No joke. As far as I can tell there really is no reward.
You get "invited" to D.C. to attend a reception where you have to present your app to a commission. Your app then gets featured on the FCC website. You have to pay your own way there for all of that and can then get reimbursed by the FCC...up to $500 per person.
It's a good point you make about alcohol, but I think the difference is that the "pure/regulated" alcoholic being sold can be consumed in a safe manner without any physical harm. I don't think a "pure" version of hardcore drugs are safe under any scenario. It's not simply a matter of them being laced with something that makes them dangerous.
Actually a lot of drugs can be full of other toxic substances that are cheaper than the drug itself. One that you tend to hear a lot about is Ecstasy. I don't know how common it is, but I remember hearing that sometimes it could be full of stuff like rat poison, so if you wanted to score some you wanted to have a dealer you trusted, not just some random guy at a rave.
Completely agree, but my point is that even if you score it from a trusted dealer -- the so-called "pure" ecstasy you're getting is still dangerous to your body and mental state, even in the absence of additives.
MDMA does have known harmful effects. So does ethanol, and from what I can tell, ethanol is more dangerous. What would be your argument for maintaining a ban on MDMA and not banning ethanol[0], or do you believe ethanol should be banned as well?
MDMA is not harmful by any reasonable definition. It's possible for overuse to cause problems, it's possible for certain people with specific preexisting conditions to have problems. That's true for asprin as well.
Fingers still need somewhere to go when holding it. It's not just the button that defined the size of the border. However there's no reason to expect the border couldn't be a bit more narrow without a button. They could also possibly do something tricky with touch zones extending beyond the screen and into the border so perhaps they could detect when fingers are wrapped around near the edges and filter them out.
As an alternative to waiting for this official release, jailbroken iPhones have been able to do this for a while now, with no tethering fees from your carrier.
1) because its more descriptive to call it WiFi Router
2) calling it HotSpot means they get to tact on another fee for that feature. Maybe something like: $14 - for tethering enabled, another $20 - to enabled HotSpot.
Maybe, but probably not comfortably. After taxes, that 172K will be about 120K. Even if you were to somehow make 8% interest on your money for the rest of your life, that's still only $800 a month.
That's about what I make now, and I'm living pretty damn comfortably without racking up debt (Internet-enabled phone, car, eat organic food, have plenty of free time for recreation).
Of getting stolen? What are basing that on? If you look at Google or Amazon, for example, they have teams of people who's only job it is to secure said data. I don't think the average office can say the same.
I had a professor that told me it's actually a good strategy to make wild predictions far in the future. If you're right, you look like an oracle. If you're wrong, nobody remembers to go back and dig up "he predicted this on this date", primarily because they're already focused on the next predictions. Most of the time it's a win-win; the farther out in the future the better.
It's not just wild predictions far in the future; even next year will usually do you more good than harm. Published predictions aren't meant to have anything to do with the future, they're for your enjoyment here and now[1].
Seth Godin makes a similar point to be unafraid of "claim chowder" - what happens when you make a prediction about the future and you end up being totally and tragically wrong. No one remembers!
But an end to the housing bubble was hardly a wild prediction, just common sense.
Either some new law that would let bubbles go on forever had just appeared or the bubble would end in a bit. You just didn't know exactly which bit.
Indeed, in any bubble, some percentage are fooled by the argument du jour that "this time it's different" and another percentage are simply trying to find the bigger fool. Sure, a lot of people know the bubble will pop but without knowing exactly when, they don't really an incentive to do anything.
I'm not sure that article convinces me yet. Here is the experience of my employer, which offered 3 different healthcare plans for employees. Healthcare plan costs skyrocketed this year, to the tune of 30%-50% (not necessarily due to the healthcare bill, but a damaging hit nonetheless). As a result, the company was forced to eliminate the two most expensive plans that it did offer and consolidate down to the lowest cost one. In turn, many people were forced onto a plan they had never been on before.
He surveyed a couple different health insurance providers, but not a complete sampling by any means. Those providers he surveyed could very well have been the ones offering the cheaper plans. So I have to ask the question, could we be seeing a consolidation in the market rather than just an explosion of coverage?
The article seems to focus more on small businesses (fewer than 50 employees) who have not historically offered health care plans but are now starting to offer them because of the tax cut in the new law. The numbers appear to support the conclusion that at least this part of the law is working.
You get "invited" to D.C. to attend a reception where you have to present your app to a commission. Your app then gets featured on the FCC website. You have to pay your own way there for all of that and can then get reimbursed by the FCC...up to $500 per person.
What exactly is the incentive?