To conclude, it’s hard to compare a cow with a fish…

As far as the DMCA talking point, I am also on the fence with this. I really enjoy hacking any device that I own, mainly just to see what else I can do with it. However, you are always treading on dangerous waters when you are directly infringing on copyright issues. If I’m hacking my Xbox to put XBMC on it so I can watch any of my ripped DVDs from one source, then that is fine; but if you’re hacking your Xbox so you can circumvent copyright and play pirated Xbox games, then that is illegal, and I agree with the DMCA that the manufacturer has the right to try to stop that.

One thing is sure though, no matter what manufacturers do, no matter what the DMCA does, hackers will still hack devices, copyright laws will still be broken, and all their efforts will be (mostly) in vain.

“Box.net is giving away 50GB free!” Sweet, I upload a whole bunch of crap there.

“Mozy has a new interface that’s iOS compatible.” View things from my iPad? I’m in!

“Bitcasa is unlimited storage!” Upload the entire back catalog of Stolen Droids Podcast.

In the end, I have a bunch of cloud services who all have some of my files, who I never see again! Something like this really helps people like me make a better decision to begin with so I find what I like faster. Glad to see someone finally made a site like it.

Ummm, what was up with the stem cell research story? That came way out of left field and seemed to be completely unrelated to anything you were discussing. Plus you gave so little time to it that you could not clarify that the government did not outlaw stem cell research, just prohibited government funding being used to create the stem cells from embryos. But allow existing stem cells to be used for research. Nor was any mention made that stem cell research was greatly increased after it was discovered that stem cells could be obtained from adult cells rather than from embryos.

The stem cell story seemed so out of place and incomplete that it distracted me from hearing anything else you guys talked about after that. I kept wondering if you were going to start talking about how LBJ’s war on poverty was a really good idea and only failed because of that pesky war in Vietnam or some other issue that is now old and outdated.

I don’t know if this intentional or not. But within the past month the podcast as grown more and more political rather than technical. Would rather see it stick with the technical topics. We will have plenty of other sources to inundate us with political topics during this election year.

Except when we’re in a depression of course; then we’re socialists.

I imagine that some people would say that isn’t ‘correct’ capitalism.

Anyway – if you want bead on economics, tariffs, events that are currently unfolding and you don’t want to be a PHD-head, listen to Planet Money – they tackle the issues and make them make some degree of sense. Start with this one … http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/12/17/132115320/after-the-crisis-an-economist-reconsiders-cappuccino

Thanks for your feedback! You’re right, we’d make terrible economists; just put the town hall between two mines and near a forest and we’ll be fine!

While we probably got into the free trade part of the discussion more than we should have, I still feel like a big problem with the entire situation remains the same. That is, we want uber cool electronics on a regular basis and we don’t want to have to pay more for it. While some might say “This is how the market SHOULD work.” I personally believe that it simply forces the companies to make higher volume at a lower cost. Higher volume than the USA can produce and cheaper than the American people are willing to work.

While it’d be easy to blame the people, or the companies, or the government, I believe the bottom line remains the same: We’ve grown spoiled by getting our toys so easily, but remain “indignant” on where they came from.

My view is that capitalism works as long as everything in the system is accurately priced. If you mis-price something (say, too low), then it gets over used and down stream goods are priced incorrectly. Following on from this, my view is fossil fuels are way under-priced and thus long distance transport is too cheap (long haul semi-trailers, freight / transport ships, etc). Reset to a higher fossil fuel cost will dampen down imports … how can importing grapes from South Africa be economical?

Finally – if America completely cuts off foreign imports at least two things will happen overnight … Walmart will close (leading to massive cost of living increases for the common man) and food prices will double or worse (leading to the situation where people cannot eat).

What has developed slowly over time needs to be corrected slowly over time … or we will all suffer a massive shock.