If you have to censor some from speaking out about science for fear of the scrutiny maybe your science isn't really science at all. Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard. I know that there will be those who will try to mock you but the science is the truth in and of itself, not a side effect of your belief in the science.
This basically sums up the postmodern approach to science. When all truth is relative, then science itself has no basis for an exalted place in the hierarchy of rationality. With nothing to "prove" itself except itself, science becomes a rolling definition of "what works for me, today." From there, it's a small step to seeing science as a means, not an end... and specifically: a means of enacting social change.
Seriously, I've lived in San Diego, CA all my life and people who move here often describe it as a "really big small town". All I know is that large ultra-urban megalopolices like LA scare the crap out of me. I'd take a more relaxed environment with good weather, beautiful landscapes, and all the essential services any day.
Well, I'd argue that its pretty well established that women can't compete in raw strength to the same level as men, so in many athletic fields they can't.
I'd say that's inaccurate, too. It would be more accurate to say that the top end of all women can't reach the level of raw strength as that of the top end of all men. There are many women who are stronger and faster than a number of men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence - variation (standard deviation) is higher in males than in females across a number of different measurement categories, including (presumably) factors that lead to any posited mathematical ability. This has been put forth to explain the "drop-off" effect in any number of fields.
Been there, done that. Apple (once again) had a great implementation of an alternative technology, that it finally abandoned when it didn't feel like fighting any more.
Open Transport (the PPC stack used in the Classic Mac OS) was fast, efficient, and cool. And based on the STREAMS methodology, the only real competition to Berkeley Sockets.
But why invest in all that bandwidth and hosting when there's a free, available, willing, and WILDLY POPULAR alternative already here? C'mon.
Why? Because Youtube isn't free. It's being paid for by advertisers. There's a big difference between a privately-funded innaugural ball (for example) and a State Dinner.
For all talk you see on Slashdot of separating public/private spheres, it seems like those principles are going out the window here.
There are laws about government-run websites; that's why.
The original was indeed just a Hypercard stack. And, if I recall, Riven as well was done solely with HC and Quicktime (its fundamental difference was with the quality of the images, rendering, and QT/audio integration). Both of those were built by Cyan.
Myst III: Exile was done by (now defunct) Presto Studios under license (and with consulting by Cyan). I'm not sure what technology they used, but it allowed for full 3d-look at the node points. Kind of QTVR-ish, but not using that.
All three of those (along with RealMyst, a reimplementation of Myst built with their new-purchased plasma engine, as someone wrote above) are playable on GameTap, if you're interested.
Myst IV: Revelation, was built by Ubisoft (under license again) up in Canada. It's actually what I would consider to be the pinnacle of the pre-rendered+interaction+cinematics style of content creation. Absolutely beautiful interaction, and if it weren't for some bone-headed production design concepts (super-annoying intro puzzle before the story even starts, unfathomably lame post-climax concerns, Peter Gabriel integration in a hard-to-swallow way) it would be the perfect realization of how Cyan was originally trying to portray the interaction back in the late '80s, early '90s.
Myst V was built from pieces of work that was going to be introduced (slowly) into Myst Online. The content was designed around the realtime engine, so it's not pre-rendered... you're basically playing a single-player version of settings from the MMO. (They had to modify camera angles to ensure that you "the player" is never visible from any of the third-person shots, for example.) There were a few nifty changes, though. Like pre-filmed recordings of faces integrated seamlessly onto 3d-rendered bodies to make for a more realistic interaction with them. I wish LoTRO or someone else would do that!
Although a probably a sound business decision at the time, since Uru Live was dead and not being funded, and Cyan had only one option for its continued funding - using content it had already basically created; retooling and releasing Uru Live content into Myst V really doomed the revitalized version of the Myst Online project from the start. Gametap was only going to fund it for a year to see how interest/growth went. However, combined with license issues that required Cyan to replace the physics engine, virtually all of the "continuing story" that Cyan had planned out for the first year or two of operation had already been seen by the population -- it wasn't "new".
If the number of locations in Myst V, along with the story revelation that went along with them, had been implemented during the first year of the GameTap-hosted Myst Online, it would have succeeded. While Cyan was building interest and continuing the plot, they would have had the time and resources to develop new ages and extend things. They had to spend so much time retooling existing content, which wasn't 'new' for the players, with so little staffing, that it became a glorified chat room once again.
