Future Testimony, House of Representatives-Government Oversight Committee

"I don't know, maybe some rogue extremist US intelligence operatives were taking a Predator out for a stroll one night and decided to fire a couple Hellfires at some US Representatives they disagreed with!

What, at this point, does it matter?"

Strat

No, the alternative was to wait.

It should be noted that:
  - The Japanese, like the Germans, had their own nuclear weapons program in progress. (That was how they were able to recognize the nuclear bombs for what they were: Bombs were SOME of the possibilities they were pursuing.)
  - While they thought nuclear-reaction bombs were hard but doable, they were actively working on the immanent bombardment of the West Coast of the Untied States with radiological weapons - "dirty bombs" spreading fatal levels of radioactive material. (Remember that much of the US war infrastructure, including nuclear laboratories such as Livermore and the Navy's Pacific fleet construction and supply lines, were on or very near the west coast. The prevailing winds are from the west and able to carry fallout blankets to them.)
  - The primary reason for using TWO bombs, only a few days apart, was to create the impression that the US could keep this up. The Japanese had an idea that making the bombs took so much resource that the US could only have a very few. And they were right.

As I understand it went something like this: There was enough material for no more than two or three more, then there'd have been about a year of infrastructure construction and ramp-up, after which the US could have started with monthly bombs and worked up to weekly or so. If the US could have gotten to that point unmolested, Japan was doomed. But a LOT can happen over that time in a total war - and big projects can get hamstrung when the bulk of the industrial output and manpower has to be used to fight off conventional attacks meanwhile. The idea was to give the Japanese the impression the US was ALREADY that far along.

12 grand with the air conditinoer and some unspecified options that don't prevent it from being stacked up like coffee cups?

For only a couple grand more I purchased, new, an 19 foot travel trailer, with kitchen, (propane stove, micrwave, propane/electric refrigerator) beds for five (if one is a kid) and two are friendlly - six if two are infants), which double as a daytime couch and bedding storage cabinet, TV antenna and prewire, air conditioner, bathroom with enclosed shower, closet, white grey and black water storage for two days if everybody showers daily, a week if they conserve, all hookablel to water and sewer if available, air conditinoier and furnace, lots of gear storage, two nights of battery power (though the microwave and air conditioner need shore power - the furnace runs on the batteries/power conditioner), hitch, dual-axle with tires, awning, etc.

This looks like a very pricey, very heavy, hardshell tent - with some lights, cots, and a big-brother computer monitoring system.

But I bet agencies would love the monitoring system.

Having owned or driven a few German cars, and I can tell you that speed limiters are no good if you don't live in Germany. My VW for instance was governed to 220 kph (the rating of the stock tyres) and had tyre pressure instructions inside the rim of the car door for speeds above/below 170 kph - I lived in Toronto at the time, where the speed limit on the fastest roads is 100 kph!

BTW, it seems fairly common in some cars, e.g. Audis, to have a speed warning buzzer. Maybe that's because they can go so damn fast without your realising.

I completely disagree. If there is roadway traffic, you don't need to check your speedometer as the safest and smoothest thing to do is to simply travel with the traffic. If you drive much faster than the bulk traffic flow, you risk causing an accident. If you drive much slower than the traffic, you risk getting rear-ended or clipped as irritated drivers people pass you. You also substantially disrupt traffic flow and actually slow down everyone's commute.

If there is no roadway traffic, it really shouldn't be much of a burden to check your speedometer every 5 seconds, preferably right after you scan your mirrors.

Devices like this actually promote driver inattention and complacency. People get bored and their minds wander. Or they think that it allows them to spend more time on the phone. All this new feature is going to do is result in some idiot driving at the speed limit, in the passing lane, exactly matching the speed of the car right next to them and perfectly blocking all traffic, while dicking with their cell phone while 2000 irritated drivers piling up behind them.

My first unix box was an Altos. Don't recall exactly when I got it but it finally died in the late '80s.

The thing burned something like a kilowatt. It also had a four-inch muffin fan - blowing outward. While this sucked dust in all the openings, it was convenient for heat scavenging, AND exhaust. The latter was important in my non-air-conditioned college-town house.

I got a couple 4" drier vents, some drier vent hose, and a heat-scavenging diverter valve (which were big that year - for electric driers only!). Took the flapper valve and rain shield off one of the drier vents, yeilding a fitting that I mounted on the pancae fan's four mounting screws. It coupled the airflow nicely into the drier vent hose, which was essentially exactly the diameter of the fan blade shroud. A few 2x4s mad a wooden insert that went into the window in place of the screen unit, with the other vent in the middle of it. Hooked the two together with the hose, with the diverter in the middle of it, and the third hose segment feeding the hot air register.

In the summer the space-heater's-worth of hot air went out the window instead of into the house. In the winter the hot air fed the furnace distributon, providing a base heat supply to the house with the furnace coming on to "top it off" to the desired temperature.

I think that you are not fully considering all of the possible implications of your comments.

