Less if they're being chased by sexy robots.

EXACTLY. Sell this one and get started on the next one. The next one will in all likelihood be a competitor to the first one, and this time it will be funded from the start.

No, no, no...Slashdot is not the place for a tragic view of humanity and a realistic approach to foreign policy. Linux and Ipads are the answer, somehow.

I nominate Detroit for beta testing.

UGLY...GORILLA
UGLY...GORILLA

Actually bacon is taken from the side and rear of the pig. The hogwash is used to make Mountain Dew.

It does get tiring explaining basic economics every few months. Look...

Farmer Brown (or, more likely, subsector 12 of Hive 11 of the Archer Daniels Midland Collective) raised x pigs over the past couple of years. The value of x was determined by figuring out how much money they could make versus raising, say, chickens. The price of pork has risen now, so now the value of x has risen. There's a lag, as we have to wait for the piglets to mature, but farmers are in it to make money - the price has spoke, the market wants more pork.

So if we do engage a price control, that is, we limit the amount that Farmer Brown can charge for the pork, he won't trim his sails, he'll just keep raising chickens, despite that what people really want is more pork. A price control is a statement that "yes, people want this more, but you cannot profit from it." And thus people will not take the extra measures to provide it that people would prefer.

I thought perhaps the flying whales in the Pines of Rome sequence from Fantasia 2000.

I was right where you are about five months ago - I'm now down forty pounds, and training (gulp) for a triathlon sometime next year. It's Weight Watchers man....I don't want to be spam for them, but join WW and go to the meetings. BTW, I turned forty this year as well.

Good luck.

Get ready for endless bitching about network latency.

At some point, we stopped doing World's Fairs, where everybody got together and celebrated civilization and culture...the ultimate World's Fair was the 1894 Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The Maker Faire is really the only thing left that remotely resembles these, in my travels. Of course, there's Epcot, but Epcot is really a museum of World's Fairs.

Anyhow, I've been to two in Austin, and one in San Mateo...they are truly engineer-geek heaven.

No, no, you don't understand - THIS TIME we'll get it right. The people involved are so good and so pure, they'll make the right choices, and resist the pull of corruption. You just don't understand how smart these new people are - the New York Times talks about them everyday. These are the best and brightest, the very smartest of society - isn't it better for them to make the choices for us?

You don't understand - human beings are corruptible and evil, and so we need to make government powerful so that it can be better. What will the government be composed of? Well, human beings, of course. Er, well, these human beings are less corruptible, I think. And look at these wonderful corporations who are supporting our rise to power - they must surely be led by disinterested saints committed to social justice.

You see, we're not committed to ideology - we're pure pragmatists, we only care about what works. Well, yes, I suppose that ideology does define what goals are worth working towards and which ones aren't, and I definitely have preferences in that area...well, yes, I suppose that I have premises that I operate from in choosing methods that constitute ideology...but ideology is bad! I mean, YOUR ideology is bad! Mine is progress. Towards what? Well...the future! Forward! By what methods, and to what ends? Eh, those are details we'll figure out later...what matters now is that we get unlimited power to reshape society according to our beautiful vision.

What? I don't care about the history and track record of these ideas! I'm not hide-bound and shackled by tradition like you! The performance of these methods in the past has nothing to do with what's going to happen when we get power! </sarcasm>

. Individual liberty may be imperfect, but ultimately it's the only deal worth considering.

What "the market" represents is doing things in a financially sustainable way that people support with their actual money, rather than just moral support. "The market" means you have to convince people, rather than taking their money by fiat. "The market" means having the right to say no.

So, yeah...having the right to say no, and require that I be convinced...I'm a member of that cult, though I do realize that there are free rider problems and stuff like that. But I want space privatized not because I believe that its a waste of money, but because in my experience everything that government everything touches turns to sh*t. I'm ready for private space travel to do what it did for private aviation.

How about we do everything like this, and have an actual democracy? Half of the country pays no taxes anyway.

That means that their second and third attempts will be absolutely #$(*#& horrible.