I think most people are tired of Hollywood stars, reality TV, and people famous for being famous. Mass market media is now a race to the bottom to keep the dwindling ignorant interested, and it was never very good at keeping the public informed about science and technology, and my guess would be that it's always been easier to have an "informed" interview with a Kardashian versus and informed interview of a scientist or engineer.

Couple of issues ago. Sorry, no link, read it in the paper edition.

Hey!!! Corporations are people, too!

This exactly. How many people aren't in the market for a game system but would buy one if the price were right. There are probably quite a few people who don't want a Wii (which is now essentially priced at as an impulse buy) who wouldn't mind a PS3. Too bad they won't crank out the old systems for cheap.

Because, as the news keeps reminding us, it's a scary world out there. Drug-Resistent Gonorrha If you need me, I'll be in my parents' basement.

Good thing that it was so easy to install ICS on my Touchpad. I feel sorry for all those not-too-technically-savvy folks who bought one but will never be able to upgrade their devices. HP still sucks.

So, Samsung owners aren't supposed to do a local search on their phone, something old POS desktops have been able to do for years, because it's on a phone? Seriously? How again is the patent system not broken?

Is it really about making money on newer, shinier new phones? It's not like you can go and buy a cheap data & voice plan from Verizon or AT&T if you already have a phone and don't need a subsidized one. I think it's probably more a problem with the U.S. having a pretty saturated mobile market, and carriers spending most of their marketing dollars to lure customers away from other carriers with a new shiny phone. That's an easier business model for the suits to implement than, oh, I don't know, having great service at a reasonable price. I think a lot of Americans are going to follow the shiny while complaining about the mobile service.

Nice pun.

Sigh. Like the new transatlantic cable for high speed trading, another project created solely to shave off time on automatic trades and thus print money. Does this do anything? Am I the only one who sees this as driving up transaction costs because you have "investors" who really don't invest in companies trying to take almost microscopic profit automatically? Where is the benefit to the financial system? What about the economy? I wonder how long people would stand for an extra layer being added to some other industry that does nothing but get paid for doing nothing?

These trades are like taxes, but they don't pay for any roads, health care, retirement, of national defense. They just make a few DBs who don't manufacture or invent anything rich. It will never happen, but I would like some politicians to get into an ethical debate on the socioeconomic benefits of this type of activity. Seriously. How defensible is this type of activity under Western Judeo-Christian ethical frameworks? Most American jurists publicly support natural law, at least while going through public confirmation hearings, so where exactly does this fit?

I disagree. Credit offers can be great if you're smart about using them. Personally, I love my BB credit card. You get no interest financing for 18 months, and the last computer I bought was online through the BB Marketplace and I still got the financing deal. Here's my simple two-step method for not getting stuck with a the "terrible deal interest." 1. Get irst statement. 2. Set up automatic payments to pay off the computer before the 18 month expiration. It's that simple.

Why not Linux for Security? Sure, okay, but what will run? Let's take the example of a small law office that bills by the hour. You have several needs . . .

1. Document Assembly. If your document assembly software is running on Windows, you're not going to migrate to Linux. Ever. Never EVER.The learning curve means lost revenue.
2. Time and billing. These take time to set up, they work with #1 above, and they usually work best on Windows.
3. Practice management. Once again, usually Windows only, or Windows best, and they work with #1 and #2 above.
4. Accounting and taxes. Quickbooks Enterprise works with Linux, but not the smaller packages. Also, there's not Turbotax Business for Linux.

I know a lot of people who would love to experiment with Linux, but it would be experimenting. A lot of people don't have time to experiment, and certainly don't want to pay someone to experiment. If you do everything yourself, there's a learning curve, and in a lot of industries there's a constant learning curve with new legislation, case law, and administrative decisions, there's no extra time to fiddle with your technology. There's always a bit of condescension when these posts come up, whether we're talking Linux or back in the day Mac OS, about continuing to use M$ products. It's like you're labeled for not wanting to f**k up your business by trying new software just for the sake of trying new software. If it were better, and CHEAPER, businesses would have switched years ago.

I'm out of mod points, but this is right on. Whether China has a blue water navy is irrelevant. The point is to make our navy hesitant to get involved in regional conflicts against Chinese interests. It doesn't take many ship killing cruise missiles to keep carrier battle groups away from danger and hence out of action.

It is until the government makes it illegal. The number of federal crimes has ballooned from around 3,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 4,500 today. wsj.com The Feds seem to make all kinds of things illegal today, so I wouldn't hang my hat on whether it's illegal or not. Where would one even look? Have you ever seen the United States Code? It's a nightmare. New bills that come up for a vote that amend an existing statute, for instance to add a crime to an existing statute, don't republish the whole statute, the bill shows the changes to the statute, and they show that they add a sub-paragraph here or remove a word there. It's really very difficult to figure out what's going on, even for our legislators.

NPR had a fascinating story a couple of years ago about a spider silk tapestry that had been woven. NPR.org Fabric as soft as silk but stronger than steel, the possibilities are fascinating even if I have to wait a while to have a "that guy" suit made out of the stuff.