Comment Re:Privacy while crossing the boarder? (Score 1) 83
The rent is too damned high!
The rent is too damned high!
Probably. I must be getting too old for slashdot, because I'd rather concede the point instead of arguing until my dying breath over slight nuances of words and corporate governance.
No doubt it was a different time. In addition to few external competitors, the entire world was rebuilding due to WWII and recovering from a decade of pent up desire from the Great Depression.
No. They're more like Ford/Mazda, wherein Ford owned a big chunk (49%) of Mazda. Hyundai owns ~40% of Kia. Not the same company.
Actually, we know almost all basic chemistry, and the range of (stable) molecules that silicon can form is orders of magnitude less than for carbon.
Well, yeah, but I didn't want to offend the pedants even further. Unless the laws of physics (and therefore basic chemistry) are very different elsewhere in the galaxy, it's not unreasonable to think that carbon-based, liquid-water-dependent lifeforms are the most probable. In fact, I'd be willing to bet a tidy sum of money that the overwhelming majority of unique forms of life are not terribly dissimilar from ours as far as the underlying chemistry is concerned. They might be fantastically alien in all sorts of other strange ways, but they'll still be based on simple organic polymers. But this is still irrelevant to the discussion at hand, because even if there were different forms of life, we have no idea how we might detect them at astronomical distances.
I wish I had mod points. Every time I hear about planets not being able to support life, this is my first thought.
And every time a story about extraterrestrial life gets posted on Slashdot, several dozen people say exactly the same thing, as if they've had some brilliantly original insight that the scientists researching the subject missed. No one is explicitly ruling out the possibility that there are gaseous lifeforms living in the clouds of gas giants, or silicon-based rock monsters like the one in Star Trek. Hell, it would be a huge discovery if we found something like that. But since we're presently incapable of observing such lifeforms firsthand, and have no idea what we should be looking for at a distance of light-years, we have to settle for looking for the planetary "signatures" of temperature, oceans, oxygen content, etc. It may not satisfy the pedants, but it's still extremely difficult by itself. When we're capable of actually exploring other solar systems directly, then maybe we can start to look for fantasy lifeforms on frozen airless rocks and methane clouds.
'In living memory'? Ask George Takei what he remembers from his childhood.
All the hundreds of bases on foreign soil should be liquidated, and the foreign countries that get those back should start footing the bill for their own defense. Then we'll see how much they want to cry about American expansionist policies and so on.
In fairness, it's generally not the South Koreans (to pick one obvious example) complaining about American expansionism.
Now if only trucks or trains could be used to transport lithium...
How many factory workers were middle class, during this heyday of which you speak?
In the 50's and 60's? Most of them.
"Heads, I win, tails, you lose" isn't a new scenario.
The militaries of the world take people who are 'just' farmers all the time. Most equipment is made to be operated by and maintained by average guys of average intelligence. (Depending on the level of mechanization of the farm, the proverbial farmer may be overqualified to operate some machinery)
He's one cowboy away from a Brokeback Mountain.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