They did the best they could, I think. The design flaws and philosophical issues behind the Uru Live concept would have worked themselves out if they'd been able to have a solid year of strategizing about the long-term story. But they didn't. We got very powerful individual episodes, but not a clear sense of what our purpose was any more.
Side note: Was anyone present for the death of Willow? That was harsh, and something I doubt any other company would have done. Without NPCs, all of the story characters were under live dev. control. They introduced the daughter of one of the characters, had her interacting and chatting with the population over a period of months in public areas, and then had her die an ugly, "off-stage" death, yet with live communications over a global communication (text) channel after a wall collapse trapped her in with, well, something we'd thought we could trust. That was a 10 hour trip through emotional hell as the "restoration staff" were drilling, trying to re
I'd give you mod-points, but instead I can only give you props.
That's exactly what I thought when I first read it. "Yay. Another pretentious whiner who boasts about how above television he is and then realizes that there are some events where being plugged in to the popular culture is useful."
Break down and get cable, dolt.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
on
The Walking House
·
· Score: 1
Note to artists.. world != you..
fucking self centred assholes..
Good luck convincing postmodern artists of that, though.... *sigh*
Bush ran on a completely different platform than what he actually did while in office. How do you know that Gore wouldn't have done the same thing?
If Bush would have implemented a lot of what he talked about when he campaigned we wouldn't be in the situation we are now. However, you can say that about almost every President elected in the last century.
Actually, for the first nine months Bush pretty much governed exactly how he'd campaigned. He worked for bipartisanship, and passed lots of squishy, bipartisan, "compassionate conservatism" packages, handled the embryonic stem-cell research funding issue in a matter-of-fact, middle of the road manner, and more or less played things mildly.
Then 9/11 happened.
The larger issue, which the left doesn't seem to comprehend, is that the reason Bush changed was because the WORLD changed. After 9/11, the official US defensive posture changed, among quite a number of other things. Bush didn't believe that Nation-building was important before 9/11. Then 9/11 happened and he felt we should kill two birds with one stone and engage in Nation-building in Iraq.
That's not a contradiction, that's changing in response to events and not being "stubborn", which people famously call him.
Possibly, but at least Biden gives the impression of understanding the constitution. It's not a lot if you want to lead a country, but a basic understanding of the law is kind of vital, I think.
Indeed it is. That's why Biden scares me more than Palin does.
Seriously though, do you really want the only scientific research to be going on sponsored by whatever makes profit?
Dude... No one's stopping you from setting up a charity to help fund profitless research. Then you can pick and choose which projects get funded and you don't have an inefficient, bloated government bureaucracy to get in the way, either. Get a couple million friends to donate and there you go!
What's that? You don't have a couple million friends? So... what? Does that give you the right to take my money and appropriate it for your selfish desires?
Lack of IPv4 embedding in IPv6 has to rank as one of the dumbest decisions of all time. It reminds me of that "anti-spam proposal evaluation worksheet" that floats around in the comments here from time to time.
Your plan fails because it: [X] Demands immediate and total cooperation from everyone at once.
I wonder how long before people in possession of scary "hacking software and equipment" are subjected to similar intrusions? Welcome to the NewUSA, where all knowledge is classified.
Been there, done that! One of the resource teachers at my junior high school confiscated my copy of ResEdit back in the day...
Don't forget, the good governator is probably payed by that system too and you know HIS pay ain't going down.
The Governator is getting paid an annual salary of $1 a year. If his pay went down any further you'd probably end up with a divide by zero error somewhere.
It seems there is an allegation of tampering that no one seems to be able to prove or disprove. Regardsless of who won or should have won, that fact alone should give anyone pause when it comes to voting by machine. With hand marked ballots counted by hand, there will be a representative of a party of my own conviction at most polling stations, who can tell me with conviction: "No tampering has taken place here". When votes are counted by hands in the presence of representatives of all partirs, I can be pretty sure that there is no widespread tampering, without having to take any expert's word for it.
Yeah, you know... how we used to do it? Before the liberals got all bent out of shape about hanging chads and demanding that (for better or for worse) Change Happen?
This is one instance where I would have loved to stand athwart history and yell "Stop". Alas, the solution of a problem is often taken to be "throw hardware at it". The proper solution rarely is. *
Do you talk to anyone overseas on the telephone? Your calls could be monitored at any time without a warrant thanks to this bill. You as an American citizen have effectively had your right against unreasonable search and seizure taken away from you just because you want to communicate with someone outside of our borders.
