drcube

Fair enough. I'm not a lawyer. Just throwing out ideas.

Do they run on Android? Windows? Linux? My point is that they're locked to an ecosystem I'll never be able to leave if I heavily invest in. I minimize app purchases for this reason. I don't want my digital life to be tied to a particular company or brand, and I run free software as much as possible because of this.

Couldn't you sue? Your home purchase was predicated on Comcast's word that they could service your new home. You require it for work. Now you've bought a home, have to sell it for a loss, all due to Comcast. I don't see why you can't stick them with the bill. Call a lawyer, have them talk to Comcast, and maybe they'll change their tune about extending their line to your home.

I'm not going to pay $10 for an app I can't transfer to another device. As long as our phones are disposable so too are our apps. And I don't pay top dollar for garbage.

There is, however, an infinite amount of information, which is basically free to copy and transmit anywhere in the world. So to the extent that our lives exist on the internet, we are already living in a post-scarcity world.

And considering that robots already took all the agriculture and manufacturing jobs, and we're supposedly split between "knowledge workers" and "service workers", I'd say the problem of automation taking our jobs still has a long way to go.

The fact that Uncle Sam is the ultimate rent seeker is beside the point.

The difference between land and widgets is that widgets are continuously manufactured and sold. Once you sell me a sandwich, you can't take it back. It's mine. Rent is the opposite. They're not making more land, or spectrum, or whatever, and that's not what they're selling. They're selling access to it. And they can revoke that access at any time. The thing I'm paying for isn't mine, it's still theirs the whole time.

I don't know if I've got it wrong or the author does, but I think about it like actual rents.

Landlords don't make money by providing a service or selling goods. They make money by sitting on something no one else is allowed to have. They don't have to do anything more than sit back and collect checks. Sure, they bought the land originally, but there's no more investment to be made after that. They can invest in a nicer building or grounds, or compete on services such as "free" utilities or quicker repairs, but those are above and beyond the "rent-seeking" part of his revenue. He could just rent an empty lot, like a trailer park or campground.

This is analogous to, for example, telephone lines. They cost a lot to initially build out, but once they're there, the phone company only has to charge people for access. They provide a service back at the switching station, but most of what they're getting money for is owning lines that already exist. It's harder to separate rent from their other revenue, but it's there.

It generalizes to all revenue that is of the "sit back and collect checks" variety. Cellular carriers sitting on a chunk of spectrum they can sell access to. They can just rent it out to MVNOs if they don't want to provide those services themselves. Film studios sitting on a catalog of work they can sell, license, etc. So yes, IP revenues are definitely rents.

I think you missed the point. Planets orbit in ellipses in the regular, 3D world.

You mean "a scheme to deflate artificially high engineers' wages"?

If you can't compete with foreigners working in your field, you can't compete.

I'm concerned with the indentured servitude we're putting H1Bs under, but not with the fact that they're working here instead of China or India. There isn't a "shortage" of STEM workers in the US, but that's no reason to support protectionist policies.

"Pay it forward" means to grant a favor or gift on a random person, in remembrance of one who did a favor for you before. The idea is to initiate a chain of favors and gifts to brighten the world in general.

It's a play on words though, by analogy with "Pay it back" which is returning a favor to one who did a favor for you first (like paying back a debt). In the case of large distros being heavily reliant on GPG and other upstream projects, I think the applicable term here is "pay it back".

Upstream developers helped out Debian, et al, and now Debian needs to pay those developers back. Arguably, by gifting their distros to the world at large, they're already "paying it forward".

At this point MS hates Google more than Linux/Android. This doesn't surprise me at all.

I long for a high walled cube. It's like an office without a door! I have the 4-foot high cube variety and people are always sneaking up on me from behind and my coat drags the ground when I hang it up.

No. Apes (including humans) are more closely related to old world monkeys than new world monkeys are. When you are more closely related to monkeys than other monkeys are, most people would say you are a monkey. Including me.

Cladistically, apes are monkeys.

That's because they can't call themselves the equally medieval term "doctor". Even though they have "Juris Doctorate" degrees.

I didn't want to see it but now I do. I imagine this is more PR than spinelessness.

We have refineries on land, too. We just put fences around them. The ocean is a big fence.

Yeah. The main benefit of digital technology is the ability to copy and transmit data freely. Nobody complains when the email I sent is still sitting in a folder in my mailbox. I don't have to hand write a second copy for my own records. This is progress. It's the same as buggy whip makers complaining that automobiles put them out of a job. Only in this century, the buggy whip manufacturers have a much larger and louder lobby.

> It seems to be a big loophole for the government to just go and steal whatever they want from you, before you've been proven guilty.

Nevertheless, that's how it works in the land of the free.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433/pol...

>I wouldn't have a mortgage if I was worrying about food, car fuel or job stability.

Really? Mortgages last 30 years, are you sure your current level of income will too?

Agreed. When FB Messenger asks for my location, or my contact list, I just click "don't ask again" and "deny". And I get to ignore all the furor over the new Messenger permissions my friends are freaking out about.

Except for mattresses, there is simply no reason to buy new furniture. I'm an engineer, I had a house fire recently and will easily have the budget to buy new furniture for my house after it is repaired. But I plan on shopping at Goodwill, Savers and Craigslist. Because new furniture is not necessary. Why would someone who is much poorer than me think otherwise?

Is it even illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater?

This isn't 1900. There are accessible, well-lit exit routes in every theater I've been in. Not to mention fire suppression systems, alarms, and the fact that you'd most likely see a fire before it was time to panic.

It was news to me when I discovered ancient Greece wasn't just white stone and marble everywhere. Almost all of it was painted bright, gaudy colors. In my opinion, it makes them more beautiful.

http://io9.com/5616498/ultraviolet-light-reveals-how-ancient...

No.

"Free as in freedom".

It's not an "AR-15 lower receiver maker". It's a cheap CNC mill you can do an infinite number of useful things with. Should high quality printers be illegal because you can make counterfeit bills with it? Or is the potential for harm an incidental part of any useful device? You can stab someone with a knife, but they're pretty handy for chopping food, too.

I assume they're going after the manufacturers of safes, paper shredders and burn barrels, next?

Isn't this just a cellular mesh network? How does it compare to wifi mesh networking as far as range, security and usefulness? I'd like to see more of these decentralized alternatives to monopoly infrastructure providers, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.

Not only does fact-checking take longer than blindly clicking "share", fact checkers are vastly outnumbered by blind-sharers. Of course the former is probably a big influence on the latter.

One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it. If only more people paid attention...