This is wonderful information -- I'm so glad to finally know it all. Thank you for the thorough documentation! I grew up at 1927 Richvale Lane, just a short bike ride from building 30. We were the first 25 houses there when it was all pastures, wild animals and bayous, and the Manned Spacecraft Center was brand new. My dad worked on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and then shuttle. We had dinners with the guys who worked there, as well as with the astronauts and their families. Of course, I was just a kid and thought is was all cool but no big deal. In retrospect, I can now see how magical it was. Everyone in the entire community was working together for something so optimistic and positive during a pretty lousy time otherwise, with assassinations, the war, and violent protests and riots.

But we were immune to it because everyone was 100% focused on getting a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth before the end of the decade. I guess that's why I like startups so much -- it's the same focus on a single objective with everyone pulling together. We don't change the world as the 100,000 engineers did on the 60s, but it's all we have left these days.

I work for a company that analyzes transactions and detects account takeovers and thefts at banks. Banks call us when they suffer a loss or series of losses. When they call us these losses are typically over $300,000 and the largest attack we've seen is for about $1.5M. We do NOT deal with the biggest banks, mostly regional and local banks. In case you didn't know, there are about 15,000 banks and credit unions in the U.S., so there are a lot of targets for criminals. Not all these banks have assets worth stealing, and not all of them are even on line. By our estimate, roughly 6,000-8,000 of these banks are sufficiently interesting and available to be targets of criminals.

So can I give you a real number? No, because we don't deal with the biggest banks and we also don't talk to all 15,000 banks. But I can tell you that having worked with several hundred banks, these so-called cybercriminals are stealing a lot of money. Yes, true, the banks that call us self-select, so I am NOT saying that every bank is losing $1M/year. But we do see hundreds of banks with losses that seem to indicate that the criminals are stealing tens of millions, and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars. FWIW.

P.S. They are also successfully stealing a lot of money from brokerage houses, so that gets added to their haul, also.

The headline is bogus -- reading the article shows the costs to be a billion, which to me means it will be much more and they don't really know how much it will finally cost.

Nokia innovated in the 1990s, led the industry, and then totally gagged. Apple innovates over the last few years in a new area for them (phones) and has to pay Nokia. I guess this makes sense. A little. Sorta.

I put panels up 6 years ago and they save roughly $2,000/year in electricity here in California ( my previous three years before panels were $6100; I've spent $300 over the last 6 years on electricity).

A prospective home owner knows they won't have to pay that $2000/year on electricity, so if they pour that into a 4% loan, they can borrow an extra $35,000 for that roughly $160/mo savings.

So to see a story say that my panels should be worth between $10K-$20K to a home buyer makes total sense.

Camera small, like dust
Travel by wind, or fiber
Fantastic Voyage.

Technically, her image didn't go to the moon, just near it. As the command module pilot, he and his billiards buddy orbited the moon while Pete and Al got all the glory and attention. Close, but no cigar, so to speak.

Did you RTFA? After the first part where it says they admit it, the story goes on to say that they deny it, they do extend the subscription, and it's only when you switch to a new product that the clock starts over. Nothing to see here. Move along. Sheesh.

In fact, Rubin worked with Tony Fadell (head of iPod/iPhone reporting to Jobs) 1990-1995 on Droid 0.1/iPhone 0.1 in the form of the Personal Communicator at General Magic, along with Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, and many others from Apple, most of whom eventually ended up on the iPhone and Droid teams. General Magic was a 1990 spin-out from Apple (code name Pocket Crystal) with John Sculley on the Board (along with Motorola, Sony and eventually AT&T, Matsushita, Philips, NTT, Mitsubishi, NorTel, Oki, Sanyo, and others). The DNA of both the iPhone and Droid contain elements from those initial General Magic products.

Look, the guy was 85 when he died. He's lived a good long life. My mom is 87 suffering from painful, agonizing terminal cancer and thanks to idiots like Stevens blabbing about death panels and such, there is no funded end of life counseling and no states allow you to end your life when it's time to do so. While perhaps he suffered for a few minutes before dying, I'm certain my mom would gladly trade that for the years of incredible pain and discomfort leading to her slow and lingering death. Meanwhile, this guy hijacked funds for all sorts of absurd, wasteful programs and did very little good. He fought for our country in WWII (as did most every male his age at that time, including my dad) and supported equality for women in sports, so good for him. But over all, he was not good for the country, and he is not someone to respect. I was very happy he finally left the senate, though there are still too many clueless boneheads there. So cut out all the empty BS because while all deaths are tragedies of a sort, some are far more than others. This rates very low on the scale. I lost my father to cancer at 69, and I would have been ecstatic for him to make it to 85. And it will be a relief to my mother to finally be at peace. Senator Stevens does not deserve my respect. And his family will be sad, but they don't have to rail at the injustice of it all, because he had a good run -- better than most.

The first sentence: "Fears receded Monday that the fallout from Iceland’s volcanic eruption would disrupt flights within North America."

There is something vaguely odd yet consistent about floating and sinking dead pigs into a dead zone. I wonder if they put lipstick on them...

But since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to whom are women more beautiful? You? Me? The guy over in the corner?

I deployed solar panels when I replaced my roof in 2004; the total out of pocket cost after state rebates and federal and state taxes was $14,612. The system generates about 15 KwH on a good day; I live in a tract home in Mountain View, CA. So far, the panels have generated 19,225 KwH, which reduced my energy bill by $10,392 as of May, 2009. I've not seen the expected degradation in the power production, but it's difficult to measure due to changes in the weather -- it's entirely possible that 2004-2005 were cloudier than 2007-2008, or something like that. In any event, the system has delivered between 3819 and 3930 KwH every year. I'm extraordinarily happy with the way this has worked out.

However, the rare earths needed to make solar panels are in short supply; recent estimates conclude the supply peaks within 50-100 years. Probably a lot sooner if we cover the deserts with solar cells. So we have to find a way to make photovoltaic cells without the exotic metals.