Even QBasic has every datastructure you could possibly want available as add-ons.
Besides, having a dev environment that would execute on F5 on android with similar speed to QBasic (hell even 1/10th would be perfect) would be great for a number of kinds of development. First of all games.
Pressing run and waiting a minute each time is annoying, and quickly becomes a performance killer.
While I am very reluctant to mention this problem : speed. Now I am very, very tolerant of speed issues in scripting languages, as I know it doesn't really matter. But python... python is an absolute disaster. Python claims execution speed doesn't matter because it's easy to use, then encases your legs in concrete. The argument justifying that one ? "It's very easy to move 0.01 cm".
So here's the issue : you always get the impression python can be used to do calculations, python claims to be capable of them. And indeed it's syntax seems to allow for more. So let's compare: 1) C, C++, hell even Java : c = a+b (1 assembly instruction) 2) CPython: c = a + b ( > 2500 assembly instructions)
This means that a C program running on an 8086 will actually calculate faster than a python program running on a current pc.
The speed of CPython is so bad that it regularly becomes a problem, and requires all sorts of complex solutions from massively parallellizing using numpy to rewriting half the project in C/C++. That's my main gripe with python. And numpy may approach (from a large distance, but at least not a factor 200 anymore) the performance of normal C/C++ loops, but if you use a numpy like vector processing library in C/C++ (there's many) you're back to a factor 200 or more distance from numpy.
Second is memory usage. I made the mistake of loading in a year's worth of monitoring data using the obvious method : a class representing a datapoint. Result : 12 GIGS (in C++ doing the same thing to the exact same data resulted in 120 megabytes)... Yes, again numpy can solve this... but only by greatly increasing complexity and destroying the utility of 90% of python's language features.
Third is the fact that python is very much a typed language, but the only available variable type is a void*, and it actually allows changing the type of a variable, which is a horrible, horrible mistake (and why ? out of some sort of obligation to the idea of dynamic languages supporting this monstruosity). Same for adding members to class instances after creation time. Horrible.
Fourth, the massive complexity and time-dependencies that result from actually using dynamic aspects of the language, introducing tons of non-obvious dependencies on the exact execution order of the program. If these features are used they directly lead to classes that only become valid useful objects after 3-4 method calls and dependant on all sorts of stuff succeeding. Our style guide outlaws actually using the features that make python dynamic, and I doubt we're the only ones.
Fifght, the fact that the dynamic nature of python makes it very hard to document libraries that make use of it.
Sixth, you can't use static analysis on python programs. So ipython just about the best possible autocomplete you can get (ie. autocomplete can only work by executing the program you're trying to develop)
*sigh*
Program a bit in haskell. Now, haskell's pedantic too, no question there, but you will find 10 places python could be improved before you even get through the tutorial.
Except that you lose the ability to have price differentiation in different products. So you will have plenty $1 romance and fantasy novels, and zero books that actually cost something to produce, and have a less-than-universal readership.
So say goodbye to any technically good computer science (or any science, for that matter) books.
Can we at least agree that having only novels written in "days or weeks" would be a great loss to society ? Sure there's a few diamonds in the pile of shit, but... not many.
Since I was forced to study latin in high school... I kind of do remember what they said about the number of poor, and the conditions they lived in. Let's just not go there.
And what happens with the learning algorithm, when it's not executed because the CPU is busy executing "tunenAndServeBurger" with 100% CPU time?
It learns how to server burgers really well, and any skill even tangentially related to that. Like social skills for example, cooperation,...
No ones talking about removing the incentive. It might be reduced a bit, but I'd assume that most students are not studying for a future to earn just enough to live somehow, but to get rich and respected.
