>"then police shot 7 or 8 of them and it helped" >Now, does that sound like the Soviet Russia from a bad movie, or what?
Welcome to The Real World. Marauders and looters will be shot on sight. Goes for practically all countries. Even in our world. Even here, in Germany, which is a *lot* more peaceful than the US.
No, it's not nice. But it IS the only way to stop it.
"Chernobyl was based on very old technology. Nuclear power is much safer today."
I believe it was not *too* long ago that it was found out that the workers from a US reactor (nice and modern, apparently) stacked old rods OUTSIDE the dome. Managing to actually get a (small) reaction going outside. Congratulations.
Okay. It's not as bad as the mushroom-pickers in the Soviet Union happening across rods lying in the woods (and fleeing in panic).
But, in the end, I don't CARE how safe and good and modern and well-managed and beloved a reactor is. One major accident and you're back to being a third-world country. For a long time. Want to take that risk? Really?
"nuclear plants can be used to generate almost unlimited amounts of electricity"
Now where have I heard *that* before? Oh, yes, way back then it was said that these things will generate enough electricity to allow us to remove the power meters, since it would be too cheap to measure. Turned out to be slightly different, didn't it?
"next logical step...follow our our information society forward...only choice..."
Look, sorry, don't want to offend you and all that, but your post did sound like it was coming from a shill.
Welllll... I'm going to loose my geek license, but...
You know, you can do nearly nothing with modern cars except stare adoringly at the engine. Back on my '68 Mustang, I could take the entire engine (351W) apart. On my last car, the Smart Roadster (http://www.smart.com), I could do exactly nothing except:
a) Change the oil b) Fill up washer water c) Laugh at the tiny engine (3 cyl, ca 50cc), which nevertheless kicked out 82 HP).
So - why let me at the engine? Yes, I was a gearhead. Yes, I loved it. But that time is over. Modern engines cannot be fiddled with by nuts like me, except the *real* nuts, who have an amazingly expensive pile of equipment.
And that car had a couple of other good ideas, like umbrella storage or that split headrest for ponytails:)
Okay, kicking a truly lousy search engine is a lot of fun, but... come on, exactly why would they block 'XFree86'?
People who already know Linux would not only NOT use the MSN search engine, but they'd be directly linked to XFree86 info from their Linux distro sites.
Poor SOBs who recently decided to dare to look over the Winows horizon will search for 'Linux', not 'XFree86'.
What a brilliant idea to use Flash as the title screen. Not only do we all loooove title screens on web pages (they are so very, very *useful*), many users also simply refuse to install Flash.
Why? Well, the adverts, of course. With the aid of our good friend Mozilla we can tell images to stop cycling or not load from a specific server, but more and more Flash ads are showing up, they cannot be permanently turned off (except through the hosts file) and THEY ARE PISSING ME OFF! (whoops, sorry)
Let's not talk about non-DSL users waiting for the applet to load...waiting...waiting...whee, what fun is waiting...wait some more...the joys of dialups...
Grumble grumble.
OTOH, it's perfectly possible that this wasn't the title screen, but an excellent demo of the system itself (which I find a great idea). In this case, feel free to demod me to China, since I didn't RTFA.
I heard of this a few years back, when it was called a 'bat'. Didn't work then, either.
And theres a simple reason for this: it's terribly un-ergonomical. Try waving this mouse about for three hours. Remember the touch-screens on PCs waaaaay back? (Curses, here I go showing myself to be an Old Fart again). They didn't work because of what was called 'gorilla arm'. Your entire arm quickly began feeling big and heavy and hairy - and tired. And that was just pointing at a screen, without having to pick up a mouse.
Besides, what happens as you pick the mouse up? Cursor wanders off? Or do you have a kind of activity trigger?
Yes, certainly, there will be specialist applications for this thing. Perhaps certain presentations (smallish percentage, though). Possibly specially-written-for games (that kind of game usually flops - no market).
But, all in all, I'm sticking to my lovely little logitech, which simply works, is nice and light (haw, a pun!), and contains no batteries.
(Curses, I just re-read this and found it's turning into a kind of rant. As are his quotes, so I'm not 100% off-topic. Only 90%, I guess. Feel free to demote me).
"The sad thing is we still haven't caught Osama bin Laden" You *do* realize, of course, that Osama Bin Laden was not involved? He knew of it, but a different cell did this. You remember reading that? Or has the mindless repetition "He did it! He did it! He did it!" without any proof whatsoever changed your mind since then?
