I think you'll see a lot more switching to Linux. Anyone who hasn't tried Linux is probably in for a shock when they do. They'll be kicking themselves for not trying it sooner.
Linux is good. Damn good. For most people it will do everything they could ever want to do and more.
True, there are a few apps that won't run under Crossover or Wine and you have to run under Windows. But the OpenOffice suite is great... and free. Browsing and e-mail are wonderful. The whole multiple desktop thing makes working on multiple applications at once easy and productive. Probably that in itself is the biggest thing I miss whenever I have to do anything on a Windows box.
But again, anyone that hasn't at least tried Linux owes it to themselves to download a "live" CD image so they can try it out without disturbing their Windows installation at all. Just boot from the live CD and check it out. You might even have fun and discover a whole new world and certainly at a lot lower cost (i.e. 100% free) than you would ever spend on Windows and Office.
The waste is considerably more radioactive than the original ore. The reason is that the process of fission releases particles that can (and do) make originally non-radioactive things radioactive. You also have one big radioactive nucleus break down into multiple, generally radioactive nuclei. Also, when someone says something is very radioactive, it is a combination of things - how much you have, how fast it emits radiation (i.e. its half life), what daughter products are there and what they emit, etc.
In weapons, highly enriched uranium is not very radioactive because it has an extremely long half life. Get a fast chain reaction going (i.e. make it blow up), and pretty quickly you have lots and lots of very radioactive everything and the radiation level goes way way up.
One of the big processes in fission is having neutrons hit other nuclei and cause them to split. (Wiki chain reaction) Stray neutrons can hit other elements too and cause them to become radioactive. That's called neutron activation. Get exposed to lots of neutrons and you will become radioactive when you weren't significantly radioactive before.
"Only products with a short half-life are radioactive."
Idiot. Anything with a half-life (radioactive decay half life) is radioactive. It's by definition. Things with short half lives are more radioactive than things with long half lives, but they are all radioactive.
What matters is the value of the half life, how much of it you have, the kind of radiation, its energy, and what kind of shielding and how effective it is. Oh, and what also matters is what it decays into (is that also radiactive?), what its half life is, how much of it you have, etc.
Something with a long half life that you have a lot of can still be very radioactive.
22 100 watt bulbs for one hour is probably what you use to light your home. So one panel can power your lights. Maybe a couple of others can power your TV and dishwasher. A few more run your air conditioner or heater. After you take 5 or 6 panels and let them run all day - pushing power into the grid at a time when the grid needs it most and you aren't home to use it yourself, then come home and run your stuff in the evening pulling power back off the grid, amazingly, you are getting all of your electricity from the sun and helping the utility supply peak power during the day. Amazing what not a lot of power can do over time.
The only people that died soon after the accident were in the immediate vicinity. People will die over longer time periods farther away. Fact. Distance does decrease the risk, but it does not eliminate it.
You miss the whole point I was making - by locating it closer, you would force the scrutiny. When plants are located far away, few people really care.
In the US, the average loss in power transmission is estimated to be 7.2%. (Wikipedia) I don't consider that a "small amount". And except for a couple of demonstration projects, high-temperature superconductors are not in use and are not practical. They are definitely not practical for long-haul transmission and that is where the greatest losses are.
It's a false sense of security. If a nuclear plant goes up and contaminates to even very small levels, the cleanup costs will be massive and many people will simply not live there. Have you seen the people born near Chernobyl with their birth defects? People here won't risk that. While I admit that there would be fewer immediate fatalities, again, you miss my point.
In the case of the Enrico Fermi meldown, contaminated would have equalled many fatalities. The studies of how many might die in the case of an accident at that power plant are why every insurance policy in this contry excludes liabilities in case of nuclear accident. The studies were also "sanitized" to minimize how bad it really might be.
100 miles away, if weather carried the fallout over a city, and obviously depending on the level and nature of the fallout, could still result in heavy contamination. Again, yes, farther away means less concetrated. But you still miss the point.
I don't understand everyone crying for lots and lots of reactors. There are huge problems with waste, with the possibilities for disasters, terrorism, sabotage, etc. The potential for disasters that contaminate huge areas and render then uninhabitable is very very real.
