Read history. First 13 years of the US was a confederacy. Look how that turned out.

I have been a big fan of Samsungs Rugby/Actives for years. I didn't care for Consumer Reports of a simulated pressure of five feet, which is an instant pressure on the phone, and have dropped my S7 Active in a pool and it works fine. I have nerve and balance issues so my phones go through hell. If IPhones can't handle that pressure how will they handle ASOC?

On the possibility we haven't discovered enough to understand a potentially infinite space-time, God might exist and we don't have the knowledge or ability to discover him. u_u

Zuckerberg: "All your face belong to us"

Game Economics are nothing like Real Economics. In games you can quit (in life that would be suicide) but outside of that necessities are not existent in a game. You do not have to buy the best gear or grind raids/pvp to achieve goals or to exist in the game. Those are things you impose on yourself by yourself or from pressure of others. In real life you have to have food, shelter and consumable water to survive, no matter what you or others think. You can believe you don't but in the end you will die or end up in the hands of people who know better. TVs, Computers, Cars, Laptops, Wagons, Knowledge are ultimately all societal ideals that are perceived to be necessary but are not for a human's survival. Money, virtual or backed by necessities is nothing but a representation of bartering which in the end is nothing but value equivalent trade. No new money has to enter a market. Money can dry up, it's called deflation which something has the US Fed needs to do before the Dollar becomes useless (ie by over-inflation which would be countered by reduction or stop of printing of new additional currency and raising of interest rates so the Fed can absorb money out of the market.) As long as people are fed and sheltered, success beyond that is highly a subjective ideal. Austerity isn't the issue, it's the fact you have different style economies, societies, and governments (private, public, gov) trying to share the identical virtual ticket to represent their economies. It's why the initial Confederacy that became the Federal Government of the US had to exist, to regulate the entities that reside within it's bounds to escape the exact same problems the EU is facing today, different taxes, economies and peoples in different recognized states. Ultimately there will be war before the EU is able to even impose federalization of the nations of Europe under it's thumb.

The big issue people aren't seeing is that that our infrastructure is much like Toll Roads. Private companies can charge as much as needed for a truck delivering a table as they see fit due to it being three axles. The biggest problem is most consumers don't have much choice into what services they have so they have to have their delivery truck go over that said toll road and that cost is either 1) factored into initial cost or 2) Required upon delivery. The issue itself isn't that the ISP's shouldn't throttle internet etc (which they need to be clear on with their customers which they are not and do secretly) it is most areas have Oligopolies where two to three ISPs are allowed to deploy in a specific area. Here in Montgomery the two companies discuss and split neighborhoods and all apartment complexes with a third option of ATT DSL (which is horrible in this area unless you have an office within 2500 feet of the ATT building.) Maybe if we could find better wireless solution, such as repeaters on the side of houses for phone, tv and internet and make it a requirement of the provider to keep the hardware up to date (one reason I rent my cable modem, it's been replaced three times with newer models over 2 1/2 years.) The only other solution would be like highways and the interstate, which are govt. controlled. With a congress that can't reform basic systems like Social Security and Taxes to today's standards and Judges who make insane decisions on technology they have no understanding of, I would hate to see the government step into an area like this at this point in time. So we're screwed.

It not only adds manufacturing cost, but every button and the slide add points of failure. Plus with slide kb's, it cuts into the placement of hardware which limits the phone in power and up time which are major factors unless they increase the size and weight. Back when I worked, when we finally broke and gave end-users qwerty keyboard phones and some slideout phones, the failure rate on phones sky-rocketed, from alphabetical key failing to the sliders failing as well. We could never pin point an issue on 80% of the phones but 20% was easily noted as end-user abuse. Companies know this and it's difficult to prove failure on behalf of the user or manufacturer. AT&T and Verizon like phones being replaced due to being outpaced by factors such as OS, Software and Connectivity vs. having to deal with customer service of a three month old phone's physical keyboard being jammed, which could be from poor QA to the end-user letting their child play on it while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which, was one of our cases.) So if they do produce a slider, and want to make sure it's thin, light and has a long lasting battery it will drive the cost up which in the end will kill sales. The few that want them will get them but a majority of people won't pay for the extra feature to have the same power and functionality as say a Samsung Galaxy S4.

Not to mention how great their non-US based construction has been as of late. (whistles while thinking of Styrofoam bridges.)

Welcome to the Age of Disinformation // Age of Irrational Egoism

A large issue Nintendo has with the Wii U (which MS is suffering) is naming. Why is a Wii U better than a Wii, or an Xbox ONE better than an Xbox 360? This doesn't include the inconsistent naming after the SNES/SFamicom. If they did a simple normal name such as Wii 2, Super Wii or hell NES6 where it was something people know it's better they probably wouldn't have such an issue. There are enough first party titles out there to support the machine but their gimmick system makes them have a separate ecosystem than the other two major platforms causing cross-platform a pain. As for the 3DS, firstly there is the 2DS, 3DS and 3DSXL. When you add the amount of colors and game packs available you cut into profits by causing less popular skus to collect dusk and increase in cost of production. Microsoft learned this in the early days of the 360. This isn't even mentioning power or capabilities of the system.

A Manifesto of Truth, written in Russia, am I the only one that finds the Irony in this?

I am more concerned about their concept of Kinect 2 will be always listening. Wonder what privacy concerns we're now going to have to have with this. Might make the PSN getting hacked look like Christmas.