"But discontinuing Aries/Constellation is a mistake."
Why?
"So task Aries/Constellation with a moon mission..."
Why?
If you really are concerned about not wasting money then there is absolutely no point in either project. The chance of Aries/Constellation getting built is low. Even if it gets built, it will probably underperform and be overbudget. And it won't have any real purpose because we won't spend the money to go to the moon. And even if we do, it will be a colossal waste of money on a PR stunt just like it was the first time.
We can build the appropriate equipment after we decide we are serious about a long term human presence in space and what form we want it to be. The "build it and they will come" crap is a waste of time, money and effort.
"How do you propose sending humans into LEO, without Shuttle pieces? Your choices seem to be 1) don't do it, or 2) ask the Russians for help. Stupid."
Both points 1 and 2 are perfectly valid. The primary reason to send humans into LEO is to staff the INTERNATIONAL Space Station of which Russia is part. We actually have NO NEED to send humans into space. If we did then I suspect we would have spent the money to keep the capability. Many people have the desire to send humans into space. Very different.
The only thing I find incredibly stupid is spending money to be able to send humans into space for no apparent reason. We don't send humans into space for research or exploration. We send them for PR and justify it with science. We always have.
Sorry, but this plan is pure pork. We do not need heavy lift capabilty. We have no real use for it now that the ISS is completed. If we did, the shuttle would continue to fly.
Sure, we have a theoretical use for it but we never actually intended to go to the moon or mars. If we had intended to go there, we would have actually funded the project at appropriate levels. The same goes for the rockets in development. They were always welfare projects first and useful items second. We have a cost effective method for getting people and materials to the ISS. No sense wasting more money on a new rocket that we do not need. When we actually have a serious need for a heavy lift vehicle, we can develop one. Developing one when we do not have a purpose for it pretty much insures a clusterfuck. Because I can guarantee that Congress will not properly fund it. They did not fund the previous one, so why should this one be any different.
"We sold a few hundred thousand copies or so at retail across a 6 month period (#4 for sales for a couple months, but no one pays attention to jewel case games).
Here's the trick: the online version had an online high-score system. You could play the online copy for free, but you didn't get access to the shared high-score system unless you bought it. We sold less than 100 copies online, but saw several hundred thousand unique IP addresses hit the high score system every day (and this kept up for years, not just people "trying out the high score system")."
I'm sorry, but selling a few hundred thousand copies of an action puzzle game can hardly be called a failure due to piracy. Sounds like a failure due to a poor business decision (compensation).
"...because people who want to play a game don't care about making it possible for the creators to keep making games."
On the other hand, what kind of savvy creator charges more for one version of a game and provides less features? Some of those online players might have actually purchased the retail version.
"I don't know that I would call it an outright failure, but the PC game "Starsiege: Tribes" from Dynamix certainly got walloped by piracy. I chatted with one of the engineers after the game's launch, and he sadly reported their server stats showing 300k+ people playing the game, with just 70-80k or so sales."
I'm sorry but those stats do not indicate that they lost any sales to piracy. Zero, nada, zilch. Yes, lots of people pirated the game. Just like they always have. I suspect that those numbers (rate of piracy) would be considered GOOD for most games. Even those 30 years ago.
"However, I also firmly believe that had Tribes had some basic form of copy protection, the sales would have been much much stronger. I hate that I am now sounding like I advocate loads of DRM, but Tribes represented an almost pathological case with its utter lack of any protection, and I think this wound up hurting sales very markedly."
There is no indication whatsoever that their sales were hurt by piracy. They just made the decision not to WASTE money on easily defeated copy protection.
"They did television commercials and low budget film work. That business failed because both kinds of work dried up. There was a lot of cost pressure on commercials so that side did poorly. The low budget film work endid because of piracy. People are giving that business up because they can't even make their production costs back. The work ends up on the internet, they can't get theatrical release, and they can't sell legitimate copies, either as physical media or downloads."
And you have provided exactly no evidence that the budget film work ended because of piracy. What does piracy have to do with an inability to get theatrical release? How exactly does it GET on the internet before release anyway, if not deliberately? Sounds like a failure due to a bad business model and management. Not to mention the minor issue of the economy...
