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Comment: Re:New phone every month? (Score 0) 329

by aurispector (#43694245) Attached to: The Days of Cheap, Subsidized Phones May Be Numbered

WHO doesn't need a smartphone? For anyone who works and needs email and web access it's a must-have. I could not function anywhere near as efficiently without one. Phone, email, scheduling/calender/contacts all go everywhere with me. Google maps is extremely useful on the road. It's not a ball and chain, it's the key to freedom - otherwise I would be stuck at a desk all day.

Comment: Re:Topsoil-based fuels are wrongheaded in every wa (Score 5, Insightful) 238

by aurispector (#43262409) Attached to: 'Energy Beet' Power Is Coming To America

Note that it's a government grant, not private industry. This is basically political patronage; whatever people running it will be contributing heavily to whatever political party was responsible for the grant. If sugar beets were a viable fuel source someone would be doing it already.

This just shifts the problem from one of directly increasing world corn (and therefore food) prices by diverting corn production to fuel to one of indirectly increasing world food priced by diverting farmland from food production to fuel production.

The worst part is that large scale farming has a significant environmental impact in terms of pesticide and fertilizer use as well as runoff into waterways. We don't gain much benefit from carbon reductions and a lot of costs from the farming itself.

It's a dead end and everyone knows it. Political hypocrisy at it's finest.

Comment: Re:No (Score 0, Flamebait) 456

By every measure the Iraq war was a screaming success. Saddam hanged, their military de-fanged and a regional force for totalitarianism neutered. The surge worked, despite democratic hand wringing to the contrary, including obama and kerry.

The democrats will never admit as such, so they and their media sycophants continue to bang the drum that the war was a failure. It wasn't and history will reflect that.

Comment: Re:Typo in summary (Score 1) 183

Corporations operate under laws created by government. They do wield influence and most people are incredibly stupid, Hence government needs to be limited.

There is corruption and waste in every organization. Concentration power in the hands of the government is simply asking for politics to be included in that toxic mix.

Comment: Re:Why government? (Score 1) 194

Speaking as a US citizen, you are of course alluding to the American blood spilled in china during WW2 helping to fight the japanese invaders?

Besides, little things like representative democracy matter in the long run. China is a dictatorship and their history is no excuse for totalitarianism or aggressive behavior above and beyond normal competitiveness in the world of business. Illegal activity in western nations generally gets exposed by the press and corrected.

  In China it's state sanctioned. They're thieves actively stealing anything they can, particularly intellectual property. All one needs to do is look at the company they keep internationally: North Korea, Iran, Russia, Syria, Cuba. Venezuela - all countries with a strong bias toward dictatorship.

Comment: Re:Yeah, let's do that... (Score 2) 235

by aurispector (#43189727) Attached to: Smartest Light Bulbs Ever, Dumbest Idea Ever?

What we need is a system whereby simple consumer products can made "smart ready". Clearly every light bulb does not need to be on the internet, at least at present; it's a waste of bandwidth and merely another source of interference for existing wifi networks. A better place to start might be smart sockets that use existing wiring to network the house.. That would be modular allowing homeowners only to change the sockets that they really need. It would also avoid the boondoggle of expensive whole house systems.

Comment: Re:Internet = Utility (Score 1) 222

by aurispector (#43077595) Attached to: 'Bandwidth Divide' Could Bar Some From Free Online Courses

Deregulation worked great for the airline industry. Prices have dropped to something like 1/5 of what they were a few decades ago. You cannot innovate by increased regulation. A healthy, competitive free market almost always brings lower prices and increased consumer choice.

Comment: Re:Funding isn't automatic now (Score 0) 522

by aurispector (#43049717) Attached to: How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech

Nonsense. It's called "negotiation", something obama says he's willing to do but never actually does. Instead he simply blames republicans for everything and people eat it up.

We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem: see "Laffer Curve". A slightly smaller increase in spending is not even close to a solution.

Comment: Re:I say cut the F-35 (Score 1) 484

by aurispector (#42990155) Attached to: There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon

And what pressures exist to prevent fraud and waste? The TVA has had it's share of abuses over the years. Government programs and agencies simply go begging to the taxpayer if they don't meet their budgets. It happens over and over and the the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.

The biggest problem with government programs is that they generally require an act of congress (and all the politics this implies) in order to change something that's wrong. In a free and competitive market, the consumer at least has a choice as to where they spend their money. If one product is too expensive or is undesirable for some other reason one can simply buy a competitors product, or not buy at all.

With government run programs you generally have no choices at all and if you decide not to pay, police will eventually come to arrest and jail you for non payment of taxes. How is this an improvement?

Comment: Re:I say cut the F-35 (Score 2, Insightful) 484

by aurispector (#42988757) Attached to: There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon

Although the F-35 is the poster child for poor procurement processes, the simple fact of the matter is that entitlement spending dwarfs defense spending.

Finding waste in government spending is easy. It's present everywhere, all the time. For every egregious example of waste in military spending you are guaranteed to find a proportional amount in any other program.

The only effective way to control it is through competition in a free market. The more a given market comes under government control, the less competition and freedom exists and the more wasteful it becomes. It's human nature.

Comment: Re:Cue the (Score 1) 299

by aurispector (#42790413) Attached to: FCC Proposal Would Cover the US With Public Wi-Fi

I fail to see how internet access is so important that the .gov needs to be in the business. You could similarly argue that .gov/union control has killed education.

Less choice in any market is always worse. Put the .gov in charge and it will take an act of congress to change anything. Those idiots can't seem to add, much less promulgate good internet access.

Let the market do it's thing..

It was all so different before everything changed.

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