So, striking down laws as unconstitutional _is_ strict interpretation.
This is only a true statement if the strikedown interpretation is based strictly on the content of the Constitution. Laws that are deemed constitutional when subjected to a strict interpretation would require a "generous", or "lenient" interpretation, in order to be struck down.
For example, a law that was explicitly mandated by the Constitution could not be struck down, by strict interpretation, as unconstitutional.
X-Prize contestants, the Mercury/Redstone system, the Saturn V, and the Space Shuttle all operate within the same general problem space.
Fish and bicycles... don't.
It's not like fish are to bicycles as the Apollo Project is to the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
Especially given the X-Prize sponsor's stated intention to make the X-Prize a recurring competition, with several win categories, and annual financial and social encouragement to extend and better previous achievements by previous contestants.
That, in itself, put X-Prize contestants over time a lot closer to orbital missions than fish will ever get to bicycles.
Sure, suborbital lobs are the most trivial task in spaceflight, so it's hardly surprising that the very first spaceflight attempt ever made by a private entity would be a suborbital lob. That doesn't mean they're the only thing X-Prize contestants will ever do, or the only thing future designs will be capable of.
Some people see the X-Prize as the beginning of a new and exciting era in space travel. You see it as a pointless dead end, bereft of all value before it's even accomplished. Is it all the rain we've been having lately, or is your world always this bleak?
Actually, I couldn't care less about Ayn Rand. My parents both read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was about six or seven, but they both said it was boring. That was the closest I ever came to Ayn Rand, except maybe for hanging out on Forum 2000 for a year or so, laughing at all the Objectivist jokes. But that got stale after a while, and I moved on to other amusements...
You can call my reasoning "Randian" all you like. You could even be right, I don't know. If you are right, though, please understand it's through no fault of my own.
Anyway, speaking of reasoning, let me see if I understand your argument.
1. Yes, it's unfair to tax the rich extra. 2. But it's only a little bit unfair, so it's okay. 3. Plus, we need that extra money from the rich to pay for all sorts of things we need, or else society falls apart. 4. So really, far from being cranky, the rich should be happy, because their taxes pay for the continuation of the society that benefits them so.
I happen to think that this is a pretty good argument, actually.
But it does seem to have some flaws.
The big one is this underlying idea that a little unfairness is necessary, in order to create the society we want. Your argument seems to hinge on the premise that we need this extra tax on the rich to pay for the social goods and services we need. Here's an idea: how about we tax everybody the same, see how much government that buys us, and then go with that? Why keep insisting that the road to a Better Tomorrow must be paved with a little injustice here and there? That doesn't sound right, does it?
Lampooning unfairly-taxed rich people as spoiled asshats who cry when they don't get their full-sized yacht sure sounds fun, but you know what? Whenever I listen to NPR, I discover that major corporations, powerful legal firms, and captains of industry are the major contributors. They may have more money, but it sure seems like the rich already do a lot with that money. Sure, they get tax breaks for charitable donations, but so do the rest of us. When was the last time you wrote off a charitable contribution proportionally equivalent to Bill Gates's charity donations for the same year?
I'm not really upset about the rich paying a higher tax rate. I freely grant the obvious point that the rich can afford it.
No, what bugs me is your own attitude. The rich are paying unfairly, by your own admission, for government services that benefit you. You enjoy a quality of life that you do not pay your fair share for. Your lifestyle is subsidized in part by a compulsory donation from people who have done nothing to deserve such treatment. You're a kept bitch of the wealthy, and they don't even have the option of ending the arrangement. How's that for dystopia?
Ugh. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. But you seem to think that this arrangement is right and good, and that a healthy society can be built on such principles.
Why cut the taxes of the people who make less money? Don't they also receive goods and services from the government?
In fact, aren't the "poor" more likely than the "rich" to receive government support of one kind or another?
Sounds to me like the people who make less money should pay more taxes.
Also, please explain the part where the "rich" should pay more than anybody else again. It still doesn't make sense.
I mean, it's a safe bet that you make quite a bit of money, compared to most people in the U.S. You certainly make more money than some people in the U.S., right?
So where's all your discretionary income going? When was the last time you paid all that extra money you make, but don't really deserve to keep, to the government. Think of all those extra dollars, that you spend on car insurance, or Playstations, or whatever it is. There's poor people in this country, waiting for the government to take away all the money you don't deserve, so they can give it to the people who do deserve it: people poorer than you.
