Lunakhod was only on the moon, and was driven at relatively high speeds using live drivers looking at TV to see where to go. This is patently impossibly on Mars due to the light travel time. Semi-autononomous navigation is far more sophisticated.

    It eventually died because of what might be characterized as a driving mistake, they came to close to the edge of a crater, scooped some dust on the solar array, then closed the lid, dumped the dust on the radiators, then overheated when the lid was opened on the next lunar day.

Nonsense, inflation is expansion of money supply, nothing else. Rising prices (or prices that are failing to fall) can be a result of inflation. Inflation changes the size of the measurement units of the economy, value of the currency. Inflation does not improve economy in any way, it destroys the economy both by destroying value of savings and rising prices of real savings, thus denying access to capital for productive purposes and pushing up nominal prices of assets, creating asset bubbles, making it look like economy is growing (faking the GDP), while in reality the economy stays the same (or shrinks), only the units change.

You are using this in an Orwellian fashion to confuse the population on the causes of inflation and its effects.

Israel has tried. They were rebuked.

But is it wrong to shoot back? What if he always travels in the middle of a paid crowd that knows he's up to no good?

Socialism is fascism. Socialists want to control companies and companies fight back and buy political power, but the only reason political power can be bought is because socialists allow government to usurp all that power.

The reason for all this debt is lack of productivity and substitution of a real economy with a fake one.

    Americans are an extremely unproductive bunch, living at the expense of the productive Chinese and others, printing money and 'buying' products created by others that they themselves do not produce, thus the 500 Billion USD/year trade deficits for a couple of decades now.

Inflation is rampant, of-course the publicly 'educated' children do not understand what inflation is or why it is bad and they revolt at that thought.

There is no 'your' definition, the definition that you are cheering for is the definition of propaganda, redefining the meaning of words in order to promote wilful ignorance.

It isn't that old. It "started" with the numerous invasions by numerous people over time. The reason is because it was a crossroads to Africa, Asia, and Europe. Yes, aside from the Suez canal, it's possible to walk from Africa to Asia/Europe. They are one land mass, and one of the most convenient places to pass between them is the middle east.

The Crusades were because of economic envy, not religion. The area was so "important" that England held it for a while, which is how it was able to be "gifted" to the WWII refugees. And it's been war ever since with the neighbors trying to finish what Hitler started.

Between the crusades and the creation of Israel, England has more to do with starting this than many who lived there.

I don't bother to follow that mess. There's nothing I can do about it, so it's pointless to try. But, in response to your accusations, I looked and found nothing that supported the story.

Your quote confirms that Hamas used the school as a human shield, deliberately firing from there, which those near knew. But rather than evacuate, they stayed at the launch site for an attack on Israel. Why? Oh, Hamas refused them passage to safety. Hamas kidnapped them for human shields. And Israel is in the wrong for hitting Hamas back, because Hamas had kidnapped human shields still on site.

Yes, all Israel's fault.

By your measure, Emminant Domain in the USA is illegal by the Geneva convention, so long as the landowner secedes.

Hamas sends no warnings to targets. Israel sends warnings to targets. Hamas deliberately tries to encourage civilians to be human shields. What response would you have Israel give to an attack from a (claimed) sovereign nation? More foreign aid?

And that's the problem with the publics modern perception of credit. Because I do not have a credit card and suggest that you shouldn't either, I'm considered a quack. I buy just as much useless garbage as anyone that modded me down does. I go on vacations, I order things online, I buy soda at the gas station. The only difference is I don't pay a 7% to 30% fee to do all of those things. And that is exactly what a credit card does. It doesn't help your credit. That's a lie driven by marketing campaigns of credit card companies.

You no doubt got modded down because you have virtually every fact you mention entirely wrong. Having a credit card doesn't mean carrying a balance month-to-month, and you don't pay a single penny extra if you don't carry a balance (unless you stupidly sign up for a card with an an annual fee). I actually get 1.5 to 6% back on all my purchases, depending on how they categorize it. Now, you could argue that we pay 3%-ish more for everything as a result of stores passing on the transaction fees to their customers, but then, so do you, and you don't even get the benefits as a result.

And as for your credit rating, sorry, but yes, having a small number of regularly-paid cards most certainly does improve your credit, compared with having no credit history. I could provide you with an hundred links discussing the optimal number of cards and how much to cycle through them monthly, but you could already have done so and apparently chose not to.

