Wouldn't it be easier to shoot *you* for a large cut than all of those pesky folks for a small cut? Yes, and that's why so many crimes are inside jobs, and why empires from nation-sized to family-sized crack in times of stress.

As for starvation being a motivator, God what an ignorant remark. The starving, well, they starve, and experience just the apocalypse that we're talking about here. Why haven't Somalis or Chinese peasants invented the next great thing? The green revolution and other ideas that have kept westerners from starving for the last 80 years were all invented by the non-starving -- people with insight, such as those that have been sounding the alarm, for decades, about rising population intersecting the bounty of a declining environment. "It can't happen to me" isn't much of a policy tool.

Whew, wish I could find the link. But a study discussed some years ago on Slashdot found that for every $1 billion spent on defense and space R&D, there was a benefit equivalent to $200 million being spent on civilian-oriented research. Like, we might have wanted a microwave oven anyhow, without building a rocket to need one.

So yes, space R&D isn't a complete waste of money. It's an 80% waste of money.

Maybe such people will be left behind, like people in dictatorships, whether the dicatorship is religious or secular. But since "smart idiots" are interwoven into the fabric of powerful nations, maybe they'll embroil the world in war, purge the intellectuals, burn the (digital) libraries, and send us back to the Middle Ages. It's happened before. In fact closed-mindedness is the only type of mentality that *can* cause war and oppression. Welcome to the good fight, for the rest of your life -- the struggle for freedom in, or despite, reality.

In time of peace, war goods go missing at all stages of the development process -- design, prototyping, demos and trade shows, manufacturing, delivery, storage and use by the armed services and our supposed allies. In time of war, it's left behind on the battlefield, shot over the enemy's borders, sunk into the deep blue sea. The military does it's best to control access but only 100% will do, and that's impossible. So backdoors are a bad thing.

It continues to amaze me that safety-critical controls -- headlights, wipers, and horn -- aren't standardized. Go from a GM vehicle to a Ford, have an oncoming car splash muddy water over your windshield, and see how fast you can find the wipers. I'm glad the NHTSA is doing *something*, but why aren't these primary controls standardized?

Paid for by you and me, the taxpayers.

For one thing, Kenya's population has increased 10 times since the 1930's, thanks to the outsider's agricultural and transportation advances. Even the crop in question -- maize -- was brought by the Europeans from the Americas. So I'm not so sure that Africa was doing so great, by today's standards, before the outsiders came. The argument that "if we let things get bad enough, the leaders will be forced to do something" is proven incorrect by a look at history. Exactly how bad do things have to get?

The whole planet is on an unsustainable course, and we'll all end up living in a way that takes less out of it. But by sharing information we can have less waste on the one hand, and less hunger on the other.

Look at the alternative: admit that Saint Ronald Regan made a horrible mistake. Can you imagine the devastation that would cause to the religion of about 40% of America? Any amount spent on SDI is worth it to keep from admitting such a thing.

iPhone $400, data within $100,000, privacy breach $1,000,000. Definitely a felony.

I have never seen the difference between "throwing money" and private sector that creates a lot of jobs that do nothing for society: advertising, luxury goods, half of the defense budget, most consumer goods, oversized housing, fashion, trips to Cancun where the the infrastructure is designed to keep the tourist from seeing actual Mexico. It's waste either way, burning fuel with no forward motion. It's resources wasted, poof gone forever, just to keep stirring a nation full of scrambled psychologies that can't settle down long enough to know what love is. (Maybe we should throw money at hysteria management?) Individuals throwing money at things that are wasteful or bad for them isn't freedom, it's addiction. There is a huge call for government policies to enable the addiction to continue. Good luck when sickness meets sickness.

It was email, Linux, and newsgroups that hooked me on the Internet in 1994. I don't think email alone would have done it. Screw "online news, banking services, restaurant reviews, shopping" -- those aren't killer apps to me. I need a forum for interacting with interesting people. The rest I can get to easily enough in town.

From what I've seen, manager boot camp takes 0 days, and you can declare success no matter what happens. Kind of like politics. Oh, wait, exactly like politics.

That means that anyone's free not to sell to you, as long as they don't discriminate based on legally established criteria.

Leonard's been publishing for almost 60 years and both his old stuff and his latest stuff is wonderful. _Djibouti_ (2010) is about Somali pirates (and Americans) and shows detailed research. _Pagan Babies_ (2000) is set in Rwanda and Detroit. _Escape from Five Shadows_(1956) is a pulp western, where Leonard got started.

You've probably watched several movie adaptation of Leonard's work. Here's his stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_Leonard#Work

This is a great version of the Communist nightmare.