There are no laws against a business being owned by the same people doing anything. There are laws against a business being owned by another business (holding) having access to its resources to do something.
I would suggest you re-read the Sherman Anti-Trust act and several other business regulation laws. Yes, there are laws that regulate businesses owned by the same people who are doing things that may economically benefit other businesses they are involved with. It may be difficult to nail down some of these things and to get any sort of prosecution if some regulations may prevent that from happening, but you are assuming too much here to suggest that governments can't prevent this from happening.
Humans are social (aka we gather together in groups rather than work individually... for the most part) omnivore chasers who captured prey by literally making the prey run to exhaustion. That is also where human intelligence comes from, and is the basis for most of human society as well. Human society tends to be hierarchical because we needed a "chief" to direct such hunts and to communicate tactics as well as pass information about how to do everything from one generation to the next.
What allows that lack of hardcoded traits is intelligence. Of course the primate heritage also helps with that including delayed gestational development that happens outside of the womb (aka infancy where young human children are particularly vulnerable and unable to perform even self-locomotion).
I like how some science fiction authors, particularly ones like Larry Niven, think through these aspects of what makes humans essentially human and acknowledges that species who have different evolutionary heritages will be thinking and behaving in very different ways. The Kzinti and Pearson's Puppeteers were particularly well designed in terms of psychological viewpoints as species (and interestingly even a part of the Star Trek universe as Larry Niven used them in a script that he wrote for one of the Star Trek episodes).
Tesla may be the first, but why would you think they'd be the only? Again, its not about Tesla, its about the practice.
Except in this case it is about Tesla explicitly, as the law is being changed to apply only to Tesla and Tesla's marketing approach. It may be worded in a general way that doesn't explicitly call out the name of Tesla explicitly, but it is a law that only applies to this particular company. Outlawing this approach is done strictly as a marketing move through the use of political pressure to further the profits of a small group of politically well connected individuals.
Sadly, legislation has some of the largest return of investment that you can ever make, from a Wall Street perspective of ROI. It is by far easier to make money that way than it is to usually invest in high growth technology companies.
Tesla would love to set up service centers (a concept completely separate from a sales office) in Ohio... especially if they have a large number of sales in the state. Unfortunately these crazy laws are also going to make sure those service centers can't be built there either.
As for the loss of local retail vendors in a municipality, that is something which merchants are going to have to adapt to as well. It will take some creative changes in the local tax structures of most cities as well as perhaps cutting out some of the other fat that comes from business licensing, regulation, and zoning laws associated with those businesses. Those changes should be looked upon as a good thing as a whole lot of fat not to mention flat out corruption has been a part of that whole side of thing in most smaller towns (not to mention even large cities). It certainly hurts to see a business go bankrupt and no doubt that will happen to otherwise very good people who have done some wonderful things for their community.
What it will take for local small-scale retailers to thrive is providing a service and customer support that larger retailers or somebody on-line simply can't do. If shopping at a local retailer doesn't give much added benefit, shoppers won't bother going there any more and businesses fighting that trend should go bankrupt.
I will be none too surprised when Tesla's Board of Directors take out a new venture: Future Auto, the Autoship Dealer of the Future! Then they open dealerships selling Volts, Leafs, and--most prominently--Tesla electric cars and even some hub motor bikes with diesel one cylinders. Every existing car dealership in your city looks like you just stepped into 1920; this is the only place in town anyone wants to buy a car from. Profits for every dealer are at record lows. Going out of business sale everywhere.
Good luck with that. In the states where you could get away with such a plan, you can already sell these vehicles in the manner that Tesla already is doing. Instead, in order to get a dealership license in the few states where Tesla is meeting some strong resistance, those are also states where getting that dealership license is incredibly bureaucratic and needs local ownership of that dealership in order to be permitted the ability to sell automobiles.