"It's the type of threat that is going to be there forever... for a long time." How convenient. An enemy for both games and the state which will simply never go away.
"...the inherent evil part of man." Yes. Sure. Terrorists are evil simply because, well, they're evil. They don't have any reason for their actions except for being evil. They will kill themselves (and lots of others) simply, um, because they're evil. Probably have red eyes, too.
"...and your great moral story..." Yes. Games teaching us morals have always been a Big Hit. Right. Right?
"..."NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America." Yes. Cool. Let's randomly shoot drug people and see if it helps. It'll make you feel better because, you see, you're defending America by shooting up people in other countries. Makes you feel good, and patriotic.
"Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country." Actually, yeah, maybe you do. Dude, where's my country? Maybe you should find one which fixes its own internal problems first before running off all over the world shooting up people.
"We're all a bunch of spoiled brats, if you get right down to it." Hey, a bright quote! He's actually right on this! Wow.
"I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun." Morals again. Well, I'm sure you're not alone in this belief. However, a rather largish amount of people have voted with their wallets on this subject - and you haven't. So I'll stick with them, particularly as I play GTA:VC a *lot* myself (Probably because I'm evil;)
"I feel strongly that the player should have a cause and be acting for the just." Yup! Instead of shooting people for fun, you're shooting people because you are - taDAH! - defending America. After all, the americans are always, always, always the Good Guys.
"As a creative person, and I think even musicians would agree with this, your No. 1 objective is not to make money, your No. 1 objective is to get people to enjoy your creative product." Wow. I'm speechless. A quote I deeply, fully agree on, and have for the past 20 years! (Curses, I just revealed myself as an Old Fart).
Whew. Some interesting points, but *what* a lot of drivel in there, too. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.
What is it with these nuts? First, all the games are about killing ze eveel germans. Next, we kill the evil commies. Oooh, look, some years later we are killing evil drug dealers and -producers.
And now - wow, what a surprise! - we are killing the evil terrorists. How patriotic.
Yes. We live in terrible times. All those enemies. They might show up on your doorstep any moment. Like the last enemy did.
Every time I read news from the USA, I keep being reminded of the RPG "Paranoia": Trust the Gouverment. The Gouverment is your friend.
Sad to see such a brilliant mind produce such moronic games.
(Yes, yes, I'll be modded so far down I'll show up at a parade in China, since it is very politically incorrect to doubt the gouverment. With its terrorists. At every corner. So, here goes: I've got four words for you! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! Wheeeee!).
>I have fantasized about loading up a model with flyers and then leafletting north korea or some other freedom-of-information deprived hole.
I don't think you'd make very many friends with this idea. And I'm not just talking about North Korea.
See, politics is an art form. It is actually very difficult, a lot like walking on a rope. No, I'm not talking about the simplistic crap spewed by major public figures. I'm talking about the quiet people in the background, who have dedicated their whole lives to this. They would not want you to interfere, especially with something so crude. You might actually damage things.
Don't believe me? Read Bismarck "Gedanken und Erinnerungen". AFAIK german only, sorry. And usually out of print because, really, who cares about politics anymore? It's all so very easy: we're the good guys, and they're not...sigh. Like Fernau said: we need people who can play chess, not tic-tac-toe.
Well, he sure did that a lot. Is there something he knows and we don't?
Besides, I think only his older books are good. Very good, mind you. But the later ones turned into some kind of mush. Strange, I keep reading mush books like this from authors who seem to run out of ideas. Endlessly long books, very little happening, stunningly boring (also see "Throne of the Ringworld" by Larry Niven). You could compress such books into a pamphlet without missing anything. "Rendezvous with Rama" was excellent. Great idea, very well written. The sequels (many years later) were, without exception, junk. Same with "2001", really.
Oh, well. Other great authors popping up left and right. You *have*, for example, heard of Neil Gaiman, right?
Mind you, I live in Germany. Germany has told SCO to "Put up or Shut up". They couldn't put up, so now they have a court order to shut up. At least around here:)
On the other hand - doesn't this whole stuff begin to bore you? Isn't it the same, every week, reading about yet another idioticy SCO had done?
I've decided to ignore it. They're beneath me. They'll never change anything in my life. To quote my grandfather: "I have never argued with morons, and I'm not going to start now".
Well, after reading through the article, reading all comments at 3+ and grinning at some jokes I still wonder - so what?
