Well, dear, Afghanistan is in Asia, and not the Middle East, so I think that when confronted with 9/11, we should have focused on the people who attacked us - Al Qaeda who were then in Asia.
I think we should have sent 9 out of 10 military divisions to Afghanistan, and stayed there until we were convinced we were beyond diminishing returns, for finding members of Al Qaeda there. (Instead of sending 9 of 10 military divisions to Iraq.) Given that Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, and Iraq had nothing to do with it, this seems reasonable to me. And given that I'm talking about sending huge numbers of troops into another country, that hardly sounds like a "never act" philosophy. In fact, I'm still pissed that the Republicans distracted President Clinton (with stupid "Wag the Dog" rhetoric) from dealing with Al Qaeda when it was an emerging threat.
I am not saying "leave them alone and they will go away." I'm saying KILL THE FUCKERS WHO ATTACKED US: Al Qaeda. Since Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, I resent the war that our President got us into.
As Richard Clarke said: "Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor."
Senator Kerry: "Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" [emphasis added]
This was pretty simple to scare up off the Internet:
Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he's for it.
Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.
Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.
Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he's for it.
Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.
Bush is against deficits; then he's for them.
Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again.
Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.
Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution.
Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't.
Bush first says that 'help is on the way' to the military... then he cuts benefits.
Bush-"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden." Bush-"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care."
Bush claims to be in favor of the environment and then secretly starts drilling on Padre Island.
Bush talks about helping education and increases mandates while cutting funding.
Bush first says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea. Now he will.
Bush goes to Bob Jones University. Then say's he shouldn't have.
Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq (no matter what the outcome). Later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.
Bush said the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors. Bush later admits it was his advance team.
Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US. Bush after meeting with Pres. Fox, he's against it.
That is about the most un-American thing that I've ever heard. America is not an island that can force its views on the world. To ignore entirely what anyone else thinks would be suicide. Why not invade Canada? It's rich in natural resources! It would surely be a boon to our economy, as war always is!
The logic you're using allows for no uncertainty: if it's good for the U.S., screw everybody else. That is suicide. That's a psychotic sociopath's view of the world: ripe for the plucking. Plus you've managed to fill it with, I feel, the perfect mix of "us versus them" paranoia.
can you give me a solid, justifiable reason why anti-american sentiment should matter when confronted with a world environment that creates something like 9/11?
Uh, because it was anti-American sentiment that was the cause of 9/11. See, in order to beat your enemy, you have to understand them. If that's not clear enough for you, then I guess I should point out who owns our national debt, and point out that we live in a world economy where inflation can be caused by dropping evaluations of the US dollar, and when the US does something freakishly stupid, the US dollar drops. Or is that too "high falootin" for your apparent "Kill 'Em All, and let God sort 'em out!" attitude?
9/11 says to me that the largest problem that the U.S. has is (mostly irrational) unpopularity. How in the world does attacking the U.S. benefit the lives of anyone affiliated with Al Qaeda? It doesn't. They must have hated the hell out of us. Winning the hearts and minds of the world is the best defense that we could possibly have. Ignoring the concerns of the rest of the world (legitimate concerns AND illegitimate concerns) is what got us into 9/11 in the first place.
because thousands of my fellow citizens incinerated is a whole hell of a lot bigger issue than who is loved or not.
They were incinerated because we are hated. If you want to end that, you have to end the hatred. Because those guys were armed with boxcutters. You will never "win a war" against an enemy who can use such low-tech to kill thousands of people. You must instead establish peace.
To believe that war in the Middle East will fix the "cause" of a "f**ked up middle east" is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Going to war in the Middle East breeds terrorists in the Middle East. Terrorists were the problem in the first place, not nukes.
Jesus, just look at Irael and Palestine, and you see that winning war after war and battle after battle and signing agreement after agreement and making every form of concesion you can imagine will not quell the flow of terrorists, as long as anyone in the Middle East is listening to a political or religious leader who preaches hate and destruction. Guess what, Bucky? Going to war in the Middle East gives them a damned good reason to preach hate and destruction.
I hope that we never have to "go to iran" as you put it. I hope and pray for more disarmaments, like Libya - probably the best thing that happened while President Bush was in office.
If something is binary, weapons or no weapons, it can be proved one way or the other.
Phew! That's a relief!
So, does God exist? I'm glad I finally found someone who pointed out that the existance of God is binary, and therefore is provable one way or the other!
Well, don't keep us waiting! Which is it?!