The whole problem has been due to the fact that some major dealership are literally blackmailing Tesla Motors in order to get their particular cut of any "local" sales (relative to those particular dealerships). While Elon Musk didn't name specific individuals, he did say he was approached by a major automobile dealer in Boston, Massachusetts who flat out demanded a dealership from Tesla and was pissed because he couldn't get it. It really is a squeeze operation no different than what Al Capone did in Chicago with alcoholic beverage distributors. Heck, it even includes hired muscle that will make sure you pay the distribution fees.
It should be noteworthy that specific legislation is currently being enacted... meaning that in spite of the power you claim auto dealerships have with politicians they still need to come up with these laws in the first place.... and those laws don't currently exist in many cases. This means they are reacting to Tesla rather than defending against changes to the law which would explicitly permit a company like Tesla to move in.
In this case, I think it is a self-correcting problem. If the Tesla vehicles start to become extremely popular, and enough voters are aware of these kind of tactics and laws, those politicians will be eventually removed from office or at least have some real political pain from which they need to face some very angry voters for supporting this kind of thing. This will be especially true if other automobile companies (of which the big three are certainly paying attention) try the same approach that Tesla is doing. When voters realize this is a law that was enacted in 2014 rather than 1814 or even 1914, they will know squarely who to blame.
This really is an issue that can stick in the craw of a significant block of voters that can dominate local politics too. Support for special rules to favor a big business best happens in obscurity and for products that ordinary citizens typically don't buy in significant quantities (like buying Aluminum by the ton or supplying 6 foot diameter pipes). Automobiles, while admittedly a big ticket item that people don't purchase every day, it is something that almost every registered voter either knows somebody very close to them buys (a brother, sister, parent, or child) or buys personally.
This still isn't going to stop citizens of Ohio from getting Tesla vehicles either. Instead, it will go to companies and service centers located in states other than those states who impose such draconian laws. You might even see a sort of "black market" pop up which completely bypasses the dealership licensing system where groups of private individuals travel across the Ohio River to Kentucky, buys the Tesla vehicle, and then sells it to a neighbor for a modest fee or mark-up. All these games end up doing is costing the citizens of this state more money than they would otherwise have to spend... as a sort of tax on the product. Perhaps that is all these guys are trying for anyway.
The dialog did not happen until after I posted my comment. IMHO it is too little too late and ass backward, and it has been largely one of pontificating rather than trying to get actual feedback too. There is no sign that they care either, but at least it is a start.
In other words, these protest posts actually worked and did their job. I'll agree that if these kind of posts continue to swamp stories completely driving out other "legitimate" discussion it is sort of stupid, but it was the lack of feedback and a dialog which was the issue. It took drastic action on the part of some real leaders within the Slashdot community to drive that point home.
Also, don't stereotype as much as it seems you are doing right now. There is a range of opinions about the topic and you have somehow lumped me into some faceless mob. I suppose that is also nothing new on Slashdot, but I hope there is an understanding that those who are posting are real people and not some sort of weird video game. That is also something which Dice seemed to have forgotten as well.
Since the community is the actual product here, let's just fork it and we'll all go somewhere else.
This.
Even if Slashdot was managed poorly and didn't seem to listen, a benign neglect was sufficient to still stick around. Unfortunately the changes in the interface show that it will most definitely be a brand new site with only passing relations to what used to be. They may have the name "Slashdot", but it isn't the same thing and somehow they've missed on a part of what made this site so good.
Please stop. Please. If you really hate it so much, go start your own site. You can even run it on Slashcode, it's open source. You demonstrate day after day after day posting these hysterical anti-beta spam comments that you provide nothing of value to us, so your loss will be unnoticed.
It will end after awhile. In the meantime, I think there is something deserved here where at least a dialog between those making this change and those readers who are pissed should take place. When changes like this were proposed in the past, Rob Malda and the other original Slashdot guys would start a post specific to the issue and let people at least vent their spleen on that post. At this point it is a little too late for that kind of informed dissent.
