panthera

Thank god the government is here to tell private companies what they can and cannot do. The FCC spent $336M of your money last year on such activities.

> During the last two decades, the FCC has manufactured the idea that the electromagnetic spectrum used by wireless devices is scarce. Spectrum auctions became another way to restrain trade. Deep pocket operators, like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, overbid for spectrum and then pass along high costs to the consumer in the form of $40 monthly fees and cryptic calling plans. It's a longer conversation, but with the right network architecture, smart devices can be programmed to share huge swaths of spectrum without interfering with other users. If we do it with Wi-Fi for data, we can certainly do it for phone calls.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704594804575649141727853232.html

> After all, the NYT isn't writing exposes on Carlos Slim Helu, who owns an 8% stake.

Amusingly, the NYT reporters like to bite the hand that feeds them:

nytimes.com/2009/02/16/business/media/16slim.html?pagewanted=all

To wit:

"Notoriously thin-skinned, he does not have to pick up the phone and bellow at those who publish and broadcast something he does not like. His vast resources often translate into less-than-critical coverage.

Mr. Slim declined through his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elias, to be interviewed for this article."

And here's another graph of government spending effectiveness:

cato.org/images/testimony/coulson-2-9-11-2.jpg

Imagine if that were

- Price vs. Hard Drive space, OR

- Price vs. Computer Chip

We would be paying more for slower computers!

Yet when the government spends, and produces outcomes like these, the cry is always for "more funding."

To make this concrete, many people on HN are involved in startups.

If you showed prospective investors numbers like the kind in that graph -- for something you produced -- you would be walking away without a check.

the hilarious thing, is that all the angst and pain is about about Stonehill college: collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/stonehill-college.htm

...with an acceptance rate of 65%, does a computer science degree even matter?

Re: pair, what if you have more than one chick?

"Apple warns US on poor financial management"

How exactly does the US government have the moral authority to warn anyone of anything, considering it is bankrupt?

The ad proves the old maxim true: "Everyone's a reactionary against something they know about."

Nearly all of the companies listed in this ad were heavy donors to the Obama administration. Now they understand what their donation got them.

Everyone in the Internet industry feels extreme pain when these regulations are proposed, and rightly so. SOPA is an insane example of a bankrupt government flailing about.

However, the same commentariat thinks that regulation is somehow "necessary" in medicine, law, or energy.

("<Calamity-of-the-day> could have been prevented if we just had more rules on the books! Surely the evil profit-making corporations would cut every corner they could, just to make a buck! It's not like taking it in the shorts every single day in the press will hit their stock price!")

Once you've tasted government intervention in your industry, you'll want some mouthwash.

WalterBright is right.

How about eliminating taxpayer funding for schools altogether? We spend $68B on the DoE.

That is ~$900 per child in the US, according to http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp.

Then, entrepreneurs will be motivated to build schools because they can earn a profit based on enrollment. As with all private enterprises, they will be forced to compete on quality of service.

These schools will also be judged on the performance and caliber of their eventual alumni classes.

I am willing to wager that at least 30% of this board went to a private college. Why do we need the government running our schools, as well? To standardize a curriculum?

Electronics companies use the Underwriters's Lab to certify their products. I'm sure schools can have something similar.

Here's a very simple algorithm to find your optimal napping time.

1. Buy a device from myzeo.com

2. Go to sleep at night, and review the times that you entered deep sleep

3. Take a nap during the day wearing the zeo, then figure out the time you enter deep sleep. That might be N minutes since you turned the device on.

4. Then, nap for a little less than N minutes.

If you determine that you start going into deep sleep at 30 minutes in #3, then you should set your alarm for 26-28 minutes. You'll feel refreshed.

There's a very good comparable from present day.

It's SMS.

http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/service/index.cfm/AID/1032...

SMS volume in the US spiked after interoperability between carriers became a reality from 2003 - 2005.

Prior to 2003, Europeans and Asians turned their noses down at their American counterparts because "Americans just didn't text."

From here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-02-text-me-main_x....

At the time, only "12% of cell phone users in the USA send or receive text messages."

And from recent times:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/16/nation/la-na-census-...