"As a Scot living through the referendum, it has been a sea of optimism and YES flags and events. Many people, including myself woke up this morning very disappointed but also wondering how did this happen:"

I can explain it to you, but like most yes voters you probably wouldn't get it, but here, I'll try anyway.

Those of us sat outside of Scotland, not caught up in the sea of supporters here and there and who bothered to look at the polls - not just the headlines, and that paid attention to events not just in a single locale but across the country, especially in the last few weeks saw something slipping through. We saw the ugly side of nationalism finally shine through, and we saw the impact that was having.

You see dear rapiddescent, all those yes flags, all those events, coupled with the things you'd probably rather not hear about or deny ever happened such as militant yes voters physically attacking no campaigners and even splitting up families and neighbourhoods, telling people they weren't true scotsmen if they voted no. All those things - they weren't a sign you were winning, you'd overwhelmed the opposition sure, all anyone could hear was yes because they'd either silence or out-shouted no at every turn, no, they were simply a sign that you weren't letting people with opposing opinions have their say.

So whilst you were busy silencing and out-shouting the opposition you missed something important- the importance of actually winning the arguments.

Along comes polling day, and guess what? all those people you'd silenced, shouted over, and prevented from expressing their opinion as vocally as you did got to have their say in the ballot box, a place you couldn't silence them, couldn't harass them, and guess what? that's where your weakness of focussing on a a blitzkrieg of yes spam rather than actually putting forward good ideas and rational arguments let you down.

That dear sir, is why the streets were full of yes campaigners, why all you could see and hear was them in the streets, on social media, and in classic media, but why when it came to, you still lost. You militantly silenced the majority, but the silent majority still got to have their say in the end.

The media wasn't biased in it's reporting, most media outlets didn't declare a preference, and those that did largely only did so in the last week or so (it was actually the pro-independence media that declared and actively backed first). You may wish to tell yourself that you've been cheated out of something, that you've been hard done by, that the media was against you, that vested corporate interests stopped it, but none of that is true. You lost simply because a majority were smart enough to see that your arguments didn't stack up, and were put off by your vile nationalist tendencies that kept slipping out from under your mask (like say, when Jim Sillars stood alongside Alex Salmond said post-independence they'd nationalise foreign companies in a revenge act for not supporting independence: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...).

I suspect the biggest problem would be the cost and pollution of transporting it relative to other fertilisers that we can transport in a much more efficient manner, we can't really do what the Sahara does with it's mineral sands more efficiently than it already does it, though we can work more efficiently with other fertilisers. The Sahara though does a good job naturally, those global wind patterns do all the work for us with zero pollution.

Given that it's probably worth taking a step back and realising that actually most of the farming that's done today already works on your plan albeit with, as I say, different fertilisers. Much of the world's crops grown today are only feasible to grow precisely because we already do use artificial fertilisers in agriculture across the globe so your plant is already being done in a roundabout way, it's just more efficient for us to do it in our own way outside of the Sahara and more efficient for the Sahara to do what it does by itself.

"No, it doesn't. Just because there is a disadvantage to a choice, doesn't mean that it is "almost" zero sum. You still have to consider the advantages."

Well if you manage to move a few million people to Antarctica and the resultant increase in sea level means a few million people have to leave coastal areas then yes, it is. I did clearly say (and suggested potential examples) there are indeed some areas you could probably get away with spreading the population to with much more minimal disadvantage.

"What species would not be a selfish species in your sense?"

Many colony based species are, such as ants and bees work for the interests of the colony rather than for the individual, though I'm not really sure what the relevance of the question is- the fact that other species are selfish doesn't change the fact that humans are also.

"And this overpopulation problem isn't being caused by the rich. It's being caused by the teeming masses of non-rich."

