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Seems like they need Molten Salt reactors

Brings back bad memories

Of course the government is likely to be "bigger and better armed than any individual" but I guess you missed where I said "heavily armed military" and the military "used biological and chemical weapons". An AK47 is nothing compared to a chemical weapon dropped on a village. If lucky the shooter may cripple or down an aircraft otherwise people are not going to stop the aircraft from dropping said chemical bomb. An armed populace both protects and has to use free speech, they have to work together. Without arms free speech isn't good enough, Syria practically shut down the press opposed to the regime. A few brave reporters sneaked into Syria, putting their lives in jeopardy.

My point was that free speech alone is not enough against a regime that will do whatever it takes to win. Peace loving Gandhi advocated violence for self-defense. Between Cowardice And Violence he said " I WOULD risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race." Speech alone is unlikely to stop violence. Between speech and being armed, I'd rather be armed as speech may be neutralized, but an armed populace can not be stopped without massive interventions, such as the chemical weapons Saddam dropped on Iraqi villages.

Falcon

>If the police will refuse to enforce this by not arresting the mayor, that will be even better.

As Gandhi & MLK demonstrated, it's even better if the police do enforce the law. Going to jail over a stupid, stupid law is a great way of saying "It's a stupid, stupid law" in a way that (a) attracts attention, (b) shows that you really mean it, and (c) gets the law repealed.

Not that I think the mayor's going to the pokey over wi-fi; I'm just saying that it's best if one wishes to break a law, that one includes the punishment in the total calculation.

In case you didn't know, Ghandi obtained some of his goals by breaking laws in a non-violent manner. The laws themselves were bad, like the salt tax in India forbidding Indians to harvest salt, activities they've done for centuries or a "registration" bill. He was arrested many times. Are you arguing that the left wing should imitate Gandhi? Because he not only picketed, used the law as appropriate, and also violated laws he felt were wrong. He just violated them in a non-violent manner, such as gathering salt and advocating that people not pay taxes (revenues), organizing huge crowds to violate the laws (not pay taxes, gather/trade salt, etc. See http://www.mkgandhi.org/intro_autobio.htm (no obligatory wikipedia reference!)

Your casualty estimate of "millions of Japanese and millions of Americans" needs a bit of refinement.

Let's look at the possible justifications for dropping nuclear devices on mainland Japan:

To win the war? The war was already won strategically, the peace process having already been begun at the time.

To prevent millions of casualties on both sides? Projected casualties for Operation Olympic, as predicted by senior military staff, ranged from 25 000 to 45 000. Subsequent, increased casualty predictions were made by politicians, not Generals.

To show off their shiny new toy to the Reds? Hrm.....

After all, if they hadn't nuked Japan and gotten a 10-minute surrender, Russia might have had time to get its commie paws on Japan, as it had Germany.

Note the phrasing: negotiated peace, not surrender. The Japanese were not offering surrender, just an end to hostilities.

So it's unreasonable to expect the leaders of the Japanese empire to have sought out the best solution for themselves? I don't understand your point here.

Do we have responsibility for what happened to Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Yes. Does Japan have more responsibility? Yes.

You make some good points, and yes, Japan was responsible for its own defeat in WWII because it made a conscious decision to start a fight. But the assertion that the Japanese Empire was responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is diametrically false. There were numerous, non-criminal ways in which the U.S.A. could have easily won against the Japanese. In fact, the Japanese had already conceded military defeat and were actively negociating for peace when they were nuked. [1]

World War Two was a horrible period of human history, one in which even good nations did terrible things in order to prevent terrible nations from doing things even more atrocious. [...] And note: these were the good guys.

While Germany, Russia and Japan were certainly in the grips of terrible and atrocious regimes during WWII, calling the allies "the good, guys is a bit of a stretch -- even for the more 'virtuous' among them. [2] War is war, and the winners win. As Mae West said, "Goodness had nothing to do with it".

EOF

[1] While the supposed dilemma of "should we bomb or not" is a classic and controversial one as popularly presented, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is/was unambiguously and incontrovertably a war crime according to the terms of the Geneva Convention.

[2] Of course, my metric for judging a nation 'good' is probably overly harsh. I cannot think of a single nation since Magellan's circumnavigation of the Earth that I would qualify as consistently good (except perhaps for the tiny ones like Monaco, Andorra, Biafra, Tibet, East Timor et al, which may only be good because they don't have the longevity/independance required to 'do bad'). The Benelux nations and New Zealand come the closest in recent times, IMHO.

Gandhi never advocated violence. Many people/reporters/etc would try and give him theoretical situations where he would be "forced" to choose a violent course. The quote was, "Where the choice is between only violence and cowardice, I would advise violence."

And if you bother to read the history of where this statement originates, the next thing he said was, "But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier...But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature....
But I do not believe India to be helpless....I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature....Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
We do want to drive out the best in the man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. And in the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance.
The world is not entirely governed by logic. Life itself involves some kind of violence and we have to choose the path of least violence."

Go read for yourself his philosophy.

If you are busy trying to argue wether people cane or can't be more or less right, then you've missed why I pointed out that quote which was taken out of context.

leads me to believe that this guy's a little bit deranged.
[...]
This guy's just an asshole, plain and simple.
This guy is John Gilmore. You don't know who he is, but many people knows.
By your standard, this guy was also an "asshole, plain and simple"

Gandhi

Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism. It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.

Sorta like weaving your own cloth, eh? Doing something like that would never get world attention, organize the masses, and eventually drive out an empire, would it? It's just a minor, petty crime, a man sitting in a hut with a small home-made spinner and loom. Nothing to worry about. People wouldn't pay attention to something like that, right?

You'd be surprised how a much a small, petty, insignificant act can do....

1. 1.
2. It's designed by the people it is meant to serve. As much as I don't want to refer to India as a "Third World" country, some parts of it is. Maybe they know what there fellow countrymen need better than us (many of who consider a PIII under 1 Ghz passe).
   2. There's some pretty sharp people designing it. Check out the member's resumes. MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Purdue, Stanford, University of Maryland, etc. Most hardware companies in the US would pretty much kill to get these guys working for them.
   3. Sometimes "used and cheap" isn't the best. Although recycling older systems from the "First World" to the third has it's benefits to us and them, why not give them something fast to start? The software written in some village in the middle of nowhere might just help us all. As I recall some other good ideas that came out of India.
   4. It's not just a PDA. According to the objectives of the Simputer Trust this is meant to be a "low cost computational device ... for the rural, semi-rural and lower income bracket persons".
   5. It's built to take a beating. IMHO the Simputer should last a lot longer than any Palm or iPaq after a drop in a rice patty (or someplace worse).

Before you complain about the type/number of ports, screen or color of the case remember this: if you are reading this posting chances are you're not their targeted customer.

pherris