What is so wrong with building wind farms, solar arrays, geothermal installations, wave generators, etc? What is wrong with mandating all new homes use solar to augment their heating and water heating requirements?
Virtually any area of the country has some renewable resource that can be exploited - fairly easily - to provide power. The roof of an average home will provide twice the energy you actually need. Install solar water and air heaters, photovoltaics and an inverter and you can have all the energy you need with no utility bills at all. None.
On larger scales it is entirely feasible to supply large cities. If you haven't seen a huge wind farm, go visit one. They are impressive. Or solar arrays that heat a working fluid that drives turbines (Mojave).
None of that will contaminate the area of a state to the point that nobody can live there without birth defects and cancer. If you haven't read about the people living near the Chernobyl plant, look into it. There are people dying from horrible cancers and people being born with monster movie birth defects. Do you really want to risk that? And for acute exposure if you happen to be near an accident, dying by radiation is a horrible way to go. Your mucous membranes just sort of fall apart because fast growing (and dying) cells can't regenerate.
The waste has to be contained for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. That will not be free. Think of it as "interest" on the debt. Is it really worth creating something (radioactive waste) that has to be contained for longer than civilization - or even people - have existed just so you can run a hot tub?
What about just plain old conservation? It is the absolute height of arrogance for people to insist they need to waste energy because it is their "right" to enjoy themselves when it means global warming and nuclear waste.
Nuclear power should be an absolute last resort. It should come after conservation and renewable energies have been maxed out. Then and only then should it even be considered.
Good points. This summer, a number of reactors in various countries had to be throttled back or shut down because of the heat load they were imposing on the rivers they were using to dump their waste heat into.
Use the heat for other things and the amount you have to dump goes down.
You go read something. I am quite aware that the Chernobyl reactor was graphite and burned very easily releasing lots and lots of radioactivity. I also know quite a bit about the exercise that was being conducted at the time.
Do you know anything about any of the reactor accidents elsewhere. Our own 3 Mile Island accident was also a result of an exercise. It also released radioactivity - and we were lucky -- It could have released a whole lot more had the hydrogen bubble exploded and blown the top off the containment building.
How about the Enrico Fermi reactor? Know anything about that one? It was just by the thinnest of margins it didn't explode and hevily contaminate Detroit. It also happened right at the perfect time - a temperature inversion that would have kept the fallout concentrated and a light breeze that would have carried the cloud right over Detroit.
The moral of the story, asshole, is that things can and do go wrong in nuclear reactors. That's probably the harshest environment on earth - high radiation, lots of heat, lots of pressure. Even the slightest chance of a disasterous set of circumstances is too much because when you get lots of reactors running, the chance something goes wrong to cause contamination goes up proportionately.
Even if you have a perfect reactor design (impossible), nuclear power plants are still going to be attractive targets for terrorism or even internal sabotage by some deranged idiot. Ther is no way that humans, designing for a "practical" balance of safety vs. cost, are going to be able to design a reactor that can't be destroyed intentionally - and that is how far you have to go. You have to make it physically impossible for someone to defeat interlocks, defeat safeties, and run a reactor up to and over design and shut down the cooling.
However, natural gas (mostly methane, CH4) has the highest hydrogen to carbon ratio of any fossil fuel. That makes it produce less CO2 per unit energy than any fossil fuel.
Anything else has more C-C bonds and so cannot have as high of a ratio.
Disclaimer: I don't have my chemistry books handy or could make sure the above is compltely true. If I remember correctly, it is. YMMV...
Higher taxes or higher utility rates. Either way, the regular population will have to pay. What you are arguing is what to call the taxation -- because that is what it is.
About buildinng them as far from population as possible...
You no doubt know that the fallout from Chernobyl circled the globe? That it contaminated neighboring countries fairly heavily?
The problem with nuclear power plants is that they are very radioactive in their cores. There are elements with a wide range of half-lives and if anything happens to disperse them, you get high radiation for a short time, medium radiation for longer, and low radiation for eons.
If anything, I would say put them near centers of population That way, they are guaranteed the kind of scrutiny they deserve - lots of it. A population center with a lot to lose and no way to evacuate in short order in the event of an accident will work very hard to make the plants as safe as they can be.
Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.
I agree 100%. Bill Clinton wasted his 8 years. He could have done good but he didn't. He partied and got his little sub sucked. George is just as bad and even worse. We're talking 16 years of the worst presidents this country has ever seen. I don't know how we will survive them. And pray Hillary doesn't win. We might as well all go shoot ourselves if that happens.
"for fear that some Luke Skywalker wannabe would fly my transport into a mountain."
Sadly this actually did happen. Pilot and copilot were on the voice recorder giggling about how someone actually paid them to have so much fun as they were flying low and pretending to be ace pilots. Too bad they didn't fly their flight plan. After hitting a mountain and killing almost everyone on board (an Air Force crew), the fact that they were nowhere where they said they would be doomed the survivors as no rescuers came before they died of exposure and their injuries.
Blackwater sucks. Hard. They kill our own military with their recklessness. Morons.
Excellent suggestion and I hope you get modded informative.
There is a blacklist website that had the www.nice8.org site listed a while back (I serched in mine before entering it) but the we268 site wasn't in there and still isn't.
And China still openly considers the USA to be an enemy. Why manufacturers subject themselves to these liabilities I'll never... Oh wait - they make more money even if they kill children with GHB overdoses, cripple their brains with lead, or export National secrets and financial data to China.
What the hell was I thinking? American businesses that outsource to China are no better than spies and traitors themselves. For all the damage they do, they might as well be.
And realize that the National debt, that the Bush administration has almost doubled, means that your children will have a lower quality education, lower quality lives, lower quality health care, lower quality roads, lower quality air, lower quality water, lower quality food, lower quality opportunities, and basically lower quality everything.
All in the name of fighting "terra".
I have news for you, bud. People like you, George Bush, and Donald Kerr, are exactly what the terrorists want to happen to us. You destroy this country from the inside thinking you are doing it a favor.
You aren't. You are playing right into their hands.
And if you care so much about your children, do you not care that in the name of "fightin' terra'", George Bush has decided for them that they will be saddled with a crippling National debt? Do you not care that virtually nothing has been done to combat the real threat to their survival - literally - doing something/anything to combat global warming? Do you not care that their energy future is one of dwindling and unstable fossil fuels and succulent targets for "terrists" -- nuclear power plants?
Are your children growing up in a free country? Really? With "free speech zones" that violate their free speech? With everything they do or say online tracked and matched to them and a liability to them if those in power disagree? Without the guarantees of legitimate elections free from wholesale tampering? How about the ability to just live their peaceful happy lives? See that anywhere in here?
This is the future you are endorsing for your children. Enjoy.
What if the "terrorist" that broke into your house and raped your wife and children was a government official? What if that same government official moved to silence you when you tried to press charges against him? What if that government official had you hauled off and locked up without due process, without right to see an attorney, without charges, and without ever being able to have a trial? Before you answer, I hope you realize that there are quite a few people, labelled as terrorists, that are locked up under these same conditions. The government has not made any case against them.
How much safer are we? Do you not realize that the Bush administration's war on "terra" has only strengthened radical Islam, strengthened Al Qaeda, destabilized countries like Pakistan (which have majority Muslim populations, missiles, and nukes), led directly to the "election" of Mahmood Amidinijad and the re-radicalization of Iran. If you think we are safer now than we were even on 9/11 itself, you are sadly mistaken and have your head firmly wedged between your butt cheeks.
The Constitution (it is a proper noun, moron) was written long ago - true. However, it is a dman good blueprint for how a free society is managed. If anything, the fault with the Constitution is that it doesn't explicitly call what George W. Bush and company are doing as treason and specify the punishment. Of course, all it would take would be another uncontitutional "signing statement" to be done with that item, just like all of his other ones, but at least people like you might actually sit up and take notice when he violated that particular statute.
You are right about one thing, though. Terrirsts don't care about the Bill of Rights. But then neither does George Bush. How about a police state where you get killed by your own police? Does that work for you?
