I don't think we're talking about credit scores, though. We're talking about Credit Cards and available credit. Apple has this information through ApplePay. All they have to do is share it with the iAd team. Fortunately, they'd never do that.

Well, based on credit information, they can probably get some idea of income. Now they can sell access to you based upon your income. So if you're income isn't that great, Mercedes doesn't have to waste money advertising to you.

Do you have anything to back up your claim that Google is selling data?

This is actually a real question--not entirely facetious.

It's my understanding that Google doesn't sell your data--it's actually pretty valuable stuff. They sell access to you, much like Apple does with iAd.

Well, if the whole rocket launching thing doesn't work out, you can open up a bird restaurant. "Flash cooked in flight" and all.

There's no risk!

I haven't quite figured out the economics yet.

If you consider minerals, I would imagine that asteroid mining will certainly be less cost-effective than mining them on Earth. So there's no way they're going to be able to compete with Earth-bound mining. Short of some kind of unobtainium deposit, you're losing money. You could conceivably sell the minerals in orbit for building things up there, but that technology doesn't really exist yet and that's going to be pretty tricky to come up with.

If you consider mining ice/water for rocket fuel, you've conceivably got a chicken-or-the-egg problem. The idea is that you mine the ice and then break it up into hydrogen (a very good propellant source) and oxygen (something we humans need for breathing) and sell that. But who will buy it? Perhaps people looking to make money mining asteroids. And what's the only way to make money mining asteroids? Mining ice/water for rocket fuel! So it becomes sort of a pyramid scheme where the first people make money and suddenly there's a lot more competition, the price drops, and the bottom falls out of the market.

I like the idea, but I'm not sure I'd be investing any money in it...

Ski and Hooper? Is that you?

One could say that the Heath is at it's Zenith.

Uh...digital music sales beat CDs a long time ago. And Apple themselves says that they are the largest distributor of music in the US, including physical media distributors.

So, nice try.

Again, though, it is not illegal to have a monopoly. The issue is whether or not Apple is using it's monopoly in music distribution to hurt rivals in another market.

Uh...how about you put it in a rocket going around the Moon?

One thing I've never really heard from the Moon landing conspiracy theorists is what missions were faked? There were plenty of missions to the Moon, both manned and unmanned. The Apollo program did some manned missions in Earth orbit (Apollo 7 and 9, I believe). Were those faked? Apollo 8 and 10 actually went to the Moon. Were those faked? What about the Surveyor missions, which landed probes on the Moon?

Assuming we could actually get rockets to the Moon, it would be fairly simple to have a rocket which took the transmissions on one channel coming from Earth and rebroadcast them back on another channel. So fake astronauts on Earth could appear to be broadcasting from the craft in orbit around the Moon.

As an aside, what to me is entertaining about this whole thing is not whether the Moon landings were faked--they weren't--but how could you fake it?

But on a planet of dwarves, the short man is king.

Keep in mind, it depends on what the FTC decides what the "market" is.

For example, Microsoft maintained that they did not have a monopoly in personal computer operating systems because of Apple. However, the FTC ruled that they did have a monopoly in operating systems for Intel-based computers. Since Apple, at the time, used PowerPC processors, Microsoft couldn't use Apple's market share to claim they didn't have a monopoly.

While Apple does not have a monopoly in computers, phones, or tablets, it might be more difficult to maintain that Apple does not have a monopoly in the sale of music.

I assume you've never heard of the Space Launch System being developed by NASA.

Can't speak for a cost, but I thought this one was funny...

A company I used to work for used Lotus Notes. For some reason, and I don't remember exactly what the reason was, I set up my e-mail to copy my mail to another account. I think it was just a "hey, I can do this" thing, playing with the e-mail system. Unfortunately, I made a typo in the name of the account to forward to.

When I came in the next morning, the e-mail system was running really slowly. Everyone was complaining about it. I logged into my e-mail and, low-and-behold, there's all sorts of e-mails in my account complaining about how it couldn't send this message to the other account and, of course, the contents of the e-mail was a message that it couldn't send this message to the other account, and the contents of that message was a complaint that...you get the idea.

I turned off the script and deleted all the e-mails. And, suddenly, from the office next door, I hear, "Hey! E-mail is working again!"

Shhhhh...

From the sounds of it, you need a gasoline powered truck. Enjoy it in good health.

What always bothers me is the whole, "Everybody should be driving electric cars!" There are those who need the range of a gas powered vehicle. I have no problem with these people.

My attitude is that it's worth taking a look at. In my case, for example, I'd be a perfect candidate except for personal preferences regarding vehicles (I like convertibles and the closest thing to a an electric convertible is a Tesla roadster and I don't have $100,000 to spend on one). But I drive about 15-30 miles per day. About the only issue I'd have would be remembering to plug it in, but I can probably manage to deal with it (hang a sign on the door from the garage to the kitchen saying, "Plug in your car!").

I gotta admit, that one caught my eye, too.

Yeah, okay, I have an outlet in the garage at home. But at work? I'm going to run an extension cord out the window and down to the parking lot? I don't think so.

While I have seen charging stations in parking garages, I've also seen them taken up by electric cars. So now I have to get to work at 6:00AM if I want to be able to charge my car during the day? Uh-uh.