I believe in this case it was someone alluding to the assassination of McCain and then trailing off...

You seem to be conveniently forgetting the actions of the Chamber of Commerce earlier this year.

One example for your personal edification: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/25/nation/na-climate-trial25

There are more examples of businesses doing similar things - they know that with any (and I do mean *ANY*) theory in science, if you don't need to present an alternative, you can always find holes in the theory and ram those holes through to be the only thing anyone talks about.

A non-climate related example would be people saying we haven't witnessed macroevolution in a lab, so how can we be sure that it exists? Of course, anyone versed in the field will say, "Well, we have witnessed macroevolution among single-celled organisms, and it's unreasonable to expect us to have lab evidence of a process that takes hundreds of generations for multi-celled creatures, where hundreds of generations could take decades."

Of course, to evolution skeptics (or those paid to oppose evolution), this is not nearly good enough. Nothing says a priori that macroevolution on a unicellular scale extends to multicellular organisms, much like nothing says a priori that microevolution on a multicellular scale extends to macroevolution. Scientifically, of course, we are united on macroevolution occurring, and have moved onto discussing its mechanisms, history, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, if we can't get people to agree that macroevolution exists despite the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that it does, how can we get people to agree on something with even greater societal impact based on (by necessity) much less data?

You jest, but you should try watching Youtube on my MSN-provided DSL. How they can provide consistent 1MBps downloads of windows updates but be unable to completely cache a 2 minute Youtube clip after I walk away from the computer for 3 minutes will forever be beyond my limits of comprehension.

Once again, I recommend you actually read my arguments rather than complain about people who don't know economics.

1) I never said we've had a free market since then. I said we've chosen competitive markets over free markets.

2) Read Brian's posts. He is using free market as a synonym for unregulated markets, so I used competitive markets as a counter to that.

When did we give them the 'right' to a free market?

Or, to put it another way, when did we give them the right to remove *our* right to a competitive market?

This 'we, as a society' are the people of the United States who decided in the early 1900s to enact anti-trust laws, after seeing what lack of competition did to OUR (not their) economy.

Similarly, you are free to exercise your right to live in a non-competitive market by moving. If you want to enjoy the benefits of living in a competitive market, you have to agree to live with the restrictions that places on you.

Also, if you're saying a free market doesn't have rights violated, you're forgetting that it only protects you from the Government violating your rights. The government does not have a monopoly on that, and so I welcome their restricting the ability of others to violate my rights.

So it's right for those with power to abuse it? Because that's the point of Antitrust - we as a society have decided that we value a competitive market more than a free market, so we took steps towards that. We have economic evidence that competitive markets are better for both consumers, corporations, and innovation than free markets. You are assuming that free = better, and therefore free = right. I see no evidence you're giving that that is correct.

You're right. Similarly, if Microsoft doesn't want to agree to the terms of doing business in the United States, where we require businesses to not behave in anti-competitive behaviour, they are perfectly free to take their business elsewhere.

That doesn't sound very militant. Would you go to "Ham, bacon & Pork - The only all-pig fast food restaurant" with a muslim?

Just because vegetarians in the western world generally don't use an invisible friend to justify their vegetarianism doesn't mean they don't take it seriously (whatever their reason for it is).

/Mikael

A hardware firewall is just a software firewall running on some else's CPU.

Though there are a few PCs coming out with an auxilary ARM CPU... you boot up on the ARM quick, run Linux or Android or something, to do simple things, but boot the full x86 for "real work". You could put a firewall and router on the ARM, give it something to do when the "full PC" mode is activate. Hmmm.....

It's not flawed so much as inevitable. A portion of the market will jump at the first example of a promising technology that ships. Being the first mover in a particular space holds special significance and advantages for companies competing for market share. The thinking goes that quality can be worked on iteratively through generations of product and there will never be a time when you reach perfect quality anyway.

Moral of the story: If you don't want to beta test products for corporations, then don't buy first generation technology.

And before you argue that G2s *are* second generation drives, I would not categorize them as such. They're die-shrunk G1 drives with some bug fixes and performance tweaks. Corporations and the media are quick to claim that any improvement to a first generation technology *is* the next generation as it sells copies, clicks and product.

As a general rule, I wait at least 6 months after Anandtech and others review a product before making a new technology purchase. By then, you can usually figure out something about longer-term reliability from online discussions/reviews. As a result, I rarely have a whole lot of trouble with technology products I buy, beyond downloading the latest drivers/updates or whatnot. Sure, it means I don't have the latest bleeding edge stuff, but I also don't have to deal with the trouble that comes with paying for the opportunity to beta test.