The only "inside-job" aspect of 9/11 was that despite repeated warnings and even a CIA briefing for George Bush on how Osama bin Laden was planning attacks on US targets such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, using airliners as flying bombs, the idiot did nothing. Look for the video of Condoleeza Rice admitting that the written versions of the briefing were sitting on her desk, unopened, until after 9/11. It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7fQcQdMoxo
His reaction at that school, while reading "My Pet Goat" to the kiddies, after Andrew Card told him the United States was under attack was priceless. He was frozen in fear. He sat there scared shitless and not knowing what to do. It is a famous video. He finally had to be escorted out. Somewhere in that alcohol-damaged brain of his, he knew that he could have stopped it if he wasn't so damn busy partying at the Crawford ranch. That little gem is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WztB6HzXxI -- His famous seven minutes of silence. He's lucky he didn't have urine dripping down his leg caught on video.
It was not an inside job though it might as well have been. It was Bush administration incompetence. Complete, total, and utter incompetence, that led to 9/11. He and his "posse" were too busy partying, bar-b-q'ing, and liquoring up the Saudis. The most vacationing presidenter, EVER. 9/11 was Bush's fault. But he didn't do it.
"so this kind of thing only works to screw with American citizens and accomplishes nothing of significance"
And this is news? America's biggest enemy is definitely within. It is lack of education and an easily terrified populace that can be manipulated with a few "support our troops" and "with us or agin' us" slogans.
I think Osama bin Laden hit the jackpot with his 9/11 attack. He spent some 19 lives and a few tens of thousands of dollars and in return, he, through the current moronic, paranoid, and opportunistic administration, has thoroughly destroyed what used to be the most powerful and respected Nation on earth.
Not such a good idea because there aren't that many John Doe's. Go for John Smith. Or now, maybe you should change your name to Mohammed Al-Mohammed. Or Juan Sanchez. Or Unique Williams. Or possibly best of all -- Lee Chin.
Actually, any stories posted on/. that tend to expose the current administration for what it is tend to get these kinds of posts. Me thinks the Bush administration is watching and trying to prevent people from discussing their treason.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't thought about it that way but you are right. My system hauls under Linux and I guess that is something I do owe to Microsoft.
Thanks Bill and Steve for making kick-ass hardware so cheap with your bloated operating system and applications!
I think you'll see a lot more switching to Linux. Anyone who hasn't tried Linux is probably in for a shock when they do. They'll be kicking themselves for not trying it sooner.
Linux is good. Damn good. For most people it will do everything they could ever want to do and more.
True, there are a few apps that won't run under Crossover or Wine and you have to run under Windows. But the OpenOffice suite is great... and free. Browsing and e-mail are wonderful. The whole multiple desktop thing makes working on multiple applications at once easy and productive. Probably that in itself is the biggest thing I miss whenever I have to do anything on a Windows box.
But again, anyone that hasn't at least tried Linux owes it to themselves to download a "live" CD image so they can try it out without disturbing their Windows installation at all. Just boot from the live CD and check it out. You might even have fun and discover a whole new world and certainly at a lot lower cost (i.e. 100% free) than you would ever spend on Windows and Office.
The waste is considerably more radioactive than the original ore. The reason is that the process of fission releases particles that can (and do) make originally non-radioactive things radioactive. You also have one big radioactive nucleus break down into multiple, generally radioactive nuclei. Also, when someone says something is very radioactive, it is a combination of things - how much you have, how fast it emits radiation (i.e. its half life), what daughter products are there and what they emit, etc.
In weapons, highly enriched uranium is not very radioactive because it has an extremely long half life. Get a fast chain reaction going (i.e. make it blow up), and pretty quickly you have lots and lots of very radioactive everything and the radiation level goes way way up.
One of the big processes in fission is having neutrons hit other nuclei and cause them to split. (Wiki chain reaction) Stray neutrons can hit other elements too and cause them to become radioactive. That's called neutron activation. Get exposed to lots of neutrons and you will become radioactive when you weren't significantly radioactive before.
"Only products with a short half-life are radioactive."
Idiot. Anything with a half-life (radioactive decay half life) is radioactive. It's by definition. Things with short half lives are more radioactive than things with long half lives, but they are all radioactive.
What matters is the value of the half life, how much of it you have, the kind of radiation, its energy, and what kind of shielding and how effective it is. Oh, and what also matters is what it decays into (is that also radiactive?), what its half life is, how much of it you have, etc.
