"ISS crew breathing easier with Ammonia freely flowing".

Well, funnier anyway.

Its not reasonable for there to be such vast disparities in population between the states.

I totally disagree. There were huge divisions even when the original stricture of government was set up. But it makes sense that if you want each state to be an equal participant in government, you have some means to give each equal representation regardless of population.

Otherwise states less populated would get totally overwhelmed by what the more populated states want to do. That is not a good thing. The Senate is there to put the brakes on mere populism.

The whole checks and balances thing is not just a catchy phrase. It's there to keep the government from running unchecked and letting a passionate mob ruin everything.

Yes, the laws were flawed, and yes, that's the idea Asimov mined to produce some interesting stories.

But the thing here is that those laws require both a free-thinking intelligence that can reason non-linearly, and a locked-down computer-like slavish obedience to simplistic concepts. As we have yet to put any kind of actual AI in the field, we not only don't have such magic combo, we don't even know how to make such a magic combo.

The only high-level intelligence we know of is us; and getting one of us to rigidly obey the three laws would be an exercise in utter frustration. No reason to think it'd be any more practical in Robbie the Robot, esq., citizen of the Consolidated Intelligences Union.

Nice job misquoting me. That "almost" you left out is critical to understanding what I said.

See any steel mills? Visit Bethlehem and check 'em out. See any television or radio manufacturers? Other than Apple's recent foray into trash can manufacture, see any computer manufacturers? (and no, importers of Chinese parts to assemble don't count) Been to Detroit lately? That's a bloody eye-opener, I can tell you. Or just take a trip to Walmart and check country of origin on, well, just about anything.

Sure, there's a little manufacturing left, but it's a pale shadow of what we have had in the past.

You know how some people feel about highly paid CEO's of companies?

Well guess what, lots of people feel the same way about highly paid tech workers.

Think on that the next time you go for the casual CEO hater joke.

Rhode Island gets two senators and california gets 2? Dumb.

I feel really, really sad for whoever tried to teach you civics.

Or do you not understand the difference between house and senate and WHY they are different?

Not that it doesn't' make sense to split up a few really large states like California though. Then they could have a half not hostile to farming.

It could be argued that Silicon Valley has benefitted the most from the California taxpayer.

That cannot be argued, because it is totally backwards! Do you have any idea how much tax revenue both Apple and Google ALONE bring into the state? Never mind tons of VC money flowing into companies there, which flows into the state through income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes on things the government buys... That is money flowing in from all over the world that California benefits hugely from.

If it were not for Silicon Valley, the state of California would look like Detroit thanks to the policies and regulations they have enacted!

It is only fair to split up the debt though because the people across the state voted for the people and policies that brought on the debt. It's just that the Silicon Valley section will pay off their debt in a year or two, while in that same timeframe most of the other sections would probably declare bankruptcy.

It's "lodestone", you infidel. And they aren't gems, either. Did you sleep through earth science?

The framework is fine. The linker isn't designed to put objects this size on the heap. Goddamned Insmell smegma registers.

Nah, those of us that think don't hang out in earthquake zones.

rimshot

they risk releasing biomechanoid killing machines that will destroy all of humanity.

Too late, already done. They're called "televisions." They kill the mind first.

There is a bottom, you heretic. It's a Yurtle.

These tunneling machines are not meant to be stopped, and consequently do not have a "reverse".

We engineer types call that "a failure of vision."

So because to our knowledge nobody has ever sold a rogue nuclear weapon to someone in the past that means it will never happen in the future?

No, it probably won't happen in the future, either. There are huge technical hurdles, most likely insurmountable.

But I'll tell you something else: Say it happens. Some big city somewhere goes up in a mushroom cloud. It still won't knock civilization out. There are billions of people on the planet, hundreds of societies, and the complete destruction of a city or two -- regardless of how -- won't mean squat in the long run to civilization at large. As we have already seen many times in the last hundred years, examples that come right to mind include Dresden, Tokyo, Berlin, Beirut, Warsaw, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just to name a few. The whole "terrorists might get a nuke and end civilization" meme is pure hysteria, nothing more.

And you can leave out the government propaganda nonsense - I don't believe in government any more than you do.

What are you talking about? Did I say I "didn't believe in" government? No, I didn't say anything of the kind. Please try to keep the strawman assembly to a minimum. Let me explain my previous post in just a few short words: Your thesis about nukes ending civilization is utter nonsense; what you ought to be concerned with is the actual threat, which is the present government out of control. None of which is propaganda: it's straight up fact. Also, just as an aside, I consider government an absolute necessity. Get it now?

The land of freedom and liberty. That's what I was always taught.

It is, but you have to vote for people that want to keep it that way. You have to complain when people tell you that this or that part of the constitution doesn't mean anything anymore. You have to complain when government grows, for the larger a government is the farther it is from control even of elected officials.

Anything worthwhile requires care and upkeep, and a nation is no different.