Only outlying planets would be vulnerable to something like that. Core systems would not.
And really if you wanted to take this to the next level, I'd suggest you check out the "Culture" novels which are sort of a take off on the federation concept.
In the Culture novels, everything of importance is on giant starships that move around the galaxy like huge cruise ships giving every luxury imaginable to the humans.
The civilization is ultimately run by super intelligent AIs that are sympathetic to humanity and... sort of see humanity as their pets.. sort of.
Anyway, the Culture as it is referred to gets into wars every so often where stars are detonated. It doesn't hurt them. Only the border systems are ever effected and even then... populations are relocated out of hostile areas before they can come under attack. And even if they are destroyed... which... is profoundly unlikely... they have the tech to back up their minds and store them somewhere else. So if they get killed... they just jump into a new body with slightly out of date memories and are told what happened to the last version of themselves.
Point is... if you want to fuck with the Culture, it is quite happy to blow up stars if that's where someone wants to take it. And long before that happens the Culture has an infinite variety of weapons to use against someone that is hostile. They have sapient "knife missiles"... drones that are about the size of golf ball that not only have enough processing power to sustain a limited independent intelligence but also all sorts of other stuff can be crammed into the body. Power supply, propulsion, weapons, etc... into a fucking golf ball.
And the star trek federation has just as much technology if not even more. The odd thing about star trek is that they have too much technology to explain the way they live. It doesn't make sense. The culture didn't have transporters or replicators for example. The federation has that and more. But the culture was vastly more formidable. If the Culture went against the Federation, the Federation would get plastered. Not that the Culture "would" do that... their attitudes towards such things are a bit confusing but they appear to genuinely not want to interfere with people that aren't intending them any harm.
it doesn't matter... the machines that make everything in that show are not in short supply and neither is the energy that powers them. So... lets say some guy owns a planet... fine... you still own an island the size of Hawaii full of sex bots. Who gives a shit.
As to your pedantic quibbles, they wouldn't have lids on the top sport if they didn't eject things with some force out of the top... would they?
I've used them... they absolutely do shoot shit everywhere. Use a cuisinart... that's the most popular brand... they are designed in fact to not even run without the top on them for safety reasons. That spinning blade. But if you press down the safety button so it thinks the top is on and press go with something in there... shit goes everywhere.
You can see that shit bouncing off the top of the lid.
So there you go. You started out with a fucking annoying quibble... and you were fucking wrong.
Moving along.
As to puffery... its their actual value to their users. If they're not that then they're dog shit. So it isn't puffery.
As to indexing and hosting... I think I actually covered that issue in the previous post. You can read and respond to it or you're not having an interactive discussion. I anticipated your objection and responded to it before you even came up with a response. And you didn't even fucking read it.
As to moral repugnance... then don't run an open social network. I believe there are some evangelical social networks that are only for people of a given religion and ideology. So... you could set something up like that.
Sound like a winning strategy? That's your fucking idea and its as fucking stupid as your quibble about the food processor.
Don't even comment to me again. Just walk away. Your failure is so complete that you should be ashamed of yourself. And the fact that you're doubtless not ashamed of yourself speaks even more poorly of you. I think I'll leave you with this response because it simply amuses me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Seriously, progressives... Learn from Detroit. Stop fucking things up. Just let people enjoy something going well.
You've so far succeed in turning a successful industry into your idealized form ZERO times. The best you can claim so far is utterly destroying any community in which you've tried it.
Just stop. And try to enjoy good things. Is it perfect? Life isn't perfect. But for the love of god stop fucking up things that are working.
This country can't stand much more of your shit.
And here a bunch of robots are going to come marching after me saying
"ERROR ERROR ALL LEFTIST ACTIONS ARE GOOD. ALL PAST FAILURES ARE DELETED"
Enough. I'm not even promoting rightist shit. I'm just saying... if something is working... leave it alone. Just stand the fuck away from it and leave it alone.
Why don't you focus on your other little projects that you seem to have lost interest in? How about improving education in the inner city? remember when that mattered to you? You fucked it up horribly and then walked away taking no responsibility for anything.
What about lowering the costs of healthcare? How has that one gone? Total failure again.
What about housing price? Nope.
What jobs? Nope.
Crime? Nope.
After serially fucking up everything they've ever touched, in typical leftist fashion... they want a fucking promotion. And that means they want to take another stab at reengineering a city with a successful industry that is making money. Why? Because they're bored apparently and can't be bothered to fix any of the shit they already broke.
And I know... you're mad at me for saying your little tribe and your little ideology could ever have made a mistake... Except for you're fucking blind if you haven't realized it makes very little besides mistakes.
Look at Washington DC... Look at the schools. THey get more money per student than anywhere and they're a complete mess. How did that happen?
Critics said for ages that hte issue was not money. The issue was how the schools were run. That there are bad teachers that need to lose their jobs. As in fired. And that there are disapline problems in the school that cause students to disrupt class rooms... etc.
But of course that is all some kind of bigoted propaganda. Because the real solution is to just give the teachers more money. Which has a zero percent track record of actually accomplishing anything.
I'm beyond tired of the fucking robot progressives. And I am NOT making an appeal to some other political faction. Most of them are horribly corrupt. But the progressive robots need to have someone pee on their circuit boards because they're out of fucking control. They've got a zero percent track record of making a positive contribution and they always think they have the answers despite the facts of the matter suggesting that they have in fact never had the answers.
Their great claim to fame is what? That they don't believe being racist and sexist is a good idea? Brilliant. Welcome to 90 percent of the rest of the population. That's not distinctive.
In a post scarcity civilization how can you possibly be greedy?
I mean... how? There's no way to horde things because there's no lack of anything. Everyone in such a society can have diamond encrusted mansions. What are you hording?
The only thing I can think of would be entire fucking planets. Just one dude... my planet. That's about it.
