And did the teen look at those youtube videos? Did she know what she was doing and simply following instructions for an effect or was she ignorant and experimenting?
You and I don't know, but it's certainly something that the school's ISP, her home ISP, and her phone company could answer for us. And I'm pretty sure one or the other parties will do whatever they can to show that evidence at trial.
Yay information age where we can actually get answers rather than bicker about we FEEL what someone was probably thinking.
Now... think about this for a moment. You've just googled about and learned how to make a bomb. If there's an explosion within your proximity in the next few months, who do you think they're going to come after? Welcome to the information age of thoughtcrime.
It never crossed anyone's mind to go shoot up our friends.
BULLSHIT! I was with you up until this point. It was highschool, there was drama, and you weren't all good upstanding kids. Odd are a few of you were losers. Or just born on the wrong side of the tracks.
I think what you meant to say is that "No one ever shot up anyone. In my school. During my time there."
Ease up on those rose colored glasses. Next you're going to try and feed us the lie that nobody swore back then either.
take any of those other areas - administration, facilities, transportation, curriculum, etc. and by itself, it doesn't come close to the cost of instruction.
Well, assuming you're not full of shit, I think it comes to about 40%. That's... you know... kinda close.
Teachers need to be made cheaper.
My comment above was not anti-teacher - quite the opposite.
I have no idea how the above statement could be taken in any way other than against teachers and the wages they make.
You'll be able to study as much as you want for whatever topic you want and for as long as you want.
It's called a library dude. Freely available knowledge and information hasn't been the issue for a LONG time. Ease of access was pretty much solved by the Internet. Everyone could see that coming back in the 90's.
Now we've got all of humanities knowledge at the fingertips of children and they can summon information, tutorials, how-to's, explanations, technical papers, research papers, the dummies guide to the research papers, and everything they need to learn EVERYTHING they would have been taught in K-12, and damn near everything they could wish to learn outside of K-12.
And that was totally amazing back around the turn of the millennium. It's been a decade. Kids are still dumb shits.
But you were talking more along the lines of college courses and whatnot. Only "most" of a college education can be had online. There's a lot of nuance missing at the higher levels. But the idea still stands. And look at how smart the average shmuck is. Oh wait. We've still got evolution deniers, philosophy and english majors who are shocked they can't find work, and just look at the average score of this test. Those are REALLY easy questions.
Sigh... this didn't start out as a cynical rant, I swear. But we've been a society with easy access to knowledge for a while now and it doesn't seem to be having that big of an effect. For as much as I love wikipedia, moving that median value of 7 billion people is DAMN hard.
You make them take a test on the subject right after the video/coursework/online shenanigans. You have a broader test at the end of the week. You have an even broader test at the end of the year. And you have a really important test over general knowledge at the end of their school years. Like an ACT or SAT.
If they don't pass a daily test, they get homework. If they don't pass a weekly test, they get told they're stupid and if they don't get their grades up they're going to be losers. If they don't pass a yearly test, they get get pushed into summer/remedial school. Possibly held back. Possibly tracked into stupid people's school for retards. If they don't pass the really big test, they get to go be menial labor for the rest of their lives. Or artists. Or used car salesmen.
Soooo... You motivate the kids a lot like you motivate them now. It was a pretty shitty system when I went through it, but it's functional for the bulk of humanity. And there's the thing. You can unleash young versions of slashdot geeks in a plain old library for 8 hours a day for 4 years and they'd get a pretty good education. But most kids would rather go screw behind the stacks. What works for the smart little cookies who actually do have a hope of being an astronaut doesn't work for the people pushing an IQ of 100 (otherwise known as normal people).
Also, locking them in a room with nothing better to do rather than go through the material. That seems to help a lot too.
Like how the EPA, OSHA, and DHS keep getting in the way of fertilizer companies just trying to make a buck?
stop rewarding off-shore manufacturing
Right, buy American. Look down at your keyboard. Look behind your monitor. Now tell me where they were made. You wouldn't be... gasp... hypocritical, would you?
Assume you have an economy consisting entirely of factory workers. Now, half the work gets automated. What happens?
Well there are 4 factors at play: 1) The old factory workers 2) The new robotics engineers 2) The owners 3) The customers
The new robotics engineers are a smaller group. Not all the displaced factory workers can go be robotics engineers, as awesome as that would be. They didn't exist before and they see 100% gains. They can be separate companies entirely, or they can be a new division of the old factory, it doesn't matter for this analysis. What's important is that the robotics system is cheaper than the workforce they're replacing. That's why they bought robots. So overall there's less money spent of the overhead of actually making the thing.