You're mixing cause and effect, increased birth rates are a symptom of poverty where the per-child survival rate is low, overpopulation is simply a symptom of a bigger problem, not the underlying problem itself. If you take those poor people that you deem responsible for overpopulation and place them in a place where there are crops and water aplenty like the UK then I assure you they will start seeing higher survival rates and lower death rates - the problem is the people who already inhabit these areas and have already prospered as a result keep it for themselves, but you know what? I'm not even judging that - it is natural instinct to look after your own precisely because as I say we are a particularly selfish species, but it absolutely is simply a statement of fact about what does and would happen. The wealthy in the world would still inhabit the most beneficial places, and the poor would still be forced to the places where there is no scope to prosper and would still continue to overproduce children as a survival mechanism as a result.

I don't think it's worth arguing whether that's good, bad, or whose fault it is, or isn't, who is good, or bad, who is innocent or not - none of that really matters because it's just a description of the natural state of the human race and I'm not sure whether we could ever really do much to change that or not, but either way it also doesn't mean that we shouldn't at least recognise it for what it is.

That assumes that all those environments are pointless wastes of space, unfortunately that premise isn't true- those areas of land serve important purpose for example the sands of the Sahara blow across the Atlantic and fertilise the likes of the Amazon rainforest.

A lot of people say "Why don't we geo-engineer the Sahara to make it tropical forest again!" but it becomes almost a zero-sum game, as you grow forests in Africa you decrease the fertilisation of the Amazon and so growth is stunted there in turn.

We can only move into these territories (or even keep expanding in existing ones) if we can find a way to do so without impacting the underlying ecosystem, otherwise we find ourselves with a whole lot of people and not enough resources and you know what that generally means? war - winning side gets the resources.

So it's not just about making an area habitable, or comfortable, it's about doing so in a manner that doesn't have a knock on effect elsewhere - by regrowing Africa into a tropical jungle paradise you'd be slowly pushing ever more of South America into a poor inhospitable desert. Similarly if you start inhabiting Siberia and Antarctica with more human activity resulting in greater melting of these regions you'll simply be flooding coastal regions elsewhere and making them uninhabitable.

Long story short, you cannot make massive changes to large areas of land without there being an impact elsewhere. You can see this on many scales, whether it's the farmers that cleared the forests on the hills of South West England to give themselves more land for crops leading to widespread devastating flooding due to lack of trees to slow water down in the hills, or whether it's something much larger scale as with the Africa/Amazon connection above. For every sizeable environmental change we make there is an impact elsewhere.

For what it's worth, I suspect the place we could most likely inhabit on land with the least impact elsewhere is in parts of the sea but even this would require a lot of care so as to restrict ocean pollution from waste which may damage fish stocks and decrease food. Failing that it's to space we go I guess.

Which isn't to say that there aren't some areas of the planet we can inhabit with little impact elsewhere meaning there is some scope for population growth, but those areas are becoming ever less common and the effects of inhabiting them elsewhere are often subtle making it difficult to know when you have and haven't found a reasonable spot to settle more people. Thus fundamentally it's not simply a case of saying "Hey look that place isn't inhabited, let's inhabit it!" because in doing so you're causing destruction of environments elsewhere where people were inhabiting and now you have to find room for them too.

Of course, I suspect none of it will matter- the rich will live where they desire to live and any knock on impact on anyone else? well they can go fuck themselves, because humans are an inherently selfish species.

Just about everything how will he get currency union? it takes two to agree and one side has ruled it out meaning it's a no go. How will he get EU membership? Spain's PM has said he'll veto.

The only thing Salmond will get are about 8.9% of the UK's assets,

I know you think the Bank of England is an asset, but it's not, well, the building is, and the walls are, but then so is Hollyrood as much an English asset in that respect, but no, everything else that "is" the BOE is employees, and political policy- you can't go independent and say you want sway over our public sector employees and our political policy as a sovereign nation - upon independence the policy splits and British currency is British policy, Scotland loses access to that on independence - if you want to retain a say in British policy it's simple, vote no, because what you're asking for is not independence.

Debt isn't the BOE, debt is a negative asset just like a bunch of fighter jets are a positive asset, on independence you only get to take your population share of each of all these assets, including the negative ones like debt. Now, you could leave the debt with the UK but then you leave equivalent value assets with the UK like fighter jets and leave yourself with no defence, no hospital equipment and so on, but that's upto Salmond and his Scots to decide whether they'd rather have assets and debt, or no assets and no debt, what he doesn't get is fantasy world assets and no debt because debt is just another asset (again, albeit a negative one). Other negative assets that are more tangible might be for example nuclear power plants that require decommissioning soon- assets come in both flavours and you don't get to pick and choose which you do and don't take unilaterally.

