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I vote in favor of restoring the picture of Human Feces back on the Feces page in the Human feces Section. (Preferably, the poop on a plate pic)

ANYONE DISAGREE OR AGREE WITH ME?

Masterhand10(Talk)(Contributions) 22:37, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

        * I agree, i never saw the pic, but i really want to! my vote is put it back on!-Unknown

        * There's no need to start over - the archives are there to be read by anyone who is interested. For the record, I disagree - the picture does little except add shock value.--Kubigula (talk) 17:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

                BRING IT BACK BABY!! WOO HOO —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.67.67 (talk) 01:43, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

        * AW Cmon! That shock value is what make this discussion popular.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Talk:Feces#Human_Poop

I guess you have not heard about Low-Cost Airlines.
 
The service is shit, but for a student wanting to travel cheap, its awesome!

TSA is another colossal failure of Obama's administration, and another reason to not re-elect him.

P.S. the TSA was created by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act and signed into law by President Bush. I'll save you the one-word search:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration

How about the last hundred million years?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Too long a trend?

how about 15 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
2.5 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

How about the last hundred million years?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Too long a trend?

how about 15 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
2.5 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

How about the last hundred million years?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Too long a trend?

how about 15 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
2.5 million?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

phiffle, lets get some real results, who cares about 9000 hotter years, when you can get a good 500 million ones.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

That is where this comes in handy, or any of the other linking long term graphs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been getting colder for a long time now!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

A real long time.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Long term perspective for those who want it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

That is where this comes in handy, or any of the other linking long term graphs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been getting colder for a long time now!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

A real long time.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Long term perspective for those who want it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

That is where this comes in handy, or any of the other linking long term graphs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been getting colder for a long time now!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

A real long time.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Long term perspective for those who want it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

That is where this comes in handy, or any of the other linking long term graphs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been getting colder for a long time now!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

A real long time.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Long term perspective for those who want it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

Lets pull out two real important facts that are used to bash this global cooling myth from that link.

That the global data from the 1940s-70's was new, and not accurate enough to be trusted.

That extrapolating a 50 year trend was not a good idea.

Same two issues are still alive and well today for global warming.

Man made or not, the climate has lived though a lot worse then we currently are in, do we want to push our luck before we know one way or another? my vote, hell no, we could be the 1c that dose push it over the edge, but all the global warming ppl need to get on the historical graphs that look past the current mini ice age and educate ppl that the current warming trend may be lasting longer and peeking longer then it should.

We have the 2nd coldest peek for temp. in the last 500k years, but one of the longest running.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been pretty cold for the last 3 million years.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Or 50 million
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

Lets pull out two real important facts that are used to bash this global cooling myth from that link.

That the global data from the 1940s-70's was new, and not accurate enough to be trusted.

That extrapolating a 50 year trend was not a good idea.

Same two issues are still alive and well today for global warming.

Man made or not, the climate has lived though a lot worse then we currently are in, do we want to push our luck before we know one way or another? my vote, hell no, we could be the 1c that dose push it over the edge, but all the global warming ppl need to get on the historical graphs that look past the current mini ice age and educate ppl that the current warming trend may be lasting longer and peeking longer then it should.

We have the 2nd coldest peek for temp. in the last 500k years, but one of the longest running.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been pretty cold for the last 3 million years.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Or 50 million
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

Lets pull out two real important facts that are used to bash this global cooling myth from that link.

That the global data from the 1940s-70's was new, and not accurate enough to be trusted.

That extrapolating a 50 year trend was not a good idea.

Same two issues are still alive and well today for global warming.

Man made or not, the climate has lived though a lot worse then we currently are in, do we want to push our luck before we know one way or another? my vote, hell no, we could be the 1c that dose push it over the edge, but all the global warming ppl need to get on the historical graphs that look past the current mini ice age and educate ppl that the current warming trend may be lasting longer and peeking longer then it should.

