I would gladly pay more for the freedom of others to make poor personal choices. Freedom isn't free.
I thought of something else regarding this...
It is fine that you're willing to pay more for that freedom. What happens when I don't want to? Does your freedom override mine? Is your freedom "better" than mine?
I don't want to and am not willing to pay for the poor health choices of others. Why should I?
It used to be, but the Army no longer trains that many pilots, they expect them to go career now. It used to be that you could do a 4 year enlistment as a warrant officer, but the cost to train those pilots is over a million dollars, so they want career pilots now.
Civilian pilot schools now train about 2/3 of the helicopter pilots in this country, I was one of them. I also ended up with my fixed-wing ratings and I did that for awhile, but my real love is helicopters.
Now I'm too old (without a waiver and those are harder to get these days) so that ship has sailed... but I did look into it back in 2001...
Windows 7 will run on almost anything built in the past 8 years, anything older than that... well, that is a small percentage of the current market...
Windows 8 does have the Metro problem, I agree with that... I suspect that will get fixed with Windows 9 once they have a new CEO in place...
Frankly, if your computer is over 8 years old, it is time to get something newer, they really don't cost that much, even a 3 year old used Dell is going to be multiple times faster than a 10 year old machine, and those can be had for $150 on eBay. They come with the Windows COA right on them, so do a clean reinstall of Windows (if it hasn't been done already) and off you go. It will have Vista or 7 on it, but even Vista with SP2 is fine these days.
The fact is, this isn't the year of the Linux desktop, it wasn't 5 years ago and it isn't going to be 5 years from now. The window (no pun intended) for that to happen came and went a long time ago.
We can debate semantics all you want, but the fact is that I was responding to the point that Jimmy Carter changed the CIA rules to prevent us from funding such people.
The question comes back to, "do we want to provide money, support, employment, protection, etc. to someone who has to do, or has done, evil things, to prevent a larger evil?"
BTW, if you say that the CIA doesn't actually insert officers into "big bad terrorist groups", then for sure other countries do. After all, we recently caught a dozen Russians who had been living long term in the US for just that reason.
Frankly, if someone in the US government *isn't* inserting agents into other countries, then they should be ashamed.
That is ultimately a question that challenges all intelligence organization at some point.
Example:
CIA officer has worked his way into "big bad terrorist organization". As a final test, they give him a gun and order him to shoot an innocent 10 year old girl.
Does he? Does he refuse?
Is it acceptable for a CIA officer (or other government paid employee) to execute an innocent person as part of his/her undercover role?
If not, it would be pretty easy to weed out such people. If so, do we want to be doing that? Is it a better option than the NSA?
That is true, however I wasn't looking to fly the AH-64, actually I have friends that used to and frankly it looks nice and has its upsides, but that requires more extensive training than I would have wanted to do.
Frankly, not having a military background, I wouldn't expect to be in a combat role, I know how to shoot a M-16, but that doesn't make me a soldier. What I can do is fly and they always need someone to fly something somewhere and rarely do they actually get shot at.
I have experience flying heavy aircraft (about 3,000 hours total flight time, about 1,000 in heavies (over 12,500lbs), the cost to teach me to fly the Blackhawk would be a small fraction of what it costs them to train someone from scratch. But they aren't interested, they want me to go through the whole program and join up for 8 years. (they no longer do 4 year enlistments for pilots due to the cost of training, or they weren't back then).
That's ok, life moves on, maybe they do it the way they do for a reason, or maybe they are just stuck in their ways, I really don't know.
Yes, but the NSA's problem, in all fairness, is that properly written 256-bit encryption is uncrackable. Many people have made jokes saying, "it is safe, unless the NSA wants in.", but the truth is, without an exploit, proper encryption is uncrackable and will remain so for a very long time.
There are evil people in the world that they want to listen to, the problem is that the good people use the same tools as the evil people.
Do those freedoms envisioned back when the "west" was still frontier and mail took 3 months to reach Europe still work in a world of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological weapons? Does it work in a world of suicide bombers, high explosives, and a world in which you can reach any major city in less than 24 hours?
Maybe, but I think it is a conversation worth having, and we haven't had it yet. Instead we have a government that has done a lot of things "for our own good" without actually having Americans be part of the conversation.
I would respect a President more who said, "We need an agency who can spy and record everything for national security. Their job is not to police the nations many laws, it isn't in their charter, so even if they find you cheating on your taxes, they won't tell the IRS. Their sole job is to prevent major threats against the United States from enemies who would seek to destroy our way of life".
You might agree or disagree with that, but I'd hope you could at least respect a man who would just man up and say it, rather than use the weezle words that the current (and past POTUS) have done.
I'm quite sure there were people in 1936 in Germany that saw exactly what Hitler was doing, but they were well past the point of being able to do something about it.
