Slashdot Mirror

Would you or have worked on tech which could enable torture?

You may be expecting an unqualified "no", but the right answer is it depends. The unacceptable kinds of torture are those, which leave the subject dead or damaged. (And I mean real damage — not as in "needs counseling"). It may be useful to confine the definition of "torture" to such methods only — as was done by some people already.

Waterboarding is certainly not damaging — a rough arrest by a police may be far more harmful to the suspect — and still be justified. Likewise, a prolonged criminal investigation may be far more damaging psychologically. And don't even get me started on the exploding use of "Hellfire" missiles (pun intended) by the highest-placed opponent of waterboarding:

no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing [emphasis mine -mi] of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

Don't know about you, but I'd rather be waterboarded by mistake, than killed by the same mistake.

Dealing with the government is rarely pleasant, but waterboarding does not cross any real lines. If the duly-elected President charged with protecting us deems it necessary, his subordinates better get on with it. Or resign. As George Orwell pointed out decades ago:

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Where does that put you morally and ethically?

Whether it is useful is another question, but "morally and ethically" there is nothing wrong with it. Deal with that.

You have a very distorted view of science. Theories are bodies of evidence and models, and in the course of making them one expects some false predictions. When they happen, the theory is adjusted (possibly slightly, possibly greatly) to conform with observation. You're doing the rough equivalent of releasing helium balloons, observing them, and claiming that the Theory of Gravity is falsified, and we must therefore accept the null hypothesis and drift off into space.

Completely 180 degrees from the truth. It is you who looks at the balloons rising and says that humans have changed how Gravity works on the planet - despite it having kept the planet in a stable equilibrium for a billion years (that is, perturbations do not cause runway catastrophes).

It is YOU who asserts the Law of Gravity no longer functions because of the small perturbation of Industrialized Civilization !

We're dumping carbon dioxide into the air, it's warming up the surface, and you come up with something you claim is a prediction, a handwave at supposed evidence against it, and conclude that it's actually cooler out there.

The specific prediction of the IPCC's AGW Theory is that the TLT will warm faster than the surface. This is their prediction, not mine. What is seen in observational REALITY is the OPPOSITE. That means the IPCC's AGW theory must be amended or discarded, as you point out in your first post. But what you are doing is clinging to the Theory and discarding and dismissing the observational evidence that contradicts the theory. That makes your approach anti-scientific. You also don't seem to understand the specific test of AGW theory, which is why you cling to it despite the observational data falsifying it.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

-- Richard P Feynman
You claim that a theory can survive contradictory data. Richard Feynman disagrees with you. I agree with Feynman, and am trying to get you out of your anti-scientific habit. AGW could be true at some point in the future, but the OBSERVATIONAL REALITY shows it is not true at this time. You have to let your prejudices and preconceptions go and follow the Scientific Method. AGW cannot be sustained at this time.

I've got news for you: the Universe doesn't care about your misguided nitpicks. The surface of the Earth is warming up regardless.

So you are saying you don't care about the science. Typical. You are just like the control freak sociopaths in the UN trying to control everyone's life: http://green-agenda.com/

The Earth is indeed warming. But the observations indicate it is natural warming expected due to the end of the Little Ice Age as well as oceans transeferring heat in complicated ways. Does CO2 have an effect? yes! does the AGW's water-vapor feedback have an effect (which is the thing the Alarmists claim is the problem)? NO! in fact, the observational reality shows the water vapor effect is neutral or even slightly negative. This is excellent news which means there is no need for de-industralization, or the UN regulating and controlling every aspect of your life, and energy poverty can be a thing of the past and we can improve the lives of BILLIONS. Do you not want this?

I can suggest some other mandatory certifications to allay consumers' fears and help them make political statements:

• "Grown in Vermont" — replace by your state or an even lesser locale as needed.
• "Fair Paid" — all of the workers involved were paid at least double the national minimum wage.
• "Minority Grown" — no Whites among the workers involved. Optional sub-certifications can be added to specify, which racial minority in particular was involved.
• "Grown by Whites" — no, scratch that, that's like sooo racist...
• "Femininely Grown" — for the fish without bicycles.
• "LGBT Farmed" — to help all those LGBT farmers in their struggle for acceptance.
• If you identify as some other Foo-American, I sincerely apologize for failing to mention Foo — it was outrageously exclusionary and harmful of me. As soon as the hurt from my unwittingly virtually punching you in the face subsides, feel free to add the "Foo Raised" or "Proudly made by Foo" at the top of this list and we shall all cheer.

