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elephants can have fleas but fleas can't have elephants. The web is just part of the Internet — it just happens that that's the part most people use most (excepting, perhaps, e-mail).

This, from Tesla's 10-K

"In addition, we have also announced our intent to develop Gen III which we expect to produce at the Tesla Factory after the introduction of Model X. We intend to offer this vehicle at a lower price point and expect to produce it at higher volumes than our Model S. Importantly, we anticipate producing our Gen III vehicle for the mass market and thus we will need a high-volume supply of lithium-ion cells at reasonable prices. While our plan is to attempt to produce lithium-ion cells and finished battery packs for our Gen III vehicles at a new Tesla Gigafactory, our plans for such production are at a very early stage and we have not yet selected a site for the construction of the Tesla Gigafactory nor completed a factory design. In addition, we have no experience in the production of lithium-ion cells, and accordingly we intend to engage partners with significant experience in cell production and to date we have not formalized such partnerships. In addition, the cost of building and operating the Tesla Gigafactory could exceed our current expectations and the Tesla Gigafactory may take longer to bring online than we anticipate. If we are unable to build the Tesla Gigafactory in a timely manner to produce high volumes of quality lithium-ion cells for Gen III at reasonable prices and thus are forced to rely on others to supply us with lithium-ion cells for Gen III, our ability to produce our Gen III vehicles at a price that allows us to sell Gen III profitably could be constrained. Finally, we have very limited experience allocating our available resources among the design and production of multiple models of vehicles, such as Model S (including any variants we may introduce such as right-hand drive), Model X and Gen III. While we intend each of our production vehicles and their variants to meet a distinct segment of the automotive market, our vehicles may end up competing with each other which may delay sales and associated revenue to future periods. Also, if we fail to accurately anticipate demand for each of our vehicles, this could result in inefficient expenditures and production delays. Furthermore, historically, automobile customers have come to expect new and improved vehicle models to be introduced frequently. In order to meet these expectations, we may in the future be required to introduce on a regular basis new vehicle models as well as enhanced versions of existing vehicle models. As technologies change in the future for automobiles in general and performance electric vehicles specifically, we will be expected to upgrade or adapt our vehicles and introduce new models in order to continue to provide vehicles with the latest technology and meet customer expectations. To date, we have limited experience simultaneously designing, testing, manufacturing, upgrading, adapting and selling our electric vehicles."

pedantry alert!

The poll tax has nothing to do with elections. It is basically a tax on existence, as it comes from

"Middle English (in the sense ‘head’): perhaps of Low German origin. The original sense was ‘head,’ and hence ‘an individual person among a number,’ from which developed the sense ‘number of people ascertained by counting of heads’ and then ‘counting of heads or of votes’ (17th cent)."

Of course, Perkins only nominally has a head...

Well, you know...

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!

What a waste!

Thash all I haf ta shay...

Possible source of contamination

"Hey, minimum-wage drudge, how'd you like to make a $1,000 just to slip this thumb drive in when no one's looking?"

Next..

Farmville

WOW!

This study seems to back up something I've posited for over 30 years, now, that had all and sundry looking at me like I was crazy: that men can be either logical OR emotional, though they can switch rapidly between the two. Women cannot separate the two.

42

Does that answer your questions?

It's only

spelled "luxuryyacht..."

On a more serious note...

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, one of the fathers of the USAPATRIOT Act, which made all this possible (read: probable) has now come out and said the NSA has gone too far and, with Sen. Patrick Leahy, has crafted the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Whether this will have any value remains to be seen. Whether he's playing to the American crowd and gives a rat's about the rest of the world, likewise.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sensenbrenner-leahy-nsa-reform-european-parliament

Doesn't seem so unusual to me

As a long-time observer of dogs, I note (for instance) that they all stop at the "No Dogs in Cemetery" sign by my house to leave messages, which I refer to as p-mail.

A great fit!

I once bought a piece of Lenovo kit and it was a piece of crap!

Foxes guarding the henhouse?

I don't think so. Any entrenched entity making money on tracking will naturally a) be against DNT and b) would dearly love to pass a sham of a standard so they can appear to be on the side of the angels while cavorting with Mammon and Moloch.

For myself, I would much rather have a tool designed by those whose sole raison d'etre was creating a working tool, not just the appearance of one...

You haven't thought this through, Tim, have you?

