What is with people these days? They have been a Communist dictatorship/kleptocracy since about 1949, with all the degradation, repression, starvation, purges, and death that entails. Only the gullible and like minded willing dupes ever imagined differently.
And in any case, the USSR was an undeniable super-power for the better part of 50 years despite nearly universal despotism that always comes with leftism. As long at they have a land army of 1.6 million men and a substantial nuclear force, they are still going to be a superpower - whether you think they deserve it or not.
I'm torn between this being a naked power grab by Xi because he wants to be dictator for life, or of this is some kind of recognition that China has many problems of an existential risk nature and that they need Xi.
You are "torn" over the topic of permitting (intent aside) the formation of a dictator-for-life in the most populous country on Earth, who also has a substantial nuclear arsenal and the largest land army? Where do you stand on the topic of Germany annexing the Sudatenland? Seems kind of bad, but don't want to take sides?
This a county where, the last time they had a dictator for life, they proceeded to purge and starve millions to tens of millions of people to death - in the last 40-50 years. That's why they currently have term limits.
There should be no equivocation, this newest cult of personality is an unabashed Bad Thing, and if it goes through, you can easily predict another disaster.
That's the sort of reasoning I expected. Of course, only *you* are smart enough to figure it out and act accordingly, and *everybody else* is too stupid to figure it out, so you have to force them. Because *you know better*.
You know what, no one restricts diesels in US cities, or anywhere else, and our monuments are not caked with diesel soot. They restricted themselves, because *people didn't want them*. And of course, the inexplicable situation of why a "clean diesel" managed to soot itself, and everything else around it, up is now resolved - it wasn't really clean when you drive it around, because of the emission test cheat codes from the ever lovable, highly intelligent and sophisticated and os-so-superior Germans.
Complete aside - if you are the same Geoff Landis, we probably met and flew at model rocket contests in the early-mid 70s.
That's fascinating. When various Euro-philes were lecturing us dumb ol 'mericans about how unsophisticated we were for not wanting those super-advanced clean diesels, you knew you were "right", too. We happened to notice that the rear end of every diesel Mercedes and Volkswagen were typically caked with soot, and decided to buy nice clean Hondas and a never-ending parade of Priuses. All without anyone "banning" anything.
And in any case, why do you think the governments need to tell you not to crap up your own living spaces? Could you not figure it out yourself and adapt without compelling everyone else do to do the same by force of arms? And the Euros want to call *us* stupid?
Do you have any more arguments for unthinking and unaccountable centralized control? Or is that the best you have?
We used to call them "Commissars" back in the olden times - from 25 years ago. Interestingly, a fair number of these new "administrators" come from the former wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
Now you're getting it. These projects (self-driving cars, Tesla, hyperloops, California's Supertrain, er, high-speed rail) are vanity projects by the uber-rich to create nerdgasms among the crowd that treated Jedi like a real religion and have seen Blade Runner 47 times. Oh, they come up with very well-written justifications of them in terms of social responsibility, and ignore the fact that if we took the money wasted on this crap (that largely winds up in the pockets of the already uber-rich), we could easily solve every other real problem we have.
OK, I see right through this, CNN and MSNBC are teaming up to get a little free training for their next generation of muckrakers, race-baiters, and conspiracy theorist they call "anchors"
That was my point a couple of weeks ago, and got modded into oblivion.
We should *want* this to happen, instead of living on proclamations from on high to make things happen. The fallacy of relying on government by decree has never been more clear. If you can't actually convince your representatives to sign on, then you have some recourse. Decrees can be anything the guys making it wants, whether its what you want or not.
That's a mediocre improvement over launching it from the ground. Getting it high enough is not the issue, getting it fast enough is the problem, and starting at 400 mph hardly makes a difference.
The advantage to launching off an airplane is that you can fly the airplane to the spot you need any day of the year, which is the value of Pegasus and the other similar schemes. It hardly helps the mass ratio/launch throw weight at all.
