"Our forces are overextended enough as it is. Within five years, we have Iran or Israel burning and in desperate need of democratization and/or support. Within fifteen years, we will probably have an open insurgency somewhere in the Greater London, Brussels or Paris when their Muslim reaches the size of a small Arab state like Lebanon and Syria. And neither Afghanistan or Iraq will be a stable democracy by then and will collapse as soon as we leave or already did."
If Israel wants to fend off its neighbors in the next war, it has tactical nukes. We don't need to mess with Iran, because it will remain Jihadist and no outcome we could influence will change that. Unless they have some wonderful equivalent of the French Revolution where they slaughter the Mullah, it will be "same shit, different day". T
he Iranian protestors aren't rejecting Islam, they chant "God is great!". Don't ever forget that. Like the Cultural Revolution in China, not our problem and the more violent things get in an _enemy_ country the better.
"If the national deficit spending continues, China could buy back all of Taiwan simply by relieving some percent of our national debt and we will still be thankful to have some room in our budgets again."
Works for me. Taiwan is in Chinas sphere of influence, which it why it is full of Chinese. The cult of Suicide for Taiwan doesn't benefit the US. How many dead G.I.s is Taiwan worth? None by my metrics. Go enlist in their Army if you like.
"We will never recover from our debts and we cannot survive without China giving us more loans every year, so they can practically demand whatever they want. In our world, politically correct may trump factually correct, but in the real world, all lunches must be paid for."
China is the natural master of Asia, NOT the US! Such neocolonial nostalgia is disgusting and no wonder the ChiComs are pissed when it is expressed! China is tough enough to help fight radical Islam. China is progressing at an amazing pace, so the old idea of preparing for confrontation is silly. We should be cooperating to carve out influence instead of competing. We have mutual cultural enemies in the Jihadists.
We fought the Cold War to make a Capitalist world, so we have no room to bitch if others play Capitalist hardball.
We should be doing the very same thing. We should lower wages to compete because if we don't we'll lose the jobs anyway. We should educate our people to be productive workers, not encourage bullshit degrees that don't land jobs. (This could be implemented by restricting student loan to science, engineering, medical, and useful vocational coursed. Hobbies can be pursued on one's own dime.)
Business is war. If we want the welfare state we seem to be heading towards, we need to be phenomenally productive to afford it!
"So I say ever other country starts finger-printing and frisking Americans just as a matter of policy."
Go ahead. I'd be fine with that. Run background checks too. Lock down all borders and protect exclusive access.
I don't fly anywhere I'm not welcome, I'm not interested in becoming an illegal immigrant, I'm not a terrorist, and I'm fine with the deterrent model for containing international flow of people.
We used to criticize the Soviets for everything, be it rational or not.:)
BTW we criticized them for not letting people LEAVE their borders, not for controlling their own airspace and controlling border ingress.
A country belongs to its people, not other people. Not its neighbors.
Those not liking how it runs its internal affairs or controls access to its territory are free to express their discontent by boycott and routing around the problem.
"Well given that they're just down the street from a state with a serious racial prejudice problem"
Muslims are not a "race", neither are Arabs. It's Semite vs. Semite, plus various imported non-Semites.
"As far as I''m concerned either both Israel and Iran should have nukes, or neither should. Imbalances in that part of the world usually lead to genocide"
Please cite examples of actual genocide and not the normal state of low-level recreational violence.
"You know what the solution to this problem is? Send more rovers. Lots more. If we had a spare rover near Spirit, we could probably have it roll over and give Spirit a tow..."
We could afford to send MANY more unmanned missions (not to rescue other unmanned missions...yet) if we weren't spending a disproportionate amount of money on the romantic adventure of sending meat tourists into space. If the public want romance, let them fap to science fiction.
We are wasting resources that could be advancing the vital robotic capabilities we REQUIRE ANYWAY to explore the universe.
