So before continuing, your position is that the earth is warming, but is unavoidable, or will cost more to correct than to let happen, correct?

There are plenty of ways to get research funding that don't involve a trillion dollar bureaucracy.

"Plenty," such as....

It's the same trend as in America in general, top managers take an ever-larger share of company earnings.

Not in the US. The government turns a profit on student loans. Nor is the demand artificial, because as bad a student debt is, being without a degree is still much worse.

Well it would certainly be odd to spend a couple billion developing a fab to ensure the integrity of the supply chain for your chips, only to install an OS from the Pirate Bay on it.

The fund is an S&P 500 index, not just a Nasdaq index. The top 10 holdings together form 17.8% of the fund. Still, the fact that 2 of the largest 3 companies in the S&P 500 are named in this lawsuit shows that a huge number of people would be affected (and likely to balk) if the companies were punished enough to have an actual impact.

Too much money and power are in on the take. Apple is worth about 12% of the entire Nasdaq, so Apple + google is about 20% of the whole enchilada. In my Fidelity-managed 401K index fund, for example (that is, basically my life's savings), Apple is my #1 holding, right above Exxon, Google, and Microsoft. So 2 of those 4 would be directly impacted, and Microsoft would no doubt feel some fallout (through rising salaries for their talent).

In a true democracy this argument should not bear much weight, since MOST (over 50%) of all stock is owned by only 1% of citizens. Most of us have a tiny slice, and I (for example) would benefit much more from higher wages in the tech sector than from a little more growth in my 401K. But in general, we small-potatoes shareholders (that is, almost all shareholders) are too short-sighted to take a hit now for the long-term economy.

More ominously, real influence is proportional to the wealth of a group rather than how many people are in it. Even if you convinced the bottom 99% of voters, you would still only have a minority of shares.

The reason I dwell on this is because I think the same logic, exactly, explains why the bank bailout occurred and the implosion of Wall Street had no real corrective result on the US economy or the distribution of wealth.

This particular headline is an example of incredible restraint. It would be well-justified as: "Is Moore's Law Dead"?

Certainly it is on its deathbed at least.

Clearly people want to be monitored at all times, they just haven't been convinced properly yet.

No, but there will be political hell to pay if there is another 9/11.

You are an idiot. I don't own a smartphone because of the experience I wrote about.

My problem is, IIRC, you don't know what broad permissions an app is going to request upfront, until after you have downloaded and partially installed it. By then you have already wasted your time and bandwidth. You are invested. It would take half a day to look at 20 different versions of Tetris to see which is OK. If you could filter Google Play searches - "search for a version of Tetris that doesn't demand to look at my contact list" - then that would create a tiny bit of market pressure to not just demand everything all the time.

Almost every app requests almost every permission anyways, so what was the point of fine-grained permissions? Why do I have to let you access the network and my contact list to play Tetris? It's frustrating.

Well, I tossed out the figure of $100 is pretty low, but even an LG G2 is right about half that. Then again, if you're resigned to being on contract with AT&T, I guess it makes sense to go with the phone that gets the biggest subsidy.

According to Amazon's website, the phone will range from $649 to $749 with an AT&T contract and will be available starting July 25.

cite. Even if that's a misprint and that's the price without a contract, that is WAY too much money!

It is amazing how much phone you can get for $100 now - GPS, decently high-res screen, MicroSD slot. If you ask me the movement is towards off-contract phones that provide a decent value, and $749 phones are going the way of the $3500 PC.

The balance of power between China and Japan is reversing with incredible speed. There's no need to go back to Kublai Khan to explain this. In 1995 Japan's GDP was 733% that of China's. In 2012 it was 72% of China's. What else do you need to know?