Your describing a situation where trust is lost. If trust is lost, how does the merchant know you really have gold in the vault? For that matter, even if you bring gold to the merchant, how does the merchant quickly test to ensure the gold is 100% pure and has not been cut with some other metal, or that your gold is not just gold plate? The modern world requires trust. A breakdown of which will result in anarchy. Food/water/guns will be much more valuable than gold.

I don't know if ballmer was involved, and I am certainly no fan of microsoft, but the kinect really was innovative. I'm not sure I could attribute anything that novel to apple. They came out with a better smartphone after Nokia, I thought sony beat them to the music player, tablets existed before apple's. So apple does a great job of polishing. Granted, microsoft should have more innovation, but thought apple just passed them in stock value, so shouldn't they have many inventions where you think, oh, apple came up with that. And AppStore is not an innovation!

There was very little in his list that is gone in unix/linux. Yes, you can do alot of stuff via gui now, but most is still available from CLI. Even his key re-assignments can be done in X. Granted the key will still say caps lock, but it will do a ctrl if you remap it. I think the only thing I ever "lost" was the old rand (sometimes called ned) text editor. So I wrote a replacement so I would have it on linux. It was not that difficult to write. I think with the improvement in tools, compilers, machine speed etc, its not that hard to re-invent the old stuff fairly quickly.

I particularly like the musical quality of the commercials when they talk about "serious side effects sometimes fatal have occurred". I also enjoy how healthy and happy all the users are. Maybe they are on coke and pot too.

I saw the blog and I wondered what conclusion the blogger would have had if it was microsoft instead of apple. Personally, I was on the creepy side of the scale and was stunned when she thought it was cool. I am so glad I am not cool.

Just curious if you remember, what did you pay for the 10 year old DVD player and even the VCR. I was very late on buying a VCR and I think I still paid about 300 for one in the 80's. Even that 15 year old TV if it was 35" was probably more than you will pay for a 35" flat screen TV today. I guess my real point is that I think a blu-ray player is worth more than 4 starbucks lattes.

Both blu-ray players I bought cost less than the DVD players I bought. DVD players: 599/699, blu-ray 399/429. The 429 was a very early model sony. So stop whining about the price of blu-ray. Heck, remember how much CD players were when they first came out. I have a first gen 900 buck model that still works after almost 3 decades. I also have a high end 1250 buck model that was out in the mid 80's. Shoot stereo cassette decks cost more in the 80's than a blu-ray especially when you factor in inflation.

I check the IAEA site fairly often. Temps are down a little. But, it is pretty amazing that a reactor that is "off" is still generating close to 2000 gallons of ? degree C temp rise per hour (Reactor 1). Not sure what the temp of the water they are injecting is, but I am guessing around 40 degree C giving 150 degree rise from 40C. That is alot of hot water. The temp is not quite as high as it was a few weeks ago, used to be over 200C in reactor 1, so slow progress.

It sounds like it does not have to be physically located in the hospital, just for scheduling. Get a home static IP address and run it, or host it somewhere. This avoids hospital IT, HIPAA and it sounds like the OP is willing to pay a little for the convenience.

Yes, but is it cheaper after you have paid the unemployment/welfare/? for the low skilled worked with no job? I would argue that it is better to keep the low skilled jobs here, keeping people employed. Giving people something useful to do is much better for society than having them wait for the dole. I don't know how you do that in a WTO treaty though. Basically you need to subsidize the low skill jobs with what the unemployment would cost instead. If johnny or suzy can't read, what are the odds they will make it as a physicist? Nope, they will be unemployed since we have exported all the low skill jobs.

I think the simplest solution is birth control. We can shape the world so it is simply food/energy/comfort for our ever increasing population, but will it be at the expense of all other bio-diversity. We westerners say we want the rain forests etc, but turn a blind eye when we want something from the rain forest be it minerals, diamonds, oil, ivory, spices, etc. Look at the latest go-daddy ceo elephant kill I think it was. It was justified because it was a rogue animal. Bad animal for destroying stuff on people land. Animals you know you are supposed to stay on the reserve!

No power windows, locks, A/C, etc. I think it is around 2K as well.

He burned a book, not kill 10 UN staff for trying to help them. While I think the guy in florida is stupid, what should I call the afghans?