Unfortunately, voting is not science. 99% of scientist used to say that "the Earth was flat", that "the Earth was the center of the Universe", that... All proved wrong.

I'm not arguing one way or the other on global warming but rather that having agreement is not a good metric.

By the way, I'm not a global warming skeptic. In fact, I'm pro-warming, it's better than the alternative of global cooling!

What he meant was tenure is being eliminated so all professors who make silly predictions like this will be out of a job. Pundits are also going to be unemployed.

Factory and lab production are far more energy intensive than natural production.

We graze livestock on pasture. Solar energy in. Meat out. Very minimal use of petroleum products or other manmade energy. It's a simple easy system that uses our available resources efficiently.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum you have Confinement Animal Feeding Operations, factories and laboratory production which require enormous inputs of petroleum products and energy for powering machinery, producing fertilizer, transporting raw materials, moving air, water and wastes, etc. All of these are energy intensive production.

The former, pasture raising, lets it self well to small farms. The latter, CAFOs, factories and labs, are the domain of Big Business and central economic controls.

Get involved in food production and this all becomes very obvious.

Food manufactured in a lab for factory production. This is even further down the spectrum of the absurdity of processed foods and the exact opposite of what we need. This will be far more energy intensive and economically controlled.

Stick with natural, pasture raised meat.

It doesn't matter that CS6 includes all those other software packages. I only use Illustrator and Photoshop. I don't need or want all those other things. They're a waste of money, time and disk space. I shed on Adobe, cutting the package to just what I use. Adobe's move a subscription model means I won't bother upgrading ever again. When I am finally forced to buy new software because the current software won't work on new hardware then I'll buy from Adobe's competition.

No, I pay for an upgrade about every three to six years and the upgrade is only around $400 to $600 so the $400 quote was much more reasonable than your overpriced quote.

"it's easy to see that, over a long enough timeline, and with the right financial model in place, the companies providing those services stand to benefit even more than they did with boxed software."

Not really. Adobe stands to lose a lot of customers. There are alternatives to all of their software. Adobe's move just makes look more closely to the competition.

"This only hurts pirates, not customers."

Wrong. Many customers want to be able to work without an active internet connection. Many places internet connections are not available, not reliable and slow. Now customers will just not bother upgrading or buying. This loses customers from Adobe.

Pirates will run with the old versions selling those or they'll crack the new versions. The pirate customers won't care either way. This only hurts customers and then in the long run Adobe and their stockholders.

Flying cars are a really bad idea. As shown by the accident reports the vast majority of people can not handle driving in two dimensions. Add another dimension and the accident rate will skyrocket. Even with autopilots they will be dangerous. Add altitude and speed and the death rate will climb even more dramatically. Perhaps we should consider this evolution at work. Call the car "Darwin".

Your cost estimates are too high. Most users don't upgrade all the time. I haven't upgrade for years. The software I have does the job I need. No need to keep upgrading at a significant cost. No need for subscriptions. Adobe is just limiting their market to a smaller group. Most of us won't bother buying or upgrading so that means our kids won't learn to use Adobe's software either. Adobe loses.

Or you could go play with the fence energizer...

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2007/07/23/calibrating-pain-fence-testing/

Farmville deluxe and with real bacon!

What we really need is to get rid of the politicians that can't understand the Constitution & Amendments. Feinstein is near the top of the list with her failure to comprehend the 1st Amendment and 2nd Amendment as well as the basic concept of limits on government.

By all means, become a business person and start a competitor as a means of learning. Great project. Hey, you could Kickstart it!

Seriously though, the problem with starting up a competitor is lack of recognition. As a project creator why would I bother using you rather than Kickstarter? That is the first question you must ask yourself. A slight reduction in the fee doesn't do me any good if your service has less chance of making my project funding happen. And that is the reality - competitors are tiny and don't have much recog.

I get contacted by about one startup a week trying to be the next KickStarter. None of them are as well done as KickStarter. None of them have any base. Most are one man operations and I don't have any faith they'll succeed. As a project creator I need them to succeed so I can succeed. Catch-23.