In any case, the business didn't fail because of piracy. As you noted, it failed because it lost work producing commercials in addition to movies.
"People pay because they have two options: (1) Pay and get the product, (2) don't pay and don't get the product. When people decide that the product is worth more to them than the money they're paying, then they buy. Piracy is the third option: don't pay and get the product. You can't reasonably argue that people are going to choose option #1 over option #3 because they "value the product"."
Actually, people can get the product for free without piracy. It's called borrowing. Not exactly new. Copyright infringement is merely a more convenient method that happens to be illegal. So the fact that people buy the product does indicate that they value it.
"No, we're well aware of that. When games like Demigod are seeing 85% of the people showing up on their servers are pirating it, and 85-90% of the people playing World of Goo pirated it, then you start to get an understanding that - if even a fraction of the pirates paid for it, it would cause a big increase in sales."
And it's irrelevant. Content producers have been competing with "free" for a long time. Infringement rates were very high for products decades ago (probably similar to current rates), despite the fact that the same things that make it easy to distribute product far and wide make the "free" competition more convenient today. So the producers are going to have to adapt either by reducing prices or providing more value if they want to get more sales.
"What's shocking is how incredibly well Torrance's creativity index predicted those kids' creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance's tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers."
Sorry, but what exactly do most of these careers have to do with being creative? Even the ones that seem to require creativity such as inventors and authors don't have to (think product upgrades, textbooks, etc.). You might as well call it persistance.
"The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ."
For very interesting definitions of creative. And three times what, exactly? The problem with the entire article is that it doesn't provide numbers. Maybe none of this is even relevant. If IQ scores are rising every decade, then maybe the IQ test isn't very useful and implying your test is three times "better" doesn't say much.
"Spin or no spin, we still have those pesky little e-mails. And the miscalculations and misrepresentations (the hockey stick)."
The only spin is from those trashing the science.
"And the publishing of baseless blogs as proven research (the Himalayan melting debacle)."
It wasn't published as proven research. That IPCC report wasn't subject to peer review.
"You would think that with all these errors, at least one of them would understate climate change instead of overstate it."
Maybe you should check out the rate of artic sea ice melting. But then that might conflict with preconceived biases.
"I don't think either side of the climate debate has "clean hands"."
Irrelevant. This type of thinking leads to the belief that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
"The question is: What (if anything) should be done about climate change if the proof is less than absolute and the fastest growing economies (China and India) are preparing to pick up the slack for any voluntary reductions that might take place elsewhere?"
And that question cannot be answered without research into the likely effects of climate change. Kind of a problem with your view. And your attitude is precisely the reason that political obstacles won't be overcome. Rather self fulfilling.
"The data has to be ALWAYS available to everyone. That's the whole point behind Freedom of Information requests."
You are quite wrong. There are numerous exceptions to FOIA requests. I've worked in government doing research and have had access to data used in research that would absolutely not be made public.
"If you feel you are being hassled by nuisence requests, you hire someone to deal with them and pay their wages by charging the people requesting the information (as you are perfectly entitled to do)."
But should they HAVE to do this? The problem with this whole incident is that real issues have been ignored. People don't like the scientists TONE. The fact that the science is essentially sound is irrelevant. The fact that a crime was committed is ignored. People are still using this incident to discredit the science when in fact it should be used to discredit the argument against it.
I disagree. I think it would make a great campaign ad.
Something along the lines of:
My opponent is so afraid of you knowing the truth about her beliefs, actions and policies that she is trying to use lawyers and the courts to silence my ability to inform you. With the appropriate quotes and imagery. What is she afraid of? Then put in some of the things she does not want known.
"Obama was certainly a moderate compared to Clinton and that is why he was elected, also just look at the attacks on him now that say that he has swung far left/socialist compared to what he promised!"
Obama was essentially no different from Clinton. They are moderate conservatives. They are only liberal when compared to the Republican party in the US.
A good site is www.politicalcompass.org
"I also feel that McCain was a moderate"
Definitely not. He is a conservative. Always has been.
"Something (mostly the tea party) has happened to drive things far from center."
