Anyone who buys into this platform is not paying attention. Not for the jokes about houses crashing, etc., but because it's not Windows. Seriously. History has shown again and again that Microsoft has one platform: Windows (or DOS before that). Anything else will eventually be killed off *by Microsoft itself*. Even for WinCE/PocketPC/WinMobile/WinPhone/whatever, the writing is on the wall -- Microsoft wants to get off that platform and on to a MinWin-derived, stripped-down mainline Windows system.
I don't want to have to replace all my home automation in X years when the upper echelon at Microsoft finally notices this thing isn't Windows and kills it.
As chance would have it, I was at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club open house last night (Saturday 21 April 2012). TMRC, for those who don't know, is a well-spring of hacker subculture. Their model railroad layout is fully automated using homebrew control and interface hardware, and their own Linux-based software. Formerly it ran on adapted telephone switch relays.
Anyhow, their layout includes a scale model of the Green building, and yes, you can play Tetris on it. Granted, it's not as impressive as doing it on the *real* building, but there's something to be said for prior art.;)
They could just do what Apple did (Rosetta, so you could run PowerPC apps on x86 Macs without needing another instance of the OS)
That's (pardon the pun) apples to oranges. Rosetta is a software emulation of the PowerPC architecture. x86 virtualization is typically hardware based; it's just a task switch, While they *could* go that route, it's not what I was getting at.:)
So far the only thing that has broken is 64-bit versions of Windows don't let you run 16-bit software.
For a change, that's not actually Microsoft's fault. When in "long mode" (the 64-bit mode), x86 compatible CPUs do not support "virtual 8086 mode". So, if you're running a 64-bit OS, it simply can't run a 16-bit process.
Although machine-level virtualization must get around this somehow. Which makes me wonder if that technique -- whatever it is -- couldn't be adapted to a more lightweight way to run a 16-bit process (without requiring a whole 'nother running instance of the OS).
I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days.
They're not allowed to - the Feds nationalized nuclear insurance in the 60's.
Interesting, but I believe my statement would stand true even if that wasn't the case.
There are three possibilities: global warming, agrarian society, nuclear power.
Right.
Nuclear power doesn't seem to be economically viable without government subsidies. The free market includes irrational actors, and too many people fear anything nuke-you-lar. At the same time, for the same reasons, most governments seem to be avoiding it -- it's bad for elections.
Agrarian society isn't going to happen willingly. Thriving civilizations don't decrease their energy usage. (Collapse of civilization would get us there, I suppose, but that's generally not a deliberate choice...)
That would assume they'd let anybody build modern nuclear reactors, which is crazy talk, but if you want a funding model it's there.
I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days. Since I know you're staunchly against government funding of such, and I suspect it's impossible for any free civilization to deliberately curtail its energy use, I guess that leaves global warming, right?
Interesting. You definitely think differently than I do when it comes to maps and directions and the like. It might be revealing to explore this kind of thing more, but unfortunately a Slashdot subthread isn't the best place for that.:)
Interesting. I hate having forward-up; I want a fixed map. But I also use the system differently than how you describe your use. I carry the map in my head and use the electronic map display to update my mental map. Even if I don't know the area, I want to have an idea of my route and the immediate surroundings. Having the map spin around disorients me: When I try to update my mental map, the on-screen map will have likely changed orientation and so I have to work harder to re-align mental with screen.
For turn warnings, I listen to audio and look at the next turn indicator at the top of the display. My GPS has a fairly easy to see arrow.
It would appear we use the system differently. It sounds like I'm more interested in the overall map than you.
It's common for people to describe themselves/others as having a good/bad "sense of direction". Different people have different skills. I generally seem to have a good sense of direction. I always have a mental map of my surroundings. How about yourself? I'm wondering if how we like to use GPSes reflects our own sense of the physical world.
You may want to look up some of the shuttle history. Carrying out experiments in space was not the original idea. That was what the space station was for.
The original concept was a smaller vehicle, intended to move people and small cargo back and forth between a permanent manned space station. It was truly intended as a *shuttle*. It was intended for frequent launches; hence the interest in a reusable vehicle. Heavier payloads were intended for conventional rocket designs (some kind of Saturn evolution).
But then funding was cut. Getting a new heavy lift booster, a space station, *and* a shuttle was not going to happen.
At the same time, the Air Force got involved. The AF needs the ability to launch spy satellites in to polar orbits. By working together, the thought was that STS could be kept alive. But polar orbits are harder to reach, and spy satellites are big and heavy. That meant a much larger vehicle. So the shuttle design evolved into what it is today.