Something with a long half life that you have a lot of can still be very radioactive.
22 100 watt bulbs for one hour is probably what you use to light your home. So one panel can power your lights. Maybe a couple of others can power your TV and dishwasher. A few more run your air conditioner or heater. After you take 5 or 6 panels and let them run all day - pushing power into the grid at a time when the grid needs it most and you aren't home to use it yourself, then come home and run your stuff in the evening pulling power back off the grid, amazingly, you are getting all of your electricity from the sun and helping the utility supply peak power during the day. Amazing what not a lot of power can do over time.
The only people that died soon after the accident were in the immediate vicinity. People will die over longer time periods farther away. Fact. Distance does decrease the risk, but it does not eliminate it.
You miss the whole point I was making - by locating it closer, you would force the scrutiny. When plants are located far away, few people really care.
In the US, the average loss in power transmission is estimated to be 7.2%. (Wikipedia) I don't consider that a "small amount". And except for a couple of demonstration projects, high-temperature superconductors are not in use and are not practical. They are definitely not practical for long-haul transmission and that is where the greatest losses are.
It's a false sense of security. If a nuclear plant goes up and contaminates to even very small levels, the cleanup costs will be massive and many people will simply not live there. Have you seen the people born near Chernobyl with their birth defects? People here won't risk that. While I admit that there would be fewer immediate fatalities, again, you miss my point.
In the case of the Enrico Fermi meldown, contaminated would have equalled many fatalities. The studies of how many might die in the case of an accident at that power plant are why every insurance policy in this contry excludes liabilities in case of nuclear accident. The studies were also "sanitized" to minimize how bad it really might be.
100 miles away, if weather carried the fallout over a city, and obviously depending on the level and nature of the fallout, could still result in heavy contamination. Again, yes, farther away means less concetrated. But you still miss the point.
I don't understand everyone crying for lots and lots of reactors. There are huge problems with waste, with the possibilities for disasters, terrorism, sabotage, etc. The potential for disasters that contaminate huge areas and render then uninhabitable is very very real.
What is so wrong with building wind farms, solar arrays, geothermal installations, wave generators, etc? What is wrong with mandating all new homes use solar to augment their heating and water heating requirements?
Virtually any area of the country has some renewable resource that can be exploited - fairly easily - to provide power. The roof of an average home will provide twice the energy you actually need. Install solar water and air heaters, photovoltaics and an inverter and you can have all the energy you need with no utility bills at all. None.
On larger scales it is entirely feasible to supply large cities. If you haven't seen a huge wind farm, go visit one. They are impressive. Or solar arrays that heat a working fluid that drives turbines (Mojave).
None of that will contaminate the area of a state to the point that nobody can live there without birth defects and cancer. If you haven't read about the people living near the Chernobyl plant, look into it. There are people dying from horrible cancers and people being born with monster movie birth defects. Do you really want to risk that? And for acute exposure if you happen to be near an accident, dying by radiation is a horrible way to go. Your mucous membranes just sort of fall apart because fast growing (and dying) cells can't regenerate.
The waste has to be contained for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. That will not be free. Think of it as "interest" on the debt. Is it really worth creating something (radioactive waste) that has to be contained for longer than civilization - or even people - have existed just so you can run a hot tub?
What about just plain old conservation? It is the absolute height of arrogance for people to insist they need to waste energy because it is their "right" to enjoy themselves when it means global warming and nuclear waste.
Nuclear power should be an absolute last resort. It should come after conservation and renewable energies have been maxed out. Then and only then should it even be considered.
Good points. This summer, a number of reactors in various countries had to be throttled back or shut down because of the heat load they were imposing on the rivers they were using to dump their waste heat into.
Use the heat for other things and the amount you have to dump goes down.
You go read something. I am quite aware that the Chernobyl reactor was graphite and burned very easily releasing lots and lots of radioactivity. I also know quite a bit about the exercise that was being conducted at the time.
Do you know anything about any of the reactor accidents elsewhere. Our own 3 Mile Island accident was also a result of an exercise. It also released radioactivity - and we were lucky -- It could have released a whole lot more had the hydrogen bubble exploded and blown the top off the containment building.
