The problem is that most corporations don't think long term anymore. To them "long term" means more than one business year.

New technology is very, very often founded by taxpayers in its initial stages. Then corporations pick it up and make it big and take the credit, but the fact is that they could start with a mature product instead of doing all the basic research themselves.

There are exceptions, but if you really go through the history of even recent inventions, you will be surprised at how often taxpayer money is involved in the early stages.

For my country, most of the current telecommunications stuff, TV and radio, a lof of transportation, thousands of small inventions in material sciences and engineering, alternative energy, almost everything in the aerospace industry, the early Internet and an endless list of other things would not have come to pass without the government funding at least parts of the early development, and often considerably more than that.

Basically, any technology that takes several years to mature and deploy as well as any that requires a considerably deployed base before economy of scale makes it profitable.

And that's a set of baseless assumptions right there.

I prefer a fact-based approach to bullshit propaganda. So unless you've got any evidence of your claim, I'll call you a liar.

What I'm saying is: Maybe they would love to do just that, but everyone complains when they need a bigger budget because they are not going with the dirt cheap solutions anymore.

The big picture is that there is this liberal assumption floating around that anything the government does is bad and expensive, and everyone private enterprise does is cheap and good. And I'm saying that's bullshit.

No. But it's still a job that can be done well, or badly.

I'm just trying to make you think one step further, beyond "the city fucked this up" towards "why did they fuck this up?".

I don't like representative democracy, either. However, the people decided that this is how they want it, so they are also responsible for what happened afterwards. I can't give you a gun and tell you to shoot something, and then complain about the details of where you shot it and how.

Complain, yes. But there are valid and invalid complaints. You can still dislike it, but you should acknowledge that it is like that for a reason. That you might disagree with, but the majority doesn't.

Ok, that's a bit beating around the bush. What's getting on my nerves is people complaining about government actions as if the government where an alien parasite that infects the planet and not something that we do to ourselves.

*grin* that was a really good one.

But, of course, I'm quite sure that you can get authentic dino skeletons from China in whatever type and quantity you desire...

Have you ever thought about the other explanation: They they do it cheaply and badly because everyone tries to save a few pennies on this job? I'm pretty sure had you hired a contractor, it would've been more than $800, but it would've been done properly.

Everyone always expects the government to work great, but with an absolute minimum of budget. Well, newsflash, private corporations don't manage to do that, either. Many of them just have the advantage of getting infrastructure, etc. for free from the government.

Example: The rail company in Germany was made a private company about 10 years ago. The first few years, everything looks great, just like the consultants had promised. Then things started to go downhill, and still do. Because the first thing they started to save money on was such irritable costs as maintainance. With minimal maintainance, the tracks and stations work just fine... for a few years...

Government is sometimes wasteful, but often they are just more expensive because they don't cut corners as much as private companies do and because they take risks and explore frontiers that corporations rather not.
NASA is crazy expensive, but they got a man to the moon in 8 years. And even with all the groundwork long done, private companies are still working out the details of reaching earth orbit after 11 years.

Well, that is democracy for it.

Here's the longhand explanation: The voters have decided that they want to do it this way. If you don't see it that way, then you're in the minority. Tough luck.

Yes and no.

There are many valid reasons why you want to store gender. One of the most obvious is that language is sex-aware and many languages even more so than english. There are many cases where you need the gender just to talk to or about someone, and the gender-neutral workarounds are at best awkward and at worst outright insulting. Again, don't just judge from english, which happens to be fairly flexible in that regard.

You need to dig a lot deeper if you want to do journalism.

First, scantily clad women do not appeal to men alone. Studies have shown that these women on the cover of magazines increase sales even among female buyers.

And, as I promised, here's a short rant for the next idiot going on about sexims:

Yes, sexism is real. Now stop pretending that the women are the victims. There are a lot of areas where men are the victims. Talk to a man who has been abused by his wife and ask him how much help he has received from the outside world. The part that didn't laugh at him, or disbelief him.

Check with the "gender studies" of your local university and if it's not a thinly veiled feminist assault group, you are very, very lucky (and a rare exception).

Make a graph about how man people work for men's rights compared to women's rights.

Talk to a language feminazi. Oh my god, these are evil and misguided people. Want an example, here's just one: The "His" in "History" has absolutely nothing to do with gender. Check your etymological dictionary.

Are booth babes sexist? Maybe. But what they mainly are is capitalistic: They bring in at least their wages in profits. If scantily clad men would do the same, you bet you'd see them around.

You care enough to reply. Twice.

You are being emotional. Everyone can disagree with me as much as they want. I will, however, point out that if you invest the time to write a reply, you can't in the same sentence claim that you don't care. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't read a topic that doesn't mean anything to you, nor would you reply.

*lol*, no. The post I replied to specifically mentioned the 9/11 attackers as people to side with if it meant less government.

The difference is that the "central lot" in case of the UN doesn't hold any power.

Name the UN representative of your country. You can't? I wonder why that is. Probably because he's not important. He's just a diplomat following orders, that's all.

You would still have to bribe and cajole all the national governments. The advantage would be that you'd have to do it to all of them (or at least a majority), and not just one.

It would be more distributed.

So, you are in support of the Unabomber, the 9/11 terrorists, every rapist and murderer out there as well as every single criminal ever?

Please explain your funny little theory to the parents of a little girl that was raped and killed at the trial of the guy who did it. That you support him because the government is evil.

You are making the false assumption that that's what it takes. But if you look at history, then the opposite is true: Every single example you've listed has made the US government more powerful and more out of control, not less.

The real tragedy of the commons is, that they don't have a defender. Corporations have been stealing from the public domain in massive quantities and for a long time.

What people mostly don't understand is that the world is not a Hollywood movie. Just because one side is the bad guys doesn't mean the other side is the good guy.

In this case, it's a power-greedy, corrupt government vs. a greedy, criminal egomaniac.

Let them tear each other apart and enjoy the show, because if you make the mistake of rooting with any of them, you're supporting the bad guys.

Kimble's business has always been himself. If the fact that he changed his last name to "Dotcom" didn't tell you as much, I'm not sure if a huge sign with neon letters will.