I think your argument that the rich don't deserve their extra money is really neat. Now put your money where your mouth is: Tax yourself into the lowest bracket, give up the luxuries you've become accustomed to, and carry on in abject poverty, collecting whatever meager welfare the government carves for you out of all your undeserved wealth. Then come back and talk to us about how the rich don't deserve their money.
My wife loves me very much. I would go so far as to say that there is little I could do--perhaps nothing at all--that she would not forgive me for, if I apologized sincerely.
But I also love my wife, just as much as she loves me. Considering the great devotion I have for her, and the great love I bear her, why would I even want to think about sinning against her?
How true are you to your articles of faith?
Do you profess Christianity simply to avoid the firey pits, or whatever? Do you induldge each and every whim and passion, thinking that all you have to do is apologize, and all will be well between you and your God? Or do you exert yourself to avoid wrongdoing, out of love and devotion to the God you worship?
Is this all your God inspires in you? Fruitless self-indulgence and an exploitation of his love? Hardly a compelling argument in favor of Christianity.
Let me get this straight... somebody uncovers a mass grave with, say, 30,000 bodies in it, and the best you can say is, "well, 42,000 people died in auto accidents in America last year, so what's the big deal?"
Must have been one of those 20,000-car pileups Iraq was known for (10% carpool participation--yet another reason we should have left Saddam in power!). When the traffic gets that bad, you really have no choice but to just throw all the victims in a big ditch by the side of the road, and clear that Interstate for traffic again as quickly as possible, you know.
Please explain to me how you arrived at the conclusion, in the face of all civilized custom and the record of history, that "auto accidents" and "mass murders" are equivalent in any meaningful way, or that the should be judged equally by any sane society.
Yeah, right - just like in the Arafat story, his mouthpiece said "we do not involve ourselves in internal American politics". These flimsy smokescreens fool only those who quote these politicians, whose lives are defined by the American presidency, in perpetuation of the cynical strategies that serve them at the expense of the American people.
So Iran didn't really endorse Bush?
I mean, if the half-assed disclaimer was a flimsy smokescreen to hide their true intentions, why wouldn't the half-assed endorsement be a similarly cynical ploy to hide... whatever it is they're really up to?
And what are they really up to, anyway? You've pierced the veil; can you tell us the Iranian government's true position on the subject? Any compelling arguments about why we should believe them when they say A, but disbelieve them when they say !A? Or does it all boil down to "A discredits my enemies, so I'm going with A"?
Please. Wake me up when Mumia writes "The Gulag Archipelago", and we'll talk about Stalin.
And while you have your appointment book open, better put me down for a wake-up call when one of the Guantanamo inmates produces his own "Book of Alfred Kantor". We can have a nice chat about Hitler, too.
(a) If I take a picture of some random bit of scenery, and you happen to be in it, tough. But if it's the police, now that's bad somehow? Why?
I think this is actually covered under the judge/warrant system I described. It's not just "somehow" bad. Rather, the explicit "how" of each instance is presented by the police to a judge, who answers your questions yea or nay on a case-by-case basis. That is, every instance isn't automatically bad, which appears to be your concern.
b) if I take a picture of some random person in some random scenery, and it turns out that said person is actually an undercover police officer, is it better to blow the cover with an action like this? Or is it better to pretend like that picture is still of some random person in some random scenery?
Good point. I suspect that most of the time, just pretending there's nothing out of the ordinary going on is the clever agent's best bet. What exactly prompted the decision to purge these particular photos from the public record is probably something that will only ever be known to the Swiss police, the judge, and possibly the Swiss citizenry (depending on the quality of their government and the sensitivity of the Police info in question).
Assuming the Behaviorist view is accurate, it raises an interesting question: What stimuli have driven marketers into their "chosen" profession?
Another interesting question: Assuming that our present social institutions are the result of naturally-occuring stimuli, what are we complaining about? I mean, obviously our complaints are in response to stimuli, rather than the result of freely-operating reason, but doesn't that mean our complaints have no real value as ideas? And doesn't it mean that our current social institutions--including marketing, terrorism, trade monopolies, et al--aren't "bad"? After all, they'd just be natural responses to natural stimuli, right? It's just what we do, under the circumstances. How could we do any different?