As to sane people not caring about status... don't be silly. Status has material consequences. If you have status people do what you say and you have high social standing. Which means if you want an actual women to hop up and down on your genitals it is a lot easier if you're higher status than lower status.
Any social species is going to be status conscious.
Say the american population can't do the job so you need this education upgrade and all the H1B visas you can handle... and then of course fire the existing american labor force that made everything the tech industry has... and possibly have them teach the imports in their final days and then fire them.
The whole thing is sick.
MS just fired something like six thousand engineers etc but they need more? Why?
The battles in startrek are based on Napoleonic ship of the line battles.
Starwars is based on WW2 carrier battles.
One of the things i found to be the most disapointing about the Enterprise series was that it wasn't based on Submarine warfare.
The whole idea was to have a weaker, smaller, more cramped ship. The ship didn't feel cramped and they just charged into shit the same way they always do.
it was dumb.
The Klingons make things more interesting with their cloaking devices. It basically lets them be pointblank submarines. They vanish and they appear.
You can have an epic space battle without closing to knife range and beating the hell out of each other.
Look at Das Boot. Barely anything is really done at any point but the whole movie is full of suspense and drama because the sub is so fragile that it just can't take that kind of punishment.
As to engaging at point blank range... I was talking about slower than light torpedoes. That's their big nasty weapon right?
FIRE THE TORPEDOES!:D
The thing is a torpedo... ONE will destroy most ships outright. I'm talking about a real one in our navy inventory right now. ONE torpedo. A battleship which is a big stupid turkey that no one builds anymore could take maybe 10 or so torpedoes but in the show they eat volley after volley which is stupid. They don't even have active defenses against them. Ever seen them shoot a torpedo out of space with a point defense phaser? Nope. They just eat that on their shields like big idiots.
As to the point of the show being about morality etc... that's fine. I'm just saying if you talk about the economics of the show then you're going to have to talk about the technology and that brings up the discussion I'm having now.
... you missed the bit where I said this wasn't an original idea. Several aeronautical engineers have drawn up blue prints for just this sort of thing.
So... you can take your presumptions and pretensions and shove them up your anus sideways.
As to where I got my knowledge of Sparta's population... I had a very comprehensive classical education so I was subjected to a lot of information about the ancient world... especially the western ancient world.
As to specific citations... I'm remembering this out of lectures and textbooks from decades ago. I didn't get this off the internet.
What is known is that the spartan elite despite not having to work, despite being able to have as many children really as they wanted because their culture was sustained by a slave underclass.... the population of the spartan elite was relatively small.
We're talking about a number less than 20 thousand total. With perhaps 10 thousand actually able to fight at any time. That's not that many.
And given Sparta's territory, wealth, etc... they should have had a larger population. What is more, losing one battle should not have broken them. They could not replace their losses. That's a fact.
Now if you look at population figures from that period of time you'll see it was not unusual for women to be having 8 or more children during their life times. Take into consideration high infant mortality rates and the numbers fall down to an effective population replacement rate of about twice the current population. Which means you could in most places lose HALF your population every generation so long as they were the right people... and it was survivable.
We have evidence from Iron Age Europe that attrition rates were often as high as 70 percent per generation to VIOLENCE. Not disease or famine... 70 percent of the male population in some Iron age settlements was SUSTAINED at 70 percent per generation.
You can't sustain that without a high birth rate.
And that was sustained. Sparta could not sustain it.
We also have population numbers from Athens... they had a very different notion of how things worked between the sexes... and their populations figures were about six to seven times the size of spartas... at least. The population difference could have been more extreme. Its hard to know really.
Anyway, Sparta is understood to have had a relatively small population. Where as most of the other greek tribes were significantly more numerous. The issue was that if you fought the Spartans in the traditional way... they would fucking kill everyone. What Thebes did was sacrifice the cream of their own warrior caste to destroy the cream of the Spartan warrior caste. And Thebes could replace their losses... and Sparta could not.
As to the battle itself... the numbers are hard to pin down. What we do know is that the population in thebes exceeded the population in sparta... especially of the spartan military elite... you can't include the slaves in the population of sparta since they didn't undergo spartan training. Where as the Thebens had a less stratified society. Their entire population could be considered Theben.
Most sources I'm seeing are showing heavier numbers from sparta but that is simply conflating all the infantry together. They're not all the same.
The tradition was for the veterans of both sides to fight the neophytes of the other. What you can see from that video is that they were not clearly concentrating their forces to break the Spartan line. What I remember about the battle was that the Thebens intentionally put their best against the spartan best against tradition and then stacked the ranks deep so that even if the spartan best was killing their best at a superior ratio... they'd just overwhelm that core with numbers.
What is important here is to understand that the spartan elite was not replaceable at those rates. They could not take body blows like that. They were like the French Imperial Guard. When Napoleon's imperial guard retreated... he knew he had lost. They were not replaceable.
The difference is that the spartan elite was MADE while th
You could do it though... You'd just have something between four and six ramps all leading to different portions of the plane.
I personally don't mind anything on the planes at this point. Its a little tight but so what. You just calm down and try to be comfortable. Its not that hard.
On long flights, I don't sleep the day before the flight. So I arrive at the terminal ready to pass out. I get on the plane... buckle up... and don't wake up until the plane touches down wherever.
And I generally feel reasonable enough when I land that I don't need a post flight nap.
THat's just me though. I sleep like a cat. I can sleep anywhere.
That is merely what the creators of the show thought would happen.
Everyone underestimated the stupidity of the Russian government to continue to dick with the Western hegemony after it lost... horribly.
The last episode of the show in the modern time line was about 16 years ago. As of 16 years ago, the Russians arguably where trying to integrate into the global economy as a productive member of the global community.
We had the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
The show simply hasn't done anything recently.