"Do you seriously think that England will erect a fence all along the border and place immigration checkpoints along it?"

Absolutely yes. That pro-UK rhetoric that's rife in the UK and that Salmond has been using to fear monger for independence will only grow stronger without Scotland and do you really think for one moment that any UK political party will be able to allow an open border with a country that has admitted it will have an extremely lax attitude to immigration because mass immigration is one of Salmond's plans (and one the easiest method of) to grow the wealth of Scotland?

I'm fairly pro-immigration but even I'd say we need a border there because whilst I'm fairly pro-immigration I still believe if nothing else we have to know who is and isn't coming in and out so we at least have some statistics on that - we can't do that with an open border with Scotland.

"Do you really think that the Spanish will lock themselves out of Scottish fishing waters by blocking their EU membership?"

Yes, because Catalonia brings far more money into Spain than Scotland's fishermen do.

"And then the rest of the UK will just watch as Russian soldiers arrive on their doorstep?"

No he was saying that's what would happen if the rest of the UK opted not to care what happened to Scotland, but the fact Scotland is basically sponging off the UK for security is rather galling given that Salmond's entire argument has been "We should become independent because we can go it alone and do everything better" - not defence it would seem at least.

Cambridge isn't a Scottish university, it's English.

"I don't see why Scotland would be rejected, especially since the UK has been a pain in the arse ever since it joined the EU. As a matter of fact, many countries in the EU would welcome Scotland just to piss off the Brits."

Yeah, one small problem with your nonsense fantasy- the Brits have a veto. So if any European nation decided to piss the Brits off the Brits can just screw their plans with a simple veto.

It only takes one country to say no, and Scotland's entry is automatically denied.

"The Euro is not the EU, and vice-versa."

It doesn't matter, that's not even what he said. The euro is controlled by the EU and that's all that matters, if the EU doesn't want Scotland in it then it wont get in it, the fact the two aren't completely aligned doesn't change that.

"You are not making any sense - again, the currency you use is totally independent from EU membership itself."

No it's not, all new member nations are put on a roadmap to joining the euro, you cannot join the EU anymore without also engaging in a plan to join the euro. This is even true for existing EU nations such as Sweden- they're obligated to join the euro at some point. The UK is the only exception because it's big enough to have been able to negotiate what Sweden couldn't - a euro optout. If a country with an economy over two times the size of an independent Scotland can't argue for an opt out then how the hell would Scotland do so do you think?

I don't think you have the slightest clue what the international rules are. If Scotland wants to argue for even anything in it's favour then independence has to be something that Westminster agrees to. If Westminster blocks independence then Scotland can go it alone and take it's case to the UN and obtain it that way, but international courts have consistently ruled that separation occurs with assets split based on population.

There is literally no way Salmond can achieve his demands- the UK is against them and will not agree to them and international courts will force him to accept a share of debt or default. This is not an argument he can win even at the ICJ or at a WTO tribunal, which ironically might not even be an avenue, because Scotland would have to get into the WTO in the first place.

The BoE belongs to Scotland in the same way that Hollyrood belongs to Westminster - all these things were purchased in sterling. Sure Salmond can argue that if they don't get the benefits of the BoE that they wont take the debt, but then the UK can argue that if they don't take the debt then they need to pay rent on the Scottish parliament buildings and similarly Scotland wont get to keep the eurofighters or frigates or NHS equipment it wants either because those are all similarly sterling denominated assets- you cannot take sterling denominated assets and not take sterling denominated debt, that will never be agreed to be anyone, whether the UK government, the people of the UK, or international courts.

Salmond's only hand is demand for faster removal of trident, but in turn the UK can veto Scottish EU and NATO entry so if Salmond plays that only hand then he is absolutely screwed by the response.

