I do my research from my recipe database, which is synced to my phone. Usually this is while having lunch out somewhere.

It would be more efficient to do this research at home, where the supplies are. Because no sensor, outside of many-$K models, will tell you if this or that cheese is still edible. It's not just it's not moldy yet - you also need to consider if it is dry like a rock. (Dental implants cost more than a new bar of cheese.)

Cameras will not peer through the glass of bottles with herbs and will not tell you how much is remaining. It is a challenge to measure the remaining volume even if you are in business of making sensors for huge tanks full of stuff. Making a sensor that is cheap enough to be disposable is not possible with the current technology and the current wallet of an average customer.

And no, I won't re-buy smoked paprika and white pepper when I use them up, "just in case" I make a recipe that requires them again in the next year.

I see. You are unwilling to spend $3 on a bottle of pepper that is always usable and lasts forever, but you are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that will not last more than a few years and will not be sufficiently reliable from day zero.

Large warehouses do maintain incremental inventory records by integrating input and output. But periodically they have to close the doors of the warehouse and to count everything, to reset the calculations. You can do the same - keep track of additions and expenses, and from time to time you open the cabinets up and physically check how much sugar is in this box, how much vegetable oil is in that bottle, and so on. I cannot think of a technology that would report all that while being so cheap that you can afford it. Food is too numerous in kind and too variable in state, shape, color, smell and every other parameter.

If I had room to space things out, pan and zoom cameras would be awesome.

Perhaps you need a fisheye camera and a LED light source inside the cabinet (or the refrigerator.) If you want it, why to deny yourself this toy - go ahead and build it! I do such things all the time (the WAF in this house is unbounded.)

Too bad nobody invents anything anymore. We'll never be able to have a fridge that can tell whats in it without someone having to scan bar codes all the time.

That's not the problem. I, or millions of others, can easily invent a jug that reports how much of the content is remaining. Are you willing to pay extra $1 for a $4 jug of milk with this function? And then throw that $1 into trash? When the economy is dying, jobs are disappearing, and we are transitioning from one recession right into another? Soon you will have all the time in the world to stare into your empty refrigerator.

every Sunday I bring my lovely wife a bouquet of fresh roses

How many rose bushes have you personally killed over those 20 years? Why do you hate them so much? :-)

I personally leave all the harmless vegetation where it belongs - in the ground. If some woman doesn't like that, it's her own problem.

It's far more useful to know what to buy, rather than to know what you already have. Those are different things. Besides, the refrigerator is not the only place where you keep food supplies. You may need salt, juice, oatmeal, pasta, rice, beans... lots of stuff is NOT in the refrigerator. Do you plan to install pan and zoom cameras in the pantry and in all the cabinets?

The best tool for food shopping is ... the shopping list. You scribble an item in whenever you remember about it, and when you are in the store you have the complete list. You don't need to do research in the store - it is neither convenient nor reliable, and besides you probably don't have time to contemplate things while in the store - you have many other places to go to.

The past 60 years were special because at least during major parts of this time the music economy *did* generate enough income to live and create (not to be rich) for music beyond the mainstream.

The past 60 years were probably the peak of human labor efficiency. A single worker could feed the entire family, as I understand. There was plenty of cash in the economy.

The efficiency continues to grow, but the human involvement drops. Tomorrow *everything* will be done by robots, and humans - having no meaningful jobs - will be what, extinct? They sure won't have spare change for music. The state of things that you prefer can exist only in a wealthy society. I think we are past that; the future holds only a high caste of select few engineers and managers that take care of robotic factories, and a low caste of "useless." (How a human can compete with a computer?) We are almost there; but for now, since we don't have metal robots to do the work, we use flesh and blood robots, also known as Chinese workers. They aren't as cheap, but they are functionally equivalent.

At least the link is easy to hit ;-) Not that there is any reason to. NSFW and such.

this would be a major change in the way our society has treated its artists at least in the decades after WW2

Why would that period of time be any special, compared to the way our society treated creators for 5,000 years of recorded history prior?

