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Comment Re:Good. (Score 4, Insightful) 235

OK, now define what's a drone and what's not.
RC planes have for decades been exempted from other FAA rules, are they now caught up in all this?
What about the micro-copters that can't fly outdoors if there's even a slight breeze?
Treating a 30g copter with a 10m range the same as a 5kg copter with a 1km range will mean the death of whole industries that pose no threat to anybody.

Comment Re:This problem suffers severe undersampling (Score 1) 822

I was looking for an answer, thank you.
Purpose, in my opinion, is almost entirely beside the point. The numbers are the numbers. A product intended for relaxation is objectively more dangerous than a product intended for killing. As you say, we've tried prohibition, and it doesn't work; I'm certainly not advocating for a renewal of those policies. Education would do far more to prevent drug/alcohol deaths, so why is that such an offensive solution to gun deaths for so many people? If 30k deaths is enough to get half the country to call for many more restrictions on the sale of guns, how many deaths would it take to get people doing the same for other, more dangerous products?
Now, THAT'S mostly a rhetorical question. The answer is that the number of deaths isn't the real issue here; nobody would call for more regulations until it became a partisan political issue. It's all politics, not logic.

Comment Re:This problem suffers severe undersampling (Score 2) 822

Of course there are regulations in place regarding medications and alcohol, as there are regulations in place for guns. But which item is getting the news cycles demanding MORE regulations? Perhaps I didn't make my point as clearly as I intended, but it's pretty clear which product gets the coverage. Despite being less dangerous than other products, and less dangerous than at any point in the last 50 years, guns are made out to be the evil one to push a political agenda, rather than an objectively logical one.

Comment Re:This problem suffers severe undersampling (Score 4, Insightful) 822

43 cases of toddler-involved shootings, and it's front page news. 100,000 cases of children going to the ER after getting grandpa's medication and nobody talks about it.
30,000 people per year die due to guns, and it's a top political story every week. 88,000 deaths per year due to alcohol and nobody talks about it.
Is anybody calling for medication or alcohol control? Maybe somewhere, somebody has this as their pet project, but nationwide, it (correctly) goes nowhere. What is it about guns and their fraction of deaths/injuries that scares people so much?

Comment Re:So the taxes were collected from salaries inste (Score 1) 262

The long game is, 'build value for shareholders.' Company A with $100m in net income and $100m in cash reserves is worth more than Company B with $100m in net income and $0 in cash.
But you're right. Cash held overseas is simply worth less because it costs so much to transfer it back to the US. That's why I think a lower corporate tax (when combined with other tax changes) could encourage investment and higher salaries in the US by letting companies bring much of the $2.1 trillion currently held overseas back to the States.

Comment Re:Democrats, not the "Electoral System" (Score 5, Informative) 239

Yes, this is important. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are not public entities, they are private groups formed and populated by people with agendas. If I'm a registered Socialist, the Democratic party has no obligation to let me run on their ticket or participate in their debates. The interests don't necessarily align.
Lessig isn't a Socialist, but is running on a platform of blowing up the system. Why on Earth would an establishment player want to support that platform?
He'd get farther by using the cash to start blowing holes in the notion that the US must only have two parties. Granted, he wouldn't get very far that way, either, but until voters give up the idea that we always have to choose between the lesser of two evils, that's all we'll ever end up with.

Comment Re:So the taxes were collected from salaries inste (Score 5, Informative) 262

Sort of, yes.
The thing is, Facebook and other massive transnationals (Google, Apple, etc) stow their IP in a country with very low corporate tax rates (Ireland and Cayman Isl. are common), then that parent company charges huge "management fees" or other fees to use the IP in the target country (UK in this scenario). So if they projected to make an annual profit of £100m in the UK, the Irish entity would charge £100m in fees. Facebook UK now makes no profit, but Facebook Ireland makes an additional £100m. Any additional profits can be handed out as bonuses (if they're going to lose a significant portion of the money anyway, they'd rather give it to employees than the government).
This is all completely legal, and has been the bane of politicians around the world for decades. If there were an easy fix, it would have been done by now.
Of course, that's just the ELI5 version, it all gets much more complicated when used in the real world. See here for more.

Comment Re:So when are they making something we can AFFORD (Score 1) 323

What's their incentive? Altruism? Not even the darling of the automotive world does things out of the goodness of their aluminum heart.
They can't even keep up with demand for the high-priced vehicles. Start offering a car at $35k right now and what happens? The waiting list would be out 3+ years, the resale value would be triple the retail cost, and nobody would be better off but the scummy middle-men who contribute nothing to the supply chain.
Toyota sells over 400k Camrys per year in the US. Tesla just recently sold its 75k'th Model S worldwide. Over 7 years. The capacity just isn't there to offer something that will generate that much demand.

Comment Re:That's what Nokia, Moto, and Microsoft said (Score 1, Insightful) 535

Apple specializes in selling to the hipster market, so their hipstermobile will probably have more in common with a Smart Car than a traditional automobile. Basically a golf cart with doors. It will cost $4,500 to manufacture, be marketed as saving the world, cost $19,999 at retail, and sell like hotcakes to a certain demographic.

Comment Re:Far too late in the game...pun intended (Score 1) 174

Sony was already entrenched in the living room by the time they made a game console. Extending their entertainment empire made sense. And they had a first-party development team already in place to roll out good launch titles.
Microsoft was already the king of gaming on the PC, also had a development team, and they still took two full console generations to get it right.
Apple is more known for portable media consumption than living room interactive content. A full-blown gaming console isn't really a natural extension of any products or services they offer. They don't have any gaming franchises ready to roll out to serious gamers, and would be the 4th entrant into a market that has shown for 30 years it can really only support two major players. Would they have the patience to stick with a relatively unsuccessful version 1?

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