That impulse is not strong enough. You know your body actually teaches your brain to make your heart beat while you're in the womb. Want to know how it does that ? It's the same mechanism that makes you breathe, except 1000x stronger. Try to hold your breath for 1 minute. That's the signal your brain is punished with for neglecting heart control for 0.1 seconds. And then you know, it is never going to neglect that control channel for 0.2 seconds. Every such signal has the same structure. The punishment for going over it a little bit is an injection of adrenalin, which will disable > 50% of your brain function entirely (if it lasts, it will be permanently disabled btw, which is why you must avoid malnutricion in children at all costs), then a pain signal will start, increasing exponentially, making sure that the more time passes, the more your brain is focused on the immediate problem. If it goes over a certain limit, it will shut down the brain almost entirely in hopes that relaxing every muscle for a few seconds will solve the problem.
So that's (one of the many) signals that nature felt was absolutely necessary, and the absolute minimum intensity it thought necessary (since these signals are very distracting, you can bet nature aims to minimize them). As we all know, nature experimented about a billion years to determine this procedure. Don't be too quick with "I know better".
Clearly for abstract concepts you can get away with a very, very slow starting signal. But in the end, frankly, it must hurt, and it must hurt badly, or it won't work. Pain is the basic, and when push comes to shove, the only "you're doing something wrong" signal in our brain. If you want a human brain to think something is wrong, it must believe that that action will (eventually) lead to pain. Otherwise, the best you can get is that it thinks it would be socially undesirable. As we all know, a significant portion of people just doesn't care about that.
This incentive will not change.
True, the incentive that drives the already-rich small-business-owners will not change. At first. Their job will become harder though, as they will not find any help. How big a percentage of the population are they ?
Furthermore, even they will succumb to doing nothing. Well, *they* may not do this themselves, but their children will copy part of their values from the rest of society (just like today), so this incentive structure is pretty much guaranteeing those children will be less driven. So how many generations will this tiny part of society hold out being productive ? 2 ? 3 ? I'd be completely amazed by the 2 figure.
On the other hand intelligent people are risk aware and susceptible to the Dunning Kruger effect, resulting in lots of potential engineers shying away from starting an education which might fail and ruin their whole existence.
Since there won't be any teachers, or decent documentation, I wouldn't worry about it.
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism?
That's pretty obvious, isn't it ? Lower the minimum wage and employment taxes, so people can be hired to provide more services.
Socialism, incidentally, always depended on forced labour. It does today, in Europe ("you flunk X interviews, and you're on your own" type of deals). And in countries like the Soviet union... well, I'm pretty sure your local dvd rental place has at least one movie demonstrating how it worked.
Do you really think forced labour is superior to the current situation ? Do you see another alternative that can make socialism work perhaps (feel free to include a few lines on why neither "very slightly socialist" Europe nor any other socialist government has ever seen fit to use that idea) ?
These things... well they are tiny. Finding them is ridiculously difficult, even for advanced military hardware.
Due to earth's athmosphere (ie. the wind generating small lensing effects) the smallest object you can find from 100km distance is about 15x15 cm. That's the theoretical limit. Let's say you can get military hardware half as good as that, well then you can find a 1m x 10cm drone from about 400 km distance. Since drones fly at a stupid altitude (we're talking 50 meters or maybe less), finding them from sea level is not possible at all, so basically they'd need a plane in the air less than 400 km from the drone. And this is assuming they don't make it really hard (paint the bottom to look like a cloud, paint the top to look like the sea, use a light nonconductive material for wings and don't let the engine's heat leak into the structure itself. Or better yet : use an engine that's too powerfull, run it at really low settings, so it doesn't get hot in the first place. Not hard, especially in tiny planes).
(that's also the problem for terrorism using these things. Even over US soil, assuming the autopilot is not stupid (and the RC doesn't give it away), doesn't fly over bases and the like, the US military needs to have a spyplane will be very invasive privacy-wise. But once a few muslims figure this out... the discussion is basically over, and the choice is between the military being able to see the pattern on your swimshorts in your own backyard live, or random explosions in cities).
Obviously, I advocate good men taking action to stop evil men from killing.
Yes, we all do.
Ahem... no you don't. Your next paragraph makes it very explicit that you in fact favor abandoning everyone and anyone because you think it better to let people be massacred when you can't be blamed for it. (that's putting your "not responsible" comment in slightly different words).