So a company/state/whatever decided that from now on they'll use a different typeface? So what? Who cares, except the little grey men in the gouverment? Why is this "News For Nerds?" Why is this "Stuff that Matters"?
Unfortunately, there's a reason they're not "harnessing the power of the atom". If their launch fails, and you have to detonate their rocket in our atmosphere, you Most Certainly don't want any little reactors involved...
But it might be a good idea to have a brush built into those solar panels...
No, really. What do you want with a TV? See films interrupted every couple of minutes by advertisements? See FOX news? See any kind of news?
Have you ever looked at people watching TV? Their mouths hanging open a bit, a glazed look in their eyes... try it some time.
Throw it away. Read a book. Gain several hours PER DAY in free time in which you can code, play computer games, go for a walk, talk to people, read slashdot...
I'm sorry, but - I don't get it. You don't want to see (very) different areas of this world? Experience very different life styles? Live in a completely different way?
Heck, I moved around most of my life (you could say I'm root-less). Met many, very different ways of looking at life. And it's fascinating. Beautiful. Really opens your eyes. Extends your horizons.
I truly don't want to insult you, but if you don't see that moving to any other country is going to mean a largish change in the way you live and see life, then... well... feel free to stay in the USA. Politics aside (ugh!), it's a large and beautiful country. Stick with your SUVs, ignore the rest of the world, believe your president, read american history written by americans and be, well, american.
Or you could look outside your horizons. Move to a different country every now and then. Sure, not as easy. But fun, believe me.
Well, it happened again. Spammers can quite easily attack a company over the net - after all, they don't have to pay for the bandwidth, seeing that they're stealing it.
Making laws against spam will not help at all, as they are very easily circumvented. All a spammer has to do is take over some computers in any foreign country, and spam from there.
The ONLY WAY to stop spam is to make it illegal to use spam as an advertising tool. Thus, if your company is selling some crap, and you're caught paying for spam to sell it, you're going to have to pay for the wasted bandwidth and peoples time. This would be expensive enough to shut down quite large companies. More importantly, it would stop people from paying spammers.
Yes, there's a problem, of course - you could target companies by spamming for them against their will. But currently, I do not see any other way of getting rid of spammers.
You have to shut down their source of income, not their spam itself.
You do realize what happens if you work for the Defense Department, right? You can't publish. You can't talk to your friends about it. Good chance that you won't be able to leave your country, either. And given the way your gouverment is currently changing, there's an excellent chance that you might pick up a WHOLE LOT OF TROUBLE in just a few years.
"because scientists...agree that the U.S. is facing dangerous foes"
Yes! Dangerous foes! Gods Own Country is being threatened! High time we create even more weapons to, uh, sell them to the rest of the world.
Yup. And your opponents *are* dangerous. Not because of their weapons (they're armed with AK-47, for heavens sake, instead of ICBMs), but because they were pushed so far that they're willing to get themselves killed just to get you. And they were pushed by you.
Why do I keep hearing of these things? Phone calls beining monitored, email being checked, privacy going straight out the window - and people claim that this is NORMAL?
At my company (been here three years now), our phone calls are not checked. Not even the numbers. The email is not checked. The surfing is not checked. We are not monitored in any way at all. Clothing is very casual. People come and leave more or less when they please. When several of us sat in front of a computer, watching the 20min video of the new Half-Life 2 game, the boss showed up and watched it as well.
And the result? We're happy. We work hard. We leave late.
Never seen this before? Well, it *is* in Germany. Perhaps the US work place is going down the toilet as well, together with the citizens rights.
Slashdot Mirror
>"then police shot 7 or 8 of them and it helped"
>Now, does that sound like the Soviet Russia from a bad movie, or what?
Welcome to The Real World. Marauders and looters will be shot on sight. Goes for practically all countries. Even in our world. Even here, in Germany, which is a *lot* more peaceful than the US.
No, it's not nice. But it IS the only way to stop it.
"Chernobyl was based on very old technology. Nuclear power is much safer today."
I believe it was not *too* long ago that it was found out that the workers from a US reactor (nice and modern, apparently) stacked old rods OUTSIDE the dome.
Managing to actually get a (small) reaction going outside. Congratulations.
Okay. It's not as bad as the mushroom-pickers in the Soviet Union happening across rods lying in the woods (and fleeing in panic).
But, in the end, I don't CARE how safe and good and modern and well-managed and beloved a reactor is.
One major accident and you're back to being a third-world country. For a long time. Want to take that risk? Really?
