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  1. Re:Defaulting is worse! on The Luck of the Irish Runs Out · · Score: 1

    In a fiat money economy, the US does not need to default.
    It just needs to inflate itself out of debt.

    Sort of. We need the Fed to continue to buy government debt and then to eventually forgive that debt. And we can't run deficits higher than the servicing of the existing debt otherwise the debt burden will continue to go up and we do end up in a situation where we have runaway inflation.

    So we don't need to default, per se, but as our own creditor we need to "fix" the balance sheets. If we do it over a number of years then it might be manageable.

  2. Re:Cry some more please on After Online Defamation Suit, Dismissal of Malicious Prosecution Claim Upheld · · Score: 1

    You can't practice law without buying into a corrupt system, which doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. We all have to make a living some how.

      But I think people have a right to be critical of the profession as a whole. Lawyers are a weight upon society without being very productive themselves, at least in terms of necessities of life.

    In an ideal society we would not have lawyers.

  3. Re:Cry some more please on After Online Defamation Suit, Dismissal of Malicious Prosecution Claim Upheld · · Score: 1

    I would say a more correct complaint would be towards a legal system that requires attorneys to be such an integral part of our lives. That wasn't always the case, but as the law has increased in complexity and overall retardedness, the need for a competent lawyer to navigate it's intricacies is frequently a necessity.

    Given that the large majority of lawmakers and judges are lawyers themselves, complaining about "the system" and complaining about "lawyers" is pretty much the same thing.

  4. Re:That's not how they work on Astronomers Find Diamond Star 4,000 km Wide · · Score: 1

    They might even want to take out the ISS (and as anyone who has seen Congo [imdb.com] can tell you

    You had me until "Congo". I think the list of anyone who has seen Congo is just pretty much you and I, my friend. And that list is one person too long.

  5. Re:Main point on Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents · · Score: 1

    But were they calling their apps "Java Apps"?

  6. Re:Main point on Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents · · Score: 1

    There not getting sued for using java. they're getting sued for not using Java.

    The Tech world should be behind this what it is really about is using open standards technology to damage the standard. Java is useless if its not universal. Thats sort of the whole point of the language.

    Android is built almost entirely on Java but doesn't run it.

    Obviously you are not a Java developer. Sun forked Java years ago. Java is not a universal platform in any sense of the phrase. There are SE and ME versions as well as various major versions which are partly or completely incompatible with one another depending on how you compile your stuff or what libraries you use.

    Having Google create an android OS with its own requirements is not forking the Java platform. Because it isn't the Java platform. The problem is that Sun called both their platform and language "Java" as if it were the same thing.

    Using Java Syntax and then compiling it into different byte code than the JVM can run should be completely fine.

    This is completely different than the MS/Java issue back in the 90s. Where Microsoft was saying it was a java compatible platform but it wasn't working the same as the real JVM. That is bad because you expect your application to run the same, but then you try to run it under Linux or MacOS and it doesn't work. No one would be under any illusion that an android app would work on another platform.

  7. Re:Why do you think Oracle bought Sun? on Oracle Sues Google For Infringing Java Patents · · Score: 1

    They bought Sun for Java - you know how many other companies Oracle might have by the short and curlies now?

    Pretty much 0

  8. Re:How does on Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As George Bush and Hillary Clinton both so eloquently pointed out "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." and "Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. " respectively.

    As Orwell put it: "If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other."

    The logic is inescapable. When people take sides and start shooting at each other then they are going to start noticing who you line up with. There is no free press in war.

  9. What is the need? on Senators Want Big Rocket Instead of New Tech, Commercial Transportation · · Score: 4, Informative

    I can see why DoD would want to keep the solid rocket companies in business, because those same companies also build and replace ICBMs. But surely DoD can figure out a way to pay to keep those companies in business without forcing NASA to go with solid rocket boosters.

    Solid rockets are a good choice when you need to keep a rocket in storage for a while (like an ICBM hopefully), but for an active launch program it is a little less clear why you would go with solid fuel since they make lots more pollutants when you burn them.

  10. Re: NASA to cut back on Constellation on NASA Attempts To Cut Back Constellation · · Score: 1

    I can't remember the exact number but something like over 90% of the NASA budget is mandated of where it is spent by congress and the NASA administrator has no control over it. NASA has no choice but to be inefficient when saddled with restrictions like that.

    I'm shocked. Shocked! You say that spending within a government agency is driven by... AGHAST... politics?

    If you want to take some of the politics out, then with their scientists, R&D and launch facilities the NASA centers would be very competitive as FFRDCs. Look at NASA's JPL which is overseen by Caltech and see how successful they have been with the robotic missions: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf05306/#Topic5

    Why aren't all the NASA centers run like that? Focus on the missions.

  11. Re:Fairly pointless research on Gardening On Mars · · Score: 1

    but I think it's safe to say you are harming something when you are changing the natural state of being.

    I don't think that is safe to say at all. I don't think you can do harm to something unless it is alive or is used by living things.

  12. Re:Not even a question on WhiteHouse.gov Releases Open Source Code · · Score: 1

    The difference is so fundamental, I can't even believe this "question" comes up.