So some of the old factory workers go become engineers, which is cool. And the company/industry experiences better efficiencies. Yay progress. Now who reaps the benefits? Everyone wants it for themselves.
The owners claim that they bought the tools, they have the same customers as before, they steered the boat, now gimme gimme gimme. And to an extent, they're right. If none of the benefit went to them, why would they seek the change?
The workers claim that the benefit should go to them. There was work put before them, and they get the work done, just as before. They either want everyone to work half as long or have the remaining employees earn twice as much. And to an extent they're right. If we suddenly give the axe to half the populace of whereeversville, the turmoil would be astounding. Detrimental to everyone involved.
The customers claim they the benefit should go to them. They want a thing and now the thing costs less to make. And they're right too. If there's a free market all it takes is one factory to try and undercut the others for a quick buck and the price will come down.
It's a difficult problem. If I were king for a day: For a while the customers will continue paying the old price.It takes a little while for the free market to kick in. Eventually, all the benefit goes to the customer (which, remember, is all of us). But until that time there is surplus money at the factory. Some goes to the new engineers to run the robots of course. Some goes to the owners who bought the robots. Some goes to the employees who continue to work hard. Some goes to re-train\retire those who have been laid off.
For a while, the bosses have bonuses, the workers work less, the laid off have tuition paid. Until they're undercut and things go back to normal: No bonuses for the bosses, full-time employment for the workers, and no free tuition. And they all have to find some new way to make everything better.
And so, hopefully, the transition will be deemed as "fair". And that's the goal of politics isn't it? To keep everyone working together without ripping out each others throats.
I would take a pay cut, work longer hours, and go balls to the walls to work on something that actually mattered. Bullshit work to make a report that will largely be ignored just grinds away at the soul. You feel your life being siphoned away, hour by hour. Sure, you're getting paid for it, but at what cost? Seeing your skills atrophy in front of you and knowing how much effort you put into sharpening them into something you could put on a resume. And you know if it goes on long enough that you won't be able to put them on a resume any longer and you'll be stuck. Just another bit of flotsam in the dead sea effect.
and the taxes support the rest of the population to sit around comfortably and do nothing probably isn't too terrible.
A large swath of the poor, having their housing and food subsidized by taxes. Sure, they could just lay about doing nothing. Or they could spend all their time making art. Or they could spend all that free time getting an education online.
Bloody hell, did you even read that? Did you notice the part where it didn't pass? This was a proposal. We don't have a rule that tries to get the top 0.3% of the populace to pay at least 30% of their income to federal taxes. And so if they're rich enough to hire someone to hire an accountant (they are), they don't pay that rate. Are you aware that the top tax bracket is only 39.6%? That's for anyone making over $400,000. And remember that's a bracket. They're not taxed 39.6% on the first $400,000 dollars of income they make. The effective tax rate for a millionaire is ~35%. This was a proposed rule that would get them to pay at least 30%. It failed due to GOP opposition.
So how about you read that again and notice that the average effective tax rate (income+payroll) GOES DOWN as people make more than a million dollars. That millionaires pay a larger share than billionaires. (well, ok, 100xmillionaires). That the super-rich have had their tax rates drop way the fuck down. Now look me in the eye and tell me that if our nation somehow got twice as productive and for some reason the super-rich reaped all the benefit that it would be a "good thing". That it would be real economic growth. That you actually refuted anything that ebno said.
The proposal is named after Warren Buffett, who is appalled about how he can dance around the tax code. Come on dude.
Yes, your point stands. And I stand by my original standing by of it. Magically double the GDP and it would be a good thing. But if these trends continue I'd have a REAL hard time saying the outcome would be anywhere near the realm of what 99% of the populace would consider "fair".
They have this sort of thing of personally run web-cameras pointed at the drawbridges in my town. The wife checks it as she commutes so she knows which route to take.
I'm pretty sure the idea here is that if you wouldn't trust the general populace with this sort of power, then you REALLY shouldn't trust people in a position of authority with said power.
One of the nice things about living in a democracy is that when problems are easily seen, the masses tend to actually give a shit and apply the correct political pressure on the people they elect. If the panopticon was publicly available, the abuse would be transparent rather than hidden away.
Do you consider it an invasion of privacy when someone looks at you in a public space?
