I think that the IPO crashing (as it appears to be doing) might have an effect on this. If the VCs see that even Facebook, the biggest of the social media sites, can't make money, they might shy away from sites like it and to more product oriented start ups.
Articles like this tend to create a risk-averse culture, causing people to be afraid of failure. An article that was more negative towards the lawyers/tort law would be much better, I think.
Certainly, if it was their fault; i.e., if the plant was in a state of disrepair. If the coal plant exploded because the current operators acted in a willfully negligent manner, they should completely bear the cost.
I currently have a blackberry torch. When the phone works, it's amazing, and I'm very satisfied with it. However, there are a lot of little glitches that make using it a terrible user experience. Furthermore, a lot of the features on it are only able to be used with a blackberry data plan, such as social feeds and bbm, and most apps explicitly require data, and cannot be used if you do not have a data plan. If they fixed these issues, I would love my torch completely.