

... it was government policy for these poor quality loans to be made. Since the early 1990s, the government has been attempting to expand home ownership in full disregard of the prudent lending principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market. Now the motives of the GSEs fall into place. Fannie and Freddie were subject to "affordable housing" regulations, issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which required them to buy mortgages made to home buyers who were at or below the median income. This quota began at 30% of all purchases in the early 1990s, and was gradually ratcheted up until it called for 55% of all mortgage purchases to be "affordable" in 2007, including 25% that had to be made to low-income home buyers.

As to how to get businesses to get off their liquid assets - driving up US debt is not going to do that. While it sounds very noble, putting teachers, firefighters, and policemen to work for a year (part of Obama's stimulus plan) is going to do anything significant to stimulate the economy, especially when the money has to come from taxes, printing, or borrowing. Borrowing is the least likely to hurt the economy in the short term, yet as the government continues to accrue long term debts from which it appears unlikely we can easily climb out of (~$45K per capita and rising), it contributes to business' economic fears. Debt has to be paid off at some point, and the more debt the US has, the less will be available for sustained economic movement in the private sector, since it has to siphon a higher percentage of revenue to pay off the interest, meaning more money has to be collected overall to meet its financial obligations.

sigh... I can't understand how people think Keynesian economics makes sense. I'm not a government laissez-faire type person - some regulation is absolutely needed. The problem is that a massive amount of spending, while it may in fact provide stimulation, will also produce negative drains in equal amounts in other economic areas, either directly (taxes) or indirectly (increased debt -> lack of consumer confidence). Borrowing money is the least painful of these options, but because we're already so far in debt, a massive amount of additional debt will put a huge pressure on revenues because of future interest payments. Essentially, our back is against the wall because of previous administration's / congress' reckless spending (all parties). Our citizens are getting older, and Medicare is predicted by some to become insolvent by 2024 (that wonderfully efficient program you're talking about), and our national debt continues to skyrocket.

I don't have a magical answer to fix everything, but it feels like massive government spending as "stimulus" is just digging the hole deeper.

P.S. "death panels" is obvious hyperbole which I probably shouldn't have used, and likely pr

One of the reasons Redbox gives is "higher debit card fees that went into effect October 1." Anyone find this strange? The debit card fees were actually reduced for merchants, and as far as I know, the only fees were the ones affecting consumers. (a good reference here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576600800330404330.html) Should I guess that RedBox/Coinstar lost a sweet deal they had with a bank and had to raise prices, or are they just shielding their move behind something not many consumers are aware of?

Yes, it did happen in a year or two. Go look up the subprime origination rates. The rates exploded post 2006 when the large investment banks were allowed to increase their leverage.

As you pointed out Freddie and Fanny only issued 1/4 of the subprime loans. Even more telling is these loans weren't resold extending the leverage into the capitalization of the entire banking system, and their default rates were and continue to be much lower than the commercial loans.

Today there was a news item that Freddie and Fanny losses are expected to come in lower than originally anticipated. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577001653467422674.html

The idea that Freddie and Fanny are at the root of the housing bubble is just plain fantasy.

Correct. That's why there are moves to change the law to make house purchases more attractive to foreigners.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203752604576641421449460968.html
Spend more that $500,000 and get a residnecy visa.