Only the military really had the power to stop him, and they were way too stuck in "obedience mode" for a very long time.
There were several attempts before 1944, and even one in 1939 6 months before the war to remove Hitler, but frankly he simply had too much support and too many Generals were "duty-bound" to support their leader.
Frankly, I give the military in Egypt credit for removing Morsi, that was risky after he was elected, but he was another Hitler in the making (minus the 1st class military machine) in terms of opression. They are equally right to not try and rule themselves.
I was asked the other day what I thought it would take for another civil war in the US. Frankly, I don't think we could do it, the US military is far too powerful. What is more likely is a coup. Which I don't mind, so long as the military doesn't try to run things, if they threw out the entire Congress and President and SCOTUS, then said, "ok, new elections in 6 months, no one who has held these offices may run again, otherwise, have at it".
The other change? SCOTUS needs to be elected by the people to 10 year terms (serve once, no reelections), the POTUS needs to be elected by popular vote. Congress gets up to 12 years, then out they go.
No? how about doing in 3 clicks what takes Windows 12? Or not having to reboot once a month?
That isn't enough of a reason to get people to move. The average person turns on their computer and opens IE, perhaps Quicken, plays a few games, and maybe opens Office to get some work done. They neither know nor care about those differences.
Linux is superior in every way.
Lets say that is true for a minute... from a technical point of view...
The problem is that it isn't superior in the ways that matter to the average user. The programs that the average user already knows are Windows programs and they have little interest in buying or learning new programs, even if they are free. I've used OpenOffice, it is nice, but it won't replace MS Office any time soon.
The benefits you see are only visible to tech people, and we're outnumbered 100 to 1 by Joe Consumer.
If Linux was so wonderful, then it would have gained some traction, but it hasn't for many reasons beyond the technical. Yes, for a long time MS used its position to prevent anyone else from coming along, that mattered more back in the Win 3.1 and Win 95 days, but as I said, once Windows XP came out, it largely no longer mattered, XP was "good enough" for most people.
With Windows 7, they have further cemented that place, for any driver issues that XP ever had, 7 fixed most of them. I used to keep a USB stick with drivers for almost everything I had to support with me whenever I was working on XP boxes. With 7, I have stopped bothering because the vast majority of stuff auto installs without a hitch (or a reboot).
XP required a lot of rebooting, 7 requires a lot less. Still some, but for the average user it just isn't an issue.
There is a reason Dell and the like stopped offering Linux, it was more trouble than it was worth. There is a reason Linux has about 1% marketshare on desktops, people like you use it, but almost no one else does.
And that's just the way it is... promoting technical superiority won't change that...
Turning GPS service "off" is just a software command that looks nice, do you really think you can disable it, short of ripping the GPS chip out of the phone?
If this is a concern of yours, don't have a cell phone, that is, frankly, your only real option. Everything else is just wishful thinking.
It isn't about the flavor of Android that you install, my understanding is that you can't disable the E911 tracking built into cell phones these days, it is hardwired in the radio interface layer (RIL) and can't be disabled, even with a fresh format and wipe, it is a legal requirement that any device connected to cell phone services must have it or the carrier can be fined.
Because humans are funny emotional creatures. At a subconscious level they don't mind being tracked, I suspect that people are "aware" that lots of data is collected about them...
But they don't want to be explicitly told about it...
People like being lied too, they want to hear what they want to hear, not the truth.
Or have you not watched who the people elect year after year?:)
The internet changed all of that. Acquiring knowledge now costs such a tiny, tiny amount, that we can afford to give it away to every single member of the human race...
Providing the raw data of knowledge isn't expensive, providing a good Internet connection and a useful computer can be, in many parts of the world they are just not wired for it. Even more, there are a billion people without electricity or running water, they have more pressing issues than access to the Internet.
What does that say about us, as a people?
That we are human beings, and humans have something called "human nature". It won't change just because 3 billion people can read Wikipedia.
The infrastructure doesn't cost money, it costs whatever we could have built instead of the infrastructure.
"Money" is just an easy way to keep track of the value of "stuff", we could go back to barter and skip "money". We could dump money and go back to using gold and silver, but frankly money works better in the modern world than those systems.
Now, if your argument that providing Internet access to a billion people is more useful than another aircraft carrier, fair enough. Except that those billion people would much prefer running water and working toilets first.
There will be another 9/11. Another Snowden. Another Pearl Harbor. These things cannot be prevented
Actually, you don't know that. Frankly, there have been a number of things that have happened in the past 50 years that could have gone the other way, the Cuban Missile Crisis stands out in my mind, but there are others. And we don't know about more recent events.
Frankly, while it is true that we could spend that money on drunk-driving (as you say) and get a "known" result, the fact is that drunk-driving is never going to threaten the existence of the United States of America. Some terrorist with a nuclear weapon might, and it is those types of threats that they are trying to catch.
