Comment Re:Heirloom laptop concept makes me wanna puke (Score 1) 101
Just feel good that you'll never be as bad as your children.
It can't end well, if the carve up continues apace.
Good thing the carve up isn't actually happening then. From 1988-2008, two thirds of humanity increased their income by at least 30%, adjusted for inflation.
but real research demonstrates basic environmental problems including a changing climate and resource depletion as the only contributing factors to every single decline
Except when that real research doesn't, of course.
whereas your postulation is unsupported by evidence
My "postulation" is often well documented in the literature of the time such as the documented behavior and infighting of the Roman elite during the centuries of the empires of Rome or similar activities of other large empires of China and Egypt. Famines, disease, etc are often also documented, which may partially support your claims of climate change.
Ataturk had nothing to do with the genocide and he condemned it.
While it is claimed that Ataturk was in a different part of the Ottoman empire at the time of the massacres, he had similar policies during a later war with Greece with several notable massacres happening under his watch, particularly, the so-called Great Fire of Smyrna.
It's not a stretch to wonder if Ataturk (or for that matter other powerful supporters) had a greater involvement in the genocides of 1915 than his official record suggests.
Mechanizing farming is the top priority, it is the prerequisite for industrialization. It cannot be done with solar thermal.
But solar thermal can be used as the primary energy input to produce fuel.
Solar thermal only provides you with raw energy, not the extremely fine tuned equipment to make pure silicon crystals. And every step of the way requires other specialized equipment of materials.
I thought we were speaking of the energy input. Of course, we can develop all that fine tuned equipment and that supply network too. After all, it's something that happened before. Food has been solved before as well.
Right now, a factory in Taiwan can simply order a $3 widget from a Swiss factory catalog that takes raw materials from Australia and Brazil. And in the apocalyptic future, they'll order from the local landfill what raw materials they need. Down the road, when the global trade network gets reestablished, then that Taiwanese factory can once again order that $3 widget.
If you assume that all our high tech factories will still be operational, that's hardly a reboot.
Read my post. I don't say that.
And without that tech, how are you going make new photovoltaic cells ?
Solar thermal.
Without that much free energy
Fossil fuels are far from free. And we have solar power which is vastly more plentiful than fossil fuels.
In fact, most large civilizations have collapsed, and for very similar reasons: over consumption of resources.
Parasitism. There's a common thread in the end of most empires, large or small. The build up of incompetent bureaucracies and the elevation of power struggles and who gets what over survival of the empire.
What's the point of you responding to my post with this when my post had nothing to do with your argument or the complaint?
Uh, you do realize you replied to the "complaint" with why you modded me? That makes your post having everything to do with them and a reason for me to reply.
Well, I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the other poster who questioned why the OP got modded insightful while yours didn't.
If you didn't want people replying to your posts, then don't post on Slashdot. It's quite simple how it works.
I don't mind negative mods. I do mind being anonymously insulted by people who don't think. There were two very obvious problems just with the little bit you wrote. And this isn't the first time someone has posted to me in the third person and then claimed they weren't.
But a member of the Mafia (or a company director) isn't just acting on their own behalf. Just because there is no physical person called Mr Mafia or Mr Corporation doesn't mean that the organisation doesn't exist.
The point here is that the member of the Mafia is acting not the Mafia.
Institutions like the Army or Catholic Church most certainly have an existence beyond their constituent human members.
Sure, in that there's knowledge/tradition peculiar to the institution, property owned by the institution, recognition of the institution by outsiders, etc. None of this allows the institutions to act independently of their members and commit crimes independent of their members.
Remember to say hello to your bank teller.