At the moment, there is no dialog, and some people (certainly more than just one or two) are trying to complain in a venue that is at best the only real place for recourse. Most larger threads usually had something which was a sidebar for complaints about slashdot, only in this case it is much more in your face about the upcoming change.
Do you actually pay to use slashdot or are you complaining about a service you use freely that is no longer up to your high standards?
You do realize that even subscribers to Slashdot are getting the shaft here too? Some people actually are paying for Slashdot, so shut the F*** up about this kind of reasoning and learn a bit about what people are complaining about.
I gave my formal feedback on Beta and flat out pointed it was just awful all around in my replies. I don't mind promoting off-topic threads on the issue too as clearly the folks running Slashdot don't have a clue as to what it is that the site has been or what they can do to maintain the community.
If the beta becomes the standard interface, they will lose most of the traditional audience. I'm sure some folks will continue to stick around, but it won't be the same place. It sure is a hell of a gamble and it looks more like "not invented here" as a new generation takes over the site. It really is change simply for the sake of change and no other reason.
Hell, I don't even like the cute photos on the beta site either.
The funny thing is that every example you have given is an application which has been used by the porn industry. I'm not saying that porn is a necessary requirement for those devices and technologies to be adopted, but it can be said that such applications do tend to drive consumer electronics far more than most people want to admit. The debate with regards to VHS vs. Betamax video tape format includes at least in part how many companies involved with porn adopted the VHS format, and I happen to know from more first hand experience what the role of the porn industry was with regards to DVD adoption as a standard (mainly because I was a technician and engineer involved with some of the early development of DVD).
You may not have purchased the Blu Ray player for porn, but because over a million porn consumers did purchase such a player for that purpose it definitely drove down the price and allowed for early adopters to move in ahead of when you likely purchased your first Blu Ray devices and provided an early market for such technology. Many in the porn industry keep track of emerging trends in consumer electronics and tend to be among very early adopters of anything new that comes along. The Oculus Rift is definitely one of those devices I see as appealing to those producers and will most likely be among the first hundred or so actual applications which will be available upon its formal release.
Of course you could be interpreting some needles being poked into your arms as shotgun blasts too. If your perception of reality is already being distorted, it is hard to tell what is real and what is fake.
Something definitely happened with that teleportation device, the question is what does it actually do and what are the side effects? (aka the original claimed backstory about how the teleportation devices opened the "gateway" into the realm of hell or wherever those demons came from).
Like all emerging technology, it doesn't make it big until the porn industry finds its applications first. I would say that Oculus is going to see that happen.
One thing I know about John Carmack is that he gets things done and knows what he is talking about. That he decided to jump ship and go to Oculus VR shows that he is willing to in this case take a pay cut and really does believe in the technology he is working for (although I think Mr. Carmack also got a sweet deal with likely stock options worth quite a bit of money potentially in the future if it works out).
If anything, his ego is smaller than the actual performance he can deliver. Hopefully he can get Armadillo going again if the Oculus VR is successful (another casualty of his departure from id Software).
My impression of Doom is more that the protagonist (aka "the player") was psychologically impaired and gradually losing touch with reality, while everybody he met and was "out to get him" was in fact people trying to save him or to protect the base from his destruction. As the player meets more exotic creatures, it is more proof he is just losing touch with reality and getting doped up even more from some experimental treatment gone bad.
At least that is a way to think about it. A sort of disturbing view as you could say the protagonist is actually killing his fellow marines and is the real enemy, but a different way to view the game.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone.
You don't have to believe that the dollar or Euro has value in order to exchange those units of currency for things that you do value.
No, you need the religious kind of faith to receive them in the first place, except perhaps as a free gift that you don't care if it has any value in the first place. It is a pretty good assumption that you have this kind of faith if you already have this kind of fiat money and don't instantly throw it away as something worthless.
