Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything. Fact is, a lot of that infrastructure, over which the telcos have been given a monopoly, has been paid for by the taxpayers. We paid for a lot of it with taxes, and we're forced to pay again through all the various fees.
Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obligation to represent taxpayers, voters, consumers, and/or citizens. And, those politicians have basically sold out to the corporations under discussion.
Balance is what I'm looking for here. Yeah, we owe the corporations a profit, if they are going to be responsible for running things. But, they owe it to US, to give us what we want, in exchange for those profits. Ever heard, "The customer is always right"? Hey - there's not one sleazy sumbitch on Wall Street that believes that anymore. They look at us as a farmer looks at cattle. We're an asset to be exploited, nothing more, and nothing less. They owe us nothing - not even the service they promise, and most certainly not good service!
What is your internet speed? First, the advertised speed, then your real speed? The telcos are infamous for over subscribing, then throttling. Hey - if I'm paying for 56k, I WANT my 56k. If I'm paying for 56MB, then I WANT my 56MB. And, if I happen to be filthy rich, and I'm paying for 56GB, then, by god, I WANT MY 56GB download speed! And, it's none of the telco's business how I might be using all of that bandwidth - I paid for it, it is mine.
The telco is most certainly NOT the enforcement arm of RIAA, MPAA, or any other alphabet agency.
Let's just say that I'm very unhappy with the way things are going in this country, and that I support those protestors who are "occupying Wall Street" this morning. I just wish they would get their act together, and tell both Wall Street and Washington what is wrong, and that it's time to fix it.
Communism? Nope. Under communist rule, corporations lose, but so do the citizens. Take another look at what I'm bitching about - as well as those protesters.
They ALL assert that they are committed to net neutrality. The problem is, they want to define what neutrality is. When you've cut away all the verbiage, to get to the heart of the matter, the telcos only want their monopoly to remain unchallenged, so that they can continue to rape the consumers. To them, "neutrality" means "anything goes, as long as WE approve of it, and it increases profits".
I have an old desktop, which the wife doesn't want to give up. I purchased that old Abit mainboard way back, when the Athlon XP chip was a hot item. 2.4 Ghz CPU, if I remember correctly. Radeon video, I think it's a 7200 or 7600 - I upgraded that once, when an older card got flaky. There is 1 gig of memory in the computer, with Ubuntu 9.10 installed. It does all her surfing, it plays the online games she likes, and it stays on 24/7 unless the electricity goes out. I've offered several times to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, and she always says "NO!"
In fact, I'll make a plug for Abit here - we've had MANY electronic devices that bit the dust because our electricity is so unreliable. This old machine just keeps going, and going, and going - maybe because it has an Energizer battery hidden away in it somewhere?
So, no, one does NOT need a bleeding edge machine to do much of anything on the web. True, she can't have as many browser windows and tabs open as I can, without going to swp memory. But, she is more than happy with it!
Whoa, now - I called no one a liar. My skepticism bleeds through, sure. But, I allowed that the man sees something more than he ever saw before. And, I did my best to explain, for myself at least, what it is that he's seeing.
Now, if you'd care for a bit of explanation - I am "color blind". Pretty severely color impaired, actually, but not "blind". You can literally hide a red flower in a yard of green grass - I'll never find it. Blue, yellow, maybe orange, white - I can see all of those. Only on an extremely bright sunshiny day will I notice that damned red flower in a green background.
For that reason, I've studied, off and on, how vision works. And, I've read many times about UV sensitive vision.
I remain skeptical, and don't really believe that this male is seeing ultraviolet. But, I'm open minded enough to follow links, to read, to listen, and to learn. Maybe the guy really is seeing the outside edges of the ultraviolet. A lot of people are posting stuff that seems to support his statement.
Still skeptical, here, but looking, and learning. Is that good enough for you? I've certainly not put myself forward as an "authority" on vision. Crap, I can't even see half the reds and greens, and certainly can't see purple, violet, and all that other stuff. I couldn't be an authority on color vision if I really worked hard at it!
It isn't the lenses that detect ultravision. Nor, do the lenses pre-process photo stimuli. Nor, do the lenses send signals to the brain. It's the rods and cones at the back of the eyeball that detect, pre-process, then send signals along the optic nerve. Women who see anywhere near the ultraviolet have slightly different rods and cones at the back of the eye.
