Words of wisdom. Making ordinary, stupid people feel like connoisseurs is the basis for at least 90% of all sales in pretty much every industry, from high-end CPUs to fast cars to indie music to Venezuelan beaver cheese.
If you're happy with a world where brick and mortar retailers just can't exist, then by all means keep the current system
If you're happy with a world where horse carriage manufacturers just can't exist, then by all means keep the current system where car manufacturers are not being regulated so that horse carriages can still compete with cars.
That's a very strange argument, to say the least - you're trying to use your anecdotal story to prove that his anectodal story can't be true. A perfect example of a non sequitur if I've ever seen one.
Here's a hint: anecdotal evidence is always just that - anecdotal. While it can be interesting, it doesn't prove any general statements.
Therefore, you failed twice: you not only failed to understand that you can't prove the GP wrong by saying "my anecdotal evidence doesn't match yours, therefore yours must be wrong", you also failed to understand that the GP wasn't even trying to make any general claims about anything; unlike you, HE simply relayed an interesting anecdote because it was, well, an interesting anecdote.
I don't know. What exactly *is* a democracy? For me at least, a democracy is not just defined by the existance of laws, regulations, procedures etc. that are normally associated with democratic states (i.e., free speech, right to vote, presumption of innocence and so on) but also by the actual reality of the political system. That's why some states are not democracies even though they hold sham elections (like the GDR did, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and so on).
When your rights still exist on paper but aren't worth anything in reality anymore, you don't live in a democracy anymore, and therefore, spying (on innocent people for no other reason than the fact that they are not in favour of the current government, no less!) is, at the very least, dangerous for democracy.
I certainly agree with the rest of your comment, though.
It's more complicated than the GP claims it is: "Large population, democracy, efficient government - pick any two".
You can have a democratic government that's efficient, but only in small countries. You can have a democracy in a large country, but then it's not going to be efficient. And you can have an efficient government in a large country, but then it's not going to be democratic (e.g. China).
I'm not at all convinced that this is actually *true*, of course, but at least it's an a priori more refined version of what the GP said that *could* be true, and some interesting food for thought.:)
The issue is that the police should leave people who haven't committed any crime, who're not suspected of having committed any crime, and who are not suspected of planning to commit any crime in the future ALONE.
Suppose a police officer would get posted outside your house. He doesn't enter your private property or anything, but he stands there, and when you leave the house, he follows you; if you enter another piece of private property (one that he can't enter - your office, for example, or a friend's house, as opposed to a supermarket or a pub), he waits outside again until you come back out. He's always with you, listening to everything you say in public, compiling a file on you that gets shared with the FBI later on. Heck, for added fun, suppose he's also recording every public conversation of yours and videotaping your actions in public.
Are you OK with that?
Clearly, the same reasoning you use could be applied here: you're in public, so everything you do and say is - well - public. And if you ask the police officer why he's doing this, he will tell you that it's in the interest of "security", of course - national security, most likely. And he's sorry, but he cannot give any details, but since he's not intruding on your *private* life, there's no issue there, right?
Now suppose the same thing's happening, but he's not identifying as a police officer or letting you know he's recording your conversations etc. or compiling a file on you; in fact, you don't even notice that he's there. He's always following you, but you don't even know until you find out years later by pure coincidence. Are you still OK with that?
The problem here is that the police simply has no business interfering with the lives of people who aren't suspected of doing anything wrong. And that's DOUBLY TRUE when we're talking about protesting and political dissent, since that's arguably one of the fundamental pillars upon which democracy rests; harassing (and I intentionally say "harassing"!) innocent people simply because they intend to attend a political demonstration creates a chilling effect and is at completely odds with democracy.
As long as this kind of statement is coming from Microsoft drones and spokesrobots instead of independent third parties, it's not interesting; not necessarily because it's automatically a priori untrue, but because they'd make the same statement no matter whether it is or not.
I will really never understand why we accept "death and taxes" as somehow magically inevitable.