Each format has advantages, but the reason netbooks sell is they are cheaper than more powerful ultraportables of the same size. Speed is always good.
That leaves room for a speed race and will push lots of netbooks to the used market (where geeks can exploit teh cheepness!).
"netbooks still have their place, mainly as a replacement for more fully featured laptops for most purposes, and eventually they will probably be themselves partially displaced by handhelds for most people."
Fully featured laptops are dirt cheap, especially refurb units. Handheld screens are too small for many users. I don't see one format as a threat to another because the market is huge and many people own many devices.
If you are talking "absolute reliability" (or at least standalone reliability) keep a CB radio handy with both automobile and alligator clip power leads (run off car in car, run off battery or batteries). Get more than one and you can set up friends who don't have them. Arrange to monitor a channel (not 9, leave that open for emergency use) when the "excrement hits the Emerson".
Since NOLA will get nailed again sooner or later, consider becoming an amateur radio operator.
BTW, the ones old enough to be bewildered by the change aren't long for this earth or at least independent living, and the "younger old folks" can learn to deal.
The radiation issue is a trifle. Atmospheric testing demonstrated that a single massive blast won't cause enough radiation to matter to an attacker willing to use a nuke in the first place. The total number of atmospheric test blasts amounts to a smallish nuclear war, proving such a war is quite practical.
If we want the power to divert asteroids we must prove we can do it in order to know we can do it.
This is a bit like atmospheric testing, which decisively proved limited nuclear wars are quite practical and suggested that total nuclear war was an extreme last resort. Some things aren't practical to simulate.
"But all that blood flow has another effect as well...makes me wonder what stuff like Viagra and Cialis are actually like, given the effects of this stuff."
The Chinese remedy, Sum Yung Tang, has been found to be highly effective.
"It's amazing to me that anyone with an engineering background could have blind (I.E. without tangible proof) faith in any religion. Agnosticism seems to me to be the viewpoint most consistent with an Engineering outlook (until a religion provides some kind of tangible proof, which goes against what most of them say about faith."
If they bought into the superstition because their culture produced nothing else of note for the last few hundred years (not an insult, an observation of inconvenient fact) then they may have adopted engineering as a means to an end and not bought into skepticism. Mosques display some impressive engineering.
While modern people generally scorn religion as a joke played on primitives to manipulate them, many anti-modern people crave its comforting lies and are horny to kill for their imaginary celestial friend.
Semi-OT, but a handy way to use different versions of Office on the same PC, and portably on a USB key, is to modify their installation via VMWare ThinApp:
I found out about Thinstals/Thinapps/"portable" versions when I accidentally browsed a torrent site where they are popular for various reasons, but the concept works well and it's easier to copy/paste a folder than do a conventional install.
My duty to my employer ended when I became a civilian.
Unlike the military, civilian employment is merely a matter of tolerable mutual exploitation.
I don't care about the company I work for and don't care if upper management fucks it up. I don't care about how well anything other than my department and payroll function.
Business is business and the fundamental principles of being a peon boil down to "get paid", "do it even if it's wrong so long as you don't break the law", and "I don't get paid to defy the stupid". If buy the uniforms I could care less. If I am asked to buy them I'll take the money back by wasting their time and amusing myself instead of working. If things become too annoying I'll leave.
Slashdot Mirror
"Our forces are overextended enough as it is. Within five years, we have Iran or Israel burning and in desperate need of democratization and/or support. Within fifteen years, we will probably have an open insurgency somewhere in the Greater London, Brussels or Paris when their Muslim reaches the size of a small Arab state like Lebanon and Syria. And neither Afghanistan or Iraq will be a stable democracy by then and will collapse as soon as we leave or already did."
If Israel wants to fend off its neighbors in the next war, it has tactical nukes. We don't need to mess with Iran, because it will remain Jihadist and no outcome we could influence will change that. Unless they have some wonderful equivalent of the French Revolution where they slaughter the Mullah, it will be "same shit, different day". T
he Iranian protestors aren't rejecting Islam, they chant "God is great!". Don't ever forget that.
