Unless you have candles. Because that's seriously about the only light source that will be left to us, unless LEDs suddenly make a huge technological leap. In the US, congress banned the incandescent light, and a ban on Mercury would eliminate all flourescent lighting (including all the new CFLs). So yeah, back to candles. Government people are such morons.

While I generally agree with your post, and would prefer to have unlocked phones that could be moved from network to network, one thing I will say in defense of American cell phone companies is this: no other country has had four companies cover such a vast geographical area with such a dispersed population. It's easy in these small, densely populated European or Asian countries to have lots of competition in the cell phone market. You want to become a competitor? Just set up a few hundred to a couple thousand towers in the major metro areas and you've covered 95% of the country. It doesn't work that way in the US, where to be a national carrier you need orders of magnitude more towers, at least. We are lucky to have as many competeing companies as we do given the barriers to entry. And the funding of this vast infrastructure, constantly replacing it every few years to support the latest data speeds, does in part explain the higher prices as well.

The only part where I flat out say "dumb Americans" is our culture of debt. We are so addicted to financing everything and never paying for anything up front that we can't even buy a cell phone without it being on a plan. The cell phone companies were just responding to the market: almost no Americans will buy phones if they have to pay for the whole thing up front, but they will buy them if it is part of a monthly payment plan. So while I think the smaller number of companies and price can to some degree be explained by geography, the whole phone contract thing is all about us being stupid debt-heads.

On a slightly different subject, this whole issue is very similar to how the Europeans also ask why the stupid Americans don't use trains. Again, it ignores the geographic realities of the country. In the northeast, where land is relatively scarce and the population is large, you have lots of trains, just like Europe. In the rest of the vast United States, where population density is pretty low, trains make absolutely no sense. They're hard to fill, and they take WAY too long to cover the distances involved. In a country like the US, cars and planes are the only things that make sense. And the marketplace reflects that.

You do realize that even if the taxes you propose are imposed:

1. 1. They won't collect as much money as they say they will, because taxes generally hurt economic growth and/or cause people to hide money and
2. 2. even if they got as much money as they expect, it won't help because congress always raises spending even more than the amount they get in new taxes. Always. Every single time. It's a historical fact. Let me repeat it again: every time they raise taxes, they raise spending even more, so they still will have deficit spending and won't have enough for the telescope.

So in summary, if you want a space telescope, the best thing you could advocate would be dramatically cutting spending elsewhere, and then maybe we would have money for that. Perhaps if we weren't a foodstamps nation with a record number of people claiming benefits we could afford this?

The SSA can invest collected SS taxes in the longest term Treasury bonds available, 30 years. This week 30 year T bonds [treasury.gov] averaged 3.8975% annual return. That's 116.925% interest. In addition to the principal, and any initial discount.

That would be a really cool return if it weren't for the fact that it is the government paying it. You say the government will get 116.925% in interest for social security. But since that's invested in government bonds, that means the 116.925% interest will have to come from the government. How, exactly, is it going to do that? Boost taxes by that much?

Your whole statement is laughable on the face of it. You've made it sound sophisticated and talking about it as an "investment" in bonds with such a great return, but that would be like me claiming that I, CrazyTaco, am going to invest my money in CrazyTaco bonds that generate 117% interest over 30 years, and that's how I'm going to be rich and retire. Sorry, you don't make money by creating debts to yourself. If they were bonds to something else, like a corporation that was very successful, this would make some sense, but since the government is loaning money to itself, it's not going to happen.

Infrastructure that in the US has collapsed thanks to greed on the part of executives, mergers and, well, greed again on the part of stockholders.

I highly disagree with this statement. The only part that is true at all is the word greed, but not when it applies to stockholders. Try applying the word "greed" to farmers, welfare moms, ethanol producers, algae for energy researchers, medicaid recipients, and everyone else with a hand out taking a government subsidy, and then you will be getting close. A nation on the verge of bankruptcy with everyone refusing to give up their subsidies is a nation that can't afford a space program.

As far as the executives, stockholders, and private sector go, they are the ONLY Americans still pursuing the original dream. Whether it's Scaled Composites designing innovative new spacecraft for suborbital tourism, or Elon Musk's SpaceX designing the latest and best heavy lift rockets, the truly private sector (outside the military industrial complex) is the entity moving everything forward.

I'm not seeing where this is good for the business, especially considering that the security fix for Firefox 4 is well-known and free (upgrade to Firefox 5).

