Just goes to show how much of cost scam CD are/were. When there is a glut of memory for example, the retail price drops. Now there is a glut of CD production and the cost stays... fixed. I guess their thug business practices are showing. All parts of the cost of production for music have gone down, and the last CD I bought was still the same cost as the CD I bought 5 years ago. Good job, music industry, you've killed your own market with your own greed!

Well said. Moreover, for those of us who have dealt with hardware piracy, Device and Vendor IDs are critical identification tools, not only to ensure that OUR software runs correctly, but it's one other way to identify pirated hardware. Most pirates aren't smart enough to use the correct information in the flash. Heck it was so important 10 years ago that Microsoft used Windows Update to enforce four-field enforcement on PCI devices. Instead of using two-field matching, that allowed, say, Asus motherboards to coat-tail on Intel drivers, Windows Update required four-field matching (Vendor ID, Device ID, Subvendor ID, subdevice ID). While it added an additional layer of validation cost, Microsoft did it because of the problems with incompatible drivers, not piracy. Also, in the PCI world, falsifying IDs is just as critical as in the USB world.

My main concern is that the purpose of these IDs is to ensure compatibility, which Apple can, in no way, guarantee with the Pre. Had Palm asked and entered into an arrangement, they might've had the opportunity to do it right. It's also true that Apple has no legal requirement to facilitate the functionality and no MORAL obligation, for that matter. The way Palm went about the Pre indicates that no matter how revolutionary the OS is (and it IS), it will be marginalized for both consumers AND business. Palm has developed a pattern on the Pre of half-assing things that actually MATTER (ActiveSync security, anyone?).

How many folks will simply throw the CFL out when they die? Think about all the mercury this will put in our landfills and how many millions of acres will be poisoned as a result?

Classic idiocy from Congress...next time, perhaps, they'll finally figure out that they don't no anything about unintended consequences (who the hell am I kidding?!)

When companies must give employees full disclosure on wages of co-workers so they can appropriately value their own work, then transparency will be acheived.

The widest canyon capitalism has is the rules are all one way. Submit salary history with resume? How about submit salary history of potential team members so you can make an informed decision?

I find it interesting that most pro-capitalism libertarians, like the authors are all about access to imformation for the investor and other corporations, but not for the workers.