I wonder how many lives would be saved if we instead put that money towards improving road safety?

I know several people who now drive rather than fly due to TSA. I guess that If they were to go far enough they would fly, but on other trips where driving can a option, but a longer one, they drive. I am sure the number of flight seats not taken due to TSA is far more than 500. Added to privacy issues are increased costs due to security requirements. This too will reduce the amount of flying people are doing.

On side note: You are correct that this is based on air travelers worldwide. I would wager that TSA has more influence in the US than the rest of the world. And I wonder what other changes in overall patterns have occurred. Are there more flights outside of the United States now? Less? Are people taking more longer flights and less shorter flights? Are certain kinds of carriers flying more?

All good examples. I was thinking US and not Europe. Europe tends to tax fuel much more than the US. The US taxes fuel too, but it also subsidies fuel at several stages. I do agree that government subsidies can alter the landscape in a negative way. But, in the US at least, ALL forms of energy are subsidized at some point.

I would also point out that nuclear plants have a very high decommission cost and risk. Even with very high taxes nuclear can be a net cost to governments.

So I think the energy picture is complicated and interwoven with many issues. There is not a single solution. And it is wise to put our eggs in many baskets.

This!
China seems to have a model they use to undercut us on manufacting. They start out cheap and with massive government assistance. Once our companies go under they move up a bit and make some profits. Plus their workers are often treated like fodder.

Sitations?
It is very easy to find tax exemptions for oil and mining exploration. There are even sections in the 1040 instructions for it. I am not a tax expert, but clearly there are government subsidies for fossil fuels.

I too have seen a lot of them. I was just on a flight and several folks on the plane had one. They may not be prevalent in all demographics, but certainly in some they are.

Yeah that bugs me too. As a developer I have been using a lot of tools that are now starting to break with the upgrades. Firefox has started to have some pain with it, and Chrome has become a pretty good browser. Just out of convenience I end up using Chrome more than Firefox now. I do not hate Firefox, but I am starting to like Chrome more.

1. I have observed legal citizens living cheaply and sending most of their money to other counties. And I have observed illegal aliens spending most of the money they earn here. It seems to depend more where their family is, and less on legal status. At any rate, if you study the value of the dollar, then you learn that when lots of currency is sent to a country, and becomes a de facto currency of that country then that increases the value of the dollar.

2. If ALL government jobs are net losses then we should stop building roads, water pipes, sewer pipes, medical research etc. The military folks are all government workers too. So you would want to get rid of them as well. 'nuff said here.

3. This is one half true. Give them opportunities to grow their money and they'll come-a-running to invest. Yep. The rest, utter BS. I would rather invest where I can grow my money at 23% and pay 33% of that in taxes, than where I pay 0 in taxes, but my money only grows at 3%.

4. I am not going to touch the WWII thing because the original poster took a leap from causes of great depression to the start of WWII in one sentence. His attempted point was more on the need for guided capitalism anyway. (I think)

Did you just made that story up? It sure appears that way.

If I had mod points, I would mod up the A/C.

Remember when the Presidential helicopters were redesigned to be better a few years ago? The security there failed and the plans were released on the Internet. Never say never!

Fact: *nix is more secure by design than windows. I do not think anyone disputes this.
Fact: All of the OS have become more hardened.
Wager: While it does appear that while the guts of Windows is less secure, Windows (Microsoft) has done a much better job of creating a good wall around its guts.
Wager: All the browsers have a lot of vulnerabilities. (Chrome has done pretty well though)


So where does that lead us? In real world practice I believe that windows is still less secure. This is due to install base, 3 party apps, (just looks at adobe reader 9 and less), years of built up skills and tools for hacking windows, and a Mac OS that is far better security wise than Windows XP. I am not willing to say that the current Mac OS is better or worse that windows 7. I like both of them. Neither are perfect. In some ways IE is more secure than Safari. But where I work I just can not get completely away from active x controls and the like. So if the hackers were starting from scratch, and they were up against windows 7 and OS X, I think it would be a draw. If I add in IE and Safari then I think that Safari loses. But if I use Chrome, well then - who knows!

This is a bit old but gives a hint to where apple's install base may be today:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/03/mac-os-x-north-american-installed-base-almost-11.ars

I would guess that there install base has gone up based on folks being influenced by the iphone and ipad. If I had to guess I would guess 13%. (Not counting ipads as computers)

I spent a lot of time testing out several different mobile systems (Only the so called "Smart variants"). I found iOS to be the best. This was a year ago and perhaps things have changed. But looking at the last several years I would have to say overall iOS has been the best. RIM over that same time period wins on security, but loses to iOS overall on based features and usability. A lot of people well informed people also have the same opinion. Some will disagree, and with valid reasons. But I doubt that any informed person truly believes that 'Nobody considered iOS to be the best'.

The problem in the chipset was traced back to a transistor in the 3Gbps PLL clocking tree. The aforementioned transistor has a very thin gate oxide, which allows you to turn it on with a very low voltage. Unfortunately in this case Intel biased the transistor with too high of a voltage, resulting in higher than expected leakage current. Depending on the physical characteristics of the transistor the leakage current here can increase over time which can ultimately result in this failure on the 3Gbps ports.

~http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug