Other than the parts and pieces of chemical weapons factories were found in Iraq. It obviously wasn't in place in active production, but why does that matter?

This BTW is the argument that went in circles a little over a decade ago, where sadly there were a great many people in denial that there were any kind of chemical stockpiles much less factories making this stuff in Iraq. I do remember the discussions, including here on Slashdot, that rehashed this same argument over and over again... even to the point some moderators modded my comments down when I pointed out just as you have that Iraq had pre-existing stockpiles.

This wasn't nearly so obvious in the heat of that very public discussion, with considerable misinformation going on sort of like you were suggesting that Iraq was going to nuke New York City if we didn't invade... although that was never claimed by Bush or for that matter Hillary Clinton when she cast her vote to support the invasion of Iraq. That particular vote in Congress is one that IMHO was done by members of congress who were very well informed not just by intelligence agencies but also by their constituents in terms of what the sentiment was from their states & districts when those votes were cast. Anybody claiming ignorance or that they were fooled when that vote was cast is just being stupid and trying to rewrite their own history.

What is your solution? Genocide? I presume that you are not going to be the ones "selected for elimination" for "the final solution".

The arrogance of those who go nuts with regards to overpopulation just make me want to puke and try to remove them from the gene pool first as obviously they are the ones who are by far a danger to humanity than what they are preaching about. As long as they are on the margins spouting off nonsense I don't care, but I do care when they get into positions of political power and start to implement their ideas.

Besides, a population crash (a massive drop in human populations) is really a much larger concern right now and something facing both North America and Europe in a huge way.

As for water resources, it is incredibly silly to say that there is any shortage at all for a planet that has so much of it that it is seen as a blue twinkle when seen at a distance due to its abundance. Pure potable water is a bit harder to get, but that is called logistics and allocation of energy resources alone. The Earth can support a population a thousand times what currently exists... perhaps more.

The problem is that chemical weapons are treated as if they were nuclear weapons in terms of diplomatic maneuverings and consequences... or at least were considered as such. In other words, if a country decides to openly use chemical weapons on American soldiers, it is considered "justified" to go ahead and use nuclear weapons in retaliation.

Yes, this is screwed up and seems silly, but it was the chemical weapons that the Bush administration was talking about elsenwhen, not the nuclear or biological weapons.

Iraq also had a nuclear bomb program in the 1980's, but that one got bombed out of existence by Israel when Iraq tried to build a breeder reactor. There certainly wasn't anybody who was serious about finding nuclear weapons in Iraq in the early 2000's decade. The question at hand was with regards to how large and widespread their chemical weapons inventory might be.

I will agree that weev is acting like an asshat and targeting women. I don't think you can make any further generalizations beyond that or try to group him with any specific group unless they are calling themselves the "he-man woman hater's club" (something that came from the Little Rascals movie serials in the 1930's... and even that group was tongue in cheek as they had a girl as a member).

Some guys target women, some women target men, or some jerks simply target "marks" or something else that is weak in their view.

This isn't a gender specific issue though. It is a cyber-bullying issue where both law enforcement and ISPs need to be serious about stamping out this behavior and setting forth explicit policies about harassment and engaging in not just banning those individuals but reaching out with handcuffs and letting them know there are consequences to on-line behavior. Where needed, laws may even need to be enacted because this stuff is getting out of hand.

One group I will acknowledge is at least trying to do the right thing is the Wikimedia Foundation, where explicit policies are in place along with active involvement of the WMF legal counsel to turn over evidence to law enforcement of the country where somebody does this kind of serious death threat. It has happened on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects over the years, and while I have not faced such a threat I would take seriously, I have seen it done on behalf of others.

Facebook on the other hand is a steaming pile of manure and doesn't care what happens to its users. I could name other groups but it is an issue that can and should be addressed in a larger forum.

I have played female characters on MMORPGs before. This is usually just for variety (it is always a secondary account) and to explore the game in a slightly different dimension.

I never try to hit on guys or even act feminine, but I neither confirm nor deny my gender in that situation as well (it is usually assumed I'm female when I'm not). Most of the time it is just some shy kids who try to hit on me (where I say something like "in your dreams... dude" or something else just as pithy) and try to shrug it off. Most of the time it really doesn't even matter, but there are a couple of creeps who go overboard.

It is definitely a different kind of experience in that situation in terms of the social interaction.

You really need to get out of the basement and start to meet some real people. Doing something like missionary work (even for the Pastafarians.... it really doesn't matter) or selling calendars door to door. Something that can give you a chance to actually meet ordinary people who do ordinary things.

Most people are compassionate and care about others. A small minority think of those others as marks or suckers, but that is the problem of that small minority. Trolls like you are talking about are definitely a small minority of the small minority who have some personal issues with society due to genetics or disposition and personality.