If it were to be represented in the show, there would be a faction of the Klingon government that missed the old days. And caused troubles with the federation. The federation would respond by sending diplomats and sending forces to secure various border worlds. Eventually the Klingons would either back off or engage in some kind of war... which they would of course lose because the challenge to the federation is pointless much as the challenge against the Western hegemony is pointless.
After that, the federation and the Klingons are on better terms... mostly because the Klingons know they can't fight the federation and the federation fears the Klingon's less as the Klingons are increasingly a minor power.
What I'd like even more though would be if the entire passanger compartment were just removed and added to planes like modules.
What kills the whole experience is the rush onto the plane and the rush off it.
If people actually wait in the seat they're going to depart from rather than at the gate... it means you don't have that silly rush.
They have to do that because whenever the plane isn't in the air it costs the airline money. They want it in the air immediately. Okay, so why not have the passengers board a compartment and then have that instantly swapped with the existing compartment. Thus the compartment and fill slowly as people arrive at the gate and debarking might be a less annoying experience because you could potentially just open all the exits on the plane to let everyone bypass the various people that block the aisle because they can't figure out how to get baggage out of an overhead.
The idea isn't original. Other people have suggested it and of course the planes would have to be designed around the concept. But it would make loading and unloading the plane a matter of two minutes or something which is less time than it takes to refuel the plane.
Greed is your way of saying "people should limit their desires to what is collectively obtainable within the existing scarcity".
I mean... fine... but you're admitting scarcity is an issue.
If there were no scarcity then how could there be greed? I mean... imagine a world where you could have as much of everything as any sane person... even a really greedy one... could possibly want?
in Startrek did you ever look at the population numbers? That people skip over that one is always baffling to me. Whole planets get blown up and they'll say stuff like "there were 3 million people on that world"... Three fucking million people... on an entire planet... and not a shitty one... a giant green/blue idealized paradise planet. Three million. Which means every douchebag on that planet could have a scale reproduction of the French Sun Palace staffed with nympho holograms that bear you on a litter about your palace whilst your dick is being sucked at all fucking times.
That is startrek.
That is what it means to be a post scarcity economy. And we are no where near that on old planet earth.
We'd need about a thousand more planets, probably a few million starships, and of course replicators, the infinite power of however that matter/anti matter reactor works... and computers so powerful that they can create sapient life on a whim just by saying "make a hologram smart enough to match wits with Data.
The untapped idiotically overpowering technology of that show is astounding.
If you think about half the crap they have and then think about the way they do things... it makes no sense.
Take their stupid wars against whomever. Why do they fight that way? That's completely insane.
First, they don't need to have crew compliments of those sizes on those ships. They clearly could automate just about everything. Maybe put one person on each battle wagon. But more to the point, why don't they have specialized warships and why are their specialized warships so completely shitty? They keep closing to knife range and firing ineffectual "phasers" at targets that are clearly best dealt with in other ways.
Their torpedoes seem like they're pretty nasty. Okay... why are they so under powered? In WW2, we had torpedoes that could cripple a ship... ONE torpedo. And for big nasty battleships... maybe you could sink them with four or five of them. But in startrek they're firing dozens of the fucking things at each other. Maybe take the torp size and increase it by a factor of ten or a hundred. Fucking fire a warp core at someone. Eat it. The Borg or whatever shows up with their big ship... You have a big torp ship that has nothing on it but big fuck you torp launchers. It warps into point blank range... fires its entire weapon's compliment in.01 seconds... then immediately warps away. Borg goes boom... everyone returns to their orgies on the holodeck.
Think of the way real war works. You don't just sit there poking at each other like that. It suppose that happened in WW1 but that was more owed to people not understanding the technology. So machine guns pinned people down and tanks were not understood to be the counter to that. By WW2, a big machine gun line just meant you had to bring in a tank column and over run the area.
On and on and on and on... so many things didn't make sense in that show.
But the point is... we don't have any of that stuff. And we're not going to get any of it any time soon.
1. No, I cited a knowledge of western history and law. Your misunderstanding on that issue is fine... but now that you've been corrected you must adapt your argument. Refusing to acknowledge correction is merely stubbornness.
2. As to the "last century" the argument you're making is "we don't do things this exact way so your comments about wanting to change something are invalid"... This is a very lazy argument. You're saying I can't do something a given way because we don't do things that given way. By this logic we couldn't change any law or change any practice because prior to the change you could make the argument that things are not done that way.
Of course things are not doing X way... if they were I would not presume to change them... would I?
Be rational. Take sip of coffee... splash some water on your face... and wake up.
I know you're afraid of the money... but this is why the legal system exists.
You can either personally educate yourself about trademark law, hire a trademark lawyer, consult with a trademark lawyer then inform yourself using their consultation as a baseline, pay the trademark troll, or you can change your name to something else
Those are your options. Google isn't going to get involved because that would take their time and money. They don't want to get involved.
... Star trek's federation is basically a "post economy"... like post modern... you're beyond economics. And the only way you get beyond economics is if you're beyond scarcity. Economics are a way of rationing finite resources. We only have so many of anything. How do we determine who gets what and who doesn't? Demand always exceeds supply.
A post economy is one in which supply exceeds demand. Where you have more stuff than anyone actually wants.
We're no where near that.
Our 3d printers etc might let us produce things personally that would otherwise take a factory somewhere. But that doesn't mean the resources that we needed to produce that are going to be free. And that doesn't mean the apartment or house you live in is free. A certain amount of labor is going to be involved in lots of things and none of that is going to be free.
And then of course the government is going to want their taxes... for reasons. And that will make things less free.
No, they represented the Soviets. In the first series the federation wasn't overtly communistic. They were sort of a post economy... economies are all about scarcity and the federation has such bounty of wealth that there's no point in any kind of economy because there's no scarcity. Everyone has effectively infinite everything. If you want to cover yourself in diamonds... you can do that. For free.
In the next generation the federation appears more communistic. And it is generally pointed at by nerd communists that the federation is their ideal system... as a wealthy and happy communistic system.
So it didn't start out being about communism but the fans have basically attributed that to it.
Also you have to look at the Ferangi who were a somewhat rival capitalistic power in the next generation. They were painted as being ugly, barbaric, sexist... unenlightened. And that does a lot to paint the federation as taking an ideologically communistic stand if only as a foil to the Ferangi who are capitalistic... although I don't know how valid that is since the writers of these shows are often not as smart as they think they are... My read on the Ferangi is that they're more "mercantile" than capitalistic. There's a very very big difference which I won't get into. But their behavior appears to be more about hording and monopolization of resources rather than about dominating production. That's the basic difference between the two. You could write books about that. Its why the Spanish conquered the new world and ultimately didn't get much for it while the English founded a few colonies here and there and ultimately made bank.
Mercantilists versus Capitalists was something that played out in the West... and the capitalists won BIG.
As to which culture I'm presuming to defend... basically every culture in the first world. They're all endangered.
Everything in western europe, the Japanese are in trouble, the Israelis are in trouble, the US is in trouble, Canada is likely in trouble though I am unaware of their statistics so that is just an assumption.
From what I've seen... nearly every nation in the first world is suffering some version of this.
Specifically I am American... but my worry here is not just for the US. Its the entire first world.
As to objectionable qualities... this is not a useful question because one doesn't simply hold or not hold the views a culture because you find it to be or not to be objectionable. I don't find Buddhism to be objectionable but I am not a Buddhist. It is not required for someone to find something objectionable to simply not embrace it.
As to what I preceive as you fishing for a PC violation... I could be overly sensitive there. If so, I appologise. I exist in a very PC environment and people are constantly trying to find ways to declare me "unclean" using that system. As a survival instinct, I assume anything that could bait me down such a line to be intentional. I am very very very rarely wrong about that... it is confirmed for me with regularity because when I don't give them what they want, they get frustrated, and ask more obvious questions.
If I am wrong in your case, then know I mean no offense to you. This is simply a consequence of the ideological and moral conflicts in my society at this point.
As to my culture... the west has religious components but the First world is in general pretty atheistic or if you prefer "lapse-religious"... You can cross reference the various religious denominations with birth rates and there are very clear patterns.
As to why we have problems, yes... gender relations are used as political weapons and it results in poisoning gender relations in general which damages the ability of people in my culture to form relationships, start families, have the confidence to have children, and remain together long enough to socialize them into our culture.
As to what you think of vagueness... I think you were merely confused by the scope of my position. I'm not referring to just one culture. I'm referring to the entire first world. This is a Hegemony wide issue.
You rebuttal is to chest thump... like a fucking ape? Really?
You could have come back with information about how fast you've observed coral grow in the environment given your experiences you're claiming. You could have talked about reefs that died and haven't recovered. You could have talked about the various conditions that reefs need and why they're fragile. Any of a nearly endless list of constructive and informative things that would validate your personal knowledge and challenge my argument.
You did none of these things. You hooted at me like a fucking primate... chest thumped... and then presumed intellectual superiority.
Really? Are you fucking serious?
I don't believe you're an expert. I think you're lying because you've demonstrated that you don't understand basic rhetoric through you ridiculous response or basic philosophy for that matter. You can't possibly be educated.
It would be like if someone claimed to be an expert in physics but didn't understand math.
If you're a scientist... which appears to be your claim here... then you either have to know better or you diploma came out of a crackerjack box.
The Reef tank experts have practical empirical knowledge of how fast coral grows under what are ultimately laboratory conditions. That serves as a reasonable maximum rate for coral to grow under ideal circumstances.
According to them, if the variables are not ideal then the coral either grows more slowly or just gets sick and dies. Tell me I'm wrong.
That fine... you're telling me the gun isn't loaded. Fine. Reddit can just put the gun in its mouth and pull the trigger.
If you're right then it will just go click.
If I'm right, then reddit will create a pattern behind the wall that will look remarkably similar to someone putting a lasagna into a food processor and failing to put the lid on.
Its not a question of obligations to fund. Its a question of "is reddit the front page of the internet"...
Well... it could be that if you didn't censor it.
Think of Google... you can find the sites for neo nazis and jihadis and anything else on it.
Why doesn't google censor out hate sites?
Grasp that it is the same thing. You're going to say "but google doesn't actually host those sites"... this is the dumb argument that torrent sites make when told they're abetting piracy. They say "the files aren't actually on my torrent site"... no... just the means to find them. It doesn't matter.
Google absolutely abets the people that make and distribute hate speech by keeping links to hate speech on their search engine. They also abet the distribution of pornography and anything else you can find on google.
Why do they do it? Because if they don't, then someone else will.
You think fat people hate is going to their own domain where they'll pay real money? No. They'll go to some other free board that is willing to take them.
And that board and boards like them will become magnets for that kind of thing. And when reddit ultimately goes to banning less controversial speech like... something that is arbitrarily politically incorrect all of a sudden but not harassing anyone... you're going to have an exodus.
Reddit has not crossed the threshold yet. But they are fucking playing with the button. They press it... they're going to Jackson Pollock their fucking site's future.
The bees can protect themselves. If you have reddit policing the community to any great extent you're going to get an exodus. There are several competing social networks that are already primed and waiting for it.
If Reddit fucks with the boards much more, the community could split... and like two stars that pass too near each other... it doesn't take much for one to suck the other dry.
Slashdot Mirror
Only outlying planets would be vulnerable to something like that. Core systems would not.
And really if you wanted to take this to the next level, I'd suggest you check out the "Culture" novels which are sort of a take off on the federation concept.
In the Culture novels, everything of importance is on giant starships that move around the galaxy like huge cruise ships giving every luxury imaginable to the humans.
