I received a love letter from Comcast when I arrived home yesterday…  Basically after being a loyal customer for over 6 years, Comcast has decided to cancel my $99/month cable/internet service. Their new and improved equivalent service will now be $140/month, or $130/month with their triple play phone/TV/internet offer.

So today I signed up for Verizon FIOS Triple Play service for $99/month with a discount to $70/month for the first 6 months. Unfortunately, with mandatory equipment rental my monthly bill will still be about $130/month, but I will save about $40/month on my landline phone service.  I’ve been on the fence about switching, but Comcast finally helped me to make a decision.

May the Comcast MBAs choke on the flood of customer service cancellations !

Adios Comcast…

Recently, my account on Facebook was hacked. A person claiming to be me was soliciting my friends for cash by claiming that I was stuck in London and needed cash to get home to Sarasota. Fortunately, my brother was informed by my niece and then told me after having a short conversation with the asshole. I immediately deleted my Facebook account.

Turns out that the developers of Facebook provide unlimited access to all of your personal information to anyone who is writing the Games, Contests and Quizes that everyone partakes of and shares. So you have no idea who knows what about you - not just your 'friends'. Think twice and then again about whether or not to post about illness, travel plans, purchases or any other social information that you would share with your friends but not with the whole world. As soon as you post it on Facebook it is in the hands of everyone - not just your 'friends'.

Would you really trust two Harvard dropouts to have your best interests at heart ?

Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private  dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I've broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American President is an honor.

I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief of Staff, and joined the President in a yellow dining room. We sat across from each other at a table draped in white linen. The Great Seal was embossed on the china. Uniformed staff served our dinner.

The meal was served, and I was startled when my waiter suddenly  reached out, plucked a dinner roll off my plate, and began nibbling it as he walked back to the kitchen.

"Sorry about that," said the President. "Andrew is very hungry."

"I don't appreciate..." I began, but as I looked into the calm  brown eyes across from me, I felt immediately guilty and petty. It was just a dinner roll.

"Of course," I concluded, and reached for my glass. Before I could, however, another waiter reached forward, took the glass away and swallowed the wine in a single gulp.

"And his brother Eric is very thirsty." said the President.

I didn't say anything. The President is testing my compassion, I  thought. I will play along. I don't want to seem unkind.

My plate was whisked away before I had tasted a bite.

"Eric's children are also quite hungry."

With a lurch, I crashed to the floor. My chair had been pulled out from under me. I stood, brushing myself off angrily, and watched as it was carried from the room.

"And their grandmother can't stand for long."

I excused myself, smiling outwardly, but inside feeling like a fool. Obviously I had been invited to the White House to be sport for some game. I reached for my coat, to find that it had been taken. I turned back to the President.

"Their grandfather doesn't like the cold."

I wanted to shout- that was my coat! But again, I looked at the placid smiling face of my host and decided I was being a poor sport. I spread my hands helplessly and chuckled. Then I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was gone. I excused myself and walked to a phone on an elegant side table. I learned shortly that my credit cards had been maxed out, my bank accounts emptied, my retirement and equity portfolios had vanished, and my wife had been thrown out of our home. Apparently, the waiters and their families were moving in. The President hadn't moved or spoken as I learned all this, but finally I lowered the phone into its cradle and turned to face him.

"Andrew's whole family has made bad financial decisions. They haven't planned for retirement, and they need a house. They recently defaulted on a subprime mortgage. I told them they could have your home. They need it more than you do."

My hands were shaking. I felt faint. I stumbled back to the table and knelt on the floor. The President cheerfully cut his meat, ate his steak and drank his wine. I lowered my eyes and stared at the small grey circles on the tablecloth that were water drops.

"By the way," He added, "I have just signed an Executive Order nationalizing your factories. I'm firing you as head of your business. I'll be operating the firm now for the benefit of all mankind. There's a whole bunch of Erics and Andrews out there and they can't come to you for jobs groveling like beggars."

I looked up. The President dropped his spoon into the empty ramekin which had been his creme brulee. He drained the last drops of his wine. As the table was cleared, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He stared at me. I clung to the edge of the table as if were a ledge and I were a man hanging over an abyss. I thought of the years behind me, of the life I had lived. The life I had earned with a lifetime of work, risk and struggle.

Why was I punished? How had I allowed it to be taken? What game had I played and lost? I looked across the table and noticed with some surprise that there was no game board between us.

What had I done wrong?

As if answering the unspoken thought, the President suddenly cocked his head, locked his empty eyes to mine, and bared a million teeth, chuckling wryly as he folded his hands.

"You should have stopped me at the dinner roll," he said.