Same here. I declared a long time ago that death does not apply to me, and I fully expect the universe to honour this - if it doesn't, it'll find itself in court faster than it can say "natural law".
I don't think that's a valid argument: you're assuming that the effects scale linearly with the amount of time "stolen", and that's not true. In other words, if f is an evaluation function that maps the "objective" severity of the crime (e.g., the amount
of time or money stolen) to the "subjective" severity (i.e., the effect it has on the victim), then you're basically assuming that f(a) + f(b) = f(a+b) (that f is a homomorphism), but there is no a priori reason why it would be.
In fact, I think the fact that sending enough spam to 10 million people so that each of them has to spend 5 minutes dealing with it costs the victims more time overall than a murder of a single person would clearly shows that it this NOT the case.
When I voted last year - I had a choice of multiple political parties, few of whom were 'two sides of the same coin'. Heck, for my State House representative, it wasn't a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils, I had six evils to decide between.
How many of these actually mattered (i.e., how many had a realistic chance of getting elected)?
Bottom line: What's really strangling this country is individual who are not only ignorant of history and politics - they seem proud of it.
Hear, hear!
Anyone who thinks the US is even remotely totalitarian hasn't a clue, and likely hasn't a functioning brain cell. (As well as being a large part of the problem.)
I think you shouldn't be quite so dismissive, although you do have a point insofar as that we're only at the beginning and that it still can get much, MUCH worse. Still, if anything, that's just another reason to pick up the proverbial fight now *before* it's too late.
Damn. I just read something about "High Performance DDR2", and immediately thought of Dance Dance Revolution - imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be about memory instead.
I'm always amazed that it's even possible to prosecute children in the USA at all. In Germany, for example, the age at which you start to have a limited legal liability for your actions is 14; if you're 13 or younger, you can't be prosecuted for anything you do, period. (Of course, your *parents* might, and you might end up in foster care or so, too, but you can't get put on trial or sent to prison or so yourself.) I'm not sure about other nations, but I imagine that it's similar elsewhere, too.
(And it makes sense, too: when someone isn't old enough to vote, drive a car, drink a beer, smoke a cigarette or have sex with their girl-/boyfriend, why should they be old enough to be put on trial?)
Off-topic, but the guillotine isn't actually all that nasty: it provides a clean and quick death without any unnecessary, preventable suffering (before its invention, people's heads were cut off with swords, and that was quite literally a hack-fest at times). I can think of much nastier devices, myself, that make death much slower and more painful.
When liberty dies and the will of the people is ignored, it does matter to everyone, including nerds. I, for one, am glad that Slashdot is about more than just the latest shiny gadgets.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. [...] The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
When reproducing that quote, I often wonder whether it'd get me in trouble with the FBI or the SS if it hadn't actually been said by one of the founding fathers of the USA. (And actually, I sometimes do wonder whether I'll get in trouble with them some day for saying this *despite* the fact that it's a Jefferson quote.)
Even disbanding the security council wouldn't work, though - some things are voted on in the general assembly, after all, but we regularly see coercion tactics being used to secure votes there, too. Essentially, it's the carrot and the stick: "oh, sure, you can vote against the resolution we favour, but then we'd unfortunately have to stop development aid sent to your country and give it to your neighbours instead who *entirely be coincidence* happened to vote *for* our resolution..:"
I'm not sure what could be done about that. Sometimes, I think we need a world constitution, but a legal document that can't be enforced isn't worth the paper it's written on. It'd be like having a schoolyard where there's rules of conduct but no teacher to watch out that they're actually being followed; the bullies would still be free to, well, bully.
Given that, curiously enough, the security council may actually be a step in the right direction: it makes the bullies undue influence official, but because it creates an air of legitimacy, it also ensures that *some* rules have to be followed, at least. What's still needed, at the very least, is a council where every continent has at least one permanent representative with veto rights and everything; even better would be a situation where *every* nation has full permanent membership and veto rights, as that would make sure that everyone actually had to work together.
(What's also funny, BTW, is the similarity to nuclear weapons: while the thought of nations like Iran or North Korea having access to them really gives me the creeps, I can see why they'd want to have them; if you do, others at least have to take you serious instead of stomping all over you whenever they feel like it.)
(Also funny: it never really occurred to me, but the veto powers in the security council are pretty much precisely those nations who do have nuclear weapons, not counting nations like Israel (who always hid the fact that it has them) and India and Pakistan (who came later). Coincidence?)
That may be true from a legal perspective, but I find the notion that any referendum in a democracy can simply be ignored because it's only "advisory" to be completely at odds with the fundamental ideas of democracy.
THE PEOPLE are never just an advisory body in a RULE OF THE PEOPLE.
There are still times when refusing to vote is the right thing to do, though. To give a ridiculously overblown example (just to illustrate the basic point), assume that you're supposed to vote for the next Nobel peace prize winner: the two candidates are Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Who do you vote for?
No sane person would vote for either. Of course, this *is* a ridiculous example insofar as that a) the candidates are about as evil as you can get, b) the Nobel peace prize is diametrically opposed to everything they stand for, and c) the Nobel peace prize is purely a symbolic thing that does not actually afford them any additional political or economic power or whatever, but still, it shows that not voting is not *always* the wrong choice.
Now think about politics. What's actually different there? Depending on your opinion of the two major parties in the USA, you might say that while they aren't as bad as Hitler or Stalin, they still are bad enough for you not to be in favour of either, for example (which covers a) and b)), and while the winner of the election will be afforded political power and influence, you may still believe that *both* will abuse that power[1]. What do you do? That is, who do you vote for?
The real problem, I think, is that the statement "I don't vote" can really mean two very different things: it can mean "I didn't bother because I was too lazy" (I'll call this "passive non-voting"), and it can also mean "I didn't vote because I wanted to make a political statement" (I'll call that "active non-voting"). In reality, things are more complicated because there's a grey area between these extremes; people might say "I'm too lazy (passive) because I already know I'm not going to make a difference (active)", for example, but it's important to realise that you can't throw everything into one pot.
I think a good way of solving this particular problem would be to include a "none of the above" option on ballots; that way, active non-voters could check that, and we'd get a clearer picture of why people don't vote. But unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen: established political parties[1] benefit from the idea that non-voters are automatically just lazy, ignorant or uncaring. If it turned out that - for example - in a presidential election, 25% of all voters voted for candidate A, 25% voted for B and 50% voted for "neither is suitable for the job", this would be a pretty heavy blow for both parties; on the other hand, if it's just "50% voted for A, 50% voted for B, and the total voter turnout was 50%", the elections seem much more legitimate.
That's not to say that active non-voting is a good idea all the time (or even most of the time), especially when no "none of the above" option is present on ballots; despite all the flaws in the US-American political system, voters still seem to have some influence on some issues, at least. But there are also elections/votes which are entirely pointless, and I can't blame people for refusing to be part of that charade (which would lend an air of legitimacy and democracy to a political process that has long lost either).
It was a *default ruling* - Spamhaus didn't have anyone show up for the trial, so they lost by default, and I'm pretty sure the judge didn't have much choice in that regard.
I can certainly *understand* Spamhaus, of course; if somebody sued me in another country, I wouldn't fly there just to attend a trial, either, and I'd certainly ignore the verdict (why do they think they'd have jurisdiction over me, anyway?), but the rules are still the rules, and the judge just did what the rules said, so don't blame him.
If you want to clear the internet of pr0n and make it safe for kids, create a.fam domain and then make the registrar a board consisting of the LDS Church, Christian Coalition, Southern Baptist Conference, and Catholic Church. Before any site is accepted, a scan will be done on their code to ensure *every* link on the page ends in.fam.
While that's not a bad idea per se (although it'd probably be.kids rather than.fam), I'm a bit surprised that all the board members you're suggesting are non-orthodox christian churches with a presence in the USA. The obvious questions are, from least to most important: why not churches from other countries (like, say, the state church of Norway, or the Greek orthodox church, or even the Ethiopian orthodox church or whatever)? Why no other organised religions - judaism, islam, buddism, hinduism, shintoism, sikhism, and whatever else you can think of)? Why no *non-organised* religions, like neopaganism, wicca, and so on? And, most important, why should *religious organisations* be allowed to decide what's safe or unsafe for kids, anyway?
