There is just too much chance of 1 person being able to cause harm to a large number of other people.
You don't need an airliner to kill a couple of hundred people. A truck filled with ammonium nitrate does just fine. You can get close with a bunch of explosives guns on your person, as is demonstrated in Israel on a regular basis.
And before you jump in with the "almost 3000" figure from 9/11, that was a one-time event. Airline passengers are never going to sit still for a hijacking again. The largest possible loss of life is still the passengers plus whoever the airplane accidentally lands on when it crashes.
Two months ago, leaving from Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International. I got to the metal detector, and the guy told me, "Sir, we recommend that you remove your shoes."
I said, "It's not required, is it?"
"No, but we will have to search you if you don't."
What kind of BS is that? I went through with my shoes on. The detector didn't go off. They made me step aside and get wanded all over. As if I would have been able to hide a bomb under my armpits because I avoided putting my shoes through the x-ray machine.
Oddly, I just went through that airport again two days ago, and nothing like that happened. I kept my shoes on and they kept their hands to themselves.
Government tyrrany has killed far, far more people than criminals or terrorists ever have. Tens of millions of people in Germany, the USSR, China, and many other places. Tell me, then, why exactly should I be more worried about terrorism and crime than about overpowerful government?
You will also notice that there hasn't been a successful airplane hijacking (at least in the US... I don't recall any outside, but I'm not certain) since that day. When somebody does try something funny in a plane, he's promptly taken down and tied up by his fellow passengers. The equation has changed, and hijacking will no longer be a successful tactic unless the passengers can be overwhelmed by the hijackers, which will need a lot more hijackers per plane and probably heavier weapons. It won't be tried again by any "serious" terrorists, in any case.
These facts make modern security precautions even more ridiculous. Box cutters are harmless, because anybody who tried to use one would be tackled and tied to his chair. Confiscating children's scissors is pure idiocy.
Don't side with this guy. Virus writers deserve whatever they get, and usually a lot more. Mitnick's damages were fictional, but damages from viruses are all real. He should probably be liable for a lot more, but he'll never have a hope of ever paying off all of the damage he inflicted.
I believe it's a good enough reason. Bush has been really, really bad. It would take a great deal of struggle for Kerry to be as bad as Bush has been. For me, given the choice of a known evil or an unknown, I will take the risk with the unknown.
The other choices are eliminated mostly because they won't help the goal, which is to get Bush out. I have weighed all of the choices, and I see this choice as being the least bad.
In any case, which third party would you propose that I vote for? Nader's a total whack-job. I don't agree with him about much of anything. Libertarians are more my style, but they're about a million times too extreme. No, even with the third parties included, it's still a choice between the least of evils, and in that contest in 2004, John Kerry unfortunately wins.
Why I'm voting for Kerry: his administration didn't get us into an insane war in the middle east, his administration didn't write the PATRIOT act, and his administration wasn't instrumental in creating the largest federal budget deficit ever seen.
Those reasons really suck, and I'd love to vote for somebody I could actually like voting for, but there's just too much at stake this time.
Why is any attempt at surveillance for the clear purpose of the protection of peoples' lives and safety always variously called a violation human rights (!) or an invasion of privacy, while there would inevitably be shrill cries of "not enough was done" if something did happen?
Newsflash: the people who complain that surveillance is an invasion of privacy are not the same people who will cry that "not enough was done" when something happens.
There are a lot of people in the world, and they all have different opinions. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time. Deal with it.
I just don't see it. Convicts and non-convicts are treated differently; that is fundamental. I can understand being against capital punishment, but why would you think that it's inconsistent?
I strongly disagree with your apparent assignation of blame. Driving the actual speed limit should never put you in danger through YOUR actions. It puts you in danger through the actions of the assholes who are driving too fast for their abilities.
Ok, picture this scenario. You're on a five-lane freeway in South Florida. Traffic is dense, nearly bumper-to-bumper, but moving very smoothly. Because it's Florida, everybody is going about 75. Well, except for one guy who has decided he should follow the speed limit and go exactly 64. Because driving in this situation requires fantastic amounts of attention and is pretty stressful, people don't always see him coming as they approach. Everybody in his lane has to either slow down, usually abruptly because they can't see him until they're almost on top of him, or merge to the side. Normally they're doing both. Eventually, somebody fails to check while merging, or hits the brakes too hard, and bam, you have a wreck.
