You think that's third-world? You mean the world where people go to neighbor's houses on a regular basis to recharge their cell phones because they don't have power themselves and the neighbor has a solar panel and a battery? And a large philanthropic effort makes headlines because it designs laptops that mesh network (to get around no network infrastructure) and have hand-cranks so they can charge the batteries?

I knew someone from India who told us about his house and that they shut the power to the whole city off EVERY NIGHT.

Wow. Three or four temporary outages a year, and you think that's a grid issue. Call the power company and get your money back.

There are three things that are useless to a pilot: runway behind you, altitude above you, and fuel in the truck.

First, I said "in many cases", not "in every case", so perhaps YMMV. Second, just try asking a unionized secretary to go pick up your dry cleaning if that's not part of his job description. A true slave would have no option; an employee has a union rep and a grievance procedure, if simply quitting and finding another job wasn't an option at the time.

It has two significant advantages. 1. It doesn't run the aircraft right into the ground as a failure on approach or departure might, given that approach and departure are when the airplane is close to the gound. 2. It gives the flight crew time to determine there is a problem, fix it, or at least mitigate it.

A flight system that has an uncommanded pitch down can kill an entire flight of people if it happens close to the ground. The same failure will shake them up, maybe break a few bones as people get tossed about the cabin, if it happens at 10,000 feet AGL, but it won't put the plane into the ground immediately. Pitch-up into a stall, same idea, better to happen at a high altitude.

Having two advantages doesn't turn an insane idea into a sane one, it only means there are different considerations that make it an insane idea. The fact that a nearby transmitter could disable the aircraft control systems much more easily for a wireless (radio) system than for a wired one makes wireless control an insane idea. The fact that it makes it trivial for an attacker to disable an aircraft remotely makes it even more insane.

But not as insane as the promo I saw last night for some new stupid TV program involving hackers saving the world. Some hacking group has disabled all of LAX's traffic control systems and none of the airplanes can land. They'll all start CRASHING when they run out of fuel if the good hackers don't save them. As if none of the pilots would divert on their own to other airports if they can't talk to LAX. They'll all just circle overhead until they run out of fuel because they're all morons or something.

No, he was right the first time. It is a question of hearing the PA announcements AT ALL, even without the engines on or any screaming babies.

This is why I simply cannot understand United's new policy of buying aircraft with NO entertainment system at all, not even one where you can just plug a headphone in so you can hear the announcements. It is a matter of cost savings over safety, and I hope it doesn't take a few deaths and serious injuries before the FAA acts to fix this problem. A couple of disabled people on the witness stand at a civil trial saying "we could have gotten off safely if we could have heard the safety announcements and emergency instructions ... and the people behind us who didn't get off at all would have made it with us."

It is better if it blows up on the ground after all the people get off than while over southern California in the air with all on board. Thus diverting the flight to a closer airport where they can get on the ground and get all the people off sooner.

A bomb with a timer won't know that it should blow up sooner because the airplane will land sooner. A bomb with a pressure sensor will blow up on descent either way. Pick a path that does the least harm.

YouTube and Twitter and every other private organization has every right to take down material they find offensive, and it is not censorship when they do it. They are not stopping you from publishing anything, they are only saying you will not use THEIR SYSTEMS to do so. They have that right. Calling it censorship just dilutes the true meaning of the word.

And the fact that the only thing you find sickening about the whole matter is this "censorship" speaks volumes about you.

So just to be clear, then, you're admitting that the US doesn't have "crony capitalism", simply because we don't have capitalism without regulation. (Any capitalist system where growing potatoes and selling them to your neighbors is considered "interstate commerce" and has to meet all the regulations thereof, or where selling your newly developed automobile cannot be done without creating a dealership system to distribute them, or where you cannot sell a 39 cent light bulb because it uses too much energy, or where you cannot buy a 39 cent incandescent light bulb because you might be too stupid to know how much energy it uses, or where you cannot produce an out-of-patent generic drug without federal approval and supervision, cannot be called "unregulated" in any sense of the word.)

However, upon further reflection, I would say that crony capitalism is the natural outcome of over-regulation. You don't need cronies to help you get ahead in a system if there are no rules, you only need them to help you fix the game so the rules are written to your benefit.

The only "capitalism without regulation" appears to be your use of capital letters on arbitrary words.

He was convicted more than four years after he left Enron. From the wiki:

Investors lost billions of dollars. Before Lay was put on trial he was estimated to have a gross wealth of approximately 40 million US dollars. It is believed that most of it was spent on his legal defense.