</sarcasm>
You idiot. I can't prove that there is no Loch Ness Monster. I can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I can't prove that a blue monkey doesn't control your thoughts. I can't prove that aliens DID NOT LAND IN IOWA LAST NIGHT AND MOVE A SLEEPING COW ONE FOOT TO THE LEFT, IN DEFIANCE OF ALL LOGIC!
Second: I would actually argue that your code is far more complicated than it needs to be, for the intended use.
Third: Apparently there is no third. =)
Fourth: Sure, I could change your code to make it go away, but I think it would be much better if your code had its own mechanism for going away. I would tend to agree that anything inside "if (false)" should mostly compile away - so that's fair. I'd like to see a "#ifdef DEBUG" or somesuch in your code for that case.
Fifth: It's not about how many, it's about how they use it. Conducting actual research on how people use it would really add some oomph to your work.
And finally a new comment: Why not output everything, and then have filters for the information that you're looking for? In other words, single-shot sessions. For instance, you first discover that the bug is in cycle 1,000,000 and then look for it again. Why not output for every cycle? Probably because it's cost prohibitive, right?
I mean, your fundamental message is don't remove debugging printf's, have a mechanism to run them or not! which is a good message. I think it just gets lost in the details of everything else you say, and it's not actually a new message.
Look, friend - first you're responding to an Anonymous Coward. Expecting an AC to RTFA is wishful thinking.
Second, he's right - your code is rather primitive, as you admit. Why not start with a much more advanced logging utility, and then speak about using the logging consistently?
Third, if your whole point was about a methodology, then talk about the methodology. Reading your article, it doesn't read like that - it reads much more like a User's Manual for how to use your code.
Fourth, what makes you think that using loggers consistently is the answer? In fact, I can't see how to turn off your code (make it compile down to nothing, not merely something small) in release mode. You're essentially asking people to always use logging, for the sake of sometimes doing debugging.
Fifth, have you actually researched how people will use your utility, or are you just making a blanket assertion that "it'll be easy to debug" if you merely follow some trick? Gotcha on this one - you're essentially pitching the idea of a silver bullet, while stating that "there is no silver bullet in sight." Well, which is it?
Look, you might have some good ideas - but when pitching a methodology, speak about it in terms of a methodology, and don't lecture down to some random Anonymous Coward on Slashdot. That's like Bill Gates stopping in the supermarket to argue with some woman about whether "Start | Shutdown" makes any sense.
And don't go telling me "that's perfectly valid," cause you know what? I don't care if the C++ compiler accepts it, and I don't care if you do it in your code. That is just pure evil.
Funny that you would mention character development.
Because character development is what happens when you take a scummy smuggler, and by the end of the story, he helps save a planet.
But what Lucas has done is to turn Han into a goody-two-shoes from the very beginning, thus sucking all of the character development out of one of the most beloved characters in the movie.
Read some of my other posts on this article, if you're interested in my criticism of the rest of your 'Engineer' points.
In a surprise turn of events, Bantam Classics, the publishers of Moby Dick have decided to release a new version, with every "A", "E", and "U" removed. Some of the "Y"s will remain. "The original was called 'Moby Dick,' not 'Maeiouby Daeiouck', and we fill that Herman Melville would have wanted it this way. Really, it improves the work. I don't know why everyone is so upset," wrote the president of Bantam Classics, when reached by email. "Frankly, the old version wasn't as good, and we're never going to publish it again."
"Cll m Ishml." reads the first line of the improved version of the epic work.
He's an arrogant ass, who doesn't appreciate the people who made him what he is.
We have a right to judge him for that. He thrust himself into the public eye, and we view his actions to be deplorable.
What part of this is hard for you to understand?
Actually, if you think about architects as artists, quite often it becomes illegal for the rightful owners of a building to destroy it, through preservation laws.
And, the theatrical versions will eventually make it to DVD or whatever format people want, as soon as the copyright expires - which won't be soon enough, if you ask me.
Any time a copyright holder refuses to publish his work, I get pissed. Like, when Disney puts a work into moratorium just to drive up demand.
They have a legal right to do it, but not all legal actions are good. And we can (and in this case will) deride their actions, if we feel that they are bad.
So, the phrase "the customer is always right" has no meaning?
And on the open source project, that's when projects fork. When the creator and the users disagree so much.
