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Comment Re:We are back to square one (Score 1) 212

Well, yes. That's the point. One of the largest reasons for breaking up huge vertical monopolies is that the cost of entry for other participants is too high because the monopoly can subsidize one side of the business with the others. Can anyone else create a viable mapping, searching, or other business competing with them? No, not really. The only competitor they have in any of these is in Smartphone Mobile OS -- which is a duopoly with Apple.

So are you proposing a consumer pay-per search model, or a monthly subscription? Or is the search company supposed to be taking money from the sites who'll pay for higher rankings? Mapping probably only makes sense as a consumer subscription service.

The Military

Air Force Says F-35 Glitches Mean the A-10 Will Keep Flying 'Indefinitely' (jalopnik.com) 325

The A-10 aircraft "is just too effective to get rid of," wrote one defense blogger -- especially in light of ongoing issues with the F-35. schwit1 quotes Jalopnik: Strategists have feared that the jet will be axed in favor of funding the F-35, but the U.S. Air Force recently confirmed that it plans to keep the A-10 flying "indefinitely." While the Air Force is theoretically supposed to be diverting the A-10's operating expenses to feed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the people in charge are now planning to keep the plane running...

Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski told AviationWeek in a interview, "Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely." While the beancounters and product planners are trying to push the A-10 off the board, Materiel Command is going to keep on keeping the planes in peak condition, which will give the A-10 it's best chance of proving its worth over and over again. And it seems to be working -- the A-10 posted a 5% increase in its availability rate from 2014 to 2015, and the Air Force seems to keep postponing its demise.

In Congress one representative has even suggested an operational testing "fly-off" between the two aircraft -- a jet-vs-jet competition to determine whether any more A-10s get retired.

Comment Re:Because their pointless. (Score 1) 330

I use my watch as a workout accessory, and it doesn't even have a heart rate monitor and I don't use the step counter. It does have GPS, the ability to store music on it's own, or the ability to control the music player on my phone. It can provide quick notifications of heart rate when it's connected to my chest heart rate monitor, which is a little more convenient than holding a phone in my hand when jogging. I can glance at notifications without grabbing my phone. Hell, I can glance at notifications even when I don't have my phone if I'm at a location that has Wifi (like my gym).

Comment Re:People probably realized.. (Score 1) 330

People finally realized most smart watches are useless unless you're also carrying the phone it's connected to, in which case, yeah, what's the point?

Because it's quicker and a little more discreet to glance at a wrist than pull out a phone? Because they don't actually need to be connected to the phone to have a lot of functionality (Sony has built in GPS, 4 GB of storage for music, almost like it was meant to be able to be used when working out or running) Because it's kind of nice to has watch where I can play with the way it looks. Because a vibrating/buzzing watch wakes me up nicely without waking up my wife. Because voice control via a watch allows me to control my phone when I'm driving and the phone is connected to the head unit of my car.

Comment Re:Why no link to the catalog? How to access this? (Score 1) 60

It's not so much first season free and pay for the rest, it's more like a time delay. Kind of the opposite of what Hulu was, where you'd get the most recent episodes for free but needed Hulu plus to get older episodes, or standard cable movie pay-per-view before the movie moved to HBO/Showtime/Whatever. Their 3rd party content selection isn't the best, but it's pretty good, but their original content (Alpha House, Man in the High Castle, Hand of God, Beta, Mad Dogs (yes, it's a remake of a British series, but it's still original content)) is really good (not sure about the children's shows however).

Comment Re:The real issue is lack of transparency (Score 1) 228

to simply see if it uncovers some of the "poorly understood" and "sloppily formulated" parts of our justice systems

Given the immense amount of laws and court cases, I can guarantee that there are contradictions and inconsistencies in our legal system. I don't know if you'd really want to find them all. I've often wondered what it would take to codify contracts and contract law, but I don't know if we'd really want that for criminal law.

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