I figure that the value of cheap, rapid round trips between system objects such as the inner planets, the outer planets, and the asteroid belt will more than pay for the cost of getting the startup capital into earth orbit. Once you can get around up there quickly and cheaply, there's no more pressing need for Earth-to-orbit solutions. Just mine the asteroid belt, for example, to build new units, and deploy them directly from there. Once the project "gets off the ground", you can pretty much ignore Earth completely as major resource contribution facility.
Short term, the value of deploying such a system would more than offset the cost of deploying it from Earth.
Long-term, a self-sustaining network of space-based ecological and economic systems would make planetside operations a luxury, not a necesssity.
Mid-term, the kinds of things we'd need from earth (well-trained technicians, specialty components, etc.) would be of sufficently high value to be worth the cost of getting them up there.
Even more mony waisted on [the] US military. Do you feel safer now?
Yes, I do. Meanwhile, how much money was "waisted" on your education, and can I get my share of it back?
Also, given your tenuous grasp of the written language, why should I have any confidence at all in your claim that the money is "waisted"? Can I trust you to know what the hell you're talking about?
I think not.
But hey, you've posted on Slashdot. Do you feel smarter now?
Occam's razor. The current explanation--international treaty, routine law enforcement activities--is adequate to describe what happened. Imagining some conspiracy may make the story more interesting, but it doesn't make it any more true. And since the conspiracy theory involves more moving parts and less facts and evidence to support it as a plausible narrative, the conspiracy theory has less chance of being correct than the current explanation.
No, I don't want anarchy. I want the government to be held responsible for its crimes against the people.
Look, we all want responsible, accountable government. One way we do that is with democracy: we can hold our governors accountable by not voting for them again. We can also impose responsibility through a system of checks and balances, and as much openness as possible. Given that government is made up of people, and most people are not wholly good, and some people are somewhat or quite evil, and even good people make mistakes; this system of democratic elections, checks and balances, and lots of openness works about as well as any system can possibly work.
The only other alternative is anarchy, and even you don't want that.
And let's not forget one of the primary purposes of government--the reason why we prefer it over Anarchy, even: To hold people accountable for their crimes against other people. So either come out for Anarchy already or drop the paranoid schizophrenic routine.
So far as your evaluation of the Patriot Act is correct, I freely grant your point.
But how is it relevant?
My point was about how the process of getting a warrant works, and how it avoids tipping off the suspect before the evidence can be gathered. I also hinted why secret warrants are sometimes desireable, even in a free and open society. I would have done more than hint, but I assumed that most reasonable people would see the obvious, so I didn't get into it.
You, however, rather than getting into that, saw this as an opportunity to kick off a tangential "he said, she said" argument about the alleged perfidy of the Patriot Act.
And again, the idea that these warrants were a Patriot Act thing is pure speculation. And given the international nature of the raid, I highly doubt that the Patriot Act had much--if anything--to do with the actual process of reviewing the request and approving the warrant.
Please, tell me how the FBI got a PA warrant from a U.S. Judge, and then the British, Swiss, and whatever other authorities involved just said, "well it's a Patriot Act thing; we'll just toss out our own due process and go along with the Americans".
"Undercover" does not always mean "without responsibility". It does, however, usually mean that the citizenry must exercise some responsibility of its own, in how it appoints and supervises the people who oversee undercover work.
Again, undercover investigations have been a staple of law enforcement for thousands of years, quite often in states that have made little or no progress towards fascism.
You should read the accounts written by people who lived in real police states. Trust me: if you lived in a police state, you'd know it. One way you'd know it is that you'd not have access to Slashdot, and even if you did, you'd be too terrified of undercover agents to actually speak out about what you know--or, in this case, think you know.
There are people in the world who traffic in human children as sex toys.
These people would kill or avoid any uniformed police officer they saw coming their way.
You claim that the true evil in this scenario would be for the government to investigate such a child sex-slavery ring in secret, so as to collect the evidence necessary to put a stop to it.
Are you insane?
No, seriously: What medication is in your medicine cabinet right now, and have you taken today's dose yet?
Like, say, the job of wearing a wiretap to a drug deal?
that carries a high risk of blowing their cover,
Yep, wearing a wire to a drug deal really does put the cover at risk of being blown.
they should have given that job to uniformed officers
Which would be an improvement over undercover narcotics officers in this scenario how?
