C'mon, AC, everyone knows that's the CIA's gig, not the FBI. The FBI would rather work to turn you into a terrorist so they can catch you, put out a press release, and justify their budget.

Ah. A successful micro-investment, for sure, but I was referring more to the 500M (Solyandra) type investments. I was genuinely curious as to whether or not that level of investment pays off in smaller companies, or if our best bet with large amounts of the public treasury is to go with the proven larger companies.

Also, good job.

Beg to differ. Armed or peaceful revolution is basically this.

Genuinely curious here - is there any evidence that giving small companies that didn't have enough capital to participate themselves will actually produce results? In other words, has this kind of investment ever worked in the past? Can any specific examples be brought forth of small companies doing research on government payroll that reached breakthroughs that the larger companies did not?

Yeah, I know. It's difficult enough to get you guys to sit around the dinner table without starving to death or fighting over forks.

Really? Different countries? Never knew that hurrrr... Seriously, go fuck yourself with that snarky bullshit. It's part of the reason I rarely bother with this fucking place anymore - the signal to snarky asshat noise ratio is far too low.

Anyway, ending the war in Iraq is a nice move, and it should have happened a long time ago, but means nothing if we're just going to scale up our war effort elsewhere. We will be taking our soldiers out of Iraq and deploying them at other 'trouble spots' around the globe. It's a shell game at best. We will never be without enemies and people who hate us, and the world will never be without douchebags who need a bullet to the head, but it is not our fucking business to go around dictating which ones are the douchebags that get the bullet. It's a problem for the region and a problem for the international community.

Afghanistan is scaling up when we should be getting out. The Taliban is more or less broken and Osama is dead. I'm sure there are plenty of other places in the world where horrible atrocities are committed all the time that we can go invade if you insist on being a neo-con about it.

With several friends having just been called up to be deployed in Afghanistan, I'm still just a bit cynical about any talks of ending the wars. I'll believe it when it happens.

Depends upon your definition of hobby.

religion: Details of belief as taught or discussed.

There is more to it than just left and right. There are other interpretations.

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

He did win - he managed to get that moderated Informative... somehow.

Doesn't need it. I'm sure there are quite a few people in the Tea Party who are also quite racist, and they will find these people and let them espouse their bullshit if you make them do it. Therefore they are all racist. That's how American politics works these days.

This movement, like the tea party movement before it, is about to get co-opted by the establishment, and then it's just background noise.

No, boxer engines are opposed pistons, but they use separate cylinders. Boxer engines are a form of a 'Flat' engine.

Advocating peace, low taxes, or economic responsibility on slashdot is seemingly always modded down. Apparently it's trolling and flamebait.

Apparently you have to simultaneously support big government and less government involvement in our personal lives, as if that will ever fucking happen.

I wonder if my sig will work...