Try again. Money pays for stuff. If you have it and you want services like police, a fire department, a military, etc. than you've got to pay up.

THIS!

During the presidential race next year you'll hear something like "Republican Candidate Jones was against closing tax loopholes that allow the super rich to avoid paying taxes"

There's a great ted talk by a real astronaut on the risks. 1 in 40 chance of dying, and why he still makes the flight:

Ted Talks

It's not just cost, it's also how far home theaters have come.

20 - 30 years ago, a really nice sounds system and really nice TV couldn't match the quality of a movie. I'm talking about big ass projection TVs that cost thousands of dollars for crappy picture quality, when movie theaters showed movies on actual FILM.

Now, with flat screen HD Tvs under a grand, and amazing surround system also for relatively cheap, we've changed the formula.

Before, I was paying for an experience I couldn't duplicate. Amazing sound, amazing picture quality, on a really big screen.

Now, I can duplicate the experience at home for cheaper. And there are a ton of incentives.

Besides cost:

1. I can drink whatever I want (including beer, wine, and scotch) with unlimited refills.
2. There's never an obnoxious pair of people who won't shut up next to me.
3. If the movie is really thought provoking, and as a group we discuss it, we won't be annoying anyone else.
4. Movies show whenever I want -- I can decide to sit down for a Matrix Marathon at 3am if I want.
5. Every movie I buy, I keep forever. I won't rewatch every movie I buy, but some I find myself going back to time and again. And in the off chance someone ends up stuck at my place (I've had friends need a place to crash because there was construction in their place, or maybe their block lost power in a storm), I can just give them my Apple TV remote and tell them to entertain themselves.

Theaters need to sell a unique experience if they want to get people. (Just look at how many people go for IMAX releases of things like Avatar). But recently there's been no innovation, just a constant increasing of costs for consumers: ticket prices, cost of food, etc.

Says who? Let me repeat, I've done this a couple of times with a couple of software titles.

And if steam decided to take away your account and all your games you would have a similar right to issue a chargeback for ALL THE GAMES.

The key is to be polite, explain that the reason you are returning the game or issuing a charge back is because it's defective and does not work AND YOU'VE TALKED TO SUPPORT. Make sure you're speaking to a manager (or someone with decision making power), document everything, and if there's any push back mention your states attorney general.

You'll get your money back, and they'll say "right away sir"

If you buy with a credit card (which you are if you're using steam), you can call your credit card company and get them to issue a charge back.

I've done this with a couple software titles where I was told to "sod off" and nothing bad happens, and you get your money back.

The thing that makes me sad is most people don't ask for a refund, so they are creating an incentive for video game companies to create bad titles.

It's almost like the Producers, in video game form. Hype up a game, get a ton of preorders, make it absolute steaming shit, say "Sorry no refunds" and haul in the cash

If we want to see a change of heart from the publishers, people should start actually returning defective games.

Despite what the EULA may say, lemon laws make it illegal to sell something that doesn't work, and even if a store says they don't take returns of software, if you tell them the return is because it's defective they'll take it anyways.

I can guarantee you if all the people who gave cash to Ubisoft turned around and asked for their money back because the game is defective (doesn't even play on a console), Ubi would think twice about pulling similar shenanigans in the future.

Fortunately for you, the supply and demand curves will provide you with much cheaper housing.

That's not how statistics works. If their sample size is large enough then, yes, it may be possible to determine that a good internet connection gives your house an increase in value of 2%.

And why shouldn't it? Small improvements like putting in a nice jacuzzi tub to make the bathroom nicer can also be shown to have single-digit-of-a-percent increase in value.

Additionally, I think it's more believable because it's such a small percent. If people were willing to spend 25% more, that'd be pretty crazy, right? 2% is something someone might not care about over a 30 year mortgage.

Well, stating the obvious here, but my tongue in cheek remark was meant to highlight the fact that Emacs is wonderful if you happened to have spent the 70s in an AI lab, but if you are illisperate, the usefulness goes down significantly.

This was not a suggestion that you actually go out and learn lisp so you can make your text editor work.

(Although, as an emacs user, if you invest in learning some basics of the language it pays off big dividends, fast)

Like so many things in emacs, this is probably easy to fix if only you spoke lisp ;)

How do you know she wasn't supposed to live to 130?

The key question here, is what is the mechanism that causes shortening of your life?

If, for instance, high fructose corn syrup is the culprit, well soda only started getting HFCS recently (old time soda was made with sugar).

Then again, maybe the mechanism is only for excessive use? The same way that how someone who drinks a beer a day is fine (maybe even healthier than someone who doesn't drink), and someone who drinks a gallon of beer a day ends up dead at 40 of cirrhosis?

Or is it something genetic? Perhaps some people have a gene that causes soda to lop off their telomeres quickly?

In summary: while the results are interesting, we're no where any where close to actually understanding the ramifications (if they're in fact true).

IIRC back around 2000 there were some laptops (was it IBM?) released with fingerprint sensors for security, and you could use biometric authentication in windows.

So really what you mean is Samsung copied Apple who copied Motorola who copied ?IBM?

Technology is a pyramid. You only get to a higher point by building on the stuff before you.

Truly original ideas are few and far between and in most cases you have incremental improvements. And, in the cases of original ideas, you have improvements on the original ideas!

The fact of the matter is EVERYONE is playing catch up.

When the iPhone 6 (and +) came out, android users started talking about how they'd had swiftkey keyboards, etc., for YEARS.

They conveniently forget about things like how Samsung came out with a fingerprint sensor after apple's introduction, or any of the other features phablet makers played follow to leader to Apple on, like a half baked watch Samsung got out on rumours of the Apple Watch so they could be the first mover.

This is the nature of competition. Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, and any other phablet makers are going to innovate. They'll create unique features for their products. A few years down the road, anything that was a brilliant idea is going to get copied.

So can we please all stop this b.s. of "X is copying Y"?

Yeah but when you buy a car, resale value is a HUGE thing people look at.

If Tesla really wants to be a good automaker, they need a good resale value.