Nope. The tea party is essentially the Republican base. Or at least members of the public expressing what most of the Republican members of Congress believe. This has been the party platform for 30 years. They have just been very good at PR for a very long time.
"Now the Democrat candidates have swung far left as well"
Name one. Seriously. Remember that Obama is a moderate conservative. Ralph Nader would be considered a moderate left candidate.
US politics generally occurs in a very narrow range. As a result, most voters concepts of conservative and liberal are highly distorted. Hell, Nixon and certainly Eisenhower would probably be considered extremely liberal today.
Ross Perot was a third party candidate. He realistically never had a chance to win. But he was popular enough that he forced the other parties to adopt and address issues that they did not really want to in order to win. That is the power of a third party in the US. Any group that attracts a sufficient number of voters (generally "independents" that can influence the outcome of an election will have influence. Even if they do not have a chance in hell of getting elected.
The current Tea Party movement will not have such an influence because they do not attract swing voters. They are essentially the Republican base. The Libertarian party is similar in demographics.
"Microsoft already puts ample resources on fixing it."
That is simply absurd. If that were the case they would have few security flaws. This is not a short term problem-windows has been around for a long time. Microsoft has just chosen to put security below features. They are just not honest enough to admit that they do not want to commit the needed resources.
"The post that you've linked to just states matter-of-factly that it doesn't scale, but doesn't explain why it doesn't scale (which is noted repeatedly in the comments to that post). Merely providing a bunch of big numbers is not particularly useful - yes, of course, more resources would be needed for a country the size of US compared to Israel, but then US has more of those resources in the first place!"
Every hear of the phrase "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer"? While often intended as a joke, I think it is very applicable here. It should be painfully obvious that this cannot scale to the US. The system would require a large number of highly trained professionals (intelligent, multilingual, etc) and accountability. It would be totally unlike the current TSA and any current police or investigative force. Even if we could recruit and train enough people it would likely take years. And it would be difficult to retain them because they would be ideally suited for a wide range of intelligence work. All this to prevent something that essentially never happens.
The air marshall program is essentially worthless. They have committed more incidents (workplace discrimination) than crimes prevented (zero?). Once again, spending money to prevent something that really doesn't happen.
"But what's lost is the ability to handle the out-of-the-ordinary service needs that customers have; the company is just too big, and the support guy (let's be frank, in some call center in India*) just doesn't have the resources or the knowledge to handle the problem."
Sorry, but this IS intentional. Good support costs money-either upfront by designing products that don't require it or providing it. It's not bureaucracy that makes it hard to escalate a problem, it's policy.
It might not be malice and it certainly could be incompetence (of course, any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice) but it is most certainly deliberate.
"You are still responsible for your entire purchase. The FTC Will not force your card company to refund you (Letter of the law does not require it). If you notify your card company you are responsible for the first $50 in charges -- YOUR CARD COMPANY MAY be kinder, but the LAW does not require it."
You might want to read the FTC site. Your liability is zero if the charge involves your CC number rather than your actual card.
"Well, maybe if California (my state) didn't have a sales that that wasn't ten godamned percent in some cities we'd buy more locally. When I got my first HDTV I went to a local store, and the sales tax was $250. Fuck that scene. Never again."
While you can elect to avoid paying the tax by purchased out of state, you still owe the tax.
"There's always some self righteous sycophants who try to shame us into reporting out of state purchases."
I would consider doing it to cover my ass. For at least a token amount for audit protection. Or for large purchases. You never know when a state will get records from a company and track down those who failed to report the use tax on their income tax forms. Or when someone will report you. Tax fraud can be expensive (and lucrative).
"Sales taxes are a notoriously unreliable way of bringing in revenue. When times get tough, people stop buying things, and sales tax revenue dries up. States that depend heavily on sales tax revenue (Tennessee and California come immediately to mind) end up with massive budget shortfalls."
Then why are states with no sales taxes currently having budget problems (Oregon)? Or those with income taxes not doing better than those with only sales taxes? Sales tax revenue is pretty predictable. The failure to plan is the problem, not the type of tax. After all, income taxes don't work very well if people are unemployed. And California relies on income tax more than sales tax (about 2 to 1 in 2005/6). Oops.