The one item missing from your analysis is money. When we automate jobs, displacing people from factory workers to cashiers to —who knows?— maybe drivers, we still insist they have an income in order to buy goods and services, but those jobs for the less skilled are dwindling to gone. Meanwhile (here in the States, though much less so over the pond) the cost of education has resulted students leaving college hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, looking for a dwindling number of jobs to pay it off. One analyst recently predicted that college will be only for the rich. Medical expenses have risen exponentially, such that they are the leading cause of bankruptcy. Obamacare may take care of this, but I doubt it. It's too complex and is, in my estimation, an insurance industry subsidy. Food and fuel costs, over the shorter term, have risen greatly. In my neighborhood, food has gone up 50% just in the last year or so. In 1965, my mom fed a family of four and a dog on $10/wk. It costs me, today, $50—60/wk to feed just myself. While fuel is down from previous highs, and natural gas from fracking has increased supply and held down costs, compared to pre-1973, costs have risen some 1200%. 'Alternative' fuels and conservation have made inroads (more than some would like to admit) and have room for growth, so there's hope there... Housing, too, has risen. Mortgage costs used be considered to be 25% of income; they're now 33%. The house I bought in 1978 for $57,000 (which left me feeling cheated, as three years previously, a friend bought one for $23,000) is now worth around $150,000. The one I bought in 1999 for $110,000 is now worth around $175,000 — and this WITH the great housing collapse. In real terms, worker wages have not increased since 1974 (this does not apply for CEOs, et al. While over the span of nearly a century, your statistics are true; over a shorter period (since the 1970's) they are dead wrong.

All this goes to show, further, that (if we consider the intrinsic value of things to remain stable — the house is still the house, a pound of cod still has the same nutritional value), that what has changed is the value of money. My stepfather was fond of telling how his father took him to the best men's store in Baltimore and bought him a complete suit of clothes, including shirt, shoes and tie for a $20 gold piece. With the change, they went to dinner and a show. It's still true, as he said, that if had that $20 gold piece today, he could do the same thing! Maybe he'd even go home with money in the pocket!

But the larger point is that we still require some means to acquire the medium of exchange, and until society changes (drastically), that means work or the dole. When the number of jobs decreases, while the population increases, the pressures are obvious. The Government is currently debating just how much of the social safety net we should eliminate. The cutters think we should work, but the jobs are lacking and we are not all so entrepreneurial. A study released today shows that the income of the top percentiles has increased, that of the dwindling middle class has remained steady or fallen, and the bottom percentiles have all fallen back. A bit of Googling will prove this.

The future you describe could be bright, if we can get our act together. I've written at length about this topic, and you can read it at http://www.lulu.com/shop/c-alexander-cohen/the-root-of-all-evil/ebook/product-17377866.html

Ain't it always the way?

Complexity doesn't necessarily add security — sometimes it adds a way in. You know what the hardest lock to crack is? A mortice lock — one where a bar slides into a hole!

Another example

Yes, the Obama Administration is at it again, with another relief act for insurance companies. How about this: take critical infrastructure OFF the net! . But no, we're fixated on monetizing failure...

No Office? Ahem!

Really, those folks should do some research. While it isn't Office, per se, there IS a FREE app called SmartOffice. Plainly, they've got their analysis wrong. IMHO, the reasons are 1) market saturation 2) high price compared with competitors and 3) falling behind in technology (though that could change in a heartbeat — stay tuned...)

RE: King Leopold's Ghost

...and look how well Congo has done!

Feel free to dismiss the following...

About 30 years ago, some New Age-y friends of mine played an audio tape for me of a lecture by a diver who was swimming around the Bahamas after a major storm. (Note that I am not saying I believe this:) He claimed to have found the remains of a city, temporarily uncovered by the storm. In the center was some kind of hall with a round table in the center. In the center of the table was a large crystal with lines incised in it, which he brought back and was apparently showing at the lecture. It would mimic whatever was shown it, like a striped card (not in the sense of reflection — the image remained after the card was removed). He posited it was some kind of memory device or display. I haven't been able to find this story anywhere else.

Representative sample?

I hardly think that number qualifies.

Niggle

Steve Jobs was NOT a technology CEO — he was a salesman/designer who recognized good tech. As a salesman, he was among the best...

Contrariwise...

I remember that in D.H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent the clocks were destroyed and replaced with a guy in the clock tower who would announce "halfway up the hill of the morning" and "halfway down the hill of the afternoon," etc. In a larger sense, in Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, one of the engineers quit, leaving a resignation note which read, "I quit. I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

Can this be so?

"Newly-appearing subduction zones are, Dr Duarte added, to be expected as part of Earth's “super-continent cycle” that sees much of earth's land come together in very large continents..."

And here I thought the continents were moving apart since the days of Gondwanaland and Pangea...

Thus disproving once again

that "free markets make free men." Bah!