I don't know where you live, but where I live downloading\streaming is quite a viable solution. I imagine DVDs will remain available, but it is hard to see their advantage. Broadband is excellent in many areas and will expand over time. I am not sure if I agree with your comment that NetFlix does not have a fiancial incentive to provide service to many areas and the expansion of streaming hardly requires eliminating DVDs - unless there are a lot of customers like me who don't want them anymore.

I stopped my NetFlix subscription many months ago because why bother with DVDs when there are so many movies already available on OnDemand? Plus DVDs are a pain and easily damaged. They are completely impractical for kids. I doubt DVDs will go completely, but I am more likely to sign up for NetFlix streaming than the DVD service again. I feel like there are way more media choices than I have time to watch and Comcast\OnDemand and the Internet provide that just fine for me. Actually a lot of movies including indie films are released to OnDemand before they are released on DVD or sometimes even the movie theater.

I think is is odd that this poster things Facebook will be going away some time soon. Forever is a long time and I am sure it will change over time, but Facebook is a great service that a lot of people love, including myself. Facebook seems to be getting more and more popular. I really doubt the core Facebook service will be discontinued. If anything there will be competing services, but FB definitely has an advantage because so many people use it and a lot of people only have time for one FB type site. Sometimes FB is overly hyped. I do think it is a little overkill the way every commercial website also has a FB page. However, I enjoy FB every day. I love the way I can easily keep up with my relatives and my friends from different parts of my life. My Facebook news feed is a much more satisfying read than the national news sites. Also I think most of the criticism of Zuckerburg is sour grapes. He is a 26 year old who invented and successfully brought to market a very successful product that a lot of people really use and enjoy. Not too many people can claim that. FB also generated many jobs and changed the way people communicate and connect. Pretty impressive stuff for kid under 30, and so what if it wasnt' 100% his invention or business savy that made FB successful. Business is a team effort. No one succeeds 100% solo. If FB is imperfect, oh well. Don't use it or work with it. FB is not the end all be all, but it is an great service that many people like and expect will continue to use. As for the photo issue, most people who upload photos to FB will have the photos on their local computer. 15 year olds are usually clueless about a lot of things, so it hardly shocking that this girl would not know that. I think is more shocking that her parents are so certain that FB will not last. Exactly what facts support that?

She's 15. Giver her a break. Just because you grow up in the digital era, doesn't mean you understand how the technology you use works. Plus a 15 year old is a freshmen or sophmore is highschool, not exactly the age of all knowing and understanding. Maybe if she was a CS major in college, we could expect her to know that she probably has copies on her local computer and to be up on the latest Facebook updates, but not a 15 year old. Every new child born is a blank slate and they only know what they experience, read or are taught. Younger people are more open to new technologies than older people, but there is no reason to expect a 15 year old youth to understand technology better that a 60 year old woman. In fact I find that young people today take technology for granted and although they are familiar with using it, usually have little understanding of the details of how it works. Computer education in the USA still is very mediocre before the college level. Also I am shocked by these rude comments towards a 15 year old. Arrogant IT people give IT a bad name. IT people are well paid because understanding technology is not easy for most people. A true IT professional knows this.

I am glad the DOJ and CA Attorney General are launching this anti-trust investigation, and I hope MPEG LA is prevented from any further action against the VP8 codec. Without open competition, capitalism does not work. No group should have the right to block alternative technology formats whether they are free & open source or not. We must be vigilant about this as citizens because otherwise monopolies will destroy our democracy and the ability of new companies to compete and innovate. After reading this article, I am going to look into the VP8 codec and see about using it.

Your warning is good advice to those that wish to live their lives in peace without persecution, but sometimes it takes courageous people that do speak out, despite the consequences, to bring freedom and liberty to their people. US citizens are many generations removed from our revolutionary days, but without the courage of our founding fathers and the many other people that have fought racism and oppression throughout US history, the US would be no better off than China. Freedom is not free. It takes courageous people willing to sacrifice their personal lives and fight for freedom and their rights. Certainly political activists should be strategic in their opposition, but to criticize them for speaking freely, which should be an unalienable right, is shortsighted.