That wreck would not have happened if that one guy would have been rational and gone as fast as everybody else. Now, you can also say, the wreck would not have happened if everybody else had followed the speed limit. However, that's ridiculous; why should everybody on the road have to adapt themselves to one person? The fact that it's illegal is irrelevant. Or, in fact, the law was an encouraging factor. Nobody ever goes the speed limit, so obviously the law is not effective in that area. No amount of wishing is going to change that fact. But the law is a contributing factor in accidents, by convincing various weak-minded (or would that be strong-minded?) people that they should be causing a traffic hazard because of the law.
I certainly don't blame the slow guy all the time, and I don't think speed limits are evil or anything. I just think that speed limits are placed artificially low in some situations, like freeways, and that in certain situations, following those artificially-low speed limits will make you a danger to everybody else on the road. As long as that is the case, drivers are justified in sometimes trying to dodge the blame for an accident just because they were speeding.
Many speed limits are set artificially low in order to generate ticket revenue. We've all been on roads where it is actually unsafe, even potentially lethal, to drive the actual speed limit. You will not be held at fault for an accident that you actually caused because you were driving ten miles an hour slower than everybody else. You will be held partially at fault for an accident that you did not cause, simply because you were trying to avoid being a traffic hazard by going as fast as everybody else.
If speed limits were set in accordance with how people actually drive, and they were used to promote safety rather than as a device to generate revenue, then people would probably be more sympathetic with your ideas. But as long as you're forced to break an artificially-low speed limit just to avoid putting your life and other people's lives in danger, then people will try to avoid responsibility for it.
And once they all mandate it, then what? You're forced to buy from them by the government, and they all force you to use these devices. In effect, the government is forcing you to use them, if that ever happens. They shouldn't get a free pass just because private companies act as an intermediary.
I don't follow. Using Orion technology, starting today, we could build a starship that would put living humans around Alpha Centauri in a bit over a century. We couldn't do that with chemical rockets at all with what we know, no matter how much money you spend on it.
Sorry, but that is incorrect. There is a design from the late 60s for an Orion starship that could get to Alpha Centauri in 130 years, for the whopping cost of $1 trillion. Thats much faster than a solar sail could ever hope to do.
...it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.
Orion can take us to the stars, and it can be done with today's technology, not something that's just starting to enter the very earliest test phases. But it's nuk-yu-ler, so it doesn't count.
Free as in beer does not mean free as in speech. An author who gives his work away for free does not give up his copyright to that work. I can distribute a program for free and explicitly deny permission to redistribute it, and it will be copyright infringement for anybody to redistribute it beyond what is allowed by fair use, even though it's available for free.
The part you don't accept is the "never revealed his presence", right? That's perfectly acceptable. If you legitimately believe that God has revealed His presence to you, then you can believe in Him all you like. However, He has not revealed Himself to me in any way, and I will not believe in Him until that changes in an obvious way.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not a militant athiest. I don't care if you believe in God or whatever. However, I do think that trying to show any phenomenon X as evidence of the existence of God is going about the entire business completely wrong. I've been exposed to a lot of religion. The common thread between all believers that I've known has been faith. Evidence is the exact opposite of faith. Trying to "prove" the existence of God is going about things backwards, as far as I can tell. As you can tell, I am not a man of faith. Somebody who tries to "prove" that God exists in order to make me believe in him is attempting something that does not make sense.
2) I'm very disheartened that someone could make this kind of trip,
An amazing trip, to be sure. A lot of evidence of people who believe in God. No evidence of God Himself.
especially a Jew,
This makes no sense. Just because some members of my family go to Shul every week and some relatives were killed by Hitler means I should be more susceptible to finding evidence of God? Why not say, "especially a white guy", or "especially a tall guy", or "especially somebody who wears glasses"?
and still not believe that God has revealed His presence in any way. Mind-boggling.
I find it equally mind-boggling that somebody can see evidence of God when His presence is not needed. The difference is that I know that I don't understand faith, and I'm willing to let people of faith believe whatever they want, as long as they don't try to convert me. You don't see me starting arguments about how God doesn't exist just because somebody brings up something vaguely linked to the subject.
Were you paying attention when they talked about the Six Day War? That alone ought to convert any skeptic.
I think you're confusing the Six Day War with the Yom Kippur War. The Six Day War was a preemptive attack by Israel which was a resounding success all around. The Yom Kippur War is where the Arab states attacked by surprise, and things were very touch-and-go for a while. But even so, God is not necessary to explain, only a belief in the resiliency of people, and an understanding of the greater situation at the time. It was amazing, but not supernatural, at least in my eyes.