I had a Windows XP MCE 2005 system at home as my DVR. Basically worked fine for many years although if you turned it off, it was unable to automatically reacquire the wireless connection via the Linksys PCI card. Service packs and driver updates never corrected the problem, so I resorted to leaving the system on all the time. I had won a free copy of Vista Ultimate at the Sarasota .NET Developers meeting a couple of months ago and decided to give it a try. I bought a new 1TB hard drive so that I could keep my XP MCE image intact in case I wanted or had to go back.

Well – it only took about 6 hours to install. Missing drivers for the Linksys wireless card, Microsoft Wireless keyboard and mouse, Hauppage dual TV tuner card, and although it’s a 3.2GHz system, with only 512MB of RAM it was paging like a mother calling her sons. It installed 86 updates – and that didn’t include Vista SP1. After the ordeal, it seemed to work although it was still thrashing.

Bought and installed 4G of RAM and it seemed a lot happier – Vista is a P.I.G. pig. Took a couple of days to tune the power and permission settings so that it worked like an appliance should – no keyboard / mouse interaction required to use it as a DVR.

Started seeing an interesting problem with the MCE remote though. After coming out of standby the remote behaved like keys were stuck – continuously scrolling the guide or screen icons after the first button was pushed. Hard resetting the Vista machine corrected the problem – now it’s no longer a DVR but yet another half-baked Microsoft computer.

Researching the problem on the Web it seems that this is a known problem – addressed in Vista SP1 – but not entirely. And there is a hotfix available, but it’s not clear whether or not this is required if you install SP1 – it reads like you still have to manually parse and edit the registry to add entries to force desired USB devices to be reset after coming out of standby.  So while I have now installed SP1 with no cure I still have this onerous task ahead. Meanwhile I have also discovered that re-plugging the MCE remote receiver corrects the problem. As the plug is accessible by reaching the back of the computer behind the entertainment center this is doable and I guess I will find out the life expectancy of the USB connectors.

Needless to say this has decreased the WAF significantly as she just wants to turn on the TV and PC and watch it – not mess with cables in order to do so.

Verizon FIOS with their DVR is looking better and better.

UPDATE:

Have installed all of the latest service packs and hotfixes. Performed the requisite registry edits. Still broken. The best workaround that I've found is to install a powered USB hub between the Microsoft remote and the Media Center PC. The hub's power is provided by a wall wart connected to the computer's UPS. This has reduced the number of failures to about twice a week.

We (ACS) design and build embedded industrial controllers for a living. So we use several dozen different software tools, compilers, IDEs, logic synthesis, logic simulation and Computer Assisted Engineering (CAE) tools for printed circuit board design layout. All of these tools have quirks and bugs – some more serious than others.

When I first started this career, printed circuit boards were hand-designed on mylar sheets, one per layer, at a 2:1 scale using stick on pads and various widths of tape to lay down traces. Improvements came with red and blue transparent tape that minimized the number of mylar sheets required as two layers of circuitry could be placed on a single sheet – improving registration.

In the mid to late 80’s Computer Assisted Engineering for circuit board layout became popular – although the tools were expensive. Over time, the number of vendors increased, the PC became the target platform and the prices dropped. Goodbye mylar sheets of artwork. My brother and I initially invested in Design Computation software 20 years ago, and later, when the DOS based tools weren’t up to the task and that company disappeared, we switched to Protel.

We've used Protel Schematic Capture v3.4 and Protel PCB Design v2.8 to design several hundred boards - mainly double-sided, mixed SMT and through-hole, some with hundreds of parts, all sizes - no problems. You build up a library of trusted components that are physically verified by their use in designs, and you learn the quirks and anamolies of the tools.

About 10 years ago, Protel ran a special and we purchased an upgrade seat of their flagship product at that time – Protel99SE. It was expensive – even when discounted, but we had had mostly good luck with their existing software and had a large investment in learning curves and libraries. The new product stayed on the shelf for several years with day-to-day pressures precluding taking on the new learning curve. Finally, frustrated with the PCB v2.8 tool’s problems with split power planes on a new 4-layer design, I moved the board to the new tool and was able to produce a product that we’re still shipping today. 

I recently did our second 4-layer PCB with Protel99SE SP6. Just received the prototypes back. When building the first board by hand, two components were on the schematic,  but not on the PCB. Bringing up the board in Protel and jumping to the component by name, the missing components were off the board, and off the screen – perhaps with a negative Y coordinate. No ratsnest wires, the router indicated that the board was 100% routed, no Design Rule Check (DRC) errors - sweet.

