It's IBM legacy kit. There are no new customers for AS/400 hardware, so confusing them doesn't matter. Plus, IBM's various divisions are in different cities, and don't play together well. AS/400 = Minnesota, Intel = Raleigh, Mainframe = NY

I'd say a more likely NSA "backdoor" would be some sort of subtle flaw in the implementation of an encryption, hash or some other algorithm critical to Windows. NSA spends alot of time and money on cryptanalysis.

Smart grid is really needed to provide the ability to support electric cars without taking out the power system, and to provide peak-demand load management for people who use power at peak times (ie. businesses, during the day). People aren't going to run washing machines at 2AM in the summertime to avoid a $0.50 fee and get smelly clothes since nobody will be around to flip the laundry into the dryer.

The problem at the residential level is that other than the electric cars that nobody wants there is minimal value to shifting residential power demand for most people -- their demand is at night, since there aren't many housewives hanging out at home anymore. From what I've read, energy usage isn't the problem -- the problem is providing sufficient power during periods of peak demand. Additionally, many, many places don't have the necessary last-mile power infrastructure to handle the electric cars that are supposedly going to drive increased consumer demand.

Plus, nobody has plugin electric cars, and the excessive costs will keep it that way. Why would you buy a $40,000 car that is similar to a compact car and requires upgrading your home electrical system to own? Just buy a diesel Jetta, which has a far lower TCO. Hell, hybrid diesel-electric cars are probably more practical.

Upgrading the infrastructure of every side street in every city is going to cost billions and take years. And it will meet resistance -- residential neighborhoods with trees and overhead lines will find the new supply lines also mean that the utility company will eviscerate every tree.

However, in practice, states generally don't tax that much, unless it's less-obvious taxes such as sales tax and property tax.

Let me guess, you're a college student who rents? Property taxes are quite obvious. In New York, I pay about $6,000 per year in city and school taxes. $500/mo.

Sales taxes are equally obvious if you spend any money. My family probably spends about $25,000 year in non-food transactions. About $2,000 of that is taxation.

The states most certainly do get a lot of funding from the Federal government, for example highway funds.

That's exactly what I said. The Federal government pays states to administer certain programs -- including the Interstate highway system.

Prior to the current US government, the country tried to do things your way under something called the "Articles of Confederation". Under that regime, the US government was at the mercy of the state legislatures to provide funds and was unable to levy significant taxes.

Guess what? It was an utter failure.

Tariffs and excise taxes were able to fund government operations until the 20th century, when the role of government mushroomed. In those days we had no standing army, minimal navy, no debt, no social programs, no social security, etc.

Assuming the allegations were true, how can you explain AMD's continued presence in OEM machinery anyway? HP (for instance) certainly didn't stop selling AMD-based desktops, servers, etc., and Intel+HP are like fraternal twins.

The AMD OEM machines at BestBuy, etc that HP is/was selling are mostly low-end or midrange consumer desktops at the bottom of the profit curve. The higher margin, higher priced machines were almost always Intel.

You see the effects of Intel's manipulation in the corporate market... with large quantity buyers like Fortune 500 and government, resellers and vendors often sell PCs at a loss, counting on backend rebates from vendors like Intel and memory vendors to make a 1-3% margin. In general, the money in PC sales is from services... Dell will charge $100 (@ 70% margin) to install a $500 PC (@ 2% margin). The vendors compete aggressively for that business.

Intel knows this, because they have their own field marketing groups who are able to figure out who is planning on buying computers. They use that intelligence to bully vendors -- if they know that 400,000 PCs are being sold, they can use that information to manipulate the rebates and affect the ability of the PC vendor to win business.

You might ask: "Why do they care if Dell sells a PC at a 10% loss, only to make up for it in services?".

The answer to that its in Intel's interest to keep the overall price of a PC stable -- around $500 in large quantity. Intel does lots of math on everything that they do -- they wouldn't let you go to the bathroom if the ROI of letting you wet your pants was 6% higher. Stability makes it easy for Intel to do the math and shape product demand to meet their product launch/production schedules. If PC vendors were allowed to engage in an all-out price war, it would push down the prices for the most expensive substitutable commodities in a PC purchase (ie the Processor) and jeopardize the PC vendor's cash cow -- the $100/pc installation. (Because "soft costs" in a lease cannot exceed a certain amount). By manipulating the market, Intel essentially sets a price floor to discourage the PC vendors from getting too aggressive.

