This is nothing like the early PC era. There are very few OSes. No one seems to be lean and considering small market share viable. Where are the small startups or other NEW players? If products were sufficiently differentiated with significant useful new added or alternative functionality, new entrants could fetch high enough prices to be viable. With most products attempting a me-too of Apple functionality or appearance, they're doomed to fetch lower prices if they can't quite reach the same bar.

If many do manage to come up with the tablet counterpart of beige-boxes, there won't be much profits in them. It'd just be the netbook situation revisited.

Competing with many players to make a low-margin commodity product is risky. If someone else innovates, you're hurting. If you're outsourcing and a disaster hits your supplier, good luck.

300 million people in 7 states of northern India were without power over a solar storm that barely registers on the radar. (M-class flares with the background near C level). Some should enjoy auroras tonight, but not as intense as earlier this month. I can't believe that no one connected the X flare and CME with the sudden melt in Greenland. At least our lights stayed on. China got some nasty flooding though.

How about one that'll spot potential embarrassing political candidates?

You're in England, and want to show off your skills and leave a lasting impression. What do you do?

1) tell the locals you have no faith in their ability to put on an event

2) complain about the traffic

3) raise funds from law-breaking foreign troubled bankers while there

4) brag about promoting Mormon business in Utah using huge government subsidies

5) reveal talks with MI-6 that weren't supposed to be mentioned

6) Refer to the senior official as "Mr. Leader" because you forgot his name

7) All of the above!

Could a wedding help? Whatever happened to the ancient idea of a princess from one country marrying a price from another and then all the conflicts or religious differences being set aside?
(the modern movie version might have two princes, but whatever works?)

Best to stay away from those sections of religious texts where people do bad things to non-believers, and even their animals. Someone wrote about the section of the bible the other day, but got the spelling wrong "Dude Iran N' Me"

A while back Bill Moyers had a guest on with a different insightful perspective on evolution of religious beliefs and some things done bridging differing cultures. He has a book. He compares some behavior using gaming theory (zero sum acts versus not)

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07172009/profile.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JisN9t504IU

something different than a hit tune, musically political
Gil-Scott Heron (passed away May 2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHOq8i5Pyk

Well there's really nothing to fear until people start getting Rick-rolled

If you look at South America and other places around the world, you'll see that China has some large operations extracting resources. There's some conflict over them cutting exports of rare-earths / metals needed for many high tech products, and some territorial conflicts as well. Japan, China, Vietnam and others are finding island / ocean areas with precious resources suddenly very important. And even though there has been a great deal of isolation of North Korea, they're talking with the South over mining those important materials. Watch news from foreign outlets (streamed, on some public stations, on free-to-air satellite, and on some paid satellite/cable)

Through two corporations he owns, Mitt Romney owns about 9% of a major Chinese electronics manufacturer that many former US appliance manufacturers outsource from. If you've bought a Mr. Coffee coffee maker, he's made money on it IN CHINA. So it's not just profiting from labor cuts in the U.S., but having a stake in profits from where the work went as well. (This is from BEFORE the period when his people claim he left and wasn't in control his corporations even with 100% of the stock)

The recent successful efforts to keep the U.S. auto industry healthy were important not just for the direct employment, but all of that at the many related suppliers. But in the electronics industry, just try setting up an operating manufacturing something. Even if you have a high-enough margins to handle U.S. labor costs, or robotics to trim those, good luck finding many components made in the U.S. to use. Even Japan, which has had multiple electronics companies merge into single entities for such things as RAM production, has seen dangerously high loses that aren't sustainable for long.

Some new reports are claiming that the wealth held in offshore banks and corporations such as those operating out of the Cayman islands adds up to the total GNP of the U.S. and Japan combined . If the extremely wealthy in the U.S. can't pay at Reagan era tax levels, they could at least invest in developing in U.S. production instead of profiting from its demise.

We've lost most component manufacturing ability, it's not surprising to see the same thing happening to tooling. Search for something on Ebay and see what shows up these days. It's mostly new from China, or surplus from someone in the U.S. who went bankrupt.

Stop the purchasing of elected officials. Ban paid radio/tv political advertising.

The Zune was a flop, but this juice-sharing thing sounds like an opportunity for Zune Squirt power supplies?

Hopefully data to/from the power supply could not include malware.

And condolences to her partner of 27 years, Dr. Tam E. O'Shaughnessy

Sadly even hero status didn't bring the right to legal marriage during their time together

Beware of any WSJ stories posted here. If the Murdock/News corp/ Fox News blood and the wonder of Wall Street and the economy aren't enough to make one expect serious misinformation from the WSJ, check out some previous stories.

A Classic is "There's no such thing as nuclear waste"
It's almost as warm and fuzzy as when James Watt of the Reagan administration bragged about material being so harmless he could sprinkle it on his cereal.
(It was something like polonium, the stuff that may have killed Arafat)

https://www.google.com/search?q=there's+no+such+thing+as+nuclear+waste+William+Tucker

It seems there's been an effort to flood Slashdot with misinformation for a while.
And you thought propaganda was illegal in the U.S.

That's at least once per household, right?

We? None for me to share, sorry. Maybe the question should be what undocumented features may be in them already? It goes downhill from there. Most microwaves are too small for applying my joke fix, and some side effects could be expected.

We really ought to require source with everything we buy. Many products invite problems if not containing them already. We should not just enabled but encouraged to inspect, fix, and innovate.

Old tech would seem more secure, but even 25 years ago there were fruity PS printers that could be bricked by data.

While I understand governments sometimes having legitimate needs for added capabilities, I believe that the exposure of knowingly leaving unpluged if not adding numerous holes in many things for their convenience has resulted in us experiencing massive damage. Security through insecuring everything and everyone?
And then where's the transparency? An informed democracy works better. 25th out of 30 rank among modern nations in math? Dumbing down the masses is good for who exactly? Please, do away with the business people or leaders betting heavily against the U.S. from offshore operations..

Build it into something above a waste can like a shredder. While you're at it, make a shredder that is also a scanner. Getting it to work when fed multiple sheets at once would be the and-one-more-thing feature.

Would you be impressed if it fits in your electric meter?

Your power strip looks a little damp.
Better dry it out in the microwave.

Guard the beaches and power plants? If electric fields control their motion, they may be swimming/marching around soon. They'll build a secret base out of floating tsunami debris.

I wonder what they'll do when high on drugs? I think there might be some student-movie plot material in the digital jellyfish border patrol.

It would likely be more fitting for pride month festivities than for a religious event, but it would be different to have a holiday with colorful auroras to watch. In that spirit, maybe an event should last a Carrington rotation instead of a month?

Techno / disco beach resort at the north pole after the ice melts?

http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/images/plot_ace.png

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anakin1814/7578749634/in/photostream/