Say you're at the grocery store. Someone looks at you. No cameras, no record, nothing like that. They see what you're wearing, maybe what you're eating next week, and they know you're not at home right now. Is that a problem? They now have knowledge about you which you, presumably, didn't want to give them. They could be a fashionista gathering information about the stylistic patterns of basement trolls, or they could be a burglar that specializes in sub-story break-ins. But... do you care? The burglar isn't going to somehow find where you live, rush over there, and start shimmying locks because that checkout line was REALLY long.
I understand that semi-permanent records of your activities change the game a little, but taking a picture of you in a public space isn't an invasion of your privacy anymore than just looking at you.
Having a centralized database of all your movements, activities, contacts, and communications... while in public...is certainly ripe for abuse, and it's something to fight against. But you're equating the ability to take pictures in public with an invasion of privacy.
Also, just how the hell do you think a panopticon society is supposed to protect you?
I wonder, is there a shortage of shmoozers and business suits that are willing to undercut the salaries of big corporate CEOs? You never really hear board member complaining about the lack of competition in business leaders. Indeed, we hear that without golden parachutes, massive salaries, obscene bonuses, and ludicrous stock options that they wouldn't be able to attract the talent they need.
don't fill your engineering department with young, single, childless males (aka brogrammers).
First off, "brogrammer" is one of those moderately new phrases that hasn't been fully defined yet. I always thought it was any code shop whose members were close friends and did stuff together outside of work. It just coincodence that young single childless programmers don't have established roots and have time to go for a beer after work. So let's break it down: -Young: No experience means entry-level pay. You REALLY need at least one experienced guy, but surrounding him with minions and padawans isn't a bad business descision -Single/childless: No roots means that they (statistically) don't have anything better to do after work... than work. If a manager can employ a guy to do 80 hours for 40 hours of pay, they will probaly do so. Dicks. -Male: Sadly, sexism in the industry is pretty well established. No good reason for it. There ARE reasons, but none of them good.
Keep your business model simple by making actual stuff that you can sell for a profit.
Did you just associate programming with "actual stuff"? Really?
And don't hire assholes.
Wow, what a revelation. Now, this might actually be news for people who are used to hiring salesmen, but for code shops? Naw.
Because Dropcam has a 100 percent employee retention rate — no one who has joined the 4-year-old company has ever left.
Which anyone can do if they get a group of dead-end-career types who know they're lucky to have a job, any job. The dead sea effect is well known, this guy might just have hit those salty sailors early. He probably does have a good point when it comes to retention and the common family-man sort. Once you have roots it's harder to up and leave for greener fields.
The worst part about all this, besides the over-reach of inept agency and the slow descent into a police state:
To detect "threats to national security as well as immigration law violators" X-ray trucks for "explosives, weapons, anything unusual", "radiation, explosives, and drugs".
You simply cannot trust people in a position of power to keep a narrow focus when you grant them broad and reaching powers to do a specific job. Once they have those tools, they ARE going to use them for anything and everything under the sun that they think they can help with. Part of it is the infatuation with a new toy. When all you have is hammer, or even when the hammer just solved a difficult problem for you, EVERYTHING starts looking like a nail. And it's natural. The people working in anti-terrorism department, spending all that time not finding any terrorists, feel the need to be productive and find another reason for doing their job. Nobody wants to lose their job.
I would LOVE to have some method of identifying everyone who really wanted to fuck over America. Or everyone that transported too much explosives. Or tried to make Anthrax. But the people that are trying to get the powers to do such things simply cannot be trusted with said power.
Because while certain immigration and certain drugs are a moderately bad thing, there is no fucking way I'm letting these piddly little problems justify the transformation of the USA into a police state.
I like big buts and I cannot lie You other brothers can't deny That when a quote walks in with an itty bitty case And conjunction in your face you get SPRUNG
Hmmmm, those three groups are still from different fields; Politics, business, and technology. All three are forced to dable in each other's territory, but while Page and Brin would have more to say on the tech side, they wouldn't necessarily have anything more to say on politics.
Slashdot Mirror
And did the teen look at those youtube videos? Did she know what she was doing and simply following instructions for an effect or was she ignorant and experimenting?
You and I don't know, but it's certainly something that the school's ISP, her home ISP, and her phone company could answer for us. And I'm pretty sure one or the other parties will do whatever they can to show that evidence at trial.
Yay information age where we can actually get answers rather than bicker about we FEEL what someone was probably thinking.
