Not that huge step to be honest. They can create viable embryos easier, yay for them. However, they haven't been able to grow a baby monkey despite trying for 100 times so far.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to have some grip on reality. 1) CDs are not $20
True, it's more like 18.95 for new releases that peters out to about 14.95 after a year from release. Unless, of course, you shop at general stores where they ask anything between 21.95 to 24.95 for latest discs.
I want all crimes except genocide or crimes against humanity to expire in 20 years tops. "Fugitives" are humans most of all and if they managed to keep themselves out of the hands of law enforcement for 20 years and didn't commit any crime apart from the one that expired (and I would say jailbreak is not a continous but singular event), then you can say that pursuing those crimes is probably a colossal waste of money and time.
Dunno how things work in US of A but around here anything short of murder DOES expire. If you embezzle millions and manage to evade justice for 20 years (or whatever) you can come retire in your homeland. Nb. I'm not a lawyer, maybe "they" would still seize your assets on the assumption they were acquired from initially illegally gained stash and/or nail you on taxes, but you couldn't be kicked to prison.
Murder, however, never expires except when the criminal dies. Actually a lot of people confess old homicides on their deathbed.. And even for slashdot groupmind, it blows MY mind that people have a problem with the concept that murder is not something that will be glossed over. Yeah, if you do your time and demonstrate you have actually reformed you'll get out eventually. In socialist europe that means about 20yrs max of hard time which is in fact quite a long time.
I kinda miss Windows NT. It's really snappy on today's hardware. I think it's going to be a long time before Vista feels snappy on current hardware. It's not just a ram issue. Let's say you have 4 gigs of ram. Todays's system bus and Hard Drives can't make Vista feel as snappy as Windows NT or an optimised Linux install. I use Windows XP on my laptop and it has 4 gigs of ram (it only sees 3 gig of it).
In fact unless you use boot switches to enable the 3GB support AND use apps that are compiled to support it, XP only ever will use 2GB of RAM.
Want to show some actual benefit of that "let's say 4GB of ram"?
Use the 64bit edition.
And that still won't make most 32bit apps use more than 2GB!
A-ha, but that's the thing. Swedes had a popular vote whether scary nucular energy should be banned and surprisingly people will vote against such. Maybe if they had expressed it as "Should Sweden build 5000MW worth of nuclear or COAL plants in next 20 years" the result might've been more interesting.
So, yeah, Swedish policy is to run nuclear power to the ground. Same as Germany.
Now with forward-thinking Finns the nuclear waste storage is handled by [url=http://www.posiva.fi/englanti/]a separate company[/url] that is owned by the power companies on a more pay-as-you-go scheme instead of having to have the funds up front in cash.
I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.
I'm sure you can come up with some other demands that make it impossible to build nuclear power if you try a bit..
Sorry, I've lost you. CDs haven't averaged $15 for a while; the stuff on the Amazon top 100 tends to be $10 - $11 per CD, with the exception of the double discs, CD+DVD, etc. Amazon buys the CDs for $8 - $10. That $8 - $10 is all that the record company sees.
Why, that's true! A new CD costs about 18-19 euros!
In any case, even in worst case there's something called genetic diversity that will stop any virus/bacillus from wiping out the general population. Even worst forms of black death killed about 90-95% who CONTRACTED the disease, not to say anything about the fact that some people are naturally immune or at least resistant to infection.
Plus, well, as soon as you have mass infection, you think airlines won't be grounded? Roadblocks on every exit for towns that haven't had any outbreaks? So on and so forth.. Frankly even a couple of billion death count won't make huge dent in the long run even if it might ruin national economies. Most likely you'd get areas (mostly) depopulated and areas (mostly) untouched due to quarantine etc.. You might have nice recently vacated real estate in population centres, thought. After you figure out vaccination and detox, that is..
Sure... if we can get the Euro selection for music;)
I have found the trick is to bittorrent on the release-date, order the CD from the EU/US, then wait for it to arrive.
I don't usually pay much attention to release dates so waiting the stuff to arrive for a week from some hong kong based mail order venture (cd-wow..) isn't a big problem. What is a problem is that I actually like Finnish bands a lot so I'm stuck with the local pricing that starts at 20e and MAYBE drops to 15e year from release. For reference, 20e is about 27.50 usd..
For that reason, itunes is actually much better deal for us than you might think.
DRM? yeah. Relative crap sound quality? Check. Same price as cd? You have to be kidding me.