The point was, I don't believe that he's seeing ultraviolet. Sure, he sees something more than he used to see, because his grimy lenses have been replaced. But, ultraviolet? There has been some research put into that. There are a few - VERY few - women who can see the edges of the ultraviolet wavelengths. No men, at all.
So, some politicos are going to investigate. They'll wave a magic wand of approval, or they'll wave a magic wand of disapproval. There's no way of knowing if this investigation will be good or bad. Maybe if we knew something about the individuals involved with the investigation, we could make some guesses.
Raptors use UV vision. I read a couple of articles about birds floating in the sky, watching the ground for fresh rodent urine. The urine gives off a bright glow under UV, that is invisible in the "visible" light spectrum.
Ultragirl. I didn't even click the links yet, because I already know that only females are gifted with vision in or near the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.
Ahhh - a serious objection, less easily dismissed than some of the whining above!
And, my answer is, yes, I have 8 gig of memory installed to both of my dual core Opteron machines, as well as my Atholon 5300+ dual core. I'm using rather old architecture, and the boards don't support more memory - or, I would have 16 gig installed.
As for how well they run - I've had no real issues. I can run Ubuntu as the host, and Windows 7 as the guest, then add in another Linux OS as another guest. I just don't notice any issues, unless I try to play some graphics intensive game on Windows. Face it - at this point in time, a serious gamer is NOT going to play from a virtual machine. Anyone else? They simply aren't going to suffer any performance hits!
I really need to point out that way-back-when Virtual Box was first released, you really did take serious performance hits when running a VM. At that time, I only had 4 gig of memory on any of my machines, all were single cores, and the graphics cards were all AGP. At that point in time, the virtualization software was marginal. Since then, hardware has improved dramatically, and the virtualization software has improved just as dramatically. Not to mention, the OS's themselves are mostly virtualization-aware. All of the Linux distros seem to know when they are installed inside a virtual machine, and some automatically install the required drivers.
In short, while the issues haven't gone away yet - they are disappearing! Give it another 3 to 5 years, and I'll bet that there is NO performance penalty!
The sharing folders is no problem whatsoever. I tell VirtualBox to make one or more folders on the host machine available to whichever VM's that I want them to be available to. Those shared folders are automagically mounted on the guest machine, no problems, ever.
As for the graphics - acceleration is improving. Until you start serious gaming, you really can't tell the difference. Or, I can't anyway.
"Kubuntu does just about everything I need it to do"
The very same claim can be made for Mac, Windows, BSD, or any other operating system you might care to name. They ALL do "just about everything". That doesn't change the fact that sometimes, one OS has advantages over another. I like Ubuntu. I installed an Ubuntu distro to the wife's computer almost 3 years ago now, and it's still running strong. She won't ALLOW me to update, upgrade, or otherwise alter her machine. And, my most elderly machine is still running Ubuntu 10.04. Meanwhile, I have several VM's installed via VirtualBox, some of which I use routines, others that I only fire up now and then.
Windows can, in fact, perform a few little tricks that I can't do on Linux, without jumping through some rather obscure hoops.
8 cores, and 4 gb of ram? Why are you being extravagant with the cores, and skimping on the ram? FFS, man, haven't you learned yet that memory is more vital than a hot core?
I'll settle for one or two cores, if I can have 16 gig of ram! And, I'll run more VM's simultaneously than you can!
But - why pick an OS? I generally boot my computer to a Ubuntu host, then I fire up a Windows VM, a BackTrack VM, a (ahem, cough) Leapord VM, and if I need more, they are available. Why do I want to PICK one, when I can run them all, at the same time?
Pragmatic? You're asking for a pragmatic approach?
Accept the fact that teen's bodies are flooded with hormones, and they only think of sex for about 36 hours each day. (Yes, I know, for children and adults, there are only 24 hours in each day - teens live in a different continuum!) The little bastards are always going to be thinking of sex, they speak sex, they look sex, they breathe sex. Pragmatism dictates that we leave them the hell alone, to deal with their own demons, in their own way.
If YOU don't want to see pictures of naked teens, then DON'T LOOK AT A TEEN'S PHONE!
Just what IS this "justice system" you go on about? We have a Department of Justice. That department does NOT go about killing people with drones. I've never heard of such a thing - and if you have, I'd love to have a link to the evidence.
In this case, the Department of Defense was authorized by the Commander in Chief to eliminate a high value military target. Justice? Since when was war ever "fair" or "just"?