I do agree that they are throwing out, perhaps too big a dragnet, trying to catch everything, but seeing far too little. More human intel, less computer intel, would be helpful, but frankly I don't really know since I don't work there and I'm not in those meetings.
Let me give you an example...
Obama ran in 2008 on closing the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay. It was a major campaign promise. Still hasn't been closed 5 years later. Why?
Candidate Obama looked at the information in 2008 just like you do and said, "this isn't America, this isn't what we stand for, I'll close this".
President Obama in 2009 sits down on Jan 20th and the CIA sits down and shows him the "notebook" with all the bits of info that will never become public. They show him why he can't do what he promised to do. Now he has more information, know he knows what they really do, and thus it is still open.
As much as he "wants" to close it, he now knows why he can't. Frankly, the average person doesn't want to know what the government does in their name, perhaps killing innocent people in order to keep us safe. It isn't a perfect system, but there really are bad people in the world who want to kill us, what would you suggest doing about that?
I can switch to Bing, or Yahoo, or whatever... I can't switch to the "other" American Government when I'm unhappy with the one that I have.
What if we divided America in half, right down the center. Each side created a "new Federal Government" for their half and competed for citizens by offering a government that worked for them. Everyone was a "citizen" of both countries and could freely travel to either side, if one side wanted to attract more people, they would have to offer a better government.
In all fairness, my "tracking collar" in the form of my Samsung Galaxy S4 also provides useful features that I like. So it isn't just a one way street, I also get a device that is a pretty powerful computer.
That is the "Sight" video, well worth watching. Give it 20 years, half of us will embed these chips in our eyes to allow us to do what you see in the video. And of course this will make us permanently traceable by the government, only a few will figure out how to encrypt it and hide, most will just became data packets for the NSA.
And you're right, people will actually pay for that.:) But it is pretty cool and people will want that, so there you go, our future.
If I had anything to do that I really wanted to keep secret from the government, I sure wouldn't use any electronic form of payment.
But the funny thing is, I doubt that cash will remain the way it is now for very long. Give it 20 years, we'll probably have government traceable credit chips to replace cash.
It will be in the name of preventing drug dealers and criminals and money laundering and all that, but it will also make it very hard to do anything financial that the government can't detect.
While I get what you're saying, another arguement could be made that we're already past that point.
The truth is, way, way too many things are illegal, and not just minor illegal, but felonies.
You're right, everyone breaks some law, somewhere. There is a saying, "it's a poor cop who can't find something to write you a ticket for".
So the fact is, phones or no phones, privacy or no privacy, the real problem is the endless laws for anything and everything. If we don't get that turned back, nothing else will matter.
Sooner or later, we'll all get embedded with chips, the "features" will be worth it to most people. You or I might not, our parents won't, but the next generation will and won't see anything wrong with it.
Phones, technology, privacy, tracking, that isn't the issue, the issue is the power we have given government over our lives in the form of making a million things illegal. If we don't change that, it won't matter.
Why do you think the big push was made to give everyone a VISA or MC debit card? It provides the banks with an incredible amount of information about you that they can then sell.
Given that my debt cards pay me rewards and I pay them nothing, frankly I don't mind, it isn't like my trips to Walmart are secret or anything.
Another reason why Google should want their Wallet to become used everywhere. Imagine the treasure trove of information if they don't even have to get into the V/MC business, yet can see "everything" you buy because you use your phone as a wallet.
Frankly, for them to have that much information about me, I'd like the phone for free.:)
If the police order to you have a vehicle moved, you need to call the insurance company and inform them of that. Their own wishes aside, they don't need to create more expense and liability by leaving it there.
Not sure if "campus police" qualify for that however.
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I would gladly pay more for the freedom of others to make poor personal choices. Freedom isn't free.
I thought of something else regarding this...
It is fine that you're willing to pay more for that freedom. What happens when I don't want to? Does your freedom override mine? Is your freedom "better" than mine?
I don't want to and am not willing to pay for the poor health choices of others. Why should I?
Many people throughout history had such views. For a time, the Native Americans held such views, until they were overrun by the white man from Europe.
Native Americans largely believed that you couldn't "own" the land, that you lived with the land, that you respected family, the tribe, nature, etc.
All well and good, until someone comes along who sees it differently and he brings cannon and repeating rifles to fight your bows and arrows.
Civilian pilot schools now train about 2/3 of the helicopter pilots in this country, I was one of them. I also ended up with my fixed-wing ratings and I did that for awhile, but my real love is helicopters.
Now I'm too old (without a waiver and those are harder to get these days) so that ship has sailed... but I did look into it back in 2001...
Windows 8 does have the Metro problem, I agree with that... I suspect that will get fixed with Windows 9 once they have a new CEO in place...