Like the Cultural Revolution in China, not our problem and the more violent things get in an _enemy_ country the better.
"If the national deficit spending continues, China could buy back all of Taiwan simply by relieving some percent of our national debt and we will still be thankful to have some room in our budgets again."
Works for me. Taiwan is in Chinas sphere of influence, which it why it is full of Chinese. The cult of Suicide for Taiwan doesn't benefit the US.
How many dead G.I.s is Taiwan worth? None by my metrics. Go enlist in their Army if you like.
"We will never recover from our debts and we cannot survive without China giving us more loans every year, so they can practically demand whatever they want. In our world, politically correct may trump factually correct, but in the real world, all lunches must be paid for."
China is the natural master of Asia, NOT the US! Such neocolonial nostalgia is disgusting and no wonder the ChiComs are pissed when it is expressed!
China is tough enough to help fight radical Islam. China is progressing at an amazing pace, so the old idea of preparing for confrontation is silly.
We should be cooperating to carve out influence instead of competing. We have mutual cultural enemies in the Jihadists.
We fought the Cold War to make a Capitalist world, so we have no room to bitch if others play Capitalist hardball.
We should be doing the very same thing. We should lower wages to compete because if we don't we'll lose the jobs anyway. We should educate our people to be productive workers, not encourage bullshit degrees that don't land jobs. (This could be implemented by restricting student loan to science, engineering, medical, and useful vocational coursed. Hobbies can be pursued on one's own dime.)
Business is war. If we want the welfare state we seem to be heading towards, we need to be phenomenally productive to afford it!
Just see if we offer you statehood with an attitude like that!
"So I say ever other country starts finger-printing and frisking Americans just as a matter of policy."
Go ahead. I'd be fine with that. Run background checks too. Lock down all borders and protect exclusive access.
I don't fly anywhere I'm not welcome, I'm not interested in becoming an illegal immigrant, I'm not a terrorist, and I'm fine with the deterrent model for containing international flow of people.
We used to criticize the Soviets for everything, be it rational or not. :)
BTW we criticized them for not letting people LEAVE their borders, not for controlling their own airspace and controlling border ingress.
A country belongs to its people, not other people. Not its neighbors.
Those not liking how it runs its internal affairs or controls access to its territory are free to express their discontent by boycott and routing around the problem.
Airspace is sovereign territory. Requiring conditions of those who enter it may be onerous, but it isn't odd.
Don't like the conditions, don't go there. Boycott the US.
"Well given that they're just down the street from a state with a serious racial prejudice problem"
Muslims are not a "race", neither are Arabs. It's Semite vs. Semite, plus various imported non-Semites.
"As far as I''m concerned either both Israel and Iran should have nukes, or neither should. Imbalances in that part of the world usually lead to genocide"
Please cite examples of actual genocide and not the normal state of low-level recreational violence.
"I am an agnostic myself but I fail to see how you could teach the history of Europe while ignoring religion."
There is a difference between describing the effects of superstition and advocating it as fact.
"There is no god, and Mohammed is his prophet."
Cue the Shia v. Sunni fight over who's the Khufar!
"You know what the solution to this problem is? Send more rovers. Lots more. If we had a spare rover near Spirit, we could probably have it roll over and give Spirit a tow..."
We could afford to send MANY more unmanned missions (not to rescue other unmanned missions...yet) if we weren't spending a disproportionate amount of money on the romantic adventure of sending meat tourists into space. If the public want romance, let them fap to science fiction.
We are wasting resources that could be advancing the vital robotic capabilities we REQUIRE ANYWAY to explore the universe.
Each format has advantages, but the reason netbooks sell is they are cheaper than more powerful ultraportables of the same size. Speed is always good.
That leaves room for a speed race and will push lots of netbooks to the used market (where geeks can exploit teh cheepness!).
