If they charged anything less than $200/mo, I would have to pay it, since I require high-speed internet for work and have few other options here.
There is no 3G coverage, there is no DSL. My only other opportunity would be satellite's asymmetric, high latency hellhole.
An ISP tried to provide alternative service here a few years ago and Comcast sued them into bankruptcy.
Comcast is MY FAVORITE.:-)
I've thought of trying to set up a WiFi point-to-point with a friend who lives about 5 miles away and gets business class DSL, but honestly, that's not a very reliable solution.
So until we stop allowing Comcast to be a douche and browbeat the competition out of existence, your whole "willing buyer, willing seller" free market speech will fall on deaf ears.
Well, other than states like Delaware and Connecticut and Rhode Island, very few states DONT have this huge diversity of populations.
The Mexicans on the south border of Texas vote quite differently from the liberal college students in Austin who vote quite differently (overwhelmingly liberal) from suburban mothers in Dallas (social conservative) who are also different from the cowboys on the panhandle plains.
Then again, The city folks in Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas have different needs from the farmers in the rest of the state. Even the farmers in the relatively moist eastern part of Kansas have very different desires from the farmers in the very aarid western Kansas plains.... on some issues anyway.
The people in Minneapolis vote vastly differently than almost everyone further north in that state. The countryside dairy farms in Wisconsin are quite different from the "big" cities of Green Bay and Milwaukee, which are basically satellites of Chicago.
I travel a lot and I could do sort of relative comparison across almost every state, so until you shrink states down to senate-district sized chunks, I think you'll run into that consistently.
Which.... leads right back to why I proposed senate-district sized chunks.:-)
Just like the rich folks on Miami Beach would vote far differently than the Cubans in north-west Miami, or the folks in Manhattan might vote differently than the folks on Long Island, if given the choice.
meh. We have the same idea and equally impractical solutions.
It has nothing to do with counting issues. It has to do with proportional representation.
At the time it was created, Delaware got 3 votes, Virginia got 10 votes.
However, Virginia had something like 30x the population.
What it did was give small states more representation in choosing the president.
Currently, the numbers are inflated. Wyoming still only gets 3 votes, but California gets 55.
If we deflated it back down so California got 15, then Florida would have 9 and Wyoming would still have 3 and suddenly, we would have a number more useful swing states.
Frankly, I prefer the concept of electoral college, but I think I'd almost favor state implementing a district election system, similar to senate seats, for electoral votes, allowing an even spread based on population clusters...
I DO NOT like a "popular vote". It feels too much like a big federalist government. I don't believe in an overwhelming federal goverment. I would prefer to go back more toward a coalition of independent states.
I'd have to point out that the Libertarian party has no issues with using courts for lawful lawsuits. It's not contrary too libertarian policy or ideology.
However, the libertarian party constantly fights to get its name on ballots, often unsuccessfully for not following these same rules.
I think it's BS if they get to selectively enforce these rules... Just my opinion...
It makes a lot more sense when the number of electoral votes per population was much smaller..
Back in the day when Virginia had 10 votes and the smallest, Delaware, had 3 votes, they both mattered.
Now when Wyoming still only has 3 votes, several states have 10-18 times as many, making those small states TOTALLY irrelevant.
So... if we cut the number of people per electoral vote so that California only gets 15 votes and Wyoming still gets 3, suddenly all the states matter a little more.
Of course, this would elect the current Republicans over the current Democrats so it won't happen, but that's the spirit of the electoral college.
The block voting in large states IS unfair to citizens of small states.
In addition, "popular vote" for federal government is a sham that results in ridiculous things like "the war on drugs", even when individual states vehemently fight those same laws.
The whole POINT of "The United States" was to unify national defense and monetary policy ONLY, while allowing each state to set its individual laws.
This is only the case in lip-service any more and I think it's a PROBLEM with out current government.
If Texas wants to ban gay marraige, it can. If California wants to allow it, it should be able to.
If California wants to allow abortion, awesome. If Georgia wants to ban it... cool.
If you don't like it, move... or travel.
I would like to move to a state with libertarian laws.
others would like to move to a state with socialized health care.
Why should these two be mutually exclusive when they're obviously both wanted by a substantial number of people, but are mutually incompatible within the same governmental structure.
Well, I refer to Edmonton, Calgary and most of interior BC, where the temperature rarely passes 80F and DOES stay below 60F for most of the year.