"nuclear plants can be used to generate almost unlimited amounts of electricity"
Now where have I heard *that* before? Oh, yes, way back then it was said that these things will generate enough electricity to allow us to remove the power meters, since it would be too cheap to measure.
Turned out to be slightly different, didn't it?
"next logical step...follow our our information society forward...only choice..."
Look, sorry, don't want to offend you and all that, but your post did sound like it was coming from a shill.
Welllll... I'm going to loose my geek license, but...
:)
You know, you can do nearly nothing with modern cars except stare adoringly at the engine. Back on my '68 Mustang, I could take the entire engine (351W) apart. On my last car, the Smart Roadster (http://www.smart.com), I could do exactly nothing except:
a) Change the oil
b) Fill up washer water
c) Laugh at the tiny engine (3 cyl, ca 50cc), which nevertheless kicked out 82 HP).
So - why let me at the engine? Yes, I was a gearhead. Yes, I loved it. But that time is over. Modern engines cannot be fiddled with by nuts like me, except the *real* nuts, who have an amazingly expensive pile of equipment.
And that car had a couple of other good ideas, like umbrella storage or that split headrest for ponytails
Okay, kicking a truly lousy search engine is a lot of fun, but... come on, exactly why would they block 'XFree86'?
People who already know Linux would not only NOT use the MSN search engine, but they'd be directly linked to XFree86 info from their Linux distro sites.
Poor SOBs who recently decided to dare to look over the Winows horizon will search for 'Linux', not 'XFree86'.
What a brilliant idea to use Flash as the title screen. Not only do we all loooove title screens on web pages (they are so very, very *useful*), many users also simply refuse to install Flash.
Why? Well, the adverts, of course. With the aid of our good friend Mozilla we can tell images to stop cycling or not load from a specific server, but more and more Flash ads are showing up, they cannot be permanently turned off (except through the hosts file) and THEY ARE PISSING ME OFF! (whoops, sorry)
Let's not talk about non-DSL users waiting for the applet to load...waiting...waiting...whee, what fun is waiting...wait some more...the joys of dialups...
Grumble grumble.
OTOH, it's perfectly possible that this wasn't the title screen, but an excellent demo of the system itself (which I find a great idea). In this case, feel free to demod me to China, since I didn't RTFA.
I heard of this a few years back, when it was called a 'bat'. Didn't work then, either.
And theres a simple reason for this: it's terribly un-ergonomical. Try waving this mouse about for three hours. Remember the touch-screens on PCs waaaaay back? (Curses, here I go showing myself to be an Old Fart again). They didn't work because of what was called 'gorilla arm'. Your entire arm quickly began feeling big and heavy and hairy - and tired.
And that was just pointing at a screen, without having to pick up a mouse.
Besides, what happens as you pick the mouse up? Cursor wanders off? Or do you have a kind of activity trigger?
Yes, certainly, there will be specialist applications for this thing. Perhaps certain presentations (smallish percentage, though). Possibly specially-written-for games (that kind of game usually flops - no market).
But, all in all, I'm sticking to my lovely little logitech, which simply works, is nice and light (haw, a pun!), and contains no batteries.
What a lot of shiny quotes to look at!
... for a long time."
;)
(Curses, I just re-read this and found it's turning into a kind of rant. As are his quotes, so I'm not 100% off-topic. Only 90%, I guess. Feel free to demote me).
"The sad thing is we still haven't caught Osama bin Laden"
You *do* realize, of course, that Osama Bin Laden was not involved? He knew of it, but a different cell did this. You remember reading that?
Or has the mindless repetition "He did it! He did it! He did it!" without any proof whatsoever changed your mind since then?
"It's the type of threat that is going to be there forever
How convenient. An enemy for both games and the state which will simply never go away.
"...the inherent evil part of man."
Yes. Sure. Terrorists are evil simply because, well, they're evil. They don't have any reason for their actions except for being evil. They will kill themselves (and lots of others) simply, um, because they're evil. Probably have red eyes, too.
"...and your great moral story..."
Yes. Games teaching us morals have always been a Big Hit. Right. Right?
"..."NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America."
Yes. Cool. Let's randomly shoot drug people and see if it helps. It'll make you feel better because, you see, you're defending America by shooting up people in other countries. Makes you feel good, and patriotic.
"Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country."
Actually, yeah, maybe you do. Dude, where's my country? Maybe you should find one which fixes its own internal problems first before running off all over the world shooting up people.