Post-separation the UK will still be the 6th biggest economy, yet Scotland will fall to 42nd. Given that economic way ties strongly to political weight (because no one wants to piss off the countries that are economically strong enough to also make them rich) do you still seriously believe Salmond has a strong negotiating hand? are you honestly that naive?

If Shetland and/or Orkney go their own way and become independent from Scotland or stick with the rest of the UK taking the oil with them then Scotland is even more screwed, it'll literally have nothing.

"Thatcher destroyed manufacturing and industry in the whole of the UK."

Christ, not this broken old meme. Thatcher didn't even come close to destroying manufacturing in the UK, the UK is still the 9th largest manufacturer in the world in spite of the trend towards manufacturing in poorer nations where labour is cheap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

That's right, the GDP value of UK manufacturing is about 4 times that of commonly cited manufacturing powerhouses like Taiwan.

So can this meme die already? It's not true, it's not even close to true, and it's never been true. The only manufacturing Thatcher killed was those industries that were unprofitable and being subsidised by the tax payer and hence were a drain on everyone's pocket.

There are plenty of better reasons to hate Thatcher like her overuse of military in civilian situations, her anti-European stance and her overly conservative views on almost everything else, but economic policy? she simply cannot be faulted there, she modernised our economy and made us as prosperous as we are.

The same is true of the Tories now, they've done fuckloads wrong such as being way too close to Murdoch and having helped derail press regulation but you'd have to be a special kind of idiot to argue their economic policy has failed- we're the fastest growing G7 nation, the nation most firmly into it's recovery and with the best trajectory on reduction of unemployment in the West.

This debate on Scotland, and too many others are being had on myths and legends like you just made and it's tiresome because as in this case the statistics paint the exact opposite of what you're claiming. The UK is still a global manufacturing powerhouse- you cannot claim a country in the top ten out of 203 to be anything else.

Objectively the UK is doing incredibly well relative to just about every other nation in a similar position right now, that's not something to bitch and moan about and yet you and the Scots are doing exactly that- frankly nothing will ever please you because you're unpleasable, even with our excellent growth and great reductions in unemployment it's still not good enough for you.

"This would leave Scotland with a new currency but with tremendous assets and no liabilities."

This is absolute stark raving nonsense. Debt is the opposite of assets, both things are valued in sterling currently. If you opt to leave the UK with no debt, you opt to leave with no assets that were paid for with that debt. This means that yes Scotland absolutely can vote to leave with no sterling debt, but it also leaves with no sterling assets - that means no frigates, no eurofighters, no hospital equipment, no public sector IT equipment as they're all assets valued in sterling, just as the debt is valued in sterling. You can't take one and not the other and I'm astounded so many of you Scots believe Alex's nonsense codswallop that's so easily disproven.

That blue book is like a kind of nationalist Bible - and like the Bible it's a book of fairy tales for gullible folk to believe and made follow you with.

Microsoft aren't trying to produce a magic controller that is perfect for everyone, because given the manufacturing constraints of producing a million different shaped controllers that'd be impossible.

What they're doing is targetting something that pleases the largest amount of people in a representative sample, this is real design testing and it's a shame you don't understand that.

This is why when you buy t-shirts or similar you have a choice between small, medium, large, and maybe extra large and xxl, but what you don't get is a thousand different shapes with a few millimetres here or there.

You apparently don't understand the reality of producing a product and the use of samples to provide a solution that's pleasing to the largest amount of people in a sample as possible. Sure they could've made it bigger all around for people with large hands and their cramping problem, but they'd be satisfying 1% of their user base whilst making it too big for the other 99%. Likely they've landed up with something that was preferable to a decent majority (like 80%) even if 20% preferred other designs.

You cannot design something like a controller around a minority, the fact you think you should shows that contrary to your early comments about HCI it's most definitely you that absolutely does not have the slightest clue about the combined topics of HCI and the reality of providing a manufacturable and marketable solution.

Bless, you've missed the entire argument about effective spying vs. blanket surveillance of targets it's illegal (under the US' own laws) to surveil. I'll give you a hint, since the US ratified the UDHR into law it's just as illegal for the US to spy on foreign civilians that have no threat dimension to the US (i.e. are not terrorists, criminals, or foreign spies) as it is to spy on your own people.