It might be good to point out that war has evolved, through the ages. What we call "conventional war" today, would have been considered terrorism long, long ago. Remember, the English army basically accused the Continental army of cowardice and terrorism, because the Americans wouldn't stand in ranks, and exchange volleys with the English.
So, war evolves. Non-state actors can now take on world powers, while hiding in the shadows. Do you think we should evolve our methods of warfare, or should we just succumb to those non-state actors?
I kinda like being a live American, thank you. I think that I'll choose to evolve our methods of warfare, to meet today's challenges.
Jiro already jumped on that nonsense. But, allow me to add, that our history books are filled with the adventures of "irregulars" who served such nations as China, in the air, on land, and at sea, both before and after the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. There's no such law, Bubba.
Thank you, for spelling that out. I was thinking the same thing, but due to my lack of education in Latin, I didn't have the ipso facto to throw out there! *sigh*
Alright, I'm finished being facetious.
Anyone who doesn't understand that we ARE AT WAR, has been asleep since 9/11/01. I think that it's unfortunate that GWB derailed the war on terrorism, so that he could go after that evil sumbitch in Iraq - but that has no bearing on the fact that we were attacked. We suffered more casualties on 9/11, than we did in Pearl Harbor. FFS, people think we should just shrug it off, because Al Queda can't claim their own country? Damn - what will it take to convince them? Another 9/11, but with 3 million instead of 3 thousand casualties?
Sand niggers, ehh? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but wasn't this operation done with the approval and cooperation of the Yemeni government? So - in your own terms, it could be said that some sand niggers authorized this killing of sand niggers?
In my own terms, "Bite my ass, you bigoted turd!"
When I wish to refer to Arabs and/or Persians, in a derogatory manner, I generally call them "camel jockeys". And, yes, I'd be willing to fly ten thousand miles to smoke a camel!
Let us use our imaginations, just a little bit, so that I can draw a parallel.
It's just prior to WW2, and tensions are increasing between the US and Germany. One or more US citizens are quite vocal in their support of Germany. They seek to gain public support for Germany and the Nazi party at every opportunity. Sometime within a couple months of the US actually declaring war on Germany, the person(s) under discussion take a ship to Germany, denounce their American citizenship, and join the Nazi party. From that time on, they work hard in the service of the Nazi party, taking intelligence missions, recruiting missions, public addresses in various countries meant to sway public opinion away from the US, and toward Nazi Germany's goals.
Would you still demand some kind of "due process" for the individual(s) involved, or would you agree that the United States should send a bombing mission to silence these high profile Nazi sympathizers?
Now, before you try to tell me that it's not the same scenario - I'll remind you that Al Unlucky has indeed publicly renounced his US citizenship. THAT is where all the media has it WRONG. Al Unlucky hasn't been a US citizen for a long, long time. And, Unlucky did indeed join a "party", or organization, whose stated goals include the overthrow of the United States.
Mr. Unlucky may not have been "Public Enemy Number One" - but he certainly ranked up there. Due Process does NOT apply in military situations such as this, or the analogy that I drew above. Al Unlucky made himself subject to military action, if not to military justice. In short, he got what he deserved.
Now, I hope that everyone can stop whining about civil rights, yada yada yada. An enemy combatant can be shot down anytime, as can an enemy spy.
You've donated 15 pounds? Hey - maybe we can get some obese Americans to do the same! Just think of the energy savings if we could get half of our obese fuckers to donate 15 pounds to any worthy cause! We'd probably save a few million gallons of gasoline (petrol) this year!
Yes, and no. Every production document that I've ever handled says "confidential" on it. We're not supposed to take pictures at work. There are a lot of "secrets" involved in our production. But - our items are sold across the nation - actually around the world. China actually produces some of our stuff, other things have been produced there, and pulled from there, back to the states. Other items have been produced in Europe, before being sent to us for production.
Whatever "trade secrets" we have, have been passed around like the most popular girl in slut school. Not very "secret" at all, really.
As for reverse engineering our stuff - anyone with a good camera and CAD setup could do it. The most expensive part of the job would be producing the molds, with which to produce the various parts we make. Assembly is nothing, of course - the market is flooded with semi-skilled labor.
"randomly calls whores and puts them on a three-way call with my girlfriend"
Somehow - I think you'd be a douche no matter what. But, blame it on the phone, if it makes you feel better. "Yeah, people, if I had a better phone, I wouldn't be such a douche!"
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything. Fact is, a lot of that infrastructure, over which the telcos have been given a monopoly, has been paid for by the taxpayers. We paid for a lot of it with taxes, and we're forced to pay again through all the various fees.
Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obligation to represent taxpayers, voters, consumers, and/or citizens. And, those politicians have basically sold out to the corporations under discussion.
Balance is what I'm looking for here. Yeah, we owe the corporations a profit, if they are going to be responsible for running things. But, they owe it to US, to give us what we want, in exchange for those profits. Ever heard, "The customer is always right"? Hey - there's not one sleazy sumbitch on Wall Street that believes that anymore. They look at us as a farmer looks at cattle. We're an asset to be exploited, nothing more, and nothing less. They owe us nothing - not even the service they promise, and most certainly not good service!
What is your internet speed? First, the advertised speed, then your real speed? The telcos are infamous for over subscribing, then throttling. Hey - if I'm paying for 56k, I WANT my 56k. If I'm paying for 56MB, then I WANT my 56MB. And, if I happen to be filthy rich, and I'm paying for 56GB, then, by god, I WANT MY 56GB download speed! And, it's none of the telco's business how I might be using all of that bandwidth - I paid for it, it is mine.
The telco is most certainly NOT the enforcement arm of RIAA, MPAA, or any other alphabet agency.
Let's just say that I'm very unhappy with the way things are going in this country, and that I support those protestors who are "occupying Wall Street" this morning. I just wish they would get their act together, and tell both Wall Street and Washington what is wrong, and that it's time to fix it.
Communism? Nope. Under communist rule, corporations lose, but so do the citizens. Take another look at what I'm bitching about - as well as those protesters.
They ALL assert that they are committed to net neutrality. The problem is, they want to define what neutrality is. When you've cut away all the verbiage, to get to the heart of the matter, the telcos only want their monopoly to remain unchallenged, so that they can continue to rape the consumers. To them, "neutrality" means "anything goes, as long as WE approve of it, and it increases profits".
I have an old desktop, which the wife doesn't want to give up. I purchased that old Abit mainboard way back, when the Athlon XP chip was a hot item. 2.4 Ghz CPU, if I remember correctly. Radeon video, I think it's a 7200 or 7600 - I upgraded that once, when an older card got flaky. There is 1 gig of memory in the computer, with Ubuntu 9.10 installed. It does all her surfing, it plays the online games she likes, and it stays on 24/7 unless the electricity goes out. I've offered several times to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, and she always says "NO!"
In fact, I'll make a plug for Abit here - we've had MANY electronic devices that bit the dust because our electricity is so unreliable. This old machine just keeps going, and going, and going - maybe because it has an Energizer battery hidden away in it somewhere?
So, no, one does NOT need a bleeding edge machine to do much of anything on the web. True, she can't have as many browser windows and tabs open as I can, without going to swp memory. But, she is more than happy with it!
Whoa, now - I called no one a liar. My skepticism bleeds through, sure. But, I allowed that the man sees something more than he ever saw before. And, I did my best to explain, for myself at least, what it is that he's seeing.
Now, if you'd care for a bit of explanation - I am "color blind". Pretty severely color impaired, actually, but not "blind". You can literally hide a red flower in a yard of green grass - I'll never find it. Blue, yellow, maybe orange, white - I can see all of those. Only on an extremely bright sunshiny day will I notice that damned red flower in a green background.
For that reason, I've studied, off and on, how vision works. And, I've read many times about UV sensitive vision.
I remain skeptical, and don't really believe that this male is seeing ultraviolet. But, I'm open minded enough to follow links, to read, to listen, and to learn. Maybe the guy really is seeing the outside edges of the ultraviolet. A lot of people are posting stuff that seems to support his statement.
Still skeptical, here, but looking, and learning. Is that good enough for you? I've certainly not put myself forward as an "authority" on vision. Crap, I can't even see half the reds and greens, and certainly can't see purple, violet, and all that other stuff. I couldn't be an authority on color vision if I really worked hard at it!
It isn't the lenses that detect ultravision. Nor, do the lenses pre-process photo stimuli. Nor, do the lenses send signals to the brain. It's the rods and cones at the back of the eyeball that detect, pre-process, then send signals along the optic nerve. Women who see anywhere near the ultraviolet have slightly different rods and cones at the back of the eye.
Baloroth was kind enough to provide a link, just a post or two down from here, which you might find informative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromats#Possibility_of_human_tetrachromats
The point was, I don't believe that he's seeing ultraviolet. Sure, he sees something more than he used to see, because his grimy lenses have been replaced. But, ultraviolet? There has been some research put into that. There are a few - VERY few - women who can see the edges of the ultraviolet wavelengths. No men, at all.
