Grrr.

Sure if thing A is inexpensive, then thing B which costs a fraction of that price might indeed be said to cost X times less. Implying that thing A is already less than some other option, and thing B is even MORE less.

But if thing A is very expensive (as in the example cited in TFA), thing B would be better described as being not a hundred times less ... but one hundredth the cost.

the fancy ones are $8,000 instead of $80 is because IP laws protect monopolies. in an open ecosystem where everything is free as in libre, any person designing medical devices could interoperate with everyone else designing medical devices. ever call to every piece of hardware would be workable by anyone who wanted to. every program even one privately funded, would then be opened to the community so their competitors could learn what you did and how and be able to build on what you did.

and if that smells like lost profit to you, maybe it is, but it's better for everyone. there is no vendor lock in forcing you to use inferior or vulnerable platforms. there is no 'upgrade cycle' that hardware vendors crave, the free market is always releasing inferior hardware to generate new upgrade cycles.

the government is supposed to be fixing things which corporations do wrong and they just don't care it seems. planned obsolescence.... do i need to rant more here?

if you think of sick people only in dollars and cents then you are in need of some morality. if you think we need to reinvent every medical tool every 20-30 years to 'fund' the proprietary developers of hardware and software then think of all the things that could have been done with those people not doing BS work, in a civilization where people are more than the dollars they have in their wallets.

Estimated deaths for various future scenarios:

- Accidentally inducing an ice age (which can happen in as little as a year or two) from amelioration efforts: billions

-Successful amelioration efforts backing off GW, with attendant damage to economic dynamism, leaving us with 2050 tech in 2100: hundreds of millions to billions

-GW with slow sea rise but continued powerful economy: Baseline against the ungodly losses of the other two scenarios, but level 2100 tech with its marvels (consider vs. 1900vs today)

I recall this conversation:

Environmentalist: CO2 bad, mmmm'kay?

Me: Ya know, if CO2 is bad, we should get rid of bans of yard waste in landfills, and requirements labdfills biodegrade. Lawnmowing was a great sequestration method already in-place, before leftover 1970s innumeracy about running out of landfill space illogically gained sway.

Environmentalist: (has mental conflicts like Nomad after Kirk is done with it). No because CO2 isn't a very important greenhouse gas anyway.

50 years ago (much less 100) tech was way behind where it is now.

If we care about the future, we should maintain a strong economy, which drives technology forward fastest, through direct investment and smaller government investment, which relies on a strong economy for sufficient tax base.

A planet with slowly rising seas will leave a better legacy for great grand children with more advanced tech.

Would our forebearers in 1900 have done us any favors grinding industry to a near halt and leaving us with a mildly nicer environment (prolly not noticeable) and, say, 1960-level tech today?

Thanks fer nuthin'. I'll take year 2200 virtual reality, autodocs, robots, and so on on a floating city over any freaking alternative, and as fast as possible. Disagree? Thou mass murderer slowing things down.

Everything interacts with everything if you look hard enouh. To use that as justification for government interference ignores why massive restrictions are on government in the first place -- because it is misused by people in power to stay in power and enrich themselves.

Yes, this means you, them playing you like a fiddle to jump to their power grab tune. The more things they can legislate, the more idiots they can promise things to.

My Aldiko eBook app came with a free Jack London book. FUCK YOU ALDIKO EWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

"Harcourt Fenton Mudd!"

"Meesa run from meesa wives!"

So, let's see ... the administration publishes a written interpretation of a law they don't like, and you think it's crazy to report that fact?

Obviously it's nothing new for the Obama administration to simply ignore statutory requirements (see his unilateral re-writing of features of the ACA entirely for political expediency), and this is simply another case of it. But what's interesting is that you are obviously either ignorant of their specific language in the new "interpretation" of the law in question, or you're well aware of the implications and are just doing your best to wish it away through childish ad hominem. Classic lefty sycophantism. Or, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt, and tell you to go read their published intention to twist the law into an implementation that is 180 degrees opposite to its plain, so you can come back here and argue the details instead of stamping your feet like an eight year old girl.

Out of hundreds of such discussions that pop up on easy Google searches ...

http://www.modelaircraft.org/a...

It's not a conspiracy, coward. It's published policy. Your decision to trot out ad hominem in place of addressing the basic facts of the matter shows you know I'm right. That you're posting as a coward makes it even more clear. But keep propping up your pet administration, man. The documents they publish - you know, the ones that have been amply covered in both aviation news and general media of all sorts - make this all very clear. The agency has just been sued by multiple parties over the 'interpretation' document and policy position in question. But please, don't trouble yourself to keep up with the news - that would take the fun out of your shrill, drooling Obama fanboyism.