The compliance with each label's statute shall be monitored and enforced by the Attorney General and penalties for violations shall be up to $1000 per day per person.

Now, of course, if we interpreted the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as broadly as we do the First Amendment, none of this would be possible... But, hey, what good is a Democracy, if the majority can not impose its will on an (unpopular) minority?

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Somehow I thought this quote was from Jobs during his first time at Apple Computer inc.? wow. I haven't had a Mac since 2005 and the distortion field is still strong... (source)

More on point, it seems that not only it is true that hardware+OS+applications are a good way to make money, the control over more of these 3 is a good insurance policy against the other vendors closing down app stores or their hardware on you.
I certainly don't mind that NVidia, Steam, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nintendo, Sony and mr Goatse all have separate app stores and compatible hardware to go with them, I just hope that in the future it will be possible to play games and use applications/files across platforms without having to own several consoles and owing monthly rents to each of them.

If combat were purely a dick-waving contest (war is to a certain degree, but I'm talking about actual tactical combat), then this might be true. However, combat is about winning, as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible. Very Art Of War-esque

George S Patton expressed this very well:

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

> Because as bad as politicians are, they are still better-informed than the general population.

I think they are about the same.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

It is incorrect to invoke Occam's Razor if the simpler version isn't adequate.

Which part is infinite?

Surely the stupidity?

I've always wanted to go to space using the lowest bidder AND the winner of a race. Must be The New NASA.

It's also The Old NASA.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

I guess that's why all countries following the teachings of Marx (who said basically the same thing you are) were so hugely successful.

it wasn't just Marx who said it:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

Is that why countries that follow the teachings of Abraham Lincoln are such failures?

(who had some damned wise things to say about a LOT of stuff .. curiously enough even the LHC:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

It's part of the denigration of work, as the executives go around saying that engineers are and should be interchangable, we're fry cooks, and working us to death is slightly more efficient than allowing us lives. And so we should all be worked to death.

This a very worthy topic of conversation on Labor Day. I don't know if you're in the US, but "denigration of work" is what's been for dinner for at least the past 35 years.

It's worth quoting Abraham Lincoln here (yes, this is a real Lincoln quote):

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

So, you're unaware of Abraham Lincoln's predilection for socialist statements? Why am I not surprised?

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...

Thus, if you are a politician, and want pork [...]

But you repeat yourself.

According to http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... Mark Twain?

Who said anything about banning private lending or insurance, just the banning of the force of law in private lending or insurance. Want to play loanshark, go ahead but expect no support from law when it comes to recovery money but expect force of law against you in your attempts to recover money.

As for the old total bullshit lie that private can be trusted more than government, give up on the bullshit from 30 years of main stream media owned by private corporations propaganda, it is just exactly that. Imagine the chaos of private armies not government armies, imagine the chaos of private police not government police, imagine the corruption of private courts, imagine the corruption or private government not public government, oh wait, you do not have to imagine that, the corrupt campaign donation system and bribes paid in offshore tax havens where incidentally corporations hide billions of dollars.

It is called psychopathic capitalism for a reason. http://thestandard.org.nz/psyc... , http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... , https://www.jacobinmag.com/201... , http://www.sott.net/article/29.... This reflected in there endless attacks on government of the people by the people and for the people versus capitalism of the psychopath by the psychopath and for the psychopath.

-1 disagree. every single person on earth will tell you that flavor is important and that things that taste gross are bad. name one who doesn't.

Also 'The first bite is with the eye and the second with the nose.'

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

Don't climate "scientists" have a personal bias invested in a certain outcome?

No. That's the argument made over and over again, but it isn't actually the way science works. In the long run, scientists gain kudos by getting the right answer. Despite the arguments of deniers, scientists aren't idiots.

And in the scientific community, the standard is: the more sensational the claim, the more evidence is required. And climate "science" has made some pretty sensational claims

Again, wrong. In some ways, the problem with actual climate science (not what's in the press, real science) is that the effect isn't sensational. The climate scientists are claiming that anthropogenic carbon dioxide has warmed the planet by on the order of one degree-- far too little for anybody to actually personally notice, although well measurable on a statistical basis. That's only a few percent of the natural greenhouse warming (which is well understood, and not at all controversial, even though it's exactly the same physics).

