Would you put your life on closed source software not having any bugs that we just don't know about because it's closed source and hence can NOT be reviewed sensibly?

Closed source and open source share one problem: Both can and will have bugs. Open source only has the advantage that they will be found and published. In closed source, usually NDAs keep you from publishing anything you might come across, ensuring that knowledge about these bugs stays within certain groups that have a special interest in not only knowing about it but abusing them.

Standard means jack. As long as there is no good reason (like, say, avoiding a fine that breaks your back or jail time) bugs like that are not being told, they're being sold.

Either the person looking at me cares about how I feel. Then he will be pissed that I try to delude him.

Or he doesn't give a shit how I feel. Then it does not matter what I look like.

And now tell me again why I'd want to spend money on that.

A lot of different topics, I'll try my best to address most of them at least.

First, most countries in Europe are actually rather small. Only 8 of the 53 have more than 20 mil people, 14 have more than 10. But even in some of the big countries, like Germany, Spain, Italy, France, you have a rather large amount of parties and they are by far not so "ancient" that you could say they grew out of a time when there were no firmly entrenched parties. Europe has a long history of political plurality, and voters tend to shop around.

Israel is a very special case indeed, a showcase of how a small party can have an impact and also one how a small party can have an impact that it's by no means entitled to. That's the threat when you have a three party system, where you have two large parties that can simply not agree on anything and a tiny one that could cooperate with either of the big ones and that will "sell" its handful of votes to whatever side offers them the biggest share of the cake.

But it's by no means hard to get an idea to national level, provided you're not the only one who has that idea. A good example is the Green movement of the 1980s. You have Green parties in pretty much every state of Europe, and independent of the size of the country they are all fairly successful, of course to varying degree. Germany, where the Greens actually made it into the national government a while ago, is a counter example to your claim that such new parties can only succeed in small countries because you cannot rally enough people to your "cause".

The problem of the US, and why it is so hard to form a new party, is not so much the size or the organization structure required to get it off the ground. The problem is a psychological one that stems from the first-past-the-post system. You will notice a similar psychological barrier to voting for a certain party in Europe, too, if people don't think that the party will make it past the election threshold. In most countries, you have to get at least 3-6% (it differs from country to country) of the votes to actually win a seat in the parliament. The goal is to avoid what happened in Italy where you suddenly had a few dozen parties sitting in the parliament which made it near impossible to govern the whole shit. It also means, though, that people do here the same they do in the US, just at a smaller scale. There are usually some parties with rather interesting concepts and ideas in many EU countries that would have a following but that following does not trust them to get in the parliament and hence their vote being "lost". So instead they give their vote to a party that does not match their preferences so well but at least has a chance to make it in.

It's the same with the US. To take up your example, if you're one of the group you mentioned, it would make a lot of sense to vote for the party you propose, but as long as people don't think that this party would gain majority they will rather fall back onto D or R, depending on what they're rather leaning towards.

In a world with no central power to establish order, limited supplies, people knowing both those facts and guns aplenty, 99% of humanity dead in a week doesn't sound so outlandish, does it?

A person or two mentioned Conway's Game of Life. Unless I specifically say so, I am not binding myself to only mentioning that one thing and never moving on to any related ideas which happen to be outside its scope. And I didn't specifically say so. Therefore I see no value in pointing that out.

Am I the only one who thinks the entire notion of a "class-action lawsuit" was a bad idea?

If a company materially harms 250,000 individuals, let them defend against 250,000 individual lawsuits. That would be a massive disincentive against harming people. Having to pay lawyers for that many separate lawsuits would be a lot more like the predicament (during a standard isolated case) of the one individual trying to have a legal battle against a huge multination corporation. Seems fair to me.

Plus in many class-action lawsuits, only the lawyers really win. The former customers might get a $10 coupon or something like that.

Is there any chance that the lawyers who knowingly and intentionally come up with such ideas and try to implement them could be disbarred? Few measures would more effectively discourage the practice.

The difference being, there is some chance the Slashdot user was actually involved in producing that software (or has enough expertise to competently discuss its merits and faults). There's also a chance they're responding to people who chose to use shoddy software when better alternatives were available, and are now complaining about the results.

Why the boolean logic?

In case you hadn't noticed, pure electric cars are stomping the ever loving crap out of the luxury/performance car market. So long as the cars are selling at a growing pace, they are here to stay and are ready for the people who continue to buy them.

And as long as this happens, manufacturers will make continuing improvements to the cars they make.

A) The power grid is constantly being worked on. As people buy more cars, the grid will be upgraded to match demand.

B) Swappable batteries might be one of those improvements. But they don't seem to be required, at least not yet.

C) 1000 miles on a charge? Show me any common car that gets anything like that range.

Lots of people expect the world to change all of a sudden. But it doesn't really. Instead, continuing incremental changes gradually make the world into a different place. Those incremental changes have rather drastically changed how people interact in just the 30 or so years that I can personally remember.

That depends on where it's located.

If you took it upon yourself to assume "right next to the machine being backed up" or "running on the same machine to be backed up" then don't ascribe to me your own assumption. It was no accident or omission that I said no such things.

Right, just like a pilot's license is useless to someone with no access to an aircraft. Personally I deal with that by running the file server 24/7. When you enable various power management options and have a clue about SSH and your favorite shell, it's really not a problem. If that doesn't describe you, find another solution. Simple and much more productive than complaining that there is no Final Ultimate Answer that is 100% suitable for all people at all times.

By reading this comment, you waive all rights to the ownership of your car...

OP starts with: "I am the sole sysadmin for nearly 50 servers (win/linux) across several contracts. ..."

This implies that he's paid hourly. Contracts implies that he's a consultant. If there's anything that a consultant craves, it's billable hours...

That is, in theory, a good idea. But for a third party to play a meaningful role, the first thing that would have to change is that first-past-the-post had to be abandoned. Else, all the effort you take to establish a third power will be void soon, history shows that a potential third power immediately results in one of the former two powers becoming irrelevant quickly and the power you established replacing it, resulting in a new, but by no means different, two party system.

The only ones that could change the system itself are, though, exactly the same entities that have no interest at all in changing it. If there is one thing that two parties in a FPTP system agree on, independent of possible differences, is that the system is great. Because it does exactly what is in their interest, ensure that they have only one potential competitor instead of many. And eventually the two competitors become so similar (for the simple reason that they want to appeal to as many voters as possible, I can get into detail but I guess it's self explanatory why the two parties become very similar over time) that it doesn't really matter which one you support.

The system ensures that you have two near identical groups to choose from and both of them have no interest in changing the election system to one that allows more variety in the political landscape.

The main reason that it works for most of Europe is that few countries in Europe actually have a first-past-the-post system in place. Coalitions are very common in most European countries, with parties needing usually between 3 and 6 percent of the votes to make it into parliament. And it's far from impossible that such comparably small parties can become part of the government if a big party needs just a few more seats to get a working majority. That's why the Greens actually made it into governments in Europe.

And now tell me how this should possibly happen in the US.

The difference is that the homeless person did not CHOOSE to be homeless. He didn't get up one day and ponder that it would be so much nicer for him to abandon his home and live on the street.

The bully has always the choice NOT to bully someone. Instead he deliberately took the choice to be a bully.

Unless someone forces a bully to be a bully, I cannot follow your argument.