The main buyers of gold are India and China, they gobble up about 30% of the yearly world production. There it mainly goes into jewelry. Gold has some usage in technology and chemistry, but this is only 15% of the world production. About 5% goes into minting and gold bullions.

Were it not for the 60% usage in China and India to fulfill their local traditional needs for family treasures, gold would plummet to a third of its current price. The price of gold is very volatile, much more than any currency. You can compare the prices for platinum with the prices for gold for the last 20 years. Both metals are quite similar: Main use is jewelry, with some usage in the electronics or as catalyst, the frequency of occurrence is about the same (0.004 ppm vs. 0.005 ppm in the Earth crust), and still the prices of both metals are not parallel, but swing hugely into both direction (up to three times the price for one vs. the other).

Taken all things together, gold makes for a horrible currency.

No. It's any conductor, not just a conductor electically connected to the system. Thus an antenna would fall in to the 248c.

You are a fucking idiot too. The relevant chapter in German law for instance is Chapter 248c StGB.

I know an antenna takes the same amount of power than an harvester. But an antenna is (according to German law) "a conductor for the rightful withdrawal of electrical energy", as the intention of the emitter was that the energy is going to an antenna. And yes, I know that any conducting material will "harvest" electrical energy from radiowaves (and mostly turn it into heat). But that's irrelevant for the law, as those aren't put there to withdraw the energy.

As far as I know, the device (if it actually could work) would be illegal in most of Europe. Charging a device with the EM waves sent by other devices is considered energy theft and thus forbidden. In the 1960ies, devices charged by radiowaves from a nearby radio tower were a constant theme in the electronic magazines, but later, this was forbidden, as it actually forces the radio tower to increase the emitted amount of energy to compensate for the loss due to the charging device.

The government network contract was up for bidding, and Verizon won. It's as easy as that. And now, the German government found out that Verizon didn't disclose some very important information in the contract negotiations.

That was never officially stated. Officially the Berlin Wall was supposed to keep foreign agents and provocateurs out.

Spain has only some dozen kilometers of fence around their enclaves in North Africa. People now use boats to get to Lampedusa, which is in Italy, and being an isle, can't be easily fenced off.

Being fast at 100 m runs demonstrates you are good at doing 100 m runs. Still you will be hailed a talent in Track&Field.

Sorry for not being a native speaker. I will try to change that as soon as possible.

I am working all day with computers, and there I have the time somewhere in a widget or just a command away. The car has a watch. There are watches all over town. Thus, I don't need a wristwatch, and in the few situations where I need to know the time and there is no watch around right now, I still can pull out the mobile and check.

Thus for me: Currently nothing could convince me to buy a smart watch.

This is a huge misunderstanding.

What I wanted to point out is, that painting regulations as anti-big business without further elaboration is completely misguided, as you can paint anything as anti-big business, even the most pro-business laws. And property laws are the most pro-business laws of all, as they actually create the property you can trade.

It's just a coincidence that every law is anti-big business. Imagine all the business opportunities, if big business could just hire some gun men and force people out of their houses! Those pesky property laws are so totally anti-big business. It's so anti free market that the people with more and better guns shouldn't be able to expand their market share.

That's probably a non-starter.

I've noticed that the yards in my area that look the most like putting greens tend to be the most likely to have political signs on them around election time.

Since you've already made up your mind to be 100% wrong about your analysis of global warming, its threats, and its monumental external costs, there's no point in discussing it with you.

So, other than spewing the single largest existing threat to the welfare of human civilization, coal is just fine.

Meanwhile, by your arguments, the problem of setting up a recycling center for solar panels appears to be an intractible dilemma.