It's like the DRM being added to Windows. In the mind of Bill Gates, it's fixing a flaw in Windows. To you, me, and the other guy (some AC, probably), that really cuts back on the legitimate uses of Windows. But since there's no real alternative (for most of us), we'll all just use it and complain.
There's no alternative. I can't buy a DVD of the originals. Lucas' claim that it would "cost millions" is nuts. First, because he couldn't have produced the special editions, without cleaning up the originals first. Second, because he knows that he would more than earn back any investment.
He's being a selfish child. It'd be like if Monet went back and painted a cow taking a giant turd on every one of his masterpieces, and then lectured us about how this was his vision all along.
No. The originals were one piece of art, and you can argue that the special editions are a different piece of art. The fact that he won't sell the old ones on DVD merely goes to show that he doesn't care what other people think - which, admitedly, is his right. That doesn't make it suck any less.
Any privately owned company can decide to stop selling their product at any point, no matter how much harm is caused. Think about it, if Microsoft were private, they could literally just stop selling Windows tomorrow, and there would be nothing we could do to stop them.
Now, sure, Star Wars isn't a OS that millions of people depend on, but I would just like to highlight the importance of things losing their copyright in a timely manner. =)
To answer your one question: Social Security spending is just now starting to outpace defense spending. But until now, Social Security has been largely funded. (That's how it was set up in the first place, and the reason it's a scary problem now, is because that's finally ceasing being true. Hell, President George W. Bush raided the Social Security Funding - he stole money that was already there!) Defense spending on the other hand, has been hugely unfunded. Witness the Manhattan project, and Reagan's spending.
As vehement as Reagan was to not raise taxes, he sure as hell spent like there was no tomorrow (defense, and spending to cut inflation; reducing taxes on the rich only exacerbated the deficit spending since he didn't cut spending) - and that means debt.
The grandparent asked, essentially: "Why is a portion of the interest on the debt attributed to defense?"
I responded.
And then you said a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with the fact that, when it came time to defend ourselves we spent like crazy and we spent without getting taxes to pay for it (which means that we accumulated debt).
We accumulated debt. And the military was largely responsible for that debt. Get over it.
You do realise that since about 1970 or so the amount of money the federal government puts into education exceeds the amount of money put in to national defense? Can someone back me up with a link? (Emphasis mine.)
The AC said federal. lucabrasi999 responded in kind, pointing out that what the AC said was ridiculous.
And if you want to talk about private citizens spending money to send their kids to a community college, then I can talk about people who buy car alarms, mace, and guns. You're the one who's twising the numbers.
Of all of the money in the entire world on militaries, the U.S. spends 43% of it. The U.S. is a war-fearing country. (That means we're also war-hungry, by the way.)
Right. Check. We should never invest in new technologies. Got it.
The problem is that new technologies often don't emerge unless the government subsidizes their development, because no individual company is willing to take the risk of investment. Because the reward for all of their hard work could quite possibly be that every other company gets the results of their labor for free.
But, if the government does it, then everyone benefits from it - if the investment works out. For the Human Genome project, trust me, it was worth it. You don't want private corporations holding the patent on every useful bit of DNA you've got.
Even without further expected improvements in turbine technology, the U.S. would now need to use less than 3% of its farmland to get 95% of its electricity demand satisfied by wind power.
...and it would rid us of all of those pesky species of birds.
Seriously, doesn't wind power completely devestate the local bird species? Is there a solution for this, yet?
Now I can finally emulate my 3.6 GHz machine with a BFGTech GeForce 6800 GT OC on my $0.85 calculator that I bought at the gas station! Thanks, Transitive Corporation!
</sarcasm>
The marketing guys shouldn't use big words like "without any performance hit" that they don't understand. Other than that, it sounds interesting.
Re:Haven't been able to get into Ringworld
on
Ringworld's Children
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Slashdot Mirror
Well, dear, Afghanistan is in Asia, and not the Middle East, so I think that when confronted with 9/11, we should have focused on the people who attacked us - Al Qaeda who were then in Asia.
I think we should have sent 9 out of 10 military divisions to Afghanistan, and stayed there until we were convinced we were beyond diminishing returns, for finding members of Al Qaeda there. (Instead of sending 9 of 10 military divisions to Iraq.) Given that Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, and Iraq had nothing to do with it, this seems reasonable to me. And given that I'm talking about sending huge numbers of troops into another country, that hardly sounds like a "never act" philosophy. In fact, I'm still pissed that the Republicans distracted President Clinton (with stupid "Wag the Dog" rhetoric) from dealing with Al Qaeda when it was an emerging threat.