Listening to Bill Gates drone on about whatever is one small step better than sitting in a coach seat next to Andy Dick on a 16-hour trip to Australia.
You are BUYING ON CREDIT, it's very reasonable that they decline to extend you credit for questionable purchases. Try to get a million-dollar home loan for a single-wide trailer, they won't give it to you then, either.
It absolutely IS NOT the same or analogous to bitcoin or other pseudocurrencies. They would be perfectly fine with you using your ATM card to buy whatever you want, because that is your money, same with cash, no one is stopping you from anything. The problem seems to be that people have deluded themselves into thinking a credit card is "electronic cash", which is isn't, you are taking out an automatic loan.
Week later banned and now need to upload a government issued ID to confirm my name.... oh hell no.
I'm sorry, but - WHAT!? You are supposed to provide your drivers license or equivalent to Facebook before they deign to let you use their service again? Is this some sort of IQ test, and if you do it, you fail?
I thought I was too cynical and too negative to be surprised any more, but holy crap, this, I didn't see coming!
Given that "bringing clean water to the millions" is not a matter of throwing money at the problem, your comment makes *no sense*.
Everyone needs to understand - the world produces FAR more than required to simply support the population, VASTLY, and in a lot of cases, we are operating far below capacity because there is no point in making any more.
Poverty, famine, dirty drinking water, most disease, are all *political* problems that could rapidly be eliminated if you removed the political barriers. In many cases, solving the problem would simply mean killing off brutal dictatorships and tribal leaders that cause the vast majority of pain in the world while trying to grab power. Unless you are willing to do that, all the money in the world will not solve the issue, in fact, sending more money to areas where problems exist would certainly make the problem much worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I expected you to say "In Soviet Russia, slashdot crashed on you!" or something.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but....
What is with people these days? They have been a Communist dictatorship/kleptocracy since about 1949, with all the degradation, repression, starvation, purges, and death that entails. Only the gullible and like minded willing dupes ever imagined differently.
And in any case, the USSR was an undeniable super-power for the better part of 50 years despite nearly universal despotism that always comes with leftism. As long at they have a land army of 1.6 million men and a substantial nuclear force, they are still going to be a superpower - whether you think they deserve it or not.
You are "torn" over the topic of permitting (intent aside) the formation of a dictator-for-life in the most populous country on Earth, who also has a substantial nuclear arsenal and the largest land army? Where do you stand on the topic of Germany annexing the Sudatenland? Seems kind of bad, but don't want to take sides?
This a county where, the last time they had a dictator for life, they proceeded to purge and starve millions to tens of millions of people to death - in the last 40-50 years. That's why they currently have term limits.
There should be no equivocation, this newest cult of personality is an unabashed Bad Thing, and if it goes through, you can easily predict another disaster.
That's the sort of reasoning I expected. Of course, only *you* are smart enough to figure it out and act accordingly, and *everybody else* is too stupid to figure it out, so you have to force them. Because *you know better*.
You know what, no one restricts diesels in US cities, or anywhere else, and our monuments are not caked with diesel soot. They restricted themselves, because *people didn't want them*. And of course, the inexplicable situation of why a "clean diesel" managed to soot itself, and everything else around it, up is now resolved - it wasn't really clean when you drive it around, because of the emission test cheat codes from the ever lovable, highly intelligent and sophisticated and os-so-superior Germans.
Complete aside - if you are the same Geoff Landis, we probably met and flew at model rocket contests in the early-mid 70s.
That's fascinating. When various Euro-philes were lecturing us dumb ol 'mericans about how unsophisticated we were for not wanting those super-advanced clean diesels, you knew you were "right", too. We happened to notice that the rear end of every diesel Mercedes and Volkswagen were typically caked with soot, and decided to buy nice clean Hondas and a never-ending parade of Priuses. All without anyone "banning" anything.
And in any case, why do you think the governments need to tell you not to crap up your own living spaces? Could you not figure it out yourself and adapt without compelling everyone else do to do the same by force of arms? And the Euros want to call *us* stupid?