The reason that denial is so easy is that the effect is so small. Over the long term, of course, it does built up-- but that's brings in the argument "why should we do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?"

that have a history if not coming true.

Again, wrong. I've been tracking the predictions to data for several years now, and climate modelling still seems to be pretty good; tracking to well within statistical error. The only people who say it isn't are saying so by cherry-picking data that isn't statistically significant.

But we knew that: if the greenhouse effect didn't exist, the Earth would be a frozen snowball.

A certain general would like to speak to you: http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

It's easy to write them off, but the fact is that we already have an affirmative action infrastructure in the USA, which could easily be adapted for every conceivable "protected class".

Somehow I doubt the microagression folks will gain much of a toehold. Way too far to the left, and catering to a demographic that I fear might have some basic human genetic parts missing. If they cannot handle any disagreement without calling it aggression against them, they are doomed to failure.

It's roughly the same thing as the far right's litmus tests. You could be the most charismatic, most competent leader possible, but unless you toe the line. as in you must be anti-abortion, pro certain middle east countries (always in flux) anti Obamacare (despite it being a Republican invention) and all the other touchstones, you won't make it through the primaries.

I have a dream.

Barry Goldwater rises from the grave, smiting the kooks, and returning conservatism to it's rightful place.

This is what a conservative sounds like:

https://www.brainyquote.com/qu...

He was prophetic:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

~Barry Goldwater

More good Goldwater reading:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2...

So perhaps I err in trying to compare the kooky lef to the religious right, but only in magnitude. The religious right have firm control of their party.

the constitution is not sacred

It is not "sacred" because it was not handed down to us by a Deity. It is sacred in that every four years the incoming President repeats the same solemn oath to defend it.

Whatever "sacred" means to you, it is the law of the land. But it can be amended. For example, when we still believed in limited government, one that could not just order people around willy-nilly for The Greater Good, the prohibition of alcohol was done as a constitutional amendment (the 18th — less than 100 years ago!).

However, only a few decades later the same same government banned marijuana with a simple law — without obtaining the national consent by ratification of an amendment. The 10th Amendment was thus nullified.

a brilliant collection of people, but they weren't prophets

Well, they were. For example, the prediction of the growth of Statism was scary:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.

— Thomas Jefferson

and the point about it concentrating in large cities — especially accurate:

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

— Thomas Jefferson

you do know where the Internet came from, don't you?

Yes, it came out of a military research project. I also know, where electricity, telegraph, telephone, radio, TV and rail-roads came from. We didn't need the benevolent guidance of government's omniscient bureaucrats for any of those, we didn't need it for the Internet.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

— Confucius

it is clear that people of faith and their beliefs should not be hindered in the public square.

Exactly, if religious extremists want to use our public squares to behead the infidels, we should not be allowed to stop them

I think you've just demonstrated the wisdom in this quote:

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University. - William F. Buckley, Jr.

It's been said before, but: when a law is essentially impossible to enforce, the problem is with the law. The ease with which digitized goods can be copied is an indication that copyright probably should not apply to them.

I actually believe (naively?) that this would not cost individual authors and musicians anything at all. I choose to by music and books from artists that I like, because I want them to continue creating.

Likely, it would affect the big companies, like Disney. They would have to find new ways to monetize their assets, and might have to create new mascots more often than every hundred years. The worlds tiniest violin...

You know the famous quote.

This one?

"As a general thing, I have not 'duped the world' nor attempted to do so... I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told."

The one you're likely thinking of is irrelevant here, because I've spent more on dinners than I did on my Sport watch that's due for delivery today. You say "suckers", I say "people who don't mind spending $350 on a watch they'll be using every day and that's easily worth the money in sheer entertainment value".

Sucker!

You know the famous quote.

This one?

"As a general thing, I have not 'duped the world' nor attempted to do so... I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told."

The one you're likely thinking of is irrelevant here, because I've spent more on dinners than I did on my Sport watch that's due for delivery today. You say "suckers", I say "people who don't mind spending $350 on a watch they'll be using every day and that's easily worth the money in sheer entertainment value".

You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.

This is a rational argument applied to the real world, and it doesn't hold true. Rational arguments are almost *never* true when applied to the real world, unless they start from a fundamental model and build up. (And in that case you can make testable predictions.)