I would argue that MySpace and Facebook have not provided us with a new form of intelligence.

The logical conclusion for an AI would be to eliminate itself of its less-efficient human parasite and utilize all available resources for the most efficient mind, which will be itself.

Evolution for some is extinction for others.

"The Government prevented competition".

But why? Because their corporate masters didn't want competition. ( and the voting public isn't paying enough attention )
Why do they have corporate masters? Because we allow corporations influence in the political arena, through campaign contributions.
Why do we allow corporations to make campaign contributions? Because the camel's nose got under the tent with the "corporations are people", and the line keeps getting pushed a bit further over time.

"Corporations are people" has zero to do with it. That SCOTUS ruling did not exist in the 1930s (as your example started with H. Hoover). Government is corrupt because it's made up of corruptible humans. And guess what? The more power and control over more things you give them, the more corrupt they will become.

Government is a necessary evil, and is a dangerous and deadly entity that can easily spin out of control if not tightly reined-in and allowed only the very minimum amount of power and resources to do what we decide to have done.

"regulatory capture"

The mechanism is above.

Which I already debunked above. Regarding the "corporations are people" meme, that's hogwash as well. It tells me you have no clue what the case was actually about. People have a right to organize, pool their resources, and buy advertising, etc and promote their views. People do not give up their right to participate in elections by being part of an organization like a corporation or PAC.

"blind trust"

There should not be blind trust in government. Or in anything.

Except that your statements regarding your views reflects the opposite. The cognitive dissonance is startling.

"Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce."

Do you see that Conservatism generates just as much police state?

No. I see Progressives who claim to be conservatives/Republicans. Heck, even a so-called "conservative" like John McCain has proudly stated he was a "Progressive" Republican. RINOs.

Sorry, that was J. Edgar Hoover, who was initially put in place by President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat and vocal Progressive who also racially segregated the military which had not been officially segregated prior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Immediately after getting his LL.M degree, Hoover was hired by the Justice Department to work in the War Emergency Division. He soon became the head of the Division's Alien Enemy Bureau, authorized by President Wilson at the beginning of World War I to arrest and jail disloyal foreigners without trial.[12] He received additional authority from the 1917 Espionage Act. Out of a list of 1,400 suspicious Germans living in the U.S., the Bureau arrested 98 and designated 1,172 as arrestable.[18]

In August 1919 Hoover became head of the Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Divisionâ"also known as the Radical Division because its goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.

Except the Watergate "Plumbers" were election campaign operatives, not members of the FBI or other TLA.

McCarthy was destroyed because he overreached, not because he was wrong. There were and are communists in the US government. Alger Hiss and others are examples.

Another Progressive Republican. Progressives have completely subsumed the Democratic Party and have almost done the same to the Republican Party.

Why do you think that nothing much changes no matter if the (R)s or the (D)s are in power? Progressives in both Parties is why.

Strat

The FCC also heavily regulated the telecom industry. We had no innovation for decades

We also had no competition for decades. It had nothing to do with regulation, it was because Ma Bell was the only game in town (FSVO "town" approaching "manifest destiny").

Gee, how was Ma Bell able to maintain a monopoly and keep anyone else from competing?

Oh, that's right! The FUCKING GOVERNMENT prevented competition!

And yes, there *will* be regulatory capture. Shit, practically every federal regulatory agency/dept./bureau suffers from it!

I've got a morbid curiosity to see just how the government through it's short-sightedness and desire to monitor everyone/everything causes an internet 'Deep Horizon'-scale disaster.

"You like your internet anonymity, you can keep your internet anonymity!"

You know it's coming.

And you know what?

It's just this kind of blind trust that government will make everything better you display that will help complete the transformation of the US into a soft-fascism surveillance/police state.

Strat

fellow-travelers

The 1950s called and wants its insult back.

Your hgh school English teacher called, he wants your passing grade in 'Vocabulary' back.

Strat

You mean we should drop multi-ton cannisters of (water? almonds?) on Sacramento at orbital speeds resulting in kinetic energy releases rivaling nuclear weapons?

Probably the best thing that could happen to California at this point.

Strat

Who are the same school of economists that didn't see the either the 1930s Depression or the current US economic crisis coming.

Yeah, the school of economics and economists that was correctly screaming warnings both times and were ignored and/or attacked/destroyed by those economically/politically/ideologically invested in the status quo and their economic/political/ideological fellow-travelers.

Strat

Right, maybe we should burn him at the stake for heresy!
    You true believers have absolutely no idea how foolish you come across.

Call me crazy, but I'd much rather trust corporations than government. Corporations have to answer to shareholders, and to a lesser extent, their customers

If there were real competition in residential Internet service, those corporations would have to answer to their customers. With the local duopolies, they only have to answer to their shareholders.

So, yes, you are crazy.

And guess who created and who maintains those monopolies with their own monopoly on the use of deadly force and/or imprisonment?

Better have that sanity-checker of yours recalibrated.

Strat