WHO doesn't need a smartphone? For anyone who works and needs email and web access it's a must-have. I could not function anywhere near as efficiently without one. Phone, email, scheduling/calender/contacts all go everywhere with me. Google maps is extremely useful on the road. It's not a ball and chain, it's the key to freedom - otherwise I would be stuck at a desk all day.

Note that it's a government grant, not private industry. This is basically political patronage; whatever people running it will be contributing heavily to whatever political party was responsible for the grant. If sugar beets were a viable fuel source someone would be doing it already.

This just shifts the problem from one of directly increasing world corn (and therefore food) prices by diverting corn production to fuel to one of indirectly increasing world food priced by diverting farmland from food production to fuel production.

The worst part is that large scale farming has a significant environmental impact in terms of pesticide and fertilizer use as well as runoff into waterways. We don't gain much benefit from carbon reductions and a lot of costs from the farming itself.

It's a dead end and everyone knows it. Political hypocrisy at it's finest.

By every measure the Iraq war was a screaming success. Saddam hanged, their military de-fanged and a regional force for totalitarianism neutered. The surge worked, despite democratic hand wringing to the contrary, including obama and kerry.

The democrats will never admit as such, so they and their media sycophants continue to bang the drum that the war was a failure. It wasn't and history will reflect that.

It's why we can't have nice things. Idiots point lasers at aircraft blinding the pilots and the .gov bans them. Nobody has any common sense.

Corporations operate under laws created by government. They do wield influence and most people are incredibly stupid, Hence government needs to be limited.

There is corruption and waste in every organization. Concentration power in the hands of the government is simply asking for politics to be included in that toxic mix.

Or the east. Oh wait, the russians are already actively supplying assad with arms.

This was reported yesterday. Once upon a time, Slashdot was a great place to pick up news early. Not any more.

Speaking as a US citizen, you are of course alluding to the American blood spilled in china during WW2 helping to fight the japanese invaders?

Besides, little things like representative democracy matter in the long run. China is a dictatorship and their history is no excuse for totalitarianism or aggressive behavior above and beyond normal competitiveness in the world of business. Illegal activity in western nations generally gets exposed by the press and corrected.

  In China it's state sanctioned. They're thieves actively stealing anything they can, particularly intellectual property. All one needs to do is look at the company they keep internationally: North Korea, Iran, Russia, Syria, Cuba. Venezuela - all countries with a strong bias toward dictatorship.

Yes, but they would still have to broadcast wifi and remain connected so the network sees them. All of them. Face it, it's a dumb idea because the functionality it would bring is almost completely unnecessary.

What we need is a system whereby simple consumer products can made "smart ready". Clearly every light bulb does not need to be on the internet, at least at present; it's a waste of bandwidth and merely another source of interference for existing wifi networks. A better place to start might be smart sockets that use existing wiring to network the house.. That would be modular allowing homeowners only to change the sockets that they really need. It would also avoid the boondoggle of expensive whole house systems.

Give up hope. Liberal idiots think you can maintain the peace by wishing really hard.

Deregulation worked great for the airline industry. Prices have dropped to something like 1/5 of what they were a few decades ago. You cannot innovate by increased regulation. A healthy, competitive free market almost always brings lower prices and increased consumer choice.

Nonsense. It's called "negotiation", something obama says he's willing to do but never actually does. Instead he simply blames republicans for everything and people eat it up.

We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem: see "Laffer Curve". A slightly smaller increase in spending is not even close to a solution.

And what pressures exist to prevent fraud and waste? The TVA has had it's share of abuses over the years. Government programs and agencies simply go begging to the taxpayer if they don't meet their budgets. It happens over and over and the the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.

The biggest problem with government programs is that they generally require an act of congress (and all the politics this implies) in order to change something that's wrong. In a free and competitive market, the consumer at least has a choice as to where they spend their money. If one product is too expensive or is undesirable for some other reason one can simply buy a competitors product, or not buy at all.

With government run programs you generally have no choices at all and if you decide not to pay, police will eventually come to arrest and jail you for non payment of taxes. How is this an improvement?

Although the F-35 is the poster child for poor procurement processes, the simple fact of the matter is that entitlement spending dwarfs defense spending.

Finding waste in government spending is easy. It's present everywhere, all the time. For every egregious example of waste in military spending you are guaranteed to find a proportional amount in any other program.

The only effective way to control it is through competition in a free market. The more a given market comes under government control, the less competition and freedom exists and the more wasteful it becomes. It's human nature.

I fail to see how internet access is so important that the .gov needs to be in the business. You could similarly argue that .gov/union control has killed education.

Less choice in any market is always worse. Put the .gov in charge and it will take an act of congress to change anything. Those idiots can't seem to add, much less promulgate good internet access.

Let the market do it's thing..