This outsourcing of everything may get interesting very soon. Apparently, we buy engines for the rockets we use to launch military satelites from russia. The country we just stuck sanctions on. I think the article said they had a 2 year stockpile. Now that we outsource materials for that grand military of ours, it could get interesting. I was expecting the first issue to be with asian made chips and disk drives. Who would have guessed it would be a big ticket rocket engine. I wonder if we have any ISS personal up there now and if they are getting anxious too.

I've often wondered about drastically modifying the prison system. Some offences, such as the recent sxsw killings would get the death penalty immediately, as there is no question as to who did it and definitely not an accident. Under those conditions (murder+in the act), death penalty is punishment. For other serious crimes, (armed robbery, kidnapping, or murder and we did not catch you in the act) you get a trial, and if convicted, you go to rehab. And I mean a concerted effort at rehab. After rehab, you have one demerit. You get out, help is given to get a job, like halfway houses etc. Again, real help. You get caught again, trial etc, rehab, demerit number 2. Get caught again, trial, convicted, no more rehab. Death penalty. This system provides real effort to make you a member of society, and allows for mistakes in the trial system. And if you really don't want to be part of society, society does what most pack animal societies do, eliminate members that can't play nice.

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. I feel both bush and obama have a poor work ethic. Bush sr was much better as was clinton. I think the fundamental problem in politics now is that the prize/reward is the job and the work is the campaign. This is true for almost all politicians now, more so as the position elevates.

I am afraid I'll disagree. While it may have cost less to fly bush to crawford, I don't agree he was working (well for us anyway). I live in TX so probably more aware of his activities in crawford. Mainly he worked his ranch, drove his ATV's around with friends, rode mountain bikes with people like armstrong and generally had a good time. He did host a couple of dignitaries one of which was putin if I remember right. I think these two provided/provide less than adequate effort to their job. Frankly I think part of the job description of prez should be no more than 2wks of vacation/yr. You want more time off, find another job. Need a break, they can always hang in the facilities in DC for weekends/short breaks. Obama plays bball, bush could have ridden around the whitehouse lawn on his bike. These people are the most powerful in the world. Take the job if your ready to man up, not use it for your ego.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. One of the things I hated about bush was his constant vacationing, and frankly obama has not been any better. I long for a president that actually takes the job seriously like clinton did. I want my prez to be like a startup, working his/her ass off. I had one vacation in 4 years at the startup I was at. Most holidays and weekends were at the plant too.

You peeked my interest so I went to a mouser catalog. single quantity SMD's were around 3c each while leaded ran about 10-15c. In quantity the SMD's dropped to .3c each while leaded ran 1 to 1.5c, so for vanilla resistors (5%) SMD's were cheaper. Even the 1% vanilla looked cheaper in SMD. I did not check out power resistors, which would not surprise me if more for SMD. I think you can get even cheaper if you go SMD resistor arrays on a per item basis but that constrains design to the matrix values.

I know this is slashdot, but really, cars are not semiconductors. Do you really want a car that's the size of a tonka toy? That is how electronics are getting cheaper. They are getting smaller (well the die, no everything, have you seen the size of a smd resistor versus a old leaded one)? Shouldn't food be cheaper? Furniture? Airplanes? Each type of product is governed by the raw materials used to make it. Cars are a little lighter, but that is because they are using even more expensive raw materials like hi-strength steels, aluminum... instead of cheap steel.

I seriously doubt it is used for anything except real games. The UT stadium is not even used for practice. They have a separate climate controlled facility for that. And as I understand it, A&M's program is not profitable even with the book cookin universities use for their precious athletic programs. Only Ohio state and UT are profitable on the books. And that profitability is tied to compulsory "fees" charged to all students. All this loses my main point though. If you are a student getting thru school on loans, which most students are, then the school should be trying to maximize the student's education while minimizing costs. A better dorm or football team is not going to make for better english majors, doctors, lawyers etc.

I think much of the increase cost is chaff. I hear TX A&M is planning a 1/2BELLION dollar football stadium. It will be used what 6 times a year? Dorm's used to be cinder block barracks. Now they have luxo condo's. I wonder if the jello salad has been replace with caviar. If the money was spent on education and not fluff, I suspect college would be about as expensive as it was 30 years ago. No one should be surprised though. When real housewives, kim k, and any other number of nobodies are heroes, why should we be surprised that education is now a vacation spa with sports entertainment.

Sharing with anyone that is not cleared is a violation of the contract he signed. I cannot be more clear, he was instructed on what his obligations were when he signed on with NSA. He was probably reminded monthly that the death penalty is on the table if he fails in his obligations. Do you really think he did not know this given the lengths he went to in his escape?

I am going to throw karma to the wind and agree. I worked in defense long ago and believe me, they remind you very frequently that treason is a federal crime that carries a possible death sentence. I know it is not a popular view on slashdot, but the guy knew what he was doing. He needs a very hefty jail sentence (20+ years) or worse. He is a traitor by definition. He is living in Russia. He has shared secret information with our enemies. You can opine all you want about NSA collecting phone records, but it does not change the fact he is a traitor.

Schools are failing because students don't listen or pay attention in class, and there is nothing the teacher can do. A friend of mine teaches. It sounds like a war zone where the students have all the weapons. And mommy and daddy never think it is their child's fault.

Interesting point, particularly if that 45% includes countries like India/china where much of the population would find 15/mo to be alot of cash.

Not anymore. I just got a letter from austin energy informing me they are cutting the payback(12c/kwh to 10) because apparently the value of electricity fell. Funny I don't recall them annoucing a rate cut since the value of energy fell. Now I will be paying them for energy I produce and consume. I am seriously tempted to disconnect the solar meter and fool them back into just plain net metering, which is what I had originally, which I always thought was the most fair. Austin energy has gone from the best utility I used (even before I got panels) to a frickin nightmare. They did a deal with IBM to do billing and I cannot imagine a worse system. In the decade plus I had a dumb meter/non-IBM accounting I never had a misread/error. Since the smart meter/IBM system I've had 2. And because they have so many misreads, getting a person to talk to to fix it is almost impossible. A friend of mine has apartments and he spends an inordinate amount of time hassling with them where previously it was clockwork. The entire management team at austin energy should be fired.

I'm confused, how is buying a car out of state to avoid CA emissions (and needing to drive 7500 miles before trying to register) any different than buying a Tesla online in ohio, registering it in some other state, and then bringing it into ohio and re-registering? The only difference I see is that I only need to drive it from the state I registered it in for the ohio case. In both cases I think the catch is that what state is going to let you register a car without being a resident?