I think it's the altitude, really. You're right, out on the plains/lakes, it's warmer in the summer and the humidity is killer (of course, that's true in some of BC as well)!
Screw Ontario and uhm Manitoba... and uhm Quebec too! Hah!:-D
I think that's the concept behind the "3d nanotube" part.
Nanotubes are both transparent and conductive. So if you can get a PV layer on top of nanotubes, you can actually accomplish this. This isn't new, it's been demonstrated by a number of university researchers.
He claims to have a new method of doing it that is *ahem* 9 times more efficient.
OF course, the article is SO poorly written, from a scientific perspective, that it's hard to make heads or tails of it.
I still put the blame at the feet of the people who agreed to sign massive contracts that obligated a substantial portion of their income for nearly half their life with collateral worth an order of magnitude larger than their net worth.... when they didn't understand them.
So, they either believe, or they continue to rent from slumlords, in crime ridden neighborhoods.
This is a classic FALSE DILEMMA.
The real choice is:
1) Rent in the ghetto for cheap 2) Buy in the ghetto for cheap+$50 3) Rent in a nice neighborhood for expensive 4) Buy in a nice neighborhood for expensive+$100
I'm sorry, but I can rent a house in the ghetto for $600. I can buy a house in the ghetto and pay a $650 mortgage.
I can rent in the "safe" suburbs for $1200. I can buy in the "safe" suburbs with a mortgage that equates to $1300/mo.
Older people do believe what bankers tell them because, well, bankers are nice men in shiny suits who are supposed to help them out.
OK, some stereotypically ignorant older people might believe that, but I personally don't know any.
Is someone really a liability if they are following the advice of someone they're supposed to be able to trust?
Yes, yes, in fact they are.
Ever put money in a bank? Are you *sure* your bank is FDIC insured,
Yes, I'm sure they are and I wouldn't even CONSIDER keeping an essential stash of money in a bank that was not.
Lots of people probably followed bankers' advice as much or more than their pastor.
I would put religious leaders slightly below investment bankers and used car salesmen on my scale of trust, but regardless, if a person I have known and trusted my whole life told me to sign a legal contract that was:
valued at more than an order of magnitude higher than my net-worth
with a monthly obligation of almost a third of my income and
a term of almost half my adult life....
I MIGHT READ IT FIRST
holy fuck...
The fact that you REASONABLY think someone would do otherwise is really really really disturbing to me.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way anymore, you're more likely to have your job shipped to China and end up working at some service job with no benefits. When my wife broke her collar bone it ended up costing us thousands out of pocket and that was with decent insurance. Without insurance we would have been looking at $10k+. How many people can actually afford to take that kind of hit?
While I have sympathy for your situation, it has almost zero relation to the concept of people becoming trapped by the "ZOMG, what's this ARM thing and when did I buy one?" scenario.
There have always been foreclosures and always will be. But the number is up sharply because a lot of people were signing loans they obviously couldn't afford, plain and simple.
I have much less sympathy for someone who bought and ARM and is finding that he can't afford it today.
This is one of the reasons why medical expenses are counted less and often overlooked completely when doing a credit check... some expenses can't be anticipated.... others can. Which is the point being made.
OK.... so I guess that most of my friends are not human because they said "nahh, I'll wait until the cycle declines again.
And now those people, who have been paying rent all along, are paying higher taxes to fund the idiots who took a mortgage that was too big?
The decline in home values on a fairly regular, predictable schedule is not a new concept. It happens approximately every 18 years, and has been happening in roughly that cycle since around the mid 1600s. There have been only TWO 18 year periods that didn't experience this boom/bust cycle in the entire history of American land ownership.
It may not make them stupid, nor greedy, but it does require a bit of willful ignorance, which we are all too happy to accept these days... after all.. they don't teach "what is a 3/1 ARM in highschool", do they?
When you are signing a contract that binds you to a sum of money an order of magnitude larger than your income, for a term of almost half your adult life..........
"saying uhm i don't understand, but ok" IS NOT A CORRECT ANSWER. In fact, it's not even a reasonable answer.
In fact, it's downright stupid on the order of "uhm, so you promise if i lay here in the street i won't get run over?"
That is willful ignorance and should be illegal. It's wrong... and someone with that level of willful ignorance shouldn't be ALLOWED to sign contracts. Shit. Their credit getting fucked to hell and back is a GOOD THING. Damn...