Yes getting involved means that you will be blamed. After all that's what evil men do : when they are stopped from killing they will point out that you used bullets to stop them. Just look at the palestinians : when their attempts to commit religious genocide are stopped through more thorough border controls they complain that said border controls are a crime : they make it harder for them, economically... Is this what you're afraid of ?
You can't have your cake and eat it too : next time you claim something, don't directly contradict it in the sentence immediately following that claim.
Let's rephrase that question : if Obama succeeds in totally destabilizing Iraq, and oversees it's state collapsing into lawlessness or worse (like what democrats did to Iran under Carter) then the most naive amongst the democrats will be in full agreement with the hardened republicans : let's NOT go back.
In case you can't understand why : 1) democrats : we don't care. We want more handouts. We'll just send them 5 bibles and 10 kumbaya tapes, and everything will sort itself out. More weed ! 2) republicans : we are NOT going in only to have the next fuckwit from (1) screw it up again
There is no "do nothing" option here. Do nothing is what the Germans did in 1941, and what worldwide socialists helped them do all around the globe. Do you consider that an innocent act ? Do nothing is equivalent to helping the Soviets start yet another extermination campaign for ideological purity.
In that case Afghanistan would be filled with mass-graves inflicted by communists, and there would probably have been an extra war with the Soviets somewhere in Eastern Europe, as that is what they intended the resources they needed in Afghanistan for.
Are you really unable to see this ? It may be hard for you to understand, but the Soviets and their extermination campaigns were everybody's problem, and there was no opt-out available anywhere in the world. Not in America, not in Europe, nowhere. Not even Southern Africa and South America were spared.
Unless of course, you truly only care about your own little life and you somehow have managed to convince yourself that what happens in the world doesn't affect you. Then yes, why protect a few million people from a genocide or two ? After all, there's a new videogame out... It doesn't quite make one wish the Soviets had actually pulled off a few dozen of their hundreds of attempts to cause a 9/11 like scenario on American soil, but...
Even that 100 million is just the figure they directly killed holocaust-style. Which is FAR less than the number they're responsible for.
So I think the original assertion, I think, comfortably stands : socialists (that's what they were, and are, called) ran a holocaust about 10x larger than "the holocaust" about 60 years ago.
It doesn't include the millions from Soviet "tactical famines", nor does it include any figures from the Chinese equivalent. It doesn't include the extermination campaigns that occurred outside their state borders, like in Korea for example... It doesn't include the many victims from Soviet and Chinese wars...
And it is by far not the full figure. South America, Africa and the Middle East each had a very unpleasant encounter with socialism themselves. And socialists may not have put the Taliban in Charge, but they have their own fuckup that is in danger of turning into a nuclear confrontation : Iran. The mullahs would never have gotten anywhere near power without the socialists (the socialists brought down the Shah, then lost control of the situation... as usual).
So given that there were 2 sides fighting, which side do you suggest America should have supported ? a) the Soviets, a communist government that ran extermination camps that killed about 10 times more people than the holocaust, was starting wars left and right, built up a force of thousands of nukes that were deployed in the configuration they thought would kill the maximum number of Americans, and threathened the lives and freedom of more than a billion human beings, in both Europe and Asia and America. b) a lunatic, local band of mohammedan theocrats (at that point in time muslim was not the term used), with grand dreams, for running religious genocides amongst other things. And at this point in time unable to resist (a), but with a little help they can open a front against (a) which will in the end weaken both them and (a)
Is this a tactical decision that doesn't stand up to moral perfection ? Of course. It sacrificed the lives of a few tens of thousands to massively improve the safety of hundreds of millions for decades.
How about we apply a moral standard to this ? Actions like war and even killing are never justified, but when you're confronted with lots of bad choices, all of which are unjustified, you take the least bad one you can find. Even if it is starting a war. The people making this decision certainly thought so.