But then the Air Force realized that the compromise design was lousy, and decided to stick with conventional rockets. SLC-6 was never used.
As a result, NASA was stuck with something of a white elephant. The shuttle was trying to be too many things at once. It wasn't the small, cheap "bus" that was originally conceived, but it also wasn't a cost-effective heavy launcher.
It's a shame; some really brilliant technology and engineering went into the program. But when the design goals are conflicting and ever-changing, no amount of engineering skill can compensate.
I thought this was hilarious until I went back to the summary and saw that CmdrTaco actually will be working at the "trendy"-named "WaPo" Labs....Now I'm a sad panda....
Services like this, and the French minitel (which was popular) weren't relying on client computers so much as dumb terminals. You dialed in to a remote machine and it just pushed text to your screen and took text from your keyboard.
Yah, and all the processing was done on the central host end.
Contrast this to the web paradigm, where all the data lives on servers, most of the processing happens on the servers, the servers just send a page description to your browser, and then send what you enter back to the server. That's totally different.
Boot times increased rather than decreased until this century.
You obviously never used an old mini or mainframe that took minutes or tens of minutes to boot. 5 to 10 was a big improvement!;-)
But it was more like 5-10 seconds on my IBM. But if you had a Commodore or the like with the OS in ROM boot speeds were far faster than the IBM.
My old Tandy 1000 SL, which was basically an 8086 IBM-PC compatible design, had the DOS kernel and COMMAND.COM in ROM. It appeared as "C:" -- the machine had no hard disk. So despite only having a floppy disk, turn it on, and the OS was ready in a second or two. It was nice.
FYI: No, it doesn't. You didn't even look at the lf(1) project page so you don't understand what it does.
Actually, I *did* look at the project page. Which states, in its entirety, "lf is a command-line tool to list files in a terse format, sorted by file extensions. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior." It makes no mention of printing the extensions separately, nor of stripping them from the file names.
You're sort-of right in that I didn't look at the screen shot. I assumed the prose description on the web page would describe all the salient features. I see now that assumption was a bad one.
Suggestion for prose description: lf is a command-line tool to list files. It is similar in concept to ls(1), but groups by file extension. Each line begins with an extension, followed by the base file names without extension. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior.
The key word you missed was "tersely".
I did read "tersely", but I didn't see how the traditional ls(1) format could be any more terse: It already prints only the file names and nothing else. It didn't occur to me that you're breaking up the file names.
Given the limited number of characters in a Slashdot sig, I was sort of relying on people to click the link...
Suggestion:
lf(1): Like ls(1) but groups by extension, printed separately.
Uhhh... unless they're using some new calendar I'm unfamiliar with, the first quarter is about two-thirds over. The fact that they're using the future tense for something which is already mostly gone makes me wonder just how well informed this article is.
I think that the emergency brake sensor should be used as the override.
Again, it's a panic thing. People panic and try to use the (regular) brakes to stop the car. There are already ways to recover from a stuck accelerator: "Shift to neutral" and "turn ignition switch to OFF" being the most obvious. But when people are panicked because their car is accelerating out of control, they don't think clearly.
Plus, I think using the emergency brake would be a poor idea. The e-brake is typically the rear wheels only and lacks anti-lock; if it's the foot pedal variety it also typically lacks any fine control. That's a recipe for rear wheel lock-up, fish tailing, and loss of control.
It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
sometimes you don't have a choice where you live and how dense the traffic is. You can either get where you want to, or you won't ever get to where you're going...
You're still probably driving inappropriately. The idea that you'll never get there because you needed to shave tens of microseconds for a lane change is... unlikely. And, ironically, people with that attitude are actually a big part of the traffic problem. If people drove properly everyone would get there faster. (See: http://trafficwaves.org/) But too many people either don't understand or don't care. Tragedy of the commons.
I'd be seriously pissed if I had to drive a car where depressing accelerator and brake caused the accelerator command to be overridden.
Heh, something like that is actually a safety feature in some cars already, and They(TM) are considering making it mandatory. Accelerator override: Where if you press the brake, it cancels the accelerator. This is done because there are legit scenarios where the accelerator pedal can get suck. The big one is floor-mat-stuck-under-the-pedal. People panic and try to use the brakes to stop the car, and that's not always as effected as one would like.
Whether or not it's worth the costs in loss of control you describe, I dunno.
