The entire premise of capitalism is that money that gets invested into useful purposes

No, the entire premise of capitalism is people own stuff. Period.

There is an assumption people might invest in useful stuff and make rational decisions in their own best interests. The reality is not quite the same.

When billionaires buy multi-million dollar yachts and diamond crusted iPhones you get to see why kings periodically get their heads chopped off.

The producers add their tax burden to the cost of goods. The study from Harvard econ. sets the price of goods as 22% higher (average) than they would otherwise be without the income tax.

And, if you didn't have a government to take taxes and do the things the public needs, your society would be a shitty place to live, and would be the most brutally Darwinistic thing you can imagine. So those 22% lower costs would be offset by a society which is many many times the worse to live in.

This fictional, utopian tax free society would be not nearly as good as its proponents claim it would be.

If you model your economic system on the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, you will not like the results.

Yeah, but making taxes difficult to do also creates animosity towards the IRS which directly helps the talking points of the right.

And god forbid they actually lose talking points by actually accomplishing something they've said they'd like to do.

Nosiree, if we don't change anything, we can keep bitching about it and we can blame the other guys. And, we can keep getting paid by the lobbyists to maintain the status quo.

Because, really, politicians are douchebags just looking to line their own pockets. Some of them may be honest, but increasingly, I doubt that fact and think we should start off with the premise they're crooked and on the take and force them to live under much more careful scrutiny.

It's shit like this why I don't think corporations should have "free speech". Humans have free speech, corporations are not humans and should not have the same bloody rights.

For instance:

A U.S. appeals court on Monday struck down parts of a regulation that forces public companies to disclose if their products contain "conflict minerals" from a war-torn part of Africa, saying it violates free speech rights.

Because when corporate money is equated with free speech, they can afford to have their speech heard more than anyone else.

And when they can astro-turf and get op-ed pieces written by people who think this is an assault on tax-payers, they just cloud the issue.

It should also be illegal for politicians to accept any personal or financial benefit from lobbyists ... because all it does it cause them to be sold to the highest bidder.

My bet? This would be a net benefit for tax-payers, and this is just buggy whip makers entrenching into law their business model. And all of those politicians who like to talk about free markets are full of shit .. the only free market here is how much the politicians get paid.

Whatever court decision decided that corporations are people too was garbage.

Yo Dawg! I hear you like updates ... so I got you an update so you can update while you're updating.

LOL ... I've seen CDs which are printed to look like vinyl albums.

I'm sure someone could just print on the existing ones something which makes it look like a floppy.

2D traffic sucks here; time to up-grade.

I see way too many examples of people not understanding how to drive their car in 2D.

The idea of many of these same drivers being expected to navigate in 3D is terrifying.

There's a reason why getting a pilots license is much harder than getting a driving license. And the idiots I see around me talking on their phone, texting while driving, and weaving all over the place and making random lane changes ... these people in a flying car would be utterly dangerous.

Perhaps if they posted about their product on well know tech blogs with links to contribute then maybe it will work.

If you're about $3 Million short of being able to start your prototypes, pay your lawyers, and move into your offices ... you need much more than publicity.

'In detail we aim to create an urban dual-mode, hybrid flight and electric drive motorized vehicle that fits into sustainable mobility.'

Does it have gattling guns? Can it be used for urban pacification? Does it have stealth technology?

If not ... well, you're just another in a long line of people hoping to create a flying car.

Many of us have long since relegated the idea into the long-since cliche bucket. And since I don't trust most people to drive in the mostly 2 dimensions offered by cars ... I really don't trust most people with a z axis.

If you want to save money, here's a hint ... don't get offices in Silicon Valley before you've got a product.

Can someone please explain this obsession with the Commodore 64?

Nostalgia.

These were the first computers many people used, and and the games were quite legendary to some people.

Because they can.

Now that they're all grown up and have these spiffy new toys to play with, you have to do something with it.

Vanity.

It has always been true that programmers tend to play with projects that appeal to them and which they find fun and interesting. That there's already a crap ton of the same kind of app is irrelevant. This one is mine dammit.

Why not?

So if in the process of learning to use something new, you decide to re-implement/emulate something old, what's the harm in it? Do you care that someone nerded out and created an emulator?

Girls.

Because, really, the ultimate pick up line is "Hey baby, wanna see my C64 emulator on my Raspberry Pi"? Right? Anyone?

both crimes with likely a lot stiffer sentence than a stupid IMEI change

Oh, I don't know ... some times it seems increasingly like the penalty for digital crimes outweighs the penalty for crimes done in person.

Which is why you can get more jail time for "hacking" a system put together by chimps than you could for manslaughter.

"Mos Eisley Spaceport.. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

I don't think much has changed since Dickens to be honest.

The specifics change, but human nature doesn't.

This has been a problem for a *very* long time.

The Japanese actors would play the part seriously, and the people who did the voice over just went "oh, it's just a cartoon, I'm supposed to sound silly".

Akira is pretty famous for that ... it was a good movie, and the translation wasn't terrible, but some of the voice performances were pretty bad. It got re-released several years (probably more by now) in which they did a much better job on the voices.

Some of the recent stuff which came out of Studio Ghibli did a lot better job of this, because good actors who took it seriously were employed from the beginning.

And, nowadays, when you can have Lucy Liu and Dustin Hoffman doing Kung Fu Panda, people have realized that you can't treat the voice overs as an afterthought and just throw any old terrible performance at it.

There have been numerous movies (in numerous languages) over the years that I've decided were far better in their original language with subtitles. Hindi/Bollywood movies are an example of this .. most of them don't have voice over, and some of the ones which do just completely ruin the tone of the film.

If you start out with the intent and resources to do a good job of it, it can be quite good. But for many years it was just a thrown together afterthought with really terrible results.

Though, one of my all time favorite examples of what happens when people do it badly is the movie Ultraviolet. The supposed Chins (ethnic Chinese I assume) are supposed to be speaking Chinese, but they can be heard saying "sin loi", which is Vietnamese for "I'm sorry" and which is one of a handful of Vietnamese words I know. I don't believe a single word of Chinese is spoken.

I asked a Vietnamese friend about it, and his response was something along the lines of "white people don't care, just any Asian language you can find because you think we all look alike".

I think the colder climate and/or recreational hallucinogens has slowed those Canadians' brains a might.

If you mean "drinking beer and figuring out new ways to pass the winter", sure.

But if you think Americans aren't sitting around drinking beer and coming up with novel uses for a shotgun, I assure you, you are misinformed.

The four words in the English language most likely to precede getting a Darwin award are "Hey guys, watch this".

if you say so dear. now go back into the kitchen and fetch me a beer.

Oh, man, does your wife do that to you too?

I hate it when she does that.