Doesn't help that everything I want to reply to is always archived.

Before the bots, it was troll farms. Now the troll farmers have lost their jobs, replaced by software. Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.

Easier is relative, though. All the nuclear weapons on Earth would still be two orders of magnitude too little to get an adequate atmosphere. As I understand, you'd need several thousand gigatons to get a low single-digit percent of Earth's atmospheric pressure.

And for humans to survive for more than about a minute even with external oxygen (the Armstrong limit), you'd need to reach about 40% of Earth's atmospheric pressure. There's probably not enough CO2 ice on all of Mars to pull that off. Best guess is that you'd need four or five times as much just to reach that limit, though the best-case estimates would result in exceeding that limit by a factor of two, so there's a lot of uncertainty here.

Whether releasing a lot of that CO2 would cause enough of a greenhouse effect to melt more polar ice is unclear, but one would assume that if this were possible, the planet would not have cooled, so that seems unlikely. Chances are, you would have to melt *all* the ice and periodically add energy from some external source to re-melt it as it forms, or else built planet-sized mirrors in Mars L4 and L5 to increase how much sunlight hits Mars.

Surviving Martian soil is the easy part. Being able to survive at near zero air pressure is the hard part.

That's not what a cancellation fee does, though. By definition, when you pay a cancellation fee, they are no longer providing service.

Because that $2,000 is consideration for the other party providing something. If the penalty clause is the entire remainder of the contract fee, then the other party should also be compelled to provide service for the remainder of the contract term, or some equivalent consideration. Otherwise, it isn't really much of a contract.

If they get out of providing service, then you should get out of paying, except for some penalty to make up for sunk costs, e.g. the prorated cost of provisioning initial service, the prorated cost of a phone that was free with contract, etc., plus some *reasonable* amount to discourage people from pulling out of the contract on a whim.

Also, understand that the company providing the service had way more power over the contract than you. You were almost certainly told "take it or leave it" when presented with the contract. That's why putting limits on what contracts of adhesion can do is generally considered to be a critical function of government.

The part you're missing is that contracts like this are contracts of adhesion, and there may or may not even be an option to sign up one month at a time. And even if there is, having a penalty clause for canceling a contract is reasonable, but having a penalty clause that massively exceeds any plausible damages isn't, particularly when one of the parties in that contract has dramatically more power than the other, and that party is the one writing the contract and demanding the penalty clause. That's why it is reasonable for governments to limit the amount of those damages through statutes. It is just compensating for that inherent power imbalance.

Also, real-world companies aren't typically selling bonds against their subscription revenue, and unless this is a very small business and the contracts are among equals (which a customer relationship almost never is), a bank isn't going to care about the difference between 1,000 subscriptions and 1,001, nor do stockholders. They care about the difference between 1,000 and 100,000. Orders of magnitude matter. A few cancellations around the margins are noise. So although you might be correct in theory, in practice, single cancellations don't matter, and if the cancellation numbers are high enough to matter, there's something much more seriously wrong with the company, and locking consumers in to a long-term contract likely serves no one's best interests, including the company's, because that just reduces the pressure on the company to fix those structural problems.

The thing is, if you stop using the service after two months, they aren't providing you a benefit, and it isn't reasonable for them to keep collecting money. And charging exorbitant fees has the net effect of forcing people to continue paying a month at a time because they can't afford the cancellation fee all at once. That's what makes it predatory.

If we were talking about a small company, where someone canceling service (e.g. a maid service) would mean that they have to go seek out other clients to stay in business, then charging such a fee makes sense. For a big company, it is really rather hard to justify.

This is doubly true if the company either does not offer a month-to-month plan or charges only slightly less for it. At most, you have cost the company the difference between the yearly contract and month-to-month price, and if the penalty is greater than that difference, that's really not right.

They will if they want viewers over age 30. I like shows where I can just keep watching episodes one after the next for a month, so nearly everything I watch is a decade old or more. It's not worth my time and effort to figure out whether I might like to watch a show if I'm going to run out of episodes in a day of viewing.

