I feel a parking lot full of loose change in Apple's future. Maybe this time it will happen!

It depends on the simulation. If you are training for a cross oceanic flight, you would simulate switching out flight crews and long periods where you would normally use auto pilot. The simulation would toss various problems at you to break up what is normally a dry, boring routine so you know how to handle different problems.

Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.

Does anyone think WinAmp is a good open source candidate?

So the often out-of-date workstations that fill libraries can now be overloaded with Windows 8. The librarians can spend hours training the public to use Windows 8 instead of helping them find books and information. Notice MS Office isn't included.

The problem with your theory is that it hits the poor the hardest. The wealthy get all of the energy they want. The middle class, well they get squeezed. "Sorry son/daughter, college isn't in the cards for you. Maybe you could join the service and get used as a tool of foreign policy. Hand me another blanket, it's gonna be cold tonight." Jacking up energy prices doesn't lead to greater efficiency. Offering discounts on energy efficiency however DOES lead to greater efficiency, and makes higher cost improvements cheaper as more competitors enter the market and existing manufacturers learn how to make the same products for less money. Eventually you won't need the discounts as whatever technologies you promote become commoditized. Discounts drive consumers. Punishment/taxes discourage consumption.

Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for apartment complexes. They have little incentive to modernize. Taxes however are an even bigger disincentive to apartment complex corporations than they are to home owners. The discounts must be created to benefit these kinds of businesses. The poor of course will be the last to benefit as they have the least to spend. The way out of that is education and opportunity. We won't eliminate poverty, but we can elevate what is defined as poverty. A poor person of 40 years ago had a lot less than a poor person does today in part due to commoditization.

Finally, if the means of wealth generation are placed well out of reach, then invention is retarded or halted completely. The IT revolution of the 90s and the on-going Big Data revolution can only exist in a country where electricity is both affordable and plentiful. Make turning on that computer or light a major cost decision and you'll loose those driven individuals that are creating the next economy.

I didn't know that Ashton Kutcher was a tech investor. Too bad we don't know how large or how deeply he was involved with the companies listed. It would be useful information to gauge this new endeavor. I wonder though, does Lenovo need technical assistance, or an artist? Technical specs are fine (and the Yoga tablet doesn't sound like a power house) but an ugly interface is the kiss of death. People spend far too much for Apple products. Why? They work well (enough) and they like the interface (Apple haters excluded). I use a Nexus phone because I don't like vendor loaded crap, but I will acknowledge the Note as one pretty phone.

This is a good move for Dell, provided they can adopt to this new market. Dell should focus on the back end of the cloud. They make good servers. They just need to cut off the consumer arm and let it drift into the ether. They lost the consumer market a long time ago and like IBM need to focus on what they (still) do well.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I never thought we would see a Communist state abandon the Planned Economy and embrace the Free Market. If you brought the idea to me when I was 18 or 25, I'd have thought you were nuts. What Communist wanted to give up that much power over the individual? How could a nation, so accustomed to marching in lockstep with it's leadership handle economic freedom? Russia wasn't doing so well after Communism and China was reportedly employing one third of this population to spy on and control the remaining two thirds. Today, many people wonder if the government's form really matters when Communist nations like China and Vietnam are creating a strong middle class while few Democracies are facing a future where its children are worse off than their parents.

Didn't Apple (mostly) kill music DRM by proving that people will buy digital music if it isn't a major pain in the ass to purchase, store, recover, or access? Hasn't the rise of streaming services like Pandora, Rdio and Spotify places the final nails in RIAA's coffin?

Isn't the lack of live, streaming NFL and NBA games cable and satellite's last hope for DRM laced video? More and more people prefer NOT to sit with a bunch of self absorbed phone addicts in a dark theater to watch a crappy movie.

Self driving cars aren't meant for longer highway speed driving. They are meant for highly congested roadways which rarely get much over 45 mph anyway. I live in just such an area. The biggest traffic tie ups are always at the merge points. Why? People are terrible at merging, and everyone merges differently. Some follow the driving class' rules and drive to the end of the on ramp. Others find a hole and dive in. Others slowly sneak out. Some only recently started driving or moved into the area from a place that didn't have traffic congestion.

Shows like Top Gear will argue that self driving cars ruin the driving experience. Personally, I don't consider my morning commute a worthwhile experience. It's merely a less time consuming method than riding the bus. If I could let my car handle the daily commute while I grab a nap or read my RSS feeds, I'd leave the driving to Google or whoever. Leave the highway miles and scenic road ways to me. Leave the drudgery to the machines.

I read the same thing on Wonk Blog. However the law also allows states to default to the Fed's exchange. That's what happens when you rush a Bill through the system instead of writing and tweaking the Bill while you run for office.

The problem with healthcare.org's site is implementation. Any moderately trained person can build a web site. A skilled artistic type can make a pretty website. To build something with the size and scope of healthcare.org, you have to set a few rules. First, you create an API for insurance companies, and you base the API around the ACA's rules and whatever federal rules already exist. Then you publish that API using whatever open source license you prefer. Let interested coders make better mousetraps and propose the improvements via GIT. In order to sell health insurance on healthcare.org, require some sort of long and difficult to crack encryption system...currently certificates are popular. If a poor encryption scheme is adopted, the self-interested coders will point that out and the more motivated ones will propose a solution.

So how do you keep the trolls and the bots at bay? Require proof, say Captcha and a sample code submission. Let the community identify the paid posers and kick them out of the system.

How not to do it? Develop the system in a vacuum. Give insurance companies an out by delaying their entry into the site as a provider. Worry more about governmental oversight and less about the end product. Develop the front end, but don't focus on the back end. Keep the Administration in the dark so it turns in to a big fiasco.

When the ACA was a Bill I often asked people "Why do you think the Government would do a good job providing healthcare or insurance?" The answers I got depended on political affiliation. Obama supporters looked at me like I asked a good question, but they refused to process the information as it was easier to respond with "well, the have it in Europe and I believe their system is perfect." Non-Obama supporters answered with their own talking points: Obama's a socialist/communist, Obama's not a US citizen, Obama . Now here we are with a half baked site and a lot of disappointed people who were already disappointed with Obama's adoption of Bush's platform, lack of openness, and the number of scandals that were suddenly popping up all around him.

Well, the ACA is law and it won't be repealed any time soon. The question I really want an answer too is: Does anyone think the government has it in them to do a good job now that the site's failures are impossible to hide from the public?

If it was my project I'd use extendable plastic pipes to circulate the cooling liquid and let the colder sea water carry away the heat. It's certainly more efficient than air, and San Francisco Bay's water is pretty cold to being with. It would take a monumental amount of heat to alter the Bay's ecosystem.

Could they fix the on-going problems with the Intel chipsets that now inhabit nearly every laptop sold? How about the Ralink WiFi chipsets that can't maintain a reliable connection?

Oh and the touchpad drivers -- I should be able to automatically shut the thing down when I plug in my external mouse.

Check out Mini Box.com for build it yourself solutions. It will cost a bit more initially, but you gain the ability to run any software you desire. I used DD-WRT for years but it doesn't seem to be well maintained anymore. Ditto OpenWRT. Interest in hacking consumer routers appears to have run it's course. Personally I run bind and isc-dhcp inside my network and I use a third party DNS provider instead of my ISP's questionable DNS service.