They should be run over by a galloping horse and then dragged through town square (not really, but SHIT?!?!?!)
And FYI, I just did a google search with the text "What is a 3/1 ARM?" and the very first result was a very simple explanation of a 3/1 ARM with links to more information about ARMS if you're still confused.
How can you POSSIBLY believe this is too difficult for someone to do on the eve of the biggest decision of their ENTIRE life.
Sigh.... This willful ignorance is a serious social problem...
The problem is that, when someone signs a contract, society expects them to understand that contract.
The trust of society is built on such agreements. If someone signs a contract without the slightest clue what they are signing, they are at fault for undermining society's system of trust, not the person who drafted the contract.
So, completely throwing out the idea of social-darwinism and going back to the basics of this discussion...
a number of people signed massive contracts for amounts of money many times their net worth, with terms of almost half their adult life..... without the slightest clue what they were signing..... and you...... want me to feel sorry for them?????????
I'm sorry, you actually want me to GIVE THEM MONEY?? Because I actually took an hour to google "Ajustable Rate Mortgages" before I signed my contract. It wasn't exactly rocket science.
It's not a matter of being dumb, but rather being willfully ignorant.
So while you don't believe that dumb people should be taken advantage of by smart people.... I would contend that willful ignorance removes you from the protections of this flowery equality and puts you squarely in the area of "should probably have his ass handed to him".
I'm sorry, I have owned several houses using an ARM.
I recognized that it was one of the largest decisions I had ever made, and probably EVER would make.
Taking an hour to go online or to the library to check out what exactly it is that you are signing...
OMFG.
If that is "too complicated".... fuck me. Then they deserve it.
Is there a class on ARMS in high school people can take? I don't think those are covered in home ec.
GAAAHHHHHHh!!!! What a sick and demented view of the world!!!
People do not have a RIGHT to be spoon-fed everything they know. Just because it isn't force fed to idiots in remedial math class, doesn't mean it shouldn't be a prerequisite to signing a massive, quarter million dollar contract with a term of almost half of your adult life.
If you are too dense to take an hour to read and understand such a massive contract then YOU DO NOT "DESERVE" to be singing that contract. Rental agreements are much simpler.
It's society's fault for making them think that it is OWED to them. People forget that it is something they earn and should take a FEW MINUTES to understand what they're doing.
Is there any other decision someone makes that affects more than half of their adult life that you would regard an hour or two of remedial study TOO MUCH EFFORT to undertake?
WTF?
I'm at a loss for words at how you can develop a level headed viewpoint with this conclusion..... sigh
The funny part is that this summary of the book does a piss poor job of debunking the paper.
In fact, I read the paper and it makes a lot of sense. It makes no claims about turbines decreasing in efficiency, merely that turbines are less efficient than piston engines... which is absolutely true.
However, they're more reliable, require less maintinance and are easier to fit to airplane designs.
What exactly in this paper requires debunking?
I think the OP is a shill for someone, or just totally taken by some BS he ran into somewhere in a book.:-)
You know, there's a reason why the US military uses turboprops on most of its transport aircraft. Because THOSE are more efficient AND more reliable than ducted turbojets used on passenger aircraft.
But they have a slightly slower top speed, so they aren't used for passengers.
Anyway, the whole analogy to the authors of this paper being "stupid, gullible idiots" is a bit ridiculous as it's a pretty rational paper that outlines facts based on documented evidence and draws a sensible conclusion.
Anyone should be free to disagree with it (including the OP), but calling them idiots is not helping that cause, but rather, making HIM look like an idiot.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, FireFox 4 won't support gopher:// anymore.
So enjoy it while it lasts!
If they charged anything less than $200/mo, I would have to pay it, since I require high-speed internet for work and have few other options here.
There is no 3G coverage, there is no DSL. My only other opportunity would be satellite's asymmetric, high latency hellhole.
An ISP tried to provide alternative service here a few years ago and Comcast sued them into bankruptcy.
Comcast is MY FAVORITE. :-)
I've thought of trying to set up a WiFi point-to-point with a friend who lives about 5 miles away and gets business class DSL, but honestly, that's not a very reliable solution.
So until we stop allowing Comcast to be a douche and browbeat the competition out of existence, your whole "willing buyer, willing seller" free market speech will fall on deaf ears.
of course, i meant the Acer. oops :-)
Well, other than states like Delaware and Connecticut and Rhode Island, very few states DONT have this huge diversity of populations.
