Agreed. I'd like to know more about the truth of that statement, but if its literally generally true - just how widespread is it etc. That's shocking and unacceptable.

If its just one river that's not much more than creek being tested right next to the waste pipe of a pharma factory its still entirely unacceptable, but not quite as alarming as the statement would have us think.

(Much like the 'great garbage patch' which although a real and genuine problem is not quite the floating garbage island the media headlines conjure. )

Hint: Those people don't care about civil liberties. They saw an opportunity to seize power and did so at a time where many people were foolishly emotional and therefore gullible.

Hint:

Politicians are also people who were foolishly emotional and therefore gullible.

6... the answer is 6

Only if kilopascals and pascals were the same unit.

Want to invest money in something new, consider the Arcology ...

I'd definitely want to visit it, maybe spend a week, see how it works, perhaps take a tour. Why I bet you'd be able to fund it with tourism.

("your head asplode")

I am not arguing that drugs -should- be illegal. Frankly, as I said in my post, I agree they largely should not be illegal.

The silk road however isn't going to disappear with the legalization of more recreational drugs.

Unlike recreational drug use, those things cannot be done responsibily and they always have victims.

Ok.

I seriously and rightly question the intellectual honesty of anyone who would deliberately conflate such things.

I didn't conflate anything.

The silk road is a black market for ALL of those things. It is therefore the police's job to shut down the MARKET itself; which is what they (albeit briefly did).

And the further and deeper underground it goes the better. One will never eliminate a black market entirely, but its absurd to suggest that the police simply ignore it outright.

This is, in fact, a good example characterizing the pro-drug-prohibition rhetoric that has expanded the police state and caused over 60% of all prisoners to be there because of nonviolent drug offenses at tremendous monetary and social cost to us all.

And I even said in my post that I agree that it is supportable that drugs should not be illegal. Legalizing drugs isn't going to make the silk road go away though; because there is always somehting illegal to buy and sell. And I support the police seeking to destroy the silk road. (or at least drive it as far underground as possible.)

I think you misread my post, because your accusation of intellectual dishonesty really doesn't fit at all here.

And what did they accomplish? They knocked Silk Road off the net for a few months, and in so doing helped it improve its security for next time.

What is your point?

Are you suggesting we just ignore the black market?

That we should simply pretend it doesn't exist, until its so mainstream that even the local coffeeshop will let you pay for your espresso and avoid paying taxes?

You do have a supportable case that drugs shouldn't be a black market product in the first place. But that's hardly a justification to make the argument that the police shouldn't be tasked with shutting down black markets.

What about murder for hire? Money laundering? Child porn? Slave trafficking? ...

People haggle for home prices

Homes are unique. So are used cars. New cars aren't but your trade in vehicle is.

Once you are sure everyone pays the same price

When the products are unique that isn't reasonable.

People haggle for home prices. They love it

Most do not. But at least if they were smart they have an agent making the offer that isn't representing the seller at all, and they are probably sending the offer to the sellers agent. So the buyer and seller are pretty well insulated from each other, and there isn't high pressure and slimy sales tactics further making things worse.

Steam does log the time you've spent on every game, last time you've played it and has a "social" system which leaks to your friends such information.

You can make your profile private so either no, one or just your friends can see it.

You can also play offline with any game that doesn't require an internet connection. I'm not sure how much telemetry valve gets when you do that.

On the flipside, you can also leave a game running at the title screen while you go away for 2 weeks, and they'll think you've played for 336 hours... so im not sure how much the teletry is really worth at an individual level; more at an aggregate level maybe.

How does the FDA draw the line between 'must be approved' and 'not our problem' for devices that connect to a greater or lesser degree to other equipment?

The FDA itself, believe it or not, is actually pretty reasonable on that specific issue.

For example:

do you need magic FDA CD-R blanks and flash drives

If the device specifications that the vendor wrote and documented and validated, specified a specific brand and model of CD-R blank as being validated. Then you need that brand and model of CD-R blank to be valid.

If the device specifications specify that the saving of images to the disk doesn't impact patient safety, and any CD that supports the CD-RW standard xyz will work, then you can use anything suitable.

Unfortunately the manufacturers too often just take the path of least resistance; and assume the safest most conservative position; all under the advice of their lawyers and FDA consultants. It doesn't hurt that it creates a revenue stream being able to supply that particular model at an inflated price.

Nice idea.

I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not. :) But I sincerely think it would be a somewhat reasonable solution.

I know car metaphors are de-rigour here, but that's really not a good metaphor. This is approvals of add-ons and consumables, not repairs. And there are a few other examples. Games consoles, printers, razors.

