More and more people are passing that point where everything on Facebook is indistinguishable from crap.

The key to trademark infringement is brand confusion in the minds of typical consumers. If it can be shown that my Team O'Geeks is not confused with Geek Squad, there is no damage to pursue.

Can't we just build nuclear plants? They're awesome. They'll provide cheap power for our kids and grandkids to enjoy.

All electric grids produce power that is not consumed off-peak. That is because most power generation cannot be easily cycled up and down (turned on and off) as load changes. Grids peak during the day, so capacity is designed accordingly. That means excess at night. There is NOTHING about the 'smart grid' that can reduce that waste.

5 is the stage where the lower class is no longer needed, which creates instability and unrest, which leads to revolution, which kills all the smarties, redistributes the wealth, back to Stage 3.

It's quite the other way. Apple gets 30% of what runs through their channel. What Apple gave the record companies was a means to continue fixing prices.

In 1998, L0phtCrack showed this to us on out pentiums, and we protected against it by changing the default hash to NTLMv2.

That read so much like "there's a car that runs on water, but the government banned it" that I assumed you were kidding. Boy was I surprised.

Why do so many people defend the free market in a case where the free market is not responsible? This is a result of forces that the argument you're making is specifically against.

GE wanted to shut down american ligth bulb plants so they can sell light bulbs with higher prices and higher margins made overseas. GE lobbies in favor of energy savings. Legislature outlaws light bulbs. GE complies with the laws and laughs all the way to the bank.

Are these the competitive forces you're looking for?

Most utilities are regulated. Those that are regulated provider cheaper power than their unregulated counterparts because their prices are based on average cost rather than marginal cost. The states that deregulated their power generation now have higher electric rates. This American belief that unchecked competition automatically produces cheaper products simply isn't true, especially with infrastructure.

It has nothing to do with subsidies; it has to do with regulated business delivering service at cost + 10% profit rather than at market price. Properly regulated utilities produce cheaper products than their unregulated ('competitive') counterparts.

The major gas providers agreed to standardize on different connectors for different types of liquefied gas (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) long ago.

Yet occasionally you still get a guy who manages to connect things that can't be and BOOM.

These results remind me of studies that showed correlation of academic performance with the presence and quantity of books in the home. The spurious conclusion was that more books would yield better grades.

The unfortunate truth is that the best predictor of your academic performance (statistically speaking, so dealing with large numbers and exceptions) is the academic performance your parents. Why? Smart parents are more likely to have smart kids. The converse is also true (as unpalatable as that may be).

The computer will not, cannot make you smarter, just as with books.

People avoid all four of these; none is as important as consequence. That is what is truly missing.

Nope. This has flim-flam written all over it. Solar is a subsidized word. Electric trains are great, but if we build them, their source will be nuclear.