I know we're moving off-topic, but another way to get people to believe it is by being awesome and beautiful. Many fundamentalists are beautiful and successful and kind, and when individuals whose life is not those things can believe that by joining, their lives will improve, they will believe the whole bit.

It's kind of like one of those South Park Mormon episodes.

Not a novel/story per se. But excellent perusing.

When a market player has a monopolistic position, it will optimise price to maximise profit/income.

They price the higher plans higher because they know options are limited, and anyone who at all can afford it will pay for it.

I'm all for funding NASA, so many good and not directly things have come from our space program, plus it's just darn cool. But I have not heard any sound justification for public funding of commercial development. This has happend many times in the pharmaceuticals industry, where public funded basic research provided excellent treatments which private firms then took over and distributed (profiting immensely), without giving back to public coffers. Also, I think this happened with broadband funding in the 90s.

". . . a right to charge . . ."

What kind of right?

And most importantly, what is the source of this right?

Free imap?

Wish I had a mod point for you.

I was going to argue about the ridiculousness of 2) until I read 3); very well stated.

Forgive the sidetrack, but it's this kind of thinking that fully exemplifies what's wrong with the U.S. (and increasingly, the world) corporatist capitalism. When the prime directive is profit, serving people becomes secondary. And when so much of energy is away froms serving people, having a useful union "of the people, for the people" becomes impossible, and all kinds of suffering result.

How is the government telling us to do this?

From their website:

By understanding and mapping the user experience touchpoints and extracting intelligence and sharing that data across the rest of the value chain as actionable insight via our Expert Services and Tools, our customers are better positioned to connect and optimize the entire user journey, differentiate their offer and protect profitability.

[comment withheld]

It was pretty awesome until Yahoo bought it. Also babelfish.

If people would vote in the primaries.

My guess is cocaine in the executive bathroom.

Well, that guy, what you are witnessing isn't necessarily poor grammer skill, but rather a messy brain. Even folks like myself, who know the different usages of lose and loose, their and there, and even who and whom, still sometimes think the right word and type the wrong one. In a /. post, where discussion is supposed to be frank and lose (!), it isn't worth the effort to apply 100% proofreading skills.

It's not a perfect world.