For the same price, NASA could have SpaceX build and launch ten rockets.
Alternatively, they could spend the same money to have SpaceX build ten rockets, then throw nine away and launch one.

That's what they've done, spent resources that can build ten rockets and ending up with one. That's PRECISELY equal to building ten rockets, then destroying nine of them.

Alternatively, they could have paid SpaceX to build the one rocket, then burned a few billion dollars in cash. They'd end up in the exact same position - billions of dollars gone, and one new rocket. It ends up precisely the same as just burning the cash.

I'll go through this with you one step at a time.

For the same price, NASA could have SpaceX build and launch ten rockets.
That would be ten times as many scientific experiments launched or whatever good thing the rocket is doing.
Alternatively, they could spend the same money to have SpaceX build ten rockets, then throw nine away and launch one.
That's virtually exactly the same as what they're doing - taking billions of dollars from taxpayers and ending up with one rocket.
It ends up exactly the same as throwing away nine rockets, removing from the economy whatever value those nine rockets have.

They could also spend the same amount of money having SpaceX build one rocket, then spending a few billion dollars sending kids to college. So, for the same price you can have either a) one rocket built by NASA or b) one rocket built by SpaceX plus provide a college education for a thousand people.
So what's the difference between those two? Both add a rocket to the economy. The difference is whether people get a college education or not. Which do you think is better for the economy, college graduates earning good money, or those same people flipping burgers? Waste REMOVES value from the economy.

There is a phrase that covers you "I'm alright jack" http://www.urbandictionary.com...!. I can assure you by far the majority of American workers get to negotiate fuck all and are lucky to get reasonable health coverage let alone anything else. So for them moving to any other modern democracy with universal health care, set protective employment conditions etc would make them far better off even when by far the majority of them are to ignorant to realise this. As for the minority, well, "I'm alright jack".

Sure there are reasons that our methods have changed, of course. That's just not really related to the point I was making. TFS claims that the military is trying to find ways to kill more people, and that's simply the opposite of the truth. They've been working on ways to only blow up a specific room rather than blowing up a building or a city block. Secondly, IF they wanted to kill lots of people, they wouldn't need need to work on methods to do so. They've had the B-52 for 60 years or so. A single B-52 could kill thousands of people per day if you wanted it to. We COULD have wiped out Iraq in about a day and half. Building a democracy in Iraq is much, much more difficult than killing them would be.

I'm quoting their official platform. Are you saying that they're lying about what policies they advocate?

Their official platform has a list of new and expanded powers they want the FCC to have. That's their official platform. They just haven't thought through the fact that the FCC is run by cable industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler, so new powers for the FCC IS new powers for a top cable lobbyist.

I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can get a current copy of MS Word to read old MS Word documents, like OpenOffice can. Since Microsoft can't pull that off, I'm guessing you won't either. I suppose you could shellExecute(OpenOffice.exe) from a Word macro. :)

So yeah, you COULD throw out all your company's documents in order to avoid having two "power users" of Word learn different menu locations for a few things. That would make sense, if you had Balmer's dick in your mouth.

>> In its latest bid to kill more people, more efficiently, and at less cost

> Isn't this what we want all government agencies to strive for? When the military's actual job is to figure out how to kill people and destroy things with maximum effectiveness

In WWII the US military wanted to kill more people, more efficiently. They were pretty good at it.
Since then, it seems the challenge has been to find ways to kill the FEWEST possible number of people, while achieving a strategic goal. We tried to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Germans - we just blew them up.

> It simply boils down to greed at this point

Greed and a whole lot of stupid. Sprint has two brands for the same company, Sprint brand and Boost.
Boost is $35. Sprint is $85 or whatever with a "free" $150 phone. People have the choice, and they choose to pay an extra $50 / month for 36 months = $1,800 for that phone. Not just uneducated people either. I bet someone will get all defensive and reply to this post with justifications of why it's not stupid of them to pay $1,800 for a $150 phone, and that person is a Slashdot user - probably a computer programmer or something.

When so many people choose to pay ten times as much as the phone is worth, it's no surprise someone will sell it to them.

If you're not financing the phone via Verizon, you have no need to pay Verizon anything. Instead you just use one of their subsidiary brands or affiliate for about $35 / month.

I don't remember the current names for Verizon, but as an example Sprint and Boost are the same company, same LTE network Boost is $35 / month. You'd only pay the Sprint contract price if you were paying off your "free" phone.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Exactly. I had to laugh when reading that article:

Really? No shit. The military kills people?

Isn't this what we want all government agencies to strive for? When the military's actual job is to figure out how to kill people and destroy things with maximum effectiveness and efficiency, then we really shouldn't complain when they seem to be doing a good job of it. I'm not exactly sure what this writer thought the military's purpose is, but he seems horrified at the thought of using technology to kill people more efficiently.

Should the US not develop technologies like this and simply hope no one else does either? People today are so damned sure that we'll never get into another large-scale shooting war. I hope to hell we don't, but if we do, I'd like our side to have the best weapons, and all the better if they're efficient to produce. Even if, in the future, the military is scaled down to paramilitary forces level (small, lean and efficient), wouldn't it be better to outfit them inexpensively rather than spending billions on weapons production? Who the hell would advocate spending more of our budget on rockets and bombs when less expensive devices could be made much cheaper (other than weapons manufacturers, I suppose)? Wouldn't that leave more money to spend on better things?

The author got one thing right. For all it gets wrong (and I'm sure actual military folks could provide plenty of stories), the US military arguably is the most lethal and destructive force the world has ever known. They also don't go off killing random people and blowing things up. Elected civilians are the ones who ultimately decide whether or not to pull the trigger. It's easy enough to demonize the military while conveniently forgetting that they guy you voted for is the one sending them out to kill people, but it's dishonest as hell.

Rural and many suburban people would be OK as long as they boil the water somehow, but what about people in NYC? Surely you don't think they can drink from the Hudson?!?

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.