The taxation argument is a fair one, other than the corrupt nature of taxation in the first place. The taxation you are talking about also is with reference to the U.S.federal government, as some states & local governments do let you pay taxes in forms other than U.S. Dollars.
Still, if hyperinflation was to happen where trillion dollar notes were worth less than a piece of toilet paper, paying taxes would be similarly meaningless. What makes taxes work is that individuals have genuine faith that it can be used for something in the future and has some actual value.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone. What you are observing if you exchange this fiat money for something else is the faith of others with regards to that money. It is a real faith none the less.
That those same individuals may in turn base their assumption of value of those pieces of paper or even bits in a computerized ledger upon the faith that others similarly have in that money is true, and the hope that this money may have value in the future, but that is about it. It only has actual value once the transaction has actually happened, at which point the money is no longer money but tangible goods or services which have been rendered on your behalf.
Computers are a horrible example, but things which don't change too much in terms of the amount of labor which has been put into them such as a loaf of bread has gone up perhaps 4x as much. Some companies have been trying to keep those prices down, but the costs to provide that product has gone up, hence why companies such as Hostess have gone bankrupt from the squeeze trying to keep prices reasonable, paying labor costs that have gone up with inflation, and paying for higher grain and raw prices.
You do tend to earn more money as you get older, gain more experience, and hopefully move up the chain of command and perhaps are put in charge of others. That isn't a fair comparison for inflation either but rather a comparison of wages and benefits of entry level workers just starting out.
Didn't they lease or sell one recently to SpaceX or one of the other private companies? Sounds like the money was already allocated as well, so what's the damage?
What happened with SpaceX was a contract to use the services at Stennis for testing the next generation of engines that SpaceX is developing. Unfortunately it is a completely different tower and facility, not to mention that SpaceX is paying for that testing out of its own pocket. They are using the people at Stennis, but it is also for other existing facilities and not this particular tower.
This particular tower seems to be very specialized for what it does. Mainly it is some folks who keep hoping that the decision to cancel Constellation is going to be reversed. Some people eternally hope for miracles, and it would genuinely take an act of God to make this one happen.
The value of a U.S. Dollar used to be essentially minimum wage of $1 per day for an eight to ten hour shift, or about 10 cents to 15 cents per hour. A loaf of bread used to be about two cents, and of course a dollar was coined from a troy ounce of silver (and intrinsically worth more than the actual silver as well).
If you think about it, people demanding minimum wage is raised to $10 per hour or more are admitting that to dollar isn't just worth a third, but only 1% of what it used to be worth and declining beyond even that.
Interestingly enough, the U.S. Dollar pretty much maintained its value (with admittedly inflation and deflation over the years) throughout the entire 19th Century and even into the 20th Century. You have to ask the question about who benefits from a continuously inflating currency.... and it should be pointed out that it isn't ordinary citizens who get the benefit.
The funny thing about fiat currencies is that the money is based upon pure faith of the religious kind. Indeed it seems funny that people have far more faith in the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Euro than they do even in Jesus of Nazareth, yet historically at least the objective validity of the existence of Jesus is on a much more firm ground philosophically than the value of the U.S. Dollar.
The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve seems to suppose that this faith is going to be broken soon, which is the only thing that seems to explain what it is that they are doing.
If you want to see not only the actual stats for what inflation has been going on, note that inflation in America has been hovering around about 10% annual on most goods. See also this site:
It not only shows the real statistics (based upon the formulas that were in use in 1980 and earlier), but explains what sort of manipulation has been going on with the CPI, why it is a bad thing, and why your claimed source with the NY Times is full of the proverbial BS.
This isn't the only site to try and correct the government numbers, but it does use credible metrics for proper comparison as opposed to deliberate understating of inflation. This also impact things like changes in the GDP and other economic health statistics as well.
In other words, you are just flat out wrong about your assumptions that inflation is not happening
Slashdot Mirror
There are no laws against a business being owned by the same people doing anything. There are laws against a business being owned by another business (holding) having access to its resources to do something.