The Mexicans on the south border of Texas vote quite differently from the liberal college students in Austin who vote quite differently (overwhelmingly liberal) from suburban mothers in Dallas (social conservative) who are also different from the cowboys on the panhandle plains.
Then again, The city folks in Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas have different needs from the farmers in the rest of the state. Even the farmers in the relatively moist eastern part of Kansas have very different desires from the farmers in the very aarid western Kansas plains.... on some issues anyway.
The people in Minneapolis vote vastly differently than almost everyone further north in that state. The countryside dairy farms in Wisconsin are quite different from the "big" cities of Green Bay and Milwaukee, which are basically satellites of Chicago.
I travel a lot and I could do sort of relative comparison across almost every state, so until you shrink states down to senate-district sized chunks, I think you'll run into that consistently.
Which.... leads right back to why I proposed senate-district sized chunks. :-)
Just like the rich folks on Miami Beach would vote far differently than the Cubans in north-west Miami, or the folks in Manhattan might vote differently than the folks on Long Island, if given the choice.
meh. We have the same idea and equally impractical solutions.
We rock. :-)
It has nothing to do with counting issues. It has to do with proportional representation.
At the time it was created, Delaware got 3 votes, Virginia got 10 votes.
However, Virginia had something like 30x the population.
What it did was give small states more representation in choosing the president.
Currently, the numbers are inflated. Wyoming still only gets 3 votes, but California gets 55.
If we deflated it back down so California got 15, then Florida would have 9 and Wyoming would still have 3 and suddenly, we would have a number more useful swing states.
Frankly, I prefer the concept of electoral college, but I think I'd almost favor state implementing a district election system, similar to senate seats, for electoral votes, allowing an even spread based on population clusters...
I DO NOT like a "popular vote". It feels too much like a big federalist government. I don't believe in an overwhelming federal goverment. I would prefer to go back more toward a coalition of independent states.
I'd have to point out that the Libertarian party has no issues with using courts for lawful lawsuits. It's not contrary too libertarian policy or ideology.
However, the libertarian party constantly fights to get its name on ballots, often unsuccessfully for not following these same rules.
I think it's BS if they get to selectively enforce these rules... Just my opinion...
Uhm. The Whigs weren't the third party... the Republicans were.
A long time ago it was the Democrats vs the Whigs.
Suddenly those Republicans crept up and pulled the rhugs out from under the Whigs. *chuckles*
It makes a lot more sense when the number of electoral votes per population was much smaller..
Back in the day when Virginia had 10 votes and the smallest, Delaware, had 3 votes, they both mattered.
Now when Wyoming still only has 3 votes, several states have 10-18 times as many, making those small states TOTALLY irrelevant.
So... if we cut the number of people per electoral vote so that California only gets 15 votes and Wyoming still gets 3, suddenly all the states matter a little more.
Of course, this would elect the current Republicans over the current Democrats so it won't happen, but that's the spirit of the electoral college.
Gridlock is good.
I recall a famous feedom lover... not sure if it was Jefferson or Voltaire, who said.
"The liberty of the people decreases in direct proportion to the number of laws on the books"
While it's a bit of an oversimplification, I agree with it on principle.
I think the "more laws" approach is bone-headed and downright wrong and just makes a worse society to live in.
But politicians feel like they have to pass "MORE LAWS" so they can say the DID SOMETHING.
By all means, ammend old ones to match modern technology, but just passing more and more isn't a solution.
The block voting in large states IS unfair to citizens of small states.
In addition, "popular vote" for federal government is a sham that results in ridiculous things like "the war on drugs", even when individual states vehemently fight those same laws.
The whole POINT of "The United States" was to unify national defense and monetary policy ONLY, while allowing each state to set its individual laws.
This is only the case in lip-service any more and I think it's a PROBLEM with out current government.
If Texas wants to ban gay marraige, it can. If California wants to allow it, it should be able to.
If California wants to allow abortion, awesome. If Georgia wants to ban it... cool.
If you don't like it, move... or travel.
I would like to move to a state with libertarian laws.
others would like to move to a state with socialized health care.
Why should these two be mutually exclusive when they're obviously both wanted by a substantial number of people, but are mutually incompatible within the same governmental structure.
That doesn't seem absurd to me...... really...