The civilization is ultimately run by super intelligent AIs that are sympathetic to humanity and... sort of see humanity as their pets.. sort of.
Anyway, the Culture as it is referred to gets into wars every so often where stars are detonated. It doesn't hurt them. Only the border systems are ever effected and even then... populations are relocated out of hostile areas before they can come under attack. And even if they are destroyed... which... is profoundly unlikely... they have the tech to back up their minds and store them somewhere else. So if they get killed... they just jump into a new body with slightly out of date memories and are told what happened to the last version of themselves.
Point is... if you want to fuck with the Culture, it is quite happy to blow up stars if that's where someone wants to take it. And long before that happens the Culture has an infinite variety of weapons to use against someone that is hostile. They have sapient "knife missiles"... drones that are about the size of golf ball that not only have enough processing power to sustain a limited independent intelligence but also all sorts of other stuff can be crammed into the body. Power supply, propulsion, weapons, etc... into a fucking golf ball.
And the star trek federation has just as much technology if not even more. The odd thing about star trek is that they have too much technology to explain the way they live. It doesn't make sense. The culture didn't have transporters or replicators for example. The federation has that and more. But the culture was vastly more formidable. If the Culture went against the Federation, the Federation would get plastered. Not that the Culture "would" do that... their attitudes towards such things are a bit confusing but they appear to genuinely not want to interfere with people that aren't intending them any harm.
it doesn't matter... the machines that make everything in that show are not in short supply and neither is the energy that powers them. So... lets say some guy owns a planet... fine... you still own an island the size of Hawaii full of sex bots. Who gives a shit.
As to your pedantic quibbles, they wouldn't have lids on the top sport if they didn't eject things with some force out of the top... would they?
I've used them... they absolutely do shoot shit everywhere. Use a cuisinart... that's the most popular brand... they are designed in fact to not even run without the top on them for safety reasons. That spinning blade. But if you press down the safety button so it thinks the top is on and press go with something in there... shit goes everywhere.
Because I'm sure you're going to disagree:
https://youtu.be/3DlIH97ywIQ?t...
You can see that shit bouncing off the top of the lid.
So there you go. You started out with a fucking annoying quibble... and you were fucking wrong.
Moving along.
As to puffery... its their actual value to their users. If they're not that then they're dog shit. So it isn't puffery.
As to indexing and hosting... I think I actually covered that issue in the previous post. You can read and respond to it or you're not having an interactive discussion. I anticipated your objection and responded to it before you even came up with a response. And you didn't even fucking read it.
As to moral repugnance... then don't run an open social network. I believe there are some evangelical social networks that are only for people of a given religion and ideology. So... you could set something up like that.
Sound like a winning strategy? That's your fucking idea and its as fucking stupid as your quibble about the food processor.
Don't even comment to me again. Just walk away. Your failure is so complete that you should be ashamed of yourself. And the fact that you're doubtless not ashamed of yourself speaks even more poorly of you. I think I'll leave you with this response because it simply amuses me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"oh look someone is successful... KILL THEM!"
Seriously, progressives... Learn from Detroit. Stop fucking things up. Just let people enjoy something going well.
You've so far succeed in turning a successful industry into your idealized form ZERO times. The best you can claim so far is utterly destroying any community in which you've tried it.
Just stop. And try to enjoy good things. Is it perfect? Life isn't perfect. But for the love of god stop fucking up things that are working.
This country can't stand much more of your shit.
And here a bunch of robots are going to come marching after me saying
"ERROR ERROR ALL LEFTIST ACTIONS ARE GOOD. ALL PAST FAILURES ARE DELETED"
Enough. I'm not even promoting rightist shit. I'm just saying... if something is working... leave it alone. Just stand the fuck away from it and leave it alone.
Why don't you focus on your other little projects that you seem to have lost interest in? How about improving education in the inner city? remember when that mattered to you? You fucked it up horribly and then walked away taking no responsibility for anything.
What about lowering the costs of healthcare? How has that one gone? Total failure again.
What about housing price? Nope.
What jobs? Nope.
Crime? Nope.
After serially fucking up everything they've ever touched, in typical leftist fashion... they want a fucking promotion. And that means they want to take another stab at reengineering a city with a successful industry that is making money. Why? Because they're bored apparently and can't be bothered to fix any of the shit they already broke.
And I know... you're mad at me for saying your little tribe and your little ideology could ever have made a mistake... Except for you're fucking blind if you haven't realized it makes very little besides mistakes.
Look at Washington DC... Look at the schools. THey get more money per student than anywhere and they're a complete mess. How did that happen?
Critics said for ages that hte issue was not money. The issue was how the schools were run. That there are bad teachers that need to lose their jobs. As in fired. And that there are disapline problems in the school that cause students to disrupt class rooms... etc.
But of course that is all some kind of bigoted propaganda. Because the real solution is to just give the teachers more money. Which has a zero percent track record of actually accomplishing anything.
I'm beyond tired of the fucking robot progressives. And I am NOT making an appeal to some other political faction. Most of them are horribly corrupt. But the progressive robots need to have someone pee on their circuit boards because they're out of fucking control. They've got a zero percent track record of making a positive contribution and they always think they have the answers despite the facts of the matter suggesting that they have in fact never had the answers.
Their great claim to fame is what? That they don't believe being racist and sexist is a good idea? Brilliant. Welcome to 90 percent of the rest of the population. That's not distinctive.
In a post scarcity civilization how can you possibly be greedy?
I mean... how? There's no way to horde things because there's no lack of anything. Everyone in such a society can have diamond encrusted mansions. What are you hording?
The only thing I can think of would be entire fucking planets. Just one dude... my planet. That's about it.
As to sane people not caring about status... don't be silly. Status has material consequences. If you have status people do what you say and you have high social standing. Which means if you want an actual women to hop up and down on your genitals it is a lot easier if you're higher status than lower status.
