Interesting. Reporting to a central authority. Now I can see why they opted for this path rather than have a device check its surroundings. They benefit from making devices a bit simpler and collecting information on the useful idiots at the same time. Genius.

To be honest, I'd rather my devices have a modicum of intelligence and look around to find the best frequency to use. To do otherwise leaves the whole system open to attack. What happens if this central authority server goes down? What happens if a rogue device doesn't report to the server? I'd like my robots with eyes and ears please, not being remote controlled from D.C.

Are you actually claiming that Democrats favor non-regulation in general? This smells more like a step toward the free market principles being championed by the Tea Party.

Equal Protection for Black Space!

Statistically speaking, when someone else is covering for your mistakes, you take more risks. Management of risk versus reward is a business requirement. When someone lops off a giant portion of your risk, you are suddenly free to increase that risk further in the pursuit of more reward. As far as your higher prices, if only one player in the market is saddled with increased costs, and this player does not make up the majority of the market by itself, the market should remain little changed. That would ensure BP could not pass its fines and cleanup costs to its customers.

There are other oil companies that are not required to pay for this cleanup. Their prices will remain low. To be competitive, BP will be forced to continue selling at the same price as everyone else. So they will be unable to pass the costs on to consumers buying gasoline.

That said, BP should be responsible for *all* of these costs through damages to be awarded in court after each claimant shows proof to the court. Ideally, noone should be able to show any increase in gasoline prices due to this problem, as other oil companies remain unaffected by fines and clenaup costs, and BP has many so many other sources of oil, that this will not dramatically affect the amount of oil on the market. But anyone who can show proof of damages to the court should be compensated.

> The existing laws basically protect BP from catastrophic payments. The system is designed to allow oil companies vast profits with only marginal risk.

Then this is another broken system brought to you by government intervention. BP should be completely liable for all damages it causes. Anything else is patently unfair. If government intervention allows this excessive risk by covering BP, then this cannot be an indication of failure of Laissez-Faire economics by any stretch of the imagination. Only the threat of consequences keep most in line. If government intervention removes/reduces that threat, you shouldn't be surprised to see risks jump way out of line.

Some here are using this as an excuse to push for new government regulation and claim that Laissez-Faire economics does not work. I believe increased government regulation and protection has actually contributed to the problem of excessive risks being taken by many, including BP. Failure is no longer feared because of government bailouts. Remove the bailouts, and fear of failure will keep risks better controlled.

As far as this specific failure, this kind of highly unlikely failure is what insurance was invented for. Government regulations didn't stop this from happening. The government can only regulate and control that which it foresees. This usually means it adds regulations *after* something bad happens. Thus governments tend to be reactive.

At any rate, existing law covers this type of situation just fine. The harmed governments, industries, companies, and individuals will sue and win large settlements from BP and its insurers. Losses due to payments and increased insurance costs will hit the share price, punishing the owners (shareholders) of BP for what has happened. None of this requires new regulation. In fact, any new regulation will result in punishment being distributed beyond BP to others who were not responsible. This will likely lead to increased prices at the pump, which will then mean you and I are the ones being punished. Is this the fairness you propose?

> If you are in the intersection before the light turns red, you have not run it If they can't get you on running a red light, then they will get you on blocking an intersection. Either way, they'll get you in your end.

Wonderful. Now that we can destroy cancer cells, where can I sign up to have my telemeres refreshed? I'm not getting any younger here... yet.

Not really. If the remote server software was written for the same platform as the client software, all they'd need to do is ship the server software in a patch. But this is besides the point. They don't have to guarantee the game will work forever. They can lease it to you for a limited time period. Most software with an EULA these days already contain a clause indicating you own the physical medium but are only leasing the software on it. So this isn't a big stretch.

If some significant portion of the game was actually computed on the remote server, then "cracking" it would not be possible. One could attempt to "hack" a user account on the remote server to get the free play, or a shady developer could attempt to reverse engineer the networking protocol and implement a fake remote server others could run. The latter would only prove useful if the portion of the game run by the server was trivial. Otherwise, the developer would essentially be reimplementing vast portions of the game him/herself and should just make their own game anyhow.

IE8 is still fairly new. My workplace hasn't yet authorized its use, as some of the web applications used in our business do not work properly with it. Thus, we are all stuck with IE7 for the time being. My recommendation is to support the last two major versions of each browser. There are very good reasons why users may not yet be able to use the latest version.

*knock knock* Excuse me sir. Please don't mind the 29 other people behind me. They're in my raiding party. It would seem that our MMORPG has placed a boss mob in what I can only assume might be your living room. Would you mind terribly if we played through? Also, we're going to be farming this boss mob until our entire guild is outfitted properly. Can we put you down for the same time every Thursday?

Please note: Wolfram did not promise computing that *correctly* answers questions. Tribute to Douglas Adams: Perhaps his next endeavor should involve providing the question that goes with the answer.