    Yes, it is unfortunate that people seem to conflate voluntarily helping people and trying to better society through charitable acts with socialism.

    To your other point, yes all governments compel using force it is just a matter of degree and for what purposes. The Constitutional Democratic ideal is simply to minimize that coercion and maximize personal freedom. Where the socialist ideal says that freedom is a false promise rarely realized and all must be compelled to the maximum extent to better society.

    One side believes that defensive war is the only reason to compel society to mobilize, where the other would mobilize for an endless war against inequality.

  13. Re:I've got the cure on Gonorrhea As the Next Superbug · · Score: 1

    I think the sexual revolution has solved some problems. Making life easier on those that didn't follow the social norms. But the societal changes over the last century have also created new problems that once again put us at odds with our own biology.

    I think the "someday" part is what is screwed up now. Modern Society says to wait until you are economically independent and stable in order to start a family, which basically means 80% or 90% of the population would have to wait until their 30s to get married and have kids and thus under the traditional model that is when they would start having sex. Maybe under current conditions society would just tell most people that they shouldn't get married or have children at all.

    But our bodies are built to start having sex when we are teenagers. It is also a biological fact that we should be having children as teenagers and in our 20s.

    Having children in our late 30s and early 40s just doesn't make as much sense biologically. And socially you are running into the biological wall of old age when parents are as old as grandparents used to be and grandparents are too old to help raise the children. Instead we are being forced to rely more and more on complex economic and social arrangements to help care for our children. Arrangements which may or may not be economically sustainable or socially desirable. We are living through a patchwork of social experiments, some of which seemed based on the desire of an elite to further their own societal dominance.

    So, the tension we have now is a direct result of the social engineering that has gone on to promote getting married later in life versus the traditional family structure (admittedly also socially engineered) which only satisfies the sexual urges of young adults if they are allowed to get married at a younger age.

    Sure getting married young and having children causes its own social problems if those marriages fall apart. But so does having children outside of marriage and never getting married.

    I don't think there is an easy answer that will get everyone a life long spouse early in life and put everyone on the path to create strong families. But neither should their be an easy scapegoat either in modern or traditional values.

  14. Re:Nothing about Wii on the Netflix site yet on Netflix Streaming Arrives For the Wii · · Score: 1

    Technically the wii won't be supported until 3/26...

    When I click on the "Find Out More" it shows that they shipped my disc and it will arrive on 3/26

  15. Re:Game of Chicken on China Warns Google To Obey Or Leave · · Score: 4, Funny

    How are the Chinese government officials going to find the objectionable content if they can't Google it?

  16. High School students act like High School students on New Plan Lets Top HS Students Graduate 2 Years Early · · Score: 1

    However some school officials are concerned about the social and emotional implications of 16-year-olds going off to college. 'That's far too young to be thrown into an environment with college students who are about 18 to 23 years old. ... Most of them are just not mature enough to handle that,' says Mary Anderson, headmaster of Pinkerton Academy.

    Are you saying Americans are immature? Kids in other countries seem to handle this okay.

    Maybe if you didn't keep 16 year olds stuck in high school when they are ready for college level or trade study then they wouldn't act like such high school students.

  17. Re:'GO' != 'GO!' on Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go" · · Score: 1

    You're observation is spot on. I doubt Microsoft asked permission from the creators of the C programming language when they came out with C# and decided that is what they were going to name it... and C is a widely used language, where "Go Bang" really isn't.

    From a copyright perspective, I know books and movies can have the same title and not be considered infringing. Google might have trouble trying to claim a trademark on it though if it was already being used by these guys.

  18. Re:Rename it on Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go" · · Score: 1

    "Goto" might be more nostalgic for us old BASIC programmers, but then you could only use it to write a new version of pong or have your name bounce around the screen...

  19. Re:I disagree on EC Formally Objects To Oracle's Purchase of Sun · · Score: 1

    What does marketing have to do with it? MySQL was just introducing the clustering features that database users needed in order to more easily use MySQL in enterprise settings. "High end" is only good if you actually have product features that really differentiate it from the free product. One by one those "high end" features were less and less obvious. And MySQL was already being openly used by a lot of high volume websites, so it was getting proven results.

    The trend line was extremely clear, anyone starting a fresh software project that required a database was probably better off with a MySQL back end rather than try to work under Oracle's onerous licensing costs. MySQL was or soon would be undermining Oracle's market, so they keep MySQL from introducing any more features and undermining Oracle's bread and butter business. I'm sure there are other benefits that Oracle was expecting, but this one was probably pretty key.

  20. Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 1

    Your impression is wrong. Every economist knows about Thomas Robert Malthus and Malthusian economics -- for the pre-industrial era his model best explains demographics and the limits of growth. It only so happened that just after he published his thoughts, the industrial revolution happened and technological progress pushed the boundaries of growth further and further - in an exponential manner.

    Would you dare to make an exact forecast where the limits of growth lie? Limited by fossil fuels? Or a single planet's worth of solar energy? Maybe a Dyson sphere's worth of solar energy? Technological progress moves the goalposts rapidly enough that you have to assume exponential growth punctuated by occasional catastrophes - at least for the next 50 years.