So, some politicos are going to investigate. They'll wave a magic wand of approval, or they'll wave a magic wand of disapproval. There's no way of knowing if this investigation will be good or bad. Maybe if we knew something about the individuals involved with the investigation, we could make some guesses.
Raptors use UV vision. I read a couple of articles about birds floating in the sky, watching the ground for fresh rodent urine. The urine gives off a bright glow under UV, that is invisible in the "visible" light spectrum.
Ultragirl. I didn't even click the links yet, because I already know that only females are gifted with vision in or near the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.
Ahhh - a serious objection, less easily dismissed than some of the whining above!
And, my answer is, yes, I have 8 gig of memory installed to both of my dual core Opteron machines, as well as my Atholon 5300+ dual core. I'm using rather old architecture, and the boards don't support more memory - or, I would have 16 gig installed.
As for how well they run - I've had no real issues. I can run Ubuntu as the host, and Windows 7 as the guest, then add in another Linux OS as another guest. I just don't notice any issues, unless I try to play some graphics intensive game on Windows. Face it - at this point in time, a serious gamer is NOT going to play from a virtual machine. Anyone else? They simply aren't going to suffer any performance hits!
I really need to point out that way-back-when Virtual Box was first released, you really did take serious performance hits when running a VM. At that time, I only had 4 gig of memory on any of my machines, all were single cores, and the graphics cards were all AGP. At that point in time, the virtualization software was marginal. Since then, hardware has improved dramatically, and the virtualization software has improved just as dramatically. Not to mention, the OS's themselves are mostly virtualization-aware. All of the Linux distros seem to know when they are installed inside a virtual machine, and some automatically install the required drivers.
In short, while the issues haven't gone away yet - they are disappearing! Give it another 3 to 5 years, and I'll bet that there is NO performance penalty!
The sharing folders is no problem whatsoever. I tell VirtualBox to make one or more folders on the host machine available to whichever VM's that I want them to be available to. Those shared folders are automagically mounted on the guest machine, no problems, ever.
As for the graphics - acceleration is improving. Until you start serious gaming, you really can't tell the difference. Or, I can't anyway.
"Kubuntu does just about everything I need it to do"
The very same claim can be made for Mac, Windows, BSD, or any other operating system you might care to name. They ALL do "just about everything". That doesn't change the fact that sometimes, one OS has advantages over another. I like Ubuntu. I installed an Ubuntu distro to the wife's computer almost 3 years ago now, and it's still running strong. She won't ALLOW me to update, upgrade, or otherwise alter her machine. And, my most elderly machine is still running Ubuntu 10.04. Meanwhile, I have several VM's installed via VirtualBox, some of which I use routines, others that I only fire up now and then.
Windows can, in fact, perform a few little tricks that I can't do on Linux, without jumping through some rather obscure hoops.
8 cores, and 4 gb of ram? Why are you being extravagant with the cores, and skimping on the ram? FFS, man, haven't you learned yet that memory is more vital than a hot core?
I'll settle for one or two cores, if I can have 16 gig of ram! And, I'll run more VM's simultaneously than you can!
But - why pick an OS? I generally boot my computer to a Ubuntu host, then I fire up a Windows VM, a BackTrack VM, a (ahem, cough) Leapord VM, and if I need more, they are available. Why do I want to PICK one, when I can run them all, at the same time?
Pragmatic? You're asking for a pragmatic approach?
Accept the fact that teen's bodies are flooded with hormones, and they only think of sex for about 36 hours each day. (Yes, I know, for children and adults, there are only 24 hours in each day - teens live in a different continuum!) The little bastards are always going to be thinking of sex, they speak sex, they look sex, they breathe sex. Pragmatism dictates that we leave them the hell alone, to deal with their own demons, in their own way.
If YOU don't want to see pictures of naked teens, then DON'T LOOK AT A TEEN'S PHONE!
Dumbasses . . .
Just what IS this "justice system" you go on about? We have a Department of Justice. That department does NOT go about killing people with drones. I've never heard of such a thing - and if you have, I'd love to have a link to the evidence.
In this case, the Department of Defense was authorized by the Commander in Chief to eliminate a high value military target. Justice? Since when was war ever "fair" or "just"?