Yes, we have a sick view of what "credit" means as a society. That doesn't invalidate the concept itself, just points a damning finger at how badly we tend to misuse it. Kudos to you for at least living within your means (and I mean that sincerely), but you massively overstate the case-for-cash while remaining blissfully ignorant of how credit cards really work in the modern world.

I am of the opinion that if the typical person is hit by lightening and we add up the liabilities and assets that we will find most people are worth less than zero.

Although I sadly agree with you, I also have to consider it largely self-inflicted. Once you enter the workforce and pay off your student loans, you should only go UP from there (with the first year of a new car as the exception, though if you can't afford that slight dip between value and equity, you shouldn't buy new cars). We as a culture simply have a really bad habit of living far beyond our means. Make no mistakes, creditors fully exploit that habit, and no doubt someone will reply that they fall into the 1.4% with some insanely expensive medical condition, but in most cases it still comes down to choosing to spend more than we make.

Outstanding mortgages, car loans and other loans are only part of the issue.

A pretty big part - Short of end-of-life care, most of us will have no bigger outstanding debts than mortgages, cars, and student loans.

the cost of dying and the costs of burials as well as the cost of settling estates

Not material - Although it varies by state, you can get your body disposed of for under $100 (I've often seen $300 cited as the floor for a "cardboard box of ashes", though other cheaper options exist). And for an "estate" with negative net worth, your loved ones can always refuse to have anything to do with it and let the state eat the cost (though most people choose to "do the right thing" for dear-old-$30k-in-debt-dad). And as for the cost of dying, I can guarantee you that my end-of-life care will never push my net worth lower than the price of one last bullet. Again, we choose to drag out that last pathetic six months, at phenomenal expense both financial and emotional. No thanks!

The support of your kids, their education, your widow's needs all are considerations.

Can't afford kids? Don't have any. I realize that counts as all-but-heresy, but seriously, kids cost a lot; if you can't afford those three teens you mention, consider having just one, or even zero. As for your widow, if she can't support herself, you chose poorly in marrying someone incapable of surviving in the modern world in your absence. I want my partner fully capable of getting along without me in the event of my sudden death; I would consider it nothing short of cruel on my part to have her financially dependent on me, and that doesn't mean buying some scam of an insurance policy, it means she can very much support herself on her own income and retirement planning (though admittedly, if I die before we pay off the house, she'd likely need to find a new partner with which to split the household expenses).


Don't get me wrong, I realize we have some wiggle room here, and don't mean this quite as monstrously as it probably sounds. But bluntly, it all comes down to choosing not to live within our means, and you describe some of the biggest examples of that. Choose better

The majority I mentioned are those who want to see the US reduce their involvement in foreign conflicts that have nothing to do with US core interests. The mayhem engulfing the Middle East and Eastern Europe is spinning out of control in part because all the warring parties know without a doubt that the US is not going to intervene militarily in these conflicts in any meaningful way. This state of affairs could actually enhance US security in the short term because as long as no one strikes the US directly like blowing up skyscrapers or bombing naval bases the US government will not have the support of it's citizens to get involved in any military conflict. We have already seen this in regards to Syria. Unfortunately sooner or later some one is going to see less US involvement and think that somehow translates to a decrease in US military capabilities and pull another 9/11 or "Pearl Harbor". After that happens they should have enough time to ponder the depths of their misjudgment before the first missile or spec ops team comes through their bedroom window.

If you only want a semipublic file share, just stand up a free AWS Linux instance and lock it down to SSH/SFTP. You get a few GB of free cloud storage (I don't actually know the limit, but I have 8 online now and have never paid a dime), and can sleep well knowing that a breach just means standing up a new instance rather than the end of your career.

You only really need to let people get onto your corporate network if you want to set up "real" remote access such as VPN or, as you mention, one of those crazy-expensive RSA Citrix gateways. And no offense, but the very fact that you have asked Slashdot how to do this on the cheap suggests that you really shouldn't do it at all (aside from my "safe" suggestion above).

Fake money cannot boost real productivity regardless of any conditions, it is shamanism through and through. But relax, nobody is fucking you in the ass, you don't need to squeeze that hard.