I wouldn't be surprised if this "controlled area" gets expanded by 10 miles, then 50 miles, then 100 miles, then the whole country.

But many people are just consumers, so they are probably opting for the tablet rather than a laptop. Also, it's simple economics. You get a better screen for a lot less money. Have you ever tried buying a laptop with a good screen lately? They're mostly $1K+.... You can get a 1920x1200 kindle fire for $230. That's a friggin bargain compared to a laptop with the same screen resolution. I hope the laptop makers get destroyed by tablets, and finally force them to bring out laptops with good screens for a good price.

why are credit card numbers even available to be indexed in the first place?

I also demand that we put flying spaghetti monsters in our science textbooks. And while we're at it, how about goblins, wizards, and unicorns too...

And who would be responsible for ensuring these external costs are accounted for in the price? I don't see how this would be possible without government involvement.

Phew, Alicia Keys is still the Global Creative Director!

And maybe encourage saving energy more strongly. One thing that struck me when I was on business in Phoenix, Arizona, is how energy inefficient everything was. I would take warm showers in my air conditioned apartment, while it was 40C outside. The water was no doubt heating with electricity or gas. Why not use solar water heaters? And why are the offices air conditioned so much? What a huge waste of energy. The apartment was equipped with a washing machine and a dryer. Do people in the desert really use a dryer? You can just hang your clothes out for an hour and everything will be bone dry. Why were people driving huge trucks just to go to work? There is HUGE potential for reducing energy consumption, which I suspect is the lowest hanging fruit.

Disclaimer: This only applies if you are wealthy and connected.

There's the ideal, then there's reality. The reality is, the Constitution no longer applies in the USA.

I'm not saying all frameworks are bad... There are a bunch of frameworks out there that will definitely be there for a while. But I don't like to be constrained to a framework. At the beginning, things might seem like it's going well and development seems to be going so fast, until there's a requirement that your framework doesn't support. Then you spend the rest of your life figuring out how to work around the framework. I prefer to develop as much as I can independent of a framework (ie - building libraries), using whatever libraries necessary to get the job done fast, then use the code in the framework. If you have to change the framework, then a lot of your code is still usable without any framework dependencies.

Sweet, 64-bit processor. Now I can have more than 4 billion friends on facebook!

After living in Germany for a few years, I have to say, I really like the German election system. I believe it's much fairer than the Canadian system. Even if you're in a neighbourhood dominated by a party, you're vote still has an effect.

China tried to have its cake and eat it too. They pegged their currency artificially low vs the USD to make their exports cheap, which means they had to accumulate USD. Now they're holding a giant bag of increasingly worthless USDs. I like the way Peter Schiff puts it: the US has a great deal. It gets goods from China in exchange for worthless USD paper.

Or just install an Oracle Client. If you're lucky, it works. Also Oracle DB is a pain in the ass (from a developer's perspective):
- 30 char limit for names? WTF? It's not 1992
- no auto-incrementing column (can't even use a sequence as the default value). Supposedly this awesome new feature is coming soon...
- Timestamp With Timezone is awesome, until you want to index it
- What's the deal with the number types? NUMBER(10), where is int32, int64?

Couldn't both be happening? Some companies are having a real hard time finding good developers, others are using it to drive down wages. I think, in the long run, bringing in as much high-skilled workers to the US as possible is for the better. Companies will open offices where there are highly skilled people available. Canada has the opposite problem: Brain Drain. A lot of highly skilled people leave Canada to work in the US. Canada would definitely benefit from the US tightening its H1B program.