Useful to China, by the way - when the news spreads that it was just a spoof, it in turn spreads "Western journalism is all lies, and only Chinese journalism is trustworthy.". Between China's superior manipulations at home and their ally in News Corp abroad, they're winning on the propaganda front.

Quite obviously they've honed playing the greed of the West's few to a fine art, and so are far, far ahead on the industrial infrastructure/defense arsenal and financial fronts.

It's been sad to watch, really...like watching Confucius pick on Western kindergartners.

Don't make fun of China, 'cuz Fox depends on people making the exact same assumption to get away with their bovine scat: "If it wasn't true, they wouldn't be allowed to say it."

When your government lets you down, you're a prime candidate to join the march of the lemmings.

Snicker. Guess you told us how you'd answer it - if you answered it truthfully.

Do you evaluate performance based upon specific goals - that is, lines of code/subroutines/class modules/interfaces/boards/prototypes/thingamabobs built, or something more ethereal, like how well I kiss ass?

lollll...only 'cuz Immelt controls a "corporate person", and that "corporate person" can afford to buy America's politicians in bulk.

The generals who know damned good and well that they will have to watch their men die because of Immelt's betrayals in the here and now work for those politicians, and so they know their hands - and the hands of the intelligence community - are well and thoroughly tied.

I.e., capitalism - as re-corrupted since 1980 by the modern American right - is a self-betraying system; it ensures that the hog trough is crowded with both corporate and political leaders - and the PRC plays it well.

I swear to God that loyalty to each other (Harvard/Yale grads/Skull and Crossbones/whatever) is a substitute for the lack of an individual code of morality and ethics.

But you didn't hear me say that.

...seems like there is an underlying lesson in the comments.

The increasingly stultifying "Corporate America" scene values "networking" over talent and ability (herein noted by remarks such as "getting past the human resources department"); that has consequences: Managerial incompetence must be concealed with offshore production and continual M&A activity. A startup might do well to filter hiring based on raw intelligence rather than "well-known school" and, in particular, make damned sure that potential candidates do NOT have preexisting "connections" that lead to the internecine politics that destroy from within...i.e., if the new hire has an Ivy League or well-known B-school degree, show 'em the door...

lolll...unless, or course, you're looking to turn'n'burn...that is, your intention is to unload into the hands of those who have money and/or connections to money but no brains. It is amazing how many individuals come out of Ivy League schools with degrees and connections but who are literally as dumb as rocks...George W. Bush, for instance, has a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.

A fact which might also suggest that they do not teach the finer points of ethics in the Ivy League schools - a consideration any idealistic startup would do well to keep in mind.

At least until the 1% have the 58% of America's wealth that they don't currently possess.

Then I suppose that there will be a period of a dozen years or so when there will be a homemade guillotine on every street corner, the 1% will become either anonymous or headless, and at the end of that period all of our currency will have new pictures on it. (God, I hope that they don't choose Oprah.)

At least, that is the pattern that repeats over and over again throughout human history, and we sure as hell appear to be stuck in that same old rut of "I have a right to exercise my greed to the detriment of the greater society!" until it all blows up.

And this is why he had to resign...the Republicans would have made political hay out of the situation, his past service to our country notwithstanding.

The more discussed, the better. If it was here two weeks ago, the planet's population has increased by somewhere in the vicinity of 2,952,992 humans since then.

Getting time to leave.

Lawyer argues court is better.

Thinking the Univac would have blown up in today's election environment - when its computations were interrupted for the 34th time by a phone call from RNC headquarters.

Don't they call a biodegradable server chassis a brain?

ain't it?

While on the surface it may seem that "Big Brother" (or the competition, or China - assuming that they're not one and the same) is less likely to have his nose in your PC given that the intent of a phone is to maintain external communications links, one would do well to remember that those teeny commo chips that fit onto a phone's dinky mobo would fit onto a massive PC mobo, too. Which is something that has probably occurred to anybody who remembers the Tandy 1000 TX - and so remembers anonymous custom chips.

Which brings me to my point: It is a lot easier to build a Faraday cage for a phone-sized device to make sure that it truly is firewalled off...so a phone-sized PC with true computational power - assuming sufficient storage (and, ideally, a means of accessing external dumb storage) - is progress.

(Yeah, I know: Paranoia, extraordinaire. lollll...but if you'd had the jobs I've had...)