Now... think about this for a moment. You've just googled about and learned how to make a bomb. If there's an explosion within your proximity in the next few months, who do you think they're going to come after? Welcome to the information age of thoughtcrime.
It never crossed anyone's mind to go shoot up our friends.
BULLSHIT! I was with you up until this point. It was highschool, there was drama, and you weren't all good upstanding kids. Odd are a few of you were losers. Or just born on the wrong side of the tracks.
I think what you meant to say is that "No one ever shot up anyone. In my school. During my time there."
Ease up on those rose colored glasses. Next you're going to try and feed us the lie that nobody swore back then either.
take any of those other areas - administration, facilities, transportation, curriculum, etc. and by itself, it doesn't come close to the cost of instruction.
Well, assuming you're not full of shit, I think it comes to about 40%. That's... you know... kinda close.
Teachers need to be made cheaper.
My comment above was not anti-teacher - quite the opposite.
I have no idea how the above statement could be taken in any way other than against teachers and the wages they make.
You'll be able to study as much as you want for whatever topic you want and for as long as you want.
It's called a library dude. Freely available knowledge and information hasn't been the issue for a LONG time. Ease of access was pretty much solved by the Internet. Everyone could see that coming back in the 90's.
Now we've got all of humanities knowledge at the fingertips of children and they can summon information, tutorials, how-to's, explanations, technical papers, research papers, the dummies guide to the research papers, and everything they need to learn EVERYTHING they would have been taught in K-12, and damn near everything they could wish to learn outside of K-12.
And that was totally amazing back around the turn of the millennium. It's been a decade. Kids are still dumb shits.
But you were talking more along the lines of college courses and whatnot. Only "most" of a college education can be had online. There's a lot of nuance missing at the higher levels. But the idea still stands. And look at how smart the average shmuck is. Oh wait. We've still got evolution deniers, philosophy and english majors who are shocked they can't find work, and just look at the average score of this test. Those are REALLY easy questions.
Sigh... this didn't start out as a cynical rant, I swear. But we've been a society with easy access to knowledge for a while now and it doesn't seem to be having that big of an effect. For as much as I love wikipedia, moving that median value of 7 billion people is DAMN hard.
Motivation.
How do you instill motivation in kids
You make them take a test on the subject right after the video/coursework/online shenanigans. You have a broader test at the end of the week. You have an even broader test at the end of the year. And you have a really important test over general knowledge at the end of their school years. Like an ACT or SAT.
If they don't pass a daily test, they get homework.
If they don't pass a weekly test, they get told they're stupid and if they don't get their grades up they're going to be losers.
If they don't pass a yearly test, they get get pushed into summer/remedial school. Possibly held back. Possibly tracked into stupid people's school for retards.
If they don't pass the really big test, they get to go be menial labor for the rest of their lives. Or artists. Or used car salesmen.
Soooo... You motivate the kids a lot like you motivate them now. It was a pretty shitty system when I went through it, but it's functional for the bulk of humanity. And there's the thing. You can unleash young versions of slashdot geeks in a plain old library for 8 hours a day for 4 years and they'd get a pretty good education. But most kids would rather go screw behind the stacks. What works for the smart little cookies who actually do have a hope of being an astronaut doesn't work for the people pushing an IQ of 100 (otherwise known as normal people).
Also, locking them in a room with nothing better to do rather than go through the material. That seems to help a lot too.
Sugar. The term in Syntactic Sugar. Not candy.
And while you can certainly implement almost any language construct in C, like object oriented class inheritance, it's not always a good idea.
how about we stop penalizing US operations
Like how the EPA, OSHA, and DHS keep getting in the way of fertilizer companies just trying to make a buck?
stop rewarding off-shore manufacturing
Right, buy American. Look down at your keyboard. Look behind your monitor. Now tell me where they were made. You wouldn't be... gasp... hypocritical, would you?
Assume you have an economy consisting entirely of factory workers. Now, half the work gets automated. What happens?
Well there are 4 factors at play:
1) The old factory workers
2) The new robotics engineers
2) The owners
3) The customers
The new robotics engineers are a smaller group. Not all the displaced factory workers can go be robotics engineers, as awesome as that would be. They didn't exist before and they see 100% gains. They can be separate companies entirely, or they can be a new division of the old factory, it doesn't matter for this analysis. What's important is that the robotics system is cheaper than the workforce they're replacing. That's why they bought robots. So overall there's less money spent of the overhead of actually making the thing.