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "yeah, but this wasn't that scenario--these guys should have done it my way!"
Except that you have no idea what the actual scenario was. In fact, the only people who know for sure why the drives were seized are the police agencies that requested the warrant and the judge who approved it.
Given that judges do approve warrants based on secret arguments presented by law enforcement officials on a regular basis, and given that such things actually are necessary from time to time, we're still no closer to understanding the true nature of this particular event. Even Indymedia is just speculating. But then, when is it ever not?
I think the way it works is, the police go to a judge. They show the judge documentation of the undercover mission, including various kinds of proof that the images do in fact show undercover policemen at work. The judge reviews the evidence presented, and approves or denies the warrant according to his own judgement.
The theory being that undercover police work is necessary for a secure society, and that it can't be done if the information about undercover missions is available to the public. Therefore, a sensible citizenry will devise some system by which a trustworthy, individual is appointed to a position of responsibility, where he reviews such warrant requests in private, and makes a judgement on behalf of his fellow citizens, without opening the information to disastrous public review.
Note that judges have been doing this sort of thing for hundreds of years, quite often in countries that have made little or no significant progress towards fascism in that time. So there's probably not much causality between closed deliberations of government and fascism.
What about the millions of fence sitters? The people who are a little motivated by current events; a little motivated by their family; a little motivated by friends. What about when they see hte commercial and this motivates them a little more? Is that a bad thing?
Are you kidding me with this? Some voter is torn over the important issues of the day, and it's a cartoon character's urging that finally gets them out to the polls? What kind of person put off taking action until Bloodrayne confirms that it's a good idea? Please explain to me how this is the kind of good judgement that will build a better tomorrow, or why on earth we'd want such a person expressing their opinions about anything.
"Yeah, I know that voting is, like, important and all, but I just didn't feel like, you know, doing anything about it. But, like, then I was watching MTV, and I saw Mario say that voting was cool, or whatever, and now I'm totally gonna vote. Rock!"
Don't make me laugh. If the only thing standing between these people and the voting booth is videogame character endorsements on MTV, then don't do us any favors, Mario.
More surface area means more mass, which means a beefier joint on the axle, which means yet more mass, which means an even beefier joint.
After a certain point, the returns start diminishing. Each extra dollar spent gets you less benefit than the one before it. After a while, you get less performance with more surace area.
Or you use new materials, if they exist.
Air travel stagnated for a very long time, because the alloys available to make airplane engines were too heavy. An engine block powerful enough to generate the thrust necessary to move a large plane full of passengers and cargo was too heavy to lift its own mass into the air, let alone the airframe, the people, and their luggage. It wasn't until the development of stronger, lighter alloys that air flight moved beyond the wood-and-canvas ultralights of the early 1900s.
If it was simply a matter of adding more surface area, we'd be powering the entire world off of one 3-mile diameter fan in Death Valley, that generated 17 billion kilowatts (or whatever) off of the breeze generated by a butterfly in Japan.
The U.S. didn't ratify Kyoto, therefore hurricanes?
What if the U.S. had signed, but Russia hadn't? Would the hurricanes be Russia's fault?
Your mastery of simple addition is impressive, but I don't think you have any understanding of how the weather works.
Nice burn on SUVs, though! So at least your post wasn't a total failure.
Re:New addition to the Patriot Act?
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Nuclear Batteries
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Your point that SF writers sometimes come up with useful ideas is well taken. I agree.
This is totally irrelevant to my point, howver. My point being that the problems attendant upon developing nuclear batteries (or space probes, or lingerie) are not going to be correctly identified or solved by an amateur posting on Slashdot.
People who know enough about the subject to contribute meaningfully to such a discussion are either industry experts, or successful entrepeneurs, or both.
And look, you're doing it, too! I commend you on your skill at oversimplifying the problem of nuclear waste material, but I doubt it's a problem so simple that it could be summarized along with all it's tradeoffs, conflicting goals, irrational fears, complicated physical and economic problems, and nearly sixty years of advancement in the state of the art and the vicissitudes of world affairs.
Not to mention such considerations as the allegation that "dirty" bombs are overrated as a threat; or that if it weren't for a constant parade of NIMBY asshats, all this at-risk waste material might by now be safely stored somewhere secure and out of reach.
