It's inefficient because they are not available in case there is a fire somewhere else

This statement makes no sense. Had they been actively involved in extinguishing the (uninsured) house, they would've been even less available for other engagements.

I'd open one in every town. Of course I wouldn't have any firemen or trucks. I would just collect the money and not answer any calls.

That's called fraud — a criminal act. Do you think, various criminals haven't tried this before? They have and still do, are you going to nationalize all insurance business because of this?

Those who get their house burnt would get a monthly refund

You'd be liable to much more than that — in addition to the above-mentioned criminal prosecution, you'd forfeit all the bonds you have posted and, of course, such a thing can only be tried once.

Most ordinary people might not have the attention span enough to track such fraudsters, but insurance companies do — and they will insist, you pick a fire-company from their "approved" list.

Of course, every private fire departement would need it's own aqueduc and private fire hydrant network, right?

Not necessarily. That's entirely up to them. You have mentioned in your previous post, that you find cooperation between neighboring towns' fireteams possible (and desirable). What makes you think, private players would be unable to cooperate with each other?

Not even close my Suomalainen friend. Not even close. :)

It is not efficient at all to move the whole fire department over to a house just to watch it burn and make sure it doesn't spread to neighbors.

Why is it not efficient? As long as they don't have to wear much equipment, nor spend much of the chemicals, nor risk lives and limb, the costs of such a move are negligible.

It's also a natural monopoly.

There is no such thing. "Natural monopoly" is a myth created by statists already in government to justify their control of our lives.

It wouldn't be efficient to have two competing fire departments in a small town.

Who said, they must limit themselves to one town? They don't — not any more than KFC does. On the contrary, the current situation, where each little town has its own department is inefficient. Multiple such companies could open shop in multiple places — competing with each other across town- and state-borders.

It's much better to have a larger one with better equipment.

Sure. But it does not have to be government-owned.

I use both G+ and FB, and they are different for me.

Facebook is a morass of annoying acquaintances sprinkled among family and friends. I rarely post there.

G+ is a much more interesting community for me.

Yes, my choices make each site different. FB is where most of my family is, so it also has a loft of noise, and i filter it.

So I use both.

You realize nobody actually uses Kelvin to talk about air temperature in any context outside of the laboratory, right?

Better than us at our own game? I bet the Western World would be really competitive at manufacturing injection molded plastic garbage if we discarded all of our pesky labor and environmental laws.

"Thank you China; you make our Happy Meals possible." -Stephen Colbert

*whoosh*

I'll buy one.

If they flip it the other way. I want a bigger screen when I choose to unfold it that way.

This ends up with the Internet being challenged by the least free nation ON ANY GIVEN SITUATION to restrict data or access based on that nation's restrictions.

And that would force less restrictive nations to comply.

Or not.

I vote not. Let nations that cannot tolerate the freedom of others to deal with the problem at their borders.

And leave the rest alone.

This is worth fighting for.

Because I have a better setup at home for watching media. She was already planning to bring her laptop and a few DVDs. I knew that the Apple TV would be easy to pack, easy to set up, and would greatly improve the viewing experience, so I tossed it in my bag and called it a day.

At home, however, messing with discs and having to use a laptop to navigate through apps and menus doesn't sound like any fun, which is why I've ripped my entire collection and am serving it up over the network to my Apple TV via iTunes Home Sharing. Simple, less complicated to use, and provides both a better image quality and better sound quality than AirPlay Mirroring does, since I'm able to get 1080p with surround sound and don't need to worry about it randomly dropping out like AirPlay Mirroring does every once in awhile.

Thanks for suggesting there will be a next honeymoon and for telling me how we should spend it. No really. I appreciate it. *eyeroll*

We spent a week up in the mountains at a resort, but the fact was that we were both dead tired after the wedding and all of the preparations leading up to it, and we knew ourselves well enough to know months in advance that that's how we'd be, so we planned accordingly. Which is to say, we got outside exactly as much as we wanted to, but we brought several seasons of TV shows with us on disc, a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle, and made sure that we booked a really nice room since we figured we'd be spending most of the time inside. We figured right.

Plus, there's only so much sex and talking to be had. At some point, you need a break.

Mozilla is whining anyway; when they switched search providers from Google to Yahoo I had to go through and specify it on EVERY INSTANCE of Firefox I have. Since I use --no-remote and segment my web browsing this was actually a royal pain in the ass. Granted, Google was the old "default," so I had never changed it, but it was still an undesired change in behavior. If they're going to whine about Microsoft doing the same thing then they ought to look at their own behavior.

Firefox is still my browser of choice for personal use but for others I've started to recommend Chrome. It's just less hassle to support it for your luser friends. The future of Firefox and Mozilla is not an encouraging one, which is a pity.

I saw comments elsewhere that indicated Intel has denied that this is a memristor. Of course, given the description they're providing of what this thing is, it's possible they're just saying that in order to try and avoid the inevitable patent lawsuits that would result from claiming they're using a memristor.

And I have been for a few years.

I've been tired of Wired being papered over with Top Gear since before my first cup of coffee today.

I'm tired of Top Gear everywhere.

Please make it stop.

First Law.

If you think any of this is expected to be reduced to a few simple formulas, some generic algorithms, you're pretty lost on this. Such AI is both a long way from being this functional AND right around the corner.

Three Laws Safe. Only way.