How about the Enrico Fermi reactor? Know anything about that one? It was just by the thinnest of margins it didn't explode and hevily contaminate Detroit. It also happened right at the perfect time - a temperature inversion that would have kept the fallout concentrated and a light breeze that would have carried the cloud right over Detroit.
The moral of the story, asshole, is that things can and do go wrong in nuclear reactors. That's probably the harshest environment on earth - high radiation, lots of heat, lots of pressure. Even the slightest chance of a disasterous set of circumstances is too much because when you get lots of reactors running, the chance something goes wrong to cause contamination goes up proportionately.
Even if you have a perfect reactor design (impossible), nuclear power plants are still going to be attractive targets for terrorism or even internal sabotage by some deranged idiot. Ther is no way that humans, designing for a "practical" balance of safety vs. cost, are going to be able to design a reactor that can't be destroyed intentionally - and that is how far you have to go. You have to make it physically impossible for someone to defeat interlocks, defeat safeties, and run a reactor up to and over design and shut down the cooling.
You go read something.
However, natural gas (mostly methane, CH4) has the highest hydrogen to carbon ratio of any fossil fuel. That makes it produce less CO2 per unit energy than any fossil fuel.
Anything else has more C-C bonds and so cannot have as high of a ratio.
Disclaimer: I don't have my chemistry books handy or could make sure the above is compltely true. If I remember correctly, it is. YMMV...
Higher taxes or higher utility rates. Either way, the regular population will have to pay. What you are arguing is what to call the taxation -- because that is what it is.
About buildinng them as far from population as possible...
You no doubt know that the fallout from Chernobyl circled the globe? That it contaminated neighboring countries fairly heavily?
The problem with nuclear power plants is that they are very radioactive in their cores. There are elements with a wide range of half-lives and if anything happens to disperse them, you get high radiation for a short time, medium radiation for longer, and low radiation for eons.
If anything, I would say put them near centers of population That way, they are guaranteed the kind of scrutiny they deserve - lots of it. A population center with a lot to lose and no way to evacuate in short order in the event of an accident will work very hard to make the plants as safe as they can be.
Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.
I agree 100%. Bill Clinton wasted his 8 years. He could have done good but he didn't. He partied and got his little sub sucked. George is just as bad and even worse. We're talking 16 years of the worst presidents this country has ever seen. I don't know how we will survive them. And pray Hillary doesn't win. We might as well all go shoot ourselves if that happens.
"for fear that some Luke Skywalker wannabe would fly my transport into a mountain."
Sadly this actually did happen. Pilot and copilot were on the voice recorder giggling about how someone actually paid them to have so much fun as they were flying low and pretending to be ace pilots. Too bad they didn't fly their flight plan. After hitting a mountain and killing almost everyone on board (an Air Force crew), the fact that they were nowhere where they said they would be doomed the survivors as no rescuers came before they died of exposure and their injuries.
Blackwater sucks. Hard. They kill our own military with their recklessness. Morons.
Excellent suggestion and I hope you get modded informative.
There is a blacklist website that had the www.nice8.org site listed a while back (I serched in mine before entering it) but the we268 site wasn't in there and still isn't.
The URL to the hosts blacklist file: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm This really speeds up browsing too as a lot of the tracking sites get blocked.
Sure you are. Keep telling yourself that...
And China still openly considers the USA to be an enemy. Why manufacturers subject themselves to these liabilities I'll never... Oh wait - they make more money even if they kill children with GHB overdoses, cripple their brains with lead, or export National secrets and financial data to China.
What the hell was I thinking? American businesses that outsource to China are no better than spies and traitors themselves. For all the damage they do, they might as well be.
And realize that the National debt, that the Bush administration has almost doubled, means that your children will have a lower quality education, lower quality lives, lower quality health care, lower quality roads, lower quality air, lower quality water, lower quality food, lower quality opportunities, and basically lower quality everything.
All in the name of fighting "terra".
I have news for you, bud. People like you, George Bush, and Donald Kerr, are exactly what the terrorists want to happen to us. You destroy this country from the inside thinking you are doing it a favor.
You aren't. You are playing right into their hands.
