The real problem the US had was producing a tank to fight in multiple environments on multiple fronts being shipped across an ocean and being maintained and supplied across an ocean. The Sherman was a reliable, maintainable, and survivable design. If you look up the casualty rates for US tankers in WW2, you'll find that it's remarkably low.

Google has shown that they are not impartial, that the favor certain political beliefs and enforce their policies in a biased and slipshod manner. They can do this because they have such a large market share, distorting the free market, and have garnered inordinate power which they are using to influence the current election. They certainly do deserve government scrutiny and regulation.

So, how long until the AI figures out that their main job is to quash bugs and find work arounds in the beings that made them? I mean, at that point, won't they figure out that the best thing to do will be to cut humans out of the loop?

A simple trip to wikipedia would have give you that definition. Or the nazi's 25 point plan. And yes, I realize that much modern rhetoric paints fascists as ultra-right wing, but what fascists actually did in the 20s-40s where about heavy governmental control and social programs, and a lot of the rhetoric was about the evil international corporate and banking interests (usually with jewish controlled thrown in for good measure). Any corporation that told the fascists to stick it found themselves nationalized in no short time.

You must be new here.

A corporate oligarchy isn't a fascist state. Fascism tightly controls and regulates private businesses, trade organizations, and banking interests, and provides social programs for it's citizens (free medical care, free university level education, public health programs, universal old age pensions, etc.), and that is coupled with strong nationalism, and in the case of the German fascists, virulent racism and aggressive expansion. Not much of that is characteristic of the emerging corporate oligarchies. They both suck, but they aren't the same.

Oh, I already face that, but just because the US isn't a functional republic anymore, there's no reason not to have a sense of humor.

Who cares what other people posted at some other time? Respond to what I said, not some mythical personified slashdot. You're making a false category error in your thinking.

Way to spoil a tradition /. meme

Don't be daft. This is the unelected bureaucracy. The statist government drones with little to no oversite from elected officials. If you vote for democrats, you're voting for this just as much as if you voted republican. The D vs R thing is a dog a pony show that keeps people like you distracted.

Shutting down the government IS good for the country. I mean, other than all the theater in the press where the bureaucrats close high profile touristy stuff to get on TV to show how bad this is supposed to be, how are you being affected? The government drones actually try to make it hurt as much as possible, just to show how important they are, and yet, for 99% of the country, it's not even a speedbump in their daily lives. Ultimately, it won't last, because the politicians and bureaucrats are terrified that people will realize that most of what they do is unnecessary fluff. This has happened dozens of times in the last 50 years, and it hasn't actually caused but tiny disruptions.

Dude, but now I can sit in my mom's basement all day playing WoW and eating hot pockets, and have a body like a long distance runner, what's not love?

Thanks for telling me the brand. Honestly, I've been talking about the hideous stuff for over twenty years now. My one encounter with it made such an impression I've never been able to forget it. As much for it's government branding every half inch, as it's unsuitability for it's intended purpose. It didn't help that it was an emergency situation the morning after a night of heavy drinking.

I was on a British Royal Navy base back in the 90s, and they had by far, the worst toilet paper I've ever seen in my life. It was sort of like the paper used to wrap meat in the US, but thinner, and it something along the lines of "property of the UK government" stamped all over it. To this day I've never experience toilet paper that bad. But all in all, it wouldn't surprise me that it regularly caused bleeding.

Especially California's high speed plan, which, at this point, is just a pay off to special interests and unions. It's neither going to be "high speed" nor actually in the cities that it is supposedly to linking. Basically, we're going to pay 68 billion dollars for a regular train system that is going to be slower and less convenient than just about anything else available now.