In the fact that it happened in every other communist country to date that has underwent a similar process.

No, but I trust their government to be pragmatic. It's easier to rule over fed people than it is to rule over hungry people. And when there's a fresh new revenue stream, and not even crumbs from it get to the people, the latter get restless, and restlessness leads to riots. Any smart and successful dictator knows that. Judging by how long the Castros have been going, they're not deficient on both counts. So yes, they will share. Not much, perhaps, but even a little helps.

And it did help, of course. If everyone would embargo Cuba, it would be as much of a shithole as DPRK is. But it's not.

Even if 1% of that money gets to the people (and, pragmatically speaking, more of it will for sure), then they are going to be better off.

More importantly, if it prompts economic reforms along the lines of what most other communist countries did - the closest example here probably being Vietnam - the people are going to be vastly better off even if the authoritarian political system remains in place.

Either way, while we can only guess what will happen without sanctions, we know full well what happens with the sanctions: absolutely nothing. So what exactly is their purpose then?

Blame them for feeling that way, no (well, it depends on who they were before Castro; if it's one of Batista's cronies, or the members of the top ruling elite supporting him, I'd say they can suck it and go cry in a corner; I have no sympathy for people robbing others under gunpoint when they get robbed themselves in a similar fashion). But I will blame them for letting that emotion guide their political decisions, and especially for pushing the same onto others.

Oh, as for my comfy chair. I was born in a communist country. Don't try that "you rich American asshole can't understand" on me.

You yourself talked about "until they reach 18 years of age"; abortion is clearly but one aspect of this, and arguably not the biggest one by far (there are far more children who are born, but have their rights limited until they are of age, than aborted fetuses).

I didn't want to touch on abortion for the simple reason that it's vastly more complicated - there's the issue of when you start considering a fetus a person (it is obvious to any rational person that a fertilized egg or an embryo is not a person in any meaningful way, while a pre-birth fetus is; but where do you draw the line in between?). There's also the sticking issue of the fetus, regarding of any rights it may have as a person, potentially infringing on its mother's rights to her body. Reconciling those two rights is not obvious.

In any case, none of this has anything to do with this particular case.

This is not true, actually. The hardline conservatives are into cop worship, but libertarians are pretty strong in pro-gun movement as well, and they are generally not a fans of police militarization and excessive use of force.

Assuming that you're referring to actual babies that have been born, then they still have human rights that their parents or legal guardians can't deny them. For example, you can't lock up your kid in a cage, even though other more reasonable limits on the freedom of movement are allowed. Generally speaking, it's okay so long as it's in their interest. Similarly, in this story, they're not letting the orangutan go where it wants, but admitting that the current arrangement is definitely not in its interest.

I thought about it as well, but now I think there might be precedent for a kind of a special status there. Think about those uncontacted Amazonian tribes - they're definitely considered human, and if you were to kill one of them you'd be charged with murder, but I'm pretty sure that those tribes don't know or care about e.g. Brazilian laws, and they are not actually enforced against them. I do wonder how they word that in law, though.

I would assume that if this ruling stands, the law would treat an ape the same way it treats human children, or adults that are considered incompetent. This means that someone else makes the decision for them, but the law still protects their fundamental rights (such as e.g. a right to life), and, at least in theory, the decisions must be in their best interest, which can be legally enforced in some circumstances. It's still way better than being treated as property.

There is a difference between tolerating and supporting. With Batista, US has actually supported him - helped him maintain power and suppress his political opponents. With Cuba, we're talking about tolerating what they are. Which is clearly the best that can be done, given how several decades of attempting to pressure them did absolutely zero good for anyone in the country.

The only people who object to the lifting of sanctions are those that are motivated by personal revenge against the Castros. There's no other logical reason for the embargo.

They were okay with hitman contracts, but not with guns?

That's hilarious.

Compiler optimizations don't really help if your code is I/O or input-bound, which accounts for most of the code written today - so users rarely see the benefits. Occasionally you get a situation where one particular code path is CPU-bound and is hit often enough that optimizing it matters, but in that case it's usually still easier to use C++ for that particular bit, and some other high-level language for the rest.

Granted, with all the changes already in C++14, and more good stuff coming in C++17, C++ itself gets more high-level every year. Right now I'd say the problem is really more with the tooling than with the language... debugging C# or Java is still a much more comfortable experience than debugging C++. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Promises and async is indeed a good point. I've been writing async (UI) code in C# for the past two years, and have almost forgotten what a mess it was before tasks and await.

BTW, async/await is also proposed for C++, though it is a much more generalized construct there:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/s...

VC++ has a preview of the implementation in the current betas:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog...

Yes, you should (and you should also include e.g. SharePoint for .NET). But without doing all that stuff, the numbers are basically meaningless.

The countries as a whole may be the richest ones, but if you look at how those riches are distributed within those countries... most people in those kind tend to be worse off than the other kind.

It only needs to happen in one place for others to recognize the urgency. Just like the communist revolution in the USSR prompted the rise of the welfare state in the West (and, with the collapse of the USSR, welfare state is also slowly evaporating).

That might not work out so well when it's proles building those robots.