"We're all a bunch of spoiled brats, if you get right down to it."
Hey, a bright quote! He's actually right on this! Wow.
"I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun."
Morals again. Well, I'm sure you're not alone in this belief. However, a rather largish amount of people have voted with their wallets on this subject - and you haven't. So I'll stick with them, particularly as I play GTA:VC a *lot* myself (Probably because I'm evil
"I feel strongly that the player should have a cause and be acting for the just."
Yup! Instead of shooting people for fun, you're shooting people because you are - taDAH! - defending America. After all, the americans are always, always, always the Good Guys.
"As a creative person, and I think even musicians would agree with this, your No. 1 objective is not to make money, your No. 1 objective is to get people to enjoy your creative product."
Wow. I'm speechless. A quote I deeply, fully agree on, and have for the past 20 years! (Curses, I just revealed myself as an Old Fart).
Whew. Some interesting points, but *what* a lot of drivel in there, too. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.
And I don't mean shifty evil eyes...
What is it with these nuts? First, all the games are about killing ze eveel germans.
Next, we kill the evil commies.
Oooh, look, some years later we are killing evil drug dealers and -producers.
And now - wow, what a surprise! - we are killing the evil terrorists. How patriotic.
Yes. We live in terrible times. All those enemies. They might show up on your doorstep any moment.
Like the last enemy did.
Every time I read news from the USA, I keep being reminded of the RPG "Paranoia": Trust the Gouverment. The Gouverment is your friend.
Sad to see such a brilliant mind produce such moronic games.
(Yes, yes, I'll be modded so far down I'll show up at a parade in China, since it is very politically incorrect to doubt the gouverment. With its terrorists. At every corner.
So, here goes: I've got four words for you! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! Wheeeee!).
"We create worlds"
I remember looking at this on one of their games and thinking "Yes, indeed you do".
When EA bought them I mourned their passing, knowing fully well what will happen. This now is just an old, gray corpse being buried.
>I have fantasized about loading up a model with flyers and then leafletting north korea or some other freedom-of-information deprived hole.
I don't think you'd make very many friends with this idea. And I'm not just talking about North Korea.
See, politics is an art form. It is actually very difficult, a lot like walking on a rope.
No, I'm not talking about the simplistic crap spewed by major public figures. I'm talking about the quiet people in the background, who have dedicated their whole lives to this. They would not want you to interfere, especially with something so crude. You might actually damage things.
Don't believe me? Read Bismarck "Gedanken und Erinnerungen". AFAIK german only, sorry. And usually out of print because, really, who cares about politics anymore? It's all so very easy: we're the good guys, and they're not...sigh. Like Fernau said: we need people who can play chess, not tic-tac-toe.
>Whether that will lead to a crackdown on RC hobbies in the future remains to be seen.
;)
Well, seen like this, most hobbies would have to be cracked down on...
Anyway, I'm sure it's not terribly difficult to set up a little interference sender, causing any RC-controlled whatsits to loose interest
Well, he sure did that a lot. Is there something he knows and we don't?
Besides, I think only his older books are good. Very good, mind you.
But the later ones turned into some kind of mush. Strange, I keep reading mush books like this from authors who seem to run out of ideas. Endlessly long books, very little happening, stunningly boring (also see "Throne of the Ringworld" by Larry Niven).
You could compress such books into a pamphlet without missing anything.
"Rendezvous with Rama" was excellent. Great idea, very well written. The sequels (many years later) were, without exception, junk. Same with "2001", really.
Oh, well. Other great authors popping up left and right. You *have*, for example, heard of Neil Gaiman, right?
Mpf.
;)
I used to *love* the Jargon File. I'd open it in an editor, hide the window beneath my work windows, and read it at work
These days, it's all in HTML, which - strangely enough - makes it a lot harder for me to read.
Heck, I used to print this out on the high-speed printers of our VAXen (ok, ok, I'm an Old Fart) and read it sitting in the sun.
How come there's no text version anymore? Have I simply reached the age where I'm too fossilized to find an entry for it on ESRs page?
Yeah, I'm getting tired of this myself.
:)
Mind you, I live in Germany. Germany has told SCO to "Put up or Shut up". They couldn't put up, so now they have a court order to shut up. At least around here
On the other hand - doesn't this whole stuff begin to bore you? Isn't it the same, every week, reading about yet another idioticy SCO had done?
I've decided to ignore it. They're beneath me. They'll never change anything in my life. To quote my grandfather: "I have never argued with morons, and I'm not going to start now".
