Nope! The Reichstag fire was set by a crazy Dutchman. Read William Shirer, he walks through the still smoking building with Goering and Goebbels and watches them talk to Hitler about it.

Now, both kinds of socialists (national and communist) definitely took full advantage of the incident afterwards. But the Reichstag fire was not a fabrication.

You don't have full control, but you have a very tight control and recourse available should you get stung.

As a designer you shouldn't be pissed about this. As an end user you definitely should.

Also I disagree they should have ignored the issue. Fake parts are the scurvy of the industry and should be eradicated. I'd much rather a part that produces a predictable but bad result when connected to the computer (bricks), than a part that I'm forever debugging because it doesn't seem to work quite right. Bricking may be a bit extreme but the do-nothing approach was no better.

What a narrow perspective. I prefer a more left-wing view of life:

"You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence, if you're not pulling your weight, and since you won't, if you're not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we can not use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of very much use to yourself."

-- George Bernard Shaw, communist

... Psudo sudafed very...

Still haven't figured out the mobile site, sorry.

I actually find the psudo sudafefvery effective, but also makes me feel funny.

Only if you follow the "Austrian School" line of thinking, and then it becomes largely a matter of definitions and values. Even the article you link to admits that: "What is objected to here is not that the free market has flaws, but that the term “market failure” is a persuasive definition (see How to Think Straight, para 5.47), seeming to say more than it really does by improperly applying the emotive word failure.". They recognize the phenomenon but object to the chosen label.

Not that I agree with that article. Another quote: "Market failure, if the term is to mean anything useful, must mean that there are fundamental defects in the nature of human ability to achieve certain goods through voluntary, as opposed to coercive, institutions. With this definition, the case for market failure is synonymous with the case for government intervention.". Economists like Friedman argue against this line of thinking, and even many statists recognize that where market failure exists, state intervention isn't always the solution and may make matters worse.

That's market failure caused by government failure. Why do you think those laws to limit competition were put in place?

And why would we not assume this?

Think about it for a minute, you're an owner of a product with a 7-10 year useful lifespan. You're being approached by vendors that have a notorious reputation for going out of date with their products within months, sometimes sooner. Are you going to be willing to partner with any of them without being able to point the finger back at them when shit goes wrong?

And we see this shit happen all the time. It's gotten to the point where they should just call it the legal finger pointing loophole.

Don't have a clue why anyone would want one. Must be the shitty resolution or something...

Says you, the consumer of said hardware.

Tell me again why a manufacturer or reseller of said hardware would give a shit about their hardware becoming slightly out of date and lacking features in 2-3 years?

At the beginning of the day, they give a shit about one thing; revenue.

At the end of the day, they give a shit about one thing; revenue.

In other words, the vendors of the world already have a solution for you. It's engineered right into the product.

Alcoholism was officially defined as a disease over half a century ago, paving the way for treatment centers to open all across the country with full official support and backing from the medical and insurance community.

What was the direct impact on alcoholism today? By the time you finish reading this sentence, three more humans will become addicted to alcohol.

Treating addiction as a medical problem? Oh yeah. I can really tell how well that fucking tactic worked out...

Uh, proper usage? Of the word rigmarole?

You mean when we stopped calling it balderdash because it was too old-fashioned, or when we stopped calling it a clusterfuck due to the overly protective censors?

Bullshit words deserve their ongoing confusion, and belong in the Urban Dictionary and not much further.

I think that government should not try and compete in a functioning market, but they definitely should have the right (and the inclination) to step in when the market fails. Set a reasonable minimum service, e.g. allow muni broadband if there are less than 3 market players having offered a plan with x Mb/s with an allowance of y GB/month for at most €z/month in the last 12 months or whatever. The incumbent telcos then have a choice to join the 21st century, or compete against the municipality.

Also, if local government is using public funds to run fiber, allow other telcos the use of that fiber at cost. Same as many countries forced the incumbent, formerly state owned telcos to open up part of their infra to newcomers on the market.