Is English a second language, or are you just being disingenuous? Me thinks the latter. No...publicly owned roads are NOT toll roads because they are paid for with taxes. Taxes and tolls are different things, that's why they are spelled and pronounced differently. I live on a private road..so I'm certain they must exist.
It is absolutely NOT illegal to create a private toll road on private property with private funds. That's just asinine. It is nearly impossible to build one without using public services, such as the public roads and ports needed to deliver materials, but certainly not illegal.

It's leaching off me if you don't pay your fair share, and you have made it clear you don't think you should have to pay any, so I must assume you do all you can to minimize what you put into the pot...so yes, I would make an educated guess that you are leaching off me. I don't even itemize deductions, because I feel grateful to live in what I feel is a great country, and feel it's unpatriotic to try to shirk my duty to pay for my portion of government, even if I disagree with how they spend most of it. That's the cost of living in a 'representative democracy'.

As to mail, yes, you may not use mail boxes set up for/by the USPS for a private mail service...so you can't do 'first class mail'. You can, however, deliver letters for a fee to your OWN style of 'letter box', so your claim they have a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, they would be so happy to have it taken over, it's a big money loser and a huge pain in the ass to keep going. I'm personally grateful mail hasn't yet been privatized, as I know full well the service would suffer badly to make it profitable, for me especially since I live in the boonies and would never be profitable as a customer. To deliver my letters by FedEx would cost 10 times what USPS charges. (by the way, FedEx and UPS are proof that you already CAN deliver 'mail' privately, just not into a USPS 'mail box')
EDIT: What you said was akin to me saying 'Instead of just complaining about the quality of available burgers, you could open your own hamburger stand' and you answering 'I can't...it's illegal for me to sell "Big Mac's" because...government'.

AND, I would add, you have still never addressed my original point, that if business could/would 'self regulate', they would be doing so now. Self regulation is total fantasy, it simply doesn't happen. How exactly, I wonder, are 'the people' supposed to gain the knowledge about a companie's violations of public trust and health if there's no regulatory agency inspecting and reporting on what the company is actually doing, and they can do all their evil in secret?

The Gist:

Guy in business suit looking thoughtfully out of window.
(Doubtful anyone who designs fine consumer goods, *actually designs consumer goods*, wears a suit). Maybe its supposed to be you! You avant-garde millionaire, you!

Person sketching watch designs. This is probably semi-close to reality, though they don’t show the hundreds of designs the visual designer creates that are dismissed at whim by the aforementioned, assumed (but inevitable even if not shown) suits.

People fiddling with plastic representations of what one would assume as the model for said watch design. Maybe realistic, though with the caveat that two people are sitting there going over said physical design, in any serious discussion concerning the actual physics of the end product. I can *not* imagine that nearly the entirety of this process today, both visual and mechanical design, are not done digitally.

Okay, there’s some CG. Because CG is the next step, rather than the first, least expensive step in any design process today. Who wants to quickly model everything in a matter of hours when you can fabricate expensive, physical material for iterative testing?

Holy shit, was that guy just looking at a wood cutout? I can’t even think of a shitty, sarcastic/realistic remark about that one. I might have misunderstood that shot.

Alright, now we’re machining shit. You can’t really fake that with a few grand for marketing. That’s the real stuff. (1.5m in)

No, they don’t sand/polish things by hand during the fabrication phase. That’s entirely too inaccurate and subjective to the assembler to leave up to human hands. (But hey: it’s a 2.5 million dollar piece of metal, so lets make those buyers feel good about their money spent).

Oh look: gemstones! (???) That's kingly.

More faux machining that is veritably inferior to quality mechanical assembly.

Oh shit, someone just turned a nob!

3.5 minutes in, and we see some actual hand-polished work that is legitimately viable to perform by hand.

Hey lets sand those nodules off the finished pieces, and micro-inspect those printed markings, because nothing about us says “accuracy” without a fallible human to do it. Also: what are they printing shit on there for? Was it pushing the price to $3mil to engrave the timestamps on the faces? That better be the highest quality electroplated coating, but even then I can't imagine that's superior than a tactile, physical representation.