9.90e for fresh cd vs 19.90e? At least you see clear difference between what you pay and what you get.
You are losing sight of the original point TR is raising. Prices in AUSTRALIA are stupidly high. His original rant (back in May) was when he found out that his album was priced at AU$32 (US$17.50) while generic top40 fluff was sold at AU$21.
You think that's unreasonable?
Try goddamn 19.90 EUROS for Pretty hate machine in Finland. Boohoo poor australians have to pay all of $17.50 for it..
Thankfully, Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained, he's maybe learned his lesson. There is an ending. It's... well, not _great_ but eminently credible, with some basis all the way through. I still don't know quite why he sent someone off wandering pathways, for no discernible reason, but... well, most of the story is fairly solid. His 'concept' of a believable fantasy world is just superb. I really loved the whole nanonics/affinity stuff, and thought it was really superb. But... yeah. I could rant all day. I won't. But it's just as well he did actually end gracefully, as I might have had to go and violence his boats otherwise.
Speaking of Hamilton.
Ahem. There's enough good stuff in the books that you could make something decent out of them. After the editor takes a chainsaw and chops off the about 2/3rd of the page count that is complete filler and/or pointless characters with no personality having gratuitious but pointless sex with everyone. I think there's sub-genre for that kind of thing if you like such..
Yup, there really are some good ideas there, 2 1500 page bricks would condense nicely into one 300-400 page book!
There are thousands of people who have hung on for 17 years to reach the end of the tale, regardless of how much it had deteriorated in the later books.
Wow.
That must have been some deteriorating. Having personally given up on part 4 or thereabouts.
AFAIK the series was really supposed to be trilogy, but as soon as the sales figures came in, the man just went on churning. In fact I think he said pretty much the same in early (90s) interview.
That's interesting. FTA: "I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism," Frattini told Reuters.
So in other words, Frattini is in fact trying to make information on holocaust inaccessible, among other things. Score one for neo-nazis!
Nice to include Rockstar/Manhunt 2 there. Not very controversial as such, just bit more gore than the norm right now. Actually the linked article says the same thing.
However, if you can see one digital nipple on-screen it's a big scandal.
Essentially un-hacked after all this time. Interestingly enough it's been possible to run warez for long time but ONLY if it's right region and no modification whatsoever is possible (cheats etc)
However, homebrew software, cross-region mods, or any modification to the games: Big Ix-Nay.
Yes, if you go to extreme lenghts and took the necessary steps long time ago it's possible to change the region code of the console. The kernel vulnerability was patched and there's no way to un-patch unless you exploited the vulnerable kernel to obtain one of the encryption keys. Or in other words, if this is news for you, forget about it.
Finnish goverment doesn't care if you get national ID card, period.
You DO need an ID card, thought. It can be Passport (goverment issued), driver's licence (goverment issued), social security card with photo (goverment issued), etc..
Any form of ID is not mandatory, it's just tricky to function without one. But possible.
US of A is the same, no? You just want to pretend it's better to have state-level ID than federal ID.. As if the data is not shared all the same.
When it DOES get iffy is with the UK proposal where it's felony to go around without ID card on you. (I do not know where's the matter right now. I'm sure someone from the blighty could bring me up to date)
By "mandatory" I don't mean that you have to carry it around with you, just that every citizen and resident is routinely assigned a national identifier. (That is the case, right? If not, amend the "every other country in the world" in my original comment, which wan't intended to be literally true anyway.)
Routinely, yup, in the sense that you can get one if you want one. Even minors.. (What for minors need ID? well, we've got people who have funny ideas about actually only selling ELSPA 15-yr game to someone who's >15.) You don't NEED one, thought, and you can use other forms of ID (passport, driver's licence, etcetera) for whatever you would need an ID for.
I do understand Finland's a minority, thought. We have national ID card, but you don't have to get it and in fact you don't need it. As I said, I haven't used mine since I got my driver's licence and the national ID card has expired plus the pic would be 15 years old in any case. Most other countries that have a form of national ID require the citizens to get one. Depends on the oppressometer whether it's mandatory to carry it with you or not.
Erhm. Just that you have single unified national ID card does not necessarily follow that it's mandatory to have. For example, Finland has national ID card but I've never used it since I got a driver's licence as it's universally accepted ID and I don't want to carry more useless cards around than I have to.
There's nobody twisting your arm to get The National ID card, passport or social security card with pic will do as well.
Strange that nobody brought the UK ID scheme into this yet. On the other hand, they seem to be hell-bent on requiring you MUST CARRY the ID card on you at all times.