Last time around, a change of only about 200 voters would have changed the outcome. (The difference in Florida, IIRC, was 400 votes, and half that number needs to change.) Out of a hundred million voters, that's 0.0002%, so you were (amazingly) overestimating the quantity needed.
Oil is out. Whether ten, fifty, a hundred, or five hundred years from today, it will run out. Signs are that it will be sooner rather than later. We can't depend on it forever, so we have to switch to something else eventually.
Batteries are out, you said so yourself; the energy density simply isn't there.
Other alternative energy sources simply don't scale down. You can't have a realistic solar-powered car, not even at noon in the Sahara. And a solar-powered car on a cloudy night is not going to work at all. Nuclear, geothermal, wind, etc. may all be viable energy options, but they will never be viable for cars.
The entire point of hydrogen is to divorce the type of energy generation from the use. If you can make a car that runs on hydrogen, then that car can be ultimately powered by solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, whatever you have on hand that can generate electricity. It may be less efficient, but I'd rather have a 10% efficient nuclear process powering my car than 20% efficient gasoline.
What a crazy attitude to have. There are other reasons you'd need that much anonymity.
First, your dismissal of people who live in China is incredibly inappropriate. Over a billion people live there, and you just dismissed them out of hand. And then there's the exile situation; what about somebody who's now living in the US who still can't speak out freely because of repercussions on friends/family back home? Do they simply not count?
There are plenty of other reasons, though, all the way from "VP in Fortune 500 company wants to expose toxic waste problems without risking being found out as the source" to "I'm such an incredibly paranoid person that I don't want to risk the wrath of the US government for posting these funny pictures of Bush" all the way to the classic standby, "because I want to".
I don't use Freenet, but I also don't simply assume that everybody who searches for perfect anonymity must be a reprehensible criminal.
Thank you for that explanation. This is the first time anybody has told me why anybody would want to buy Google stock, other than searching for the classic Greater Fool to sell it to later. Things make a lot more sense now.
Slashdot Mirror
There is just too much chance of 1 person being able to cause harm to a large number of other people.
You don't need an airliner to kill a couple of hundred people. A truck filled with ammonium nitrate does just fine. You can get close with a bunch of explosives guns on your person, as is demonstrated in Israel on a regular basis.
And before you jump in with the "almost 3000" figure from 9/11, that was a one-time event. Airline passengers are never going to sit still for a hijacking again. The largest possible loss of life is still the passengers plus whoever the airplane accidentally lands on when it crashes.
Two months ago, leaving from Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International. I got to the metal detector, and the guy told me, "Sir, we recommend that you remove your shoes."
I said, "It's not required, is it?"
"No, but we will have to search you if you don't."
What kind of BS is that? I went through with my shoes on. The detector didn't go off. They made me step aside and get wanded all over. As if I would have been able to hide a bomb under my armpits because I avoided putting my shoes through the x-ray machine.
Oddly, I just went through that airport again two days ago, and nothing like that happened. I kept my shoes on and they kept their hands to themselves.
Government tyrrany has killed far, far more people than criminals or terrorists ever have. Tens of millions of people in Germany, the USSR, China, and many other places. Tell me, then, why exactly should I be more worried about terrorism and crime than about overpowerful government?
You will also notice that there hasn't been a successful airplane hijacking (at least in the US... I don't recall any outside, but I'm not certain) since that day. When somebody does try something funny in a plane, he's promptly taken down and tied up by his fellow passengers. The equation has changed, and hijacking will no longer be a successful tactic unless the passengers can be overwhelmed by the hijackers, which will need a lot more hijackers per plane and probably heavier weapons. It won't be tried again by any "serious" terrorists, in any case.
These facts make modern security precautions even more ridiculous. Box cutters are harmless, because anybody who tried to use one would be tackled and tied to his chair. Confiscating children's scissors is pure idiocy.
I'm sorry, but how did he not cause damages with a virus which disrupted work and forced companies to disinfect their machines?
Don't side with this guy. Virus writers deserve whatever they get, and usually a lot more. Mitnick's damages were fictional, but damages from viruses are all real. He should probably be liable for a lot more, but he'll never have a hope of ever paying off all of the damage he inflicted.
Don't worry, China is going to be the next world power, very shortly. Few see it coming, but it's coming.
They must all be on Slashdot, then, because I see this idea repeated all the time here.
I believe it's a good enough reason. Bush has been really, really bad. It would take a great deal of struggle for Kerry to be as bad as Bush has been. For me, given the choice of a known evil or an unknown, I will take the risk with the unknown.