Any social species is going to be status conscious.
peasants... *shakes head*
That's all this about.
Say the american population can't do the job so you need this education upgrade and all the H1B visas you can handle... and then of course fire the existing american labor force that made everything the tech industry has... and possibly have them teach the imports in their final days and then fire them.
The whole thing is sick.
MS just fired something like six thousand engineers etc but they need more? Why?
This is why I'm building an underground compound powered by a nuclear reactor with a vast internal green house.
Freeze or fry... I'm over it.
I disagree... It would just change the nature of those battles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The battles in startrek are based on Napoleonic ship of the line battles.
Starwars is based on WW2 carrier battles.
One of the things i found to be the most disapointing about the Enterprise series was that it wasn't based on Submarine warfare.
The whole idea was to have a weaker, smaller, more cramped ship. The ship didn't feel cramped and they just charged into shit the same way they always do.
it was dumb.
The Klingons make things more interesting with their cloaking devices. It basically lets them be pointblank submarines. They vanish and they appear.
You can have an epic space battle without closing to knife range and beating the hell out of each other.
Look at Das Boot. Barely anything is really done at any point but the whole movie is full of suspense and drama because the sub is so fragile that it just can't take that kind of punishment.
As to engaging at point blank range... I was talking about slower than light torpedoes. That's their big nasty weapon right?
FIRE THE TORPEDOES! :D
The thing is a torpedo... ONE will destroy most ships outright. I'm talking about a real one in our navy inventory right now. ONE torpedo. A battleship which is a big stupid turkey that no one builds anymore could take maybe 10 or so torpedoes but in the show they eat volley after volley which is stupid. They don't even have active defenses against them. Ever seen them shoot a torpedo out of space with a point defense phaser? Nope. They just eat that on their shields like big idiots.
As to the point of the show being about morality etc... that's fine. I'm just saying if you talk about the economics of the show then you're going to have to talk about the technology and that brings up the discussion I'm having now.
... you missed the bit where I said this wasn't an original idea. Several aeronautical engineers have drawn up blue prints for just this sort of thing.
So... you can take your presumptions and pretensions and shove them up your anus sideways.
As to where I got my knowledge of Sparta's population... I had a very comprehensive classical education so I was subjected to a lot of information about the ancient world... especially the western ancient world.
As to specific citations... I'm remembering this out of lectures and textbooks from decades ago. I didn't get this off the internet.
What is known is that the spartan elite despite not having to work, despite being able to have as many children really as they wanted because their culture was sustained by a slave underclass.... the population of the spartan elite was relatively small.
We're talking about a number less than 20 thousand total. With perhaps 10 thousand actually able to fight at any time. That's not that many.
And given Sparta's territory, wealth, etc... they should have had a larger population. What is more, losing one battle should not have broken them. They could not replace their losses. That's a fact.
Now if you look at population figures from that period of time you'll see it was not unusual for women to be having 8 or more children during their life times. Take into consideration high infant mortality rates and the numbers fall down to an effective population replacement rate of about twice the current population. Which means you could in most places lose HALF your population every generation so long as they were the right people... and it was survivable.
We have evidence from Iron Age Europe that attrition rates were often as high as 70 percent per generation to VIOLENCE. Not disease or famine... 70 percent of the male population in some Iron age settlements was SUSTAINED at 70 percent per generation.
You can't sustain that without a high birth rate.
And that was sustained. Sparta could not sustain it.
We also have population numbers from Athens... they had a very different notion of how things worked between the sexes... and their populations figures were about six to seven times the size of spartas... at least. The population difference could have been more extreme. Its hard to know really.
Anyway, Sparta is understood to have had a relatively small population. Where as most of the other greek tribes were significantly more numerous. The issue was that if you fought the Spartans in the traditional way... they would fucking kill everyone. What Thebes did was sacrifice the cream of their own warrior caste to destroy the cream of the Spartan warrior caste. And Thebes could replace their losses... and Sparta could not.
As to the battle itself... the numbers are hard to pin down. What we do know is that the population in thebes exceeded the population in sparta... especially of the spartan military elite... you can't include the slaves in the population of sparta since they didn't undergo spartan training. Where as the Thebens had a less stratified society. Their entire population could be considered Theben.
This is an interesting little video on the battle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Most sources I'm seeing are showing heavier numbers from sparta but that is simply conflating all the infantry together. They're not all the same.
The tradition was for the veterans of both sides to fight the neophytes of the other. What you can see from that video is that they were not clearly concentrating their forces to break the Spartan line. What I remember about the battle was that the Thebens intentionally put their best against the spartan best against tradition and then stacked the ranks deep so that even if the spartan best was killing their best at a superior ratio... they'd just overwhelm that core with numbers.
What is important here is to understand that the spartan elite was not replaceable at those rates. They could not take body blows like that. They were like the French Imperial Guard. When Napoleon's imperial guard retreated... he knew he had lost. They were not replaceable.
The difference is that the spartan elite was MADE while th
You could do it though... You'd just have something between four and six ramps all leading to different portions of the plane.
I personally don't mind anything on the planes at this point. Its a little tight but so what. You just calm down and try to be comfortable. Its not that hard.
On long flights, I don't sleep the day before the flight. So I arrive at the terminal ready to pass out. I get on the plane... buckle up... and don't wake up until the plane touches down wherever.
And I generally feel reasonable enough when I land that I don't need a post flight nap.
THat's just me though. I sleep like a cat. I can sleep anywhere.
That is merely what the creators of the show thought would happen.
Everyone underestimated the stupidity of the Russian government to continue to dick with the Western hegemony after it lost... horribly.
The last episode of the show in the modern time line was about 16 years ago. As of 16 years ago, the Russians arguably where trying to integrate into the global economy as a productive member of the global community.
We had the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
The show simply hasn't done anything recently.