I would suggest you re-read the Sherman Anti-Trust act and several other business regulation laws. Yes, there are laws that regulate businesses owned by the same people who are doing things that may economically benefit other businesses they are involved with. It may be difficult to nail down some of these things and to get any sort of prosecution if some regulations may prevent that from happening, but you are assuming too much here to suggest that governments can't prevent this from happening.
Humans are social (aka we gather together in groups rather than work individually... for the most part) omnivore chasers who captured prey by literally making the prey run to exhaustion. That is also where human intelligence comes from, and is the basis for most of human society as well. Human society tends to be hierarchical because we needed a "chief" to direct such hunts and to communicate tactics as well as pass information about how to do everything from one generation to the next.
What allows that lack of hardcoded traits is intelligence. Of course the primate heritage also helps with that including delayed gestational development that happens outside of the womb (aka infancy where young human children are particularly vulnerable and unable to perform even self-locomotion).
I like how some science fiction authors, particularly ones like Larry Niven, think through these aspects of what makes humans essentially human and acknowledges that species who have different evolutionary heritages will be thinking and behaving in very different ways. The Kzinti and Pearson's Puppeteers were particularly well designed in terms of psychological viewpoints as species (and interestingly even a part of the Star Trek universe as Larry Niven used them in a script that he wrote for one of the Star Trek episodes).
Tesla may be the first, but why would you think they'd be the only? Again, its not about Tesla, its about the practice.
Except in this case it is about Tesla explicitly, as the law is being changed to apply only to Tesla and Tesla's marketing approach. It may be worded in a general way that doesn't explicitly call out the name of Tesla explicitly, but it is a law that only applies to this particular company. Outlawing this approach is done strictly as a marketing move through the use of political pressure to further the profits of a small group of politically well connected individuals.
Sadly, legislation has some of the largest return of investment that you can ever make, from a Wall Street perspective of ROI. It is by far easier to make money that way than it is to usually invest in high growth technology companies.
Tesla would love to set up service centers (a concept completely separate from a sales office) in Ohio... especially if they have a large number of sales in the state. Unfortunately these crazy laws are also going to make sure those service centers can't be built there either.
As for the loss of local retail vendors in a municipality, that is something which merchants are going to have to adapt to as well. It will take some creative changes in the local tax structures of most cities as well as perhaps cutting out some of the other fat that comes from business licensing, regulation, and zoning laws associated with those businesses. Those changes should be looked upon as a good thing as a whole lot of fat not to mention flat out corruption has been a part of that whole side of thing in most smaller towns (not to mention even large cities). It certainly hurts to see a business go bankrupt and no doubt that will happen to otherwise very good people who have done some wonderful things for their community.
What it will take for local small-scale retailers to thrive is providing a service and customer support that larger retailers or somebody on-line simply can't do. If shopping at a local retailer doesn't give much added benefit, shoppers won't bother going there any more and businesses fighting that trend should go bankrupt.
I will be none too surprised when Tesla's Board of Directors take out a new venture: Future Auto, the Autoship Dealer of the Future! Then they open dealerships selling Volts, Leafs, and--most prominently--Tesla electric cars and even some hub motor bikes with diesel one cylinders. Every existing car dealership in your city looks like you just stepped into 1920; this is the only place in town anyone wants to buy a car from. Profits for every dealer are at record lows. Going out of business sale everywhere.
Good luck with that. In the states where you could get away with such a plan, you can already sell these vehicles in the manner that Tesla already is doing. Instead, in order to get a dealership license in the few states where Tesla is meeting some strong resistance, those are also states where getting that dealership license is incredibly bureaucratic and needs local ownership of that dealership in order to be permitted the ability to sell automobiles.