This has ALWAYS been the case. FISA originally came about in '78. For the 200 years before that, any communications that crossed the national border was free for inspection for any (or no) reason whatsoever by US Customs/Border Patrol. This not only included postal mail, but telecommunications as well (once the technology was present). And if the US thought there was reason enough to monitor something, chances are pretty damn high the communication was opened (postal) or tapped (phone) by the other country's custom's or security services too.
No FISA needed. No special authorization needed... it was built into the Constitution long before the FISA law's authors were born.
The whole controversy here revolves:
a) Bush (and others) feel that if your phone call is tapped or you're otherwise communicating internationally with a known/suspected terrorist, the Federal government is within its bounds to tap your other phone calls, as well.
and b) also claiming that to whatever extent FISA purports to regulate this action or these activities, it cannot override an authorization stemming from the Constitution (Congress can't pass a bill to alter the constitutional powers, it has to amend it itself)
and also c) given that tons of the world's traffic routes through US territory, it should be able to examine that traffic by virtue of it crossing national borders (ie, Canadian calls someone in Dubai and the call goes through AT&T's NJ station).
So no. Aruging that FISA does not apply does not abrogate your 4th amendment rights. It's very clear that 4th amendment rights DO NOT APPLY to international communication, especially international communication with declared enemies. If you want to debate whether (a) falls naturally out of the sentence above this one, then fine; let's do so.
But leave the hyperbole at home. The Feds don't give a sh*t about your phone calls to your grandmother. Worrying about abuse is one thing, claiming that something isn't authorized in the first place is another.
If something is down, you've got 140 characters or so to tell me about it. If it takes more than that, it's either not serious enough to make me care about, or it's serious enough for you to call me about.
Either way I'm fine with my LG 10000 Voyager, and personal laptop to remote in when travelling if needed beyond that.
They day I have a blackberry is they day I've sold my soul (and/or am making more... heh).
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
With all due respect, what planet are you on? Gore Vidalpia?
The sanctions were definitely *not* working, in that most of the Oil-for-Food funds were being siphoned off for Saddam's personal use while his people starved. Containing? If you mean, "wasn't invading any other countries", perhaps.... but he was about as contained as a mob boss in a medium security jail cell, already directing and planning his activities/revenge by phone for when he gets out.
The evidence for this was apparent, but became even more convincing once the invasion had occurred and we saw how much corruption there actually was in the Oil-for-Food program. Thanks France.
In addition, the "containment" was being performed at the hest of the US Military, who'd every so often have to blow up an Anti-aircraft gun that locked onto them in the No-Fly zones (where Saddam was "contained" from gassing his domestic enemies). Each and every one of those incidents was adequate reason to throw out the armistice and resume hostilities against Iraq, since they were all violations of the negotiated agreements.
The WMD program was a red herring. Despite the pre-existing resolutions that allowed the use of force against Saddam, the US (or UK) felt the need to get political cover for finding a reason to go after Saddam *now*, since the general public and random kleptocracies out there didn't understand that our defensive posture had changed after 9/11. They bet that Iraq had WMD, and so used that as the focal point. Bad call... but if they'd used the war crimes against the Kurds, no-fly incidents, or Oil-for-Food corruption as the focal points instead no one would be complaining today (for that).
...its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
If you're a bona-fide pacifist, fine. Otherwise, there's a moral difference between good and evil in human actions, and if you can't tell the difference then I pity you. And your students.
Yes, they are terrorist tools. Of course, so are shovels. The crime is in how they're being used, not necessarily the technology itself.
That being said, when export laws (presuming they were effective) were reduced this was a "known possibility"... that the Bad Guys were going to get access to the encryption tech and make it harder for the Good Guys (that's us) to track them down. The tech industry/open-source/software-wants-to-be-free movement, collectively, needs to understand, accept, and acknowledge that.
The price for idealism is paid in realism dollars, FYI.
With there finally being a nice Javascript implementation that cleanly and efficiently sends to bytecode, I'm wondering if the dynamically-typed-specs in the Parrotcode project could be of some assistance. The ECMAscript implementation they're already working on still has a long way to go, and this would be one way to help consolidate development efforts -- plus get some additional motivation behind both projects.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have to censor some from speaking out about science for fear of the scrutiny maybe your science isn't really science at all. Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard. I know that there will be those who will try to mock you but the science is the truth in and of itself, not a side effect of your belief in the science.
This basically sums up the postmodern approach to science. When all truth is relative, then science itself has no basis for an exalted place in the hierarchy of rationality. With nothing to "prove" itself except itself, science becomes a rolling definition of "what works for me, today." From there, it's a small step to seeing science as a means, not an end... and specifically: a means of enacting social change.