The other choices are eliminated mostly because they won't help the goal, which is to get Bush out. I have weighed all of the choices, and I see this choice as being the least bad.
In any case, which third party would you propose that I vote for? Nader's a total whack-job. I don't agree with him about much of anything. Libertarians are more my style, but they're about a million times too extreme. No, even with the third parties included, it's still a choice between the least of evils, and in that contest in 2004, John Kerry unfortunately wins.
Why I'm voting for Kerry: his administration didn't get us into an insane war in the middle east, his administration didn't write the PATRIOT act, and his administration wasn't instrumental in creating the largest federal budget deficit ever seen.
Those reasons really suck, and I'd love to vote for somebody I could actually like voting for, but there's just too much at stake this time.
Why is any attempt at surveillance for the clear purpose of the protection of peoples' lives and safety always variously called a violation human rights (!) or an invasion of privacy, while there would inevitably be shrill cries of "not enough was done" if something did happen?
Newsflash: the people who complain that surveillance is an invasion of privacy are not the same people who will cry that "not enough was done" when something happens.
There are a lot of people in the world, and they all have different opinions. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time. Deal with it.
I just don't see it. Convicts and non-convicts are treated differently; that is fundamental. I can understand being against capital punishment, but why would you think that it's inconsistent?
How is it inconsistent? The camera thing is happening to people who have not been convicted. Executions happen to people who have been convicted.
I strongly disagree with your apparent assignation of blame. Driving the actual speed limit should never put you in danger through YOUR actions. It puts you in danger through the actions of the assholes who are driving too fast for their abilities.
Ok, picture this scenario. You're on a five-lane freeway in South Florida. Traffic is dense, nearly bumper-to-bumper, but moving very smoothly. Because it's Florida, everybody is going about 75. Well, except for one guy who has decided he should follow the speed limit and go exactly 64. Because driving in this situation requires fantastic amounts of attention and is pretty stressful, people don't always see him coming as they approach. Everybody in his lane has to either slow down, usually abruptly because they can't see him until they're almost on top of him, or merge to the side. Normally they're doing both. Eventually, somebody fails to check while merging, or hits the brakes too hard, and bam, you have a wreck.
That wreck would not have happened if that one guy would have been rational and gone as fast as everybody else. Now, you can also say, the wreck would not have happened if everybody else had followed the speed limit. However, that's ridiculous; why should everybody on the road have to adapt themselves to one person? The fact that it's illegal is irrelevant. Or, in fact, the law was an encouraging factor. Nobody ever goes the speed limit, so obviously the law is not effective in that area. No amount of wishing is going to change that fact. But the law is a contributing factor in accidents, by convincing various weak-minded (or would that be strong-minded?) people that they should be causing a traffic hazard because of the law.
I certainly don't blame the slow guy all the time, and I don't think speed limits are evil or anything. I just think that speed limits are placed artificially low in some situations, like freeways, and that in certain situations, following those artificially-low speed limits will make you a danger to everybody else on the road. As long as that is the case, drivers are justified in sometimes trying to dodge the blame for an accident just because they were speeding.
The issue with speed limits is this:
Many speed limits are set artificially low in order to generate ticket revenue. We've all been on roads where it is actually unsafe, even potentially lethal, to drive the actual speed limit. You will not be held at fault for an accident that you actually caused because you were driving ten miles an hour slower than everybody else. You will be held partially at fault for an accident that you did not cause, simply because you were trying to avoid being a traffic hazard by going as fast as everybody else.
If speed limits were set in accordance with how people actually drive, and they were used to promote safety rather than as a device to generate revenue, then people would probably be more sympathetic with your ideas. But as long as you're forced to break an artificially-low speed limit just to avoid putting your life and other people's lives in danger, then people will try to avoid responsibility for it.
And once they all mandate it, then what? You're forced to buy from them by the government, and they all force you to use these devices. In effect, the government is forcing you to use them, if that ever happens. They shouldn't get a free pass just because private companies act as an intermediary.
I don't follow. Using Orion technology, starting today, we could build a starship that would put living humans around Alpha Centauri in a bit over a century. We couldn't do that with chemical rockets at all with what we know, no matter how much money you spend on it.
Sorry, but that is incorrect. There is a design from the late 60s for an Orion starship that could get to Alpha Centauri in 130 years, for the whopping cost of $1 trillion. Thats much faster than a solar sail could ever hope to do.
...it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.
