Stop spending ~$43,000 per prisoner to house them in Club Fed and revert prison to what it should be: Three square meals and the chance to break big rocks into little rocks.

Lesson Number 1:

In the American federal system almost all violent offenders are prosecuted at the state and local level.

Lesson Number 2:

The constitutional roots of federal criminal jurisdiction are in interstate and economic crimes. The Secret Service, for example, was originally organized to fight counterfeiting.

The white collar criminal can do enormous harm but it is often only the Feds who can put him behind bars - and keep him there.

That thought can be - disquieting - for the geek.

Because Club Fed was built for him. It's the prison farm for the financial and technocratic elite.

Lesson Number 3:

Prisoners do not remain prisoners forever. Breaking big ones into little ones does nothing to prepare them - or us - for their eventual release.
       

We all do everything we do because of our brains, and none of our brains are perfect. The real question is whether the person is responsible for their crime. With some types of brain damage or mental illnesses then, no, of course they aren't. But you wouldn't say "This person has naturally high testosterone levels and he can't help being agressive so his sentence should be lighter". It helps us to know why some people are more agressive - but we need to accept that humans vary in what they are. Otherwise we will be on our way to diagnosing anyone who isn't a happy, uncritical extrovert as having "a brain abnormality"

The economic crisis was a completely separate issue, caused by funny business in the housing markets - particularly the insurance markets.

The increases in oil prices could have the long term potential of damaging the economy, but I think your conclusion on the impact of oil prices is correct. The oil prices surged and quickly subsided before they could have any significant effect beyond stirring up anger.

However, I would say the funny business in the housing market was only part of the cause for the current economic debacle. Aside from the games finance, investment and insurance companies were playing with large blocks of risky mortgages was the borrowing of funds from the Fed at very low interest rates and then lending that money to every warm body on the street combined with out of control spending practices of the masses and inflation offset by incomes that had turned stagnant around 2000 and unless you were in the top 10% income brackets was flat until the meltdown where the income quickly dropped to near nil for those who ended up without a job.

Increases in consumer spending and inflation combined with stagnant wages by itself would have eventually been enough to kill the economy. The banking greed only added fuel to the fire. In fact, if wages for the other 90% of the wage earners had continued their rate increase seen in the 1990s then credit would not be as much of an issue as it is today. Banks have money they've borrowed from the Fed that they could lend to individuals, but they wont as most individuals wages are already strapped with debt.

Oh, I agree. Not only that, but you don't end up spending an arm and a leg on software.

For actual online games, if you start late, you may miss a community. Otherwise, buying games late really doesn't signify anything really, except that maybe the bugs are fixed by the time you buy it for $10.

In the past 4 years I've maybe bought 8 games or so total, so I wouldn't consider myself a power buyer either.

Let's see what the hit count looks like when answers no longer are found from his pubs, in popular search engine results.

Indeed. Google could settle this thing now by removing all News Corp sites from their listings proactively. The screaming from Fox and the Right would be almost deafening though.

Quit your trolling. You can patent general easy-to-think-of ideas which would then cover any real innovations. This is constantly being done today.