I disagree. What got us into this meltdown was bad regulation. A Free market does not mean a market without rules and regulations. It means a market that is free from active outside government interference. The system went so horribly bad because in part, government created and allowed people to preform shady and underhanded lending practices and then convinced people that they were safe because the market was regulated. Uncle Sam has for the past 60 years tried to turn the stock market and housing market into savings tools for the masses and has distorted them from their original intent. They told the american people that it was safe to buy a house and created programs to help low income people purchase houses as a way out of poverty. And they claimed that it was safe because it was regulated. Then it hiked the long term interest rate while keeping short term rates low, which increased the amount of 5/1 and 7/1 ARM loans that then catastrophically failed across both prime and sub-prime markets. people blame the subprime market because it is mostly ARM and not fixed rate but the failure rate of ARM loans across both prime and subprime were the same. Then when the industry executed its contingency plans it realized that all the promises made by the regulators that this was safe were wrong. You would like to go back to this model? Regulation dilutes the value of reputation and makes entities whose intentions are less than honorable seem trust worthy. It increases the cost of entry to the market and therefore increases the minimum profit margin required to run a successful business. It almost always favors incumbents and limits the ability to enter the market and compete on value and values. it may stop the bleeding of a broken system but also prevents the wound from healing. There is as science to developing systems that self regulate. In order to do this you need transparency and clear penalties. The end customer needs to understand what they are getting into and bad business practices have to be cost prohibitive. Instead we get regulation where individual regulators are making inconsistent calls on how companies do business and that is not a good solution. I think that there needs to be a combination of regulatory reform and competition incentives in order to solve the teleco problem. Incentives have to be given to build out networks and more attention has to be paid in the M&A space to incumbents acquiring start ups for purely anti-competitive reasons. And lastly municipalities have to stop signing exclusive deals and start standards based access to right-of-ways which are the primary barrier competition in the teleco field.

Bigelow Aerospace is likely out there to put the mile high club to shame. the owner cleans fish tanks as a second job.

If google maps lead people to drive off a cliff I would applaud them for helping eliminate people too stupid to realize that even if the map tells you to drive off a cliff that its still not a good idea. And I don't pity people who run apps from an untrusted source and get burned. I understand where you're coming from but the reason this software is being distributed is because people want the functionality. Don't send a C&D, come up with your own solution which should be that much better being it's authorized and verified with all the cozy protections from coming with the google brand attached.

N. Dakota and Germany may appear to be on the same latitude, but that doesn't mean they get the same amount of sun. weather conditions and topography play a large part in that. And since germany imports the majority of their panels, it would make sense that they would have a surplus, since they didn't pay the generation costs. Since the repayment period is close to 20 years on solar panels in that latitude. that means that GW that you so proud of caused 20 GW of pollution at some point of time.

you can't just say "oh well then they'll be motivated to make an investment in solar and wind" and that will solve anything

Most greening techniques are capital intensive, solar takes 5-10 years for ROI, LED bulbs require about 5 years as well. Insulating your home, replacing your windows, it all takes money up front. so although I agree mother nature doesn't care if you have a job, it might be more effective to get the economy out of the quagmire it's in before trying to green it.

no we don't have one. the reason why it's been defeated every time is that the proponents of the bill (typically California, Washington, Arizona, Nevada) receive a large portion of their power from hydroelectric power. So they have renewable sources available. Essentially this is a tax on the breadbasket states who have less clean resources available to them, and who's economies are based more on industry then the states on the coasts. It's been proposed several times, and several times defeated. Cap and trade makes sense if alternatives are more evenly distributed, but unfortunately they're not.

Isn't an "app store" just a shiny package management system for small programs? 99% of linux distros have this already. What, we need to skin it prettier and put it on the web? That should be easy enough. I don't know why we need to copy something from apple when the idea creating a repository for programs and working out interdependence started in the *nix environments. Getting useful usable programs onto the computer is the main barrier for adoption. Cost has nothing to do with it, they'll put out the cheapest item that will sell. If linux won't sell netbooks, then they won't use it.

Everyone knows god programed in perl :)

Technically, there's nothing in the law against it despite DCMA safe harbors.

Ever since the Grokster case got settled, courts have been ruling for "contributory infringement" on a I-know-it-when-I-see-it type basis. Usenet actively promoted the fact that it had lots of infringing content and used that as a selling point in it's business model. And despite disagreeing with the model, they are EXACTLY what is pictured and depicted as "contributory infringement". Until we can reverse it, if your going to run a file sharing site or network, then don't advertise you're doing so.

We're not looking for a complete work up here. Genetic testing becoming more available and consumable is a good thing as it should spur development in the industry. Additionally there are a lot of conditions for which people can have genetic predisposition and knowing that predisposition may change their treatment and behavior in ways that may actually save money. Being able to better focus and tailor one's individual medical care is a good thing and will hopefully lead to long term cost savings. I hope genetic testing for serious, long term disabilities that can drive up end of life care becomes common place as it could be used as a mitigation for rising cost of treatment.

Ok, so he hung 200 people publicly a year. From 1991 to 2003 is 12 years so 2400 people.
Then add a conservative 5000 (Probably closer to 10000 since many of the injured died of complicationis) from the Halabja poison gas attack and we're just getting started. That was just one part of the Al-Anfal Campaign where he killed roughly 100,000. That's just violence against the Kurds which is the most well documented. And the hangings don't account for the shootings and killings post Gulf War when he quelled the Shiite Rebellion. Body count puts the Iraq war collateral damage total at about 100,000. So in fact we haven't killed as many Iraqis as Saddam.

I'm not saying that the code shouldn't be released. I'm saying there should be some remediation prior to it being released. Cisco should have to release a new version of their firmware that is completely closed source, or they should offer new routers running open software. I'm saying that everyone is so concerned about getting the code out there NOW and I'm of the opinion that's not necessarily the responsible thing. If I was a major Cisco client, I'd be furious about this. But no one's talking about that.

You misunderstand. Just because you release the code, it doesn't magically become as secure because it's "open source". Open Source is secure because it goes through a process. A process this code didn't see. That process allows for corrections when errors are made. This process takes time. And what I said in my original post is that there is going to be a window between when we, the community, improve the quality of product up to other open source standards, and when the source code is released, during which time there is an elevated threat.