Yes of course all countries spy, everyone knows that, you're stating the obvious and repeating something that's already been said. What most countries do though when spying is focus on threats, not snoop illegaly through the communications of foreign civilians that have no threat dimension.

Which is why when you support illegal spying of foreign innocents, you're supporting the exact same illegality that you're bitching about with non-foreigners.

But I get it, you're one of those crackpot American exceptionalists, you believe you're the master race and everyone else is irrelevant and that only you matter, which would also explain why you're not very smart and missed the entire point above- they're spying on you because you support and defend their illegal spying- you can't say it's okay for them to spy illegally in some cases, but not in others, you don't get to pick and choose, the law is the law and if you want them to break it then don't be surprised and don't bitch and moan when they do exactly that to you.

But we're not talking about 1946 - 1999, that's irrelevant to what's happening now. It's like going back 300 years and saying, well, look at the growth of the UK with it's empire, obviously that means it's kicking ass in the world! It's meaningless.

"China's overwhelming advantage over India and much of the rest of the world is its 5000 years of centralization, plans that would have been non-starters in a decentralized government and economy, like One Child and the open development of the Great Firewall, are acceptable there. Brasil is a special case, drastically underpopulated and resource-rich, while India is the exact opposite. You're not even comparing apples and oranges, more like apples and Barkaloungers."

If you think you can make India a special case by arguing that there is something different about the country then you're severely misguided. We all operate in the same world economy and all countries have their differences. Whatever differences you want to argue for India you can't hide from the fact that it has failed to take advantage of the same growth in largely ex-3rd world nations that China and Brazil have seen. We have evidence of why it's failed too - India's great outsourcing of services plan was too much of a leap and it failed because it didn't have the talent required to support those sorts of high

"Stand back and take the long view, look forward a generation or two. Other cultures do it, which is why Japan, China and India have repeatedly risen from the ashes like the phoenix."

What you're effectively saying is "Yes, we've fucked up in the short term but maybe it'll all be okay in the end!" that's nonsense, it's pointless speculation. Maybe India will also collapse and split into 20 different nations, predicting the future is a mugs game. What matters is the heard and now and the much more predictable near future - it's still clear that whilst India's neighbours like China have massively prospered, India has failed.

Your whole argument is based around "but the past!" and "but the future!", it's a pathetic attempt to hide from the reality of the recent past, the current, and the near future and it shows a profound lack of will to accept reality and instead make up a pretend future in the hope it'll come true and somehow absolve your nonsense arguments about why it doesn't matter that it's failed in the present.

That, and frankly, the FOSS community needs to make a choice - if they want the year of Linux on the desktop to stop being a joke and start being a reality there has to be a move towards this sort of professionality that gives corporations the confidence they need to roll it out onto the desktop - they need to know it will be supported for x number of years, they need to know there will be frequent updates to keep it competitive and so on.

There are a non-negligible number of participants in the FOSS community that want both global domination for their software, but just want to continue to developing in a laissez faire attitude - avoiding the responsibilities of creating something genuinely competitive and reliable enough to become dominant such as decent planning, professional efforts on documentation, design and UX stuff whilst also complaining that it doesn't get the attention they want.

IMO there are two choices developers have when working on FOSS projects:

1) Do it for fun and don't give a shit who or how many people use it, don't care how they use it, when they use it, just develop it because you like developing and because it's a good opportunity to showcase your skills and keep them sharp.

2) Care about how people use it, how successful it is, how widespread it is, but accept that there is a cost to this - the cost being that you have to expend effort doing the non-fun parts of software development like offering support, quashing bugs in a pre-agreed timeframe, providing documentation and so on and so forth.

Those who want the success and want to crush proprietary software without wanting to put in the effort of doing the boring stuff that makes proprietary software so successful in so many cases are living in fantasy land. Personally I have respect for people whatever decision they make above, what I don't have respect for are those who want to achieve the political agenda of 2) but simultaneously demand the lack of responsibilities of 1) - that's not realistic.