And if you care so much about your children, do you not care that in the name of "fightin' terra'", George Bush has decided for them that they will be saddled with a crippling National debt? Do you not care that virtually nothing has been done to combat the real threat to their survival - literally - doing something/anything to combat global warming? Do you not care that their energy future is one of dwindling and unstable fossil fuels and succulent targets for "terrists" -- nuclear power plants?
Are your children growing up in a free country? Really? With "free speech zones" that violate their free speech? With everything they do or say online tracked and matched to them and a liability to them if those in power disagree? Without the guarantees of legitimate elections free from wholesale tampering? How about the ability to just live their peaceful happy lives? See that anywhere in here?
This is the future you are endorsing for your children. Enjoy.
Three points, moron:
What if the "terrorist" that broke into your house and raped your wife and children was a government official? What if that same government official moved to silence you when you tried to press charges against him? What if that government official had you hauled off and locked up without due process, without right to see an attorney, without charges, and without ever being able to have a trial? Before you answer, I hope you realize that there are quite a few people, labelled as terrorists, that are locked up under these same conditions. The government has not made any case against them.
How much safer are we? Do you not realize that the Bush administration's war on "terra" has only strengthened radical Islam, strengthened Al Qaeda, destabilized countries like Pakistan (which have majority Muslim populations, missiles, and nukes), led directly to the "election" of Mahmood Amidinijad and the re-radicalization of Iran. If you think we are safer now than we were even on 9/11 itself, you are sadly mistaken and have your head firmly wedged between your butt cheeks.
The Constitution (it is a proper noun, moron) was written long ago - true. However, it is a dman good blueprint for how a free society is managed. If anything, the fault with the Constitution is that it doesn't explicitly call what George W. Bush and company are doing as treason and specify the punishment. Of course, all it would take would be another uncontitutional "signing statement" to be done with that item, just like all of his other ones, but at least people like you might actually sit up and take notice when he violated that particular statute.
You are right about one thing, though. Terrirsts don't care about the Bill of Rights. But then neither does George Bush. How about a police state where you get killed by your own police? Does that work for you?
The only "inside-job" aspect of 9/11 was that despite repeated warnings and even a CIA briefing for George Bush on how Osama bin Laden was planning attacks on US targets such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, using airliners as flying bombs, the idiot did nothing. Look for the video of Condoleeza Rice admitting that the written versions of the briefing were sitting on her desk, unopened, until after 9/11. It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7fQcQdMoxo
His reaction at that school, while reading "My Pet Goat" to the kiddies, after Andrew Card told him the United States was under attack was priceless. He was frozen in fear. He sat there scared shitless and not knowing what to do. It is a famous video. He finally had to be escorted out. Somewhere in that alcohol-damaged brain of his, he knew that he could have stopped it if he wasn't so damn busy partying at the Crawford ranch. That little gem is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WztB6HzXxI -- His famous seven minutes of silence. He's lucky he didn't have urine dripping down his leg caught on video.
It was not an inside job though it might as well have been. It was Bush administration incompetence. Complete, total, and utter incompetence, that led to 9/11. He and his "posse" were too busy partying, bar-b-q'ing, and liquoring up the Saudis. The most vacationing presidenter, EVER. 9/11 was Bush's fault. But he didn't do it.
Got Mod Points? Please mod the parent post UP!
"so this kind of thing only works to screw with American citizens and accomplishes nothing of significance"
And this is news? America's biggest enemy is definitely within. It is lack of education and an easily terrified populace that can be manipulated with a few "support our troops" and "with us or agin' us" slogans.
I think Osama bin Laden hit the jackpot with his 9/11 attack. He spent some 19 lives and a few tens of thousands of dollars and in return, he, through the current moronic, paranoid, and opportunistic administration, has thoroughly destroyed what used to be the most powerful and respected Nation on earth.
Not such a good idea because there aren't that many John Doe's. Go for John Smith. Or now, maybe you should change your name to Mohammed Al-Mohammed. Or Juan Sanchez. Or Unique Williams. Or possibly best of all -- Lee Chin.
Actually, any stories posted on /. that tend to expose the current administration for what it is tend to get these kinds of posts. Me thinks the Bush administration is watching and trying to prevent people from discussing their treason.