...Kinda like not going to a 13th floor in a high rise building.

Instead of building yet another cruise ship, let's build the Starship Enterprise and go into deep space! C'mon! (About 300 years too soon, but who cares?) :)

The new design and safety technology notwithstanding, knowing how superstitious people are, who would be brave enough to take a chance on a ship named Titanic II? They'd think it was jinxed before they got out of the port.

Exactly, you get what you pay for. And you're right, EMPLOYEES are the single biggest cost to any company. As for me, where the situation is home use and free DOES matter, I decided to switch back to Windows after my little short-lived courtship with Ubuntu Linux, for a number of reasons: * For every little file move or copying of files, I HAD to get root access and type in a command. There was no GUI way to do some things (as far as I know). And there's really no way to correct a typing mistake in command line. That got to really be annoying. * I have a multifunction printer (print, copy, scan, fax) and the ONLY Linux driver that worked with it was from TurboLinux - $40 for the driver and it was only good for print. Couldn't use the driver over my home LAN like I can with my mfr's Windows driver. * OpenOffice messed up the formatting of some of my more intricate Word files. * Couldn't stream videos on Netflix, as Netflix requires the Silverlight plugin. * Some web applications require Internet Explorer to work (I know, I HATE proprietary web applications and extensions as much as the next person, but one doesn't always have a choice). * I still have to sometimes use local (non-Web) software on my PC, and that software is WINDOWS based. And so far WINE sucks; it crashed on every Windows program I tried to run in the Linux environment. * Sure, I could set up a dual-boot with Windows, which I did. But very shortly I got tired of switching back and forth between OS's. I was tired of having a "schizophrenic" computer, and just decided the heck with it, I'm just going back to Windows. So there you go. And plus, so far Windows 7 is running very smoothly on my new machine I recently built, so why mess with success?

Bottom line, employers need to stop requiring or even preferring degrees. Phooey! College degrees are such an expensive, artificial barrier to employment. Employers need to focus on just getting the people who have the skills, period - whether they learn from a training center or under a tree from their uncle. Recognized certifications are probably a good litmus test of whether people have the skills. And then, employers need to go back to the good ol' fashioned apprenticeship programs like they had in the 1800's for blacksmiths and so forth. And...here's an idea...why don't employers provide training, and ongoing training, for their employees? Wow.

Dang! Wonder what it would do on my AMD quad-core FX system with 8GB?

...tape still jams and breaks. Every audio cassette I've ever had has done so. RIP.

I'm afraid not, unless you want to cut off some people's heads in the process. (Although, that wouldn't be so bad for Picard, as it would cut off his baldness!) No, seriously though, the series was filmed in traditional 4x3, before widescreen television came about.

If more cars today are built with high quality, then why don't all the manufacturers have 10-year warranties like Hyundai, Kia, and Mitsubishi?

That was going to be $39 billion.

I'm hoping that at some point, as what happened to PC's, the prices of unlocked smartphones will come down from $600-$700 more to $100-$200. Wireless carriers will have to adopt the unlocked/dumb pipe model in order for consumers to see the true cost of the phone and therefore have the market lower the prices. But until we really get real competition among U.S. carriers, they're not going to let go of their control. Because of the subsidized model, or maybe even independent of that business model, carriers have WAY too much control over the phones, let alone the plans. All their bloatware is on it, and you can't get it off (unless you root or jailbreak the phones). (I'm talking mostly about the Android and other platforms; somehow Apple was able to avoid this on their units.) Even with a PC, if it came with bloatware, you can always uninstall it. And (again, mostly with Android) you can't get the latest OS on a brand new device unless it's of the exclusive Nexus line (and that's not always on every carrier, and lately some have put some bloatware on it as well, and denied a core functionality on it in favor of their own version). It's a mess. I would love to just buy a "naked" phone and choose my carrier, just like I can with the good ol' landline phone.

Well, if you think about it, all marketing/advertising is about evoking good emotions about the product. I for one don't mind conjuring up images of something really scrumptious when buying a really nice piece of electronics. Heck, Apple has always made their buttons look delicious like jelly beans. It's all part of the appeal.

Here here. Google lacks the balls Apple definitely has to dictate their product to the manufacturers and carriers (an I'm an Android user and fan). I'd love for there to be ONE killer plain vanilla (Ice Cream Sandwich, haha) Android phone, a Nexus, guaranteed never to have any bloatware on it (have you read about what Verizon did to the Galaxy Nexus?), on all carriers simultaneously, and with a much more organized way of marketing and releasing it than the boondoggle that's currently going on with the Galaxy Nexus. Great phone but the way it's being marketed/sold: FAIL.

Well, I would have switched to Linux, but here are the outstanding issues: (1) I still have to type in that cryptic code (which is not editable at all if you make a mistake), just to do some basic things like copying and moving files. (2) The only driver I found to work with my all-in-one multifunction printer is from Turbo Linux, and costs $40 (and that's only for the printer driver, let alone scan, fax, etc.). (3) The last version of Ubuntu Linux I used had a bug where if you put it in sleep mode you couldn't get it back again. (4) It still doesn't work for Netflix streaming. (5) There's still plenty of non-web software I have to use, that's not Linux-compatible (including Turbo Tax -- the web version didn't have enough features I needed for one particular year's filing). (6) WINE still sucks and won't run most of my Windows software. (7) I got tired of having a dual-boot, it was like having a schizophrenic computer and I got tired of jumping back and forth so often. (8) My techno-phobic wife, while still not entirely comfortable with computers (and doesn't want to be), is more comfortable with the good ol' Windows XP interface. It's a crying shame for these 8 reasons I can't use Linux, because when I tried it, I LOVED it!

Most of today's economists believe in Keynesian central planning, not true free market economics and sound money like the Austrian economists. Students of the Austrian School predicted the economic bubble and subsequent collapse because they very well know the obvious causes. RON PAUL 2012!