Well, after reading through the article, reading all comments at 3+ and grinning at some jokes I still wonder - so what?
So a company/state/whatever decided that from now on they'll use a different typeface? So what? Who cares, except the little grey men in the gouverment? Why is this "News For Nerds?" Why is this "Stuff that Matters"?
Unfortunately, there's a reason they're not "harnessing the power of the atom". If their launch fails, and you have to detonate their rocket in our atmosphere, you Most Certainly don't want any little reactors involved...
But it might be a good idea to have a brush built into those solar panels...
No, really. What do you want with a TV? See films interrupted every couple of minutes by advertisements? See FOX news? See any kind of news?
Have you ever looked at people watching TV? Their mouths hanging open a bit, a glazed look in their eyes... try it some time.
Throw it away. Read a book. Gain several hours PER DAY in free time in which you can code, play computer games, go for a walk, talk to people, read slashdot...
Yes, I also see this as the major problem facing Linux.
;)
After all - who of us don't keep a dual-boot around, just so we can play Half-Life 2 or DOOM 3 when they come out?
(No, let's not talk consoles. I don't even have a TV)
Yes, isn't this strange?
A search for "Gentoo Linux" on search.msn.com returned "about 135285 containing "Gentoo Linux""
(Yeah, ok, of course google returned 643,000)
I'm sorry, but - I don't get it.
You don't want to see (very) different areas of this world? Experience very different life styles? Live in a completely different way?
Heck, I moved around most of my life (you could say I'm root-less). Met many, very different ways of looking at life. And it's fascinating. Beautiful. Really opens your eyes. Extends your horizons.
I truly don't want to insult you, but if you don't see that moving to any other country is going to mean a largish change in the way you live and see life, then... well... feel free to stay in the USA. Politics aside (ugh!), it's a large and beautiful country. Stick with your SUVs, ignore the rest of the world, believe your president, read american history written by americans and be, well, american.
Or you could look outside your horizons. Move to a different country every now and then. Sure, not as easy. But fun, believe me.
>The amount of paperwork explodes and you drown in self imposed red tape.
Too late. NASA is a moloch, carrying an enormous bureaucratic waterhead, completely wrapped in miles of red tape.
Every single gouverment institute ends up like this, together with most large enough private ones, which bodes rather ill for our future.
Well, it happened again. Spammers can quite easily attack a company over the net - after all, they don't have to pay for the bandwidth, seeing that they're stealing it.
Making laws against spam will not help at all, as they are very easily circumvented. All a spammer has to do is take over some computers in any foreign country, and spam from there.
The ONLY WAY to stop spam is to make it illegal to use spam as an advertising tool. Thus, if your company is selling some crap, and you're caught paying for spam to sell it, you're going to have to pay for the wasted bandwidth and peoples time. This would be expensive enough to shut down quite large companies.
More importantly, it would stop people from paying spammers.
Yes, there's a problem, of course - you could target companies by spamming for them against their will. But currently, I do not see any other way of getting rid of spammers.
You have to shut down their source of income, not their spam itself.
You do realize what happens if you work for the Defense Department, right? You can't publish. You can't talk to your friends about it. Good chance that you won't be able to leave your country, either.
And given the way your gouverment is currently changing, there's an excellent chance that you might pick up a WHOLE LOT OF TROUBLE in just a few years.
"because scientists...agree that the U.S. is facing dangerous foes"
Yes! Dangerous foes! Gods Own Country is being threatened! High time we create even more weapons to, uh, sell them to the rest of the world.
Yup. And your opponents *are* dangerous. Not because of their weapons (they're armed with AK-47, for heavens sake, instead of ICBMs), but because they were pushed so far that they're willing to get themselves killed just to get you.
And they were pushed by you.
Thank the Gods I don't live in the US anymore.
Why do I keep hearing of these things? Phone calls beining monitored, email being checked, privacy going straight out the window - and people claim that this is NORMAL?
At my company (been here three years now), our phone calls are not checked. Not even the numbers. The email is not checked. The surfing is not checked. We are not monitored in any way at all.
Clothing is very casual. People come and leave more or less when they please. When several of us sat in front of a computer, watching the 20min video of the new Half-Life 2 game, the boss showed up and watched it as well.
And the result? We're happy. We work hard. We leave late.
Never seen this before? Well, it *is* in Germany. Perhaps the US work place is going down the toilet as well, together with the citizens rights.