I got some pushback on a comment a couple of weeks ago suggesting Trump was following China's and dictators' playbooks, saying America is totally different and I was mad to make the comparison.

How's that going for you?

Just used my last mod points for the day. Here, have a personalized "TROLL" message, lovingly crafted by our artisans.

Only comparing one democracy (at time of writing ) and up to a few years ago it would indeed have been bonkers. Today he's using the playbook of China (and Russia and North Korea, plus various historic European regimes) to achieve his "aims". He seems to use 1984 and Animal Farm as instruction books as opposed to cautionary tales.

"One-man show, top-down authoritarian style, interfere in the market."

Watch out, you'll get a visit from the masked Imperial Trump Guard with criticisms like that. Oh, you're talking about Chyna. Sorry.

And then all the other contributors. I first installed it 31 years ago, probably on a DX-something-slow processor PC. Slackware something or other. Currently mainly use flavours of Ubuntu on VIM4 SBC computers and in Vagrant (on a Mac, because the year of the Linux desktop was/will be too late for me). Here's to the next 34 years.

Her government sold off the resource. In order to make short-term profit. To enable tax cuts for middle-class. In order to cement her party in power. Without making any investments in the future. Yes, I'll blame her for it. She, with Ronny, gave the world Neo-liberalism and other parties have run with it.

After she'd sold Water, the parties had nothing to do with building reservoirs etc - it was a corporate decision from then on driven by profit. Until this year, when a Labour government stepped in to build reservoirs: https://www.gov.uk/government/...

So once again, yes I will blame Thatcher. She did irreparable damage to the country I once called home and enabled much of the later damage that her colleagues got away with.

Privatise a public good, reap the rewards. She (Mrs Thatcher) sold off the family silver for short-term gain (and after she'd hamstrung the old water authorities by denying them access to loans for infrastructure). Now a bunch of water companies "compete" to make the most profit, by raising bills and reducing investment. Yay. Another bit of right-wing nonsense the country gets to enjoy.

Hey Internet pedants, that's how you correct someone's spelling. Well played.

n/t, just despair.

Will my six-year old Model 3 with FSD, like fully self-drive because of this?

No wait, I don't care; it goes next month to be replaced by a Porsche EV. That's what having an unstable Nazi as a CEO does to potential repeat buyers. Getting the orange one into power and laughing along as he threatens my country with becoming the 51st "state" made sure I sold it as soon as I could.

Can't find any concrete references (too lazy). But I remember many of us (here on Slashdot and other dens of iniquity) laughing at the insanity of the OOXML format when it first emerged. Especially given the pre-existence of ODF.

The Wikipedia page does tell us the number of pages the standard runs to - it's greater than 120.

It also suggests there have only been two major releases of the format and the problems seem to have been baked in from day one.

Moderated Troll? Tough crowd.

And none of that is relevant in the slightest to discussions about "comparative advantage" and why trade can and should (in an ideal world) be beneficial to both parties, including consumers as a well as corporations. Nor why phones are made in China.

Note that Ford rapidly built factories around the world shortly after getting the assembly line concept working for him.

Comparative advantage was what we taught 40 years ago. I don't think Donny understands gains from trades or opportunity costs.

Saw story this morning, bought book on my Kobo immediately.

For the cost of a few (Canadian dollars) to a Canadian/Japanese company (some of which goes to a German-owned publishing house, albeit probably their American subsidiary), on a device that replaced my Kindle last week (unionization-inspired close-down of Amazon depot in Canada earned them a cancelled Prime after more than ten years, no further purchases, cancellation of Audible subscription, even before Emperor Orange Turd and Grand Moff Musk started stamping their malignant narcissistic feet), I get a nice warm glow in this chilling times. And a book that's probably at least somewhat interesting.