Semi-related: It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
Not to mention that a GUI-less mode was available in Windows Server 2008 already.
Server Core is not GUI-less. It still actually *is* a GUI -- just a crippled one. It still requires graphics mode, and a few things even pop up the same GUIs you get on the regular install. (REGEDIT comes to mind.)
Since it's still running in graphics mode, that means no serial console, which means you need significantly more expensive gear for remote console. One shouldn't need the console often, of course, but on the occasions you do need it, you *really* need it. (And no, "serial console" doesn't mean cabling up an old VT-102 to the server. You use external gear to make it available via SSH.)
Moving beyond the question of "GUI or not", Server Core has usability issues. Microsoft's included tools for Server Core administration are quite kludgy, and often incomplete. Try changing the screen resolution, for example. (If you're going to force me to run in graphics mode, I'd like the screen to support a window bigger than 80x25.)
Most of all, too many things don't work without the full GUI install. That includes most of Microsoft's own server products. It's kind of ridiculous for Microsoft to expect others to support Server Core when they can't even do it themselves.
So while Server Core is a step in the right direction, and 2008R2 is improved, there is still a long way to go. This news sounds like further steps in the right direction, which is a Good Thing.
Previously, vehicles weren't designed to do this, and so the weakest area was the cabin.
Correction: The weakest area was not the cabin. The weakest area was the people sitting in the cabin. When those people impacted on the much stronger cabin walls, the injuries were often quite severe.
Saying "Let's stop invading random countries and trying to run the world" is not isolationism. It's being a good neighbor. You ever live next to someone who's poking their nose into your business all the time, criticizing everything you do, threatening to call the police because you didn't shovel the snow properly, etc.? Everyone hates those people. Yet somehow, some people seem to think it's good foreign policy.
One of the things I like about Ron Paul (and believe me, there's plenty I don't like) is that he believes we need to get our nose out of other people's business.
Pulling out of the UN seems like a bit much to me, especially since almost all the UN ever does is talk and pass powerless resolutions. Like I said, I don't agree with all of RP's ideas.
like trying to recolonize iraq.
Yah, see, that's one of the things RP is against.
Most US military spending is domestic, it's a giant jobs programme. Nothing more. There are more efficient ways to accomplish that, but the net effect is money for US things.
Military operations are a horrible way to boost an economy. They siphon a lot of resources away from building useful long-term infrastructure, and the end up sending a lot of resources overseas to where the battle is. Those resources don't come back. It's like a trade deficit, except with more dead people.
... you're saying you'd be better off without the bailouts that saved a few million jobs and prevented your economy from going into a tailspin...
It can be argued that we would have been better off letting unhealthy, poorly-run companies which screwed over the entire country die off, yes. Especially since it was largely government meddling which set-up the economic collapse in the first place. The more we prop it up, the harder it will fall.
because oh no, they added to the budget deficit (which, by the way, you mostly owe yourselves
Printing more money without regard to resources is classic inflation. It devalues the currency. Everyone who does it hurts themselves. Everyone who has done it a lot has ruined their economy. See Hyperinflation for plenty of case studies.
Did you live through the US government shuts downs of the 90's?
If we don't stop deficit spending, our economy is going to collapse completely, and those shutdowns will look like a bank holiday in comparison.
You cannot keep spending resources you don't have. This is more than just a law of economics, it's a law of thermodynamics. It is probably the single most fundamental concept in the known universe.
What so this is a US site now? Where is the.us domain on the end then?
Despite the "global" moniker that's been lately added, when first created, the three-letter top-level domains were US-centric by virtue of the fact that the system we now call "the Internet" was a US-centric project. Same reason.mil is US military. Jokes about Al Gore aside, the US created the Internet, and thus there's a US-centric focus in some places -- such as the original top-level domains. If you dislike this, you're welcome to create your own global network project. Good luck with that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet this is GeekNet's Jump The Shark moment, today, May 1, 2012, for anyone keeping track.
I think you're right. I've been here a gawd-awful long time, and this latest abomination is by far the worst by several orders of magnitude.
I keep hoping to see an "UPDATE: Suckers! We trolled you good!" appear in the summary, but I don't think that's going to happen.
I wonder if the Romans felt this way as their empire declined and fell?
Anyone who buys into this platform is not paying attention. Not for the jokes about houses crashing, etc., but because it's not Windows. Seriously. History has shown again and again that Microsoft has one platform: Windows (or DOS before that). Anything else will eventually be killed off *by Microsoft itself*. Even for WinCE/PocketPC/WinMobile/WinPhone/whatever, the writing is on the wall -- Microsoft wants to get off that platform and on to a MinWin-derived, stripped-down mainline Windows system.