"Sales tax is inherently regressive. The poor spend a high percentage of their income on taxable goods. This is still true even if you eliminate taxes on food."
And your point is? The income tax is inherently regressive too. I have lived in Ohio and Washington state. Ohio had a sales tax and income tax while Washington had only a sales tax. The tax structure in Ohio was far more regressive due to the income tax. I could avoid paying much of the sales tax due to exemptions. I couldn't avoid the income tax (no income exempted for city and school taxes, little for the state). My tax burden in Washington, despite a much higher sales tax, is lower.
Well, that's one way to become energy independent. However, I don't want to be around when our economy collapses from losing the bulk of our petroleum supply....
"They don't understand that workers are not being driven into the factories. Rather the factories are a more attractive form of employment than subsistence farming or herding."
Sounds like six of one and a half dozen of another to me. They are being driven to work in the factories because they can no longer support themselves by farming or herding related to government policy.
"Such a question should have been laughed out of the room, not because it was a silly question (and a gotcha with regard to a future question on Health Care), but because such a thing as the government being authorized to mandate to such a personal level as to what you must eat is laughably authoritarian."
And many (most?) people don't really have a problem with authoritarian. As long as it suits them. Is the idea of a government passing such a law really far fetched? We pass laws telling people what they can't eat. Religions tell people what they can eat (Kosher, Halal). That doesn't seem to be a large issue as long as it has sufficient support.
"For the immediate future, the S sedan seems like a niche product."
It doesn't matter. Tesla IS a niche car maker. Anything they could possibly make is a niche car by definition.
Consider that Volvo was unable to succeed as an independent car maker. Not to mention Saab, Jaguar, etc. And they made more cars than Tesla has. Fiat bought Chrysler in part because they determined that they had to sell over 6 million cars a year to survive.
Not very good examples. Lexus is the luxury brand created by Toyota. BMW and Mercedes aren't inherently toys for the rich. They are common cars in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
"But discontinuing Aries/Constellation is a mistake."
Why?
"So task Aries/Constellation with a moon mission..."
Why?
If you really are concerned about not wasting money then there is absolutely no point in either project. The chance of Aries/Constellation getting built is low. Even if it gets built, it will probably underperform and be overbudget. And it won't have any real purpose because we won't spend the money to go to the moon. And even if we do, it will be a colossal waste of money on a PR stunt just like it was the first time.
We can build the appropriate equipment after we decide we are serious about a long term human presence in space and what form we want it to be. The "build it and they will come" crap is a waste of time, money and effort.
"How do you propose sending humans into LEO, without Shuttle pieces? Your choices seem to be 1) don't do it, or 2) ask the Russians for help. Stupid."
Both points 1 and 2 are perfectly valid. The primary reason to send humans into LEO is to staff the INTERNATIONAL Space Station of which Russia is part. We actually have NO NEED to send humans into space. If we did then I suspect we would have spent the money to keep the capability. Many people have the desire to send humans into space. Very different.
The only thing I find incredibly stupid is spending money to be able to send humans into space for no apparent reason. We don't send humans into space for research or exploration. We send them for PR and justify it with science. We always have.
Getting rid of a poor teacher requires documentation. As documentation requires a manager to do actual work, we all know that is right out.
Sorry, but this plan is pure pork. We do not need heavy lift capabilty. We have no real use for it now that the ISS is completed. If we did, the shuttle would continue to fly.
Sure, we have a theoretical use for it but we never actually intended to go to the moon or mars. If we had intended to go there, we would have actually funded the project at appropriate levels. The same goes for the rockets in development. They were always welfare projects first and useful items second. We have a cost effective method for getting people and materials to the ISS. No sense wasting more money on a new rocket that we do not need. When we actually have a serious need for a heavy lift vehicle, we can develop one. Developing one when we do not have a purpose for it pretty much insures a clusterfuck. Because I can guarantee that Congress will not properly fund it. They did not fund the previous one, so why should this one be any different.
"We sold a few hundred thousand copies or so at retail across a 6 month period (#4 for sales for a couple months, but no one pays attention to jewel case games).