    Problem is that economists have built "innovation" into their forecast models as if it is a resource unto itself. We shouldn't assume the availability of technology before it is invented. Each major technological advance in food production, health care, communication, construction and transportation has moved the limits of population growth higher and higher, but to assume that this will continue is to court disaster. Innovation should be incorporated into economic models after it happens and not before.

  21. Re:Professionalism on Some Early Adopters Stung By Ubuntu's Karmic Koala · · Score: 1

    The major open source projects like Ubuntu have many professionals working on them. But unlike Windows Vista, it probably won't take the ubuntu folks 2 years to work out the kinks.

    But people are bitter at Microsoft for their monopolistic business practices: vendor lock-in with proprietary document formats, market manipulation through licensing deals that conspire to block competition. All of which negatively effects their customers by driving up the cost of computing. No one should be paying $500 for Microsoft Office. It is insanely overpriced. Same with Windows. I paid $30 for Windows 7 because I am a grad student now, but that is all anyone should ever be expected to pay.

    And when MS does come out with a crappy OS like Windows Vista it puts progress in computing on hold for two years while they get around to replacing it.

  22. Re:Idocracy on Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Heavier Women · · Score: 1

    Evolution would just mean that whomever has the most children (that survive to also make children) becomes the dominant (in numbers) body type.

    Yes, that is how evolution works.

    But run this same study in other places and maybe you get a different result. It could be that in Framingham the people that want to reproduce the most happen to be shorter. Or maybe there is something about being a bit shorter that opens up more mating possibilities. And the heavier part needs a bit more investigation, because people that have a lot of kids usually don't lose all the weight after the pregnancy.

    There is a very complicated cultural interplay that is part of human reproduction. Government policy, language differences, religious beliefs etc.

  23. Re:How is that sustainable? on Chinese To Supply 600 MW Wind Farm In Texas · · Score: 1

    You use the worst possible examples to shore up your faulty arguments.

    Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, which is one of the latest plants to be built in the US (completed in 1986), has a capacity of 1,244MW and sits on 900 acres much of which is just a buffer area that is left in a mostly natural state.

    So comparing apples to apples, this wind farm uses 80 times more land area per megawatt. And if you are going to be dragging in mining into the equation, then you had better account for all the materials and energy required to manufacture those wind turbines. Not to mention the land area of the new power grid that it will take to transmit all this power from far off places. When you add it all up, a full roll out of wind and solar in the US would take up an area the size of Arizona and still wouldn't give you enough power on a cloudy or windless day.

    Heck can you even run an industrial economy on wind power? How many wind turbines would it take to power the manufacture of a single turbine? All this talk of how many homes you can power, without considering manufacturing and business. Is the expectation that we are just going to keep outsourcing our industrial production to China where they will continue to use cheap coal power? The Chinese have done the math on this, have we? The last major foray into renewable energy in the US was with hydro-electric power and now many environmental groups want to see many rivers undammed to allow the ecosystem to recover. Do we really want to see our entire landscape covered with wind farms and transmission lines? What is the environmental impact of that?

    Nuclear is a proven safe reliable technology that has the least environmental impact of any other technology including wind and solar.

    I do, by the way, believe that wind and solar do have a place, but it is only going to get us about 5-10% of the way there.

    It is a simple choice either Global Warming is a threat and we need to triple our nuclear capacity in the next 20 years or Global Warming isn't going to be so bad and we can play around with a little solar and wind power to assuage some political groups.

  24. Re:Too early yet on Legal Code In a Version Control System? · · Score: 1

    I agree that this isn't about coverage because everyone is already covered... this is about equity of who pays what. This bill screws over the middle class to pay for the poor and subsidize the rich. Give me a 2.5 percent tax on everyone, like Medicare and then give everyone the same basic 2 doctors visits a year and free emergency room care for actual life threatening emergencies. Don't screw over the middle class with health insurance that is cheap enough to buy, but has too high deductibles to actually use. Making people pay 5 to 10% of their incomes to high deductible health insurance, leaving them no money to actually pay out of pocket for their own health care, for something that has no value, is wrong.

  25. Re:Too early yet on Legal Code In a Version Control System? · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't they be proud of their socialism? Why do they try to sneak it through the back door? If their true position is too weak to stand up to real debate then they deserve to fail.

    I thought you were heading in the right direction when you said the bill is dishonest, but I disagree that it is heading towards socialism. This bill is just a corrupt abomination, not the product of a coherent policy of socialism or anything that cohesively rational. It is a giant give away to the insurance industry which allows them to continue to raise premiums beyond the breaking point. People in droves were deciding to decline health insurance because it was too expensive, a trend that was threatening insurance companies growth. People would be a lot better off with medical savings accounts (that actually carried over each year) even subsidized savings accounts would be better. But this way with mandated purchase of insurance, people won't have the option to save their money. And if you actually do get sick and can't afford the insurance anymore because you are out of work, then you get stuck on the public dime anyway because the insurance companies get to walk away with all the money that you gave them over the years and you get nothing to show for it.

    Forget socialism, the US government is running a Ponzi scheme.