I'm not a fan of subscription models either but at least Office 365 comes with 1TB Onedrive. This makes it convenient to share files between phones and computers and at a cheaper cost than Google Drive or most other mainstream cloud-based file sharing services. I look at it as paying for the easy 1TB shared drive and getting an office suite for free.

On the other hand, governments provide roads, police service and sanitation, at least where they are functioning properly. I am of the belief that a government is of, for, and by the people. Who exactly are we trying to blame?

The solution is grant capital stakes to more of the population. James Albus, an engineer who worked on automation and foresaw this in the 70s, described a system to achieve this that he called People's Capitalism. The basic idea is that the government should invest in cutting edge research and then socialize a portion of the efficiency gains, giving a dividend check to all citizens that would grow over time. Instead of laying the groundwork for massive improvements in machine vision, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, etc. and handing the keys over to private industry to privatize the gains, the government should get a better return. Self-driving cars and biodiesel are two prime examples of DARPA seeding money to get development going, then essentially handing over the research to private companies to refine and commercialize. His book, People's Capitalism is available for free download here. It's worthy of greater attention.

Get a cooler bag and an ice pack. Amazing technology.

Just for the record (no pun intended) if you're looking for rare music the best place to check is gemm.com. The site is a database of thousands of independent record stores' catalogs. I have not been let down with any oddball request I've thrown at it.

The best thing to do is ignore the comments and just watch the fucking video...

Check out People's Capitalism. Written in 1976 by a NASA engineer who foresaw that automation would wipe out many jobs. For some reason, the links on the page are no longer working but the PDF link in the bottom left corner of the page is still active. The tl;dr version is that he proposed rather than use the Federal Reserve to print money for the banks, we should invest money in research, license the fruits of that research to private industry, and use the proceeds as dividends for the citizenry. Well worth the read. It's an idea whose time has come. See also Buckminster Fuller's idea for a basic solar income or read the wikipedia article on Economic Democracy. Oh, and spread the word. This needs to happen. It's crazy that we have have a class of workers who are overworked alongside a class of people who can't find work. http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

I really cannot think of any occasion where the two-paragraph overview from a printed encyclopedia ever helped me accomplish anything.

I generally agree with what you're saying but one thing I wish more people would realize is that the EB is divided into two sections: the Micropedia and the Macropedia. The Micropedia (actually Micropaedia) is what people generally think of when they think of encyclopedias: relatively short articles on a wide number of subjects. The Macropaedia had much longer articles that went into some depth on a much narrower number of topics. The articles on Number Theory and Relativity are a couple that stand out in my mind as being quite interesting to my younger self. The maps of select world cities were also a great source of interest to me. Wikipedia did not come close to this type of depth and organization until the last couple of years. In some areas they may still be behind: Macropaedia

Hitchens was right, religeon poisons everything.

I wouldn't say that religion poisons everything but rather that inflexible certitude poisons everything.

Get educated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

The answer: a National Dividend This is the most capitalistic approach to C.H Douglas' theory of social credit. Read up now and help make this future happen . . .

I doubt that. Do you realise how many times it's been pointed out by various parties how ironic it is that all "Ironic's" examples of irony aren't? They've probably heard that more times than they've heard the song itself...

Now that's ironic . . .

The point of journals is the value of their reputation.

Couldn't this too be easily done in an online social network-type setting? Some type of "karma points" system could be set up that would reward thoughtful review and criticism. Different weights could be placed on different opinions (for instance, a recognized expert in a field could be given a "karma boost") and some type of filtering could be instituted. Different teams of scientists who have replicated the experiment can publish their comments and findings in a way that links it to the original research. Citations of other papers would be linked in this way as well, of course. This seems to me to be the best direction to head in.

A clever way around this problem is addressed in the prescient 1976 book People's Capitalism. The basic idea is that government sponsored long-term research and development is used to boost productivity and citizens earn dividends off of their share in this National Mutual Fund. It's quite an elegant concept. I could carry on more about what I think but you can read the book for free online at peoplescapitalism.org. Social Credit and the basic income guarantee are related concepts if you are interested in learning more.