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Comment Re:Childish Weltanschauung (Score 1) 376

Being the first to market has huge advantages. Reverse engineering isn't really much cheaper than just engineering. Being and inventor of a value product makes you skills and knowledge highly sought after. Even without direct payment an invention can pay off. (double or triple the sort of salary you can demand) Anyways if you read their friendly book, you'll find the example and arguments therein.

Comment Re:Been saying that... (Score 1) 376

The Robber Barons, benifited greatly from all sort of intervention, but especially from patronage. THe UP is a great example where executive bought coal mines for the express purpose of selling it the the UP at highly inflated prices. The overall shape of business, especially big business of the time was not what one would expect in a free market. Anyways the rest of it isn't to far off. The overvaluation of stock is going to bite the U.S economy in the Ass, probably sooner rather than later.

Comment Re:Assassinating American Terrorists (Score 1) 800

What part of the magna carta, don't you understand. "No freeman shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his freehold, or his liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, (harmed,) nor will we (the king) proceed. against him, nor send any one against him, by force or arms, unless according to (that is, in execution. of) the sentence of his peers, and (or or, as the case may require) the Common Law of England," Governments have killed nearly a quarter billion of their own citizens in the twintieth century alone. A tyranical government is far more of a danger than a handful of kooks thousands of miles away. Strict adherence to the rule of law and traditional safeguards are the best defense against tyranny. But back to the issue of lives. The wars and operation to date have cost in the multiple trillions of dollars. How many lives could have been saved had the money been diverted into medical research, or into the revitalization of urban ghettos? And the U.S does not have the moral high ground here. It provided, aid, arms and training to central and south american terrorist groups, for no better reason to advance some political agenda or another.

Comment Re:in my humble opinion... (Score 1) 305

And got your law degree where? And you license number authorizing you to dispense legal advice? There is almost always more than two options. In this case the e-mail could be ignored, or a request for clarification could be sent. Such as. Dear Louise Kinane, I do not have enough information currently to deny or confirm your accusations, please answer the following questions so that I may be able to better respond to your correspondence. 1. What Terms of service are you refferring to? 2. What, if anything did I knowingly do, say or sign, which would have obligated me under said Terms of Service? 3. Which specific term or terms do you alleged were violated? (Section and paragraph) 4. Which specific features do you alleged are in violations? (In your own words)

Comment Re:Freakonomics? (Score 1) 627

False, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, have greater rates of murder than the U.S. Also the murder rate within the U.S varies greatly, with about a 10x difference between the highest and lowest rates. Culture, education, poverty and so on have large influences on where and when violence occurs. While disarmament might reduce some types of crime, it is absurd to think the disarmament could bring U.S. rates of crime in line with Western European rates.

Comment Re:One more Linux annoyance (Score 1) 464

Systemd was inspired by launchd, an OS X project. A bigis that you don't have to manually order dependencies and thus penitential for better parrelalization, another is that you can boot without a shell. Lots of different ways to active a service that are integrated into each other.

Comment Storage, capacity, maintenance are problems. (Score 1) 735

The problem with the grid parity link is this,

To satisfy your personal peak power, your going to have to reduce it via smart home appliances or by selling power back to the grid or storing it, or some combination of the three. The first and third cost money (the third, at least 10 cents per kilowatt), and the second you get less than half the money for sending power into the grid than you buy it for. (No way a residential investment that produces more than you can immediately use or store and use later will have parity)

Now if the grid goes out and you don't have storage, how to you run your heat pump at night when you actually need it the most?

Forth the power rating are for ideal conditions, and actual power decreases linearly with time after 25 years you've lost between 17 and 28 % of the efficiency. Oh did you climb up on the roof and wash your panels every week? If not knock some more off.

The point being even under idea conditions solar barely makes sense as to run at a wattage equal to your base load, much less a backup. an entire house, unless it is earthship-esque with minimal total demand for electricity, in which case, WTF are you doing on the grid anyways?

Comment Re:Title is misleading (Score 1) 510

"That argument doesn't serve the consumers who pay the price for the products at all. In fact, It hurts the consumer when other people's wages are reduced."

You ignore the unseen and the mechanics of change. Allowing wages in certain sectors send out price signals that make people consider what other avenues of endeavor may be more productive than their current one. This allows for capital, labor and natural resources to be allocated to satisfy more urgently felt needs of consumers.

Now don't get me wrong I believe the corporate structure is an abuse as it is a fiction designed to be rid of the consequence of facts. CEO's get absolutely absurd compensation packages because the stock market is so over-packed with money seeking shelter from taxed through 401k accounts and the like. In addition vast laws and regulations favor inbuments over new competitors. (Most regulatory law is written by a group within the industry to be regulated). Unions can be a balance against this power in some cases, but it would be uniformly more beneficial just to be rid of the special privileged of large corporations so that the mobility of and competition for labor can act to drive up wage rates.

Comment Re:Title is misleading (Score 1) 510

You confuse inflation and it's effects . Inflation consists and only consists of and increase in either money of money substitutes. Other things being equal this increases the demand for cash holdings the price of many goods and services. What you point out is just one of the many way that other things may have changed. to partially offset these effects.

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