Eighty percent of first businesses fail, but only 20% of *second* businesses fail, and it's not because people don't try to do it right the first time.

Both Thomas Edison and [head of IBM] Thomas J. Watson have extensive experience in this, and both have written positions on the subject. When someone approached Watson and asked "how can I increase my success rate", he responded "double your failure rate". When someone asked Edison how he could continue researching the electric light bulb after failing 5,000 times, he replied "I haven't failed 5,000 times, I know 5,000 ways that won't work" (source).

The rational argument fails when it's applied to the risk/reward formulation. Each time you fail you lose 1x the value of the experiment, but each time you succeed you regain 50x the value of the experiment in profit.

The mantra in the IT world is "fail fast, fail often", which reflects the risk-reward equation very well. It takes almost nothing to set up a website showing your idea to the world, and almost nothing to shutter it 6 months later.

But once in awhile, that idea becomes popular and profitable and you can recoup your investment many times over. That's why people should fail; or rather, not be afraid of failure.

Not because of any rationalization, but because it's historically the route to success.

ObStevenWrightQuote

most corporations today are global multinationals operating in all countries, and they love to make use of that by doing in the non-free countries all the evil things that they can't (as easily) do in the free countries.

First of all, America is still reasonably free. Second, the governments of those non-free countries, which may condone (and encourage) those unspecified "evil things", are even less likely to provide citizens with decent Internet access, than is Facebook.

You claim this is the best way for a corporation to get rich, but you offer no evidence to support that claim.

In a free country, there is simply no other way to get rich. That's my proof... The less free the country (down from "free" to "reasonably free"), the worse it is as corruption and crony capitalism open up opportunities for corporations to get rich in other ways.

A big news one recently was when Oracle decided the best way to riches was to take the MONEY for providing a service to the taxpayers of Portland without actually providing the service, and giving just a token piece of junk instead.

That's a rather one-sided way of describing it, but is this your argument for trusting the State government, which hired Oracle in the first place? Or for the Federal government, which made such a contract (creation of "health exchange") necessary in the first place?

But whatever the specifics of this case, I was talking about corporations getting rich by pleasing people — people, spending their own monies, rather than government officials spending those of their constituents.

The more money is spent by the government, the less free the citizens — and the more opportunities arise for unscrupulous corporations to profit unjustly. You can win a billion-dollar contract by giving a million to the official in charge of millions' of people taxes. But you can't do that selling to people directly — for that you have to actually deliver something decent, or fool people. Fortunately, fooling all the people all the time is notoriously difficult...

That they will never end up doing something that makes less money but is more evil simply because made a bad decision

Not at all. I consider neither corporate CEOs nor government bureaucrats to be omniscient. But you seem to think, only the CEOs are fallible...

PG&E was providing electricity [...] toxic waste properly and dumping it in people's drinking water instead.

Once again your example involves a corporation profiting from a special arrangement with the government... Don't you see the trend yet?

Facebook is the perfect example here - their product is private information for targetted advertising, the users aren't the customers

So long as nobody is forced to sign up, you argument is without merit.

It's easy to point the finger solely at government for those but it's also false, if the government didn't exist the companies would do the SAME things

For someone pointing out logical fallacies (real or otherwise) in other people's arguments, you are strangely susceptible to the "excluded middle". How about the government existed, but limited itself to those things enumerated in our Constitution as government's domain:

• Law (criminal, tort, contractual) enforcement;
• Defense from any would-be foreign invaders

Nothing else.

William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

This is why I think Sherman is our (USA) greatest General. He knew what needed to be done to end a stupid war - and for those of you who have seen photos of Atlanta before and during the Civil War, he did us a favor by burning it down!

Our leaders have sent us down a path of perpetual war and have created at least two generations of peoples who hate the US of A. Those tens of thousands of civilians we have killed in the name of "fighting for freedom" have family that now hates the US of A with a passion - to their deaths. And they will teach their children to hate us.

We have accomplished nothing other than creating more terrorism and hatred. All for what?

Freedom?

Why aren't we invading Saudi Arabia or North Korea or pretty much most of the Continent of Africa? Or even Israel for that matter? So, please tell me, how are we fighting for "Freedom" and the "Oppressed" again?

We have gone past the tipping point. There is no peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East.

....