Because SSD represents such a paradigm shift, I've chosen to hold off for at least another 6-12 months on SSDs partly to allow prices to drop and partly to account for the obvious growing pains that manufacturers have experienced over the past couple years.

You mean like the Long Ranger?

Personally, I think that's the perfect solution. Too bad most upcoming EVs don't have trailer hitches. Why shove an engine into the vehicle when you only need it on long trips? Such trailers would be perfect for sharing and for rental, too.

A solar panel is a buy once use for a long time item. While it is true that oil companies are really energy distribution companies, the sun does it's own distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if the oil companies are some of the ones lobbying for orbital solar power as opposed to ground based solar and wind. If you have your own solar panels and wind turbines you don't need to pay a giant company to distribute power to you.

Ahh, I would venture to say that the advice is only as simplistic as you make it. In fact, entire novels could be written about the idea. If you take it absolutely literally, then it is certainly idealistic and optimistic, but I would like to highlight the critical difference with a question: Is your goal simply fun, or it is your true passion?

I did not explain the idea very well, but I would not suggest you pick something just because you did it as a hobby in high school. Instead, I say find your true calling; you'll know you got it right if you can overcome any pains to do it. After all, most people are not REALLY passionate about the roles you listed, they just see that those roles are the ones with the most money and power, and figure they should go in there to live the good life. I am saying that you need to overcome this natural desire to gravitate towards the jobs everyone idealizes, and instead move towards the job truly meant for YOU. As someone else brought up in a reply, there are people that might even love hauling trash. I happen to know such people myself.

Your example of the garage band illustrates this perfectly. The guy might enjoy music, and might even convince himself that this is what he wants, but he goes in there, and suffers constantly. What probably happened, is he saw all the media attention, money, and power heaped upon those successful in the business, and thought to himself, "Hey, I have a band. That could be me." In my view, this illustrates that he did not really understand what the job actually entailed, instead he just saw the rosy pastures, and wandered into the field, oblivious of the thorns. In his place, I would first research what it really means to run a successful band. There are plenty of artist testimonials that explain all the pains that come with the job. If that price is something I can afford to pay in order to pursue this passion, then nothing will stop me. On the other hand, if I feel a seed of doubt that it is worth it; if I think to myself, "Well, it sounds like a huge pain, but the money must be nice," then I will know immediately that this is not the job for me. In that case, I can still keep music as a hobby, so that someday, when I have more time and freedom, I may pursue it at my leisure, but when it comes to making a living, I will find something else to do.

Of course, life is not that easy. As many people pointed out, many roles are already filled in our current system, and the dependence on the huge service industry drives skilled people into dead-end jobs. Still, even in those situations you should constantly explore and expand your horizons. Who is to say your passion will not win out over the tedium of your boring life. It is certainly better than accepting that this is all there is to live. To make matters even more complex, your passions may change over the course of your life. Eventually, you may feel that you accomplished everything you wanted in your profession. Hopefully, when that day comes, you will have a small nest egg to allow you time to train yourself, and reach success in a new field.

Yeap, they certainly will. The Air Force certainly shot down that Northwest [chicagotribune.com] flight to Minneapolis. And that was high altitude. A UAV can fly at low altitudes evading radar long enough to hop over the border. Smugglers even use submarines [timesonline.co.uk], which can carry more drugs and other contraband.

A commercial flight that is overdue for a landing but still being tracked on radar is VERY different from an UNKNOWN radar signal coming from across a border on an unexpected path and trajectory. You obviously know jack squat about Air Force and general defense protocols to think that would be allowed to happen.

Remember, we are talking about an autonomous vehicle capable of carrying a rather heavy payload a VERY long distance. So that means a LARGE vehicle, close to the size of your average light airplane (Think Cessna single engine plane sized or slightly smaller).

A vehicle that size flying over the border WILL NOT go unnoticed! If you think it will you are utterly ignorant about just how tightly controlled our airspace is.

Oh, and submarine comparisons are NOT applicable. Until such time as we have a Sonar network around our coasts as extensive as the Radar network blanketing our skies AND we have teams of fast-response submarine hunter-killers waiting to be launched from naval bases all along the coast at a moment's notice, then our coasts will always be more porous than our skies. The same goes for the ground borders.

That, and the fact that the "semi-sub" was a flop and CAUGHT with it's load on it's maiden voyage.

The simple fact is that both ground and sea borders are far less intensively monitored and defended than the air is. Flying vehicles are the LEAST practical method of transporting contraband, Autonomous flying vehicles (which cannot respond to radio ID requests or have a conversation with a ground controller) are even LESS practical.

I'm sorry if that bursts your "romantic" bubble of clever drug dealers getting your blow across the border with oh-so-cool technology and beating "the man" so you can get high, but it's the truth.