The Jones family of northwest Arkansas is rich from their trucking company. They are well known amongst people who follow the trucking industry. How many unstable people are passionate about trucking compared to how many unstable people are passionate about bitcoin?

I'm not saying that everyone who uses bitcoin is unstable - most aren't. But of the people who are unstable, more will be iinterested in bitcoin, Marilyn Manson, and Ron Paul than in Walmart, Jewel Kilcher, and Marco Rubio.

Both the reporter thought Mozilla was involved and also people posting here said they saw the headline and got mad at Mozilla. Out of our very small sample, we know more than one person thought it was Mozilla's doing, and it hurt Mozilla's reputation.

You might wonder much likelihood of confusion is allowed under the law. Google "moron in a hurry" for the answer. If you're selling cans of Coke at a garage sale, only a moron in hurry would think for a second that your sale of warm Coke was endorsed by Coca-Cola, so that would be allowed.

Ps, I do understand your point of view too, and that's a reasonable argument. I'm just saying Firefox also has a reasonable argument because it's about "likelihood of consumer confusion" and in this case we know it did in fact cause consumer confusion.

TFA says when the reporter saw it, they asked Mozilla about the deal. Only after Mozilla said "what the hell... We didn't know about this" did the reporter ask Dell. So at least to the reporter, there was in fact consumer confusion, which is the primary test under trademark law.

You low how commercials and labels so often indicate "not affiliated with ..."? There is a reason for that. Had Dell labeled it "Installation of Firefox, a free browser not affiliated with Dell" that would be different.

Note that in your example, if you posted on Craigslist, "I will install Windows for $200" it is unlikely that a) anyone would think Microsoft was involved in posting your or and b) that it would do Microsoft any harm. Thus, you'd be allowed to use the Windows trademark since it wouldn't result in consumer confusion.

It looks Mozilla made a deal with Dell to sell Firefox.
Given Mozilla is dependent on the goodwill of the free software movement, there are actual damages from that false implication of affiliation. Because "likelihood of consumer confusion" figures prominently in trademark law, that's one reasonably strong legal argument. I'm not a lawyer, I just play one in court. Actual lawyers may express better arguments too.

The main thing in trademark law is likelihood of consumer confusion. The first thing the reporter did was ask MOZILLA about the deal. When Mozilla said "wtf", the reporter asked Dell. If a tech reporter thought it looked like implied affiliation, some customers probably will to. You can't use someone's trademarked name to falsely imply affiliation.

If you sell a Coke at your garage sale, nobody is going to think that Coca-Cola Inc is involved in that, so there is no problem.

I can think of ONE purchaser who would pay $100, and they'd buy 100,000 copies at $100 each.

You may remember a few years ago advertisements did NOT say "T-Mobile is better than AT&T". Instead they compared themselves to "the leading brand". Only fairly recently was it decided that such a comparison was not trading on the good reputation of the target and not implying affiliation, and was therefore allowed.

The tests is whether the speaker is a) attempting to tie themselves to the trademark's good reputation or b) implying an affiliation where none exists.

In this case, the first thing the reporter did was contact MOZILLA to ask about the deal they had with Dell. The reporter figured the Mozilla had made a deal to sell Firefox through Dell. That sounds like an implication of affiliation, and a false one. It arguably makes Firefox look bad, as though they are doing something that many of their users and developers would object to. Almost like a false flag operation, making it look like Mozilla is involved. That's not allowed.

> This is the DOE *prediction* is for 2018

Finally you said something honest! All this time you've been saying 11 cents, comparing it to the 3.5 cent actual retail price of natural gas. I'm glad you're now being a little more transparent - some people PREDICT that one day the cost to build new solar plant may come down. Other people predict Bitcoin will make them rich. I'm not betting on either.

Nanosolar scammed / lost half a billion of our money, Mt Gox did the same. Similarly for Solyndra and all the other bitcoin scams / losses. The one difference between Bitcoin and solar is that Bitcoin is available 24 hours a day.

Your link says that's the predicted cost to the utility to build a solar plant. That is, not including distribution costs, etc.
The actual retail price is 35 cents, compared to 3.5 for natural gas.

Even your link says "solar electricity doesn’t really compete" with other sources.

You keep posting that, a blogger who starts his post with "change all the numbers, because solar is way more effective than the manufacturers rate their systems to be". That blogger WISHES solar was only twice as expensive. The DOE price survey says solar customers actually pay ten times as much.

DOE says the national average is 35 cents.
I don't know where you got 11 cents. Is that the marginal cost at 1PM on a sunny day in Southern California? Is that the panel manufacturing cost, ignoring installation, trackers, distribution, etc .?

The only two citations I see in that article are a) the solar energy association and b) the head of a solar company. If their claim is in any way hinted at by any DOE report , it's too bad they didn't cite that report. I have a guess as to why they didn't cite anything. I wouldn't be surprised if DOE had run a projection on the scenario that taxpayers might subsidize solar more, so one person using solar would pay less because his neighbors are effectively paying the outrageous cost. They could have also done a "what if" analysis of what would happen IF solar electric magically became feasible.(Starting with 24 / 365 sunshine).

You don't need any energy storage as long as your base power can supply all your needs. Period. If nuclear, hydro, natural gas, and coal can provide all of power, you don't need to store ie solar. Which is good, becuase there is no feasible means of storage. How much wind or solar you have has ZERO effect on that. Sometimes wind will make no power, either because it's not windy enough, or it's too windy. So you need the reliable sources to provide 100% during those times.

I see you've "rebutted" the DOE price survey by pointing to a blogger as your source. LOL. Garfield, the cartoon cat, says your're mistaken.

Since you brought up the actual numbers, I figured I'd add those in. So we have:

Nuclear 7 cents
Natural Gas 3.5 cents
        --------
Solar 35 cents (10AM - 4 PM only)
Wind 5 cents (when wind is between 30-40 MPH)

The two groups are separate because the top two are base power - reliable sources available all the time.
The bottom two are supplementary power - they are available SOMETIMES, and when they are available you can reduce the generation from the base power plants.