Isn't this basically what banks do? Loan out money they don't have and hope that their depositors won't withdraw their money at the same time? (Not that it's right for banks to do that, but just a note.)

Watching the man in Redmond throw a chair across the office: priceless

Or rather, short sell them.

How many more of these mistakes will people tolerate before they turn in disgust from buying a $20+ POS that stops working randomly? I know that if I bought this game (and was foolish enough to install it, DRM and all) and the DRM kicked in like this, my first stop would be to The Pirate Bay.

The ISPs have large areas where they are the only high-speed Internet providers, besides expensive and high-ping satellite connections. You know just as well as I that there's no feasible way to build your own ISP. Caps are only possible because of the ISPs' anti-competitive behavior. What you're saying is, "Hey, DeBeers has a business model of 'managing costs'. They can do what they want. If you don't like it, find another player (never mind that DeBeers controls 90%+ of the market) or make your own diamond mining corporation."

Where there is an financial incentive to spam (there are those dumb people that click on the v1@9r@ ads, believe it or not), there will be spam.

Regardless, encouraging sale of old vehicles to scrapyard means that people will buy new cars. A portion of this will go to the domestic manufacturers, who at this point are not as worried about selling more cars than their foreign competitors, but rather just selling more cars.

You're right. Compared to the size of the recent bailout, 600k is a drop in the bucket. Even 100x this would still be almost trivial for the government.

What enthusiast that spends big dollars on the latest cards uses their card for more than a year?

Most people that rush out to buy these type of cutting-edge hardware replace them every few months or so. The savings realized by power conservation will never cover the difference between the two with the crowd these new cards (indeed, all new cards) are targeted at.

Statistically, African Americans are more likely to kill than those of other races. So the ones that don't go around killing people need to police the ones that do? Sounds like suicide.