Do you have any more arguments for unthinking and unaccountable centralized control? Or is that the best you have?
We used to call them "Commissars" back in the olden times - from 25 years ago. Interestingly, a fair number of these new "administrators" come from the former wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
Just a coincidence, surely.
The EU allows social engineering that would have made the Soviets blush? Color me surprised!
Now you're getting it. These projects (self-driving cars, Tesla, hyperloops, California's Supertrain, er, high-speed rail) are vanity projects by the uber-rich to create nerdgasms among the crowd that treated Jedi like a real religion and have seen Blade Runner 47 times. Oh, they come up with very well-written justifications of them in terms of social responsibility, and ignore the fact that if we took the money wasted on this crap (that largely winds up in the pockets of the already uber-rich), we could easily solve every other real problem we have.
You are not supposed to ask that question. You risk excommunication.
OK, I see right through this, CNN and MSNBC are teaming up to get a little free training for their next generation of muckrakers, race-baiters, and conspiracy theorist they call "anchors"
Now all we need is someone to decipher Word documents we wrote 2 weeks ago but no longer render properly.
That was my point a couple of weeks ago, and got modded into oblivion.
We should *want* this to happen, instead of living on proclamations from on high to make things happen. The fallacy of relying on government by decree has never been more clear. If you can't actually convince your representatives to sign on, then you have some recourse. Decrees can be anything the guys making it wants, whether its what you want or not.
I can see the Slashdot echo chamber is working particularly well today.
That's a mediocre improvement over launching it from the ground. Getting it high enough is not the issue, getting it fast enough is the problem, and starting at 400 mph hardly makes a difference.
The advantage to launching off an airplane is that you can fly the airplane to the spot you need any day of the year, which is the value of Pegasus and the other similar schemes. It hardly helps the mass ratio/launch throw weight at all.
Listening to Bill Gates drone on about whatever is one small step better than sitting in a coach seat next to Andy Dick on a 16-hour trip to Australia.
Wrong. They will ask for you to decrypt them, and when you don't, you go to jail.
You are BUYING ON CREDIT, it's very reasonable that they decline to extend you credit for questionable purchases. Try to get a million-dollar home loan for a single-wide trailer, they won't give it to you then, either.
It absolutely IS NOT the same or analogous to bitcoin or other pseudocurrencies. They would be perfectly fine with you using your ATM card to buy whatever you want, because that is your money, same with cash, no one is stopping you from anything. The problem seems to be that people have deluded themselves into thinking a credit card is "electronic cash", which is isn't, you are taking out an automatic loan.
I'm sorry, but - WHAT!? You are supposed to provide your drivers license or equivalent to Facebook before they deign to let you use their service again? Is this some sort of IQ test, and if you do it, you fail?
I thought I was too cynical and too negative to be surprised any more, but holy crap, this, I didn't see coming!
It's a leftist affectation. Using European variants for various words and punctation makes them seem more sophisticated to other leftists.
Given that "bringing clean water to the millions" is not a matter of throwing money at the problem, your comment makes *no sense*.
Everyone needs to understand - the world produces FAR more than required to simply support the population, VASTLY, and in a lot of cases, we are operating far below capacity because there is no point in making any more.
Poverty, famine, dirty drinking water, most disease, are all *political* problems that could rapidly be eliminated if you removed the political barriers. In many cases, solving the problem would simply mean killing off brutal dictatorships and tribal leaders that cause the vast majority of pain in the world while trying to grab power. Unless you are willing to do that, all the money in the world will not solve the issue, in fact, sending more money to areas where problems exist would certainly make the problem much worse.
Normally. I wouldn't, but this reaction is perfect (see at 00:45)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Why are we still surprised at these stories? This is SOP, if you don't do something to stop it, you can just presume that it is being done.
They already make a substance that appears to be bioprocessed human waste. It's called Marmite.
Agreed, this is getting far beyond parody at this point. Just absurd.