Every service will be paid exactly as much as the customer is willing to pay and the performer is willing to do it for. I can understand why a group of young boys cannot live on their music: because they aren't producing enough value! For example, the group of three spends a year and makes one CD that plays for 45 minutes. 1000 people in the world bought one, bringing in about $5K in revenue. Is this good or bad?

It is good because it is the true value of their product. I, for example, would not want their CD (I'd rather send the money to Rammstein, they at least know a thing or two about notes.) I may be wrong at that, having not heard the panicky crowd, but I'm comfortable in my ignorance :-)

This means that the band is simply not making enough public good to ask for an equivalent amount of public good back, in form of food, housing, etc. (what we normally call "money" as a shortcut.) Those guys may be OK in what they do, but they aren't doing enough of it. Perhaps there is no way to do more; as you said, they can only tour one city at a time, and they are limited to German-speaking countries. Well, I already mentioned some artists that overcame this little problem - and opened up a large market for themselves, a market that they cannot saturate even if they are on a tour every day of their lives.

The crew from Airplane should get a job. Their music may be nice, but I do not expect to get paid and live in luxury just because I whistle a tune for a minute every morning. People have to work hard to earn their living. Other people work from 9 to 5 moving boxes, driving trucks, welding metal. Musicians on tours work just as hard (I witnessed that firsthand.) But working hard is not enough; you also must do something that enough people consider useful.

Dirt and concrete floors are FAR more expensive than the best Persian rug. Just check out the prices of real estate. Those floors have to be attached to something...

In general you are right, though. "Worth having" == "optional, luxury item that one can easily do without." Optional items are cheap if their only utility value is small - but not zero. Companies that violate this rule lose in the market - nobody wants to buy their *useful* products for the asked price. (Perhaps MS' Surface is going down that route.) On the other hand, luxury items, like old paintings, or those hand-made rugs, command high price because they are unique, regardless of how much value you get out of that painting by Renoir.

Music is not finite. Live performances of a specific artist may be finite (nobody lives forever, especially bands) - but recordings of that music have no replication cost, no deterioration, and the only factor that keeps the price above zero is convenience, gratitude, and laws. Music recordings will never be a luxury item that people must fight each other to get. This leaves it in the "nice to have if I can be bothered" category - in this case, in a bargain bin, priced to sell for $1.

Yes. But things that are "worth having" are usually priced lower than things that you "must have."

IMO, very few pieces of music qualify for "must have." Consequently, "avant chello" - that may be had as a curiosity - may well be somewhere among free samples and free newspapers.

To be honest, I don't know, I am just trying to find some optimism here.

Understood. But just for sake of argument:

Of course it should be. But still somehow here we are today

Yes. That's the definition of malfunction. You don't change your approach to an essential device if the device decided to quit on you. It remains the device, and it needs to be repaired or replaced with a new one. If a fuse blows I do not start learning to live in darkness (that would be a compromise) - I fix the fuse and whatever caused it to blow.

"What compromise can you suggest here?" -- Restore liberty, restore the Bill of Rights, kick out the corruption [...]

I don't see a compromise here. Those are your wishes. Why the government should do any of these things? Who or what forces it to do so? All three branches of the government are now under the same roof, and the fourth one (the media) has been bought out.

I guess government can either do this the easy way or the hard way.

There are other factors at play. The USA is facing an imminent economic collapse because of chronic mismanagement and because the level of consumption does not even nearly match the level of production. I very much doubt that an averaged american even works enough to buy his daily bread. His food comes borrowed abroad, in form of free money that the USA prints to finance the ever-growing international trade (and the inflation of the USD.) Technically speaking, the USA can feed itself - this is one of few areas where the country is good. But the food cannot be produced without fertilizers, fuel, machinery, water, power, and it cannot be delivered without oil and trucks. Lacking those, the agricultural output will drop to the levels of 19th century - and we don't even have enough horses and other domestic cattle to pull the plow, except Amish.

As soon as the collapse happens, the government will be forced to establish martial law and a rigid system of food distribution (for those lucky enough to be under such a system.) Therefore, what's the point of trading political power for being nice if a few years down the road the government will still be forced to do the unpopular move?