Orion can take us to the stars, and it can be done with today's technology, not something that's just starting to enter the very earliest test phases. But it's nuk-yu-ler, so it doesn't count.
Free as in beer does not mean free as in speech. An author who gives his work away for free does not give up his copyright to that work. I can distribute a program for free and explicitly deny permission to redistribute it, and it will be copyright infringement for anybody to redistribute it beyond what is allowed by fair use, even though it's available for free.
1) Mu. (I don't accept the premises.)
The part you don't accept is the "never revealed his presence", right? That's perfectly acceptable. If you legitimately believe that God has revealed His presence to you, then you can believe in Him all you like. However, He has not revealed Himself to me in any way, and I will not believe in Him until that changes in an obvious way.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not a militant athiest. I don't care if you believe in God or whatever. However, I do think that trying to show any phenomenon X as evidence of the existence of God is going about the entire business completely wrong. I've been exposed to a lot of religion. The common thread between all believers that I've known has been faith. Evidence is the exact opposite of faith. Trying to "prove" the existence of God is going about things backwards, as far as I can tell. As you can tell, I am not a man of faith. Somebody who tries to "prove" that God exists in order to make me believe in him is attempting something that does not make sense.
2) I'm very disheartened that someone could make this kind of trip,
An amazing trip, to be sure. A lot of evidence of people who believe in God. No evidence of God Himself.
especially a Jew,
This makes no sense. Just because some members of my family go to Shul every week and some relatives were killed by Hitler means I should be more susceptible to finding evidence of God? Why not say, "especially a white guy", or "especially a tall guy", or "especially somebody who wears glasses"?
and still not believe that God has revealed His presence in any way. Mind-boggling.
I find it equally mind-boggling that somebody can see evidence of God when His presence is not needed. The difference is that I know that I don't understand faith, and I'm willing to let people of faith believe whatever they want, as long as they don't try to convert me. You don't see me starting arguments about how God doesn't exist just because somebody brings up something vaguely linked to the subject.
Were you paying attention when they talked about the Six Day War? That alone ought to convert any skeptic.
I think you're confusing the Six Day War with the Yom Kippur War. The Six Day War was a preemptive attack by Israel which was a resounding success all around. The Yom Kippur War is where the Arab states attacked by surprise, and things were very touch-and-go for a while. But even so, God is not necessary to explain, only a belief in the resiliency of people, and an understanding of the greater situation at the time. It was amazing, but not supernatural, at least in my eyes.
Last time around, a change of only about 200 voters would have changed the outcome. (The difference in Florida, IIRC, was 400 votes, and half that number needs to change.) Out of a hundred million voters, that's 0.0002%, so you were (amazingly) overestimating the quantity needed.
What do you propose other than hydrogen?
Oil is out. Whether ten, fifty, a hundred, or five hundred years from today, it will run out. Signs are that it will be sooner rather than later. We can't depend on it forever, so we have to switch to something else eventually.
Batteries are out, you said so yourself; the energy density simply isn't there.
Other alternative energy sources simply don't scale down. You can't have a realistic solar-powered car, not even at noon in the Sahara. And a solar-powered car on a cloudy night is not going to work at all. Nuclear, geothermal, wind, etc. may all be viable energy options, but they will never be viable for cars.
The entire point of hydrogen is to divorce the type of energy generation from the use. If you can make a car that runs on hydrogen, then that car can be ultimately powered by solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, whatever you have on hand that can generate electricity. It may be less efficient, but I'd rather have a 10% efficient nuclear process powering my car than 20% efficient gasoline.
What a crazy attitude to have. There are other reasons you'd need that much anonymity.
First, your dismissal of people who live in China is incredibly inappropriate. Over a billion people live there, and you just dismissed them out of hand. And then there's the exile situation; what about somebody who's now living in the US who still can't speak out freely because of repercussions on friends/family back home? Do they simply not count?
There are plenty of other reasons, though, all the way from "VP in Fortune 500 company wants to expose toxic waste problems without risking being found out as the source" to "I'm such an incredibly paranoid person that I don't want to risk the wrath of the US government for posting these funny pictures of Bush" all the way to the classic standby, "because I want to".
I don't use Freenet, but I also don't simply assume that everybody who searches for perfect anonymity must be a reprehensible criminal.
Thank you for that explanation. This is the first time anybody has told me why anybody would want to buy Google stock, other than searching for the classic Greater Fool to sell it to later. Things make a lot more sense now.
Given that it's non-voting stock that, according to Google, will never pay dividends, why is it worth anything at all?