Another thing I don't understand is what you mean when you say "before any site is accepted". Do you mean that I'd have to design my entire site before applying for a domain? Do you also mean that once it's up, I could never change any part of it, at least not until I submit the site for a rescan to see that it's still "safe"? (For that matter, why is "links only to.fam domains" a sufficient criterion for determining "safety", anyway?) What about database-driven sites? What you're essentially proposing is a huge bureaucracy that's slow, inefficient and costly, and that - most importantly - wouldn't even work out (people do make mistakes, after all, and things *would* slip through).
The proposal to change email is also laughable at best. Even if you think that requiring an SSN to get an email account would be a good idea, how do you handle people from outside the USA (95% of the world's population, last I counted) that don't even *have* an SSN? For that matter, how do you handle people that ARE from the USA and don't have an SSN?
You also don't seem to be able to grasp the sheer volume of email that goes around the globe each day - and I'm talking about ham here, not spam. Do you seriously think that there enough "LDS missionaries" to read everything? And for that matter, again, why would you trust them? If I (just assume I'm below 18 for the sake of the argument) send an email that says "the LDS sucks", does it get blocked? If yes, what can I do about it? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In about 30 days and with absolutely no resistance, you could create a family-safe internet.
No. You would've created an entirely new system that superficially resembles the Internet because it uses similar terms ("domain", "email" etc.) but that, in reality, is pretty much the polar opposite of the Internet.
Seriously, if you or someone you know came up with the idea of.xxx, please turn in your geek card and go work a help desk in India and leave the real thinking to much smarter people.
Smarter people like you? Your ideas are not just ridiculous, US-centric, based on religious convictions and ignoring any religion that isn't christian, they're also unworkable, and any smart person would see why right away.
So unless your entire post was very clever sarcasm/satire, you're not smart, to put it bluntly, and that's actually a good thing, too. If it WAS sarcasm, then I bow before you: you're a true master.
Don't even get me started on the domain-squatting and name-grabbing/auctioning, either... it'd make the Oklahoma Land Rush of the 19th Century seem tame by comparison.
Not necessarily -.eu and.info were also only launched relatively recently, and the introduction seems to have worked quite well in both cases.
That might have been true 230 years ago, but if you seriously believe that handguns and rifles can be used to stop a modern army, you're naive at best. Not to mention that in order to defend your freedom, you also have to be able to *use* them; at the very least, there has to be a critical mass that leads to a large-scale uprising. If there isn't, you're not a defender of your freedom, you're just a random murderer who gets life without parole.
That's not to say that the original idea behind the second amendment wasn't a good one, but do keep in mind that Jefferson not only talked about the blood of tyrants, he also said "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion".
You've gone 230 years without one. Let's face it - the only purpose the second amendment still serves is to fool gullible people into thinking that they have some sort of control left over their destiny, their freedom, and their country. (Incidentally, this also explains why right-wingers are so much in favour of it: as long as people have the illusion of being in control, it's much easier to actually take away control from them.)
If you really care about things like the "patriot" act (i.e., if you want to make sure that there's not going to be another, at least), pretty much the only choice you have when it comes to choosing who to vote for is Russ Feingold.
That being said, saying "both parties are evil, it doesn't matter who I vote for" is irresponsible. It's true that neither party comes close to caring about the citizens and trying to uphold and protect the constitution (not just the letter, but also the spirit), but even Plato already said that if you have to choose between two evils, you should choose the lesser one. Right now, I think it's pretty clear which one that is.
It always amuses me when (and I am not saying this is you) single college students look with distain at a middle aged homeowner with 3 kids who is not willing to chuck it all down the drain to stand up to a law he does not agree with.