Easy.

"Look, we beat the analyst's earnings estimates again! We we rock at this governance thing... lets talk to the compensation committee about increasing our honoraria."

Another example: Your company gets sued and you have to capture user data from 200 computers. The lawyers do their thing a year later and tell you that you can throw out data from 150 of them. Now you have 10TB of empty SAN that costs you $27/GB/mo.

Familiarize yourself with Roman history.

Depending on the era that you were talking about, slaves were used on a variety of tasks. Some of the best teachers in Rome were Greek slaves, for instance. In most circumstances, public construction was funded personally by Roman Generals and other rich folk, and they would use their employees (ie. the legionnaires) to perform the construction tasks.

Construction was useful, as it kept the soldiers busy and occupied. Occupied soldiers don't try to overthrow their patrons.

You obviously know next to nothing about the US government and how it operates.

A few things:
  - States have plenty of taxing authority
  - Pre 1920, most Federal revenue came from the taxation of imports
  - States don't go to the Federal government for money -- they administer some programs on behalf of the Federal government

These days, smaller, more rural states tend to get screwed, as the large states have more recipients for high-dollar programs like Medicare & Medicaid.

News is alive an well, just not in the traditional, dominant media outlets. We have online blogs and weekly newspapers that are in many cases thriving. In my hometown, a tiny rural weekly called "The Altamont Enterprise" has such a demand for local advertising that they've had to add a second section. 15 years ago, it was a 10 page weekly, now its closer to 50.

Why the growth? The local newspaper, the Hearst-owned Albany Times-Union doesn't really provide a service to people in the outlying areas of Albany. Even within the area that the traditional paper claims to serve, the editorial practices of the paper marginalize it as a provider of news that people want to hear. Often, you know when important things are going on because they don't appear in the paper.

When the daily papers die, others will take their place. The only thing missing will be the editorial boards that are typically in cahoots with politicians and business. Keeping them on life support is suppressing the development of new news organizations.

I was the oldest child of a middle class family of 3. I applied to 2 public and 3 private universities and was accepted to all of them, but with minimal financial aid. I chose to attend a nearby public university that offered a quality education that cost approximately $10,000/year in the late 90's.

Why did I make this choice?

- I could afford to finance about 75% of tuition via savings that my parents had set aside for me.
- I worked various jobs while in school, eventually hitting $15-17/hr, which more than covered the remaining tuition & expenses.
- I didn't want to screw my siblings out of an education or force my parents into debt. In the end, I was able to leave about $4,000 of my parent's savings for my brother or sister.

I have friends who are teachers who decided that they needed to attend small, private New England colleges with tuition and expenses over 350% more than my education. One of those friends and his wife makes $120k combined teaching, but after years of deferments owes over $300,000 a decade after graduation (not including graduate work form a private school which would have been FREE had they gone to the state university) -- my friend and his wife can barely afford rent, and will likely become homeowners when they inherit a house when one of their parents pass.

People don't need bailouts, they need to live within their means and not assume that they are entitled to a specific lifestyle or type of job due to the circumstances of their birth. If you can't afford four years of college, borrow money to go to trade school and work as a plumber, HVAC, electrician, etc. If you really want to go to college, you'll be able to earn the money to do so.

Do you accept or make payment via credit card, check or ATM debit? Congratulations, you (indirectly) use COBOL.

The SAT example is like saying that people prefer driving to flying, because no students arrived at the SAT exam site via helicopter. Kids aren't taught cursive, so shockingly, they do not use it to write.

People sign their names in distinctive ways, making it possible to authenticate a document by comparing it to past signatures. At a glance, I can identify my dad, wife, boss and several of my colleague's signature.

In today's society where we are more anonymous and the people we deal with every day have no interest in us as an individual, so it is less effective. But if you interact with a group of people on paper long enough, you recognize signatures. Now we trust a computer to assert identity based on a person's knowledge of a 6-10 character key combination. Doesn't sound like progress to me.

Back in the day, a signature was enough, and a high-value document was "secured" by a signature authenticated by a notary stamp.

In the US, all children are special and you cannot force them to do anything. If you tried to make a child read and write by 2nd grade, parents would complain because their special snowflakes had self-esteem issues.