Or how about the atheist standard ? Clearly it was critical to the success of America to stop the Soviets. Supporting this moronic genocidal faith was cheaper than fighting the Soviets directly, so it was justified. The numbers are very clear : supporting the paedophilic theocrats pays off better than any other option. Therefore : justified.
You are attempting to use very general and naive "moral rules", or maybe even legal rules, in situations where they do not apply.
Given that this is mostly a prediction... citations are a bit hard to come by. If it's about the voting down, here's an example : http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-tea-party-tax-increase/ (the article is written as if the bill being downvoted was actually not a tax increase, but read on to see how little thought "thinkprogress" assumes in it's readership. You can just feel the crybaby frustration dripping between the sentences).
If the tea party attitude lowers the deficit, they will have turned out to be really good. If not, well... Given what is already happening with the current government bungling... I'm going to go with less money in the hands of the government being a good thing.
Just so people know... the linked article is called "the world's biggest battery switched on in Alaska".
And this biggest battery of the world is capable of providing power to a small town (compared to any American metro, tiny) for 7 minutes. The total capacity will be 4 minutes in less than 10 years. It needs 2000 square meters and weighs over 1300 tonnes. For America total we would need half a million batteries like these, ignoring issues with the grid (in other words : probably even more).
What can I say, except perhaps that I think this "counterexample" does not exactly refute my point.
The point you're making seems to be more "look, climate idiots get to torch anyone slightly disbelieving in 'renewable' energy' for no reason whatsoever". Usually that sort of attitude comes from the fact that they know perfectly well how wrong they are.
The problem is "some changes". Which is somewhere between replacing all devices on the electrical network to support full bidirectional transmission, and replacing every last piece of transmission infrastructure we have. Ignoring that in practice we probably need to build a whole lot more in the process. In order to reach the transmission efficiency that most "solar is cheaper" systems depend on we'd need HVDC lines everywhere (not just plant -> homes, but every single location would need high capacity east and west uplinks, so we can have follow the sun(/wind) transmission, additionally we'd need lots of south -> north capacity), and superconducting transmission within cities.
We're apparently talking between $800 billion up to several trillion dollars. Most electricity networks are broke, more than a few are bankrupt.
The alternative is battery systems in every home (would still be massively less efficient, but it might actually work). That does mean however installing 200kg of (toxic) batteries (at least) every 2-4 years or so. Of course, this is never going to work north of some point. Not just Alaska. This would also actually cost more than the nationwide infrastructure, but it doesn't need to be paid by the government.
Hell, even Obama would think twice before building "some changes", even with other people's money.
It may constitute a threat, which would fall under "conspiracy to commit kidnapping/rape/murder/...".
However, "in general", this is perfectly allowed, and protected speech. I seem to recall an article about a bridge being demolished, where a paper did just that, stating that without the bridge, the kids' route would need to get 25 miles longer. This is perfectly acceptable, even without agreement from the kid (/his parents).
That is not the standard in the law. You are perfectly at liberty to distribute pamphlets with any text you wish on it.
And as long as this text can reasonably be argued to be the truth, it cannot constitute slander (it doesn't have to *be* the truth, you must simply be able to legally argue that you believe it to be the truth, basically that you're not lying explicitly to destroy the other person's social standing. This has been sometimes understood to imply that you're willing to retract wrong statements, but not always). You are perfectly at liberty to claim whatever another person's sexual habits are, as long as you're not just lying to damage that person. You are perfectly at liberty to tell the truth... and damage that person.
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Even QBasic has every datastructure you could possibly want available as add-ons.
Besides, having a dev environment that would execute on F5 on android with similar speed to QBasic (hell even 1/10th would be perfect) would be great for a number of kinds of development. First of all games.
Pressing run and waiting a minute each time is annoying, and quickly becomes a performance killer.
While I am very reluctant to mention this problem : speed. Now I am very, very tolerant of speed issues in scripting languages, as I know it doesn't really matter. But python ... python is an absolute disaster. Python claims execution speed doesn't matter because it's easy to use, then encases your legs in concrete. The argument justifying that one ? "It's very easy to move 0.01 cm".
