So since William Randolph Hearst demonized Hemp and forever tied to to Pot, it's been illegal to grow in the USA. You do realize that in most of the free world, you can walk into a grocery store and still buy products made from Coca leaf?

And yet in the "land of the free" almost everything is banned. Except guns. And you need those in case the government "takes away your rights". I hope you see the tremendous irony there.

See if it's available on Netflix or something, but go watch a movie called "Tucker" -- it's the (mostly) true story about a guy with a lot of good ideas about making a good car, who started up right after WWII -- and the Big Three colluded with government to put the guy out of business.

50 Tucker Torpedos were built before the factory was shuttered, and of that number about 43 survive to this day -- he built a great car (i.e, mousetrap), but the world wasn't able to beat a path to his door before he was forced to close.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Musk has been able to survive this long, and Big Oil just hasn't shut him down. Of course, Big Oil owns most of the battery tech, and the Big Three aren't quite the powerhouses they used to be, plus Musk is starting out with enough cash to buy his own Senators, and I'm sure he's not as naive as Preston Tucker was.. So perhaps Tesla has a chance.

Terminator: "Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range."
Shopkeeper: "hey, just what you see here pal..."
Terminator: "Uzi nine millimeter."
Shopkeeper: "You really know your guns. This baby's perfect for home defense..."

So... as long as the government comes after dissidents, one at a time, it's OK. As long as your rights are taken away, one at a time, it's OK. As long as you are oppressed SLOWLY, that's fine. Face it. America is sheeple. No one is ever going to take up arms against the government, and if someone does, he's easily dismissed as a kook by the media, and killed in a hail of gunfire and we all cheer on TV that we've been "saved" from this guy by the long arm of oppression.

People keep claiming that they want to keep their guns because they need to protect themselves if their rights are taken away by the government...

HELLO???? At what point do you start defending yourselves? Your rights are being slowly stripped away and have been over the course of the last 30 years, and nobody does anything?

Even when the Stormtroopers are patrolling the streets, and curfew after dark is in place and people are afraid to speak against the government, or talk on their phones, with your neighbors turning each other in for 'treason'... you'll all still be sitting on your guns waiting for the government to take away your rights.

There's quite a few typos in this interview. Did the editors READ it, or did they just cut-n-paste into the "post" form? Can anyone advise what differentiates Slashdot from an amateur's blog?

The "congresspeople" prattling on about how it's "unfair" to brick & mortar stores should shove it. How about when you buy something that's not a tangible product, like an MP3 from the iTunes store?

Meanwhile, trillions of dollars of transactions happen every day in the stock market, and NONE OF THAT IS TAXED.

So, just so we're clear: middle-class == screwed by paying more taxes when they buy stuff online; rich investors == even more rich 'cause they don't really pay taxes of any sort anyhow, then complain bitterly if their income (via investments) is taxed at 15% while the rest of us pay 30% because we actually work for a living.

Seriously; screw them all. Perhaps it's time to enforce our second amendment rights. No taxation without representation.

And believe me, we (the 99%) are NOT represented by the government.

GE paid zero corporate income taxes. ZERO. On a company that continuously reports record profits. They "offshore" most of their money so they don't even have to pay taxes on the interest they earn. Exxon Mobil plays the same games, but they're in an even better position because they receive subsidies from the government, so their taxes are actually negative (the government gives them money), on top of their record profits.

My guess is that the larger online retailers will have to start playing these games as well. Amazon for sure, will probably charge us (the buyer) taxes, and then offshore the income, so that those taxes never get to the states they should.

Therefore, Amazon will actually get more income from every product sold, and that money will go right into Bezo's pocket. Because he has lawyers and accountants to make that money vanish into his mansion(s), without ever reporting it to the government.

And if not, it's fairly easy to buy a few senators and congressmen and make the problem go away.

So, if Republicans supported this bill, and they signed Grover's tax pledge, is Grover going to go after these people come the next election? Or is Grover going to look they other way, since this doesn't affect the elite and large corporations?

But the American people are sheeple. As long as you continue to feed them their daily dose of Honey Boo Boo and American I-Dull, they will continue to scream "Yeah. Murica Number One!", go about their dull lives and take whatever crap to elite feel they can continue to crush them with.

And if any Americans do start to rise up, the government will have an act of "terrorism" to keep the people frightened of the boogeyman, and tell them to duct tape their windows and doors and we'll all comply.

Unfortunately; America is bunch of whiney, spineless do-nothings who've had it easy for so long, they can't even see they're being squeezed into slavery and servitude to the elite.

But hey, you made your bed. Now sleep in it.

Trying so hard to still be relevant.

He's trying hard to sell Balmer's terrible mistakes. Bill, I hope your money still isn't tied up in Microsoft Stock, as in 10 years it's gonna be over for you.

I can create documents on my phone. It's called a bluetooth keyboard and you can get one on Amazon for as little as $20 for a Chinese apple knock-off. (So cheap, I keep one at home, and one at work, so I don't have to carry the keyboard, just my phone).

Bill, you're smoking crack and you've missed the boat again.

And meantime, 50 years later, Moller is exactly NOWHERE.
The dude's concepts have been on the cover of Popular Mechanics since... what... 1972? And he has yet to even sell one flying car.

Even the safety crap: The electronics fail eventually and leads to unpredictable results. For example: I can't use the cruise control in my car anymore because a transistor behind the dash that runs the speedometer failed. As a result, my speedometer is off by about 20%, i.e., if I'm going 80, it reads 60. This also causes the odometer to read wrong, I'm guessing that the car has about 170,000 on it, but the odo reads 145,000.

If I attempt to use Cruise control, the engine surges in a scarey fashion, as the tach readings don't match the car speed, and the stupid computer can't do anything about the false data it's getting so the car actually TRIES to get me into an accident and/or blow itself up. Manually, everything is OK, I just drive keeping up with traffic and ignore the speedo...

I only want safety tech if I can turn it off when things go bad after 100,000 miles -- it's amazing how badly a car will operate when one tiny sensor is feeding the car bad data.

If you wanna see something hilarious, unplug the sensor coming out of the airbox (the MAF). Your car will drive 30 feet and then stall. Brilliant. And no way to get around that? No way to limp to a service station or dealership?

Screw that, I'm going back to a Carb.

I believe the national anthem to the USA contains a line about "bombs bursting in air" -- terrorist activity no doubt. Perhaps we need to arrest everyone in the USA...

Dude; have you not been following the last 30 years of elections? When was the last time *anyone* running for an office actually represented *you*?

Campaigns now cost millions of dollars, even for local elections. The only people that can run are people with "connections" to money, meaning they are already friends of the elite, and therefore, represent the elite. They are not interested in, nor do they represent the common people.

And never mind big, federal elections, We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars needed. The bar has been raised so high that no common man can ever run for a Congressional Office.

So really, what's your "vote" doing for you? You can vote for representative (D), who represents the elite, or representative (R), who represents the elite. Neither choice is for you. So your vote has already been taken away -- they just didn't take it away in a form you recognize!!

I'm sorry to say that the real world isn't like the movies. It doesn't take a stormtrooper in a black uniform to take away your rights, it can be done in a much more subtle way, in a way you'll end up going along with, and NOT rebelling against.

And in fact, you'll end up working *for* the oppression of other people's rights. And all the time, your guns will sit idle, because you trust your government while they continue to screw you.