It might be good to point out that war has evolved, through the ages. What we call "conventional war" today, would have been considered terrorism long, long ago. Remember, the English army basically accused the Continental army of cowardice and terrorism, because the Americans wouldn't stand in ranks, and exchange volleys with the English.
So, war evolves. Non-state actors can now take on world powers, while hiding in the shadows. Do you think we should evolve our methods of warfare, or should we just succumb to those non-state actors?
I kinda like being a live American, thank you. I think that I'll choose to evolve our methods of warfare, to meet today's challenges.
Jiro already jumped on that nonsense. But, allow me to add, that our history books are filled with the adventures of "irregulars" who served such nations as China, in the air, on land, and at sea, both before and after the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. There's no such law, Bubba.
Thank you, for spelling that out. I was thinking the same thing, but due to my lack of education in Latin, I didn't have the ipso facto to throw out there! *sigh*
Alright, I'm finished being facetious.
Anyone who doesn't understand that we ARE AT WAR, has been asleep since 9/11/01. I think that it's unfortunate that GWB derailed the war on terrorism, so that he could go after that evil sumbitch in Iraq - but that has no bearing on the fact that we were attacked. We suffered more casualties on 9/11, than we did in Pearl Harbor. FFS, people think we should just shrug it off, because Al Queda can't claim their own country? Damn - what will it take to convince them? Another 9/11, but with 3 million instead of 3 thousand casualties?
Well - SOMEONE had to process all that data into a target that the drone could acquire. And, it was long overdue. Due process - works for me!
Sand niggers, ehh? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but wasn't this operation done with the approval and cooperation of the Yemeni government? So - in your own terms, it could be said that some sand niggers authorized this killing of sand niggers?
In my own terms, "Bite my ass, you bigoted turd!"
When I wish to refer to Arabs and/or Persians, in a derogatory manner, I generally call them "camel jockeys". And, yes, I'd be willing to fly ten thousand miles to smoke a camel!
Let us use our imaginations, just a little bit, so that I can draw a parallel.
It's just prior to WW2, and tensions are increasing between the US and Germany. One or more US citizens are quite vocal in their support of Germany. They seek to gain public support for Germany and the Nazi party at every opportunity. Sometime within a couple months of the US actually declaring war on Germany, the person(s) under discussion take a ship to Germany, denounce their American citizenship, and join the Nazi party. From that time on, they work hard in the service of the Nazi party, taking intelligence missions, recruiting missions, public addresses in various countries meant to sway public opinion away from the US, and toward Nazi Germany's goals.
Would you still demand some kind of "due process" for the individual(s) involved, or would you agree that the United States should send a bombing mission to silence these high profile Nazi sympathizers?
Now, before you try to tell me that it's not the same scenario - I'll remind you that Al Unlucky has indeed publicly renounced his US citizenship. THAT is where all the media has it WRONG. Al Unlucky hasn't been a US citizen for a long, long time. And, Unlucky did indeed join a "party", or organization, whose stated goals include the overthrow of the United States.
Mr. Unlucky may not have been "Public Enemy Number One" - but he certainly ranked up there. Due Process does NOT apply in military situations such as this, or the analogy that I drew above. Al Unlucky made himself subject to military action, if not to military justice. In short, he got what he deserved.
Now, I hope that everyone can stop whining about civil rights, yada yada yada. An enemy combatant can be shot down anytime, as can an enemy spy.
You've donated 15 pounds? Hey - maybe we can get some obese Americans to do the same! Just think of the energy savings if we could get half of our obese fuckers to donate 15 pounds to any worthy cause! We'd probably save a few million gallons of gasoline (petrol) this year!
Yes, and no. Every production document that I've ever handled says "confidential" on it. We're not supposed to take pictures at work. There are a lot of "secrets" involved in our production. But - our items are sold across the nation - actually around the world. China actually produces some of our stuff, other things have been produced there, and pulled from there, back to the states. Other items have been produced in Europe, before being sent to us for production.
Whatever "trade secrets" we have, have been passed around like the most popular girl in slut school. Not very "secret" at all, really.
As for reverse engineering our stuff - anyone with a good camera and CAD setup could do it. The most expensive part of the job would be producing the molds, with which to produce the various parts we make. Assembly is nothing, of course - the market is flooded with semi-skilled labor.
"randomly calls whores and puts them on a three-way call with my girlfriend"
Somehow - I think you'd be a douche no matter what. But, blame it on the phone, if it makes you feel better. "Yeah, people, if I had a better phone, I wouldn't be such a douche!"