The whole problem has been due to the fact that some major dealership are literally blackmailing Tesla Motors in order to get their particular cut of any "local" sales (relative to those particular dealerships). While Elon Musk didn't name specific individuals, he did say he was approached by a major automobile dealer in Boston, Massachusetts who flat out demanded a dealership from Tesla and was pissed because he couldn't get it. It really is a squeeze operation no different than what Al Capone did in Chicago with alcoholic beverage distributors. Heck, it even includes hired muscle that will make sure you pay the distribution fees.
It should be noteworthy that specific legislation is currently being enacted... meaning that in spite of the power you claim auto dealerships have with politicians they still need to come up with these laws in the first place.... and those laws don't currently exist in many cases. This means they are reacting to Tesla rather than defending against changes to the law which would explicitly permit a company like Tesla to move in.
In this case, I think it is a self-correcting problem. If the Tesla vehicles start to become extremely popular, and enough voters are aware of these kind of tactics and laws, those politicians will be eventually removed from office or at least have some real political pain from which they need to face some very angry voters for supporting this kind of thing. This will be especially true if other automobile companies (of which the big three are certainly paying attention) try the same approach that Tesla is doing. When voters realize this is a law that was enacted in 2014 rather than 1814 or even 1914, they will know squarely who to blame.
This really is an issue that can stick in the craw of a significant block of voters that can dominate local politics too. Support for special rules to favor a big business best happens in obscurity and for products that ordinary citizens typically don't buy in significant quantities (like buying Aluminum by the ton or supplying 6 foot diameter pipes). Automobiles, while admittedly a big ticket item that people don't purchase every day, it is something that almost every registered voter either knows somebody very close to them buys (a brother, sister, parent, or child) or buys personally.
This still isn't going to stop citizens of Ohio from getting Tesla vehicles either. Instead, it will go to companies and service centers located in states other than those states who impose such draconian laws. You might even see a sort of "black market" pop up which completely bypasses the dealership licensing system where groups of private individuals travel across the Ohio River to Kentucky, buys the Tesla vehicle, and then sells it to a neighbor for a modest fee or mark-up. All these games end up doing is costing the citizens of this state more money than they would otherwise have to spend... as a sort of tax on the product. Perhaps that is all these guys are trying for anyway.
The dialog did not happen until after I posted my comment. IMHO it is too little too late and ass backward, and it has been largely one of pontificating rather than trying to get actual feedback too. There is no sign that they care either, but at least it is a start.
In other words, these protest posts actually worked and did their job. I'll agree that if these kind of posts continue to swamp stories completely driving out other "legitimate" discussion it is sort of stupid, but it was the lack of feedback and a dialog which was the issue. It took drastic action on the part of some real leaders within the Slashdot community to drive that point home.
Also, don't stereotype as much as it seems you are doing right now. There is a range of opinions about the topic and you have somehow lumped me into some faceless mob. I suppose that is also nothing new on Slashdot, but I hope there is an understanding that those who are posting are real people and not some sort of weird video game. That is also something which Dice seemed to have forgotten as well.
Since the community is the actual product here, let's just fork it and we'll all go somewhere else.
This.
Even if Slashdot was managed poorly and didn't seem to listen, a benign neglect was sufficient to still stick around. Unfortunately the changes in the interface show that it will most definitely be a brand new site with only passing relations to what used to be. They may have the name "Slashdot", but it isn't the same thing and somehow they've missed on a part of what made this site so good.
Please stop. Please. If you really hate it so much, go start your own site. You can even run it on Slashcode, it's open source. You demonstrate day after day after day posting these hysterical anti-beta spam comments that you provide nothing of value to us, so your loss will be unnoticed.
It will end after awhile. In the meantime, I think there is something deserved here where at least a dialog between those making this change and those readers who are pissed should take place. When changes like this were proposed in the past, Rob Malda and the other original Slashdot guys would start a post specific to the issue and let people at least vent their spleen on that post. At this point it is a little too late for that kind of informed dissent.