So, out of billions that investors lost (mostly to other people, not to Lay), Ken Lay had at most 40 million and actually much much less. That leaves very little for the "two children, three stepchildren, and twelve grandchildren". And wife.

So where did the money go? Did the family "blow it all in a few weeks"? No, the money went from one investor to another, from employees hoping to cash in big to stockholders who sold at inflated prices. Did either side in that do anything illegal? Not if it was Lay that was distorting the market and making some money, while the others went along for the ride. (You sold a house near the peak of the housing bubble for what it was appraised at. Two months later the value drops. Are you guilty of fraud?)

So, how do you fairly pull billions of dollars out of a family whose patriarch started with only $40 million before the lawyers hoovered it up into their pockets?

And "quickly"? Remember, he had been convicted but still had a full appeals process open to him. Had he lived, he had probably a full decade of appeals to go through. Because he didn't live and he didn't get the chance to appeal, the convictions have to be vacated. That leaves the civil courts with lawsuits filed against people for money they never saw, who didn't commit a crime other than be related to Ken Lay, (some only by marriage), who no longer has a criminal conviction to be used as evidence IN that civil process.

I think "quickly" is a rather odd word to use for the decades of legal battles that would result from such a situation. And to be fair, you'd have to go after so many innocent parties to recover that it would be 1) a nightmare and 2) an economic powderkeg. How many retirement funds sold Enron stock because it was high and there was a demand? I dunno. They're all beneficiaries of the acts of Ken Lay, shouldn't they be sued, too?

And before the government started doing this, we had things called "charities" that people donated stuff to and they took care of those who fell behind. Now the government is taking the "donations" and doing the organizing, so why should people give money to anyone else to solve problems the government is supposed to fix? That's the problem with socialized charity -- people start losing track of personal responsibility to BE voluntary benefactors to others because they ARE already involuntary benefactors.

That means that socialism is not the natural result of free markets, the result is charity. Socialism is a result of a distortion of the charity market by government assumption of responsibility.

And many of them still do. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for one. Ronald McDonald House. St. Jude's Children's Hospital (Danny Thomas may not have given all the money to build and run it, but he certainly organized it.) Dave Thomas and his work for adoption. We have a local version of the McD house in our city, funded by the local Pepsi bottling company owner. Mario Pastega, I think it is. There is a heart wing bearing the name of the donor who built it across the street. There is the name of a local timber baron on a lot of things that his money built for the good of the people. The new engineering building on campus bears the name of the donor for that.

Huh? People who stay at McD house have to divert a portion of their labor to Ray Crock's estate permanently? No, the generosity of the rich is not based on requiring a lifetime of slavery from the recipients. The people who are "diverting a portion of their labor" are doing so for money so they can buy things that other people have made, and the people who run the companies are not limited to "the wealthy" you denigrate. But the charity activities are just that -- charity.

The fact that there are more and more common people over time is a pretty good reason why any one large project has less of an impact on all of them. There are also more and more large projects, and many more small ones. A local businessman who hands a $1000 check to a local charity is doing what he can just as much as (or more than) Bill Gates handing a billion to someone. The fact that the organization getting the $1000 only operated in a city or county and not globally, well, there's room for ten thousand more organizations for those locations, and they likely already exist.

Except that "rich person" may be your next door neighbor who is scraping by because he has a payroll to meet and health insurance to buy for you and the city is levying a special tax for some project. In fact, he's more likely to be your neighbor because there are a lot more small businesses than you think.

And you working on something you don't care about is due to the specialization of society and the fact that not everyone can do the same job. You trade your labor doing something you don't like to do for money so you can buy things you want.

And of course, it differs from slavery because massa can't whip you for being late back from lunch, and he can't stop you from quitting and finding a different job, and he can't even make you do something outside your job description in many cases.

Yeah, so other than all of that, your description is spot on.

Uhhhh, ok. I think I've done pretty well under capitalism and I wasn't one of the very early players. Maybe the rules aren't that hard? I'm also not one of the rich people that everyone wants to hate.

Fleeing to where? Some other company where the service is just as bad or worse?

I'm currently displeased with T-Mobile and the lies they told me about their "no overages fees" promise. I walked into AT&T and asked "how much to put your SIM in my phone?"

"$20 a month for 300Mb data, unlimited talk/text". Oh, ok!

"Plus $25/month to use a phone with that service." WTF? You can buy a service that requires a phone and then charge EXTRA to be able to use a phone with it? MY own phone, to boot?

I could understand if you were adding additional devices to the service (two phones sharing one plan, e.g.). I could understand a charge to get a phone from them. But I consider it dishonest to separate out the plan from any devices that you need to have to use that service. It makes the cost look artificially low.