Now they’re hand-engraving the sculpted ornamentation, but it’s one more point I can gladly give them because those kinds of human touches let you know at least some sort of artisan was involved. I can appreciate that, though realizing what I just said causes me to reflect on the inaccuracies of mass-production, and why we would take one over the other…

More microscopes. (Because if one notch is off, it’s back to the furnace for you!)

Awe shit, payday. A guy in a suit looking confident is walking towards your building!

Finally, the gear assembly. It certainly looks fantastic, photographically speaking. I can’t help but notice that all that detail is lost to hundreds of textural indentations or are due to stylized alternating polish/grinding. However, I’m confident that spending $2.5mil on this product would get me the absolute, most accurate, unnoticeable details (hand-made!) within a micro-millimeter of accuracy. Those indentations are like chrome on a street-racer in the 90’s: the more you have, the greater they perform.

@~8min, I’m pretty sure no one works like that at their desk. That posture would kill you in a month.

They know you can’t spin the head of a watch while it’s on your wrist, right?

Awe! It’s got 5 ringtones! That’s way more than any other watch I’ve even heard of! Except everything that doesn’t cost $2.5mil.


If I can take anything away from this that’s even remotely positive, it’s that at least millionaire shitheads are now being just as suckered as the rest of the consumer base. Let me sell ONE of those watches, and I would have enough money to overtake their business within a year, except for that I don't have the greed, dishonesty, and overall lack of morals that it would take to set up a quality factory, and trick such dickheads into buying (even superior BS) products.

Fuck me, this is a real thing!

http://www.thugkitchen.com/cookbook

Make sure you pause at 1:28 to read the fine print.... "It's scientific as hell. We made graphs...and all kinds of shit."

On further inspection, this appears to be a vegetarian cookbook in disguise. Well, if you have to have vegetarianism (or as I call it, the art of cooking side dishes), it may as well be ninja vegetarianism, and at least these guys a) have a sense of humour (something missing with most vegetarians) and b) are trying to get people to stop eating processed crap, so...

*promote being a skilled sunuvabitch in the kitchen!

While reading a rather depressing series of articles about the state of affairs in pretty much the entirety of Europe regarding un(der)employment, I felt an urge to look up an old quote by Bucky Fuller I had read some 15 years ago:

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.

We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.

The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

I twist and inspect my cane all the time...giggidy

Also, TSA could not afford to shoot on location in an real airport and had to use a green screen?

Just wondering which one got pulled over...concrete truck or the vehicles that came through after. They have a tendency to ignore non-commercial vehicles around here and also ignore MULTIPLE and DANGEROUS jay walking people.

By dangerous jay walking I mean crossing at non-cross walks...coming from behind buses and just darting into traffic without even attempting to look or give people a chance to react before they are fully into the lane. And using baby strollers like they are concrete barriers, rolling them into traffic suddenly and making people freak the fuck out to avoid running down a baby. I'm talking they are walking down the side of the road then suddenly change direction and shove the stroller into the street....not waiting like it's obvious they are trying to cross at non-designated zones. This stuff gets ignored all the time, seen cops drive by and do nothing while people nearly pile into each other trying to avoid hitting people. And it's because the people doing the crossing can't afford or simply won't pay the fines, so fining them does nothing but waste time.

Commercial vehicles are going to be higher fines because they can find more 'wrong" with the vehicle once it's pulled over via inspections. And they are most likely to pay and not fight the ticket because they need to stay on the road earning.


I have no issues with them enforcing the laws, but when it favors fining the people most likely to pay and still lets the illegal behavior continue...it's a money making endeavor and not safety related.

Pedestrians probably don't have to yield to traffic at crosswalks, but there's a level of responsibility on their part too. Don't step out into traffic before looking...don't suddenly change your speed crossing to cause the most mayhem. Don't step into traffic when the vehicle is probably too close to stop in time. Make your intentions clear...face the way you want to cross and stop there so it's clear what you're doing....you're not waiting for a bus....or reading a street sign...or whatever.

It'd be pretty horrible as a driver to have to stop at every crosswalk to try to discern what the people on the corner are attempting to do because the police aren't holding the pedestrians up to some level of acceptable behavior.