But even if we pretend that no collapse is ever going to happen and everything is just peachy, let's consider why the government would want to step back and relax the fascist rules and regulations that it imposed on the country? The only reason is to prevent the uprising. (With the collapse out of the picture, the oppressive rule would be the only cause.) What is the upside and what is the downside for the government if it doesn't step back? The upside is that the government gets absolute control over the country. The downside is that some troublemakers with guns are killed. Hey, why is this a downside? It's an advantage; we don't need no stinking troublemakers here. So what is the real downside then? Bad PR abroad? Hardly a concern when you sit on a good stash of nuclear weapons. Attrition among the peasants and grunts of your own army? Hah, that's what they are here for - to die for their masters. Some shooting around, some cities ravaged? Big deal, who needs those cities anyway? On the other hand, a lot of "disadvantaged folks" (a.k.a. ghetto dwellers) will be summarily destroyed, cleaning the slate for the new society where work is not a luxury and not a privilege, it's the back-breaking duty, and FSM forbid you slack in that.

So if you think cynically enough you see that the government *wants* the civil war, as long as they can win it easily enough. This will scrap the old USA and will create a completely new country; the term USSA is not new, but perhaps it will be fitting. This country will be renewed (the current society of slackers is hopeless) and everyone will be given his daily food (just like in USSR.) This new country will be actually viable, for a while, because 100 million free laborers are bound to make something useful, after all. The old USD will be abandoned; its current holders will be advised to procure a paper and wood based handheld aeronautical toy and launch it on a windy day. The new currency will be probably modeled after USSR, such as it will be for domestic use only, and posession of foreign currency will be a serious crime. Members of the current government will all get positions in the new ruling class ("nomenklatura") and will be living at expense of peons.

When the opponent wants a fight you don't have too many choices. You can give up - and then the other side enslaves you, or you can accept the fight and see what happens. The government's advantage is that none of those bureaucrats have to actually fight. They only make speeches that denounce domestic terrorism, and the pocket MSM creates any visual that fits the story (see "The Running Man" - we have that technology for a long time already.)

You may say that I read and watched too much SciFi. Guilty as charged. However not all those futuristic societies are thought up by writers just to earn a quick buck. Most of them follow the well known rules and principles by which human societies evolve.

Face it. If the military goes nuts and wants to seize power, there's nothing an assault rifle or three hundred million assault rifles is going to do to stop them.

You don't even need an "assault rifle", whatever it may be. You have 100,000,000 rifles in the country. Let's say only 10% of them will be ever fired at the enemy. Let's say only 10% of those shots will hit the target. What do we have as result? The one million army is wiped out, down to the last man. That's the current size of the US Army, counting all the non-combat personnel and discounting all the desertions that are bound to happen.

Note that it doesn't matter what happens to the shooter. He can be killed on the spot; but more likely he will get away, to fight another day. I don't even mention shooting from a well prepared position that allows the shooter the preplanned escape and at the same time leaves the position mined. The score then could be 10 to 1, with the one escaping without a scratch. The reason for that is that the rebels will have the initiative; they don't have to fight here and now. The soldiers will have to go where told, position themselves in the streets and do their patrols there, in the open. They will have no initiative, and they will be defenseless against a man with a .223 hundreds of yards away, in a maze of buildings and alleyways and basements and roofs and everywhere in between. How many troops will it take to search a city block in NYC? What is the chance of them finding a hidden rifle hung in a garbage shute? Even if they are lucky, what is the chance of matching the rifle to any inhabitant of that city block? (Gloves are cheap, and they can be easily destroyed after use.) You don't have to look like Rambo either; an old, one-legged and one-eyed man may be the one who did the shot; or a 14 y/o girl, or a fat matron, or a man with a briefcase and in a business suit. There is just no way to tell.

