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Comment Re:online DVD rental service (Score 1) 42

As I understand the law from previous readings, it is legal to rent or buy an antenna and install it on land you rent or own, but it is not legal to rent or buy access to an antenna on land you neither rent nor own.

Think of the scenario of living at the bottom of a hill that blocks access to all the TV signals from the nearby town. If the guy who owns the top of the hill installs an antenna and runs a cable down to your property line, he can't sell you access to that cable. Likewise, you can't buy an antenna and install it on his property, and run your own cable to your property. (As I understand the law, stupid as it may be.)

What you might be able to do is rent 10 square feet of land on the top of the hill, and sign an access agreement to that land for you and your cable. Then you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with those ten square feet (subject to your rental agreement) including install an antenna. This wasn't aero's business model so it wasn't explored by this case. Of course, in a city there may be laws that limit where and how sub-parcels of land can be rented. I suspect someplace advertising themself as "roof top storage units with gigabit Ethernet connections) would be legal even if you happen to install an antenna and network-controlled DVR in them. Hard to know.

Comment Re:Millions used this... one complained. (Score 1) 218

I take photographs each year at SXSW, just walking the street and looking for interesting people. Many of those people pose for me when they see the camera. Facebook picked one of those pictures for the cover of my album, so apparently they think my year is summed up by a group of people I don't know, one of which is giving a fake blowjob to a green balloon dildo.

I didn't share the album with my friends and family - or open it at all.

Comment Re:Waste (Score 1) 170

I stated facts, which you ignore. You also ignore the fact that the majority of humans have something called empathy, a natural instinct that keeps the species from destroying itself. While instinctual empathy tends to be limited to those around us, it does extend for some to those more distant that are suffering. That will keep those people fed and, yes, breeding. The only logical way to reduce that population growth, given the existence of empathy, is thus to bring those people out of poverty, and plenty of studies show population growth slows and levels off when communities develop a strong middle class and women's rights aren't withheld.

Your options, as someone who lacks empathy, are to either try to kill off everyone who does, or I guess just bitch about it on the internet. So I guess you have that part down.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 2) 170

Let's assume he earns 3% interest on his money. That's in the ballpark of realistic. Let's also assume (for the sake of argument) that he took out a 30 year mortgage on that $70M mansion, like those people you have a nickname for. That means he'll pay maybe $150M total for it over 30 years, or $417k per month.

He earns $6.25M per month on interest alone, so his house payment would be less than 7% of his income. (Let's say less than 15% taking into account electricity, cleaning, taxes, etc.) That doesn't make him anywhere close to the 50% rate you cite for "poor people living in a big house". And that makes him pretty smart - not and idiot.

Comment Re:Waste (Score 1) 170

Your logic is... flawed. Well fed, educated children have fewer children than those that live in poverty. And the mentally ill account for a full third of the homeless. Add in those genuinely down on their luck and in need of a better safety net, and we'd be over half the homeless through no fault of their own.

Comment Re:Waste (Score 1) 170

At a measly 1% rate of return, he'll make 25 million a year for life on the interest from that one-time paycheck. If he'd gotten $100M for Minecraft and just spent $70M of it on the mansion, I'd agree with you. But he got $2.5 billion. If he doesn't want to maintain the mansion, he can just give it away and buy another one every other year for the rest of his life and he'll be okay.*

I'm ignoring taxes and stuff. I have a headache.

Comment Re:Nothing can go Wrong Here (Score 1) 441

Thiel also plans to launch a floating sovereign nation in international waters, freeing him and like-minded thinkers to live by libertarian ideals with no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.

...and then his plans to live to 120 are spoiled when he's mugged by a starving beggar with an assault rifle, or is attacked by pirates or the warships of a rogue nation, or maybe just when his house falls down on his head.

Comment Re:And how many were terrorists? Oh, right, zero. (Score 4, Informative) 276

Err, you know you are not only allowed to lock luggage containing a gun, but you are required to do so? It's spelled out explicitly in the rules.*

While it was a few years ago and the laws may have changed, I read somewhere that you should travel with a starter pistol. The TSA considers them guns, which means you are allowed (required) to securely lock your checked baggage, but (most) states don't consider them weapons, so you can travel with them to different states without multiple concealed carry permits.

* this is with a real lock, not a TSA lock

Comment Re:This looks like pre-paid corruption. (Score 1) 141

I'm likely not that much younger than you are. We're both six digit UIDs. And you're term limit yabber has been around just as long and is just as hopeless as campaign finance reform. Ultimately we're all screwed either way, but your proposal to fix things would make stuff worse; I note that you have no actual rebuttal to the quality of my position, just that it's unlikely to happen.

Comment Re:Dish Customer Here (Score 2) 275

...and I didn't miss CNN at all. At work they moved the cafeteria TVs to CNBC. At home if I watched the news at all I switched to Al Jazeera America to check them out. When CNN came back work switched em back.

All of these news channels are replaceable. If Dishes loses they'll pass the rate increase on to me, and I'd rather lose one or two of them. Losing Fox is just a bonus.

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