Stereolithography was patented in 1986. I would imagine Ford would be an early adopter (at least to buy one machine to see what they could do with it), so it's not really a claim I'd call completely crazy. This is the GP's point, but for 6 parts per day, that doesn't seem that crazy either - they likely run the machines 24/7 and produce mostly small parts with them.

Seriously, why do people think that they're going to buy a car and the sales guy isn't going to try and, you know, sell them a car? It's one thing when companies actively lie about their products, like claiming a car would get 30mpg when it's rated at 10mpg, but their job is to sell you a fucking car. They're going to spin that 10mpg number to seem insignificant, and they aren't going to give a shit about your personal finances, because that's your problem, not theirs. I'd only be concerned if car companies were outright lying on their specification sheet for the car, or if dealers lied about the price and handed you paperwork with a higher than negotiated price in the hope that you didn't notice it before signing.

They literally have days to examine each patent. One friend, in particular, could evaluate more than double his actual quota. Time isn't the USPTO's problem, at all.

The problem is that there's substantial pressure for them to accept bullshit patents. There's both direct pressures, as in managers telling them to "just accept it", and systemic pressures, as the system itself is arranged such that rejecting a patent becomes a massive headache for the individual examiner. The people I know in the office hate that they're forced to accept some troll patents, but there's nothing they can do about it. The other options are that they miss their quota because they have to reevaluate a patent on appeal (a reevaluation doesn't count towards their quota, and takes far longer than the initial evaluation because of the bureaucracy surrounding rejections), or they're pushing towards getting fired because their boss outright tells them to accept the fucking patent. They need to be somewhat selective in which ones they fight the system to actually reject, or they will no longer be employed, either by way of the boss's personal opinion of them or by consistently missing their quota.

Next time, know what the reality is before you write out some massively condescending bullshit describing how somebody else doesn't understand reality.

This guy got modded insightful for saying "this" to the quote, but that's not true in the slightest. I actually know patent examiners; they have far, far more time than that to review patent applications.

No, he was not the first person to be prosecuted under the act. There's plenty of other people who have been prosecuted with the Espionage Act, including some who were actually executed, like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

That's entirely untrue. Adolf was appointed by President Hindenburg to a very weak post called Chancellor, where he could create legislation, but it had to be passed by a majority in parliament. After parliament, then recently filled with Nazi members via an election, voted to pass the Enabling Act (which allowed the Chancellor to create legislation without a vote in Parliament), Hindenburg signed it, which gave Hitler more power. When Hindenburg died, using the power given to him by the Enabling Act, Hitler abolished the presidency and gave the powers of the president to himself. In sum, Hitler never won an election - he got to be the head of Nazi Germany by dismantling the system from within.

The point is that the customer did not know that the loans were shitty. They were packaged in with some good loans, then the whole package was rated highly. When the customers, like Bear Stearns and other investment banks, bought a package, they weren't told "It has 90% C through F loans and 10% A loans", they were told "The package is rated an A". The fraud was on the part of both the bank and the ratings agencies, which were AFAIK "independent" - as in, not officially affiliated with a bank, but paid to lie about the quality of the loans in the package.

Yes, and the Moto X is offered the same exact way as other flagship phones. It's not being singled out as more expensive, and it fits the same paradigm as other phones of around the same specs, which means "vendor lock-in" isn't an explanation for poor sales in the US.

In reference to other models, yes, this happens, but it's not the reason for the failure of the Moto X in the US. The Moto X is available on all 4 major carriers in the US, from the carriers themselves and from Motorola directly.

It's not the nicotine. There's naturally occurring substances in tobacco that are MAOI's. That's probably why a lot of people aren't able to switch to vaping. For me personally, it's most noticeable when drinking - a real cigarette is far more satisfying, even though totally sober vaping does it for me.

If they sold more (rather than having their CEO actively attempt to tank sales numbers), they could produce more at a lower cost per unit. If they produced more, they could lower the price. Instead, they decided to complain that they'd just rather not try to sell them at a profit, then put that "fact" out publicly. Then they have statistics showing how shitty the electric car business is, which will likely be used in an attempt to influence legislation favor of their current business model.

Ah, yeah, I messed that up pretty badly. Then again, you can just move the comparison to a Ford Model F/B/K, where it's not so favorable for the worker, and consider the after-Model X car to be the equivalent comparison to the Model T. It's a different scenario since the luxury market is already developed and pretty well open for Tesla to grab market share, whereas Ford had serious problems breaking in against the larger luxury automakers of the time due to a cheap reputation.

Tesla's pretty close to Ford's original vision if Wikipedia's math is correct. The Model T cost about 4 months of pay for an assembly line worker, who was paid above average wages for the time period. The Model S is 35-40k base, which is just under the year for an average worker in the US. An average worker on the line at Tesla probably makes a fair bit more than that - CareerBliss shows their average at 71k, which puts the S currently at around 6 months of pay. The "currently" is pretty important, since the Model T took about 5 years to halve in price from launch, potentially while salaries went up, which made that 4 month figure possible.

I don't know about UStream, but on most of the sites I use, "Best" is a step above the highest listed resolution - in this case, 480p. Presumably, this means the stream is 720p.

That's exactly what I heard about this from research - Coke is more refreshing for an entire glass, while Pepsi has a better one-off taste. It's actually an interesting problem for people doing market research like focus groups - a seemingly insignificant variable like quantity given can have a massive impact on the results. One of the specific comparisons was why focus groups with the blind "Pepsi Challenge" showed Pepsi out ahead substantially, but Coke had more market share - people tend not to drink a small quantity, they drink a full glass.