Presto. :/
New Zealand suffers from small town mentality.
That might not be a bug... it could be a feature.
Seriously, I've lived in San Diego, CA all my life and people who move here often describe it as a "really big small town". All I know is that large ultra-urban megalopolices like LA scare the crap out of me. I'd take a more relaxed environment with good weather, beautiful landscapes, and all the essential services any day.
Well, I'd argue that its pretty well established that women can't compete in raw strength to the same level as men, so in many athletic fields they can't.
I'd say that's inaccurate, too. It would be more accurate to say that the top end of all women can't reach the level of raw strength as that of the top end of all men. There are many women who are stronger and faster than a number of men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence - variation (standard deviation) is higher in males than in females across a number of different measurement categories, including (presumably) factors that lead to any posited mathematical ability. This has been put forth to explain the "drop-off" effect in any number of fields.
See also http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121691806472381521.html and of course, The Bell Curve...
Been there, done that. Apple (once again) had a great implementation of an alternative technology, that it finally abandoned when it didn't feel like fighting any more.
Open Transport (the PPC stack used in the Classic Mac OS) was fast, efficient, and cool. And based on the STREAMS methodology, the only real competition to Berkeley Sockets.
Choice is good, mmmkay?
Anyone running (and *using*) SELinux might disagree with ya there :)
All these worlds are belong to you. Except Europa. Attempt no landings there, every 'ZIG'!!
But why invest in all that bandwidth and hosting when there's a free, available, willing, and WILDLY POPULAR alternative already here? C'mon.
Why? Because Youtube isn't free. It's being paid for by advertisers. There's a big difference between a privately-funded innaugural ball (for example) and a State Dinner.
For all talk you see on Slashdot of separating public/private spheres, it seems like those principles are going out the window here.
There are laws about government-run websites; that's why.
And through our sheer force of will, you'll all have to keep knowledge of it too. haha. Pax Americana ftw.
The original was indeed just a Hypercard stack. And, if I recall, Riven as well was done solely with HC and Quicktime (its fundamental difference was with the quality of the images, rendering, and QT/audio integration). Both of those were built by Cyan.
Myst III: Exile was done by (now defunct) Presto Studios under license (and with consulting by Cyan). I'm not sure what technology they used, but it allowed for full 3d-look at the node points. Kind of QTVR-ish, but not using that.
All three of those (along with RealMyst, a reimplementation of Myst built with their new-purchased plasma engine, as someone wrote above) are playable on GameTap, if you're interested.
Myst IV: Revelation, was built by Ubisoft (under license again) up in Canada. It's actually what I would consider to be the pinnacle of the pre-rendered+interaction+cinematics style of content creation. Absolutely beautiful interaction, and if it weren't for some bone-headed production design concepts (super-annoying intro puzzle before the story even starts, unfathomably lame post-climax concerns, Peter Gabriel integration in a hard-to-swallow way) it would be the perfect realization of how Cyan was originally trying to portray the interaction back in the late '80s, early '90s.
Myst V was built from pieces of work that was going to be introduced (slowly) into Myst Online. The content was designed around the realtime engine, so it's not pre-rendered... you're basically playing a single-player version of settings from the MMO. (They had to modify camera angles to ensure that you "the player" is never visible from any of the third-person shots, for example.) There were a few nifty changes, though. Like pre-filmed recordings of faces integrated seamlessly onto 3d-rendered bodies to make for a more realistic interaction with them. I wish LoTRO or someone else would do that!
Although a probably a sound business decision at the time, since Uru Live was dead and not being funded, and Cyan had only one option for its continued funding - using content it had already basically created; retooling and releasing Uru Live content into Myst V really doomed the revitalized version of the Myst Online project from the start. Gametap was only going to fund it for a year to see how interest/growth went. However, combined with license issues that required Cyan to replace the physics engine, virtually all of the "continuing story" that Cyan had planned out for the first year or two of operation had already been seen by the population -- it wasn't "new".
If the number of locations in Myst V, along with the story revelation that went along with them, had been implemented during the first year of the GameTap-hosted Myst Online, it would have succeeded. While Cyan was building interest and continuing the plot, they would have had the time and resources to develop new ages and extend things. They had to spend so much time retooling existing content, which wasn't 'new' for the players, with so little staffing, that it became a glorified chat room once again.