At the moment, there is no dialog, and some people (certainly more than just one or two) are trying to complain in a venue that is at best the only real place for recourse. Most larger threads usually had something which was a sidebar for complaints about slashdot, only in this case it is much more in your face about the upcoming change.
Do you actually pay to use slashdot or are you complaining about a service you use freely that is no longer up to your high standards?
You do realize that even subscribers to Slashdot are getting the shaft here too? Some people actually are paying for Slashdot, so shut the F*** up about this kind of reasoning and learn a bit about what people are complaining about.
At this point, that is all that will be left. Hopefully some folks get a clue about how bad beta blows chunks.
I gave my formal feedback on Beta and flat out pointed it was just awful all around in my replies. I don't mind promoting off-topic threads on the issue too as clearly the folks running Slashdot don't have a clue as to what it is that the site has been or what they can do to maintain the community.
If the beta becomes the standard interface, they will lose most of the traditional audience. I'm sure some folks will continue to stick around, but it won't be the same place. It sure is a hell of a gamble and it looks more like "not invented here" as a new generation takes over the site. It really is change simply for the sake of change and no other reason.
Hell, I don't even like the cute photos on the beta site either.
The funny thing is that every example you have given is an application which has been used by the porn industry. I'm not saying that porn is a necessary requirement for those devices and technologies to be adopted, but it can be said that such applications do tend to drive consumer electronics far more than most people want to admit. The debate with regards to VHS vs. Betamax video tape format includes at least in part how many companies involved with porn adopted the VHS format, and I happen to know from more first hand experience what the role of the porn industry was with regards to DVD adoption as a standard (mainly because I was a technician and engineer involved with some of the early development of DVD).
You may not have purchased the Blu Ray player for porn, but because over a million porn consumers did purchase such a player for that purpose it definitely drove down the price and allowed for early adopters to move in ahead of when you likely purchased your first Blu Ray devices and provided an early market for such technology. Many in the porn industry keep track of emerging trends in consumer electronics and tend to be among very early adopters of anything new that comes along. The Oculus Rift is definitely one of those devices I see as appealing to those producers and will most likely be among the first hundred or so actual applications which will be available upon its formal release.
Of course you could be interpreting some needles being poked into your arms as shotgun blasts too. If your perception of reality is already being distorted, it is hard to tell what is real and what is fake.
Something definitely happened with that teleportation device, the question is what does it actually do and what are the side effects? (aka the original claimed backstory about how the teleportation devices opened the "gateway" into the realm of hell or wherever those demons came from).
Unless virtual sex is involved :)
Like all emerging technology, it doesn't make it big until the porn industry finds its applications first. I would say that Oculus is going to see that happen.
One thing I know about John Carmack is that he gets things done and knows what he is talking about. That he decided to jump ship and go to Oculus VR shows that he is willing to in this case take a pay cut and really does believe in the technology he is working for (although I think Mr. Carmack also got a sweet deal with likely stock options worth quite a bit of money potentially in the future if it works out).
If anything, his ego is smaller than the actual performance he can deliver. Hopefully he can get Armadillo going again if the Oculus VR is successful (another casualty of his departure from id Software).
My impression of Doom is more that the protagonist (aka "the player") was psychologically impaired and gradually losing touch with reality, while everybody he met and was "out to get him" was in fact people trying to save him or to protect the base from his destruction. As the player meets more exotic creatures, it is more proof he is just losing touch with reality and getting doped up even more from some experimental treatment gone bad.
At least that is a way to think about it. A sort of disturbing view as you could say the protagonist is actually killing his fellow marines and is the real enemy, but a different way to view the game.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone.
You don't have to believe that the dollar or Euro has value in order to exchange those units of currency for things that you do value.
No, you need the religious kind of faith to receive them in the first place, except perhaps as a free gift that you don't care if it has any value in the first place. It is a pretty good assumption that you have this kind of faith if you already have this kind of fiat money and don't instantly throw it away as something worthless.