By all means, let us discuss nuclear waste recycling policy. But such a discussion is a far cry from "I haven't read the article, but I'm pretty sure it can't work, no matter what the experts actually studying the problem say (not that I'd know what the experts say, since I haven't read the article).
Slashdot Mirror
This is only a true statement if the strikedown interpretation is based strictly on the content of the Constitution. Laws that are deemed constitutional when subjected to a strict interpretation would require a "generous", or "lenient" interpretation, in order to be struck down.
For example, a law that was explicitly mandated by the Constitution could not be struck down, by strict interpretation, as unconstitutional.
Valid points, all.
As is mine, I think. Let me rephrase it:
X-Prize contestants, the Mercury/Redstone system, the Saturn V, and the Space Shuttle all operate within the same general problem space.
Fish and bicycles... don't.
It's not like fish are to bicycles as the Apollo Project is to the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
Especially given the X-Prize sponsor's stated intention to make the X-Prize a recurring competition, with several win categories, and annual financial and social encouragement to extend and better previous achievements by previous contestants.
That, in itself, put X-Prize contestants over time a lot closer to orbital missions than fish will ever get to bicycles.
Sure, suborbital lobs are the most trivial task in spaceflight, so it's hardly surprising that the very first spaceflight attempt ever made by a private entity would be a suborbital lob. That doesn't mean they're the only thing X-Prize contestants will ever do, or the only thing future designs will be capable of.
Some people see the X-Prize as the beginning of a new and exciting era in space travel. You see it as a pointless dead end, bereft of all value before it's even accomplished. Is it all the rain we've been having lately, or is your world always this bleak?
So researching and developing fish is a necessary and productive precursor to a robust and useful bicycle?
Who knew?!
Actually, I couldn't care less about Ayn Rand. My parents both read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was about six or seven, but they both said it was boring. That was the closest I ever came to Ayn Rand, except maybe for hanging out on Forum 2000 for a year or so, laughing at all the Objectivist jokes. But that got stale after a while, and I moved on to other amusements...
You can call my reasoning "Randian" all you like. You could even be right, I don't know. If you are right, though, please understand it's through no fault of my own.
Anyway, speaking of reasoning, let me see if I understand your argument.
1. Yes, it's unfair to tax the rich extra.
2. But it's only a little bit unfair, so it's okay.
3. Plus, we need that extra money from the rich to pay for all sorts of things we need, or else society falls apart.
4. So really, far from being cranky, the rich should be happy, because their taxes pay for the continuation of the society that benefits them so.
I happen to think that this is a pretty good argument, actually.
But it does seem to have some flaws.
The big one is this underlying idea that a little unfairness is necessary, in order to create the society we want. Your argument seems to hinge on the premise that we need this extra tax on the rich to pay for the social goods and services we need. Here's an idea: how about we tax everybody the same, see how much government that buys us, and then go with that? Why keep insisting that the road to a Better Tomorrow must be paved with a little injustice here and there? That doesn't sound right, does it?
Lampooning unfairly-taxed rich people as spoiled asshats who cry when they don't get their full-sized yacht sure sounds fun, but you know what? Whenever I listen to NPR, I discover that major corporations, powerful legal firms, and captains of industry are the major contributors. They may have more money, but it sure seems like the rich already do a lot with that money. Sure, they get tax breaks for charitable donations, but so do the rest of us. When was the last time you wrote off a charitable contribution proportionally equivalent to Bill Gates's charity donations for the same year?
I'm not really upset about the rich paying a higher tax rate. I freely grant the obvious point that the rich can afford it.
No, what bugs me is your own attitude. The rich are paying unfairly, by your own admission, for government services that benefit you. You enjoy a quality of life that you do not pay your fair share for. Your lifestyle is subsidized in part by a compulsory donation from people who have done nothing to deserve such treatment. You're a kept bitch of the wealthy, and they don't even have the option of ending the arrangement. How's that for dystopia?
Ugh. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. But you seem to think that this arrangement is right and good, and that a healthy society can be built on such principles.
Why cut the taxes of the people who make less money? Don't they also receive goods and services from the government?
In fact, aren't the "poor" more likely than the "rich" to receive government support of one kind or another?
Sounds to me like the people who make less money should pay more taxes.
Also, please explain the part where the "rich" should pay more than anybody else again. It still doesn't make sense.