This would be funny if this woman wasn't really sentence to a year of 're-education' in a labour camp. Considering it actually happened, it is quite horrific. All I can say is I am so glad I live in the US where we do have real freedom, even if it is not perfect. Certainly, the US does not need any really hostility with China, still we need to do everything we can to stop the Human Rights Abuses in China. The Chinese people have every right to have freedom of speech and real democracy.

I agree with you and I think this is a bad law. We do not need the government regulating every little thing that might be dangerous or harrassing citizens for potential crimes that have not been commited yet. People that actually DO cause accidents while using a cell phone should be held fully accountable and those that use a cell phone while driving and do NOT cause accidents should be left alone. There is plenty of precedence for this in US law, consider the justification against gun laws. The argument goes, guns don't kill people, criminals using guns kill people. Well a cell phone is a lot less dangerous than a gun. A lot more people have died accidentally from guns than accidentally from cell phone. I have no problem agreeing with the statement "cell phones in cars don't cause accidents, bad drivers not paying attention while using a cell phone cause accidents". Cell phones are a great invention. There is no need to demonize them or to make criminals out of people that use them. The US has a lot bigger security issues to solve than this one.

A couple of things to consider about these statistics and the comments that the British live longer. While I support US healthcare reform, in a fair comparison of the US and UK's health system, I think it is important to understand some key differences between the countries. First of all the US population is 6x England and 5x of Britain with the US having many diverse geographic and cultural regions. While the UK does have immigrants, the US has many different immigrant populations some large with a wide variety of health and nutritional backgrounds. Different groups may have had poor nutrition and health care as children or may eat unhealthy diets because of cultural habits or because high calorie food is inexpensive and plentiful. In addition the US is a nation of independent states and people and what might be the best for California, might not work in Kentucky and vice versa. All of this means that health care delivery in the US and the resulting outcomes of live expectancy and illness recovery rates is complicated and not well understood by simple numbers. It may be just as complicated in the UK, but in different ways because the demographics of the countries are so different. Plus the thing to remember about US healthcare is that it is often excellent if you have it. The problem is not the quality of health care in the US, its having affordable access to it. However, by law in the US, if you are acutely ill or injured you can go to any emergency room and you will be helped and if you never pay the bill not much happens. Most rental agencies don't count medical debt. This means that many poor and working class adults get no preventative health care, but if they become ill they are saved from death. The statistics that show that the US pays more for health care but gets less quality of care don't mean that all of US healthcare is expensive and second rate. It is usually first rate and expensive because the US spends a lot on expensive emergency procedures and life saving care for the unisured which are absorped into higher medical costs across the board. Most Americans, even Democrats are fiercely capitalistic and do not like a one-size fits all approach to medical care, so I don't think single payer health care is realistic for the US. What the US needs to do is find a solution to health care that allows all citizens to receive comprehensive preventative and diagnostic medical care at low costs and also funds regional emergency services, and then allow all citizens to purchase additional benefits through insurance companies. The government also needs to step in and take an active role in reducing the cost of health care and medical services across the board. Some obvious first steps would be increasing the number of doctors and nurses and helping local governments and regional health care facilities provide free & low cost preventative health care services to the uninsured and effective, cost efficient emergency services. I think that is why a lot of American are mad about the recent health care legistlation. Health insurance and health care are available but they are expensive. We don't need the government to provide health care or even health insurance, we want it to lower the cost of health care and health insurance and make it more affordable. Unfortunately, the recent healthcare legistlation increased almost everyones premiums who already had insurance and the insurance provided by the new legistlation is expensive and available to only a few. I do support insuring all citizens as part of the solution, but the health care problem in the US won't be solved until the cost is reduced for everyone while maintaining quality. I believe it is possible, but it will mean lost profits for some groups (although gains for others) and innovative thinking so real reform is probably some time coming.

Removing these videos is definitely a violation of the first amendment and the material would still be available to those seeking it. I do not support the terrorists in any way, but the US or UK government forcing YouTube to remove these videos is the wrong approach. The first amendment has to be a sacred right or we will lose it. It is a slippery slope from banning terrorist videos to banning anti-government videos and then any video the government find inconvenient. There are other ways to address terrorism and murders have happened for 100s of years, with or without these videos. Shame on the Brits for even suggesting it! Governments should not concern themselves with the contents of YouTube or any other site unless a chargeable crime has already been committed.