$20/month! Great deal. $45/month, not so good anymore.

Adding in that they charge for texts coming through the email to SMS gateway despite being "unlimited text", the service was more expensive for less product. I could choose to send a message to T-Mobile but it would wind up costing me more per month, and I have no reason to believe that AT&T's customer service is any better than T-Mobile's.

So, it is likely that the idea of fleeing companies with bad customer service would only result in increased thrashing as 100 people move from company A to company B and 100 move from B to A, and 200 people find out that neither one is any good at helping them, and 200 people find out that they couldn't get as good a deal at their new provider as they had at the old.

There is also the issue of the devil you know vs. the one you don't. AT&T may have better service, but they probably don't, and I already know how bad T-Mobile is. Changing providers for no benefit, added cost, and potentially no better service is a lose for me and T-Mobile probably wouldn't even notice.

That's not necessarily true. While his children may have benefited from growing up in a home with extra money, they are likely not benefiting from that money anymore (that source dried up a long time go), and taking their property does nothing but punish them for the acts of their father.

You believe it is appropriate to punish the children of a criminal when the criminal himself is no longer available for your revenge? Would you be receptive to someone who knocked on your door with a confiscation notice for your car because your father stole $100 from someone 20 years go and your father isn't around to be punished, so you must be in his place? How many generations would it take before the father's crimes would be cleared from the blood of the progeny?

Nope. But it solves the problem of the next guy thinking "hey, I'll steal a bunch of money from old people because even if I get caught all I'll have to do is give the money back". And it solves the problem of THIS guy doing the same thing for at least a few years, because it is hard to run a financial scam business from inside prison.

Here's a novel idea. Make the punishment time in jail AND reimbursement of the loss. I assume someone has already patented that idea, but if I say "reimburse the loss using a computer" I can get a new patent. Profit!

"I couldn't steal from old people while I was in prison, and now that I'm out I really don't want to ever go back so I'm not going to do it again." Ok, prison time served to prevent this financial advisor from "doing it again". What's the problem with putting him in prison, again?

I punch you in the nose for continuing to fling dog poo into my front yard and you just won't stop. I get 6 months for assault. And you think someone who steals the entire life savings of old people shouldn't get more time than I did as a deterrent to him and others like him? The only punishment for him should be giving back the money, so he's no worse off than when he started and is free to do it again -- this time if he doesn't get caught it will be pure profit for him. You think a system where he has no risk and all reward is going to deter him? Man, your value system is really cock-eyed.

So you're referring to Ken Lay the weasel who was convicted on ten felony counts for his acts as the head of a corporation, but managed to avoid 20-30 years in prison as punishment for his crimes by having a heart attack and dieing. That's the guy you're unhappy got "no punishment at all"? The sneaky bastard planned all along on having a massive heart attack if he was ever convicted of anything as a way of avoiding a prison term, you bet.

Even though the criminal justice system had to vacate the convictions because he died before his appeals were exhausted (and he couldn't very well assist in his own defense at this point), "civil suits are expected to continue against Lay's estate." In other words, you can't imprison the dead man to punish him (or you could, but it wouldn't be a very effective punishment, deterrent, or rehabilitation effort), but his family can be punished by having money and property taken away from them through the civil courts.

Nice try.

At the bottom of the reference I linked to, they mention that there are conspiracy theorists that say that Lay faked his death and he's still alive. Are you one of them? Of all the people who saw his dead body, not a single one of them would come forward to tell his story for the probable six figure payment he'd get? Sure.

When I saw the headline for this article I could guess that it was biased and incorrect, and I was right. The guy got 33 months in prison not for recording a movie in a theater, he got the criminal sentence for distributing copies for sale. The former could have gone unnoticed and would have harmed nobody, had he not continued to distribute even after he was warned about it.

No, in other words, don't assume the right to preempt state regulation because you want to force the states to allow something, based on your interpretation of a law controlling the FCC, because the next group in power will use the precedent YOU created to preempt other state regulations that you might not want preempted. That's a pretty simple, clear message.

If you actually read the article, you'll see THAT is the message he's sending. If you manage to use an interpretation of current laws regarding the FCC such that the FCC can preempt state controls on intrastate matters, then you've just opened the door to many other uses by people you don't want doing the same kind of thing in ways you don't like. I think the phrase "don't be a hypocrite" would apply.

I said it was a clear message, and it is a shame it has to be spoken. It is a shot across the bow, so to speak, for people who support the current FCC attempts to preempt state bans on municipal ISPs, so they'll know that the argument "you aren't authorized to do that" won't apply when the FCC under a potential different political control acts to preempt state regulation of other matters using the same law as justification.