I actually think games consoles, by virtue of their transformation to using software/online stores deserve to face the same criticism as iOS here.

People aren't being MADE to be safer. They CHOOSE to pay extra for the service of being made safer.

If that were really true the phone could ship with the option to install apps from 3rd party app stores, and people would pay $1 for an app to remove that feature in droves.

Yet that is not your argument, your argument is quixotically that people who are "CHOOSING" to pay extra for the service of being made safer would be unable to stop themselves from pushing the "turn the safety you paid extra for off" button even if it was hidden somewhere deep in the settings and you had to perform some arcane ritual to get to it.

That's absurd. If they genuinely were choosing safety, they could and would simply leave the safety turned on. Sufficient barriers to prevent accidentally pushing it are warranted, but there is no justification for the setting just not being allowed to exist at all.

Given the interest in jailbreaking etc, its clear that a LOT of people are buying devices who have not drunk the walled-garden koolaid.

If a phone ever needs the kind of maintenance a PC or Mac needs it's a failed phone.

And yet Android is not a failed phone.

Consumers these days have got something that for most of their casual uses is better than a PC. That's progress.

At risk of going off on a tangent, I'd say that's because consumers have transitioned from using computing devices to create things to using them to passively consume things. That is not progress. :(

But to make modern consumer computing devices with as troublesome a set of ideas as a PC would be silly

And yet Android is not 'silly'. Nor are some of the other linux based mobile OSes that are starting to appear from ubuntu and firefox etc.

I would have to sign up for a Microsoft Live account, and then use that to log into Windows.

No. That is false. You can use the app store perfectly fine while logged into a local or domain windows account. You do not have log into windows with a microsoft account to use the app store.

Had they made it so I could browse...

http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

Browse to your hears content.

and download apps without requiring a log-in (only requiring an account for paid applications so it could be tied to one subscription) I would have been much more open to Microsoft's implementation.

Yes. You do have to log into the store to download stuff. So what? All that needs is a working email address. You have to have an apple id to get free stuff from ios app store. A google account to use the play store. A steam account to use steam. An account with GoG.com to download the free stuff from them. Etc. This is not some new Horror from microsoft.

Further, having an account means that even your 'free stuff' is tied to that account and can be trivially installed on all your computers; just as the Apple and Google and Steam stores work...

I just searched the web directly for the applications I was interested in

That's Great. I wouldn't want the app store to be the only way to get apps either. Its precisely why I don't use ios.

and bypassed the entire Windows 8 app infrastructure.

Yes. But you did it because you were GROSSLY misinformed about it. Not exactly a crowning achievement.

"Want an annual year end stock report for 2014 taxes? Type 'annual_stock_report 2014'
etc."

Want to file your payroll taxes for january? "Type "file_payroll_taxes 01 2014"

Want to view your receiables type "list_receivables"
Want to filter that list to anything over 3 months?
Type "list_receivables filtered to aged>90 days" ? Was I close? Probably not close enough that I just got what I wanted.

But put me in front of a GUI and I'll find them efficienltly enough; no training required.

"Eliminating the GUI eliminated huge amounts of complexity and flattened the learning curve.

I doubt that very much.

But there are some truly excellent off-the-shelf point of sale systems (the restaurant industry for example has some great ones). Most of the really 'terrible ones' out there these days are usually terrible because they're layered on 20 years of previous systems, and are windows 7 layers on top of windows 95 wrappers of OS/2 terminal apps.

The good ones today, usually integrate with off-the-shelf accounting packages which while more complicated than yours are widely used and you can easily hire people who already know them; or can send them to 3rd party training if really necessary.

Not that there is anything even slightly wrong with your small business or anything like that; it works for you. I just think your wrongly critical of what's available.

The curated app store only carries "modern" apps. Desktop applications need not apply. A case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...

I agree, and said as much in my post.

The point i was making was that even though the new UI sucked, it and the app store underneath was all bolted on top of exactly the sort of new installer solution the original poster was asking "why doesn't it exist".

Had they gotten the modern UI right, it might have already taken it place as the default and preferred way to get such apps. As you said though... defeat from the jaws of victory.

However, modern apps are pretty much just 'apps' in windows 10. So it may all yet work out in the end.

Take your pick.

A curated app store funded by the sales of paid apps.
Or download.com funded by ads and the bundling of CRAP.
Or you can visit the developers website directly, but its hard to 'discover' things this way.

If you don't want to give the app store a fake name and a working email address, fine. Use one of the other 2 methods. And if you use skype or onedrive or office365 or windows phone/tablet, or xbox live you already have one.

(and likely the credit card number)

Pretty sure you don't.