I mean, it's a safe bet that you make quite a bit of money, compared to most people in the U.S. You certainly make more money than some people in the U.S., right?
So where's all your discretionary income going? When was the last time you paid all that extra money you make, but don't really deserve to keep, to the government. Think of all those extra dollars, that you spend on car insurance, or Playstations, or whatever it is. There's poor people in this country, waiting for the government to take away all the money you don't deserve, so they can give it to the people who do deserve it: people poorer than you.
I think your argument that the rich don't deserve their extra money is really neat. Now put your money where your mouth is: Tax yourself into the lowest bracket, give up the luxuries you've become accustomed to, and carry on in abject poverty, collecting whatever meager welfare the government carves for you out of all your undeserved wealth. Then come back and talk to us about how the rich don't deserve their money.
My wife loves me very much. I would go so far as to say that there is little I could do--perhaps nothing at all--that she would not forgive me for, if I apologized sincerely.
But I also love my wife, just as much as she loves me. Considering the great devotion I have for her, and the great love I bear her, why would I even want to think about sinning against her?
How true are you to your articles of faith?
Do you profess Christianity simply to avoid the firey pits, or whatever? Do you induldge each and every whim and passion, thinking that all you have to do is apologize, and all will be well between you and your God? Or do you exert yourself to avoid wrongdoing, out of love and devotion to the God you worship?
Is this all your God inspires in you? Fruitless self-indulgence and an exploitation of his love? Hardly a compelling argument in favor of Christianity.
Let me get this straight... somebody uncovers a mass grave with, say, 30,000 bodies in it, and the best you can say is, "well, 42,000 people died in auto accidents in America last year, so what's the big deal?"
Must have been one of those 20,000-car pileups Iraq was known for (10% carpool participation--yet another reason we should have left Saddam in power!). When the traffic gets that bad, you really have no choice but to just throw all the victims in a big ditch by the side of the road, and clear that Interstate for traffic again as quickly as possible, you know.
Please explain to me how you arrived at the conclusion, in the face of all civilized custom and the record of history, that "auto accidents" and "mass murders" are equivalent in any meaningful way, or that the should be judged equally by any sane society.
So Iran didn't really endorse Bush?
I mean, if the half-assed disclaimer was a flimsy smokescreen to hide their true intentions, why wouldn't the half-assed endorsement be a similarly cynical ploy to hide... whatever it is they're really up to?
And what are they really up to, anyway? You've pierced the veil; can you tell us the Iranian government's true position on the subject? Any compelling arguments about why we should believe them when they say A, but disbelieve them when they say !A? Or does it all boil down to "A discredits my enemies, so I'm going with A"?
You can't be serious...
Stalin?
Please. Wake me up when Mumia writes "The Gulag Archipelago", and we'll talk about Stalin.
And while you have your appointment book open, better put me down for a wake-up call when one of the Guantanamo inmates produces his own "Book of Alfred Kantor". We can have a nice chat about Hitler, too.
(a) If I take a picture of some random bit of scenery, and you happen to be in it, tough. But if it's the police, now that's bad somehow? Why?
I think this is actually covered under the judge/warrant system I described. It's not just "somehow" bad. Rather, the explicit "how" of each instance is presented by the police to a judge, who answers your questions yea or nay on a case-by-case basis. That is, every instance isn't automatically bad, which appears to be your concern.
b) if I take a picture of some random person in some random scenery, and it turns out that said person is actually an undercover police officer, is it better to blow the cover with an action like this? Or is it better to pretend like that picture is still of some random person in some random scenery?
Good point. I suspect that most of the time, just pretending there's nothing out of the ordinary going on is the clever agent's best bet. What exactly prompted the decision to purge these particular photos from the public record is probably something that will only ever be known to the Swiss police, the judge, and possibly the Swiss citizenry (depending on the quality of their government and the sensitivity of the Police info in question).
Assuming the Behaviorist view is accurate, it raises an interesting question: What stimuli have driven marketers into their "chosen" profession?
Another interesting question: Assuming that our present social institutions are the result of naturally-occuring stimuli, what are we complaining about? I mean, obviously our complaints are in response to stimuli, rather than the result of freely-operating reason, but doesn't that mean our complaints have no real value as ideas? And doesn't it mean that our current social institutions--including marketing, terrorism, trade monopolies, et al--aren't "bad"? After all, they'd just be natural responses to natural stimuli, right? It's just what we do, under the circumstances. How could we do any different?