Yes, Gorbachev made lots of noises about reforming the way the performance is measured but of course for him it was impossible task with entrenched interests of people who later become the robber baron oligarchs.. Another good example is nails - They were measured by the output weight, so the factory could easiest meet and exceed the quotas by producing only big honking nails that are not really appropriate for most things you'd want to use nails for in the construction or manufacturing industries. And in more refined products such as, say, buckets, they measured performance in units so it was best for the factory to produce small buckets that were not appropriate for most things you'd want to such thing for!
I believe in essense they wanted a regulated system that'd simulate supply and demand of an open market.. And as the theorists realized the equation cannot work, they naturally decided that the problem is with the people. So enter nonsense about "new socialist man" (or person) who they will educate to behave in a way that makes socialism work.
As for soviet military industry, they actually did have real outside pressure to produce better products that also reacted to what they manufactured. So probably that's why their arms industry is so much better in comparison to the rest of their industry. For example, Israel demonstrated that F-15 can take on much larger enemy air force comprised of Mig-21s and Mig-23s and sweep the skies.. So they came up with Mig-29 and Su-27 that were really ace products in the 70s.
Interestingly when India put interest into fielding Su-30 (essentially upgraded Su-27) it took Sukhoi and the indian arms industry ten years to make decent user-friendly avionics package for it. The pilot's user interface if you like.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of a coup, a radically reformist government, and breakaway republics. The Soviet Union's economic might declined radically from the sixties to the eighties. The Soviets themselves recognized this and wrote about this. It's one of the main issues that brought Gorbachev to power. There was already wide discontent because their industrial production couldn't provide their people the sort of standard of life that the west's did, because of widespread corruption, repression, and so forth. Soviet military spending during Reagan didn't even match their inflation rate.
That's doubleplus good doublespeak you have there, comrade.
First off, soviet economy was about to "collapse" late sixties already but they were bailed out by the oil crisis. Yeah. They ran the circus for additional 20 years with the oil income when the crude prices quadrupled due to the middle east oil czars getting their act together. Economic collapse is not quite that straightforward in the planned economy either as the value of goods was strictly controlled by the goverment. In any case sovs economy was in better shape late 70s than late 60s, cf age of stagnation in Brezhnev era. Interestingly enough to soviet citizens this may be the "golden era" since the system "worked" at that time.
As for military spend. GROWTH may not have exceeded their inflation rate, but so what? First off, the real inflation value was astronomical due to the central banks printing money with prices of goods fixed by the goverment. Yeah, you may have got cheap shoes from the shops but the tricky bit was finding the shop that actually had any shoes. Secondly, USSR military spending of their GDP was huge. See for reference the soviet tank production figures and other conventional munitions.. They could have fairly easily overrun NATO in 70s and 80s (Please, no red storm rising fantasies here. Yes, Leo 2A4 is much better tank than T-72, but if you have 10x the numbers in strategic reserve in one side, you can concentrate them on 1:100 numbers locally) if not for the pesky first strike and the whole mutually assured destruction-deal. So mainly soviets were exceeding military production combined NATO countries with economy that was basically crap. Doesn't leave much room for decent consumer goods production there. Plus, well, since prices were goverment sanctioned and there was waiting list of years for the crappy car, what for improve the product?!
On the other hand, the satellite is much much higher up and orbital speeds are pretty snazzy. And AFAIK the lasers of today are just able to overload/burn the extremely sensitive sensors of the satellites, not to damage the lump of metal itself.
Chinese did pop a satellite with kinetic kill eg lump of metal rammed into the satellite.
I do doubt it will be very long until you get missiles/interceptors that can intercept the new spyplane - After all russkies developed Mig25 to hunt Valkyrie. Crap plane but can fly really fast really high.
100kfeet is something like 30km? Wouldn't that be a job for Ramjet engine?
Slashdot Mirror
Not that huge step to be honest. They can create viable embryos easier, yay for them. However, they haven't been able to grow a baby monkey despite trying for 100 times so far.
Tech has "some" room for refinement right there..
Efrgh. Slashdot seems to be too america-centric to deal with euro-sign right now.
Those prices are in euros, of course. Multiply by 1.4 to get USD prices.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to have some grip on reality.
1) CDs are not $20
True, it's more like 18.95 for new releases that peters out to about 14.95 after a year from release. Unless, of course, you shop at general stores where they ask anything between 21.95 to 24.95 for latest discs.