As for the misogynist attitude among several posts, I agree this is equal gender opportunity here. Women do things a little different than men, but the brutal asshats among women are just as cruel as any men. They can also screw over men if they want to get their claws into you. Luckily, even among women those are a minority.

Nothing about the GP post you were replying to was stupid and IMHO was spot on for the situation described.

In my case the police wouldn't even act. When I contacted the internet service provider for the communications medium I was using, their response was to delete the threat (very clear, very specific, and yes, I felt and still feel that my children's lives are at risk by this deranged individual). The ISP tried to console me by directing me to a web page about cyber bullying and essentially saying "grow a pair".

That was it. There was no potential for litigation because the ISP deleted the evidence in spite of a screen capture I made (thus I couldn't even confirm it really happened).

As for the rest of your advise, you are simply full of shit and don't know the law.... particularly for situations like this. I do feel like some firearms used against the asshat in this case is very appropriate, but I would need to seek them out first to be assured my kids are safe. That is first degree murder that would put me in a firing squad instead (which is still used in my state). Perhaps worth the price to protect my kids, but not very useful legal advise.

I wish your advise was the way the law works, but it isn't. Instead, I need to bury a child before the law will act.

The Social Security Number is way overused and unfortunately treated as a password rather than as a somewhat (but not always) unique number meant to distinguish one citizen from another for tax purposes. The misuse of that number by banks, credit agencies, and for that matter government bureaucrats is what makes its disclosure so horrible. Otherwise it would be no different than simply disclosing your name or treating it like your phone number.

Like Joe Biden? He actually thinks he has a shot at becoming President in the next term.

I guess that is more or less confirming your hypothesis though.

He likely lives a lifestyle where he doesn't give a damn. Considering his unapologetic response, that almost certainly seems to be the situation. Doing that sort of bullshit won't work. Neither will putting him into Club Fed.

A Mexican or Turkish prison, on the other hand, might just be the ticket.

Which unfortunately won't get prosecuted unless you have a pile of money or are famous enough for the police to bother caring about you. I've had similar death threats against me and zero action done against the perpetrator. There is literally nothing you can do about it in most cases other than pray and hope that the asshat on the internet won't actually act. If you or your child (which was what was threatened in my case... they said my kids wouldn't come home from school the next day) is dead, it is too late to act anyway.

While technically illegal, you can't get the police to act.

The only time I got any action was when I observed somebody making a death threat openly to the President of the USA. The Secret Service took that one seriously.

I think in this case it was a mid-level manager at SpaceX who thought they knew more about labor laws than might actually be the case. Even if it was Elon Musk himself who pushed these guys out the door, it really is just a dispute over money and how much is owed to them... based upon a technicality of labor laws and not upon actual hours worked.

My own opinion is that SpaceX screwed up here, but doesn't mean that SpaceX is a slimy company to work for either. If anything, it just shows the growing pains they have been going through from the rapid increase in employees they have had over the past decade.

I think it is wrong to suggest there is no hypothetical ability to store intelligence. It is on the level of interstellar colonization though, which means that while the specific details for how it can be done haven't been worked out, the potential exists for something like this to actually happen. It may require quantum computers to become a whole lot more sophisticated than will exist in even a hundred years or more, perhaps thousands of years. It may take computing concepts that don't even exist right now.

There certainly seems to be enough researchers doing Artificial Intelligence studies that the idea of creating a self-aware machine capable of thinking just like a human in terms of drawing conclusions, coming up with original ideas, and discovering new truths is entirely possible. Any such machine capable of creating a new such intelligence is just as capable of storing that intelligence and preserving everything about "you" or "me" such that we would find it indistinguishable from what we are right now.

So no, you haven't provided evidence, you have provided ignorance.

Your assertion here is that the essence of who we are, our soul if you will, can't ever be immortal. I guess that takes defining eternity and suggesting that we can never live past the heat death of the universe. On the other hand there is nothing to suggest that it is impossible to build a machine that stores our intelligence that can last for billions or even trillions of years, which on a practical level might as well be immortal when you can outlast M-class stars and watch the death of galaxies that you were also an eyewitness to their birth.

In terms of retrieving the souls or intelligences of people who have died, that only takes time travel. Again something very theoretical and not possible with current technology, but something that even Albert Einstein suggested is at least in theory possible even if at the moment a practical means of doing so is not available. Presuming that some future technological civilization may possess the ability to travel through time, it may very well be that our ancestors have already been scanned in some means such that their "souls" have been preserved for billions of years into the future.

Again, I'm not saying that any of this is true, but it really pokes a giant hole in your strong assertion that this can never happen as well.

No, Elon Musk was actually at a point where not only these companies were in risk of bankruptcy (noting also that he personally guaranteed much of the debt of these companies too, not to mention having fiduciary responsibility over the debt of these companies as CEO), but that he even was in debt at this time too.

You are simply wrong. He was very much at risk of personal bankruptcy too and definitely losing everything he had.