I figure that the value of cheap, rapid round trips between system objects such as the inner planets, the outer planets, and the asteroid belt will more than pay for the cost of getting the startup capital into earth orbit. Once you can get around up there quickly and cheaply, there's no more pressing need for Earth-to-orbit solutions. Just mine the asteroid belt, for example, to build new units, and deploy them directly from there. Once the project "gets off the ground", you can pretty much ignore Earth completely as major resource contribution facility.
Short term, the value of deploying such a system would more than offset the cost of deploying it from Earth.
Long-term, a self-sustaining network of space-based ecological and economic systems would make planetside operations a luxury, not a necesssity.
Mid-term, the kinds of things we'd need from earth (well-trained technicians, specialty components, etc.) would be of sufficently high value to be worth the cost of getting them up there.
Or something. Yeah.
Hey, if Billy Idol can spell it "mony", that's good enough for me!
Yes, I do. Meanwhile, how much money was "waisted" on your education, and can I get my share of it back?
Also, given your tenuous grasp of the written language, why should I have any confidence at all in your claim that the money is "waisted"? Can I trust you to know what the hell you're talking about?
I think not.
But hey, you've posted on Slashdot. Do you feel smarter now?
Occam's razor. The current explanation--international treaty, routine law enforcement activities--is adequate to describe what happened. Imagining some conspiracy may make the story more interesting, but it doesn't make it any more true. And since the conspiracy theory involves more moving parts and less facts and evidence to support it as a plausible narrative, the conspiracy theory has less chance of being correct than the current explanation.
Look, we all want responsible, accountable government. One way we do that is with democracy: we can hold our governors accountable by not voting for them again. We can also impose responsibility through a system of checks and balances, and as much openness as possible. Given that government is made up of people, and most people are not wholly good, and some people are somewhat or quite evil, and even good people make mistakes; this system of democratic elections, checks and balances, and lots of openness works about as well as any system can possibly work.
The only other alternative is anarchy, and even you don't want that.
And let's not forget one of the primary purposes of government--the reason why we prefer it over Anarchy, even: To hold people accountable for their crimes against other people. So either come out for Anarchy already or drop the paranoid schizophrenic routine.
So far as your evaluation of the Patriot Act is correct, I freely grant your point.
But how is it relevant?
My point was about how the process of getting a warrant works, and how it avoids tipping off the suspect before the evidence can be gathered. I also hinted why secret warrants are sometimes desireable, even in a free and open society. I would have done more than hint, but I assumed that most reasonable people would see the obvious, so I didn't get into it.
You, however, rather than getting into that, saw this as an opportunity to kick off a tangential "he said, she said" argument about the alleged perfidy of the Patriot Act.
And again, the idea that these warrants were a Patriot Act thing is pure speculation. And given the international nature of the raid, I highly doubt that the Patriot Act had much--if anything--to do with the actual process of reviewing the request and approving the warrant.
Please, tell me how the FBI got a PA warrant from a U.S. Judge, and then the British, Swiss, and whatever other authorities involved just said, "well it's a Patriot Act thing; we'll just toss out our own due process and go along with the Americans".
"Undercover" does not always mean "without responsibility". It does, however, usually mean that the citizenry must exercise some responsibility of its own, in how it appoints and supervises the people who oversee undercover work.
Again, undercover investigations have been a staple of law enforcement for thousands of years, quite often in states that have made little or no progress towards fascism.
You should read the accounts written by people who lived in real police states. Trust me: if you lived in a police state, you'd know it. One way you'd know it is that you'd not have access to Slashdot, and even if you did, you'd be too terrified of undercover agents to actually speak out about what you know--or, in this case, think you know.
There are people in the world who traffic in human children as sex toys.
These people would kill or avoid any uniformed police officer they saw coming their way.
You claim that the true evil in this scenario would be for the government to investigate such a child sex-slavery ring in secret, so as to collect the evidence necessary to put a stop to it.
Are you insane?
No, seriously: What medication is in your medicine cabinet right now, and have you taken today's dose yet?
Like, say, the job of wearing a wiretap to a drug deal?
that carries a high risk of blowing their cover,
Yep, wearing a wire to a drug deal really does put the cover at risk of being blown.
they should have given that job to uniformed officers
Which would be an improvement over undercover narcotics officers in this scenario how?