Well, I refer to Edmonton, Calgary and most of interior BC, where the temperature rarely passes 80F and DOES stay below 60F for most of the year.
I think it's the altitude, really. You're right, out on the plains/lakes, it's warmer in the summer and the humidity is killer (of course, that's true in some of BC as well)!
Screw Ontario and uhm Manitoba... and uhm Quebec too! Hah! :-D
I think that's the concept behind the "3d nanotube" part.
Nanotubes are both transparent and conductive. So if you can get a PV layer on top of nanotubes, you can actually accomplish this. This isn't new, it's been demonstrated by a number of university researchers.
He claims to have a new method of doing it that is *ahem* 9 times more efficient.
OF course, the article is SO poorly written, from a scientific perspective, that it's hard to make heads or tails of it.
The Asus ships with a base of 512MB and is upgradeable to 1.5GB out of the box.
Personally, I got the Linux version and upgraded it. Same specs as the EEE 901 but almost $200 less and an extra 512MB of RAM. :-)
a good portion of canada rarely, if ever, gets above 80F, even on a hot August day. And generally stays below 60F fore 10 months of the year.
Sounds like a perfect candidate for venting to the outside.
Awesome answer.
Reading slashdot is not an obligation. :-)
I still put the blame at the feet of the people who agreed to sign massive contracts that obligated a substantial portion of their income for nearly half their life with collateral worth an order of magnitude larger than their net worth.... when they didn't understand them.
No, that's totally faultless..
sigh.
So, they either believe, or they continue to rent from slumlords, in crime ridden neighborhoods.
This is a classic FALSE DILEMMA.
The real choice is:
1) Rent in the ghetto for cheap
2) Buy in the ghetto for cheap+$50
3) Rent in a nice neighborhood for expensive
4) Buy in a nice neighborhood for expensive+$100
I'm sorry, but I can rent a house in the ghetto for $600. I can buy a house in the ghetto and pay a $650 mortgage.
I can rent in the "safe" suburbs for $1200. I can buy in the "safe" suburbs with a mortgage that equates to $1300/mo.
Your analogy is dishonest and ridiculous.
Thanks for playing.
Older people do believe what bankers tell them because, well, bankers are nice men in shiny suits who are supposed to help them out.
OK, some stereotypically ignorant older people might believe that, but I personally don't know any.
Is someone really a liability if they are following the advice of someone they're supposed to be able to trust?
Yes, yes, in fact they are.
Ever put money in a bank? Are you *sure* your bank is FDIC insured,
Yes, I'm sure they are and I wouldn't even CONSIDER keeping an essential stash of money in a bank that was not.
Lots of people probably followed bankers' advice as much or more than their pastor.
I would put religious leaders slightly below investment bankers and used car salesmen on my scale of trust, but regardless, if a person I have known and trusted my whole life told me to sign a legal contract that was:
I MIGHT READ IT FIRST
holy fuck...
The fact that you REASONABLY think someone would do otherwise is really really really disturbing to me.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way anymore, you're more likely to have your job shipped to China and end up working at some service job with no benefits. When my wife broke her collar bone it ended up costing us thousands out of pocket and that was with decent insurance. Without insurance we would have been looking at $10k+. How many people can actually afford to take that kind of hit?
While I have sympathy for your situation, it has almost zero relation to the concept of people becoming trapped by the "ZOMG, what's this ARM thing and when did I buy one?" scenario.
There have always been foreclosures and always will be. But the number is up sharply because a lot of people were signing loans they obviously couldn't afford, plain and simple.
I have much less sympathy for someone who bought and ARM and is finding that he can't afford it today.
This is one of the reasons why medical expenses are counted less and often overlooked completely when doing a credit check... some expenses can't be anticipated.... others can. Which is the point being made.
OK.... so I guess that most of my friends are not human because they said "nahh, I'll wait until the cycle declines again.
And now those people, who have been paying rent all along, are paying higher taxes to fund the idiots who took a mortgage that was too big?
The decline in home values on a fairly regular, predictable schedule is not a new concept. It happens approximately every 18 years, and has been happening in roughly that cycle since around the mid 1600s. There have been only TWO 18 year periods that didn't experience this boom/bust cycle in the entire history of American land ownership.
It may not make them stupid, nor greedy, but it does require a bit of willful ignorance, which we are all too happy to accept these days... after all.. they don't teach "what is a 3/1 ARM in highschool", do they?