I am not saying "leave them alone and they will go away." I'm saying KILL THE FUCKERS WHO ATTACKED US: Al Qaeda. Since Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, I resent the war that our President got us into.
As Richard Clarke said: "Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor."
And no, "you're a friggin genius".
P.S. Find the shift key.
Show me where Kerry has EVER said he made a mistake/changed his mind/whatever about Iraq.
Debates.org
Senator Kerry: "Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" [emphasis added]
the man is consistent
... then he cuts benefits.
This was pretty simple to scare up off the Internet:
Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he's for it.
Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.
Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.
Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he's for it.
Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.
Bush is against deficits; then he's for them.
Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again.
Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.
Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution.
Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't.
Bush first says that 'help is on the way' to the military
Bush-"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden." Bush-"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care."
Bush claims to be in favor of the environment and then secretly starts drilling on Padre Island.
Bush talks about helping education and increases mandates while cutting funding.
Bush first says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea. Now he will.
Bush goes to Bob Jones University. Then say's he shouldn't have.
Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq (no matter what the outcome). Later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.
Bush said the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors. Bush later admits it was his advance team.
Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US. Bush after meeting with Pres. Fox, he's against it.
why should the us care what anyone else thinks?
That is about the most un-American thing that I've ever heard. America is not an island that can force its views on the world. To ignore entirely what anyone else thinks would be suicide. Why not invade Canada? It's rich in natural resources! It would surely be a boon to our economy, as war always is!
The logic you're using allows for no uncertainty: if it's good for the U.S., screw everybody else. That is suicide. That's a psychotic sociopath's view of the world: ripe for the plucking. Plus you've managed to fill it with, I feel, the perfect mix of "us versus them" paranoia.
can you give me a solid, justifiable reason why anti-american sentiment should matter when confronted with a world environment that creates something like 9/11?
Uh, because it was anti-American sentiment that was the cause of 9/11. See, in order to beat your enemy, you have to understand them. If that's not clear enough for you, then I guess I should point out who owns our national debt, and point out that we live in a world economy where inflation can be caused by dropping evaluations of the US dollar, and when the US does something freakishly stupid, the US dollar drops. Or is that too "high falootin" for your apparent "Kill 'Em All, and let God sort 'em out!" attitude?
9/11 says to me that the largest problem that the U.S. has is (mostly irrational) unpopularity. How in the world does attacking the U.S. benefit the lives of anyone affiliated with Al Qaeda? It doesn't. They must have hated the hell out of us. Winning the hearts and minds of the world is the best defense that we could possibly have. Ignoring the concerns of the rest of the world (legitimate concerns AND illegitimate concerns) is what got us into 9/11 in the first place.
because thousands of my fellow citizens incinerated is a whole hell of a lot bigger issue than who is loved or not.
They were incinerated because we are hated. If you want to end that, you have to end the hatred. Because those guys were armed with boxcutters. You will never "win a war" against an enemy who can use such low-tech to kill thousands of people. You must instead establish peace.
Wow. You are freakishly stupid.
To believe that war in the Middle East will fix the "cause" of a "f**ked up middle east" is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Going to war in the Middle East breeds terrorists in the Middle East. Terrorists were the problem in the first place, not nukes.
Jesus, just look at Irael and Palestine, and you see that winning war after war and battle after battle and signing agreement after agreement and making every form of concesion you can imagine will not quell the flow of terrorists, as long as anyone in the Middle East is listening to a political or religious leader who preaches hate and destruction. Guess what, Bucky? Going to war in the Middle East gives them a damned good reason to preach hate and destruction.
I hope that we never have to "go to iran" as you put it. I hope and pray for more disarmaments, like Libya - probably the best thing that happened while President Bush was in office.
If something is binary, weapons or no weapons, it can be proved one way or the other.
Phew! That's a relief!
So, does God exist? I'm glad I finally found someone who pointed out that the existance of God is binary, and therefore is provable one way or the other!
Well, don't keep us waiting! Which is it?!
</sarcasm>
You idiot. I can't prove that there is no Loch Ness Monster. I can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I can't prove that a blue monkey doesn't control your thoughts. I can't prove that aliens DID NOT LAND IN IOWA LAST NIGHT AND MOVE A SLEEPING COW ONE FOOT TO THE LEFT, IN DEFIANCE OF ALL LOGIC!