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "yeah, but this wasn't that scenario--these guys should have done it my way!"
Except that you have no idea what the actual scenario was. In fact, the only people who know for sure why the drives were seized are the police agencies that requested the warrant and the judge who approved it.
Given that judges do approve warrants based on secret arguments presented by law enforcement officials on a regular basis, and given that such things actually are necessary from time to time, we're still no closer to understanding the true nature of this particular event. Even Indymedia is just speculating. But then, when is it ever not?
I think the way it works is, the police go to a judge. They show the judge documentation of the undercover mission, including various kinds of proof that the images do in fact show undercover policemen at work. The judge reviews the evidence presented, and approves or denies the warrant according to his own judgement.
The theory being that undercover police work is necessary for a secure society, and that it can't be done if the information about undercover missions is available to the public. Therefore, a sensible citizenry will devise some system by which a trustworthy, individual is appointed to a position of responsibility, where he reviews such warrant requests in private, and makes a judgement on behalf of his fellow citizens, without opening the information to disastrous public review.
Note that judges have been doing this sort of thing for hundreds of years, quite often in countries that have made little or no significant progress towards fascism in that time. So there's probably not much causality between closed deliberations of government and fascism.
Are you kidding me with this? Some voter is torn over the important issues of the day, and it's a cartoon character's urging that finally gets them out to the polls? What kind of person put off taking action until Bloodrayne confirms that it's a good idea? Please explain to me how this is the kind of good judgement that will build a better tomorrow, or why on earth we'd want such a person expressing their opinions about anything.
"Yeah, I know that voting is, like, important and all, but I just didn't feel like, you know, doing anything about it. But, like, then I was watching MTV, and I saw Mario say that voting was cool, or whatever, and now I'm totally gonna vote. Rock!"
Don't make me laugh. If the only thing standing between these people and the voting booth is videogame character endorsements on MTV, then don't do us any favors, Mario.
More surface area means more mass, which means a beefier joint on the axle, which means yet more mass, which means an even beefier joint.
After a certain point, the returns start diminishing. Each extra dollar spent gets you less benefit than the one before it. After a while, you get less performance with more surace area.
Or you use new materials, if they exist.
Air travel stagnated for a very long time, because the alloys available to make airplane engines were too heavy. An engine block powerful enough to generate the thrust necessary to move a large plane full of passengers and cargo was too heavy to lift its own mass into the air, let alone the airframe, the people, and their luggage. It wasn't until the development of stronger, lighter alloys that air flight moved beyond the wood-and-canvas ultralights of the early 1900s.
If it was simply a matter of adding more surface area, we'd be powering the entire world off of one 3-mile diameter fan in Death Valley, that generated 17 billion kilowatts (or whatever) off of the breeze generated by a butterfly in Japan.
The U.S. didn't ratify Kyoto, therefore hurricanes?
What if the U.S. had signed, but Russia hadn't? Would the hurricanes be Russia's fault?
Your mastery of simple addition is impressive, but I don't think you have any understanding of how the weather works.
Nice burn on SUVs, though! So at least your post wasn't a total failure.
Your point that SF writers sometimes come up with useful ideas is well taken. I agree.
This is totally irrelevant to my point, howver. My point being that the problems attendant upon developing nuclear batteries (or space probes, or lingerie) are not going to be correctly identified or solved by an amateur posting on Slashdot.
People who know enough about the subject to contribute meaningfully to such a discussion are either industry experts, or successful entrepeneurs, or both.
And look, you're doing it, too! I commend you on your skill at oversimplifying the problem of nuclear waste material, but I doubt it's a problem so simple that it could be summarized along with all it's tradeoffs, conflicting goals, irrational fears, complicated physical and economic problems, and nearly sixty years of advancement in the state of the art and the vicissitudes of world affairs.
Not to mention such considerations as the allegation that "dirty" bombs are overrated as a threat; or that if it weren't for a constant parade of NIMBY asshats, all this at-risk waste material might by now be safely stored somewhere secure and out of reach.
By all means, let us discuss nuclear waste recycling policy. But such a discussion is a far cry from "I haven't read the article, but I'm pretty sure it can't work, no matter what the experts actually studying the problem say (not that I'd know what the experts say, since I haven't read the article).