Disclaimer: I am a business analyst at an insurance company that uses Accenture policy administration software (I do production support).

I can see the value in a product like this. There's a lot of complexity in billing based on premium rating, fx rates, taxes in different states/countries, etc. that are constantly changing. Maintenance teams struggle to keep up with the requirement changes and there are a lot of weird defects and missed requirements that make their way into billing. It's taken as a given that our financial system will include mistakes that need occasional manual correction. So if the blockchain is going to emerge as the new industry standard ledger system, there needs to be a way to correct mistakes.

This guy nailed it.

Whoever wins, we lose.

I imagine you're probably correct to some degree, since the existence of a supply chain enables American corporations to contract H-1Bs at all. But that isn't within the jurisdiction of the United States. The fact is that this is a problem for the US economy, and the US has to figure out what to do about it. Not to mention that your recommendation seems to imply that the US should either increase diplomatic relations (with, as you already mentioned, corrupt officials), or intervene in foreign nations' domestic affairs (doesn't the world hate us enough already?), neither of which are likely to have much success. And even if we could find a way to combat corruption and "empower voters," political empowerment in developing nations doesn't happen overnight, and this is a problem for the United States right now.

An intellectual by the name of Ice-T once said, "don't hate the player, hate the game."

And half of the debate in Parliament is whether or not "Jewish" refers to an ethnic group or a religious group.

Have you been to either of these countries? Cameras litter the streets of Britain, many have claimed they are more of a police state than the U.S. is now. Israel has security checkpoints with metal detectors at shopping malls (I've been through them, and the guards aren't much more charming than TSA agents). Make no mistake, this isn't an American problem, this is a progression in Western society in general.

I'm not sure this is a fair statement to make. By pirating media you are boycotting the media companies; by not partaking in that media at all, you are boycotting both the media companies and the artists who perform the work. This is not to suggest that you are not hurting the artists by doing either; in both cases, lower revenue will hurt artists as much as the production companies (both directly and indirectly). But a boycott is a concept, and in that sense, the act of pirating media (for the media pirate in question) is a boycott of the payment, not the art which the payment is for. Your analogy fails to acknowledge this distinction. An alternative would be if saying you are going to protest the ridiculous pricing of Mars bars by stealing the recipe and making them yourself. And in this way, you may hurt Mars all the same (well, slightly less so because they aren't out any manufactured goods at all) but you aren't saying anything negative about the food itself, just the pricing/corporate policies/etc.

I don't think that anyone debates how easy it is to steal a bunch of pamphlets. I think it's more about the price of losing a bunch of pamphlets versus losing a tablet.

If only I still had mod points... so true.

I appreciate the idea of searching for extraterrestrial artifacts, but the moon does not seem a logical place for aliens to drop off their stuff. If anything, it seems far more likely that the earth would be such a place, seeing as it has life already (and has been far more active over the course of its history) so if it makes sense to search anywhere, it's here. I'm not sure what could really be accomplished by scouring the moon...

What are you talking about? There's no such thing as two.

Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you wanted to build a rig capable of playing Xbox 360 ports with graphics on-par with the console, you wouldn't need to spend more than $50 on a video card, if that. The whole computer would probably run you less than the Xbox 360, AND it would be capable of upgrades, not to mention a real operating system with real programs. If you really prefer the console controller, you can hook that up to your PC. If you really prefer playing on a TV, get a cheap HDMI cable, or place your PC by your TV. Besides exclusive games (which is entirely a marketing issue), there is no reason to use a console, certainly one like the Xbox 360, over a PC.

1.21 Gigapixels

Wow, at that resolution, you can practically see back in time...

I'll hold out for the social enhancement chip. Could use some pheromones right about now...

When I saw the headline, I thought Apache was going to warn retailers about selling HP touchpads...