You can't prove a negative like that.
Or, to use your "W00t!" lingo against you: PWN3D!
LOL. That's hilarious. Thanks for sharing!
Hoewever, it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard.
No it's not.
First: fair enough. =)
Second: I would actually argue that your code is far more complicated than it needs to be, for the intended use.
Third: Apparently there is no third. =)
Fourth: Sure, I could change your code to make it go away, but I think it would be much better if your code had its own mechanism for going away. I would tend to agree that anything inside "if (false)" should mostly compile away - so that's fair. I'd like to see a "#ifdef DEBUG" or somesuch in your code for that case.
Fifth: It's not about how many, it's about how they use it. Conducting actual research on how people use it would really add some oomph to your work.
And finally a new comment: Why not output everything, and then have filters for the information that you're looking for? In other words, single-shot sessions. For instance, you first discover that the bug is in cycle 1,000,000 and then look for it again. Why not output for every cycle? Probably because it's cost prohibitive, right?
I mean, your fundamental message is don't remove debugging printf's, have a mechanism to run them or not! which is a good message. I think it just gets lost in the details of everything else you say, and it's not actually a new message.
Look, friend - first you're responding to an Anonymous Coward. Expecting an AC to RTFA is wishful thinking.
Second, he's right - your code is rather primitive, as you admit. Why not start with a much more advanced logging utility, and then speak about using the logging consistently?
Third, if your whole point was about a methodology, then talk about the methodology. Reading your article, it doesn't read like that - it reads much more like a User's Manual for how to use your code.
Fourth, what makes you think that using loggers consistently is the answer? In fact, I can't see how to turn off your code (make it compile down to nothing, not merely something small) in release mode. You're essentially asking people to always use logging, for the sake of sometimes doing debugging.
Fifth, have you actually researched how people will use your utility, or are you just making a blanket assertion that "it'll be easy to debug" if you merely follow some trick? Gotcha on this one - you're essentially pitching the idea of a silver bullet, while stating that "there is no silver bullet in sight." Well, which is it?
Look, you might have some good ideas - but when pitching a methodology, speak about it in terms of a methodology, and don't lecture down to some random Anonymous Coward on Slashdot. That's like Bill Gates stopping in the supermarket to argue with some woman about whether "Start | Shutdown" makes any sense.
// Constructor:
Logger(const Logger& enable2 = *(Logger*)0);
(Trimmed to trick the lameness filter.)
Pure. Evil.
And don't go telling me "that's perfectly valid," cause you know what? I don't care if the C++ compiler accepts it, and I don't care if you do it in your code. That is just pure evil.
What "rendered original effects" were in Star Wars? I didn't think there were any.
Unless you're talking about some of the computer screens in the movie?
The stockholders would win. If Microsoft decided to stop selling Windows, it would be intentional sabotage of their own business.
The Linux fans would love it, but a lot of real people would be harmed.
Funny that you would mention character development.
Because character development is what happens when you take a scummy smuggler, and by the end of the story, he helps save a planet.
But what Lucas has done is to turn Han into a goody-two-shoes from the very beginning, thus sucking all of the character development out of one of the most beloved characters in the movie.
Read some of my other posts on this article, if you're interested in my criticism of the rest of your 'Engineer' points.
In a surprise turn of events, Bantam Classics, the publishers of Moby Dick have decided to release a new version, with every "A", "E", and "U" removed. Some of the "Y"s will remain. "The original was called 'Moby Dick,' not 'Maeiouby Daeiouck', and we fill that Herman Melville would have wanted it this way. Really, it improves the work. I don't know why everyone is so upset," wrote the president of Bantam Classics, when reached by email. "Frankly, the old version wasn't as good, and we're never going to publish it again."
"Cll m Ishml." reads the first line of the improved version of the epic work.
</sarcasm>
Some works you don't need to see to criticize.
He's an arrogant ass, who doesn't appreciate the people who made him what he is.
We have a right to judge him for that. He thrust himself into the public eye, and we view his actions to be deplorable.
What part of this is hard for you to understand?
Actually, if you think about architects as artists, quite often it becomes illegal for the rightful owners of a building to destroy it, through preservation laws.
And, the theatrical versions will eventually make it to DVD or whatever format people want, as soon as the copyright expires - which won't be soon enough, if you ask me.
Any time a copyright holder refuses to publish his work, I get pissed. Like, when Disney puts a work into moratorium just to drive up demand.