Did a select outside the board area, move selection, and surprise - the missing two components moved into the visible area - ratsnest wires appeared indicating where they were supposed to be connected and now the board is no longer 100% routed - it's magic !

I don't know how the two components got 'placed' off of the viewable screen, or why a zoom all didn't show them, or why the autorouter All Routes command didn't complain, or why the DRC passed...

I can no longer trust Protel99SE to produce a board that matches the schematic. This was a fundamental trust item that the tool violated with serious repercussions. I'm glad that these are just a handful of prototypes, and I can tack these two missing components on by hand. Imagine if I had made a simple change to a production board and then found missing parts and/or connections with 1000 of them in manufacturing.

Of course, this tool is now 10 years old. The company has changed it’s name – Altium – and has moved on. They are again offering a special purchase of an upgrade version…

And so it goes…

Having downloaded and installed Windows 7 Beta back in January, I was eager to try the new Release Candidate 1. What a long strange trip it’s been…

Evidently the only way to legitimately download the RC is by using the Akamai Download Manager provided by clicking on the Download button. All well and fine – but on my Intel 975XBX Quad Core machine running XP SP3 with IE8, the download manager never runs and crashes the browser.

Tried clearing the browser cache, disabling pop-ups, removing the Google toolbar, clearing the Java cache, etc.  Nothing worked.  E-mails to Akamai went unanswered. Searches on Google revealed that I’m not the only one experiencing this problem.

Finally found the workaround – went to my trusty Win2K server sitting in the corner, started up IE6 and went through the same download registration sequence and then clicked the download button. Voila – the Download Manager worked, the download started and is progressing as I write this.

I guess I’ll have to keep this older technology around for when the new magic breaks…

Recent network outages in the Bay Area as well as others around the nation have revealed the flaw in letting the Telecom carriers provide and manage an increasingly important global resource.

This is not your father's internet anymore. The network is no longer structured as it was originally designed - to survive these type of disruptions. The network is now solely at the whim of the carriers who are only interested in 'billable events'. More and more the carriers are deciding whose bits are special and whose aren't worth the effort to transport. As they continue to construct their tariffed fiefdoms, more of these network chokepoints and bottlenecks will be put in place. Poorer service and increased outages will result - but hey - at least the @#$% MBA in the corner office made his quarterly numbers.

Until we remove the telecoms from the internet scenario, we are forever doomed to live within their limited vision of what a global network should be.

Read more at:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=16136

and about the increasing Telecom crisis at:

http://frankston.com/

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn't pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country. However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.

First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a Back Story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You've seen my big home at last years Christmas party. I'm sure; all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.

However, what you don't see is the BACK STORY :

I started this company 28 years a go. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn't have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business -- hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends went to their jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom's for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn't look like it was birthed in the 70's. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don't. There is no "off" button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden -- the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations... you never realize the Back Story and the sacrifices I've made.

Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn't. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for. Yes, business ownership has its benefits but the price I've paid is steep and not without wounds.

Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don't pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my "stimulus" check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home, pregnant with her fourth child, waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.

The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck, you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should you? That's nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what many of you don't understand ... To stimulate the economy, you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn't need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep.

So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple.

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child's future. Frankly, it isn't my problem any more.

Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I'm done. I'm done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

So, if you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about...

Signed, THE BOSS

Yes – it’s not Exxon/Mobile or Shell or what you’d expect…

It’s Investment Bankers (aka Crooks) who drove up the Oil prices last year. Your dollars didn’t go the the Arab Mullahs but to Wall Street:

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO6HUwlIS_Y

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9dA8pUpeV8&feature=related

From Clusterstock:

http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/ayn-rand-for-treasury-secretary

“The most popular article in the Wall Street Journal this morning is Stephen Moore's editorial applauding the brilliant economic policies of Ayn Rand. As we recall, Atlas Shrugged was Alan Greenspan's favorite book, too.

We doubt that abolishing the income tax and firing all government workers is the quickest way out of our fix, but it might not be the slowest, either. In any event, you'll enjoy Moore's summary:

WSJ: The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."

In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.

The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."

Economist Ayn's fix? Abolish the income tax:

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

”

A strong recommendation to subscribe and peruse Charles Hugh Smith’s blog: “OfTwoMinds”. Charles is an author of several works of fiction as well as a visionary for today’s reality.

If you’re a reader, I strongly recommend reading (or re-reading) Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. Written in the late fifties, it’s almost prescient in it’s parallels to today’s economic reality. Indeed, you can read a few pages, then pick up the newspaper and almost read the same thing – scary.