Here's the trick: the online version had an online high-score system. You could play the online copy for free, but you didn't get access to the shared high-score system unless you bought it. We sold less than 100 copies online, but saw several hundred thousand unique IP addresses hit the high score system every day (and this kept up for years, not just people "trying out the high score system")."
I'm sorry, but selling a few hundred thousand copies of an action puzzle game can hardly be called a failure due to piracy. Sounds like a failure due to a poor business decision (compensation).
"...because people who want to play a game don't care about making it possible for the creators to keep making games."
On the other hand, what kind of savvy creator charges more for one version of a game and provides less features? Some of those online players might have actually purchased the retail version.
"I don't know that I would call it an outright failure, but the PC game "Starsiege: Tribes" from Dynamix certainly got walloped by piracy. I chatted with one of the engineers after the game's launch, and he sadly reported their server stats showing 300k+ people playing the game, with just 70-80k or so sales."
I'm sorry but those stats do not indicate that they lost any sales to piracy. Zero, nada, zilch. Yes, lots of people pirated the game. Just like they always have. I suspect that those numbers (rate of piracy) would be considered GOOD for most games. Even those 30 years ago.
"However, I also firmly believe that had Tribes had some basic form of copy protection, the sales would have been much much stronger. I hate that I am now sounding like I advocate loads of DRM, but Tribes represented an almost pathological case with its utter lack of any protection, and I think this wound up hurting sales very markedly."
There is no indication whatsoever that their sales were hurt by piracy. They just made the decision not to WASTE money on easily defeated copy protection.
"They did television commercials and low budget film work. That business failed because both kinds of work dried up. There was a lot of cost pressure on commercials so that side did poorly. The low budget film work endid because of piracy. People are giving that business up because they can't even make their production costs back. The work ends up on the internet, they can't get theatrical release, and they can't sell legitimate copies, either as physical media or downloads."
And you have provided exactly no evidence that the budget film work ended because of piracy. What does piracy have to do with an inability to get theatrical release? How exactly does it GET on the internet before release anyway, if not deliberately? Sounds like a failure due to a bad business model and management. Not to mention the minor issue of the economy...
In any case, the business didn't fail because of piracy. As you noted, it failed because it lost work producing commercials in addition to movies.
"People pay because they have two options: (1) Pay and get the product, (2) don't pay and don't get the product. When people decide that the product is worth more to them than the money they're paying, then they buy. Piracy is the third option: don't pay and get the product. You can't reasonably argue that people are going to choose option #1 over option #3 because they "value the product"."
Actually, people can get the product for free without piracy. It's called borrowing. Not exactly new. Copyright infringement is merely a more convenient method that happens to be illegal. So the fact that people buy the product does indicate that they value it.
"No, we're well aware of that. When games like Demigod are seeing 85% of the people showing up on their servers are pirating it, and 85-90% of the people playing World of Goo pirated it, then you start to get an understanding that - if even a fraction of the pirates paid for it, it would cause a big increase in sales."
And it's irrelevant. Content producers have been competing with "free" for a long time. Infringement rates were very high for products decades ago (probably similar to current rates), despite the fact that the same things that make it easy to distribute product far and wide make the "free" competition more convenient today. So the producers are going to have to adapt either by reducing prices or providing more value if they want to get more sales.
"What's shocking is how incredibly well Torrance's creativity index predicted those kids' creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance's tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers."
Sorry, but what exactly do most of these careers have to do with being creative? Even the ones that seem to require creativity such as inventors and authors don't have to (think product upgrades, textbooks, etc.). You might as well call it persistance.
"The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ."
For very interesting definitions of creative. And three times what, exactly? The problem with the entire article is that it doesn't provide numbers. Maybe none of this is even relevant. If IQ scores are rising every decade, then maybe the IQ test isn't very useful and implying your test is three times "better" doesn't say much.
"Spin or no spin, we still have those pesky little e-mails. And the miscalculations and misrepresentations (the hockey stick)."
The only spin is from those trashing the science.
"And the publishing of baseless blogs as proven research (the Himalayan melting debacle)."
It wasn't published as proven research. That IPCC report wasn't subject to peer review.