That's because you don't understand how a large corporation works, and have never worked for one. Large corporations have many THOUSANDS of custom written applications, as well as many 3rd party applications they buy that rely on a browser (typically IE). They need time to test all of these apps before upgrading the browser to make sure things don't break. For example, our company uses Remedy, a 3rd party client application, for IT change management/incident reporting. Unfortunately, though it is mostly a stand alone client app, Remedy uses the IE engine (via some IE.dlls) for display. An upgrade to IE 9 (at least on the version of Remedy we are on) instantly breaks it so that you can't read tickets. Similary, some SAP Netweaver components throw a "browser is not supported" message for IE 9. Some of our custom apps, especially the older ones written in early ASP .Net or Classic ASP, do not display correctly on the new version. Some 3rd party browser plugins don't work. Security testing needs to be done.

All of this takes time. Everything has to be tested, and all the problems like those mentioned above have to be ferreted out and mitigated before the new browser can be rolled out, or key productivity tools and processes will break. That is why a stable release cycle, as well as security support for older versions (rather than instant End of Life) is critically important to businesses. It has nothing to do with "vendor lock-in" as you suppose.

The first (and hopefully last time) I was rooted was in '99 on a Redhat box through FTP using a buffer overflow.

How do you know you aren't rooted now, at this very moment? The first rule of security is that there are only two states when it comes to being compromised:

1. 1. You know you are compromised.
2. 2. You are unsure if you are compromised.

Sorry to be a little pedantic, but it's true. There's no way to know for a fact that you have not been compromised, especially if you are connected to remote systems. A good enough attacker may have gotten in and covered his tracks.

In other words, it can very well start slow, but build up a hell of a lot of steam with time.

What's really going to be amazing is if Microsoft, which started even slower, manages to pull something off in the phone arena. I've heard more screaming from pundits about how they will never be a contender than I've heard about any other company, but the Windows 7 phone wasn't half bad for a first try. I'd love to see them grab some market share, if for no other reason than three huge players competing will really start to push the quality envelope.

The Xoom was half-baked and lacklustre, and no other tablet has been widely available for a reasonable amount of time. That's all there is to it.

I absolutely disagree with that statement. Yes, it may have been half-baked and lacklustre, but that's not all there is to it. I think he makes a very good point in the article that the attitude of a lot of non-Apple fanboys is "why use one of these tablets, which are glorified smartphones with a big screen, when I could use a real computer?" He's right that while those users really like their Android phones, that an Android tablet may not be adopted due to laptops and, to some extent, netbooks, out-competing them.

This is of course anecdotal, but I firmly fall into that category. I have no desire to pay 600 or more dollars for a keyboardless toy. Because that really is what these tablets are. They do lightweight web surfing, lightweight games, and that's pretty much it. I'm not going to sit and write reports, code, play real games, etc, using one of those. I am open to tablet sized devices, but only if they do something really different than what my laptop can do. For example, I own a kindle because the e-ink screen is dramatically better for reading than any LCD based option. Everything about it is purpose built to excel at reading, and it does. But an iPad? Other than booting quickly it does nothing my laptop can't do, and there is much my laptop can do that it can't (and for quick booting and light web surfing in a pinch, I have my Android phone).

The other comment I'll add is this: He says in the article that there are a few Windows tablet fanboys. I guess count me as one of them, because I do love a Windows 7 convertible tablet (with a keyboard). It eats the iPad for lunch. It runs real, full featured programs... any Windows program I want. In college, I can fold it flat, hold the stylus and write on the screen just like I would a piece of paper. Microsoft OneNote's handwriting search is just about perfect... I can find any note I ever took, even in my own handwriting, in less than a second. And I can take engineering notes... just try doing that with any other device, whether the iPad or normal laptop... there are so many special symbols you'll never be able to. And the screen is multitouch (and this tablet is a few years old). Yes, the iPhone is cheaper (but much less powerful), lighter, and can boot faster, and I don't deny that. But that's what my Android smartphone is for, and when I want a real tablet to do real things with, I pick Windows 7.

My employer has survived for centuries (some of the units it engulfed, anyway). It has grown almost continuously since its formation, both organically and by devouring other organizations. Verily, it is a cancerous blight upon the Earth, and will probably survive until the heat death of the Universe.

Mine won't last that long. While probably 160 years old, my employer only makes food. That makes it nearly impossible for it to fail right now (everyone has to eat), but it also means it will end when our robotic overlords cause humanity to become extinct, and therefore it will not survive until the heat death of the Universe.