I don't want to have to replace all my home automation in X years when the upper echelon at Microsoft finally notices this thing isn't Windows and kills it.
As chance would have it, I was at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club open house last night (Saturday 21 April 2012). TMRC, for those who don't know, is a well-spring of hacker subculture. Their model railroad layout is fully automated using homebrew control and interface hardware, and their own Linux-based software. Formerly it ran on adapted telephone switch relays.
Anyhow, their layout includes a scale model of the Green building, and yes, you can play Tetris on it. Granted, it's not as impressive as doing it on the *real* building, but there's something to be said for prior art. ;)
I'll see if I can't get a video of it uploaded.
They could just do what Apple did (Rosetta, so you could run PowerPC apps on x86 Macs without needing another instance of the OS)
That's (pardon the pun) apples to oranges. Rosetta is a software emulation of the PowerPC architecture. x86 virtualization is typically hardware based; it's just a task switch, While they *could* go that route, it's not what I was getting at. :)
So far the only thing that has broken is 64-bit versions of Windows don't let you run 16-bit software.
For a change, that's not actually Microsoft's fault. When in "long mode" (the 64-bit mode), x86 compatible CPUs do not support "virtual 8086 mode". So, if you're running a 64-bit OS, it simply can't run a 16-bit process.
Although machine-level virtualization must get around this somehow. Which makes me wonder if that technique -- whatever it is -- couldn't be adapted to a more lightweight way to run a 16-bit process (without requiring a whole 'nother running instance of the OS).
Can we make naming acts/bills illegal?
Yeah... we could call the new legislation "Ban Idiotic Titles in Congressional Hearings".
I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days.
They're not allowed to - the Feds nationalized nuclear insurance in the 60's.
Interesting, but I believe my statement would stand true even if that wasn't the case.
There are three possibilities: global warming, agrarian society, nuclear power.
Right.
Nuclear power doesn't seem to be economically viable without government subsidies. The free market includes irrational actors, and too many people fear anything nuke-you-lar. At the same time, for the same reasons, most governments seem to be avoiding it -- it's bad for elections.
Agrarian society isn't going to happen willingly. Thriving civilizations don't decrease their energy usage. (Collapse of civilization would get us there, I suppose, but that's generally not a deliberate choice...)
Which leaves global warming.
I'm just one big ray of sunshine, aren't I?
That would assume they'd let anybody build modern nuclear reactors, which is crazy talk, but if you want a funding model it's there.
I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days. Since I know you're staunchly against government funding of such, and I suspect it's impossible for any free civilization to deliberately curtail its energy use, I guess that leaves global warming, right?
(I'm stirring the pot, yes. :) )
Interesting. You definitely think differently than I do when it comes to maps and directions and the like. It might be revealing to explore this kind of thing more, but unfortunately a Slashdot subthread isn't the best place for that. :)
Interesting. I hate having forward-up; I want a fixed map. But I also use the system differently than how you describe your use. I carry the map in my head and use the electronic map display to update my mental map. Even if I don't know the area, I want to have an idea of my route and the immediate surroundings. Having the map spin around disorients me: When I try to update my mental map, the on-screen map will have likely changed orientation and so I have to work harder to re-align mental with screen.
For turn warnings, I listen to audio and look at the next turn indicator at the top of the display. My GPS has a fairly easy to see arrow.
It would appear we use the system differently. It sounds like I'm more interested in the overall map than you.
It's common for people to describe themselves/others as having a good/bad "sense of direction". Different people have different skills. I generally seem to have a good sense of direction. I always have a mental map of my surroundings. How about yourself? I'm wondering if how we like to use GPSes reflects our own sense of the physical world.
You may want to look up some of the shuttle history. Carrying out experiments in space was not the original idea. That was what the space station was for.
The original concept was a smaller vehicle, intended to move people and small cargo back and forth between a permanent manned space station. It was truly intended as a *shuttle*. It was intended for frequent launches; hence the interest in a reusable vehicle. Heavier payloads were intended for conventional rocket designs (some kind of Saturn evolution).
But then funding was cut. Getting a new heavy lift booster, a space station, *and* a shuttle was not going to happen.