"You would think that with all these errors, at least one of them would understate climate change instead of overstate it."
Maybe you should check out the rate of artic sea ice melting. But then that might conflict with preconceived biases.
"I don't think either side of the climate debate has "clean hands"."
Irrelevant. This type of thinking leads to the belief that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
"The question is: What (if anything) should be done about climate change if the proof is less than absolute and the fastest growing economies (China and India) are preparing to pick up the slack for any voluntary reductions that might take place elsewhere?"
And that question cannot be answered without research into the likely effects of climate change. Kind of a problem with your view. And your attitude is precisely the reason that political obstacles won't be overcome. Rather self fulfilling.
"The data has to be ALWAYS available to everyone. That's the whole point behind Freedom of Information requests."
You are quite wrong. There are numerous exceptions to FOIA requests. I've worked in government doing research and have had access to data used in research that would absolutely not be made public.
"If you feel you are being hassled by nuisence requests, you hire someone to deal with them and pay their wages by charging the people requesting the information (as you are perfectly entitled to do)."
But should they HAVE to do this? The problem with this whole incident is that real issues have been ignored. People don't like the scientists TONE. The fact that the science is essentially sound is irrelevant. The fact that a crime was committed is ignored. People are still using this incident to discredit the science when in fact it should be used to discredit the argument against it.
I disagree. I think it would make a great campaign ad.
Something along the lines of:
My opponent is so afraid of you knowing the truth about her beliefs, actions and policies that she is trying to use lawyers and the courts to silence my ability to inform you. With the appropriate quotes and imagery. What is she afraid of? Then put in some of the things she does not want known.
I think it would be great....
"Obama was certainly a moderate compared to Clinton and that is why he was elected, also just look at the attacks on him now that say that he has swung far left/socialist compared to what he promised!"
Obama was essentially no different from Clinton. They are moderate conservatives. They are only liberal when compared to the Republican party in the US.
A good site is www.politicalcompass.org
"I also feel that McCain was a moderate"
Definitely not. He is a conservative. Always has been.
"Something (mostly the tea party) has happened to drive things far from center."
Nope. The tea party is essentially the Republican base. Or at least members of the public expressing what most of the Republican members of Congress believe. This has been the party platform for 30 years. They have just been very good at PR for a very long time.
"Now the Democrat candidates have swung far left as well"
Name one. Seriously. Remember that Obama is a moderate conservative. Ralph Nader would be considered a moderate left candidate.
US politics generally occurs in a very narrow range. As a result, most voters concepts of conservative and liberal are highly distorted. Hell, Nixon and certainly Eisenhower would probably be considered extremely liberal today.
Ross Perot was a third party candidate. He realistically never had a chance to win. But he was popular enough that he forced the other parties to adopt and address issues that they did not really want to in order to win. That is the power of a third party in the US. Any group that attracts a sufficient number of voters (generally "independents" that can influence the outcome of an election will have influence. Even if they do not have a chance in hell of getting elected.
The current Tea Party movement will not have such an influence because they do not attract swing voters. They are essentially the Republican base. The Libertarian party is similar in demographics.
"Microsoft already puts ample resources on fixing it."
That is simply absurd. If that were the case they would have few security flaws. This is not a short term problem-windows has been around for a long time. Microsoft has just chosen to put security below features. They are just not honest enough to admit that they do not want to commit the needed resources.
"The post that you've linked to just states matter-of-factly that it doesn't scale, but doesn't explain why it doesn't scale (which is noted repeatedly in the comments to that post). Merely providing a bunch of big numbers is not particularly useful - yes, of course, more resources would be needed for a country the size of US compared to Israel, but then US has more of those resources in the first place!"
Every hear of the phrase "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer"? While often intended as a joke, I think it is very applicable here. It should be painfully obvious that this cannot scale to the US. The system would require a large number of highly trained professionals (intelligent, multilingual, etc) and accountability. It would be totally unlike the current TSA and any current police or investigative force. Even if we could recruit and train enough people it would likely take years. And it would be difficult to retain them because they would be ideally suited for a wide range of intelligence work. All this to prevent something that essentially never happens.