You actually need a citation to believe that the director of the FAA is a political appointee? You are that unaware of how federal agencies are run by the executive branch of the government? You don't need a citation, you need a remedial course in basic civics. Please return to the conversation when you understand the basic structure of the government.

Yes, and congress passed a law requiring the FAA to produce such regulations in a timely fashion due in this coming year. The administration has said they will not obey that law, and will not have such a framework in anything like the timely fashion required.

In the meantime, the administration has published an "interpretation" of the 2012 law that says they take it to mean more or less the exact opposite of its plain intent, and they are busy getting ready to fine people for doing things like participating in RC competitions (you know, like we've been having for decades) that happen to involve things like $20 cash prizes ... because that's commercial drone use! The employees of US-based companies that have for years stepped out back of their shops to test-fly a new RC airplane or multirotor will, according to the Obama administration's new interpretation, be breaking the law and subject to substantial fines for being paid to fly unmanned aerial systems. We can't have that! Quick! Shut down all of those businesses and jobs! Chase those retailers out of the country!

It's preposterous. We're not just dragging behind the rest of the world, we're actively taking steps backwards. The administration is deliberately, purposefully, putting the brakes on what would otherwise be a multi-billion dollar industry full of innovation and attractive to STEM-types in this country. The left's instinct to Nanny State their way down into every last aspect of what someone might do to conduct some business (hey, kid, quit flying your $250, 2-pound plastic quad-copter with a cheap camera over your neighbor's roof because he asked you to, and said he'd give you $25 to get pictures of his roof gutters for him - if you don't cease and desist such commercial UAV operations, that's going to be a $10,000 fine!) means they can't simply clone the sort of framework that the UK or Canada have long had in place ... no, there's got to be a way to make it all MORE miserable, MORE expensive, MORE punitive, and nearly impossible for small entrepreneurs to get into - because otherwise we might miss out on some more federal fees, and intrusive paperwork.

And as usual, the very idiots that we'd most worry about anyway, who will be getting a drone from Amazon tomorrow and flying it over a park full of kids an hour later without any understanding of safe operations or good manners, will completely ignore the FAA's rules/guidance/regs anyway. The government, which is here to help you, will only be placing the painful burden and expense on the very people who are the most responsible anyway: those with a lot to lose because they're in business to use the technology.

More Hope and Change, hard at work for our economy. Yes, Obama's man Huerta at the FAA is a political appointee and that aspect of the food chain lays the FAA's entire posture on this squarely at the door of the White House.

No. The same collectivist and PC-style urges that currently act to prevent free expression will continue to further intercede when you seek to trade with someone. Why? Because there will always be people who think it's unfair that you and someone else have found a mutually beneficial reason to interact, and they will use the force of government to take a piece of that benefit, pay career middlemen in the government to handle it, and hand some of that benefit over to other people who didn't manage to make that transaction happen for themselves. That trend has been increasing, not decreasing. Places like academia and mass media are now LESS free places, for expression, and the market is an increasingly less free place in which to transact business between any two given parties. The "in the future" you envision is a fantasy. That horse has left the barn, and the nanny staters have won.

> "The world economy and middle-class lifestyle are built on theft, slavery, extortion and murder."

They have those things in many countries, yet they remain shitholes compared to America. There's more to the success of America than just criminality.

Putting forth such a blanket statement only makes you look absurd.

lets look here, cnn the ptb lap dog they are have a 'salary' calculator that caps at $400,000 a year. http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ yet america has 1565 billionaires according to forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/03/03/forbes-billionaires-full-list-of-the-richest-americans/ so to correct you, the blanket statement that the middle class lifestyle is unsustainable or the cause of the problem is absurd. clearly a system that supports 1,500 billionaires yet no one can apparently get a salary over $400,000 is definitely a gamed system. it is the top 1% who are the problem and the middle class only supports a dream of the poor to not be poor, while doing so for little rewards while whole nations are bankrupted so an investment banker can get 50% growth of income for billionaires, and the 304,118 millionaires can keep growing their wealth http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2014/02/14/where-the-304118-u-s-millionaire-earners-live/
one in one hundred people are millionaires. and the civilization that caused this is not going to sustain it forever. if the romans couldn't do it we sure as hell can't.