We have the 2nd coldest peek for temp. in the last 500k years, but one of the longest running.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

Its been pretty cold for the last 3 million years.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Or 50 million
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Typically the insurance company gets ownership of any damaged goods it pays to replace (this is known as salvage). I'm not familiar with the peculiarities of satellite insurance tho - salvage may very well not apply (or it may be in the insurance contract but not acted upon as a matter of practicality) because it seems to me it's generally an all or nothing proposition: either the satellite launches and operates successfully or it is permanently lost (the present case, surely an oddity, notwithstanding). And it isn't as tho an insurer would hop a space shuttle and go claim their salvage such that they could sell it for scrap metal...actually, here's what wiki says: "Another aspect of satellite insurance is the procedure attached to salvage. Though it is impossible to obtain monetary value from the wreckage in the event of an actual total loss or constructive total loss, many insurers rely on sharing any revenue which may be obtainable from the failed satellite with the insured." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Satellite_insurance It's safe to say the satellite's owner would also carry liability insurance, such that any harm done to other satellites (or anything, really) results in compensation to the injured third party.

I have it on good authority that there's a little black spot on the sun today.

They say at the end of their talk they do not have the LV1 OS keys, and they aren't going to work on them -- those are used to sign & verify games.

No, the keys which are used to sign games are the appldr keys (appldr runs in user space). They didn't care about them because they just wanted low-level access. They could get the lv2 keys because Sonys ECDSA implementation, which they use to sign their (S)ELF files, is broken. It uses a static number as a value which is supposed to be random, and that made it possible to recalculate the private keys.

They couldn't get the lv1 for some reason ("weird hardware stuff", whatever that means), but at the end he mentions that they will "figure that out".

It's not news, there have been restrictions for years all over the EU.
Netherlands has 12 zones, Austria 1, Denmark 5, Sweden 6, England 3, Italy 12 and lots of zones in Germany.
Wikipedia link in German only.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/wiki/Verordnung_zum_Erlass_und_zur_%C3%84nderung_von_Vorschriften_%C3%BCber_die_Kennzeichnung_emissionsarmer_Kraftfahrzeuge#Umweltzonen_in_Deutschland

When teaching students how to program (which is entirely different from teaching them computer science), you should begin with the most fundamental concepts: talk about raw memory and opcodes. Discuss briefly how these instructions are actually interpreted and implemented (how a half-adder works is fascinating, even if most people never have to build one in real life).

Once your students understand how to make computers do basic things with raw instructions, teach them jumps, conditionals, loops, and even subroutines. After that, introduce higher-level languages and compilers, and demonstrate that the compiler merely automates what your students have already been doing. From there, teach progressively higher-level constructs, including second-order function references, data structures, and so on. Object-orientation falls out naturally once you get to structures and function pointers.

If you follow this approach, your students will have an understanding of the entire abstraction hierarchy, which is not only of immensely practical value, but also underscores the principle that nothing in this field is "magical". You can always pierce an abstraction, and even more importantly, erect new abstractions where appropriate. The most common flaw I find in programmers is the inability or unwillingness to build new abstractions. The only way we make progress in this field is by the old reductionist approach of breaking a hard problem into smaller parts and attacking each individually. When you teach your students how to do that by demonstrating the power of abstraction, you make them better programmers.

Programmers shown UML, Java class graphs, and so on right away become too familiar with that level of abstraction. They think of lower levels as some kind of magic and don't realize they can and should build their own levels on top of what they're given. The result is often incoherent, rambling, brittle, and ugly code. Don't let that happen.

Uhm Hindi is the official language of India.

My understanding is that there are so many regional dialects and official languages that many Indians from different regions speak English to each other in India. It is often the most practical common language, after their regional dialect many are most fluent in english. Is this accurate or have I gotten a mistaken impression from my university classmates?

The term for an international language is Lingua Franca - guess who coined the term - and yet despite the language that sparked the term being kept very pure indeed, it is hardly spoken today

You seem to think erroneously that the term "lingua franca" originally referred to France. It didn't, it was a Mediterranean pidgin that had no ambition to purity at all, "a mixed language composed mostly (80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic".

Uhm Hindi is the official language of India.

I prefer this language myself -

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lojban

Greatly appeals to my nerdy side.

Meeh, both where lame :(

The Dracula castle in Romania:
http://www.wayfaring.info/images/castel_bran_aka_dracula_castle.jpg

Malbork castle in Poland:
http://pictures.polandforall.com/images/malbork-castle-bridge-towers-dansker-high-castle.jpg

Bastille, France:
http://www.napoleonguide.com/images/pixs_bastille.jpg

Svartsjö slott here in Sweden, was wasted being used as a prison :(
http://www.ekero.se/imagemod/AvanEvents/16f73101-570f-4eb5-a4de-084ce249efa2/svartsjo_____resize_s_460_230.gif
http://www.slottsguiden.info/slott/17_2.jpg