Over on The Big Picture Blog, a post giving 150 ways to drive oil prices higher... basically an outline of US Energy policy for the last 50 years:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/05/how-to-drive-oi.html

At the New York Times, op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman writes about the huge transfer of wealth and power that is shaping the future ( or lack thereof) of America:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/opinion/21friedman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"There has been much debate in this campaign about which of our enemies the next U.S. president should deign to talk to. The real story, the next president may discover, though, is how few countries are waiting around for us to call. It is hard to remember a time when more shifts in the global balance of power are happening at once — with so few in America’s favor.

Let’s start with the most profound one: More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications — the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

If this huge transfer of wealth to the petro-authoritarians continues, power will follow. According to Congressional testimony Wednesday by the energy expert Gal Luft, with oil at $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy Bank of America in one month worth of production, Apple computers in a week and General Motors in just three days.”

But that’s not all. Two compelling new books have just been published that describe two other big power shifts: “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, and “Superclass” by David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment.

Mr. Zakaria’s central thesis is that while the U.S. still has many unique assets, “the rise of the rest” — the Chinas, the Indias, the Brazils and even smaller nonstate actors — is creating a world where many other countries are slowly moving up to America’s level of economic clout and self-assertion, in every realm. “Today, India has 18 all-news channels of its own,” notes Zakaria. “And the perspectives they provide are very different from those you will get in the Western media. The rest now has the confidence to present its own narrative, where it is at the center.”

For too long, argues Zakaria, America has taken its many natural assets — its research universities, free markets and diversity of human talent — and assumed that they will always compensate for our low savings rate or absence of a health care system or any strategic plan to improve our competitiveness.

“That was fine in a world when a lot of other countries were not performing,” argues Zakaria, but now the best of the rest are running fast, working hard, saving well and thinking long term. “They have adopted our lessons and are playing our game,” he said. If we don’t fix our political system and start thinking strategically about how to improve our competitiveness, he added, “the U.S. risks having its unique and advantageous position in the world erode as other countries rise.”

Mr. Rothkopf’s book argues that on many of the most critical issues of our time, the influence of all nation-states is waning, the system for addressing global issues among nation-states is more ineffective than ever, and therefore a power void is being created. This void is often being filled by a small group of players — “the superclass” — a new global elite, who are much better suited to operating on the global stage and influencing global outcomes than the vast majority of national political leaders.

Some of this new elite “are from business and finance,” says Rothkopf. “Some are members of a kind of shadow elite — criminals and terrorists. Some are masters of new or traditional media; some are religious leaders, and a few are top officials of those governments that do have the ability to project their influence globally.”

The next president will have to manage these new rising states and these new rising individuals and networks, while wearing the straightjacket left in the Oval Office by Mr. Bush.

“Call it the triple deficit,” said Mr. Rothkopf. “A fiscal deficit that will soon have us choosing between rationed health care, sufficient education, adequate infrastructure and traditional levels of defense spending, a trade deficit that has us borrowing from our rivals to the point of real vulnerability, and a geopolitical deficit that is a legacy of Iraq, which may result in hesitancy to take strong stands where we must.”

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels. "

Nobody in Congress has the balls to place a significant use tax on gasoline - one that would cause people to demand and embrace alternatives. So instead, let's institute rationing. Can't get to work with your ration ?  Time for a new job, more efficient car or maybe mass transit.

Basically we've done nothing to wean ourselves off of the oil teat - even with a 50 year warning from the Admiral and the oil embargo wake-up call in the 70's. We're paying the price now - literally. The greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world is happening right now as dollars stream to China for crap and Saudi Arabia for oil. The USA is exporting nothing comparable. Of course the joke may soon be on them (and ourselves) as the dollar becomes worthless.

Hope is dimming for any chance of survival through a period of runaway inflation and drastic decline in the standard of living. Colonies on the moon ? Trip to Mars ?  Forget about it. Watch as the USA becomes a third world nation when all of our grandiose infrastructure comes crashing down due to the end of low-cost energy.

And I don't mean diesel engines either - bring back the steam powered locomotives that burn coal.

The airlines are dying, and the price is rapidly becoming unaffordable. At least the trains ran on time (or so I've been told) and we have plenty of coal.

Maybe if everybody can see the tons of pollution being spewed by their travel activities they might take an interest in researching alternatives...

This is great !  Now Japan is experiencing the decline of Engineering - next China and then India !

High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

"After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields.

Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising campaigns intended to make engineering look sexy and cool, and companies are slowly starting to import foreign workers, or sending jobs to where the engineers are, in Vietnam and India.

It was engineering prowess that lifted this nation from postwar defeat to economic superpower. But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing. "

. . .

Read it and weep - too bad our elected officials can't read:

The Hirsch Report on Peak Oil