So here's the issue : you always get the impression python can be used to do calculations, python claims to be capable of them. And indeed it's syntax seems to allow for more. So let's compare:
1) C, C++, hell even Java : c = a+b (1 assembly instruction)
2) CPython: c = a + b ( > 2500 assembly instructions)
This means that a C program running on an 8086 will actually calculate faster than a python program running on a current pc.
The speed of CPython is so bad that it regularly becomes a problem, and requires all sorts of complex solutions from massively parallellizing using numpy to rewriting half the project in C/C++. That's my main gripe with python. And numpy may approach (from a large distance, but at least not a factor 200 anymore) the performance of normal C/C++ loops, but if you use a numpy like vector processing library in C/C++ (there's many) you're back to a factor 200 or more distance from numpy.
Second is memory usage. I made the mistake of loading in a year's worth of monitoring data using the obvious method : a class representing a datapoint. Result : 12 GIGS (in C++ doing the same thing to the exact same data resulted in 120 megabytes) ... Yes, again numpy can solve this ... but only by greatly increasing complexity and destroying the utility of 90% of python's language features.
Third is the fact that python is very much a typed language, but the only available variable type is a void*, and it actually allows changing the type of a variable, which is a horrible, horrible mistake (and why ? out of some sort of obligation to the idea of dynamic languages supporting this monstruosity). Same for adding members to class instances after creation time. Horrible.
Fourth, the massive complexity and time-dependencies that result from actually using dynamic aspects of the language, introducing tons of non-obvious dependencies on the exact execution order of the program. If these features are used they directly lead to classes that only become valid useful objects after 3-4 method calls and dependant on all sorts of stuff succeeding. Our style guide outlaws actually using the features that make python dynamic, and I doubt we're the only ones.
Fifght, the fact that the dynamic nature of python makes it very hard to document libraries that make use of it.
Sixth, you can't use static analysis on python programs. So ipython just about the best possible autocomplete you can get (ie. autocomplete can only work by executing the program you're trying to develop)
*sigh*
Program a bit in haskell. Now, haskell's pedantic too, no question there, but you will find 10 places python could be improved before you even get through the tutorial.
I feel like some midnight snacks. Anyone know if Bhutan & Tibet taste good ?
Except that you lose the ability to have price differentiation in different products. So you will have plenty $1 romance and fantasy novels, and zero books that actually cost something to produce, and have a less-than-universal readership.
So say goodbye to any technically good computer science (or any science, for that matter) books.
The suggestion is to use an essentially communist system, so :
Problem: is the amount to be paid to authors a static amount? If so, what makes you think all authors are going to agree to those terms?
The government has guns.
Sadly that probably means it's a fucking hard problem. You know, maybe guys like these have a point.
Can we at least agree that having only novels written in "days or weeks" would be a great loss to society ? Sure there's a few diamonds in the pile of shit, but ... not many.
While "NONE" is way too strong, you do have a point. > 99% of them don't do anything.
Since I was forced to study latin in high school ... I kind of do remember what they said about the number of poor, and the conditions they lived in. Let's just not go there.
We don't want that.
And what happens with the learning algorithm, when it's not executed because the CPU is busy executing "tunenAndServeBurger" with 100% CPU time?
It learns how to server burgers really well, and any skill even tangentially related to that. Like social skills for example, cooperation, ...
No ones talking about removing the incentive. It might be reduced a bit, but I'd assume that most students are not studying for a future to earn just enough to live somehow, but to get rich and respected.
