Damn you Jones! How the hell am I supposed to keep up with that!

| If this was done close to Earth, it just might shatter and not be deflected – sort of being hit with a shotgun blast instead of a bullet. But wouldn't the fragments have a higher likelihood of burning up in re-entry? Yes that will add tons of vaporized debris to the atmosphere and a lot of friction heat, but the Earth's a pretty big place - wouldn't that just be noise by comparison with a large multiton single block of rock/iron/ice hitting us and not being burnt up?

vs losing fearful customers who percieve a competitor is more secure and hence more safe? Really all the Federal government had to do was call for minimum guidelines and allow the airports and carriers to implement, as they had done successfully for 40+ years prior to 9/11. Instead we get a new goat rodeo that makes plenty of congressional staff rich (thank you insider information re: scanners etc) while stripping the rest of the populace of their fourth amendment rights.

"the last thing I'm going to do is tell him that I'll just have to stop doing the highest-priority work that I have. I'd be fired that day."

And there you have the difference between public and private sectors in a nutshell. One's "entitled" to your business, regardless of quality, and fuck you if you don't like it. The other will do what it can to make sure it retains you.

You're kidding, right? How much do you think school superintendents make vs school teachers in primary and secondary education?

"I'm happy to pay taxes to educate children and young adults in basic skills such as writing and mathematics." I'm right there with you, but I'd really like to see some transparency on how effective our tax spending here is. We spend $11k/student in the US for elementary and secondary education -- more than any other country (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/figure-ifn-1.asp). Yet we're consistently ranked among the midrange or lower for scientific and mathematic literacy (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/figure-msl-1.asp). That tells me that we're both not getting value for the money being spent, and that the priorities for education (or maybe the cultural priorities of the students) are not aligned with the US's needs.

Seems we should take advantage of the situation, using funds from low-to-zero interest treasury bills sold to the Chinese to buy these below-cost panels from the Chinese. That way we get the Chinese government to doubly fund our efforts to get away from dirty energy imports.

MP3 players were already poised to be displaced by smartphones. Apple made the wise decision to be the one to do it, rather than have someone else eat their lunch.

That your answer to the RIAA and ASCAP's actions too? I mean, yeah I can see why it's "unreasonable" to allow other competitive business models have a chance to succeed. Hooray for crony capitalism and the autocracy of the ancien regime. Jackass.

Ditto with Microsoft. and I know folks who did the same thing with utilities for some of IBM's app servers. It's the risk you take in trying to capitalize on someone else's market share (Facebook population, Apple captive app audience, Microsoft flaws..er..gaps).

The pension issue is hardly isolated to California though. Something like an additional $2.8T across the US, and Illinois has the winner's slot at having over 70% of it's liabilities unfunded.

Prop 13 isn't the cause of the budget issues. Recall why that won the popular vote -- the citizenry revolted due to unbridled squandering of the taxes that were coming in. My own parents saw their property tax bill rise almost 40% over 7 years, which I shouldn't have to point out is a hell of a lot faster than their wages increased. Elderly homeowners were being forced to sell their paid-off homes because they couldn't afford the annual shakedown. Maybe if the state tried to live within its means, it wouldn't have its fiscal problems.

"which is essentially an immortal ally." Damn, I'd heard their health care was good... I had no idea!

You're overestimating the effect of a dirty bomb. It would be nasty, and would contaminate a few blocks, and some unlucky souls might be poisoned or statistically more likely to experience cancer later in life. But those blocks can be decontaminated, the radioactive material hauled off and entombed, and the city be just dandy in a handful of years.

As Basilbrush points out, they're stuffing the channel to make their quarterly numbers - so yes, they could very well end up sending phones to the landfill (or heavily discounting them) in 2-4 quarters when the retails can't unload them on the public. Many electronics firms do this.