The taxation argument is a fair one, other than the corrupt nature of taxation in the first place. The taxation you are talking about also is with reference to the U.S.federal government, as some states & local governments do let you pay taxes in forms other than U.S. Dollars.
Still, if hyperinflation was to happen where trillion dollar notes were worth less than a piece of toilet paper, paying taxes would be similarly meaningless. What makes taxes work is that individuals have genuine faith that it can be used for something in the future and has some actual value.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone. What you are observing if you exchange this fiat money for something else is the faith of others with regards to that money. It is a real faith none the less.
That those same individuals may in turn base their assumption of value of those pieces of paper or even bits in a computerized ledger upon the faith that others similarly have in that money is true, and the hope that this money may have value in the future, but that is about it. It only has actual value once the transaction has actually happened, at which point the money is no longer money but tangible goods or services which have been rendered on your behalf.
Computers are a horrible example, but things which don't change too much in terms of the amount of labor which has been put into them such as a loaf of bread has gone up perhaps 4x as much. Some companies have been trying to keep those prices down, but the costs to provide that product has gone up, hence why companies such as Hostess have gone bankrupt from the squeeze trying to keep prices reasonable, paying labor costs that have gone up with inflation, and paying for higher grain and raw prices.
You do tend to earn more money as you get older, gain more experience, and hopefully move up the chain of command and perhaps are put in charge of others. That isn't a fair comparison for inflation either but rather a comparison of wages and benefits of entry level workers just starting out.
Didn't they lease or sell one recently to SpaceX or one of the other private companies? Sounds like the money was already allocated as well, so what's the damage?
What happened with SpaceX was a contract to use the services at Stennis for testing the next generation of engines that SpaceX is developing. Unfortunately it is a completely different tower and facility, not to mention that SpaceX is paying for that testing out of its own pocket. They are using the people at Stennis, but it is also for other existing facilities and not this particular tower.
This particular tower seems to be very specialized for what it does. Mainly it is some folks who keep hoping that the decision to cancel Constellation is going to be reversed. Some people eternally hope for miracles, and it would genuinely take an act of God to make this one happen.
The value of a U.S. Dollar used to be essentially minimum wage of $1 per day for an eight to ten hour shift, or about 10 cents to 15 cents per hour. A loaf of bread used to be about two cents, and of course a dollar was coined from a troy ounce of silver (and intrinsically worth more than the actual silver as well).
If you think about it, people demanding minimum wage is raised to $10 per hour or more are admitting that to dollar isn't just worth a third, but only 1% of what it used to be worth and declining beyond even that.
Interestingly enough, the U.S. Dollar pretty much maintained its value (with admittedly inflation and deflation over the years) throughout the entire 19th Century and even into the 20th Century. You have to ask the question about who benefits from a continuously inflating currency.... and it should be pointed out that it isn't ordinary citizens who get the benefit.
The funny thing about fiat currencies is that the money is based upon pure faith of the religious kind. Indeed it seems funny that people have far more faith in the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Euro than they do even in Jesus of Nazareth, yet historically at least the objective validity of the existence of Jesus is on a much more firm ground philosophically than the value of the U.S. Dollar.
The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve seems to suppose that this faith is going to be broken soon, which is the only thing that seems to explain what it is that they are doing.
If you want to see not only the actual stats for what inflation has been going on, note that inflation in America has been hovering around about 10% annual on most goods. See also this site:
http://www.shadowstats.com/
It not only shows the real statistics (based upon the formulas that were in use in 1980 and earlier), but explains what sort of manipulation has been going on with the CPI, why it is a bad thing, and why your claimed source with the NY Times is full of the proverbial BS.
This isn't the only site to try and correct the government numbers, but it does use credible metrics for proper comparison as opposed to deliberate understating of inflation. This also impact things like changes in the GDP and other economic health statistics as well.
In other words, you are just flat out wrong about your assumptions that inflation is not happening