At the same time, the Air Force got involved. The AF needs the ability to launch spy satellites in to polar orbits. By working together, the thought was that STS could be kept alive. But polar orbits are harder to reach, and spy satellites are big and heavy. That meant a much larger vehicle. So the shuttle design evolved into what it is today.
But then the Air Force realized that the compromise design was lousy, and decided to stick with conventional rockets. SLC-6 was never used.
As a result, NASA was stuck with something of a white elephant. The shuttle was trying to be too many things at once. It wasn't the small, cheap "bus" that was originally conceived, but it also wasn't a cost-effective heavy launcher.
It's a shame; some really brilliant technology and engineering went into the program. But when the design goals are conflicting and ever-changing, no amount of engineering skill can compensate.
I thought this was hilarious until I went back to the summary and saw that CmdrTaco actually will be working at the "trendy"-named "WaPo" Labs. ...Now I'm a sad panda....
I thought you were an eternal Doctor Who...
Services like this, and the French minitel (which was popular) weren't relying on client computers so much as dumb terminals. You dialed in to a remote machine and it just pushed text to your screen and took text from your keyboard.
Yah, and all the processing was done on the central host end.
Contrast this to the web paradigm, where all the data lives on servers, most of the processing happens on the servers, the servers just send a page description to your browser, and then send what you enter back to the server. That's totally different.
Oh, wait... ;-)
Boot times increased rather than decreased until this century.
You obviously never used an old mini or mainframe that took minutes or tens of minutes to boot. 5 to 10 was a big improvement! ;-)
But it was more like 5-10 seconds on my IBM. But if you had a Commodore or the like with the OS in ROM boot speeds were far faster than the IBM.
My old Tandy 1000 SL, which was basically an 8086 IBM-PC compatible design, had the DOS kernel and COMMAND.COM in ROM. It appeared as "C:" -- the machine had no hard disk. So despite only having a floppy disk, turn it on, and the OS was ready in a second or two. It was nice.
FYI: No, it doesn't. You didn't even look at the lf(1) project page so you don't understand what it does.
Actually, I *did* look at the project page. Which states, in its entirety, "lf is a command-line tool to list files in a terse format, sorted by file extensions. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior." It makes no mention of printing the extensions separately, nor of stripping them from the file names.
You're sort-of right in that I didn't look at the screen shot. I assumed the prose description on the web page would describe all the salient features. I see now that assumption was a bad one.
Suggestion for prose description:
lf is a command-line tool to list files. It is similar in concept to ls(1), but groups by file extension. Each line begins with an extension, followed by the base file names without extension. Sorts by the user's locale, or by ASCII, and has many options to control its behavior.
The key word you missed was "tersely".
I did read "tersely", but I didn't see how the traditional ls(1) format could be any more terse: It already prints only the file names and nothing else. It didn't occur to me that you're breaking up the file names.
Given the limited number of characters in a Slashdot sig, I was sort of relying on people to click the link...
Suggestion:
lf(1): Like ls(1) but groups by extension, printed separately.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely.
FYI: The -X switch to GNU ls(1) already does this.
Uhhh... unless they're using some new calendar I'm unfamiliar with, the first quarter is about two-thirds over. The fact that they're using the future tense for something which is already mostly gone makes me wonder just how well informed this article is.
You are aware that CDMA is technologically superiour to GSM in EVERY way.
Care to explain why/how? For those of us who aren't aware?
I think that the emergency brake sensor should be used as the override.
Again, it's a panic thing. People panic and try to use the (regular) brakes to stop the car. There are already ways to recover from a stuck accelerator: "Shift to neutral" and "turn ignition switch to OFF" being the most obvious. But when people are panicked because their car is accelerating out of control, they don't think clearly.
Plus, I think using the emergency brake would be a poor idea. The e-brake is typically the rear wheels only and lacks anti-lock; if it's the foot pedal variety it also typically lacks any fine control. That's a recipe for rear wheel lock-up, fish tailing, and loss of control.
It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
sometimes you don't have a choice where you live and how dense the traffic is. You can either get where you want to, or you won't ever get to where you're going...
You're still probably driving inappropriately. The idea that you'll never get there because you needed to shave tens of microseconds for a lane change is... unlikely. And, ironically, people with that attitude are actually a big part of the traffic problem. If people drove properly everyone would get there faster. (See: http://trafficwaves.org/) But too many people either don't understand or don't care. Tragedy of the commons.
I'd be seriously pissed if I had to drive a car where depressing accelerator and brake caused the accelerator command to be overridden.