The castle here in my home town, Örebro:
http://www.paranormal.nu/orebro-01-high.jpg
http://www.lst.se/NR/rdonlyres/FDD91C98-E374-485B-BBBD-EB1100972407/0/slottet3RogerLundberg.jpg
http://img.geocaching.com/cache/1971731f-90fc-4780-aa67-8f13a6dc24e4.jpg
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/1163049.jpg
http://www.thegogglesdonothing.com/photos/d/415-4/IMG_2550.jpg
http://www.remains.se/gallery/photo458dba988b2e5.jpg

Kalmar slott, also Sweden:
http://www.svd.se/multimedia/dynamic/00280/kalmarslott_280791b.jpg
http://www.malinken.com/wedding/bilder/kalmarslott.jpg
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1563728-KALMAR_SLOTT_KALMAR-Kalmar.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Kalmar_slott.jpg

The city wall of Visby, also Sweden:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZARBRqLx-r4/SKmM6KTCgTI/AAAAAAAAC3g/gPpbJrmhVxs/s400/Stadsmuren+i+Visby+på+Gotland.jpg
http://www.hagen.web.surftown.se/Visby%20torn%20med%20fanan.jpg
http://www.topcastles.com/images/large/visby.jpg
All: http://www.slottsguiden.info/slott/163_4.jpg
http://www.guteinfo.com/scripts/bilder/info/1248.jpg

Not that Scottish tribe shit ;)

Castles are cool :)

Helsingborg:
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2110709-Travel_Picture-Helsingborg.jpg

See Southern Baptists

ABC USA has 1.4 million members

Southern Baptists have 16.3 million members.

The southern ones are really nutso. I dont know enough about ABC to pass judgment on nutso or not so nutso.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Baptists_in_the_United_States

The American Baptist Church is mostly the former Illinois Baptist Church. Most American church denominations split along the North/South lines prior to the Civil War over the slavery issue. Some (Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.) have reconciled. Some have not, and I doubt either the American Baptists or the Southern Baptists would be interested.

See Southern Baptists

ABC USA has 1.4 million members

Southern Baptists have 16.3 million members.

The southern ones are really nutso. I dont know enough about ABC to pass judgment on nutso or not so nutso.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Baptists_in_the_United_States

Sugar cane is far better but we don't produce enough sugar cane in this country. Brazil did it by cutting down half the Amazon rain forest which is far from environmentally friendly.

Every time ethanol appears on Slashdot, someone mentions that Brazil cuts down rain forest to plant sugar cane. As someone from Brazil, I feel that I should enlighten you on this subject.

In short, convincing you that Brazil's ethanol destroys forests is another lie created by the corn lobby, because their proposal can't compete with sugar cane ethanol on technical merits.

How about someone making money with a copy of your penis?

(See "legal battles" section)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jeff_Stryker

One of the winners in the early years was a sort that generated a random permutation of the data, and tested it for sortedness, repeating if it wasn't sorted. And it turns out that there are several progressively worse variants of this, depending on how ridiculous your random-permutation algorithm is.

That's a Bogosort. The O(\infty) can easily be achieved by forcing permutations to appear which aren't sorted, but will lead to the themselves after a few repetitions again.

Captcha: develop ... and the sounds of thrown chairs and chanting sound from Redmond.

The last Dutch government fell over supporting the Afghanistan mission for even x more years. Because the Dutch and many others don't believe in forcing peace in such a way. The Russions tried it for years and warned us all at forehand.

What the Soviets did in Afghanistan registers as "forcing peace" to you? I'm guessing that the violent suppression of the anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956 also registers as a "peace mission" to you. Likewise, perhaps those millions of starved Ukrainians is merely an exaggeration or malignant propaganda to you.

Oh, and Cuba has free, awesome health care for all.

The last Dutch government fell over supporting the Afghanistan mission for even x more years. Because the Dutch and many others don't believe in forcing peace in such a way. The Russions tried it for years and warned us all at forehand.

What the Soviets did in Afghanistan registers as "forcing peace" to you? I'm guessing that the violent suppression of the anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956 also registers as a "peace mission" to you. Likewise, perhaps those millions of starved Ukrainians is merely an exaggeration or malignant propaganda to you.

Oh, and Cuba has free, awesome health care for all.

The last Dutch government fell over supporting the Afghanistan mission for even x more years. Because the Dutch and many others don't believe in forcing peace in such a way. The Russions tried it for years and warned us all at forehand.

