Not diamonds. Diamond prices are whatever deBeers says they are. ... Synthetic diamonds, now, possibly. But their prices are lower. If you want comodities, then iron is fairly good, but storage prices are high. (Notice I didn't say comodity futures?) A few decades ago I thought that monocrystalline silicon would be a good commodity to invest in, but I'm not sure that would still be a good long-term choice.

Why use the dollars to support foreign (to them) jobs, when they can just use them to purchase resources, companies, etc. True some minimal number of jobs will be involved in that, but any labor intensive processes can be shipped back home.

So its not just "jobs in the far future" it's "strip mine the country when convenient".

Sorry, but the "right" it issue "fake" certificates is pretty much what a CA is about. You are trusting them not to abuse that right. Google has said that they don't trust one particular CA, which happens to be in China. Many others also shouldn't be trusted, but still are. I have a real question as to which CAs actually *do* validate that the folk they issue certificates represent those with an actual right to the name...and my suspicion is that none of them do. If they did you wouldn't get so many "off by one letter" phishes.

Heraclitus might agree with you, but I do not.

The US Constitution has some of it's roots in Greek philosophy, but many of them are more directly derived from British Common Law and "The Rights of Englishmen". If you want to understand the purpose behind the Constitution, read Locke. (The Federalist Papers are too focused on the politics of the time to give you a good perspective.)

OTOH, there were disagreements among the "founding fathers", and I think the branch lead by Alexander Hamilton would agree with you. I have scant sympathy for that view however, preferring the branch lead by Thomas Jefferson (in his polemics, if not always in his actions).

Traitor is defined explicitly in the constitution. They betrayed their oath of office, they violated the law, they ignored the constitution. All that is true, and it doesn't constitute treason as defined by the constitution.

Mind you, I feel that they should all be given a decade of extreme solitary confinement. (I.e. *NOBODY* gets in to see them or talk to them except once a month a doctor & their lawyer in a combined visit (the doctor leaves first). And nobody includes guards. I'm thinking of a steel box with a garden lit be grow-lights and food delivered by bellamy tube. If the toilet breaks down they're in trouble...the doctor can order them moved to another cube on his next visit.)

If you actually ARE a Greek, then this sense.

If you believe in the values of the US Constitution, then Snowden is NOT a traitor (which is explicitly defined). And also his acts were in support of the Constitution, which is supposed to be the entire basis of the Federal government. That he revealed the current officeholders to be liars and oathbreakers is *not* a strike against him. I won't go into just how unconstitutional I believe the actions of the current and immediately prior government to be, but the only way they've been able to justify their actions are by requiring you to believe, essentially, that blue was yellow.

The thing is, that salve was intended for external use only. You *don't* put garlic, e.g., into your body, except for your digestive tract. And brass is a pretty good germicide all on its own, so perhaps some of the other parts of the mixture were to make the brass biologically available. The wine is probably to thin the mixture so that its penetrating (and alcohol is a pretty good germicide). Etc.

As an external salve this probably has some pretty reasonable uses...thick enough to be sticky, thin enough to be penetrating, and quite germicidal in multiple ways. It's also likely to give you heavy metal poisoning if you use too much of it too frequently, so dosage will be important. I don't know what the leeks do for the mixture, but they probably add texture while also being a yet different form of germicide.

It clearly isn't a mixture I would have thought of, but when pointed out it seems quite reasonable...as an external ointment for very occasional use. You could probably improve it by adding a bit of iodine or bromine...but that might cause the dissolved metallic salts I'm presuming to be present to percipitate, so maybe not.

As for this being the basis for a new class of drugs...I doubt that. It sounds rather like a mixuter of drugs already known to be effective, and one that's just a bit dangerous to use (though not as dangerous as MRSA).

IIUC, TIOBE measures amount of discussion rather than use, applications, or anything objectively useful. So, OK, I can agree that a lot of people are talking about .NET. I'm talking about it, and I have ZERO interest in using it until it's included in the Debian package repository (which will mean I'm willing to trust its license). OTOH, I actively develop in 3-4 languaes, not all of which are from the Debian repository, but all of which I have reasonable trust in. And I occasionally dip my fingers in 3-4 more languages, which means I am willing to install them. Because they have licenses that I have reason to trust. (I'm not saying a reasonable license is the only requirement, but it's one of the set of minimal features before I'll even look at it.)