I can only think of one show that I've watched when it had fewer than 20 episodes, and I regret not waiting longer, because it would have been much more enjoyable watching three seasons instead of two a year from now. Modern shows require too much effort for too little payoff. The threshold where I feel like it is actually worth my time is about 40 episodes. And most new shows will be canceled long before they reach that threshold, which means most new shows aren't worth my time.

One problem I have with Windows has been the ongoing obfuscation of controls. Replacing Control Panel with Settings is something I suppose needed to happen eventually. I personally dislike the style of Settings over Control Panel. However it appears to me Settings is just a front end to actual controls and Windows can lie/hide things from the user. Before Control Panel showed the actual settings.

For example, Add/remove programs appears to remove optional Windows components but in reality it does not. For example in the latest build, Weather and News apps are still present and running despite "uninstalling" them in Add/remove programs. The user can go to Personalization and add them as apps to the Lock Screen. So they are not really "uninstalled"; they were just hidden from the user. Also both appear to ignore the privacy settings regarding Location. They know exactly where the user is are even if Location is turned "off”.

I think part of the issue is priority. Netflix started out physically distributing content then switched to online. Their entire business relies on making sure their online distribution system is stable. That includes apps on multiple platforms. The content companies like Disney are only now switching to apps, but they still have other channels of distribution and revenue. I would guess that part of the problem is some executive is getting a huge bonus for maintaining online distribution for as little cost as possible.

Author is another quasi-luddite who yearns for the days of hand-coded C++ because it made him elite, :)

No the problem is your need to quibble basic facts. Collecting solar energy is indeed free. It costs money to acquire the technology to collect solar power, but so does every other form of energy. Trying to contest that argument with deceptive points does not win your case. It makes your arguments appear dishonest.

It is "interesting" that you chose to fight against a statement that is true by leaving out facts.

This is a classic strawman argument on your part. Collecting solar energy is free once the equipment is acquired. No one said 100% of solar is free.

So you didn't use only 1 factor in your argument that coal is better? No, you did. You still are using only 1 factor: EROI.

Zero part of EROI takes that into account. You seem not to understand this point.

Zero part of EROI takes that into account. Again your reliance on 1 factor weakens your argument.

I am pointing out you presented none of these arguments before but someone expect everyone to have known them as if we know your inner monologue.

Pointing out your arguments do not present the whole picture is the situation. But that makes everyone "children". No it makes you easily offended when people point out the flaws in your arguments.

Sigh. When you leave out obvious facts in your arguments to make a case, it weakens your case. But your problem is not that you did that. Your problem is that I'm "upset" when I point them out. How about the acceptance that your argument was weak?

The point here is you made arguments relying on those links before you presented the links as if everyone knows what is in your mind.

I'm relying on as much of a single factor as the person I was replying to. If the reason to use solar power is because it is "free" is ignoring the cost of building the machines to collect, convert, and distribute energy.

Again: No one said solar is 100% free. No one. You misinterpreted that or using a strawman argument. The point is collecting solar is free after (obviously) acquiring solar generating equipment. Television shows and movies are free with OTA broadcasts. Music is free if people buy radios. Basically your argument is that content is not free because people have to buy electronics.

Buddy, you are tilting at windmills. You created a fight and do not see how

Buddy, in red states with private companies, coal is being abandoned due to higher operating. This is not due to "policies" despite what you make think. As I stated earlier EROI does not factor in things like transportation, maintenance, and capital costs. When factoring transportation costs alone, coal is far more expensive to operate than natural gas. When factoring maintenance and capital costs, many red states like Texas find it easier and cheaper to install wind and solar. I repeat: Texas through private companies has installed wind and solar over coal. You seem fixated one a single number that does not begin to portray the real world.

So oil, coal, and gas has no government subsidies?

I'll say it again: When people say solar power is "free" they specifically said COLLECTINGsolar energy is free. Your misinterpretation and quibbling with that makes you appear to be a denialist.

Your argument that "We should take all factors into account . . " is undermined by your "Based on this single EROI factor . . " argument.

Dude you made it so obvious with your outright lies.

Your point is that in 15 years, JPL has a net loss of 50 people? That includes natural attrition like retirements and resignations. That proves DEI was the culprit? Sure. . . .