My dream - my wish - is that the Arabic, Persians, Kurds, and other peoples of the Middles East stand up unite and say, "Fuck you!" to the West and work together, throw all of us out of YOUR land and show us - like the originators of Civilization that you are - how it is fucking done.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

Wake me up when you have something falsifiable to say.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
-- Albert Einstein

Full disclosure: I found this at this web site.

Holding up "I thought of it first" as a paper wall to command the universe. Shout morals if you like, but reality listens closer to logistics.

The paper wall of the property deed works just fine — in a reasonably law-obedient society — to hold squatters outside of one's house. I don't see, why you'd dismiss the "I thought of it first" paper wall as any less practical.

I tend to put more priority on people who lose

"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

-- Vince Lombardi

Also:

"Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure."

-- Knute Rockne

Holding up "I thought of it first" as a paper wall to command the universe. Shout morals if you like, but reality listens closer to logistics.

The paper wall of the property deed works just fine — in a reasonably law-obedient society — to hold squatters outside of one's house. I don't see, why you'd dismiss the "I thought of it first" paper wall as any less practical.

I tend to put more priority on people who lose

"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

-- Vince Lombardi

Also:

"Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure."

-- Knute Rockne

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
- Rahm Emanuel

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

I believe there is a right to anonymous speech, but when you're paying someone else to speak for you, and you're trying to influence the political process, that may be different.

As declared by the Supreme Court several times, money — spent on politics — is speech. "It may be different" as you say — as much as one person's speech may differ from that of another.

Anonymous speech online (or elsewhere) generally doesn't carry with it an air of credibility that advocacy groups and think tanks try to project.

I don't accept, that concerns such as "air of credibility" are valid arguments against anonymity, Grant.

You are making a common mistake in violating (or calling for a violation of) a sound principle, while it serves your cause — not realizing, the violation, once deemed legitimate, will soon be used by your opponents (and enemies) against you too. This is how the worst things come into and stay in existence...

WTF happened to you, libertines? Where is the spirit of "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."? Unlike Voltaire (or his biographer), you are ready — indeed, anxious — to suppress the opponent's speech (or, at least, his anonymity)... ACLU was not like that even a short time ago — what happened to the new generation?

Generally, groups in favor of net neutrality got better transparency grades, but we looked at both. We weren't targeting one side, and a handful of pro-net neutrality groups received mid-level or lower grades.

Considering the obvious sympathies of both you and the rest of this forum, I'll take your "grades" with a dollop of salt, thank you very much. Not that it matters — if anonymity is a right for "poor" Anonymous Cowards, it is also a right for the "rich" astroturfers.

Finally, our reporting, while taking a lot of work, didn't really unmask or shame anyone.

That's good to hear. It may even be true in letter. But reading the write-up or TFA — it does not seem to be true in spirit. You do deem the actions shameful and you are mere half a step away from suggesting a law to make them illegal too.

We do tend to become the thing we are fighting. That's why people like Gandhi would not fight...
A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.

Profit is king in the US. Providing for your citizens is king in Sweden. Apparently those are unrelated concepts.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

— Adam Smith

You are a fool, if you expect more from a politician, who needs only your vote every few years, than from a capitalist, who wants your money to make profit every day.

This was not an "ad hominem". This was an insult. Don't you know the difference?

There distinction you are trying to make, idiot, is without difference. When you switch an argument from the topic being argued to the person doing the arguing — whether it is name-calling or discussing his hygiene — it is an argumentum ad hominem — a fallacy.

Chickenhawk is perfectly fine carnivorous bird, by the way — can't really insult anyone with such a comparison, unless you are trying to use the term policitcally:

a political term used in the United States to describe a person who strongly supports war or other military action, yet who actively avoids or avoided military service when of age.

You don't know anything about me to be able claim, I took active steps to avoid military service in any war the US fought, nor do you know my age.

Your having committed an ad hominem first, and an idiocy of misusing a term that your fellow idiots have misused too, thus established, let's get back to the other topics.

assuming that Obama would be somehow mine

If you are from Europe, then Obama is "yours" even more — whereas his popularity in the US in 2008 barely exceeded the 50% necessary for being elected, he was and remains more popular in the corrupt continent (80+%). For all I care, you can have him any day of the week — the sooner the better. Just be sure to take Joe Biden with him.

