Israel has had nuclear weapons for over 30 years and have not used them or even threatened to use them. They don't hold weekly "Death to Iran" parades and their leaders don't make speeches aimed at the elimination of Iran. Granted Israel is certainly not afraid to employ their conventional weapons when threatened. And they don't waste time gathering a consensus or asking permission or approval from the US or any other country.

The Ukraine gave up their nuclear missiles and look where that got them. There will never be another country that has nuclear weapons willing to give them up based on paper agreements or treaties. There was never any down side to SA giving up their nuclear weapons program. They are not facing off against any great foe intent on invading their country. The US, Russia, and China arsenals are held in check by the MAD doctrine. On the other hand Israel is surrounded by 80 million implacable enemies who are always looking for Israel to drop their guard. No matter how good Israels conventional forces are they could eventually be defeated by sheer numbers and there is certainly no shortage of raving lunatics from the surrounding Arab countries to feed into the meat grinder. The Iranians can chant "death to Israel" at their weekly prayer groups until they are blue in the face but the Iranian leadership knows exactly what would happen if they decided to play nuclear chicken with Israel. They are much safer playing nuclear chicken with the US.

England paid for it's continued survival by handing over just about every technological and engineering breakthrough they had mastered or were in the process of mastering to the US. In return the US supplied England with ships, planes, ammunition, food, trucks, clothing, fuel, and eventually US lives. And the folks at Bletchley Park would have had a much harder time breaking the Enigma code if not for the 2 Polish mathematicians who originally reverse engineered the pre-war business version model of the machine and forwarded all their research to England prior to Germany invading Poland.

Minorities can leverage the Internet to make themselves appear larger than they really are. And of course the majorities do the same thing which has led to soaring animosities between both peoples and states across the world. And make no mistake the government is a failure in every way that matters. If the Senators and representatives in Congress had a shred of decency and honor they would acknowledge the failure, step down, and allow special elections to select their replacements. Mid term elections happen all the time. A symbolic restart would go a long way towards solving the countries many problems.

Democrats are no different than Republicans. They are both terrible managers of the government. Populists and the so called Progressives are even worse. They tend to spout ridiculous policies that are so divorced from reality they should rename themselves the Fairy Tell party. If we could just get the extreme far right and extreme far left, which are pitiful minorities, to shut the fuck up maybe things could get better.The extremist of every strip just generate more screeching rhetoric and hyperbole while those living in the real world try to carry on as best they can.

The people and government entities who provide the money are not humanitarian operations. Loans and lines of credit get calculated and approved by evaluating the risk of getting the money paid back. Germany is a much lower risk than Greece is. Greece's government have bungled these negotiations at every turn. The "intellectuals" and "progressives" trying to manage the government are discovering that standing in the street loudly protesting the government is easier than having to actually manage the government. The elected government got swept into power by promising to magically make their debts disappear. They let their political demagogues exhort policies that are pure fantasy. If the Greeks think their economic situation is bad now just wait a few months. When you renege on billions of dollars of debt the country will find it damn near impossible to gain access to the global capital markets.

There is a setting in the Windows Update action center that allows you to stop updates from automatically installing without your explicit permission. It pops up the nice little dialog you are requesting. So I would be careful about who you are calling stupid or rude.

Exactly. The US has a perfect anti-satellite weapon and none of the other major powers have said anything about it.

There are no "shitty languages and implementations" only shitty developers and those trying to implement the shitty applications creations by those developers.

Exactly who are they racing? Putting men or satellites in orbit has become quite pedestrian. Private companies offering launch services are only possible because of the money spent and the R&D generated by 50+ years worth of government sponsored missions and supporting technologies. That is the way things should work. And until the government actually comes up with a realistic destination the unmanned probes flying around the solar system gathering information will have to suffice. Spending shit loads of money for a "plant the flag" mission to Mars seems like a tremendous waste of money.If a private company wants to take on a manned Mars mission more power to them.

The NSA will never be shutdown. The only possible scenario that has the NSA being shutdown is the simultaneous shutdown of every foreign intelligence agency in the world. Scream and stamp your feet if you have to but the NSA is not going away. The spotlight on the NSA over the past couple of years has only resulted in them taking steps to further compartmentalize their operations and beefing up the level of scrutiny they put into their employees when granting security clearances.

It may be a fun site but they are also show casing their new Oxford API which does tie in to their business model.

The oil wells and related facilities ISIS was using to raise cash were taken out shortly after the bombing campaign began.

Who do you think was providing the NSA with the data collected in the various European countries? And it is not illegal (in the US) for the NSA to spy on and collect any information they want on any foreign country. If Snowden had only released information about the US domestic related programs he might have been able to get a slap on the wrist. But he released information on NSA programs that targeted foreign countries. Programs that had nothing to do with US citizens. The type of programs that foreign intelligence services are supposed to be conducting. And unless every state security agency in the world disbands don't expect the US to stand down any of their foreign intelligence agencies.

So you are saying the US only produces intellectual property that translates to new products of all sorts and China just builds the products? And what are "typical" Americans? There is not one single country on the planet as diverse in race, culture, or religion as the US population. The US ranks in the top 3 manufactures in the world depending on how the figures are calculated. China is increasingly having to compete against other nations in South East Asia. China's economy has been built on low labor costs and currency manipulations which help lower the prices on their exports. Now there are other countries that can offer the same low labor cost and they are attracting manufacturers. In order for China to continue growing they need to establish a healthy domestic economy so they are not totally dependent on their exports. To do this the workers need to make more money to spend domestically and this is causing a rise in the labor costs China has had to depend on to make their exports attractive.