They did the best they could, I think. The design flaws and philosophical issues behind the Uru Live concept would have worked themselves out if they'd been able to have a solid year of strategizing about the long-term story. But they didn't. We got very powerful individual episodes, but not a clear sense of what our purpose was any more.
Side note: Was anyone present for the death of Willow? That was harsh, and something I doubt any other company would have done. Without NPCs, all of the story characters were under live dev. control. They introduced the daughter of one of the characters, had her interacting and chatting with the population over a period of months in public areas, and then had her die an ugly, "off-stage" death, yet with live communications over a global communication (text) channel after a wall collapse trapped her in with, well, something we'd thought we could trust. That was a 10 hour trip through emotional hell as the "restoration staff" were drilling, trying to re
I'd give you mod-points, but instead I can only give you props.
That's exactly what I thought when I first read it. "Yay. Another pretentious whiner who boasts about how above television he is and then realizes that there are some events where being plugged in to the popular culture is useful."
Break down and get cable, dolt.
Note to artists.. world != you..
fucking self centred assholes..
Good luck convincing postmodern artists of that, though.... *sigh*
Data: If you had an off switch, Doctor, would you not keep it a secret?
Bush ran on a completely different platform than what he actually did while in office. How do you know that Gore wouldn't have done the same thing?
If Bush would have implemented a lot of what he talked about when he campaigned we wouldn't be in the situation we are now. However, you can say that about almost every President elected in the last century.
Actually, for the first nine months Bush pretty much governed exactly how he'd campaigned. He worked for bipartisanship, and passed lots of squishy, bipartisan, "compassionate conservatism" packages, handled the embryonic stem-cell research funding issue in a matter-of-fact, middle of the road manner, and more or less played things mildly.
Then 9/11 happened.
The larger issue, which the left doesn't seem to comprehend, is that the reason Bush changed was because the WORLD changed. After 9/11, the official US defensive posture changed, among quite a number of other things. Bush didn't believe that Nation-building was important before 9/11. Then 9/11 happened and he felt we should kill two birds with one stone and engage in Nation-building in Iraq.
That's not a contradiction, that's changing in response to events and not being "stubborn", which people famously call him.
Indeed it is. That's why Biden scares me more than Palin does.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/10/5/104254/995
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/10/4/12510/0071
Truer words have never been spoken here...
Seriously though, do you really want the only scientific research to be going on sponsored by whatever makes profit?
Dude... No one's stopping you from setting up a charity to help fund profitless research. Then you can pick and choose which projects get funded and you don't have an inefficient, bloated government bureaucracy to get in the way, either. Get a couple million friends to donate and there you go!
What's that? You don't have a couple million friends? So... what? Does that give you the right to take my money and appropriate it for your selfish desires?
djb, love him or hate him, called this out years ago...
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
Lack of IPv4 embedding in IPv6 has to rank as one of the dumbest decisions of all time. It reminds me of that "anti-spam proposal evaluation worksheet" that floats around in the comments here from time to time.
Your plan fails because it:
[X] Demands immediate and total cooperation from everyone at once.
I wonder how long before people in possession of scary "hacking software and equipment" are subjected to similar intrusions? Welcome to the NewUSA, where all knowledge is classified.
Been there, done that! One of the resource teachers at my junior high school confiscated my copy of ResEdit back in the day...
Don't forget, the good governator is probably payed by that system too and you know HIS pay ain't going down.
The Governator is getting paid an annual salary of $1 a year. If his pay went down any further you'd probably end up with a divide by zero error somewhere.
It seems there is an allegation of tampering that no one seems to be able to prove or disprove. Regardsless of who won or should have won, that fact alone should give anyone pause when it comes to voting by machine. With hand marked ballots counted by hand, there will be a representative of a party of my own conviction at most polling stations, who can tell me with conviction: "No tampering has taken place here". When votes are counted by hands in the presence of representatives of all partirs, I can be pretty sure that there is no widespread tampering, without having to take any expert's word for it.
Yeah, you know... how we used to do it? Before the liberals got all bent out of shape about hanging chads and demanding that (for better or for worse) Change Happen?
This is one instance where I would have loved to stand athwart history and yell "Stop". Alas, the solution of a problem is often taken to be "throw hardware at it". The proper solution rarely is. *
(The proper solution for 2000 was: grow up.)
Do you talk to anyone overseas on the telephone? Your calls could be monitored at any time without a warrant thanks to this bill. You as an American citizen have effectively had your right against unreasonable search and seizure taken away from you just because you want to communicate with someone outside of our borders.