The air marshall program is essentially worthless. They have committed more incidents (workplace discrimination) than crimes prevented (zero?). Once again, spending money to prevent something that really doesn't happen.
"But what's lost is the ability to handle the out-of-the-ordinary service needs that customers have; the company is just too big, and the support guy (let's be frank, in some call center in India*) just doesn't have the resources or the knowledge to handle the problem."
Sorry, but this IS intentional. Good support costs money-either upfront by designing products that don't require it or providing it. It's not bureaucracy that makes it hard to escalate a problem, it's policy.
It might not be malice and it certainly could be incompetence (of course, any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice) but it is most certainly deliberate.
"You are still responsible for your entire purchase. The FTC Will not force your card company to refund you (Letter of the law does not require it). If you notify your card company you are responsible for the first $50 in charges -- YOUR CARD COMPANY MAY be kinder, but the LAW does not require it."
You might want to read the FTC site. Your liability is zero if the charge involves your CC number rather than your actual card.
"Well, maybe if California (my state) didn't have a sales that that wasn't ten godamned percent in some cities we'd buy more locally. When I got my first HDTV I went to a local store, and the sales tax was $250. Fuck that scene. Never again."
While you can elect to avoid paying the tax by purchased out of state, you still owe the tax.
"There's always some self righteous sycophants who try to shame us into reporting out of state purchases."
I would consider doing it to cover my ass. For at least a token amount for audit protection. Or for large purchases. You never know when a state will get records from a company and track down those who failed to report the use tax on their income tax forms. Or when someone will report you. Tax fraud can be expensive (and lucrative).
"Sales taxes are a notoriously unreliable way of bringing in revenue. When times get tough, people stop buying things, and sales tax revenue dries up. States that depend heavily on sales tax revenue (Tennessee and California come immediately to mind) end up with massive budget shortfalls."
Then why are states with no sales taxes currently having budget problems (Oregon)? Or those with income taxes not doing better than those with only sales taxes? Sales tax revenue is pretty predictable. The failure to plan is the problem, not the type of tax. After all, income taxes don't work very well if people are unemployed. And California relies on income tax more than sales tax (about 2 to 1 in 2005/6). Oops.
"Sales tax is inherently regressive. The poor spend a high percentage of their income on taxable goods. This is still true even if you eliminate taxes on food."
And your point is? The income tax is inherently regressive too. I have lived in Ohio and Washington state. Ohio had a sales tax and income tax while Washington had only a sales tax. The tax structure in Ohio was far more regressive due to the income tax. I could avoid paying much of the sales tax due to exemptions. I couldn't avoid the income tax (no income exempted for city and school taxes, little for the state). My tax burden in Washington, despite a much higher sales tax, is lower.
Well, that's one way to become energy independent. However, I don't want to be around when our economy collapses from losing the bulk of our petroleum supply....
"They don't understand that workers are not being driven into the factories. Rather the factories are a more attractive form of employment than subsistence farming or herding."
Sounds like six of one and a half dozen of another to me. They are being driven to work in the factories because they can no longer support themselves by farming or herding related to government policy.
"Such a question should have been laughed out of the room, not because it was a silly question (and a gotcha with regard to a future question on Health Care), but because such a thing as the government being authorized to mandate to such a personal level as to what you must eat is laughably authoritarian."
And many (most?) people don't really have a problem with authoritarian. As long as it suits them. Is the idea of a government passing such a law really far fetched? We pass laws telling people what they can't eat. Religions tell people what they can eat (Kosher, Halal). That doesn't seem to be a large issue as long as it has sufficient support.
Good luck trying trying to overcome it.
"For the immediate future, the S sedan seems like a niche product."
It doesn't matter. Tesla IS a niche car maker. Anything they could possibly make is a niche car by definition.
Consider that Volvo was unable to succeed as an independent car maker. Not to mention Saab, Jaguar, etc. And they made more cars than Tesla has. Fiat bought Chrysler in part because they determined that they had to sell over 6 million cars a year to survive.
It will be amazing if Tesla survives.
"Look at BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus."
Not very good examples. Lexus is the luxury brand created by Toyota. BMW and Mercedes aren't inherently toys for the rich. They are common cars in Europe.