The government is not your negotiating partner. It is your tool, your slave. It shouldn't have any interests of its own. If your vacuum cleaner doesn't work you don't negotiate the new terms with it, you throw it out and get a new one.

all this military claptrap is a f-cking waste of money

It is the side effect of the government forming a society within the society - and now having its own interests. The military and helicopters protect that privileged society. What do you do with your computer if it gets a virus? Do you negotiate with it about how many your files it may overwrite per day, or how often it may crash the system?

Conflict is expensive, and often slows down progress.

Conflict is the only way out of many dead end situations. Imagine that you are a slave who is abused, and your owner is living happily, spending fruits of your labor. What compromise can you suggest here? He gives you one free hour per month, and in return you do what? You have no goods to bargain with because you are not in control of anything.

"more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick"

Countries have done many mobilizations in the course of last few centuries. In each case all they got were draftees who were "more likely to shoot himself in the leg and shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick." How long did it take to train them? Not long at all, especially if they wanted to learn. A volunteer will be very eager to learn because he knows that his life is on the line; otherwise he wouldn't become a volunteer; he'd just sell his weapons for food, and those who are more competent will use them. The civil war in the USA will not have a front, and there will be no territories to conquer and hold. It will be a war of attrition. The regular army will be sitting ducks just due to the nature of their job. A foot patrol, count four, leaves the base? A foot patrol, count three, returns. Repeat this day in and day out, and pretty soon all the army can do is to hole up behind the walls of the base and dare not venture out. This is the Afghanistan mode, one you can see today. Such surrounded troops are already defeated because they are not capable of doing their job. Eventually an enterprising water engineer finds a tap and poisons their water, and they are done with.

A person used to luxury, comfort and abundance...

Those qualities will be long gone by the time when armed resistance is necessary. Would you sit comfortably in front of the wall to wall TV screen and chew sweet chewables if your son, father or mother have been arrested or killed for just demanding their constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms?

not much smart money will be on the pasty-face keyboard warrior, even if he's got some fancy firearm

Urban combat is paradise for snipers. A pasty-faced keyboard warrior probably spent half his life training in various games, from Doom to Resistance and Halo and Far Cry. He probably knows more about tactics than an average grunt. Nothing stops him from taking a pot shot from half a mile away, from a roof of a building or wherever. If he leaves the weapon and just walks out, nobody can associate him with the shot - and there are enough deer rifles in the country for all personnel in the US Army, a hundred times over. (The weapon can be quickly hidden and recovered a few days later, when the hubbub dies down.)

A pasty-faced keyboard warrior would be useless if he and hundreds of his friends have to run a mile over the forbidding terrain, under enemy fire, and shoot accurately as they run. But this will not be the scenario. Keyboard warriors are not in any hurry, and there are very many of them. If we say there are 10 million people in the country who are willing to fight, they will have to hold a lottery because there aren't enough enemy soldiers for all of them (the rate is about one to ten.)

I have a small 12V compressor. Bought it a decade ago, and it is still as good as new. The price was $30 or $40, I don't remember. If you need compressed air often then it would be a good investment.

I'm pretty sure merely having insufficient funds on hand to pay a tax assessment isn't a criminal offense in California

No, you will not be incarcerated for that. However the state will seize and sell your house, your car, and everything else that you own (like your personal business.) It's called a lien. Your only remedy is to sell everything that you can't take with you, and leave the state.

even if it was, it would be an offense that occurred after the assessment.

That's not how FTB is treating this. They say it's a violation that occurred back in 2008, and you owe not only the tax but also the interest and penalties - even though nobody could have known about this ahead of time. That's why it's bizarre - it creates a punishment for no fault. But I guess robbing the rich is the SOP in this state.

But even if we say that FTB reneges and only wants that tax right now at the latest - where would an investor find this money? It's already invested elsewhere, often into something not very liquid, like a startup. You cannot take your investment back once you made it. If you have known about this tax in time you'd plan for it; but you didn't, and nobody did. This can create very painful situation for many people. Imagine that you bought a multi-year CD in 2012. What do you do now? You'd have to sell that CD at a huge loss, if you are lucky. If not - if, for example, the money is invested into an illiquid asset, like product development - you will be on the lam, lest you are content with being impoverished for no fault of yours.