Heh, something like that is actually a safety feature in some cars already, and They(TM) are considering making it mandatory. Accelerator override: Where if you press the brake, it cancels the accelerator. This is done because there are legit scenarios where the accelerator pedal can get suck. The big one is floor-mat-stuck-under-the-pedal. People panic and try to use the brakes to stop the car, and that's not always as effected as one would like.
Whether or not it's worth the costs in loss of control you describe, I dunno.
Semi-related: It occurs to me that if you really need that extra margin while changing lanes, you're probabbly driving inappropriately for a public road.
Not to mention that a GUI-less mode was available in Windows Server 2008 already.
Server Core is not GUI-less. It still actually *is* a GUI -- just a crippled one. It still requires graphics mode, and a few things even pop up the same GUIs you get on the regular install. (REGEDIT comes to mind.)
Since it's still running in graphics mode, that means no serial console, which means you need significantly more expensive gear for remote console. One shouldn't need the console often, of course, but on the occasions you do need it, you *really* need it. (And no, "serial console" doesn't mean cabling up an old VT-102 to the server. You use external gear to make it available via SSH.)
Moving beyond the question of "GUI or not", Server Core has usability issues. Microsoft's included tools for Server Core administration are quite kludgy, and often incomplete. Try changing the screen resolution, for example. (If you're going to force me to run in graphics mode, I'd like the screen to support a window bigger than 80x25.)
Most of all, too many things don't work without the full GUI install. That includes most of Microsoft's own server products. It's kind of ridiculous for Microsoft to expect others to support Server Core when they can't even do it themselves.
So while Server Core is a step in the right direction, and 2008R2 is improved, there is still a long way to go. This news sounds like further steps in the right direction, which is a Good Thing.
Previously, vehicles weren't designed to do this, and so the weakest area was the cabin.
Correction: The weakest area was not the cabin. The weakest area was the people sitting in the cabin. When those people impacted on the much stronger cabin walls, the injuries were often quite severe.
Paul is an isolationist, that's the problem.
Saying "Let's stop invading random countries and trying to run the world" is not isolationism. It's being a good neighbor. You ever live next to someone who's poking their nose into your business all the time, criticizing everything you do, threatening to call the police because you didn't shovel the snow properly, etc.? Everyone hates those people. Yet somehow, some people seem to think it's good foreign policy.
One of the things I like about Ron Paul (and believe me, there's plenty I don't like) is that he believes we need to get our nose out of other people's business.
Pulling out of the UN seems like a bit much to me, especially since almost all the UN ever does is talk and pass powerless resolutions. Like I said, I don't agree with all of RP's ideas.
like trying to recolonize iraq.
Yah, see, that's one of the things RP is against.
Most US military spending is domestic, it's a giant jobs programme. Nothing more. There are more efficient ways to accomplish that, but the net effect is money for US things.
Military operations are a horrible way to boost an economy. They siphon a lot of resources away from building useful long-term infrastructure, and the end up sending a lot of resources overseas to where the battle is. Those resources don't come back. It's like a trade deficit, except with more dead people.
... you're saying you'd be better off without the bailouts that saved a few million jobs and prevented your economy from going into a tailspin ...
It can be argued that we would have been better off letting unhealthy, poorly-run companies which screwed over the entire country die off, yes. Especially since it was largely government meddling which set-up the economic collapse in the first place. The more we prop it up, the harder it will fall.
because oh no, they added to the budget deficit (which, by the way, you mostly owe yourselves
Printing more money without regard to resources is classic inflation. It devalues the currency. Everyone who does it hurts themselves. Everyone who has done it a lot has ruined their economy. See Hyperinflation for plenty of case studies.
Did you live through the US government shuts downs of the 90's?
If we don't stop deficit spending, our economy is going to collapse completely, and those shutdowns will look like a bank holiday in comparison.
You cannot keep spending resources you don't have. This is more than just a law of economics, it's a law of thermodynamics. It is probably the single most fundamental concept in the known universe.
What so this is a US site now? Where is the .us domain on the end then?
Despite the "global" moniker that's been lately added, when first created, the three-letter top-level domains were US-centric by virtue of the fact that the system we now call "the Internet" was a US-centric project. Same reason .mil is US military. Jokes about Al Gore aside, the US created the Internet, and thus there's a US-centric focus in some places -- such as the original top-level domains. If you dislike this, you're welcome to create your own global network project. Good luck with that.
My guess is that it's not a DDOS, it's a fuckup.
Looks like you get the gold star. Good call. :)