If it were to be represented in the show, there would be a faction of the Klingon government that missed the old days. And caused troubles with the federation. The federation would respond by sending diplomats and sending forces to secure various border worlds. Eventually the Klingons would either back off or engage in some kind of war... which they would of course lose because the challenge to the federation is pointless much as the challenge against the Western hegemony is pointless.
No, they were the chinese.
Regardless, the Klingons were absolutely the soviets if you return to the original series and even most of the movies.
The "undiscovered country" was about the fall of the soviet union for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
After that, the federation and the Klingons are on better terms... mostly because the Klingons know they can't fight the federation and the federation fears the Klingon's less as the Klingons are increasingly a minor power.
I didn't see any in the photo but that doesn't mean they can't have any.
this means not sharing arm rests with people.
What I'd like even more though would be if the entire passanger compartment were just removed and added to planes like modules.
What kills the whole experience is the rush onto the plane and the rush off it.
If people actually wait in the seat they're going to depart from rather than at the gate... it means you don't have that silly rush.
They have to do that because whenever the plane isn't in the air it costs the airline money. They want it in the air immediately. Okay, so why not have the passengers board a compartment and then have that instantly swapped with the existing compartment. Thus the compartment and fill slowly as people arrive at the gate and debarking might be a less annoying experience because you could potentially just open all the exits on the plane to let everyone bypass the various people that block the aisle because they can't figure out how to get baggage out of an overhead.
The idea isn't original. Other people have suggested it and of course the planes would have to be designed around the concept. But it would make loading and unloading the plane a matter of two minutes or something which is less time than it takes to refuel the plane.
Hmmm... Not really.
Greed is your way of saying "people should limit their desires to what is collectively obtainable within the existing scarcity".
I mean... fine... but you're admitting scarcity is an issue.
If there were no scarcity then how could there be greed? I mean... imagine a world where you could have as much of everything as any sane person... even a really greedy one... could possibly want?
in Startrek did you ever look at the population numbers? That people skip over that one is always baffling to me. Whole planets get blown up and they'll say stuff like "there were 3 million people on that world"... Three fucking million people... on an entire planet... and not a shitty one... a giant green/blue idealized paradise planet. Three million. Which means every douchebag on that planet could have a scale reproduction of the French Sun Palace staffed with nympho holograms that bear you on a litter about your palace whilst your dick is being sucked at all fucking times.
That is startrek.
That is what it means to be a post scarcity economy. And we are no where near that on old planet earth.
We'd need about a thousand more planets, probably a few million starships, and of course replicators, the infinite power of however that matter/anti matter reactor works... and computers so powerful that they can create sapient life on a whim just by saying "make a hologram smart enough to match wits with Data.
The untapped idiotically overpowering technology of that show is astounding.
If you think about half the crap they have and then think about the way they do things... it makes no sense.
Take their stupid wars against whomever. Why do they fight that way? That's completely insane.
First, they don't need to have crew compliments of those sizes on those ships. They clearly could automate just about everything. Maybe put one person on each battle wagon. But more to the point, why don't they have specialized warships and why are their specialized warships so completely shitty? They keep closing to knife range and firing ineffectual "phasers" at targets that are clearly best dealt with in other ways.
Their torpedoes seem like they're pretty nasty. Okay... why are they so under powered? In WW2, we had torpedoes that could cripple a ship... ONE torpedo. And for big nasty battleships... maybe you could sink them with four or five of them. But in startrek they're firing dozens of the fucking things at each other. Maybe take the torp size and increase it by a factor of ten or a hundred. Fucking fire a warp core at someone. Eat it. The Borg or whatever shows up with their big ship... You have a big torp ship that has nothing on it but big fuck you torp launchers. It warps into point blank range... fires its entire weapon's compliment in .01 seconds... then immediately warps away. Borg goes boom... everyone returns to their orgies on the holodeck.
Think of the way real war works. You don't just sit there poking at each other like that. It suppose that happened in WW1 but that was more owed to people not understanding the technology. So machine guns pinned people down and tanks were not understood to be the counter to that. By WW2, a big machine gun line just meant you had to bring in a tank column and over run the area.
On and on and on and on... so many things didn't make sense in that show.
But the point is... we don't have any of that stuff. And we're not going to get any of it any time soon.
1. No, I cited a knowledge of western history and law. Your misunderstanding on that issue is fine... but now that you've been corrected you must adapt your argument. Refusing to acknowledge correction is merely stubbornness.
2. As to the "last century" the argument you're making is "we don't do things this exact way so your comments about wanting to change something are invalid"... This is a very lazy argument. You're saying I can't do something a given way because we don't do things that given way. By this logic we couldn't change any law or change any practice because prior to the change you could make the argument that things are not done that way.
Of course things are not doing X way... if they were I would not presume to change them... would I?
Be rational. Take sip of coffee... splash some water on your face... and wake up.
I know you're afraid of the money... but this is why the legal system exists.
You can either personally educate yourself about trademark law, hire a trademark lawyer, consult with a trademark lawyer then inform yourself using their consultation as a baseline, pay the trademark troll, or you can change your name to something else
Those are your options. Google isn't going to get involved because that would take their time and money. They don't want to get involved.
So... you deal with it.
... Star trek's federation is basically a "post economy"... like post modern... you're beyond economics. And the only way you get beyond economics is if you're beyond scarcity. Economics are a way of rationing finite resources. We only have so many of anything. How do we determine who gets what and who doesn't? Demand always exceeds supply.
A post economy is one in which supply exceeds demand. Where you have more stuff than anyone actually wants.
We're no where near that.
Our 3d printers etc might let us produce things personally that would otherwise take a factory somewhere. But that doesn't mean the resources that we needed to produce that are going to be free. And that doesn't mean the apartment or house you live in is free. A certain amount of labor is going to be involved in lots of things and none of that is going to be free.
And then of course the government is going to want their taxes... for reasons. And that will make things less free.
