Why should Verizon spend many billions of dollars to subsidize Netflix?
They're not. Verizon's customers are paying them to provide a service. Just because a bulk of the traffic is coming from a particular source doesn't mean it's okay for them to charge their customers for a service that they're not providing. It all comes down to Verizon trying to double-dip.
The barrier to entry is so absurdly low that I dont think anyone needs to worry about Amazon's monopoly, at least in the shopping sector.
The barrier to entry is significant. Not necessarily on the logistics/shipping side, but most certainly on the marketing side. In Q2 of 2014, Amazon spent $943 million on marketing. In 2013, they spent $3.1 Billion (yes, with a "B") on marketing. How money potential online retail start-ups have even a fraction of that amount? The online retail market isn't a "if you build it they will come" thing, hasn't been for awhile. You either need a really innovative and unique product to sell to carve out a yet-to-exist niche, or marketing to drive customers to you instead of the other guys.
Your next supercar will be ugly as hitting your father with a sweaty sock, but really efficient because, as we all know, people buy supercars for their efficiency.
People buy super cars because they consider them to be cool (and they have nothing better to spend their money on). New technology is cool. If this is cool new tech, a super car seems like a logical place to start. Also note that efficiency isn't necessarily solely fuel economy, but can also affect top speed.
As far as making it's way into the mass market...it seems like the "morphing" would be the expensive part. Why not just have it be a fixed dimple on a mass-production car? Perhaps it wouldn't be quite as efficient as one that optimized the dimple depth for the speed of the car, but ought to be a helluva lot cheaper. A disadvantage is that the dimples are going to fill up with grime and will be a PITA to clean.
FTA:
The helmet runs for about $600,000, which doesn't include software integration with the aircraft’s systems.
I think you're missing the point. It's not that this gives them permission to track you, like you said that's probably already in your service contract. The point is that it gives explicit permission to sell that data to somebody else, thus legitimizing it and making it more valuable by decreasing legal and PR risk.
After what's come out about corporations having to feed the surveillance beast, anyone who opts in should be subjected to having their house and cars wiretapped in perpetuity by the NSA with a direct feed to the FBI as the price for their nonchalance toward surveillance.
This is already a service being provided to everyone, no need to opt-in. Plus, we only have to pay the subscription fee once a year on April 15.
I see the exchange of value in one business plan, and not the other.
And there's another big difference. Google gives you services for free (which many people find useful) in exchange for exploiting your info. Verizon is going to give you discounts for third party services that will still cost money in exchange for exploiting your info while overcharging you money for using their services.
Every single government department that has power over other people needs a watchdog or oversight committee.
It's called the judicial branch. Unfortunately, they suck at their jobs.
Unlike in other countries such as the US, there is no such thing as an unconstitutional law, or
an act of parliament being "illegal" if properly passed
There isn't in the US anymore either.
The ExoLance folks don't seem to claim that the idea of going below the surface is novel, only the "news" article does that. It is apparent, however, that their ideas for the design are different from DS2:
http://exploremars.org/exolanc...
Additionally, their video mentions DS2, they themselves don't say that the idea of subsurface is novel, but that their implementation is.
on the House of Reppresentatives website.
Thanks for that. It would be doubly helpful if we knew which congressmen were supporting this, I'm sure that it's more than just R's that are getting big campaign contributions. The article only says "some House members." I'd like to know if mine is supporting it. A quick Google search finds another article that says it's being introduced by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). There's another one, HR 4752 being introduced by Bob Latta (R-OH) that would prevent the FCC from regulating ISPs under Title II (common carrier).
OTOH, there is a group of senators who are pushing the FCC to reclassify ISPs so they can be regulated: Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Ed Markey (D-MA), Al Franken (D-MN) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). Once again Wyden falls on the side of sanity.
The few that I checked out, were all clarifying legitimate typos.
Looks like there are several of those. But then there's the one about a radio host saying he's a disinformation agent of the Kremlin. Or the tea bagger that had a paragraph added with wording that sounds like it's from a campaign pamphlet (rather than facts about what his platforms are).
The possibility of it collapsing is probably more of a concern than "chemicals." (FYI water is a chemical, and concrete generally contains water, so I guess they're screwed).
The deal will indeed be scrutinized by federal officials, to ensure that campaign contributions are large enough.
What happened to listening to your customers? To providing options? Historically MS has always been all about that, and *Apple* has been the "our way, or the highway" company. It was really strange to see things reversed for Windows 8.
The big difference being that, at least when Jobs was around, Jobs was almost always right about what a vast majority of the users actually wanted vs what they said they wanted. Yes, I know you want to say how much it sucked, but that's why I said a vast majority of users, certainly not all users. MS, OTOH, has generally gone for what users say they want rather than what they really want (anybody who has developed software for non-techy customers knows what I mean). They tried it Apple's way for Windows 8, but apparently they didn't have anybody pragmatic enough to understand real-life users.
In other words, users said they wanted A, but Jobs knew they'd like B better. He made B, and 90% of them loved it. MS users said that wanted C, MS thought they'd like D better, they made D, and 90% of them hated it. The right answer for MS is probably not C or D, so they need to find the value of E.
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person, unless he has an atomic weapon." -- Howard Chaykin