I want all crimes except genocide or crimes against humanity to expire in 20 years tops. "Fugitives" are humans most of all and if they managed to keep themselves out of the hands of law enforcement for 20 years and didn't commit any crime apart from the one that expired (and I would say jailbreak is not a continous but singular event), then you can say that pursuing those crimes is probably a colossal waste of money and time.
Dunno how things work in US of A but around here anything short of murder DOES expire. If you embezzle millions and manage to evade justice for 20 years (or whatever) you can come retire in your homeland. Nb. I'm not a lawyer, maybe "they" would still seize your assets on the assumption they were acquired from initially illegally gained stash and/or nail you on taxes, but you couldn't be kicked to prison.
Murder, however, never expires except when the criminal dies. Actually a lot of people confess old homicides on their deathbed.. And even for slashdot groupmind, it blows MY mind that people have a problem with the concept that murder is not something that will be glossed over. Yeah, if you do your time and demonstrate you have actually reformed you'll get out eventually. In socialist europe that means about 20yrs max of hard time which is in fact quite a long time.
No.
I kinda miss Windows NT. It's really snappy on today's hardware. I think it's going to be a long time before Vista feels snappy on current hardware. It's not just a ram issue. Let's say you have 4 gigs of ram. Todays's system bus and Hard Drives can't make Vista feel as snappy as Windows NT or an optimised Linux install. I use Windows XP on my laptop and it has 4 gigs of ram (it only sees 3 gig of it).
In fact unless you use boot switches to enable the 3GB support AND use apps that are compiled to support it, XP only ever will use 2GB of RAM.
Want to show some actual benefit of that "let's say 4GB of ram"?
Use the 64bit edition.
And that still won't make most 32bit apps use more than 2GB!
A-ha, but that's the thing. Swedes had a popular vote whether scary nucular energy should be banned and surprisingly people will vote against such. Maybe if they had expressed it as "Should Sweden build 5000MW worth of nuclear or COAL plants in next 20 years" the result might've been more interesting.
So, yeah, Swedish policy is to run nuclear power to the ground. Same as Germany.
Now with forward-thinking Finns the nuclear waste storage is handled by [url=http://www.posiva.fi/englanti/]a separate company[/url] that is owned by the power companies on a more pay-as-you-go scheme instead of having to have the funds up front in cash.
I think that before any new nuclear facility is licensed, its operators should be required to pay in advance for the disposal of its spent fuel. I don't think it's right that the cost should be borne by the taxpayer.
I'm sure you can come up with some other demands that make it impossible to build nuclear power if you try a bit..
Sorry, I've lost you. CDs haven't averaged $15 for a while; the stuff on the Amazon top 100 tends to be $10 - $11 per CD, with the exception of the double discs, CD+DVD, etc. Amazon buys the CDs for $8 - $10. That $8 - $10 is all that the record company sees.
Why, that's true! A new CD costs about 18-19 euros!
Very graphic. Is that from a novel?
In any case, even in worst case there's something called genetic diversity that will stop any virus/bacillus from wiping out the general population. Even worst forms of black death killed about 90-95% who CONTRACTED the disease, not to say anything about the fact that some people are naturally immune or at least resistant to infection.
Plus, well, as soon as you have mass infection, you think airlines won't be grounded? Roadblocks on every exit for towns that haven't had any outbreaks? So on and so forth.. Frankly even a couple of billion death count won't make huge dent in the long run even if it might ruin national economies. Most likely you'd get areas (mostly) depopulated and areas (mostly) untouched due to quarantine etc.. You might have nice recently vacated real estate in population centres, thought. After you figure out vaccination and detox, that is..
Sure... if we can get the Euro selection for music ;)
I have found the trick is to bittorrent on the release-date, order the CD from the EU/US, then wait for it to arrive.
I don't usually pay much attention to release dates so waiting the stuff to arrive for a week from some hong kong based mail order venture (cd-wow..) isn't a big problem. What is a problem is that I actually like Finnish bands a lot so I'm stuck with the local pricing that starts at 20e and MAYBE drops to 15e year from release. For reference, 20e is about 27.50 usd..
For that reason, itunes is actually much better deal for us than you might think.
DRM? yeah.
Relative crap sound quality? Check.
Same price as cd? You have to be kidding me.
9.90e for fresh cd vs 19.90e? At least you see clear difference between what you pay and what you get.
You are losing sight of the original point TR is raising. Prices in AUSTRALIA are stupidly high. His original rant (back in May) was when he found out that his album was priced at AU$32 (US$17.50) while generic top40 fluff was sold at AU$21.