That impulse is not strong enough. You know your body actually teaches your brain to make your heart beat while you're in the womb. Want to know how it does that ? It's the same mechanism that makes you breathe, except 1000x stronger. Try to hold your breath for 1 minute. That's the signal your brain is punished with for neglecting heart control for 0.1 seconds. And then you know, it is never going to neglect that control channel for 0.2 seconds. Every such signal has the same structure. The punishment for going over it a little bit is an injection of adrenalin, which will disable > 50% of your brain function entirely (if it lasts, it will be permanently disabled btw, which is why you must avoid malnutricion in children at all costs), then a pain signal will start, increasing exponentially, making sure that the more time passes, the more your brain is focused on the immediate problem. If it goes over a certain limit, it will shut down the brain almost entirely in hopes that relaxing every muscle for a few seconds will solve the problem.
So that's (one of the many) signals that nature felt was absolutely necessary, and the absolute minimum intensity it thought necessary (since these signals are very distracting, you can bet nature aims to minimize them). As we all know, nature experimented about a billion years to determine this procedure. Don't be too quick with "I know better".
Clearly for abstract concepts you can get away with a very, very slow starting signal. But in the end, frankly, it must hurt, and it must hurt badly, or it won't work. Pain is the basic, and when push comes to shove, the only "you're doing something wrong" signal in our brain. If you want a human brain to think something is wrong, it must believe that that action will (eventually) lead to pain. Otherwise, the best you can get is that it thinks it would be socially undesirable. As we all know, a significant portion of people just doesn't care about that.
This incentive will not change.
True, the incentive that drives the already-rich small-business-owners will not change. At first. Their job will become harder though, as they will not find any help. How big a percentage of the population are they ?
Furthermore, even they will succumb to doing nothing. Well, *they* may not do this themselves, but their children will copy part of their values from the rest of society (just like today), so this incentive structure is pretty much guaranteeing those children will be less driven. So how many generations will this tiny part of society hold out being productive ? 2 ? 3 ? I'd be completely amazed by the 2 figure.
On the other hand intelligent people are risk aware and susceptible to the Dunning Kruger effect, resulting in lots of potential engineers shying away from starting an education which might fail and ruin their whole existence.
Since there won't be any teachers, or decent documentation, I wouldn't worry about it.
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism?
That's pretty obvious, isn't it ? Lower the minimum wage and employment taxes, so people can be hired to provide more services.
Socialism, incidentally, always depended on forced labour. It does today, in Europe ("you flunk X interviews, and you're on your own" type of deals). And in countries like the Soviet union ... well, I'm pretty sure your local dvd rental place has at least one movie demonstrating how it worked.
Do you really think forced labour is superior to the current situation ? Do you see another alternative that can make socialism work perhaps (feel free to include a few lines on why neither "very slightly socialist" Europe nor any other socialist government has ever seen fit to use that idea) ?
How does your suggestion even begin to provide an answer ?
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind.
True, but that's because of capitalism. Take capitalism away, and it will become the problem again in short order.
That doesn't really matter. Drones have the extremely desirable property of having a tiny signature in pretty much any field.
Tiny radar signature ...
Tiny heat signature
Tiny visual signature
Tiny audible signature
These things ... well they are tiny. Finding them is ridiculously difficult, even for advanced military hardware.
Due to earth's athmosphere (ie. the wind generating small lensing effects) the smallest object you can find from 100km distance is about 15x15 cm. That's the theoretical limit. Let's say you can get military hardware half as good as that, well then you can find a 1m x 10cm drone from about 400 km distance. Since drones fly at a stupid altitude (we're talking 50 meters or maybe less), finding them from sea level is not possible at all, so basically they'd need a plane in the air less than 400 km from the drone. And this is assuming they don't make it really hard (paint the bottom to look like a cloud, paint the top to look like the sea, use a light nonconductive material for wings and don't let the engine's heat leak into the structure itself. Or better yet : use an engine that's too powerfull, run it at really low settings, so it doesn't get hot in the first place. Not hard, especially in tiny planes).
(that's also the problem for terrorism using these things. Even over US soil, assuming the autopilot is not stupid (and the RC doesn't give it away), doesn't fly over bases and the like, the US military needs to have a spyplane will be very invasive privacy-wise. But once a few muslims figure this out ... the discussion is basically over, and the choice is between the military being able to see the pattern on your swimshorts in your own backyard live, or random explosions in cities).
