What a blissful world you live in!

Corporate taxes are bullshit in the first place. They are passed on in their product prices. If your response to that is that businesses are evil for doing so, then you are doubly a fool -- if an expense like taxes makes no difference in product prices, then why do other expenses matter? Expense is expense, money is fungible, and if you can't see that, you are far too ignorant to survive.

And that theoretical speed is with minimal fuel, no weapons, no armor, no maneuverability, no military radios. In short,

Then there's that crap about being a jet fighter.

which is only half the horsepower available in real fighter airplanes 5 years later which could only manage 450 mph.

This is one of the more idiotic articles to come down the pike in quite a while.

"Hard to follow" is itself hard to follow. The shades and colors and hard lines made it difficult for German stereo rangefinders to lock on, it made it difficult for submarines to determine the shape and length which were necessary for proper range, speed, and angle estimates, and in general it made target identification slower and more uncertain.

It wasn't zebra striping either. It was bizarre blocky shapes, always with straight edges, and there was a lot of color. The reason so many people think it black and white is because color film was very expensive and rare, and newspapers didn't print color pictures.

... if government just stepped out of the picture altogether. Yes, I hate bloatware. Why do you hate it so much, though, that you think you need to get government fo back up your hatred with the threat of jail and corporate death?

Government exists only to compel or prohibit, ultimately at the point of a gun. Its core competency is corrupt cronyism. To want that on your side is to admit your desires can not be achieved by moral persuasion or logical argument.

I wrote a file deduplicator. Build a table of file size ---> name. If two files have the same size, run md5sum on them or just use cmp -s. It's a trivial program.

But if you have photos which you consider duplicates but which have different sizes or checksums, then it's a visual gig and lots of boring tedious work,

Try this refutation.

tl;dr -- they counted the entire budget of any organization which spent even a dime on anything remotely anti-climate crisis. The true amount spent is probably (my guess) well under $100M.

It was intellectually dishonest to even release that study, and intellectually dishonest to tout it.

Exactly my thoughts. What need does this serve? Will it only be targeted at remote equipment (satellites, undersea rovers) which don't really need a phone or SIM card in the first place? Will accessible equipment still come with the write-once-read-mostly kind?

Anytime coercion enters the picture, along come its sibling corruption in every sense of the word.

If your scheme is not popular enough to stand on its own two legs -- if your arguments are not enough to win the day -- propping it up with compulsion is the only recourse left, and it reaps what it's worth.

Yes, let's set a standard, AND NEVER CHANGE IT.

Technology makes one leap into the future, and never changes again, so new standards are just capitalist hokum meant to deceive a gullible public and corrupt crony governments.

Why anyone ever let the government move away from the horsefull carriage standard, I do not know. Oh wait, that was after they'd already let the government approve the carriage, as if horses alone weren't good enough. Oh wait, that was after they'd already approved the walking standard. Oh wait, someone approved shoes and boots. And socks. And shoelaces, don't forget them, or velcro tabs, or slip-ons.

Yes, by all means, let's freeze standards to what YOU want, bub.

"Ministers" pretty much rules out .... only a few countries. Subby might want to include the country next time.

1. That's the first time anyone has ever tried a reverse ad hominem attack on me. Yay!

2. A one-sided conversation is not a conversation. Once commenced, a conversation is not under control of any single party to it. This is not a panel discussion and you are not the moderator of one. if you don't like the path the conversation taken -- if you now wish you had not made that first post -- too bad. Drop out if you want.

You have argued nothing except that you are butt hurt over being called out on your attempts to artificially limit the definition of corruption and cronyism. Your subsequent attempts to pretend you didn't start the topic and switch horses in mid-stream is interesting. I can only guess your first post embarrasses you so much you want to disown it.

If, instead, all you want to do now is argue about what degree of butt hurt you are, find a mirror. But if you want to argue about what crony corruption is, feel free to respond again. I'm sure slashdot's servers can withstand your efforts.

Your only limit on a conversation is refusal to take part. If you bring up corruption in a half-assed manner and I call you out and show how the problem is far wider than you are willing to admit, you don't get to call a foul on me for expanding the conversation. That's 3 year old behavior.

You especially don't get to try to limit the conversation to your original post on the one hand, and then widen it on the other hand by telling me to go read other comments of yours. That's admission that you wish to withdraw your original comment because it wasn't reflective of your rhoughts.

My opinions of you are necessarily as fact-free as your opinions of me. My facts showing the depth and breadth of crony corruption are sitting there waiting for you to answer with something other than "I was only talking about insurance since 2010" or more opinions on me, which apparently is ok for thee but not for me.

You say this thread is about the insurance industry, but only in 2010, apparently. You also say I should read all your other comments to see what kind of a person you are. You also say many other things, but you also say you say only one thing. You say I don't back up my arguments, but I did, and you don't answer those. But you want me to go read other comments you have made which have nothing to do with this.

Why don't you settle down to one single argument? Why do you insist I narrow my discussion down to insurance companies in 2010 while you also tell me to read your other comments, and while you wander all over the place and talk about everything except what I have said concerning your arguments?

You haven't done anything on this thread except (a) refuse to back up your bare assertions, (b) change the subject to your comment history when cornered, and (c) repeat the same bare assertions without backup.

Exactly what I have been saying about Washington and Wall St. Why you insist on singling out the insurance industry and claim they are distinct from Washington is a puzzle.

You're doing nothing of the sort. You're expecting me to blindly agree with you instead of thinking or requiring any proof, a typical statist attitude.

And the first cuss word comes from you! Who's in the frenzy here?

My argument is that differentiating Wall St and Washington is a distinction without a difference. Go back to your history. Look up Mayflower Compact. The indentured servants signed up for a Virginia destination, and threatened to free themselves when they were landed in Massachusetts instead. The Mayflower Compact was the fat cats' response to make sure there was some form of government at all times so they could maintain a facade of legality to keep the servants indentured even though the fat cats had broken their side of the contract.

George Washington and friends bought 200,000 acres in the Ohio Valley, a questionable deal with unsettled colony borders and agreements with the Indians, and then used their votes in the Virginia Legislature to give their deal some also questionable legal cover.

Later, as President and commander-in-chief, he led the army which put down the Whhiskey Rebellion of small farmers who couldn't manage to pay the whiskey tax. Was it a coincidence that Washington was a successful large scale whiskey farmer?

The revolution itself was co-opted by the merchants, sheriffs, judges, and other entrenched interests.

Not a single insurance company in the lot, not even John Hancock yet, but plenty of crony corruption. This corruption has been going on since the beginning of time. Your focus on the insurance companies in 2010, and your insistence that government is pure and should crack down on the insurance companies, is laughable.