What the Soviets did in Afghanistan registers as "forcing peace" to you? I'm guessing that the violent suppression of the anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956 also registers as a "peace mission" to you. Likewise, perhaps those millions of starved Ukrainians is merely an exaggeration or malignant propaganda to you.

Oh, and Cuba has free, awesome health care for all.

The last Dutch government fell over supporting the Afghanistan mission for even x more years. Because the Dutch and many others don't believe in forcing peace in such a way. The Russions tried it for years and warned us all at forehand.

What the Soviets did in Afghanistan registers as "forcing peace" to you? I'm guessing that the violent suppression of the anti-communist uprising in Hungary in 1956 also registers as a "peace mission" to you. Likewise, perhaps those millions of starved Ukrainians is merely an exaggeration or malignant propaganda to you.

Oh, and Cuba has free, awesome health care for all.

The only trouble with that confidence is that in the case of both shuttle disasters, it was not fundamentally difficult technology or circumstances but poor design & politics, and old parts & bad communication that caused them. While I'm sure there were cases of senseless politicians sending ill-equipped ships to sea in the fifteenth century, I'm pretty sure fundamental inadequacies of technology (navigation, weather prediction, construction) explain the majority of disasters. In the case of the shuttle, we could have avoided them, but we didn't. It's the program management that deserves most of the blame, yes, but you can still argue that with better technology (that was available at the time), the problems would never have arisen.

The only trouble with that confidence is that in the case of both shuttle disasters, it was not fundamentally difficult technology or circumstances but poor design & politics, and old parts & bad communication that caused them. While I'm sure there were cases of senseless politicians sending ill-equipped ships to sea in the fifteenth century, I'm pretty sure fundamental inadequacies of technology (navigation, weather prediction, construction) explain the majority of disasters. In the case of the shuttle, we could have avoided them, but we didn't. It's the program management that deserves most of the blame, yes, but you can still argue that with better technology (that was available at the time), the problems would never have arisen.

Right, because the Americans have done so much better with their hideously expensive ones:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster

Right, because the Americans have done so much better with their hideously expensive ones:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster

Supercomputer Race. Unless supercomputers start blowing up or growing arms.

It's likely that the single largest driver of US government spending on supercomputers is for nukes.

Being realistic never meant you should just accept everything that is wrong. Compromising with evil makes you an accessory to evil. And even the impossible is worth fighting for, especially since sometimes taking on this impossible fight makes previously impossible things possible. People who fight an impossible fight like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela or even Thich Quang Duc are heroes because they refuse to compromise with injustice even in the face of prosecution, imprisonment and death.

Being realistic never meant you should just accept everything that is wrong. Compromising with evil makes you an accessory to evil. And even the impossible is worth fighting for, especially since sometimes taking on this impossible fight makes previously impossible things possible. People who fight an impossible fight like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela or even Thich Quang Duc are heroes because they refuse to compromise with injustice even in the face of prosecution, imprisonment and death.

Being realistic never meant you should just accept everything that is wrong. Compromising with evil makes you an accessory to evil. And even the impossible is worth fighting for, especially since sometimes taking on this impossible fight makes previously impossible things possible. People who fight an impossible fight like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela or even Thich Quang Duc are heroes because they refuse to compromise with injustice even in the face of prosecution, imprisonment and death.

Bravo argues that downloading files is undoubtedly legal and uploading, although more controversial, is surely not a crime, within the current Spanish legislation[1]. His views are grounded mainly on the Intellectual Propierty Law (1996), Article 31, 2nd Chapter, "Reproduction without authorization" and the Penal Code, Article 270[2]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/David_Bravo_Bueno

Classic Max OS 8 and 9 did that (if I recall correctly).

It emulated 68000 CISC apps on the new PowerPC RISC machines. Although not very well. I remember the first PowerMac was slower than the 68040 QuadraMac, when running classic apps like WordPerfect, Eudora, and so on. For awhile I specifically avoided the PPCs when going to the college lab, since the Quadras ran faster.

Ahhhh... those were the days (1996). Even the college line loaded the Web as slow as a dialup connection. "Looking for scifi.com"...... "Finding scifi.com"..... loading scifi.com/index.html..... loading scifi.com/titleimage.com. I became very familiar with that animated Netscape logo as I stared at it, and wondered if my page would ever load: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Netscape_throbber_2.gif

In 1976, pilot Viktor Belenko defected from the USSR, and flew his MiG-25 to Japan. The US and its allies had never had a chance to examine the MiG-25, having only seen it from a distance at airshows and tracked it at insanely high speeds by radar, so this was a golden opportunity. Just how had the Soviets manage to build a Mach 3+ interceptor?

