Or we are.

It may not be intelligent but it is common enough that there is an official term for it. Manufactured obsolescence.

"a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete after a certain period of time."

I can't read the article, pay wall, but this quote seems to indicate what you are saying:.

2007, when reliable measurements from devices called "Argo floats" were put to use worldwide. Before that, different types of temperature records -- and an overall lack of them -- contributed to murkiness.

So they rejected the not only the previous findings, but all other methods of measurements. All of this makes it seem it is really hard to get reliable temperature measurements. I mean we really only learned how in 2007.

In 1992 the great sin which brought the wrath of government and popular judgement against it was the inclusion of a web browser and multimedia software in standard operating system packages. For free. Google is largely free or marginal in cost. Google's parent company is leading the charge into super discounted medical devices for chronic issues. Facebook is free. I don't know what altruistic endeavors Facebook is involved in but they shouldn't have to justify their existence beyond the great demand which exists for their free platform.

This is not a conservative or historically normal american right wing position. European right wing is different and doesnt really apply since there really isnt a european party with even marginally similar conservative positions. What you described is more appropriately a classical liberal or modern libertarian position, where the implication of crime requires primarily a victim. Thus victimless crimes such as prostitution without coercion, and drug use that doesnt contribute to a separate crime are not crimes at all under classic liberalism. This is because classical liberalism is based on the primary demand of freedom of the will of humanity.
  Thus the great crime to the liberal is force.

American right wing political thought begins not with free will, but with all rights (read freedom from coercion) being granted by God who has authorized a particular order where justice demands adherence to a similarly particular morality and this grants conditional living under certain freedoms. For this reason, that the rights granted are not fundamental, but conditional to a moral and religious people. One primary tenant of conservatism is the inherent uniqueness of man as created by God and for this reason, humanity is to be treated with a dignity beyond other parts of his creation. With human dignity as the foundation of the direction of the law, conservative law resists classical liberal concepts such as freedom to commit suicide, drug use, pornography, prostitution, gambling and other 'victimless' crimes because there is still one victim, even of the victim is also the author of the crime.

For this reason, legalization is not the pathway for a conservative. The destruction of a human soul through self actuated depravity is no better than the destruction brought by another.

See Kirk, DeTocqueville, Bastiat, Locke

The eia reports consumer electricity usage in the same range it's been stuck in since 2000. Speculating which runs contrary to previous examples, namely that energy efficiencies lead to anything besides increased energy use due to cost savings, would require data, not speculation.

If I buy a server, and a T1 subscription, create a blog and allow you post comments on my setup over the internet... and I say you cant post comments about politics because this isnt a political blog, you have not been harmed. And I certainly havent restricted your rights.

You had no right to post anything whatsoever before I bought the server, before I paid for the connection, before I setup the software and before I allowed you to sign up. What changed that gave you a right to use my platform for anything I dont agree with.

If I bought a football and asked Peyton Manning to sign it, and he wrote an anti war screed instead, would it be a violation of his rights to erase the comments and get someone else to sign it instead?

The answer is not at all. My property is mine. That is completely different from the government, because government is obligated (due to the fact that they are to in existence specifically to guard rights and take direction from the people) to accept reasonable (ethical) public input.

It is interesting to see this argument to be coming up again but reverse from the previous generation. During the 80s it was hard fought on the left in America (at least in print and film) that nudity could be presented acceptably, even in underage girls, if the content was asexual objectively. The right argued against it for ethical reasons and were accused of slippery slope beliefs and moralizing. I dont know Zuckerberg's real politics but he is considered left of center socially. If this was banned as part of a no exceptions policy on underage nudity he would basically be taking the rights position from the mid 80s (Jerry Falwell!) It seems the argument against is the historical importance of the photo, and current modern propaganda (without making a moral judgement either way) against war in general and specific tactics and weaponry. It begs the question however, why is facebook a necessary medium. Facebook is neither a journalistic outlet, a historical medium, or an advocacy group. In fact, to facilitate its goals, it makes sense that facebook would want to avoid becoming an outlet of gruesome war photos, films or images of murders, surgical or autopsy images and the like. If allowing this image, facebook also decided postings of aborted fetuses were also allowed to appear in your timelines, how many would still be on board. All of those would be equally controversial, but also as subjectively valuable to various advocacy proponents.