They have a legal right to do it, but not all legal actions are good. And we can (and in this case will) deride their actions, if we feel that they are bad.
And you can pipe down, if you'd please.
</smirk>
So, the phrase "the customer is always right" has no meaning?
And on the open source project, that's when projects fork. When the creator and the users disagree so much.
It's like the DRM being added to Windows. In the mind of Bill Gates, it's fixing a flaw in Windows. To you, me, and the other guy (some AC, probably), that really cuts back on the legitimate uses of Windows. But since there's no real alternative (for most of us), we'll all just use it and complain.
There's no alternative. I can't buy a DVD of the originals. Lucas' claim that it would "cost millions" is nuts. First, because he couldn't have produced the special editions, without cleaning up the originals first. Second, because he knows that he would more than earn back any investment.
He's being a selfish child. It'd be like if Monet went back and painted a cow taking a giant turd on every one of his masterpieces, and then lectured us about how this was his vision all along.
No. The originals were one piece of art, and you can argue that the special editions are a different piece of art. The fact that he won't sell the old ones on DVD merely goes to show that he doesn't care what other people think - which, admitedly, is his right. That doesn't make it suck any less.
Any privately owned company can decide to stop selling their product at any point, no matter how much harm is caused. Think about it, if Microsoft were private, they could literally just stop selling Windows tomorrow, and there would be nothing we could do to stop them.
Now, sure, Star Wars isn't a OS that millions of people depend on, but I would just like to highlight the importance of things losing their copyright in a timely manner. =)
To answer your one question: Social Security spending is just now starting to outpace defense spending. But until now, Social Security has been largely funded. (That's how it was set up in the first place, and the reason it's a scary problem now, is because that's finally ceasing being true. Hell, President George W. Bush raided the Social Security Funding - he stole money that was already there!) Defense spending on the other hand, has been hugely unfunded. Witness the Manhattan project, and Reagan's spending.
As vehement as Reagan was to not raise taxes, he sure as hell spent like there was no tomorrow (defense, and spending to cut inflation; reducing taxes on the rich only exacerbated the deficit spending since he didn't cut spending) - and that means debt.
The grandparent asked, essentially: "Why is a portion of the interest on the debt attributed to defense?"
I responded.
And then you said a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with the fact that, when it came time to defend ourselves we spent like crazy and we spent without getting taxes to pay for it (which means that we accumulated debt).
We accumulated debt. And the military was largely responsible for that debt. Get over it.
The rest is all interesting, but not as interesting as this one:
Interest on National Debt $280B and why do they include this under MILITARY AT ALL
Because the military spent the money!
The Manhattan Project cost a BILLION dollars. (Do you have any idea what the interest on a BILLION dollars is, over that much time?)
And then Reagan went and tripled the debt (adding two TRILLION dollars), arming up for the Cold War.
You're damned right $280B of interest on national debt belongs to the military.
You do realise that since about 1970 or so the amount of money the federal government puts into education exceeds the amount of money put in to national defense? Can someone back me up with a link? (Emphasis mine.)
The AC said federal. lucabrasi999 responded in kind, pointing out that what the AC said was ridiculous.
And if you want to talk about private citizens spending money to send their kids to a community college, then I can talk about people who buy car alarms, mace, and guns. You're the one who's twising the numbers.
Of all of the money in the entire world on militaries, the U.S. spends 43% of it. The U.S. is a war-fearing country. (That means we're also war-hungry, by the way.)
Right. Check. We should never invest in new technologies. Got it.
The problem is that new technologies often don't emerge unless the government subsidizes their development, because no individual company is willing to take the risk of investment. Because the reward for all of their hard work could quite possibly be that every other company gets the results of their labor for free.
But, if the government does it, then everyone benefits from it - if the investment works out. For the Human Genome project, trust me, it was worth it. You don't want private corporations holding the patent on every useful bit of DNA you've got.
Seriously, doesn't wind power completely devestate the local bird species? Is there a solution for this, yet?
Now I can finally emulate my 3.6 GHz machine with a BFGTech GeForce 6800 GT OC on my $0.85 calculator that I bought at the gas station! Thanks, Transitive Corporation!
</sarcasm>
The marketing guys shouldn't use big words like "without any performance hit" that they don't understand. Other than that, it sounds interesting.
The Mote in God's Eye!
;)
Niven and Pournelle at their finest!
86.5% of all estimates are made up on the spot by an idiot.