So some of the old factory workers go become engineers, which is cool. And the company/industry experiences better efficiencies. Yay progress. Now who reaps the benefits? Everyone wants it for themselves.
The owners claim that they bought the tools, they have the same customers as before, they steered the boat, now gimme gimme gimme. And to an extent, they're right. If none of the benefit went to them, why would they seek the change?
The workers claim that the benefit should go to them. There was work put before them, and they get the work done, just as before. They either want everyone to work half as long or have the remaining employees earn twice as much. And to an extent they're right. If we suddenly give the axe to half the populace of whereeversville, the turmoil would be astounding. Detrimental to everyone involved.
The customers claim they the benefit should go to them. They want a thing and now the thing costs less to make. And they're right too. If there's a free market all it takes is one factory to try and undercut the others for a quick buck and the price will come down.
It's a difficult problem. If I were king for a day: For a while the customers will continue paying the old price.It takes a little while for the free market to kick in. Eventually, all the benefit goes to the customer (which, remember, is all of us). But until that time there is surplus money at the factory. Some goes to the new engineers to run the robots of course. Some goes to the owners who bought the robots. Some goes to the employees who continue to work hard. Some goes to re-train\retire those who have been laid off.
For a while, the bosses have bonuses, the workers work less, the laid off have tuition paid. Until they're undercut and things go back to normal: No bonuses for the bosses, full-time employment for the workers, and no free tuition. And they all have to find some new way to make everything better.
And so, hopefully, the transition will be deemed as "fair". And that's the goal of politics isn't it? To keep everyone working together without ripping out each others throats.
Which is why nobody is a professional musician now-a-days. /s
Thankfully art is more of a fashion than a commodity.
For those who don't already own capital, eventually the only jobs available to humans will be in the entertainment industry.
Isn't that... you know.... one of the flavors of a utopia? Nobody has to do back-breaking work and everyone just sits around making art and music.
This. Oh god this.
I would take a pay cut, work longer hours, and go balls to the walls to work on something that actually mattered. Bullshit work to make a report that will largely be ignored just grinds away at the soul. You feel your life being siphoned away, hour by hour. Sure, you're getting paid for it, but at what cost? Seeing your skills atrophy in front of you and knowing how much effort you put into sharpening them into something you could put on a resume. And you know if it goes on long enough that you won't be able to put them on a resume any longer and you'll be stuck. Just another bit of flotsam in the dead sea effect.
and the taxes support the rest of the population to sit around comfortably and do nothing probably isn't too terrible.
A large swath of the poor, having their housing and food subsidized by taxes. Sure, they could just lay about doing nothing. Or they could spend all their time making art. Or they could spend all that free time getting an education online.
It's a romantic dream, but you should probably learn your history.
Bloody hell, did you even read that? Did you notice the part where it didn't pass? This was a proposal. We don't have a rule that tries to get the top 0.3% of the populace to pay at least 30% of their income to federal taxes. And so if they're rich enough to hire someone to hire an accountant (they are), they don't pay that rate. Are you aware that the top tax bracket is only 39.6%? That's for anyone making over $400,000. And remember that's a bracket. They're not taxed 39.6% on the first $400,000 dollars of income they make. The effective tax rate for a millionaire is ~35%. This was a proposed rule that would get them to pay at least 30%. It failed due to GOP opposition.
So how about you read that again and notice that the average effective tax rate (income+payroll) GOES DOWN as people make more than a million dollars. That millionaires pay a larger share than billionaires. (well, ok, 100xmillionaires). That the super-rich have had their tax rates drop way the fuck down. Now look me in the eye and tell me that if our nation somehow got twice as productive and for some reason the super-rich reaped all the benefit that it would be a "good thing". That it would be real economic growth. That you actually refuted anything that ebno said.
The proposal is named after Warren Buffett, who is appalled about how he can dance around the tax code. Come on dude.
Yes, your point stands. And I stand by my original standing by of it. Magically double the GDP and it would be a good thing. But if these trends continue I'd have a REAL hard time saying the outcome would be anywhere near the realm of what 99% of the populace would consider "fair".
They have this sort of thing of personally run web-cameras pointed at the drawbridges in my town. The wife checks it as she commutes so she knows which route to take.
I'm pretty sure the idea here is that if you wouldn't trust the general populace with this sort of power, then you REALLY shouldn't trust people in a position of authority with said power.
One of the nice things about living in a democracy is that when problems are easily seen, the masses tend to actually give a shit and apply the correct political pressure on the people they elect. If the panopticon was publicly available, the abuse would be transparent rather than hidden away.