Obviously, I advocate good men taking action to stop evil men from killing.
Yes, we all do.
Ahem ... no you don't. Your next paragraph makes it very explicit that you in fact favor abandoning everyone and anyone because you think it better to let people be massacred when you can't be blamed for it. (that's putting your "not responsible" comment in slightly different words).
Yes getting involved means that you will be blamed. After all that's what evil men do : when they are stopped from killing they will point out that you used bullets to stop them. Just look at the palestinians : when their attempts to commit religious genocide are stopped through more thorough border controls they complain that said border controls are a crime : they make it harder for them, economically ... Is this what you're afraid of ?
You can't have your cake and eat it too : next time you claim something, don't directly contradict it in the sentence immediately following that claim.
You do realize that doing nothing is equivalent to supporting the Soviet extermination camps, right ?
Let's rephrase that question : if Obama succeeds in totally destabilizing Iraq, and oversees it's state collapsing into lawlessness or worse (like what democrats did to Iran under Carter) then the most naive amongst the democrats will be in full agreement with the hardened republicans : let's NOT go back.
In case you can't understand why :
1) democrats : we don't care. We want more handouts. We'll just send them 5 bibles and 10 kumbaya tapes, and everything will sort itself out. More weed !
2) republicans : we are NOT going in only to have the next fuckwit from (1) screw it up again
There is no "do nothing" option here. Do nothing is what the Germans did in 1941, and what worldwide socialists helped them do all around the globe. Do you consider that an innocent act ? Do nothing is equivalent to helping the Soviets start yet another extermination campaign for ideological purity.
In that case Afghanistan would be filled with mass-graves inflicted by communists, and there would probably have been an extra war with the Soviets somewhere in Eastern Europe, as that is what they intended the resources they needed in Afghanistan for.
Are you really unable to see this ? It may be hard for you to understand, but the Soviets and their extermination campaigns were everybody's problem, and there was no opt-out available anywhere in the world. Not in America, not in Europe, nowhere. Not even Southern Africa and South America were spared.
Unless of course, you truly only care about your own little life and you somehow have managed to convince yourself that what happens in the world doesn't affect you. Then yes, why protect a few million people from a genocide or two ? After all, there's a new videogame out ... It doesn't quite make one wish the Soviets had actually pulled off a few dozen of their hundreds of attempts to cause a 9/11 like scenario on American soil, but ...
Even that 100 million is just the figure they directly killed holocaust-style. Which is FAR less than the number they're responsible for.
So I think the original assertion, I think, comfortably stands : socialists (that's what they were, and are, called) ran a holocaust about 10x larger than "the holocaust" about 60 years ago.
It doesn't include the millions from Soviet "tactical famines", nor does it include any figures from the Chinese equivalent. It doesn't include the extermination campaigns that occurred outside their state borders, like in Korea for example ... It doesn't include the many victims from Soviet and Chinese wars ...
And it is by far not the full figure. South America, Africa and the Middle East each had a very unpleasant encounter with socialism themselves. And socialists may not have put the Taliban in Charge, but they have their own fuckup that is in danger of turning into a nuclear confrontation : Iran. The mullahs would never have gotten anywhere near power without the socialists (the socialists brought down the Shah, then lost control of the situation ... as usual).
So given that there were 2 sides fighting, which side do you suggest America should have supported ?
a) the Soviets, a communist government that ran extermination camps that killed about 10 times more people than the holocaust, was starting wars left and right, built up a force of thousands of nukes that were deployed in the configuration they thought would kill the maximum number of Americans, and threathened the lives and freedom of more than a billion human beings, in both Europe and Asia and America.
b) a lunatic, local band of mohammedan theocrats (at that point in time muslim was not the term used), with grand dreams, for running religious genocides amongst other things. And at this point in time unable to resist (a), but with a little help they can open a front against (a) which will in the end weaken both them and (a)
Is this a tactical decision that doesn't stand up to moral perfection ? Of course. It sacrificed the lives of a few tens of thousands to massively improve the safety of hundreds of millions for decades.