Not exotic materials. To our surprise, the airframe was made of nickel-alloy stainless steel. Its speed capability was simply because it had a freakin' huge pair of engines... and those engines would be damaged by a full-speed run. You could do Mach 3 ONCE... then you had to overhaul the engines. But as an interceptor designed not for dogfighting but for shooting down bombers bearing nuclear weapons, you don't care about repeat missions; its job was to get out there and dump a load of air-to-air missiles. *

The biggest surprise was the radar. 600 kilowatts. Yeah, sure, try to jam a 600Kw radar. Not gonna happen. (For comparison, the radar in an F15, which itself was a response to the MiG-25, is about 15Kw) And even more amazing... it was not solid state. It was a TUBE radar! Those stupid backwards Soviets with their stone knives and bearskins! But wait... tubes are not vulnerable to EMP. This taught us that a lynchpin of Soviet defense against incoming US bombers would be to pop nukes about 100km up along its borders when incoming bombers were detected... to fry the sophisticated American avionics the American bombers relied upon... then shoot down any now-crippled aircraft with Mach 3 missile-platforms.

Upon realizing this, a massive program of EMP-hardening of military avionics and other control systems was undertaken.

A fascinating story, the moreso because it's true.

* (The USSR thought they needed an aircraft with this speed because of the XB-70, which was a US bomber capable of Mach 2+. We never put the XB-70 into regular production, but the USSR had to plan for "what if the US actually did make B-70's?", and the MiG-25 was a mighty expensive response. The USSR was matching US military spending pretty much on a dollar-for-dollar basis with a much smaller economy. Goading the enemy into economic ruin through unsustainable defense spending ultimately brought down the Berlin Wall, and as I understand it has modern applications too... amazing how huge an economic lever a shoe-bomb or exploding panties can be, yes?)

What I'm curious about is why they're using catapults at all - the Russians and the Brits, for example, use a "ski jump" instead. And I read somewhere (unfortunately, I can't remember where - damn you, source blindness!) that that approach is actually better, in terms of aircraft launch rate, as you don't have a complex catapult system that has to be reset for every plane.

So... why are US carriers using catapults, when they seem to me to be just another point of failure? Can someone enlighten me?

What I'm curious about is why they're using catapults at all - the Russians and the Brits, for example, use a "ski jump" instead. And I read somewhere (unfortunately, I can't remember where - damn you, source blindness!) that that approach is actually better, in terms of aircraft launch rate, as you don't have a complex catapult system that has to be reset for every plane.

So... why are US carriers using catapults, when they seem to me to be just another point of failure? Can someone enlighten me?

Police are no different but the government and themselves would have you believe they are somehow ethically superior.

It's not "the government" or even police who are trying to make you believe they are ethically superior. It's been an ongoing theme from the right-wing "law and order" crowd for decades. You
hear it constantly from conservative media.

That's because police are authority figures, and American conservatives are a bunch of fucking bedwetters who just can't get enough of that daddy-knows-best attitude -- even it means turning this country into a totalitarian hellhole.

Read this. Skip to page 20 to see what these folks think of the police.

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis

I was going to reply to PopeRatzo with a link to the WP article about that book's very topic, right-wing authoritarianism, but you kinda beat me to it. I don't have any mod points, but I can do better anyway by quoting you at +2

/me dons my internet-psychologist's trousers:
Some of the replies in this discussion are clearly from people who are RWAs.

Isn't it illegal for MasterCard to knowingly take part in illegal transactions anyway?

This is hardly "internet police", this is common sense.

Anyway, if MasterCard is so bad you can go to the other vendor. Although when they both block something legal, this can cause problems.

What is needed here is that they either get in big trouble for taking part in illegal transactions even if they don't know, or they have to agree to some "common carrier" like status in which they are not allowed to discriminate against any transaction that is legal.

Do trucks in Canada have railings along the sides at wheel level to stop things going underneath? They obviously don't prevent things like this, but they can make them less serious.

Picture here (the one at the top, and sort-of on the road tanker near the bottom). American ones don't, in my limited experience.

Because the CIA only upholds the law.

Gag me with a microdot! That's funny as hell! TNX