Do you consider it an invasion of privacy when someone looks at you in a public space?
Say you're at the grocery store. Someone looks at you. No cameras, no record, nothing like that. They see what you're wearing, maybe what you're eating next week, and they know you're not at home right now. Is that a problem? They now have knowledge about you which you, presumably, didn't want to give them. They could be a fashionista gathering information about the stylistic patterns of basement trolls, or they could be a burglar that specializes in sub-story break-ins. But... do you care? The burglar isn't going to somehow find where you live, rush over there, and start shimmying locks because that checkout line was REALLY long.
I understand that semi-permanent records of your activities change the game a little, but taking a picture of you in a public space isn't an invasion of your privacy anymore than just looking at you.
Having a centralized database of all your movements, activities, contacts, and communications... while in public...is certainly ripe for abuse, and it's something to fight against. But you're equating the ability to take pictures in public with an invasion of privacy.
Also, just how the hell do you think a panopticon society is supposed to protect you?
Assuming they pay taxes. And assuming that it goes on to help the 99%. But yeah, all in all it would probably help a little. I believe the term is "pittance".
I wonder, is there a shortage of shmoozers and business suits that are willing to undercut the salaries of big corporate CEOs? You never really hear board member complaining about the lack of competition in business leaders. Indeed, we hear that without golden parachutes, massive salaries, obscene bonuses, and ludicrous stock options that they wouldn't be able to attract the talent they need.
Funny, that.
Ah, nice to see the rampant ageism in the industry hasn't gone anywhere.
Salesmen.
don't fill your engineering department with young, single, childless males (aka brogrammers).
First off, "brogrammer" is one of those moderately new phrases that hasn't been fully defined yet. I always thought it was any code shop whose members were close friends and did stuff together outside of work. It just coincodence that young single childless programmers don't have established roots and have time to go for a beer after work.
So let's break it down:
-Young: No experience means entry-level pay. You REALLY need at least one experienced guy, but surrounding him with minions and padawans isn't a bad business descision
-Single/childless: No roots means that they (statistically) don't have anything better to do after work... than work. If a manager can employ a guy to do 80 hours for 40 hours of pay, they will probaly do so. Dicks.
-Male: Sadly, sexism in the industry is pretty well established. No good reason for it. There ARE reasons, but none of them good.
Keep your business model simple by making actual stuff that you can sell for a profit.
Did you just associate programming with "actual stuff"? Really?
And don't hire assholes.
Wow, what a revelation. Now, this might actually be news for people who are used to hiring salesmen, but for code shops? Naw.
Because Dropcam has a 100 percent employee retention rate — no one who has joined the 4-year-old company has ever left.
Which anyone can do if they get a group of dead-end-career types who know they're lucky to have a job, any job. The dead sea effect is well known, this guy might just have hit those salty sailors early. He probably does have a good point when it comes to retention and the common family-man sort. Once you have roots it's harder to up and leave for greener fields.
The worst part about all this, besides the over-reach of inept agency and the slow descent into a police state:
To detect "threats to national security as well as immigration law violators"
X-ray trucks for "explosives, weapons, anything unusual", "radiation, explosives, and drugs".
You simply cannot trust people in a position of power to keep a narrow focus when you grant them broad and reaching powers to do a specific job. Once they have those tools, they ARE going to use them for anything and everything under the sun that they think they can help with. Part of it is the infatuation with a new toy. When all you have is hammer, or even when the hammer just solved a difficult problem for you, EVERYTHING starts looking like a nail. And it's natural. The people working in anti-terrorism department, spending all that time not finding any terrorists, feel the need to be productive and find another reason for doing their job. Nobody wants to lose their job.
I would LOVE to have some method of identifying everyone who really wanted to fuck over America. Or everyone that transported too much explosives. Or tried to make Anthrax. But the people that are trying to get the powers to do such things simply cannot be trusted with said power.
Because while certain immigration and certain drugs are a moderately bad thing, there is no fucking way I'm letting these piddly little problems justify the transformation of the USA into a police state.
I like big buts and I cannot lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a quote walks in with an itty bitty case
And conjunction in your face
you get SPRUNG
Well it's good for him then that he's a business suit rather than an engineer. Do you know anything about Google?
Hmmmm, those three groups are still from different fields; Politics, business, and technology. All three are forced to dable in each other's territory, but while Page and Brin would have more to say on the tech side, they wouldn't necessarily have anything more to say on politics.