You're going to work. Deal with it.
No, they represented the Soviets. In the first series the federation wasn't overtly communistic. They were sort of a post economy... economies are all about scarcity and the federation has such bounty of wealth that there's no point in any kind of economy because there's no scarcity. Everyone has effectively infinite everything. If you want to cover yourself in diamonds... you can do that. For free.
In the next generation the federation appears more communistic. And it is generally pointed at by nerd communists that the federation is their ideal system... as a wealthy and happy communistic system.
So it didn't start out being about communism but the fans have basically attributed that to it.
Also you have to look at the Ferangi who were a somewhat rival capitalistic power in the next generation. They were painted as being ugly, barbaric, sexist... unenlightened. And that does a lot to paint the federation as taking an ideologically communistic stand if only as a foil to the Ferangi who are capitalistic... although I don't know how valid that is since the writers of these shows are often not as smart as they think they are... My read on the Ferangi is that they're more "mercantile" than capitalistic. There's a very very big difference which I won't get into. But their behavior appears to be more about hording and monopolization of resources rather than about dominating production. That's the basic difference between the two. You could write books about that. Its why the Spanish conquered the new world and ultimately didn't get much for it while the English founded a few colonies here and there and ultimately made bank.
Mercantilists versus Capitalists was something that played out in the West... and the capitalists won BIG.
As to which culture I'm presuming to defend... basically every culture in the first world. They're all endangered.
Everything in western europe, the Japanese are in trouble, the Israelis are in trouble, the US is in trouble, Canada is likely in trouble though I am unaware of their statistics so that is just an assumption.
From what I've seen... nearly every nation in the first world is suffering some version of this.
Specifically I am American... but my worry here is not just for the US. Its the entire first world.
As to objectionable qualities... this is not a useful question because one doesn't simply hold or not hold the views a culture because you find it to be or not to be objectionable. I don't find Buddhism to be objectionable but I am not a Buddhist. It is not required for someone to find something objectionable to simply not embrace it.
As to what I preceive as you fishing for a PC violation... I could be overly sensitive there. If so, I appologise. I exist in a very PC environment and people are constantly trying to find ways to declare me "unclean" using that system. As a survival instinct, I assume anything that could bait me down such a line to be intentional. I am very very very rarely wrong about that... it is confirmed for me with regularity because when I don't give them what they want, they get frustrated, and ask more obvious questions.
If I am wrong in your case, then know I mean no offense to you. This is simply a consequence of the ideological and moral conflicts in my society at this point.
As to my culture... the west has religious components but the First world is in general pretty atheistic or if you prefer "lapse-religious"... You can cross reference the various religious denominations with birth rates and there are very clear patterns.
As to why we have problems, yes... gender relations are used as political weapons and it results in poisoning gender relations in general which damages the ability of people in my culture to form relationships, start families, have the confidence to have children, and remain together long enough to socialize them into our culture.
As to what you think of vagueness... I think you were merely confused by the scope of my position. I'm not referring to just one culture. I'm referring to the entire first world. This is a Hegemony wide issue.
You rebuttal is to chest thump... like a fucking ape? Really?
You could have come back with information about how fast you've observed coral grow in the environment given your experiences you're claiming. You could have talked about reefs that died and haven't recovered. You could have talked about the various conditions that reefs need and why they're fragile. Any of a nearly endless list of constructive and informative things that would validate your personal knowledge and challenge my argument.
You did none of these things. You hooted at me like a fucking primate... chest thumped... and then presumed intellectual superiority.
Really? Are you fucking serious?
I don't believe you're an expert. I think you're lying because you've demonstrated that you don't understand basic rhetoric through you ridiculous response or basic philosophy for that matter. You can't possibly be educated.
It would be like if someone claimed to be an expert in physics but didn't understand math.
If you're a scientist... which appears to be your claim here... then you either have to know better or you diploma came out of a crackerjack box.
The Reef tank experts have practical empirical knowledge of how fast coral grows under what are ultimately laboratory conditions. That serves as a reasonable maximum rate for coral to grow under ideal circumstances.
According to them, if the variables are not ideal then the coral either grows more slowly or just gets sick and dies. Tell me I'm wrong.
That fine... you're telling me the gun isn't loaded. Fine. Reddit can just put the gun in its mouth and pull the trigger.
If you're right then it will just go click.
If I'm right, then reddit will create a pattern behind the wall that will look remarkably similar to someone putting a lasagna into a food processor and failing to put the lid on.
Its not a question of obligations to fund. Its a question of "is reddit the front page of the internet"...
Well... it could be that if you didn't censor it.
Think of Google... you can find the sites for neo nazis and jihadis and anything else on it.
Why doesn't google censor out hate sites?
Grasp that it is the same thing. You're going to say "but google doesn't actually host those sites"... this is the dumb argument that torrent sites make when told they're abetting piracy. They say "the files aren't actually on my torrent site"... no... just the means to find them. It doesn't matter.
Google absolutely abets the people that make and distribute hate speech by keeping links to hate speech on their search engine. They also abet the distribution of pornography and anything else you can find on google.
Why do they do it? Because if they don't, then someone else will.
You think fat people hate is going to their own domain where they'll pay real money? No. They'll go to some other free board that is willing to take them.
And that board and boards like them will become magnets for that kind of thing. And when reddit ultimately goes to banning less controversial speech like... something that is arbitrarily politically incorrect all of a sudden but not harassing anyone... you're going to have an exodus.
Reddit has not crossed the threshold yet. But they are fucking playing with the button. They press it... they're going to Jackson Pollock their fucking site's future.
The bees can protect themselves. If you have reddit policing the community to any great extent you're going to get an exodus. There are several competing social networks that are already primed and waiting for it.
If Reddit fucks with the boards much more, the community could split... and like two stars that pass too near each other... it doesn't take much for one to suck the other dry.