This has ALWAYS been the case. FISA originally came about in '78. For the 200 years before that, any communications that crossed the national border was free for inspection for any (or no) reason whatsoever by US Customs/Border Patrol. This not only included postal mail, but telecommunications as well (once the technology was present). And if the US thought there was reason enough to monitor something, chances are pretty damn high the communication was opened (postal) or tapped (phone) by the other country's custom's or security services too.
No FISA needed. No special authorization needed... it was built into the Constitution long before the FISA law's authors were born.
The whole controversy here revolves:
a) Bush (and others) feel that if your phone call is tapped or you're otherwise communicating internationally with a known/suspected terrorist, the Federal government is within its bounds to tap your other phone calls, as well.
and b) also claiming that to whatever extent FISA purports to regulate this action or these activities, it cannot override an authorization stemming from the Constitution (Congress can't pass a bill to alter the constitutional powers, it has to amend it itself)
and also c) given that tons of the world's traffic routes through US territory, it should be able to examine that traffic by virtue of it crossing national borders (ie, Canadian calls someone in Dubai and the call goes through AT&T's NJ station).
So no. Aruging that FISA does not apply does not abrogate your 4th amendment rights. It's very clear that 4th amendment rights DO NOT APPLY to international communication, especially international communication with declared enemies. If you want to debate whether (a) falls naturally out of the sentence above this one, then fine; let's do so.
But leave the hyperbole at home. The Feds don't give a sh*t about your phone calls to your grandmother. Worrying about abuse is one thing, claiming that something isn't authorized in the first place is another.
If something is down, you've got 140 characters or so to tell me about it. If it takes more than that, it's either not serious enough to make me care about, or it's serious enough for you to call me about.
Either way I'm fine with my LG 10000 Voyager, and personal laptop to remote in when travelling if needed beyond that.
They day I have a blackberry is they day I've sold my soul (and/or am making more ... heh).
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
With all due respect, what planet are you on? Gore Vidalpia?
The sanctions were definitely *not* working, in that most of the Oil-for-Food funds were being siphoned off for Saddam's personal use while his people starved. Containing? If you mean, "wasn't invading any other countries", perhaps.... but he was about as contained as a mob boss in a medium security jail cell, already directing and planning his activities/revenge by phone for when he gets out.
The evidence for this was apparent, but became even more convincing once the invasion had occurred and we saw how much corruption there actually was in the Oil-for-Food program. Thanks France.
In addition, the "containment" was being performed at the hest of the US Military, who'd every so often have to blow up an Anti-aircraft gun that locked onto them in the No-Fly zones (where Saddam was "contained" from gassing his domestic enemies). Each and every one of those incidents was adequate reason to throw out the armistice and resume hostilities against Iraq, since they were all violations of the negotiated agreements.
The WMD program was a red herring. Despite the pre-existing resolutions that allowed the use of force against Saddam, the US (or UK) felt the need to get political cover for finding a reason to go after Saddam *now*, since the general public and random kleptocracies out there didn't understand that our defensive posture had changed after 9/11. They bet that Iraq had WMD, and so used that as the focal point. Bad call... but if they'd used the war crimes against the Kurds, no-fly incidents, or Oil-for-Food corruption as the focal points instead no one would be complaining today (for that).
...its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
If you're a bona-fide pacifist, fine. Otherwise, there's a moral difference between good and evil in human actions, and if you can't tell the difference then I pity you. And your students.
Uh oh. PGP is a terrorist tool. We better outlaw it!!! Or at least investigate anyone who uses it.
Distributed content networks are a terrorist tool. We better spend money counteracting such activity!!!
Looks like someone's been paying attention.
Yes, they are terrorist tools. Of course, so are shovels. The crime is in how they're being used, not necessarily the technology itself.
That being said, when export laws (presuming they were effective) were reduced this was a "known possibility"... that the Bad Guys were going to get access to the encryption tech and make it harder for the Good Guys (that's us) to track them down. The tech industry/open-source/software-wants-to-be-free movement, collectively, needs to understand, accept, and acknowledge that.
The price for idealism is paid in realism dollars, FYI.
With there finally being a nice Javascript implementation that cleanly and efficiently sends to bytecode, I'm wondering if the dynamically-typed-specs in the Parrotcode project could be of some assistance. The ECMAscript implementation they're already working on still has a long way to go, and this would be one way to help consolidate development efforts -- plus get some additional motivation behind both projects.