It's just the opposite for me: it always amuses (and saddens) me to see middle-aged homeowners with a spouse and kids use their family as an excuse for why they can't do anything:
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'd really like to stand up against this kind of fascism, but I can't, you see, I've got a wife and kids, I've got to take care of them, but I'm no coward, no Sir, I just need to take care of my family, I'm sure you'll understand, I can't just abandon them, where would America(tm) end up when everyone just abandonded their families in times of need, I can't become a martyr, let one of those youngin's do that, they've got no family anyway, their life is worth less than mine, I don't care what becomes of them, but I'm no coward, no Sir, not me, I just need to protect my family, my children... just think of the children! The children!"
Slashdot Mirror
Words of wisdom. Making ordinary, stupid people feel like connoisseurs is the basis for at least 90% of all sales in pretty much every industry, from high-end CPUs to fast cars to indie music to Venezuelan beaver cheese.
If you're happy with a world where horse carriage manufacturers just can't exist, then by all means keep the current system where car manufacturers are not being regulated so that horse carriages can still compete with cars.
That's a very strange argument, to say the least - you're trying to use your anecdotal story to prove that his anectodal story can't be true. A perfect example of a non sequitur if I've ever seen one.
Here's a hint: anecdotal evidence is always just that - anecdotal. While it can be interesting, it doesn't prove any general statements.
Therefore, you failed twice: you not only failed to understand that you can't prove the GP wrong by saying "my anecdotal evidence doesn't match yours, therefore yours must be wrong", you also failed to understand that the GP wasn't even trying to make any general claims about anything; unlike you, HE simply relayed an interesting anecdote because it was, well, an interesting anecdote.
I don't know about you, but I'd choose subway bombings over nazi Germany any time.
I don't know. What exactly *is* a democracy? For me at least, a democracy is not just defined by the existance of laws, regulations, procedures etc. that are normally associated with democratic states (i.e., free speech, right to vote, presumption of innocence and so on) but also by the actual reality of the political system. That's why some states are not democracies even though they hold sham elections (like the GDR did, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and so on).
When your rights still exist on paper but aren't worth anything in reality anymore, you don't live in a democracy anymore, and therefore, spying (on innocent people for no other reason than the fact that they are not in favour of the current government, no less!) is, at the very least, dangerous for democracy.
I certainly agree with the rest of your comment, though.
It's more complicated than the GP claims it is: "Large population, democracy, efficient government - pick any two".
:)
You can have a democratic government that's efficient, but only in small countries. You can have a democracy in a large country, but then it's not going to be efficient. And you can have an efficient government in a large country, but then it's not going to be democratic (e.g. China).
I'm not at all convinced that this is actually *true*, of course, but at least it's an a priori more refined version of what the GP said that *could* be true, and some interesting food for thought.
The issue is that the police should leave people who haven't committed any crime, who're not suspected of having committed any crime, and who are not suspected of planning to commit any crime in the future ALONE.
Suppose a police officer would get posted outside your house. He doesn't enter your private property or anything, but he stands there, and when you leave the house, he follows you; if you enter another piece of private property (one that he can't enter - your office, for example, or a friend's house, as opposed to a supermarket or a pub), he waits outside again until you come back out. He's always with you, listening to everything you say in public, compiling a file on you that gets shared with the FBI later on. Heck, for added fun, suppose he's also recording every public conversation of yours and videotaping your actions in public.
Are you OK with that?
Clearly, the same reasoning you use could be applied here: you're in public, so everything you do and say is - well - public. And if you ask the police officer why he's doing this, he will tell you that it's in the interest of "security", of course - national security, most likely. And he's sorry, but he cannot give any details, but since he's not intruding on your *private* life, there's no issue there, right?
Now suppose the same thing's happening, but he's not identifying as a police officer or letting you know he's recording your conversations etc. or compiling a file on you; in fact, you don't even notice that he's there. He's always following you, but you don't even know until you find out years later by pure coincidence. Are you still OK with that?
