The Soviets most certainly did have state mandated atheism. You could get sent to the gulags for admitting to or demonstrating your religious beliefs.

They even tried to hijack Xmas and turn it into a purely secular holiday.

American Xians have absolutely no clue what genuine religious persecution is like.

Well, it's reasonable for people to fixate on that which they have actually been exposed to. Fundies are a noisy sort of lot. They also like to hijack generic terms and pretend that they are the one true definitive source for dogma.

That leads to less extreme forms of Xianity being marginalized.

The squeaky wheel and all that.

Why do you expect people to assume thigns that aren't apparent by the visible evidence?

You're either doing nothing particularly interesting in which case any consumer appliance will do.

Or you are doing something inherently interesting and should not be a total rube while doing it. In that case, you should be able to deal with the iptables interface or seriously reconsider what you are doing.

There's a little issue of professional responsibility here. You should have enough pride to not want to be a menace to others and willing to do what it takes to ensure that.

The thing I took away from this is that Apple users are just stupid. They will pay extra for a 3rd party item that does something the base product already does.

So it's little wonder that Apple users spend more. They're idiots that wear thier ignorance like a badge of honor and they love to demonstrate that they can waste money.

They're the suckers that are born every minute.

My Linux boxes with SSDs boot in 6 seconds. Not that I would advocate fixating on boot times as a metric for anything but an HTPC where you're basically horseracing against the projector and the home theatre system (which is also running Linux).

...that we know of.

It's a lot like bragging about closed sourced software. Most of it was done in secret without any chance for outside review with critics likely being sent to the gulag if they dared speak up.

> This. NASA is not a political body and should not act like one.

NASA is an agency of a government that's a part of the alliance that is supposed to defend a number of countries that are likely Putin targets.

NASA should not be dependent on Russia right now any more than they should have been dependent on the Soviet Union when it was still around.

Lack of self-reliance can be a right b*tch sometimes. You never know what kind of abusive crap you will have to tolerate.

That's the thing about liberty. It means that you have to tolerate people that you disagree with and don't particularly like. It's not liberty if everyone only tolerates people with their own brand of group think. That's more like communism or theocracy.

Your intolerance is the same as his intolerance.

You beat me to it man.

The problem with "Cadillac" plans is that there is no free lunch. You aren't getting anything for free even if that's what you've deluded yourself into thinking. You still have to pay, or alternately I have to pay for your sorry *ss. Going through an intermediary insures that everything will cost more because the insurance company wants it's cut and it needs to keep it's lights on.

What I save on the difference between "good" plans and "bad" allows me to save for an emergency. It allows me to be a proper responsible adult rather than a ward of the state.

Things like being independent, responsible, and somewhat self-reliant are things neither party really wants to enable.

It's all about averages. A few mega-wealthy in the Republican party aren't enough to skew the numbers. They don't live in the same places that their willing dupes do.

On the other hand, the large number of relatively affluent people manage to average out large numbers of urban poor in more wealthy urban centers. The "rich" part of Democratic party is much larger than the "rich" part of the Republican party. The middle is far less likely to be taken in by "defend your Robber Baron" type rhetoric.

Your mega-wealthy GOP types are more likely to live in some bright blue high density urban center rather than out in the shire where it's more red.

Why should the average software engineer need to be "industrious" enough to know how the patent system works? That's just asinine. That right there is the perfect argument against your love of the patent system.

The only rightful metric of whether or not to revise a system or to abolish it is the relative benefits of either option. None of this rhetorical nonsense you are trying to spout is remotely relevant.

Are we better off with more trade secrets or more patents?

The harmful effects of the intellectual land grab are clear.

The key problem with patents is that they don't just grant you property rights on your own efforts but they also allow you to STEAL mine.

They should be treated like toxic waste rather than trivialized like candy.

> Which commonly happens, though if you can show you did arrive at the same result without a very technical means, the patent may be discarded and the idea deemed "obvious"

Only after a great deal of wasted time, money, and effort that should never have to be expended in the first place. Piss poor quality of patent examiners is a very real cost that is a burden on the rest of the industry. Abuse of the patent system is far more harmful to innovation than the idea that someone might copy and improve your product.

> I should add, the only people who think patents should be abolished are people who don't create anything.

Nope. Someone that creates realizes how derivative everything is. Someone that creates has half a clue. So they know how much bullshit goes on in patents. They realize how much stuff is simply average practitioners applying mundane methods.

If all it takes for reverse engineering is a working example or a simple description then you simply don't have a novel invention. You have something that could be recreated by any number of people in the industry. You probably has something that HAS been recreated by any number of people in the industry.

It's far less trouble to just leave everyone else alone.

Of course there are plenty of self-centered jack*sses that would gladly see the world burn for their own personal benefit. Those are the ones that really dig patents.

It's not about being creative. It's not about having a clue.

It's about being evil and anti-social. It's about being willing to abuse everyone else for your own personal gain.

>> Drop Box is nothing more than a gussied up repackaging of a SFTP or FTPS and a nice fancy ol' GUI.
>
> The post office is nothing but a gussied up repackaging of walking to your friend's house and giving him the letter yourself.

Your analogy is retarded. Installing your own application on some PC is nothing like being your own mail man.

That's all this is really about. It's the rough equivalent of installing the latest high res shooter on your overpowered Windows gaming machine.

If Windows makes it a problem then that's Windows being crapulent as usual.

No. You are just taking it as an article of faith that your corporate masters are always right and never make a mistake or abuse the DMCA takedown system for selfish or evil purposes.