Something does not have to be illegal for it to be suspicious. If you are found to be carrying a hammer and a towel down a residential street at night, you will be stopped and checked out to be sure you aren't using them to steal from cars or homes. That doesn't make hammers illegal, it makes someone carrying one at night suspicious.
A gun on your hip on a public street is more suspicious than a hammer, and at the least should give the officer the ability to stop and identify the person carrying it. In most jurisdictions, you must identify yourself to an officer when asked, (but nothing more) and they can 'hold' you until your identity is known.
As mentioned before, he could be a felon, therefore committing another felony by carrying a gun...therefore it's legally suspicious. Or you might be a known suspect in another crime...suspicious. Or you might be about to use that gun for a crime...suspicious. Or you might be selling crack and using the visible gun as a deterrent other crack dealers....also suspicious. So yes, anyone intentionally visibly carrying a gun on main street (where there's no need for a gun to protect yourself from anything) is suspicious, just as anyone carrying 15 legal knives would be, or someone with a samurai sword, or handcuffs, a blindfold, and a stun gun might be...none of them illegal but totally suspicious.
His actions were suspicious, more so when he won't identify himself. The officer could have said he 'met the description of a suspect at large', which he (and nearly everyone else on earth) does, there's lots of suspects at large of every description, and as I understand it he could have held him until they identified him. (really I would see that as harassment, but as I understand the law it would be allowed, I was held for 'meeting the description' of a vandal once, and the person eventually arrested turned out to be a 25 year old 6 foot black man, while at the time I was a 13 year old, 5 foot tall white boy).
Yes, people who act in a way that 'freaks normal people out' will likely be stopped and inspected if they're reported. We have all tacitly agreed to that long ago.

I have the feeling this is more of a worst case scenario or complete exaggeration being used as an enrolment tool for the AMA rather than a plan set in stone. That said, the FAA is required to respond to public input before setting their rulings, and usually actually listens, so comment to them and follow the story is the best advice I've heard. Sending your $60 to AMA does NOT seem like the proper course of action except for the AMA themselves.
The law is already fairly clear about this....
Here's what the statute says about exempting model aircraft from additional regulation.
(https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr658)
"SEC. 336. SPECIAL RULE FOR MODEL AIRCRAFT.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law
relating to the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems into
Federal Aviation Administration plans and policies, including this
subtitle, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration
may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model
aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft, if—
(1) the aircraft is flown strictly for hobby or recreational use;
(2) the aircraft is operated in accordance with a community-
based set of safety guidelines and within the programming
of a nationwide community-based organization;
(3) the aircraft is limited to not more than 55 pounds
unless otherwise certified through a design, construction,
inspection, flight test, and operational safety program adminis-
tered by a community-based organization;
(4) the aircraft is operated in a manner that does not
interfere with and gives way to any manned aircraft; and
(5) when flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator
of the aircraft provides the airport operator and the airport
air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located
at the airport) with prior notice of the operation (model aircraft
operators flying from a permanent location within 5 miles of
an airport should establish a mutually-agreed upon operating
procedure with the airport operator and the airport air traffic
control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the
airport)).
(b) STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall
be construed to limit the authority of the Administrator to pursue
enforcement action against persons operating model aircraft who
endanger the safety of the national airspace system.
(c) MODEL AIRCRAFT DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘model
aircraft’’ means an unmanned aircraft that is—
(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere;
(2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating
the aircraft; and
(3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes."

'name and badge number, and phone number for your supervisor. I will be making a complaint on your permanent record, and that will follow you the remainder of your career.' That is the proper way to 'instruct' and 'help' this officer, and the rest of us.

"Technically I can pull you over for an inspection...and that's what I did"?...no dickhead, he pulled YOU over for multiple violations.

name and badge number, and phone number of your supervisor, and stop searching for a 'violation' of your 'inspection', or the 'threats' will go on that permanent record too, as will this video proving them.
We need more of these 'guys'. (pun intended)

People miss the point with net neutrality.

The internet is a packet delivery system.
You are literally paying your ISP for a packets-per-second delivery rate across their network.