The problem here is that the police simply has no business interfering with the lives of people who aren't suspected of doing anything wrong. And that's DOUBLY TRUE when we're talking about protesting and political dissent, since that's arguably one of the fundamental pillars upon which democracy rests; harassing (and I intentionally say "harassing"!) innocent people simply because they intend to attend a political demonstration creates a chilling effect and is at completely odds with democracy.
THAT is what the issue is.
Translation:
MS: We don't suck! Open soure sucks!
As long as this kind of statement is coming from Microsoft drones and spokesrobots instead of independent third parties, it's not interesting; not necessarily because it's automatically a priori untrue, but because they'd make the same statement no matter whether it is or not.
Same here. I declared a long time ago that death does not apply to me, and I fully expect the universe to honour this - if it doesn't, it'll find itself in court faster than it can say "natural law".
I don't think that's a valid argument: you're assuming that the effects scale linearly with the amount of time "stolen", and that's not true. In other words, if f is an evaluation function that maps the "objective" severity of the crime (e.g., the amount of time or money stolen) to the "subjective" severity (i.e., the effect it has on the victim), then you're basically assuming that f(a) + f(b) = f(a+b) (that f is a homomorphism), but there is no a priori reason why it would be.
In fact, I think the fact that sending enough spam to 10 million people so that each of them has to spend 5 minutes dealing with it costs the victims more time overall than a murder of a single person would clearly shows that it this NOT the case.
How many of these actually mattered (i.e., how many had a realistic chance of getting elected)?
Hear, hear!
I think you shouldn't be quite so dismissive, although you do have a point insofar as that we're only at the beginning and that it still can get much, MUCH worse. Still, if anything, that's just another reason to pick up the proverbial fight now *before* it's too late.
Damn. I just read something about "High Performance DDR2", and immediately thought of Dance Dance Revolution - imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be about memory instead.
I'm always amazed that it's even possible to prosecute children in the USA at all. In Germany, for example, the age at which you start to have a limited legal liability for your actions is 14; if you're 13 or younger, you can't be prosecuted for anything you do, period. (Of course, your *parents* might, and you might end up in foster care or so, too, but you can't get put on trial or sent to prison or so yourself.) I'm not sure about other nations, but I imagine that it's similar elsewhere, too.
(And it makes sense, too: when someone isn't old enough to vote, drive a car, drink a beer, smoke a cigarette or have sex with their girl-/boyfriend, why should they be old enough to be put on trial?)
Off-topic, but the guillotine isn't actually all that nasty: it provides a clean and quick death without any unnecessary, preventable suffering (before its invention, people's heads were cut off with swords, and that was quite literally a hack-fest at times). I can think of much nastier devices, myself, that make death much slower and more painful.
When liberty dies and the will of the people is ignored, it does matter to everyone, including nerds. I, for one, am glad that Slashdot is about more than just the latest shiny gadgets.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. [...] The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
When reproducing that quote, I often wonder whether it'd get me in trouble with the FBI or the SS if it hadn't actually been said by one of the founding fathers of the USA. (And actually, I sometimes do wonder whether I'll get in trouble with them some day for saying this *despite* the fact that it's a Jefferson quote.)
Even disbanding the security council wouldn't work, though - some things are voted on in the general assembly, after all, but we regularly see coercion tactics being used to secure votes there, too. Essentially, it's the carrot and the stick: "oh, sure, you can vote against the resolution we favour, but then we'd unfortunately have to stop development aid sent to your country and give it to your neighbours instead who *entirely be coincidence* happened to vote *for* our resolution..:"
I'm not sure what could be done about that. Sometimes, I think we need a world constitution, but a legal document that can't be enforced isn't worth the paper it's written on. It'd be like having a schoolyard where there's rules of conduct but no teacher to watch out that they're actually being followed; the bullies would still be free to, well, bully.
Given that, curiously enough, the security council may actually be a step in the right direction: it makes the bullies undue influence official, but because it creates an air of legitimacy, it also ensures that *some* rules have to be followed, at least. What's still needed, at the very least, is a council where every continent has at least one permanent representative with veto rights and everything; even better would be a situation where *every* nation has full permanent membership and veto rights, as that would make sure that everyone actually had to work together.
