Uh, yes we do. The BOP failed because the gasket that was in it sheared off and came back up the pipe. Despite this, BP executives told them to push on and not worry about it because they were already behind.

"...during a test, they closed the gasket. But while it was shut tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through the closed blowout preventer. Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising to the top made a troubling find.

"He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid. He thought it was important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring them into the driller shack. I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, 'Oh, it's no big deal.' And I thought, 'How can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing,'"

And there you have it. They were being pushed too hard, and made huge mistakes. BP needs to pay dearly for this, maybe even be put out of business completely, so that all the other companies can witness what happens to them if they do the same thing.

Let them factor that in to their actuarial tables..a big fat "closed for business" if a mistake like this takes place.

You said it. They failed to test. I design/run datacenters, and have had exactly this kind of thing happen recently. No outage, hardly anyone even noticed. My most critical stuff runs active/active out of multiple data centers...you could nuke one of them and everything would still be up.

I'm actually a little blown away that the all powerful Amazon could possibly let this kind of thing happen. They are supposed to be pro team, a power failure is high school ball.

Reasonable policies managed with good judgment are exactly what zero tolerance rules are meant to circumvent, almost by definition.

"All government did was allow other companies into established Central Offices so they could drop DSL equipment at the end of the copper lines."

This HUGE step, which would have completely stopped the internet in its tracks if it hadn't happened, was because of direct intervention by the government.

"Zero tolerance is for things like, violence, gun possesion, possesion of drugs, harassment, cheating, etc, etc."

You are doing exactly what parent is criticizing, and for exactly the same reason. Violence (self defense), gun possession (BB Gun, toys), possession of drugs (OTC, prescription, etc), harassment (online? name calling?), cheating (plagiarism, failed footnote).

You really, really need to rethink.

I put forth that "everyone is happy with an iPhone" until they realize what it can do when it is jailbroken. Then they are not so happy. In my case its even worse, a factory iPhone is practically unusable as it can't vibrate continuously and intensely and can't put my schedule on its lock screen.

I have an iPhone that is hacked to within and inch of its life. I will be replacing it with a Droid when my contract is up, as I am tired of playing cat and mouse with jailbreaks. I'm sure there will eventually be more like me.

4.1 was the first version you could get a CNA for...before that it was only CNE. Your memory is going as you get old...

Cadillacs in this case being analogous to a really good health care system, which we don't have. High costs for middling care is not a good thing.

Being 37th and paying like we're number one...well, at least we're number one at something....

Why yes, yes it is. However, the crowed usually gets something of value too, a la Google. You get your search results, they get to target advertising and gather statistics on you.

An AS400 is a mid-range, not a mainframe...

FYI, the Euro is tanking against the dollar right now, as investor's fear of a crash of the Euro due to the PIGS. And that is against an already heavily devalued dollar. Now would not be a good time to deny European banks access to the American market. Your plan would pretty much ensure the demise of the Euro as European countries end up pulling out of the Eurozone so they don't have to bail out the PIGS. If they don't figure out some way to devalue the Euro even further for the countries that are in deep trouble (Greece), people are going to have to start cleaning the crap off the walls....

Why wouldn't it, the iPhone does.

And your inane argument contends that the current way is the best way. They are out whoring themselves because they need money to win. If they didn't have to compete against others who had massive war chests then they wouldn't need the money. Then they would need to go out and whore themselves to get VOTES, which is exactly what I want them to do.

Your argument is that if you flood them with money, well, then they won't have to go out and get it. Well yes, but now who are they whores to? Who opened the flood gates? Yes, the corporations, not the people.

Since when did a corporation take a political stand on anything, endorsing anything? Corporations will contribute bucket loads of cash to EVERYONE, and in so control the entire process. Your simplistic thinking is almost cute...this isn't about one political ideology against another, its about corporations running things vs. the people. Democrats, republicans, libertarians, progressives, teabaggers, gays, right/left/up..it doesn't mean much now and especially won't mean anything in the future. It will be us (the people) against them (the corporations).