You think that's unreasonable?
Try goddamn 19.90 EUROS for Pretty hate machine in Finland. Boohoo poor australians have to pay all of $17.50 for it..
Can we have AUS pricing? Please?
Thankfully, Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained, he's maybe learned his lesson. There is an ending. It's ... well, not _great_ but eminently credible, with some basis all the way through. I still don't know quite why he sent someone off wandering pathways, for no discernible reason, but ... well, most of the story is fairly solid. His 'concept' of a believable fantasy world is just superb. I really loved the whole nanonics/affinity stuff, and thought it was really superb. But ... yeah. I could rant all day. I won't. But it's just as well he did actually end gracefully, as I might have had to go and violence his boats otherwise.
Speaking of Hamilton.
Ahem. There's enough good stuff in the books that you could make something decent out of them. After the editor takes a chainsaw and chops off the about 2/3rd of the page count that is complete filler and/or pointless characters with no personality having gratuitious but pointless sex with everyone. I think there's sub-genre for that kind of thing if you like such..
Yup, there really are some good ideas there, 2 1500 page bricks would condense nicely into one 300-400 page book!
There are thousands of people who have hung on for 17 years to reach the end of the tale, regardless of how much it had deteriorated in the later books.
Wow.
That must have been some deteriorating. Having personally given up on part 4 or thereabouts.
AFAIK the series was really supposed to be trilogy, but as soon as the sales figures came in, the man just went on churning. In fact I think he said pretty much the same in early (90s) interview.
That's interesting. FTA: ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism," Frattini told Reuters.
"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector
So in other words, Frattini is in fact trying to make information on holocaust inaccessible, among other things. Score one for neo-nazis!
Nice to include Rockstar/Manhunt 2 there. Not very controversial as such, just bit more gore than the norm right now. Actually the linked article says the same thing.
However, if you can see one digital nipple on-screen it's a big scandal.
Hmm.
I propose Xbox 360 DRM.
Essentially un-hacked after all this time. Interestingly enough it's been possible to run warez for long time but ONLY if it's right region and no modification whatsoever is possible (cheats etc)
However, homebrew software, cross-region mods, or any modification to the games: Big Ix-Nay.
Yes, if you go to extreme lenghts and took the necessary steps long time ago it's possible to change the region code of the console. The kernel vulnerability was patched and there's no way to un-patch unless you exploited the vulnerable kernel to obtain one of the encryption keys. Or in other words, if this is news for you, forget about it.
The point of the link is that, even if it takes a long time to pay for the system, you can still save money by going solar.
Assuming maintenance free operation for 20 years, of course. No panel breakage or degradation, equipment failures, need to replace batteries..
As stupid as replying to my own posts feels ..
Finnish goverment doesn't care if you get national ID card, period.
You DO need an ID card, thought. It can be Passport (goverment issued), driver's licence (goverment issued), social security card with photo (goverment issued), etc..
Any form of ID is not mandatory, it's just tricky to function without one. But possible.
US of A is the same, no? You just want to pretend it's better to have state-level ID than federal ID.. As if the data is not shared all the same.
When it DOES get iffy is with the UK proposal where it's felony to go around without ID card on you. (I do not know where's the matter right now. I'm sure someone from the blighty could bring me up to date)
By "mandatory" I don't mean that you have to carry it around with you, just that every citizen and resident is routinely assigned a national identifier. (That is the case, right? If not, amend the "every other country in the world" in my original comment, which wan't intended to be literally true anyway.)
Routinely, yup, in the sense that you can get one if you want one. Even minors.. (What for minors need ID? well, we've got people who have funny ideas about actually only selling ELSPA 15-yr game to someone who's >15.) You don't NEED one, thought, and you can use other forms of ID (passport, driver's licence, etcetera) for whatever you would need an ID for.
I do understand Finland's a minority, thought. We have national ID card, but you don't have to get it and in fact you don't need it. As I said, I haven't used mine since I got my driver's licence and the national ID card has expired plus the pic would be 15 years old in any case. Most other countries that have a form of national ID require the citizens to get one. Depends on the oppressometer whether it's mandatory to carry it with you or not.
Erhm. Just that you have single unified national ID card does not necessarily follow that it's mandatory to have. For example, Finland has national ID card but I've never used it since I got a driver's licence as it's universally accepted ID and I don't want to carry more useless cards around than I have to.
