Companies are sitting on an historically mammoth pile of cash (in general) :
https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub...
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on...
http://bgr.com/2013/10/02/appl...
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

Why are they being so stingy?

They have realized that it is far more profitable to invest in CONGRESSMEN, than it is to invest in their own labor-pool.

Yeah, well, cars cost $20000. Good luck with your $10000 car. (hint: buy the extended warranty).

When I worked at Seagate, the Sales and Marketing guys got a "package" for making some quarterly goal, which included a South African safari for the whole team, and a commemorative wristwatch (about $2000 value). No engineer EVER got any kind of perk like that. Three quarters later, our group was being sold-off to another company. Which was bought by another company two years later. We engineers were treated very much like cattle. I'm sure the sales guys are all retired now because they got way more in stock options and bonus packages than us engineers, who still have to work, and will probably be laid off in our late 40's.

When I was working at Lockheed Martin; 7 years ago, there was a company-wide initiative SPECIFICALLY FOR training younger employees to head into that advancement pipeline. Included tuition-reimbursement programs, special mentoring programs. Etc. LM saw this coming, and they took serious measures to try to avoid it. The rumor mill was saying that Boeing was trying to do this as well, but I didn't know anyone who worked at Boeing to confirm.

Why not a network made up of only known friends? It would be the ultimate clique -

. . . like a BBS?

The question is; is the Cs-137 from the Navy, or is it from Fukushima?

Once you claim "it's only metadata," then you open the floodgates for all abuse.

Don't they have surplus nuclear warheads? Or do you think they're going to use them all?

so, basically, we're going to litter mars with piles of dead bodies of suicidal people. Typical humanity.

Can't do "bread and circuses" without bread.

I do not want my car grinding to a halt because the police are looking for some runaway or a bank was robbed.

. . . or I didn't endorse the right political candidate.

doesn't really kill the power braking. I think that in a car the size of a prius, loss of power steering isn't a big deal either.

What happens to the brakes is the vacuum pump (or manifold vacuum) falls off, and the vacuum assist to the brake booster drops off. However, ALL brake boosters I'm familiar with, have enough vacuum in the reservoir for at least 3 brake pumps after vacuum is removed. I think this may be a NHSA regulation. Without brake booster, you still have hydraulic assist, AND a handbrake that is a mechanical linkage. Unless you're towing 5000 lbs, I have a hard time believing that brakes weren't strong enough.

UNLESS - the software failure somehow affected the antilock brakes and/or electronic stability control. But in my understanding, those solenoids would HAVE to be firing like crazy, and the driver would know something was up because that is loud. It would have been reported.

This depends on how much mass there is, whether it's concentrated in a small lump, or flows through the paths of least resistance, and separates, and spreads out, (like chernobyl did). If it spreads out, the reaction slows, and then, it's largely decay-heat that's left over (which is pretty significant, but still, not 3000 degrees C significant).

Youtube is full of videos of steam-clouds that have been around the plant since roughly June 2012. This *seems* to indicate that there's something hot contacting moisture in the ground, and forcing out steam over an area of soil, but it's not consistent with a 77-ton mass of molten material dropping into a lake (ie. worst-case steam-explosion situation which is often portrayed as the result of a meltdown). The plant is along the coast, so fog has never been an unusual occurrence, so that likely conceals the fact that the core is issuing radioactive steam through cracks in the soil. A simple sampling and test of the steam should reveal if this were the case. But we're not getting that kind of data from Tepco.

. . . I mean, what if Boeing finds a problem with the avionics firmware in their 777? Just send out a broadcast radio patch, and you're good to go on all planes. What could possibly go wrong?

Banking and financial services are clearly necessary for progress.

But the winner-take-all profit skimming model certainly isn't necessary. We could be just as prosperous and successful with a national banking model that treats this function as a utility, rather than an easy method for entitled white-collar crime.