"netbooks still have their place, mainly as a replacement for more fully featured laptops for most purposes, and eventually they will probably be themselves partially displaced by handhelds for most people."
Fully featured laptops are dirt cheap, especially refurb units. Handheld screens are too small for many users. I don't see one format as a threat to another because the market is huge and many people own many devices.
"Here we go, the whining and complaining from people who are too cheap or too poor to buy a Congressman."
The people can afford political power if they work together and support effective lobbyists such as the National Rifle Organization.
As the slogan goes, "I'm the NRA and I vote!".
http://www.nraila.org/
The difference is that SCO was obviously turned into a weapon with no concern for its viability as anything else.
SCO didn't try to succeed on merit and fail, and is merely the corporate equivalent of an exploded land mine.
Sounds like (some) developers are like (some) artists and many other creative types who, outside their specialty, have a head full of feathers.
Such folk can be useful, but bear watching.
If you are talking "absolute reliability" (or at least standalone reliability) keep a CB radio handy with both automobile and alligator clip power leads (run off car in car, run off battery or batteries). Get more than one and you can set up friends who don't have them. Arrange to monitor a channel (not 9, leave that open for emergency use) when the "excrement hits the Emerson".
Since NOLA will get nailed again sooner or later, consider becoming an amateur radio operator.
Why is that a Troll?
BTW, the ones old enough to be bewildered by the change aren't long for this earth or at least independent living, and the "younger old folks" can learn to deal.
Too awkward, and only useful for a single strike.
The radiation issue is a trifle. Atmospheric testing demonstrated that a single massive blast won't cause enough radiation to matter to an attacker willing to use a nuke in the first place. The total number of atmospheric test blasts amounts to a smallish nuclear war, proving such a war is quite practical.
If we want the power to divert asteroids we must prove we can do it in order to know we can do it.
This is a bit like atmospheric testing, which decisively proved limited nuclear wars are quite practical and suggested that total nuclear war was an extreme last resort. Some things aren't practical to simulate.
"But all that blood flow has another effect as well...makes me wonder what stuff like Viagra and Cialis are actually like, given the effects of this stuff."
The Chinese remedy, Sum Yung Tang, has been found to be highly effective.
...why I can't find my damn Ginkgo bottle...
"It's amazing to me that anyone with an engineering background could have blind (I.E. without tangible proof) faith in any religion. Agnosticism seems to me to be the viewpoint most consistent with an Engineering outlook (until a religion provides some kind of tangible proof, which goes against what most of them say about faith."
If they bought into the superstition because their culture produced nothing else of note for the last few hundred years (not an insult, an observation of inconvenient fact) then they may have adopted engineering as a means to an end and not bought into skepticism. Mosques display some impressive engineering.
While modern people generally scorn religion as a joke played on primitives to manipulate them, many anti-modern people crave its comforting lies and are horny to kill for their imaginary celestial friend.
In other news, US vegetable pickers with delusions of grandeur complained about their replacement by Mexicans.
Not to mention innocent food references like "1 guy 1 jar".
Semi-OT, but a handy way to use different versions of Office on the same PC, and portably on a USB key, is to modify their installation via VMWare ThinApp:
http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/
I found out about Thinstals/Thinapps/"portable" versions when I accidentally browsed a torrent site where they are popular for various reasons, but the concept works well and it's easier to copy/paste a folder than do a conventional install.
My duty to my employer ended when I became a civilian.
Unlike the military, civilian employment is merely a matter of tolerable mutual exploitation.
I don't care about the company I work for and don't care if upper management fucks it up. I don't care about how well anything other than my department and payroll function.
Business is business and the fundamental principles of being a peon boil down to "get paid", "do it even if it's wrong so long as you don't break the law", and "I don't get paid to defy the stupid". If buy the uniforms I could care less. If I am asked to buy them I'll take the money back by wasting their time and amusing myself instead of working. If things become too annoying I'll leave.