The current mess in Iraq has been caused by toppling Saddam Hussein.

Yeah, nothing like a strong leader for those unwashed sand-niggers, is there? Some peoples may have a democratic government, but certain untermensch just need a strong hand, right?

And then by arming the crazies who were rebelling against Assad.

Right. Because only a crazy could rebel against the kind and benevolent king (masquerading as elected President) such as Assad. Sure. But even if that's the problem, in your opinion, it was Obama's doing — and he was never called "chickenhawk" in his life.

You are seriously calling the Southern regime back then "kindler gentler"?

No, you dimwit. If you can't read English, stay out of English arguments. I challenged you to explain, how the things would've been better in the North Korea, if the South Korea's regime was kinder and gentler.

Without American intervention a way less radical government for an united Korea would be quite possible

Sure. And Palestine would've been a united and calm, if America had not given Israel any support. And China would've unified into a calm Confucian existence long ago, had the US not defended Taiwan. And Germany too would've united much earlier — under Eric Honecker (or even Ulbricht), of course. Wouldn't such have been a better world? If only the US war-mongers didn't resist Communism, huh?..

Sorry, but I'm rather glad there are enough of my countrymen still supporting that earlier chickenhawk's doctrine:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that

I see a lot of cars driving around 80% empty.

Just wait until the self-driving cars get on the road in mass. They'll be 100% empty!

No? Right now I can email Pizza Hut and have them make me a pizza for pick-up. Automate the billing (I use a credit card to pay -- oh noes, how am I ever going to get that to them?) and have the (correct) pizza inserted in the car window, which then drives itself back home. Delivery? No thanks, I'll have my car do it. Hell, add a Coke (NOT Pepsi!) to that and I'll have the dual A/C cool it while keeping the pizza piping hot.

Upscaling that via Sams Club (Cosco), Staples, and others: right now you can place your order by internet and have it waiting on you for pickup. Now just pay a little extra for handling to have it placed in your car for you.

Why on Earth would I want to waste my time shopping (for standard items) when I can pay a small extra amount and not go at all?


Note: It'll be a cold day in hell before the self-driving car is accepted on the road for one simple reason: Liability Insurance. (Read: lawsuits and punitive damanges for the owner of the killer car, the mechanic who last worked on it, the car company that designed and built it, the programmers who worked on the software, and the sensor manufacturers. The parent/spouse of the first person hurt or killed by a self-driving car will win a large fraction of our national GDP. And if the lawyers are ambitious enough, it might even BE the GDP. My car bruised little Johnny inside who wasn't wearing a seat belt while doing an emergency stop? I don't care if the MS legal contracts say "Not for use in life-critical applications" -- you used it while building the car and software; you're libel as well.) That you might actually not be at fault has actually nothing to do with it.


And the other reason: TERRORISM! (They've won, by the way, if our government is so scared of them they're trying to control all of us.) Just think of all of the evil people who could pack the car full to the brim of explosives / radiation / anchovies and have it drive itself somewhere and explode? Think I'm joking?

Ummm: they can do that right now by adding a driver/drone who can also steer the car off-road while the car itself can't. They don't care at all about the driver; I don't think driver-LESS cars will make any difference. It'd be cheaper to buy a "normal" car and add a suicide driver than it would be to buy an "automatic" one.

Nice try, FBI and all -- but sorry, that's one's a miss. Keep trying; you can't guard against what you can't envision. Then again, remember: cost/benefit - don't guard against EVERYTHING, there is no 100.00000% safety. Ever. Anywhere. "We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." -- Some Ignorant, Worthless Dude who Obviously didn't know Anything about Important Things.

The best known standard quip about standards itself has multiple versions and attributions. How meta:

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." - Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 2nd ed., p. 254

"The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Ken Olsen

“The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.” -- Grace Murray Hopper

See also:

Obligatory (but who set that standard?): xkcd : Standards
Why are there so many plugs and sockets?

‘Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.’ -- Frederick Crane
‘It is not enough that X be standard, it should also be good.’ -- Rob Pike (Window Systems Should Be Transparent)
The two above can be found on the cat -v page on standards"
"Standards are like toothbrushes. Everybody wants one but nobody wants to use anybody else’s." -- Connie Morella

I would say it would be against the Fourth Amendment as I would say it is an unreasonable search

Oh, but "reasonable" is a term with such a wide interpretation, you drive a train through it — sideways...