(What's also funny, BTW, is the similarity to nuclear weapons: while the thought of nations like Iran or North Korea having access to them really gives me the creeps, I can see why they'd want to have them; if you do, others at least have to take you serious instead of stomping all over you whenever they feel like it.)
(Also funny: it never really occurred to me, but the veto powers in the security council are pretty much precisely those nations who do have nuclear weapons, not counting nations like Israel (who always hid the fact that it has them) and India and Pakistan (who came later). Coincidence?)
That may be true from a legal perspective, but I find the notion that any referendum in a democracy can simply be ignored because it's only "advisory" to be completely at odds with the fundamental ideas of democracy.
THE PEOPLE are never just an advisory body in a RULE OF THE PEOPLE.
There are still times when refusing to vote is the right thing to do, though. To give a ridiculously overblown example (just to illustrate the basic point), assume that you're supposed to vote for the next Nobel peace prize winner: the two candidates are Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Who do you vote for?
No sane person would vote for either. Of course, this *is* a ridiculous example insofar as that a) the candidates are about as evil as you can get, b) the Nobel peace prize is diametrically opposed to everything they stand for, and c) the Nobel peace prize is purely a symbolic thing that does not actually afford them any additional political or economic power or whatever, but still, it shows that not voting is not *always* the wrong choice.
Now think about politics. What's actually different there? Depending on your opinion of the two major parties in the USA, you might say that while they aren't as bad as Hitler or Stalin, they still are bad enough for you not to be in favour of either, for example (which covers a) and b)), and while the winner of the election will be afforded political power and influence, you may still believe that *both* will abuse that power[1]. What do you do? That is, who do you vote for?
The real problem, I think, is that the statement "I don't vote" can really mean two very different things: it can mean "I didn't bother because I was too lazy" (I'll call this "passive non-voting"), and it can also mean "I didn't vote because I wanted to make a political statement" (I'll call that "active non-voting"). In reality, things are more complicated because there's a grey area between these extremes; people might say "I'm too lazy (passive) because I already know I'm not going to make a difference (active)", for example, but it's important to realise that you can't throw everything into one pot.
I think a good way of solving this particular problem would be to include a "none of the above" option on ballots; that way, active non-voters could check that, and we'd get a clearer picture of why people don't vote. But unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen: established political parties[1] benefit from the idea that non-voters are automatically just lazy, ignorant or uncaring. If it turned out that - for example - in a presidential election, 25% of all voters voted for candidate A, 25% voted for B and 50% voted for "neither is suitable for the job", this would be a pretty heavy blow for both parties; on the other hand, if it's just "50% voted for A, 50% voted for B, and the total voter turnout was 50%", the elections seem much more legitimate.
That's not to say that active non-voting is a good idea all the time (or even most of the time), especially when no "none of the above" option is present on ballots; despite all the flaws in the US-American political system, voters still seem to have some influence on some issues, at least. But there are also elections/votes which are entirely pointless, and I can't blame people for refusing to be part of that charade (which would lend an air of legitimacy and democracy to a political process that has long lost either).
It was a *default ruling* - Spamhaus didn't have anyone show up for the trial, so they lost by default, and I'm pretty sure the judge didn't have much choice in that regard.
I can certainly *understand* Spamhaus, of course; if somebody sued me in another country, I wouldn't fly there just to attend a trial, either, and I'd certainly ignore the verdict (why do they think they'd have jurisdiction over me, anyway?), but the rules are still the rules, and the judge just did what the rules said, so don't blame him.
While that's not a bad idea per se (although it'd probably be .kids rather than .fam), I'm a bit surprised that all the board members you're suggesting are non-orthodox christian churches with a presence in the USA. The obvious questions are, from least to most important: why not churches from other countries (like, say, the state church of Norway, or the Greek orthodox church, or even the Ethiopian orthodox church or whatever)? Why no other organised religions - judaism, islam, buddism, hinduism, shintoism, sikhism, and whatever else you can think of)? Why no *non-organised* religions, like neopaganism, wicca, and so on? And, most important, why should *religious organisations* be allowed to decide what's safe or unsafe for kids, anyway?
