On the subject of stupid/corrupt officials, just a translation for those who don't already know:

Radical sympathiser (Governmentish)
Noun
A person that disagrees with our right to absolute power over everything.

liberal
/lib()rl/
adjective
adjective: liberal
1.
open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
"they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people"

favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms.
"liberal citizenship laws"synonyms: tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened; Morepermissive, free, free and easy, easygoing, libertarian, indulgent, lenient
"the values of a liberal society"
antonyms: narrow-minded, bigoted

(in a political context) favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform.
"a liberal democratic state"synonyms: progressive, advanced, modern, forward-looking, forward-thinking, progressivist, enlightened, reformist, radical More"a liberal social agenda"
antonyms: reactionary, conservative

noun
noun: liberal; plural noun: liberals
1.
a person of liberal views.


People who spout garbage in public and have no idea what they are talking about. Ew, yuck.

Winamp... I don't understand why people think it is going to suddenly disappear. I haven't needed to update winamp in years, I only have a newer version because I sometimes lose the installer. What exactly is going to change that will make me need a new music player? My music is still all in mp3 format, I don't use any of winamp's online services. The program is finished and complete. I don't need support from AOL and I never did. In a few years there will be new developments and winamp will slowly become obsolete, but those same new developments will result in new software being developed that caters to them. I really don't see the problem here. Winamp will be able to play me mp3s until I no longer need to listen to them or my OS no longer has windows 7 compatibility mode.

Exactly, we should also legalise rape and murder, because criminals don't follow those laws either.

Yeah, they would have been so much better off if he was legally able to carry the gun.

Hey I just noticed that brasnacte actually contradicted you before you even posted, and you quoted the contradiction. I am impressed.

Informative? Really?

"Smoking is different, when used properly and as intended, your smoking harms the person next to you" - Not proven, if you want to take it on faith you can believe what you want but studies have failed to prove this conclusively

Secondly, when used properly and as intended, firearms harm something, somewhere, maybe not a person, maybe not next to you, but their uses are somewhat limited.

While I am posting on this topic I would also like to point out that this has nothing to do with second amendment freedoms. These weapons can be produced at will by private citizens. This means if it comes to a revolution (and honestly, I don't know what you are all waiting for), they can be produced at the time when needed. At this point the government is going to kill you on sight anyway, so whether you are breaking gun printing laws or not is irrelevant.

If anything, 3d gun printing makes the second amendment obsolete. If 3d guns were any good (currently they aren't but maybe one day), the need to keep arms would no longer exist, people would only need to have 3d printers in every house and could make the guns the day before the revolution starts.

"At higher energy levels, an EMP can cause more widespread damage including to aircraft structures and other objects."

What is this about? I looked into it and it is actually something the media is copy pasting from wikipedia. The original quote from wiki also includes the extra words "At higher energy levels, an EMP event such as a lightning strike can cause more widespread damage to aircraft structures and other objects."
Can someone who knows the science explain this to me? Can an EMP weapon actually damage the structure of an aircraft? Obviously 'other objects' is just stupid no matter how you look at it, my farts can damage 'other objects'.

Actually the opposite is true, it is not even close to trivial. Yes I can download aand install a new voip program with a couple of clicks. The issue is contacts. I can't use the new program to call any of my old skype contacts. I have been dealing with the same issue for years now with instant messaging services. My current solution is to use pidgin and simply have an account on every IM network I ever used in the past. Many of my friends are still on msn and icq. I can't simply tell everyone they have to change services, well I can, but they won't do it. After I stopped using facebook I lost contact with a large number of important internet contacts who refuse to use any other means of communication. Skype would be the same situation again.

Many of these people are skype users because I encouraged them to start using the service back when it didn't suck. For me to come along now and say that they have to stop using it and start using something else will make them trust my recommendations less, making the whole process harder each time.

Having said that, I would still like to know what the alternatives are, and I haven't seen many people mentioning any so far in this thread. Anyone got good suggestions?

On the subject of language pedantry: Why do so many people use out of the box when they actually mean outside the box? The two phrases mean almost the opposite thing. thought it was an Americanism at first but if so you would expect a reference to it on wikipedia which is the primary US encyclopedia.

You think they told everyone about it first? Because otherwise IT WAS A CONSPIRACY.

conspiracy
plural noun: conspiracies
1. a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

I am so sick of the word conspiracy being used to mean 'things that crazy people who are wrong believe in'. The correct word for that is delusion.

delusion
plural noun: delusions
1. an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

Stop using these words as though they are synonymous

The Borg of course, their transportation costs are astronomical. The justice league only have a few vehicles and their budget easily covers the fuel costs.

I understand that in the wonderful utopian future we will all have as much energy as we want. My argument was referring more to the actual reality of now though. Your battery to wheels efficiency statistics conveniently left out the efficiency of the coal power plant that charged the batteries. I did however clearly refer to power production in the post you were replying to so the only kind assumption is that you are just pretending to be ignorant.

While on the subject of future fantasy technologies that will solve all our transportation problems: I am a big fan of building a world wide teleporter network. Oh and a space elevator.

That seems to sum up the vast majority of this thread, and the alternative energy debate in a very concise way.
Let me take this opportunity to summarise the thread:
30 pages of people arguing about the safety of hydrogen. 20 pages of people arguing about their opinions of Elon Musk.


Let me now summarise the issue:
A) Danger is not the issue, yes hydrogen tanks are dangerous, but we are talking about private transportation here. If we cared about safety we would have banned all of it decades ago. No one really cares if a few people get torn to pieces by a car.
B) Hydrogen fuel cells are a bad idea because the production of hydrogen is hugely inefficient. The thermal efficiency is only about 50% and that is ignoring the massive compression that would be required for private transport, as well as distribution costs. This means hydrogen powered cars will use significantly more energy than other alternatives, energy that is generated in power stations, mostly through burning fossil fuels. The issue we have with cars is that they use too much energy. Neither Musk's electric cars nor any hydrogen technology currently on the market do anything to change this at all. It is all a huge PR lie so that all the happy consumers will feel good in the fluffy cotton wool illusion that they are saving the planet.
C) Quit the celebrity worship, hundreds of people have quite clearly explained the pro's and cons of hydrogen fuel cells and we should not care more about this guy's opinion just because he is rich and famous. We could care about his opinion because he has a physics degree, but then again there are a great many people with physics degrees who have opinions on hydrogen fuel cells.

Well it changes the definition of free will slightly. If you take the many universes approach as suggested above then we have the emergent illusion of time and therefore the emergent illusion of being able to choose which perspective of the universe we experience next. It also means that the words 'free' and 'will' have no objective meaning. Subjectively however I find it useful to believe in such illusory things as my own existence, time, causality, etc. and within this logical framework which I use most of the time I have free will.

It is just as true to say 'free will exists' as it is to say 'parallel lines cross at infinity'. Within a certain logical framework it exists. Furthermore without any logical framework at all no language has meaning, let alone truth, and no coherent thoughts are possible. In fact everything anyone ever experienced is an illusion, and therefore it exists as such.

In case this was not clear I am disputing your first claim (that the reader does not have free will), and agreeing with your second one (that free will is an illusion). I also see them as directly contradicting each other.

Funniest thing I have seen all day, and I watched the surgeon simulator video so that is saying something.