You mean 'jibe'. Nothing of any significance has 'jived' since Barbara Billingsworth on the movie Airplane.

In the long list of things than can and do make your country increasingly irrelevant (although not there yet, by far), restricting access to high quality communications will definitely help. In the end, whether it's an oppressive regime or simple failure to invest doesn't matter.

The hell? The slowest cable connection offered in most of the Netherlands is 40Mbps. If my phone had just 160kbps I'd rightly complain to the phone company.

If all the other side has are planes that are capable of out-dogfighting the US planes, they'll endeavour to close with US planes quickly. Unless the F-35 can take down any and *all* comers at range, without fail, it's going to lose out to that tactic.

An SU-27 costs $30 million, an F-35 about $148 million at the cheapest, and $248 million at the more expensive end. So as long as you produce enough pilots, you can field five to eight times as many planes for the same amount of money, and those planes are better at dogfights, and reasonably capable at long range as well.

A problem we've solved already. Just use a hinge and two screens. Use code to stitch them into a logical entity. Bezels can be small, on one side.

I have a feeling it's just patent-troll-defense.

What continent am I on? Europe. All of Europe had a record warm winter. As a point of interest, Europe's bigger than Florida, so we more than cancel each other out. Anecdotes aplenty.

I'm 36 years old. I remember we used to get snow here in Holland, so we could sled. Barely happens these days. The last time we had an Elfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Tour, an ice skating marathon) was 1997, and before that 1986. The other years, we didn't have enough frost.

It's entirely possible global climate change means Florida's going to be colder. I hope you enjoy skiing, at least until your state floods.

Technology decreases certain classes of work. And a large portion of the population is capable -- either by experience, choice or simple capacity -- only of unskilled labor. When menial labor disappears, you have unemployed people who still need to live.

Alternative view: Places where employees are encouraged to change and grow over their decade(s) of employment are more innovative, yet more stable, than places that encourage drive-by work. New ideas only get implemented in a half-assed way if the person who promoted the idea is already two jobs further in his career.

Seems to be working okay. My country (The Netherlands) is consistently in the top happy countries, definitely near the top healthy countries.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that European countries are communist. We're not, but by and large we've heavily regulated and, in some cases, nationalized things that should not be run for profit, like health care. I'm still miffed that the train system was privatized. It's gone down-hill since then.

You can do anything you want to anyone, period. The difference is that being an unethical asshole has consequences in other areas. The deficiency lies with business.

Ever notice how, when you're driving and need to find your way, so you're peering at all the street signs, you turn the radio down? Most people can't do it with a high radio volume.

Multitasking is a myth.

That might make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it's not actually true. US foreign policy is based on US interests.

Ron Paul took a lot of flak years back for saying that the US is responsible for creating a climate that allowed Al Qaida to strike on 9/11 2001, but he was absolutely on the money.

Media in the US, however, don't exactly report on what the US actually does. Just one of many parallels between the soviets and present day US (besides propaganda, this includes comprehensive spying on its own citizens, disappearing citizens and use of torture). This used to be something that would upset Americans.

And we're still at lower rates now. So killing prisoners doesn't influence murder rates. Why do it then? Shits and giggles?

So... money? You'd kill a person for money.

How much of society's money would you be willing to have someone killed for? Ten million? A thousand? Somewhere in between, perhaps.

How's that working out for you? Murder rate in the US is higher than (almost?) any western country that has abolished the death penalty.