North Dakota has saturated rail and road traffic trying to get it's crude out of the state. At the same time Natural gas is simply being burned off because there's no pipeline infrastructure to transport it. Pipelines that were being used to transport natural gas to the midwest from the east coast and gulf states will no longer be able to be used next year because they are being converted for use in transporting chemicals needed for tar sand conversion in Canada.

The reason big oil companies want the pipeline from Canada and not North Dakota is because there's a multibillion dollar tax loophole related to foreign oil processed in US refineries for export. Which is why the pipeline runs to the coast. Keystone Excel will have no effect on US fuel prices because it's not designed to sell fuel on the US market. It's quite likely that Keystone will result in refining capacity being taken out of the US market as it's used for export. All the signs point to this project actually costing the tax payer more at the pump in the end.

Let's also not forget the natural gas problems this creates for the upper midwest. They currently get their natural gas from Canada. Tar sand production need incredible amounts of natural gas. That's expected to increase prices people will be paying to heat their home. At the same time there's no plans now or in the future to bring more natural gas to upper midwest from the east coast. If anything they are losing capacity in order to support the tar sand production.

One of the reasons I love Japanese Quality is because of Ribbons of Shame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Man, if workers in Alabama who "assembled" my Honda had to wear them I wouldn't have so many little quality issues.

What's happening in many States is researchers are moving to private sector. In Minnesota at any given time there are over 400 biomed start-ups in operation. Many started in the University system but moved out for various reasons. Mostly that the academic sector moves at a glacial pace in terms of commercialization. It's not that there isn't as much money in totality, it's that a large component has moved to Venture Capital instead of grants.

Sadly I agree. Nye does a lot of guest spot on pseudo news shows. He's very good at writing and a master at presenting scripted material, but he's not a great off the cuff debater. Nye tends to get side tracks and has trouble packaging the argument into a limited time slot when he doesn't have the time to refine a script. Neil deGrasse Tyson is far better at this sort of thing but I he would never do a debate like this.

Having spent time in that part of the world I can attest the idea behind copyright of virtual things is cultural. They don't see stealing it as being wrong. Some even see it as their nationalistic duty to take things from the west to level the playing field. Generally in the US you can't lease space in a mall and open a store that sells clearly pirated software. But over there? It's not a problem until a representative from a Western company makes a complaint. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Be that as it may, since we're making comparisons, I will remind you that older (but quite capable) models of iPhones have sold in the free and under $99 tiers for some time now. Even in the pre-paid market iPhone has been dropping. The carriers have been taking the hit as a customer acquisition cost for some time. By your logic there should have been at least some amount of equalization in the app sell through rates years ago. I'll tell you as a professional in the field it hasn't happened.

There's no analogy. It is what it is.

I'm an independent software developer. I work in a large community of software developers. Two years ago when we did projects for ourselves or startup ventures it was pretty common to try to release the iOS and Android version of the app as close as possible and with the same feature sets. What we found was the sell through rate on iOS was huge compared to Android. At the same time we found the piracy rate of Android was huge compared to iOS.

If I'm charging by the hour and a client wants an Android version of an app, great. But I'm not spending my time and capital writing a paid app it's going to be iOS because there simply isn't a payday at the end of the Android trail.

Given Android users are loath to actually pay for apps I think it make sense. Despite have a tremendous number of Android smart phones active world wide and over 48 billion apps installed the Apple App store blows away Google Play revenues.

So long as you give people enough desk space and drawers to store stuff I think it works well for agile and paired programming. When it doesn't work is when some bean counter decides "Let's throw all the contractors into a meeting room". Things get cramped and stuffy. It also doesn't work when you have resource that take a lot of phone calls. They just end up disturbing everyone else.

The matrix was one of the few movies to get it right. There's a scene where they are sabotaging a computer. The screen showed the output of a real rootkit.

802.11AC 4x4 MIMO card? Good luck finding that under a hundred mate.

Business people who travel the world usually have global medical plans. Most of those plans include evacuation coverage. Medical transfers off a ship are customarily handled by a coast guard. I'm sure the insurance company had to pay for the service.

If anything the insurance company saved a little money because Bezos already had the private jet in position and that saved them the cost of an airline ticket.

Bill is a great guy, good writer and presents well on script, but he's not the best debater or off the cuff speaker. I've seen him do many talk shows. He doesn't always connect with the audience. I think he just thinking a mile a minute and he needs some time to organize them together. Tyson is just much better at this kind of stuff.

Just look at this commercial for Old Glory Insurance robot protection plan!

http://www.digyourowngrave.com/saturday-night-live-old-glory-robot-insurance/

Two week turnaround? Maybe if you drop it off at the Genius Bar and the part was on backorder. If you use the on-site support the guy is going to show up in a couple days with the new component in hand. That's not even specific to Apple. When I did warranty repairs in the 90s we could turn a consumer repair in 2-3 days and a business repair 1-2 days.

These days companies can join a technician program with a vendor and do their own repairs. Often that means they have a parts depot on-site and can do a repair same day. If down time is a concern there are plenty of ways of mitigating the risk.

There's a lot of trades people building housing in the US because of the sheer amount of undeveloped land. Being able to put stuff in the back bed is a plus for that sector. Trades people tend to be a bit more independent in the US, many of them work for themselves and have their own tools and supplies they take to a job site. In Europe you have those really tall vans to do that kind of work and likely they would be owned by a company. Those vans are sold here in the US, but unless you need the materials covered most tradesmen see it as a tipping hazard to have a vehicle that tall.

The trucks are also very popular in agriculture, which is the biggest economic sector of the US. There's a lot of stuff you would want to put in the back bed that you wouldn't want to have in the driving compartment.

Most city dwellers do not have trucks. They likely have cars or SUVs. The cars are larger in the US because the roads were built for cars in the first place and the taxes don't penalize the ownership cost. For example, I had some friends stationed in Europe for NATO. They brought their huge Toyota FJ. I asked them if that was an expensive vehicle to drive in Europe. They said no, because of little thing called WWII US military personal are exempt from all gas and vehicle taxes.