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Comment Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score 2) 342

The only reasonable thing we can do is reduce the stockpile so we can eradicate humanity only once, instead of ten times and ensure that the weapons are safe (when idle). They may be necessary to prevent nuclear extortion, but we don't have to sink more money into it then necessary.

Unfortunately not. Simply reducing the stockpile isn't enough. A continuous stewardship programme is needed otherwise you'll very soon end up with a workable stockpile of zero, since these things decay over time.

The "kill the world 10 times over" was always hyperbole though. All you need is enough to reliably destroy enough of an enemy that it's never worth them attacking.

Comment Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score 3, Insightful) 342

Just because Obama's campaign slogan was "A Nuclear-Free World" doesn't mean he can't lie

This isn't evan a lie. The best way to get a nuclear free world is not to simply chuck them in the bin while Russia, China, etc still have them. That's the best way to get your ass handed to you on a plate in 20 years time. And after the ass-handing has happened the world still won't be nuclear free.

Sure there are countries that have done it, but their just cheap-ass freeloaders, relying on the US, the UK and France spending the money to not do it and thereby indirectly keeping them safe. It's great to say "hey I'm nuclear free" when you're close to two nuclear powers and allied to a third all of which have a good incentive to not let you get invaded. It's still freeloading.

As for revamping, the stockpile stewardship is and has been for a long time an ongoing process. Assuming a nuclear free world is in abstract a good idea, as I mentioned, simply getting rid of the nukes is not the way to do it. If you've decided you need them, keeping them unmaintained, on obsolete decaying missiles is also not a good idea.

Comment Re:DLR (Score 1) 179

If that were correct how would the Docklands Light Railway operate above ground without any drivers at all?

You are right in part: the late and IMO not lamented Bob Crow has been responsible for a lot of stupidness by running that union.

However, the subsurface lines share infrastructure with the surburban railways, whereas the DLR is essentially a closed system.

Comment Re:This is supposed to be the *WAY* they do their (Score 1) 392

That's not the point here. It's a fact that governments always do their best to cover up their mistakes and self-aggrandize.

As opposed to companies which self aggrandize and do their best to cover up their mistakes?

Seriously you can generalize that to:

PEOPLE do their best to self aggrandize a corollary of which is covering up mistakes.

Singling out the goverment (made of people, just like Soylent Green) as opposed to companies (also Soylent Green) makes it look like you have an axe to grind. Do you?

Comment Re:London underground has automatic trains (Score 3) 179

For example the central line has been automated since the 90s. Drivers there just to go on strike

+1 internets. So true.

Though in actual fact the drivers do serve some other purposes. Parts of the subsurface system (Central, District, Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City) are open to the air or just plain above ground. The drivers are needed in case there are unexpected obstructions on the line. Also, since none of the stations are designed for it (unlike the new metro line in Paris), the drivers are needed to make sure that the train is safe to leave and no passengers are stuck in the doors and so on.

The other, important purpose it to make sarcastic announcements when the train gets stuck at a signal, which is something they do excel at.

Comment Re:What's wrong with American drivers? (Score 2) 179

Washington DC Metro and San Francisco BART are very similar systems and were designed from the outset for fully automatic operation.

I still don't see why this should be a problem. As the article pointed out the London Underground operates flawlessly in this regard. There's a mix of trains there. All trains can be manually driven. Some lines are now pretty much fully automatic with the driver only required to press the button to start the trip to the next station.

Neither manual not automatic operation seems to have problems.

Comment Re:Business (Score 4, Insightful) 275

Judging by the number of broken web sites I've seen lately, we could use a bit more staticness and a bit less dynamicness

And a good deal faster too. It seems to be very fashionable now to use heaps of mandatory JS to serve up what in the end amounts to some text with a few images and perhaps a link or two. In other words exactly what HTML was designed to do, except it used 20M of JS libraries, hogs the CPU for a few minutes to render and is otherwise horrid.

But hey, it uses a different font to the default.

Comment Re:Is there a single field that doesn't? (Score 0) 460

That would be exactly my point. You just label anyone that disagrees with you to have "outright reprehensible behaviour".

And you just cherry pick and ouright make shit up. If you read his posts, you will very clearly see that he does not in fact label literally everyone who disagrees with him as having outright reprehensible behaviour. As far as I see, it's fine for him to label the dickheads who disagree as dickheads.

Either that or you just conveniently ignore (or pretend don't exist) the huge amount of people that disagree with you and do not have reprehensible behaviour.

I think you're confused as to who is ignoring what. You seem to be ignoring the people who disagree over things in a reasonable way who he isn't in fac labelling as sexist.

You think that you are better than people; you think that entitles you to act like an asshole.

You're projecting here. What I see is him disagreeing with people who are basically asshole MRAs and you jumping all over him accusing him of being a "straw feminist" whatever the fuck that is. You are thereby getting a very smug feeling of superiority over him (and now presumably me) which is exactly what you're accusing him of.

Comment Re:Is there a single field that doesn't? (Score 1) 460

But when I came back recently, the first thing I noticed was that the community is awful. Apparently everyone with 2 ounces of social skills left a while ago. The people left seem to be mostly basement dwelling neckbeards who have ridiculous issues with women.

Witness the rise of the MRA movement. The shared voice seems to have emboldened them o share their deep issues and repulsive attitudes much more freely.

Comment Re:Don't Miss The Point (Score 1) 105

It's a toy.

Bullshit. That's spoken like someone with too little imagination to know what to do with it. There's plenty of useful stuff one can do with a single head PLA only 3D printer. Look for example at how many printers are built with printed parts. Turns out you can build more than just 3D printers with plastic parts. Who knew, eh?

And with a little gingery furnace, one can go from cheap 3D printed plastic t cast aluminium... there are several online guides for this. And so on.

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