This supports my opinion about Facebook privacy fears are greatly exaggerated and maybe the people that care the most are the ones trying to sell you something to protect yourself from it. First of all, I don’t care if anyone sees my Facebook information because I don’t post anything that I wouldn’t want the public to see. Even the photos of my daughter are not especially dangerous in a stranger’s hands. With the other accounts, as long as no one sees my credit card or bank info –what does it really matter? Consider that most of your personal information is already available on the Internet through a Google search and in the local phonebook. Also Identity Theft occurs all the time from activities that have nothing to do with computers or the Internet. Last time my credit card was used fraudulently it was because my purse was stolen out of a locked car in a mall parking lot. Guess I better not drive or shop a mall anymore! If you are worried about your children, people that might harm your child are just as likely to be seeing your child in Starbucks as breaking into your photo gallery on Facebook at Starbucks, and it would be a lot easier to steal your child at a Starbucks than to figure out how to find your child after breaking into your Facebook account. Also just because there could be a child predator at your local Starbucks or shopping mall, does that mean that you will never let your children leave the house? I sure hope not. Believe me, I am in IT and I fully support appropriate IT security and due diligence, but I think the concerns about Facebook and Amazon privacy are over done and are almost a created problem where none existed. If you don’t like Facebook or Amazon, don’t use them. I, myself, will keep using them because I enjoy them and I don’t really think other people at Starbucks care about my Facebook activity. I sure don’t care about theirs.

I am not advocating people being poisoned, but I do think it is unfair to judge China, a developing industrial nation, by US safety standards today. The US has had many decades to develop its manufacturing base before these types of concerns even existed. If you think about it, one of the reasons why these types of devices are built in China and not the US is because the US has so many regulations that it is too expensive to manufacture almost anything in the US. While I do think US companies should be pressured to some degree to require their source companies to follow decent safety and labor practices, if we insist that China match the US level of safety, manufacturing will become too expensive there too. Then manufacturing will simply move somewhere else where people are poorer and the Chinese people will be without jobs. Long-term the world should work towards having standard safety regulations world-wide, but there are too many poor people in the world for that to happen anytime soon. In the meanwhile, careful thought needs to put into what type of safety regulations should be expected of China and other developing nations. While China is mostly a dictatorship, the government is not immune to pressure from the US or its own citizens. I do believe that the best way to help China ultimately become a democracy is by increasing its middle class, which mainly happens by having good manufacturing jobs widely available. While it is easy for upper class Americans to complain about the horrors of industrial poisoning, the workers in China probably only appreciate the outcry if the solution also involves them keeping their jobs. It is also worth considering that the companies involved may be trying to protect their workers from these solvents, but individual workers may not be following safety practices and becoming poisoned.

Is Facebook even looking for a buyer? It hasnt even gone IPO yet because they want keep control of their vision. If that is the case, it doesnt make sense to sell it to Apple whatever they are offering. I think Apple buying Facebook would be a mistake for the users and would ruin the Facebook experience. I like that they are a privately held company and not IPO, and you got to be impresssed by a kid that figured out the entepreneurial game before 20. I think all these complaints about Facebook's privacy are greatly exaggerated. I mean to begin with, you don't have to post anything at all, and you can restrict your page to your friends. Also the complaints about the targeted ads are over the top. Aren't most users today already great at ignoring ads anyways? I can't remember a single ad on Facebook ever because I never even look at them even though I use the site daily. I think most of the "privacy" concerns are either from people overly concerned about their already non-existent privacy, or news and media agencies worried that Facebook style sites will eclipse their current media & news offering, or people, especially politicians, creating scare stories to frighten other people into thinking there is a problem that must be solved. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe in developers understanding and implementing proper IT security in general, but seriously how many people have lost "private" information on Facebook that was not already public information on the Internet or in phone books. Perhaps a public "Don't be Stupid on the Internet" campaign is in order these days, but I don't think it is neccessary to attack Facebook with exaggerated accusations. The main reason that is happening is everyone is jealous of its success.

Seems to be making money for someone...