That literally means, that the ISP is obligated to make an honest best effort to route your packets at the rate you subscribed to.

Any action to deliberately throttle your packets down to below your subscribed rate, is deliberately not providing a paid for service - i.e. fraud/stealing/whatever.

Net neutrality is the concept that they deliver all packets without prejudice.

That they don't inspect your packets, and decide to treat them differently based on their content.

Kind of how the postal service charges the same to send a letter from point A to B, regardless of what you wrote in that letter.
The postal service doesn't say things like :
"This letter describes a picture. We only allow 3 'letters describing a picture' per month, and you already sent 3, so this one will have to wait.".



So for example, comcast v netflix.

Reports such as this build a case for deliberate throttling : http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/416871/get-around-netflix-throttling-vpn

We know comcast wanted netflix to pay for network integration/improvement.
One way to do that is by twisting their arm : deliberately throttle netflix traffic to netflix customers, until netflix pays up (and along the way, selectively not deliver paid for bandwidth to comcast customers)

That would be singling out netflix packets - a non-neutral action.

(blah blah, I changed ISPs because my own experience suggested netflix throttling.)

-scheherazade

So, every watch I've ever owned has never lasted a year. From the cheap Casio watch to the $400 Timex and Roots watches I've owned. Every watch on my wrist has ceased up. I'm told it's because I magnetism them.
After inspection, not even Timex would honor their warranty. I'm just doomed to never wear a watch.
I'll be dammed if I'll ever pay $2000 for a watch just to see if it'll last the year.

Wow! Since when do they set traffic cones in front of the engines! The engine may not have been 'damaged' but it would have had to be completely inspected and that would have put it out of order for days or weeks I'm positive. You can't just suck shit through a turbo fan and go on flying (safely). Yes, technically you can do it.

2. I'm fairly certain there was drug dealing going on in at least one of those crowds harassing the cops. If not, it would be out of character for these groups.
3. Well, you said crime on private property is no one's business but the owner...that's Bullshit, which you admit now.
Shooting a gun violates public discharge laws, sends a projectile on a random arch to impact somewhere, and creates noise violations (especially in the middle of the night like these)...or can I come to your neighbors property and start my shooting range.
4. My point exactly
5. Use of taxpayer services while shirking your duty to pay taxes is theft and treasonous.
6. once gain, business regulation didn't cause the crime problem.
7. Are you suggesting giving the public property to private industries for them to 'take over' the entire city? First, can't happen. Second, shouldn't happen. Living in Disney is terrible, oppressive, expensive, and draconian. I don't see a difference between paying taxes for services and paying 'homeowner fees' for services, except homeowner fees are usually far more expensive for fewer services and more regulation. Not the direction I think most want to go, or a place where most Oaklandites could afford.
So, you aren't anti regulation, only if a Kenyan is doing it to you? That's just dumb.
8. Yes, but those reasons are not capped and/or solely created by having a democrat in power, as you and others suggest.
Most property owners in Oakland are absentee landlords that don't inspect their property regularly, because private ownership does NOT mean better management.
I get mob justice because you keep pushing for it, it's what the Mexicans did that you keep referencing, and it's what you get with a private, unregulated, armed 'group'.
9. Send me the URL to a company that gives actual security for $35 a month that isn't simply a guy you call on the phone who then calls the police. Never heard of any such thing, and if it exists, you are paying your on-post 24/7 security guard $1 a day, I don't think they'll care so much when you get knifed in the throat for that money.