Been an employee and a contractor. Contractor is so much better and more freeing. I never once thought, Oh if I could only have my taxes withheld... I got to dictate terms for my jobs, I got the benefit of tax exemptions which pay for my working vehicle. All expenses are tax write offs. It was downright pleasant and for once my time put into being better at a job, paid me directly instead of paying my boss. Also, it was government which took the opportunity away from me, forcing me back into an hourly position so they could get that 40% cut from my weekly check.

Outcomes dont determine whether an act is 'slavery' or more accurately an immoral imposition on the rights of a human. The act of imposing is the immoral act. If government takes all the profit from running a business therefore making that business insoluble, (such as $15 minimum wage making entry level workers un-hireable) The government has only indirectly hurt the employee, by harming the rights of the employer to operate his business in an equitable manner. More to the point, If the employee votes to enable or encourage the government to impose heavy demands (such as comprehensive medical coverage) on said business owner, the employee is immorally imposing mob rule impositions on the minority business owner (if he were part of a majority he obviously would have won the majority vote) and the only one harmed by the resulting poor economy would be the business owner since the employee is complicit.

You still have you rights should you choose to express them. Thats the meaning of inalienable. You just have an elected tyranny which seeks to punish you for expressing those rights.

Every generation of consoles cause streams of claims the sky has finally fallen in on Nintendo. Sega's (and Turbographics)CD based systems were the initial perceived killer. After that the N64 (still cartridge based) was not powerful enough to compete. Then the Gamecube was again not powerful enough to play the games people wanted to buy. Then the Wii was just the cube put into a new box with fancy shake equipped controllers. At every stage Nintendo causes a rip to form in the 'power is everything' argument. Nintendo clearly isnt working on the same model. Nintendo creates fads and they ride those through the hardware eras. They invest their billions on unique hardware and create opportunities for completely original gameplay. Nintendo brought back gaming in the 80s. They mastered the art of fun immersive long form adventure gaming with Zelda, Metroid and Mario in the 90s. They basically invented party gaming with the Wii in the 2000s. Meanwhile their portable gaming has been on the cutting edge the entire time until phones became portable computers. Despite the loss of control over that portable market they have now found a way to revitalize both the portable gaming industry and Nintedo themselves. In a year there will be a dozen games blatantly copying this new innovation and Nintendo will have the best of them. Part of this is because Sony and Microsoft treat their consoles as an inroad to gaining customers in other branches of technology or services. Nintendo just wants people to play their games.

Amazing how different this is from internet browsing where, except for page breaking and popup/popunder ads, ads are mostly ignored. Web presence of content providers of news or non video content have to force paid patronage by blocking content. I think if they did it clever enough, say they stick star wars movies on the top of action lists when a new star wars comes out... or attach a commercial for the new ghostbusters to the other ghostbuster movies... Trailers in front of movies...Commercials for New seasons of CSI recommended on CSI fans lists... That could work. Not like Hulu where is just spams crappy internet ads every five minutes.

seriously just stop gwx.exe

First US usage of power is about 4 times higher per household than Germany, possibly due to Germans mostly not having or using AC in the warmer months. This makes summer the power usage low in Germany. In the US the summer months are the usage high.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...

The government (ie taxpayers) subsidize the tune of 20 billion Euros per year and rising (hiding the actual cost)

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
http://www.seia.org/research-r...

German prices per kwh are higher (~.34 per kwh) vs US (~.15) mostly due to tax/tariff on energy, and regulatory procedures related to the infrastructure payments of solar and other renewables. The prices are rising so fast the government has had to begin a more restrictive path on new solar.

https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
https://www.cleanenergywire.or...

Based solely on price per kwh and predictable capacity, solar is awful. More specifically awful for germany, because of geography and weather trends.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/qu...

This unpredictability is causing massive new production plants using coal. This is a reult of shutting down nuclear and building solar which only generates an average of >10% of potential capacity. Altogether the solar plan's end result is not bringing them closer to meeting their climate pollution goals.
https://carboncounter.wordpres...

"when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That's when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany's energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011. If there is still an electricity shortfall, energy-hungry plants like the ArcelorMittal steel mill in Hamburg are sometimes asked to shut down production to protect the grid. Of course, ordinary electricity customers are then expected to pay for the compensation these businesses are entitled to for lost profits."

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...