money can be brought into existence regardless of whether it actually represents anything

This is exactly what new regulations like Basel 3 are addressing. In short, banks need to have a certain percentage of capital to backup any financial objects they create. In other words, with this regulation you can no longer just create money out of thin air.

I skipped my High School reunion primarily because the cost of going to it was pretty high considering that I already was in touch with everyone through Facebook.

There was a period a few years ago when it seems that I friended or was friended-by everyone I was friends with or socially on neutral terms with (I refused to connect with the few ass hats I never liked from those years). I can pretty much find out whatever I want at any time and if I felt compelled to make an impromtu reunion, I could (and "we" have, speaking from the network of people). When the official reunion came up asking for over $100/person, I had a hard time justifying it.

Sure, people went and now I actually regret somewhat not going since there is something to be said about having a proper organized place for all these people to get together. And for the folks who say that "why would I ever want to see XXXX?" The most common thing I heard from a range of friends was that they had a blast hanging out with people that they weren't friends with or never talked to in their life.

I'll definitely go to the next one.

Coming to NYC from just about anywhere else in the country will be a shock. I've got a friend from the mid-west who is basically Larry the Cable Guy and whenever I've talked with him about coming to NYC there seems to be a general concern (I'd almost say fear in his gut) of coming here. Too many people. Too busy. Too easy to get "run over" (hypothetically and literally) compared to the easy country roads of where he's from. Heck, I had the reverse culture shock going out there for the first time in my life for college.

But the key thing from what I just said is "too many people". In a city like New York, you can't have 8 million people PLUS visitors and not have that many cops. Sure, you did see one on every corner, but was that in Times Square? Financial District? Some other tourist area? As well, some of those might just be the parking meter or traffic staff which typically don't carry a weapon, only a billy club, radio and maybe handcuffs / zip-ties at best.

Not saying it doesn't look like a police state, but as someone who has spent most of his life on this side of the country, I'd say it doesn't really bother you and when something bad does happen, you're glad there are these patrols around to respond quickly. A city the size of NYC would fall into chaos if they weren't there. In general the police aren't here to mess with you and they've got bigger things to worry about. When I was in high school, I remember drinking a beer on the sidewalk and asking a cop a question and there was no problem (yes, that would be underage btw). They're just doing their job but when the order comes to preserve order, they need to be tough because the city is a tough place. Heck, the city is safer now than it has been in many decades.

Unfortunately, that's a documented way to get fired.

It isn't that I couldn't as I certainly know how to do it a few different ways, it's just that defeating any mechanisms put in place by the company will result in discipline or termination. And for an obituary, I don't find that justified :-)

Sorry to rant about this, but for the folks who live behind a websense firewall, a social networking site like Google+ is as good as no link at all.

Spent 5 seconds to find one that isn't blocked by proxy servers:

Father of C and UNIX Dennis Ritchie passes away at age 70

I remember talking with someone at an "art museum" (read: an old worn down to the point of being dangerously condemned ex-paper plant) noting how the town's power problems could be solved by somehow tapping the energy of the freight trains that would rumble by.

For some reason, I guess this guy figured there was no degenerative effect on the freight train by capturing its power or like it just comes for free. It has to come from somewhere.

Not entirely related to TFA, but felt like making a rant.

But what about the average cost of a UNIX workstation or server was traditionally much higher than a white box x86 PC?

Go back to 1997 when I was working at a firm that had a huge deployment of Sun workstations and servers globally. The SparcStation 20's or Ultra 1's on peoples' desk easily ran several thousand dollars (I think my Ultra 1 167MHz box without Creator 3D or fancy stuff like that ran nearly $15k). Don't even talk about the servers. Now compare that to some Compaq PC for $3000?

(yes, I know you can build a PC for cheaper but large organizations that do cause these trends tend to use vendor suppliers that charge a LOT more for this stuff than you could at best buy)

I was hoping that this is going to do one of two things:

1. 1. Dump (from an economics perspective) WebOS devices on the market with the side effect of generating interest and developers on WebOS. Then, introduce new WebOS devices for the sudden influx of applications that appear.
2. 2. Completely bail-out.

Unfortunately, I think if people convert these things to Android, #2 is more or less inevitable. I do think that WebOS is a real fine piece of work, but Palm screwed up early on with their developer relations (a good example here). I do hope something along the lines of #1 does happen, though...

So can these cyber warriors work out of their mom's basement?

"Jimmy! Go upstairs and clean your room!"

'MaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!!! I'm fighting off cyber terrr-ists!!!'

I recently pulled my old Apple ][+ and //e out of storage and set it up on my workbench in the basement. The three shoeboxes of floppy disks were kept on a shelf in a living space (rather than attic), so they appeared to be fine.

Turned it on and it all worked. Surprisingly, the disks I've tried are still working perfectly as far as I can tell.

I don't know what I'll do with this equipment in another 30 years, but it was satisfying to hear my wife exclaim "wow! I forgot how primitive those things looked!" when she saw the green monochrome display and fixed font. Now will my kid be impressed in a few years? Who knows.