Sigh... idiots... i still say they're idiots.
ZOMG!
When you are signing a contract that binds you to a sum of money an order of magnitude larger than your income, for a term of almost half your adult life..........
"saying uhm i don't understand, but ok" IS NOT A CORRECT ANSWER. In fact, it's not even a reasonable answer.
In fact, it's downright stupid on the order of "uhm, so you promise if i lay here in the street i won't get run over?"
That is willful ignorance and should be illegal. It's wrong... and someone with that level of willful ignorance shouldn't be ALLOWED to sign contracts. Shit. Their credit getting fucked to hell and back is a GOOD THING. Damn...
They should be run over by a galloping horse and then dragged through town square (not really, but SHIT?!?!?!)
And FYI, I just did a google search with the text "What is a 3/1 ARM?" and the very first result was a very simple explanation of a 3/1 ARM with links to more information about ARMS if you're still confused.
How can you POSSIBLY believe this is too difficult for someone to do on the eve of the biggest decision of their ENTIRE life.
Sigh.... This willful ignorance is a serious social problem...
The problem is that, when someone signs a contract, society expects them to understand that contract.
The trust of society is built on such agreements. If someone signs a contract without the slightest clue what they are signing, they are at fault for undermining society's system of trust, not the person who drafted the contract.
So, completely throwing out the idea of social-darwinism and going back to the basics of this discussion...
a number of people signed massive contracts for amounts of money many times their net worth, with terms of almost half their adult life..... without the slightest clue what they were signing..... and you...... want me to feel sorry for them?????????
I'm sorry, you actually want me to GIVE THEM MONEY?? Because I actually took an hour to google "Ajustable Rate Mortgages" before I signed my contract. It wasn't exactly rocket science.
It's not a matter of being dumb, but rather being willfully ignorant.
So while you don't believe that dumb people should be taken advantage of by smart people.... I would contend that willful ignorance removes you from the protections of this flowery equality and puts you squarely in the area of "should probably have his ass handed to him".
Seriously.... gah...
I have *got* to reply to this.
I'm sorry, I have owned several houses using an ARM.
I recognized that it was one of the largest decisions I had ever made, and probably EVER would make.
Taking an hour to go online or to the library to check out what exactly it is that you are signing...
OMFG.
If that is "too complicated".... fuck me. Then they deserve it.
Is there a class on ARMS in high school people can take? I don't think those are covered in home ec.
GAAAHHHHHHh!!!! What a sick and demented view of the world!!!
People do not have a RIGHT to be spoon-fed everything they know. Just because it isn't force fed to idiots in remedial math class, doesn't mean it shouldn't be a prerequisite to signing a massive, quarter million dollar contract with a term of almost half of your adult life.
If you are too dense to take an hour to read and understand such a massive contract then YOU DO NOT "DESERVE" to be singing that contract. Rental agreements are much simpler.
It's society's fault for making them think that it is OWED to them. People forget that it is something they earn and should take a FEW MINUTES to understand what they're doing.
Is there any other decision someone makes that affects more than half of their adult life that you would regard an hour or two of remedial study TOO MUCH EFFORT to undertake?
WTF?
I'm at a loss for words at how you can develop a level headed viewpoint with this conclusion..... sigh
As long as there are people to live in them, they're worth something.
Now, if they're in.. for example... Detroit... then you have a valid point. :-)
The funny part is that this summary of the book does a piss poor job of debunking the paper.
In fact, I read the paper and it makes a lot of sense. It makes no claims about turbines decreasing in efficiency, merely that turbines are less efficient than piston engines... which is absolutely true.
However, they're more reliable, require less maintinance and are easier to fit to airplane designs.
What exactly in this paper requires debunking?
I think the OP is a shill for someone, or just totally taken by some BS he ran into somewhere in a book. :-)
You know, there's a reason why the US military uses turboprops on most of its transport aircraft. Because THOSE are more efficient AND more reliable than ducted turbojets used on passenger aircraft.
But they have a slightly slower top speed, so they aren't used for passengers.
Anyway, the whole analogy to the authors of this paper being "stupid, gullible idiots" is a bit ridiculous as it's a pretty rational paper that outlines facts based on documented evidence and draws a sensible conclusion.
Anyone should be free to disagree with it (including the OP), but calling them idiots is not helping that cause, but rather, making HIM look like an idiot.