So, you don't drive, you don't US dollars, food products, electricity, mail, internet, phones, water, sewers, public property, items that are imported, items that traveled inter-state, television, or any other service provided by the feds? Impressive. So many of your fellow Americans do that it makes semse for everyone to pay for part of these things so they are available to EVERYONE. Private institutions taking over make all of these for profit, removing their usage from many if not most people.
Yes, really, many people in the bay are having trouble paying their bills and feeding themselves, it's insanely expensive there.
I don't pay much in taxes, only my fair share. That's not enough to support one indigent. If you pay enough to support Oakland by yourself, you are either Bill Gates or a liar.
Most law abiding citizens have no inclination to grab their gun and go on the streets to patrol.
This didn't seem like you ignored me, neither did the 2 other posts that followed.
Sorry, mixed up the insanity.
You always have terrible governing from any governing body, from some point of view. It's a fallacy to conclude otherwise.
If you got your 'lack of governing' you would quickly get foreign governing.
So, there is no utopian free market, just the real, regulated one you're complaining about.
I don't think most libertarians agree with you that libertarian government is anarchy. I don't.
Well, I'm confused. You've spent a bunch of time and effort trying to convince me of your points, but you claim you know it's futile to even try...so what are you doing then?
To me, good government means doing the minimum it can to do what the populace wants, with safeguards to keep one group from taking unfair advantage of another. Better safeguards could make better politicians (yes, that's regulation, of politicians).
I know very little of 'praxology' that I didn't read in Foundation. Not in my science publications that I read regularly.
The tea party took over the libertarian party, and the republican party.
I do, I vote, and I pay my taxes. I don't have these problems, or over-regulation problems where I live. WOW! It worked!

And I paid for my excessive education, I only did 2 years in public school which was daycare. You don't seem to have any information I'm looking for.
If you think a mob of only your friends and family should roam the streets armed to 'protect your interests' then you support gangs. That's exactly what they are. To get enough to regulate activities in a place like Oakland would take a HUGE mob, far more than you have friends and family I'm certain.
I might hope you DO need the police to help you (with something minor, but enough to create your 'need'), then you might realize they are not all your enemy or useless and not far worse than anarchy. It's sad to think that it would take a personal need for you to realize that, but apparently it would.
The police are not a 'foreign' army, like the red coats.

Retailer strong-arming: So what? Movie studios do this to theaters all the time. So what if Best Buy only sells Apple -- in essence becomes an Apple store -- like all the other exclusive Apple stores? There will still be many willing and able competitors who will employ their entrepreneurial savvy by seeing the market need in selling non-apple tablets and make good money fulfilling that need that Best Buy may have (stupidly) stopped serving.

I repeat: Natural monopolies don't exist. And if they come about, they end up very short-lived because the world is full of competitors and competitor-wannabe's who will rush to fill any perceived market needs.

Misinformation: You find your trusted sources. The government is not one of them, I assure you. I, for example, trust way more the "Non-GMO Project" or the "Berkeley Ecology Center" far more than I would trust any (former-lobbyist/government kleptocrat) FDA-crony. Both of these (and many other) non-governmental organizations would still exist without government and in fact would be able to do more without government limiting what they can study or not about the products they inspect.

Patents: No, nothing good will ever come out of patents. If you want I will point you to countless articles I've read which show this to be the case.

New Technology: You're discounting reverse engineering? Why? If what you claim was so, then innovators would not even bother to patent, because then they could keep the technology "secret" forever. Clearly this isn't so. But, they get patents because they know of reverse engineering and other ways that the technology would be copied if they don't get a patent. In fact, right now, they can keep it "secret" by not getting patent. For example, Coca Cola does not have a patent on its secret formula for that very reason. Look it up.

The marginal utility of R&D: This is the standard old argument for patents. But you can find creative ways to make the inventions pay off. Did the music industry disappear because of piracy? No, it is making record profits, actually! Some companies would not be as mega wealthy, perhaps. Bill Gates would still be mega rich, but maybe not as rich as he is now. But, here you are complaining about extreme "inequality" while supporting the very structures which generate it.

Ignorance may be bliss -- but thankfully, we don't all have to be as ignorant as the least informed among us.

Look at the situation agnostic of what you know of as the law.
People in modern society have been so well-trained to look at things objectively from the perspective of The Law vs. The Individual.
Wouldn't you be offended if some "authority" came to your home and decided to inspect what you were doing?
I completely understand both sides. I know the police were doing what they have been programmed to, and the civilians were reacting the way our anti-authoritarian subculture has told them too, but there is a middle ground.
Between the two parties I believe the police acted most appropriately because they showed doubt and restraint (regardless of it being out of ignorance or self-restraint). In the end the situation could have been resolved best by openness and honesty on both parts, but that's the one element that our current state has beaten into submission.