How about we apply a moral standard to this ? Actions like war and even killing are never justified, but when you're confronted with lots of bad choices, all of which are unjustified, you take the least bad one you can find. Even if it is starting a war. The people making this decision certainly thought so.
Or how about the atheist standard ? Clearly it was critical to the success of America to stop the Soviets. Supporting this moronic genocidal faith was cheaper than fighting the Soviets directly, so it was justified. The numbers are very clear : supporting the paedophilic theocrats pays off better than any other option. Therefore : justified.
You are attempting to use very general and naive "moral rules", or maybe even legal rules, in situations where they do not apply.
Given that this is mostly a prediction ... citations are a bit hard to come by. If it's about the voting down, here's an example : http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-tea-party-tax-increase/ (the article is written as if the bill being downvoted was actually not a tax increase, but read on to see how little thought "thinkprogress" assumes in it's readership. You can just feel the crybaby frustration dripping between the sentences).
If the tea party attitude lowers the deficit, they will have turned out to be really good. If not, well ... Given what is already happening with the current government bungling ... I'm going to go with less money in the hands of the government being a good thing.
Just so people know ... the linked article is called "the world's biggest battery switched on in Alaska".
And this biggest battery of the world is capable of providing power to a small town (compared to any American metro, tiny) for 7 minutes. The total capacity will be 4 minutes in less than 10 years. It needs 2000 square meters and weighs over 1300 tonnes. For America total we would need half a million batteries like these, ignoring issues with the grid (in other words : probably even more).
What can I say, except perhaps that I think this "counterexample" does not exactly refute my point.
The point you're making seems to be more "look, climate idiots get to torch anyone slightly disbelieving in 'renewable' energy' for no reason whatsoever". Usually that sort of attitude comes from the fact that they know perfectly well how wrong they are.
The problem is "some changes". Which is somewhere between replacing all devices on the electrical network to support full bidirectional transmission, and replacing every last piece of transmission infrastructure we have. Ignoring that in practice we probably need to build a whole lot more in the process. In order to reach the transmission efficiency that most "solar is cheaper" systems depend on we'd need HVDC lines everywhere (not just plant -> homes, but every single location would need high capacity east and west uplinks, so we can have follow the sun(/wind) transmission, additionally we'd need lots of south -> north capacity), and superconducting transmission within cities.
We're apparently talking between $800 billion up to several trillion dollars. Most electricity networks are broke, more than a few are bankrupt.
The alternative is battery systems in every home (would still be massively less efficient, but it might actually work). That does mean however installing 200kg of (toxic) batteries (at least) every 2-4 years or so. Of course, this is never going to work north of some point. Not just Alaska. This would also actually cost more than the nationwide infrastructure, but it doesn't need to be paid by the government.
Hell, even Obama would think twice before building "some changes", even with other people's money.
It may constitute a threat, which would fall under "conspiracy to commit kidnapping/rape/murder/...".
However, "in general", this is perfectly allowed, and protected speech. I seem to recall an article about a bridge being demolished, where a paper did just that, stating that without the bridge, the kids' route would need to get 25 miles longer. This is perfectly acceptable, even without agreement from the kid (/his parents).
That is not the standard in the law. You are perfectly at liberty to distribute pamphlets with any text you wish on it.
And as long as this text can reasonably be argued to be the truth, it cannot constitute slander (it doesn't have to *be* the truth, you must simply be able to legally argue that you believe it to be the truth, basically that you're not lying explicitly to destroy the other person's social standing. This has been sometimes understood to imply that you're willing to retract wrong statements, but not always). You are perfectly at liberty to claim whatever another person's sexual habits are, as long as you're not just lying to damage that person. You are perfectly at liberty to tell the truth ... and damage that person.
So now all we need is a statement by a court that facebook makes everyone a public figure to make a quick buck.