Another thing I don't understand is what you mean when you say "before any site is accepted". Do you mean that I'd have to design my entire site before applying for a domain? Do you also mean that once it's up, I could never change any part of it, at least not until I submit the site for a rescan to see that it's still "safe"? (For that matter, why is "links only to .fam domains" a sufficient criterion for determining "safety", anyway?) What about database-driven sites? What you're essentially proposing is a huge bureaucracy that's slow, inefficient and costly, and that - most importantly - wouldn't even work out (people do make mistakes, after all, and things *would* slip through).
The proposal to change email is also laughable at best. Even if you think that requiring an SSN to get an email account would be a good idea, how do you handle people from outside the USA (95% of the world's population, last I counted) that don't even *have* an SSN? For that matter, how do you handle people that ARE from the USA and don't have an SSN?
You also don't seem to be able to grasp the sheer volume of email that goes around the globe each day - and I'm talking about ham here, not spam. Do you seriously think that there enough "LDS missionaries" to read everything? And for that matter, again, why would you trust them? If I (just assume I'm below 18 for the sake of the argument) send an email that says "the LDS sucks", does it get blocked? If yes, what can I do about it? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
No. You would've created an entirely new system that superficially resembles the Internet because it uses similar terms ("domain", "email" etc.) but that, in reality, is pretty much the polar opposite of the Internet.
Smarter people like you? Your ideas are not just ridiculous, US-centric, based on religious convictions and ignoring any religion that isn't christian, they're also unworkable, and any smart person would see why right away.
So unless your entire post was very clever sarcasm/satire, you're not smart, to put it bluntly, and that's actually a good thing, too. If it WAS sarcasm, then I bow before you: you're a true master.
Not necessarily - .eu and .info were also only launched relatively recently, and the introduction seems to have worked quite well in both cases.
That might have been true 230 years ago, but if you seriously believe that handguns and rifles can be used to stop a modern army, you're naive at best. Not to mention that in order to defend your freedom, you also have to be able to *use* them; at the very least, there has to be a critical mass that leads to a large-scale uprising. If there isn't, you're not a defender of your freedom, you're just a random murderer who gets life without parole.
That's not to say that the original idea behind the second amendment wasn't a good one, but do keep in mind that Jefferson not only talked about the blood of tyrants, he also said "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion".
You've gone 230 years without one. Let's face it - the only purpose the second amendment still serves is to fool gullible people into thinking that they have some sort of control left over their destiny, their freedom, and their country. (Incidentally, this also explains why right-wingers are so much in favour of it: as long as people have the illusion of being in control, it's much easier to actually take away control from them.)
If you really care about things like the "patriot" act (i.e., if you want to make sure that there's not going to be another, at least), pretty much the only choice you have when it comes to choosing who to vote for is Russ Feingold.
That being said, saying "both parties are evil, it doesn't matter who I vote for" is irresponsible. It's true that neither party comes close to caring about the citizens and trying to uphold and protect the constitution (not just the letter, but also the spirit), but even Plato already said that if you have to choose between two evils, you should choose the lesser one. Right now, I think it's pretty clear which one that is.
It's just the opposite for me: it always amuses (and saddens) me to see middle-aged homeowners with a spouse and kids use their family as an excuse for why they can't do anything:
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'd really like to stand up against this kind of fascism, but I can't, you see, I've got a wife and kids, I've got to take care of them, but I'm no coward, no Sir, I just need to take care of my family, I'm sure you'll understand, I can't just abandon them, where would America(tm) end up when everyone just abandonded their families in times of need, I can't become a martyr, let one of those youngin's do that, they've got no family anyway, their life is worth less than mine, I don't care what becomes of them, but I'm no coward, no Sir, not me, I just need to protect my family, my children... just think of the children! The children!"