Some things are true across all the big players (I don't know about the government-audited services; I can only imaging there's even more tracking).

If you're running the service, you don't have access to the datacenters, and likely don't even have access to the location of the data centers (the big players all keep exact datacenter locations somewhat secret - they have addresses, but the addresses don't mean much). If you work at the data center, you don't know what any given server is doing. So you don't really have physical access to the hardware in a useful way.

Further, everything is logged and audited like crazy - not so much for stuff like PCI compliance, but for troubleshooting. If a server falls in the woods, a whole team will hear. I'm sure everyone has tools to let you remote into any given hypervisor, but I'd be quite surprised if you could do so without a heck of an auditing trail.

It's not quite there for banking, but for most normal business, chances are there's more safety against a bad employee of MS Google, or Amazon than there is protecting you from your own IT staff locally.

I routinely have problems playing low-res YouTube vids on my 50 Mb/s connection, but didn't have those problems with my previous 3 Mb/s connection. Something's just screwy with YouTube. Either they have internal service issues, or the slap-fighting between them and ISPs continues.

Well, to the engineers' defense, the wheels were designed to handle the terrain that was found by the previous 2 rovers. Going beyond that probably gets into internal NASA politics, but your claim wouldn't surprise me at all - sexy features seem to trump infrastructure in every field.

As with anything on Slashdot that starts with armchair experts asking "didn't they think of X?", well, of course they thought of X. Weight of the probe is the primary cost of the mission - nothing's heavier than in must be.

These wheels were tested extensively, and work just fine in normal rocky soil - they're more robust than car tires. But glue a spike to the ground pointing up and it goes right through the wheel. There was no reason to expect Martian Caltrops, but that's what was found: sharp spikes of rock that aren't merely stuck in the soil, but seemingly extruded from the bedrock (like you can get with a'a lava).

Now *there's* a phrase to fill you with confidence. "Works right up to the point where you need to be paying attention, except you won't be because the car is driving itself."

For those who don't follow this stuff: the rover has tin-foil wheels, and they're getting chewed up fast (many holes and tears in them already). The problem is sharp rocks that are embedded firmly in the ground, or perhaps part of the bedrock like a'a lava - a geological feature that wasn't expected or designed for. The rover can handle sharp rocks in soil just fine, but now they're going really slowly trying to find a better path.

So you're actually playing the victim card now? Ohhhh, I'm just like a handicapped person or the elderly because I'm tall, get women easier, and make more money. Pity me!

You can guess my delight at that idea.

Not every business cycle is a boom. We're just coming out of a ~15 year downturn, a bit worse than the one in the 70s, not as bad as the one in the 30s. It doesn't say much about capitalism, other than that it has business cycles.

You know, it's been hotter every month for the past 6 months - OMG it's the global warming, it will be 300 degrees in a decade! Either that or the seasons are cyclic, sort of like the economy. One of those.

The only serious economic issue we face is public debt. Life always seems better when you're living beyond you're means. Your standard of living is certainly higher while your running up credit card debt like crazy. The Boomers did that with the nation as a whole - running up the national debt like crazy (which did improve everyone's standard of living for a while, thus the misleading impression that they had it better). We'll be generations paying that binge off, with an appropriately lower standard of living to show for it. The US national debt is $150k per taxpayer now. That's going to be a drag on everything, and might well blow up. But that's the flaw in democracy, not capitalism.

End products are what we use in daily life - doesn't matter where they're made. I expect some small measure of in-home "manufacturing", growing gradually over time. The feedstock for that will still be raw materials, however, despite being shipped to the end user.

The current revolution is in automating everything automatable, sending manufacturing jobs (and mindless clerical paper-shuffling jobs, and mindless service jobs) the way of farming jobs. Just like every previous technological step forward, it will be a good thing in the long run.

Well, if that's your standard, I do hope you're personally donating enough to the charities you feel most deserving (political groups don't count) to cover all the flaws and misbehavior any random stranger might see in you (or at least that you see in yourself).

Heh, I can't tell if you're really asking, or simply impersonating a typical 5-year old. Just in case it's the former:

Asking for fairness is asking that the world be so simple that the rules make sense to a young child. But fairness is a poor goal. A court system in which innocence or guilt is decided by the toss of a fair coin would be perfectly simple and unbiased, discriminating against no one (not even the guilty). Justice is better that fairness, and righteousness is better than justice (the principle of jury nullification).

Real life is about trade-offs and compromises to achieve the best result given the world as it is, not the world as we'd like it to be. A non-corrupt government tries keep the economy growing, and provide needed services. Treating each company the same way is not an interesting goal per se, at best it's sometimes a useful means toward those ends.

Pay for what you need. Whatever happened to that idea? Should you get extra food for the same price if you eat more? Should you get a bigger car for the same price if you have kids and need the space? Should you get a bigger apartment for the same price if you're bigger?

Meh, statistically you'll make significantly more over your lifetime if you're tall. I think you're still coming out ahead from that particular genetic lottery, without also getting free seat upgrades.

Doesn't every airline that offers economy plus (or whatever it's called) also let you upgrade with frequent flyer miles?

If you want a toy train set, just go and buy one. Passenger trains solve no problem that the US has (you'd need that extra 4 weeks off work just for one trip!).

"Economy plus" or whatever they call the seats wit normal legroom is the old-school standard. Think of is this way: you can buy a "standard seat" ticket for $350, or an "I don't care how you torture me just give me the cheapest price" ticket for $300. 90% of customers choose the torture option over the standard option, cheap bastards, but you don't have to.

Fair is for 5-year olds.

The 40k MS employees likely keep another 400k in the area in work providing good and services to them, as they're paid quite well by WA standards, and most people spend all the money that comes to them.

There's no need for politicians to get kickbacks: there's nothing more powerful at the state level then bringing jobs to the state or keeping jobs in the state.

Plus WA and local governments get the property taxes not just from the buildings on the MS campus, but the 40k houses owned by MS employees, the businesses owned by those who wouldn't otherwise be in business in the area, their homes, and so on. All the sales tax for everything all those people buy, and so on. I'd bet at least 10% of MS's entire WA payroll ends up in local/state coffers, plus at least an equal amount from the satellite business created. That's a lot of funding for the state.

What economic damages? I don't get it. Are you complaining that MS bought a lot of small software companies the way every large tech firm does? Are you complaining that MS products weren't as good as you'd have liked (compared to what? IBMs offerings at the time? please).

I've never understood the burning MS hatred on Slashdot. Yes, MS had a lot of second-rate products, but so do most companies in the world!

People will complain about anything, but it pisses me off to see people who likely give nothing at all to charity complaining that someone who does isn't doing it the way they would.