FWIW, my top 3 languages are D, Python, and Java. Ruby is in 4th place. I also occasionally look at Fortran, Haxe, Eiffel, Racket Scheme, SBCL, Squeak, etc. So my not being willing to look at C# is a strong indictment of the license. This doesn't mean my assessment is correct, but if MS issues a license that has ANY uncertain questions about it, I won't trust the license. Twice bitten, thrice shy.

I don't know about the Java that you're using, but the one that I'm using uses the GPL license. I find that *much* closer to what I want. (The AGPL3 license is pretty near exactly what I want.)

OTOH, there are Java Libraries from Oracle that are more restricted. I don't use them.
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Well, to be honest I've currently switched development from Java to D, but it's not because of licensing issues.

That's not at all clear. Mammals still get viruses and infections, and they've been fighting that battle for millions of years. In fact one arguement justifying the existence of sex is that it's to allow multicellular creatures to evolve fast enough to stave off most parasites. I'm not sure I believe it, but it's true that when asexual multicellular creatures evolve they generally go extinct fairly quickly. (Except for bdelloid rotifers...which are pretty small, and have rapid generations, and also engage in gene sharing in a manner analogous to that used by bacteria.)

But the evidence from analogy is that this war cannot be won. By either side. If one side took to using only ROM of OS code, and that of standard applications (and not allowing any others), somebody would figure out how to infect the factory that was buring the ROMs.

I could find one for you, were I to feel like it. There's a local goatherd who's currently working the the city park, but who also does backyards, or other places that need a short trim.

Sorry, but Amazon took over the market by operating at a deficit for decades. I've heard that they are still operating at a deficit, which, if true, is frankly amazing. How *do* they stay in business.

When most companies use this policy (pricing below the cost of service) the governments put them out of business. Somehow Amazon is allowed to "prosper". (I'm not sure that proper is the right term if they're actually still operating at a deficit. I know they did for over a decade, as there used to be many financial people commenting about it.)

While that's reasonable circumstantial evidence, I don't know that it couldn't have been done by someone else, and the balance of the opinion seems to be that it, indeed, could be done by someone else.

OTOH, it's not clear who else would have a motive. And, governments not being any more monolithic that corporations, it could quite well have been some department (or actor within a department) acting without any knowledge by the official spokesman, and either with, or without, approval by higher organizational figures. And you can't tell. And that's *assuming* (without proof) that China, in some meaning of the term, was behind the attack.

So were I to guess, I'd guess that it was probably China behind the attack, and the spokesman for China didn't know. But please note that this is a guess with a lot of unverifiable assumptions, and I wouldn't even want to guess how much probability to assign it.

Well, it's actually quite plausible. That doesn't mean you should believe it. Lots of things are believable that aren't true.

The interesting thing is, I can't think of how they could either make it believable that they did it or that they didn't do it. In some things there are no good grounds for having a belief in either (any) direction.

The thing is, all the governments I've paid any attention to lie so often that you would do well to use a roulette wheel to decide HOW they are lying in any particular statement. And "They're telling the truth" would be the 00 slot of the wheel. But belief should occur only when there is reasonably grounded evidence...and then it shouldn't be committed belief, because governments are quite able to fabricate evidence when they find it worth the effort.

It has certainly been reported as happening multiple times, and, given the known corruption of the police, is quite believable.

OTOH, these weren't police. This was a military base. I've never heard it claimed in that situation (though I'm rather sure it has happened). In most circumstances the guards are quite civil, even when you don't know the procedures. But they are armed and under orders to use such force as is necessary...including lethal force.

It's my expectation that, if the full story ever becomes known, it will turn out to be some sort of drug deal, and that the people leaving were high. It may well turn out that they had the right to be leaving, but that wouldn't give them the right to pass the guard without following procedures.