Just ask a European what they think privacy is and you will see that it is much more that just the stuff you do at home when you are alone. It inclused everything you do and what defines you as a person. That is the startingpoint.

Ah, yes, the famous "why can't we be more like Europe" whine.

Well, you can not board a train anonymously in Europe either — so, in that regard, we are "like Europe" already. Or do you believe, European police don't have access to the rail passengers?.. Of course, they do — and it does not even cause an outrage, unlike here...

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

- Thomas Jefferson

Indeed... The big cities are the most Illiberal...

+1 Insightful

There ares still days when I feel I would prefer the Commodore VIC or 64 with a Forth cartridge or Machine Language Monitor cartridge where the whole system was so much more understandable and predicable and also restartable with a warm boot.

While I never tired one, the Cannon Cat sounds like it had merit, and I did get the somewhat similar AlphaSmart Pro for keyboarding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
"The Cat was primarily the brainchild of Jef Raskin, originator of the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979. It featured a text user interface, not making use of any mouse, icons, or graphics. All data was seen as a long "stream" of text broken into several pages. Instead of using a traditional command line interface or menu system, the Cat made use of its special keyboard, with commands being activated by holding down a "Use Front" key and pressing another key. The Cat also used special "Leap keys" which, when held down, allowed the user to incrementally search for strings of characters. ... There was a software project no longer under development, that was initiated by the late Jef Raskin himself, to develop a similar yet even more capable system for today's computing systems. The project (called Archy) was designed to eventually replace current software interfaces."

But your point is really more about appropriateness, configurability, directness, and the power of the command line than mine about simplicity -- although they are all related.

Part of the problem is that it is much easier to add new features than to take some away or to figure out new paradigms that require less "features" to get work done. As in:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery"

Another part is Doug Englelbart's point about investments in skills by professionals. We now expect people who do engineering or programming to go to a four year college and more, but we can't expect them to spend a few weeks learning how to use a chord keyboard or how to use, say, easier to read Smalltalk keyword syntax instead of C-like function name syntax? So everyone suffers from a lowest common denominator of two-handed QWERTY and C-looking languages...

That said, I still think innovations are possible... Just a question of which ones are worth actually using... And worth bucking convention for (typing this on a QWERTY keyboard on a C-powered Chromebook -- yet I like some aspects of the simplicity of the Chromebook).

>> The neoconservatives know better than to let a perfectly good crisis go to waste

Does that make Obama a "neocon"? (If he really wanted us out of those places, he'd have done it by now.)

BTW, the "never let a good crisis go to waste" quote is frequently attributed to Obama's former chief of staff and long-time Chicago associate Rahm Emanuel:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

counter point: http://www.examiner.com/articl...
http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...

If I make a ridiculous claim right now - let's say, there are fairies underneath your garden, and that they can't be detected via any method known to man - would you be able to provide empirical evidence for the contrary? From your limited experience and worldview, one limited by current times' technology, yes, you would believe (hopefully) that the fairies aren't there, but would you be able to prove so? No.

I think agnosticism and atheism are bound by a thin line from where you assert that the original assertion is so ridiculous that you don't need to provide empirical evidence to the contrary (in cases like this, you even - as of now - just can't). For me, I draw the line a bit before religion.

Why is the original assertion (of there being an intelligent designer) ridiculous, in this case? I'd like to first make it clear that I think the entirety of this discussion is about "how did we (Universe) come into existence?" With "intelligent designer" as the answer, you're simply off-loading the question. If any such designer does exist, my view of the Universe would extend to include the intelligent designer, and I'd ask "how did we (Universe & intelligent designer) come into existence?"

Ya it was pretty obvious our government was hijacked when they had the gold seizure in 1933.

I expect them to do that and worse as things continue to fall apart.

A dollar today has the relative value of 2 cents from 1913 when the Fed reserve corporation
took the power of money away from the government.

The last president who tried to take that power away from was JFK, and not long after he tried he died.

Same for Lincoln and the Greenback, but they failed with Andrew Jackson as the Assassin's gun failed.

I think "the creature from Jekyll Island" about the Federal Reserve bank which is as federal as federal express
should be read by all citizens, but I would not enjoy the result of most ppl realizing what is going on because it
might be much like Henry Ford said.

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." ~ Henry Ford

http://www.brainyquote.com/quo...