There's nobody twisting your arm to get The National ID card, passport or social security card with pic will do as well.
Strange that nobody brought the UK ID scheme into this yet. On the other hand, they seem to be hell-bent on requiring you MUST CARRY the ID card on you at all times.
Yes, Gorbachev made lots of noises about reforming the way the performance is measured but of course for him it was impossible task with entrenched interests of people who later become the robber baron oligarchs.. Another good example is nails - They were measured by the output weight, so the factory could easiest meet and exceed the quotas by producing only big honking nails that are not really appropriate for most things you'd want to use nails for in the construction or manufacturing industries. And in more refined products such as, say, buckets, they measured performance in units so it was best for the factory to produce small buckets that were not appropriate for most things you'd want to such thing for!
. jpg
i t-1S.jpg it evolved to, eventually.
I believe in essense they wanted a regulated system that'd simulate supply and demand of an open market.. And as the theorists realized the equation cannot work, they naturally decided that the problem is with the people. So enter nonsense about "new socialist man" (or person) who they will educate to behave in a way that makes socialism work.
As for soviet military industry, they actually did have real outside pressure to produce better products that also reacted to what they manufactured. So probably that's why their arms industry is so much better in comparison to the rest of their industry. For example, Israel demonstrated that F-15 can take on much larger enemy air force comprised of Mig-21s and Mig-23s and sweep the skies.. So they came up with Mig-29 and Su-27 that were really ace products in the 70s.
Interestingly when India put interest into fielding Su-30 (essentially upgraded Su-27) it took Sukhoi and the indian arms industry ten years to make decent user-friendly avionics package for it. The pilot's user interface if you like.
here is what they basically started with, user-hostile mess of dials and buttons and controls that are very hard to master - http://www.aeronautics.ru/img002/su30-302-cockpit
And this is what http://www.ausairpower.net/000-Su-30MKI-Fwd-Cockp
I suppose the user-friendliness bit didn't really take, they just looked at the performance.
The Soviet Union collapsed because of a coup, a radically reformist government, and breakaway republics. The Soviet Union's economic might declined radically from the sixties to the eighties. The Soviets themselves recognized this and wrote about this. It's one of the main issues that brought Gorbachev to power. There was already wide discontent because their industrial production couldn't provide their people the sort of standard of life that the west's did, because of widespread corruption, repression, and so forth. Soviet military spending during Reagan didn't even match their inflation rate.
That's doubleplus good doublespeak you have there, comrade.
First off, soviet economy was about to "collapse" late sixties already but they were bailed out by the oil crisis. Yeah. They ran the circus for additional 20 years with the oil income when the crude prices quadrupled due to the middle east oil czars getting their act together. Economic collapse is not quite that straightforward in the planned economy either as the value of goods was strictly controlled by the goverment. In any case sovs economy was in better shape late 70s than late 60s, cf age of stagnation in Brezhnev era. Interestingly enough to soviet citizens this may be the "golden era" since the system "worked" at that time.
As for military spend. GROWTH may not have exceeded their inflation rate, but so what? First off, the real inflation value was astronomical due to the central banks printing money with prices of goods fixed by the goverment. Yeah, you may have got cheap shoes from the shops but the tricky bit was finding the shop that actually had any shoes. Secondly, USSR military spending of their GDP was huge. See for reference the soviet tank production figures and other conventional munitions.. They could have fairly easily overrun NATO in 70s and 80s (Please, no red storm rising fantasies here. Yes, Leo 2A4 is much better tank than T-72, but if you have 10x the numbers in strategic reserve in one side, you can concentrate them on 1:100 numbers locally) if not for the pesky first strike and the whole mutually assured destruction-deal. So mainly soviets were exceeding military production combined NATO countries with economy that was basically crap. Doesn't leave much room for decent consumer goods production there. Plus, well, since prices were goverment sanctioned and there was waiting list of years for the crappy car, what for improve the product?!
On the other hand, the satellite is much much higher up and orbital speeds are pretty snazzy. And AFAIK the lasers of today are just able to overload/burn the extremely sensitive sensors of the satellites, not to damage the lump of metal itself.
Chinese did pop a satellite with kinetic kill eg lump of metal rammed into the satellite.
I do doubt it will be very long until you get missiles/interceptors that can intercept the new spyplane - After all russkies developed Mig25 to hunt Valkyrie. Crap plane but can fly really fast really high.
100kfeet is something like 30km? Wouldn't that be a job for Ramjet engine?
Having offspring with yourself?
Talk about inbreeding.