Frankly, if your computer is over 8 years old, it is time to get something newer, they really don't cost that much, even a 3 year old used Dell is going to be multiple times faster than a 10 year old machine, and those can be had for $150 on eBay. They come with the Windows COA right on them, so do a clean reinstall of Windows (if it hasn't been done already) and off you go. It will have Vista or 7 on it, but even Vista with SP2 is fine these days.
The fact is, this isn't the year of the Linux desktop, it wasn't 5 years ago and it isn't going to be 5 years from now. The window (no pun intended) for that to happen came and went a long time ago.
The question comes back to, "do we want to provide money, support, employment, protection, etc. to someone who has to do, or has done, evil things, to prevent a larger evil?"
BTW, if you say that the CIA doesn't actually insert officers into "big bad terrorist groups", then for sure other countries do. After all, we recently caught a dozen Russians who had been living long term in the US for just that reason.
Frankly, if someone in the US government *isn't* inserting agents into other countries, then they should be ashamed.
Dead tree books are doomed, completely and utterly doomed...
It is just a matter of time. We could debate how long that will be, 5 years, 25 years, 50 years, but doomed they are.
Example:
CIA officer has worked his way into "big bad terrorist organization". As a final test, they give him a gun and order him to shoot an innocent 10 year old girl.
Does he? Does he refuse?
Is it acceptable for a CIA officer (or other government paid employee) to execute an innocent person as part of his/her undercover role?
If not, it would be pretty easy to weed out such people. If so, do we want to be doing that? Is it a better option than the NSA?
Frankly, not having a military background, I wouldn't expect to be in a combat role, I know how to shoot a M-16, but that doesn't make me a soldier. What I can do is fly and they always need someone to fly something somewhere and rarely do they actually get shot at.
I have experience flying heavy aircraft (about 3,000 hours total flight time, about 1,000 in heavies (over 12,500lbs), the cost to teach me to fly the Blackhawk would be a small fraction of what it costs them to train someone from scratch. But they aren't interested, they want me to go through the whole program and join up for 8 years. (they no longer do 4 year enlistments for pilots due to the cost of training, or they weren't back then).
That's ok, life moves on, maybe they do it the way they do for a reason, or maybe they are just stuck in their ways, I really don't know.
I'm not saying we *shouldn't* have it, I'm just asking where it actually says it.
Neither of them are offering anything remotely close to what I'd call "reasonable pay" for what they want in return.
They would have to double it to interest me, triple it to get me jumping up and down about it.
They will fill their quota, but that doesn't mean they'll fill it with the best and brightest.
There are evil people in the world that they want to listen to, the problem is that the good people use the same tools as the evil people.
What would you use for a solution?
Maybe, but I think it is a conversation worth having, and we haven't had it yet. Instead we have a government that has done a lot of things "for our own good" without actually having Americans be part of the conversation.
I would respect a President more who said, "We need an agency who can spy and record everything for national security. Their job is not to police the nations many laws, it isn't in their charter, so even if they find you cheating on your taxes, they won't tell the IRS. Their sole job is to prevent major threats against the United States from enemies who would seek to destroy our way of life".
You might agree or disagree with that, but I'd hope you could at least respect a man who would just man up and say it, rather than use the weezle words that the current (and past POTUS) have done.
Only the military really had the power to stop him, and they were way too stuck in "obedience mode" for a very long time.
There were several attempts before 1944, and even one in 1939 6 months before the war to remove Hitler, but frankly he simply had too much support and too many Generals were "duty-bound" to support their leader.
Frankly, I give the military in Egypt credit for removing Morsi, that was risky after he was elected, but he was another Hitler in the making (minus the 1st class military machine) in terms of opression. They are equally right to not try and rule themselves.
I was asked the other day what I thought it would take for another civil war in the US. Frankly, I don't think we could do it, the US military is far too powerful. What is more likely is a coup. Which I don't mind, so long as the military doesn't try to run things, if they threw out the entire Congress and President and SCOTUS, then said, "ok, new elections in 6 months, no one who has held these offices may run again, otherwise, have at it".
The other change? SCOTUS needs to be elected by the people to 10 year terms (serve once, no reelections), the POTUS needs to be elected by popular vote. Congress gets up to 12 years, then out they go.
But our military won't do that. Oh well...
No? how about doing in 3 clicks what takes Windows 12? Or not having to reboot once a month?
That isn't enough of a reason to get people to move. The average person turns on their computer and opens IE, perhaps Quicken, plays a few games, and maybe opens Office to get some work done. They neither know nor care about those differences.
Linux is superior in every way.
Lets say that is true for a minute... from a technical point of view...
The problem is that it isn't superior in the ways that matter to the average user. The programs that the average user already knows are Windows programs and they have little interest in buying or learning new programs, even if they are free. I've used OpenOffice, it is nice, but it won't replace MS Office any time soon.
The benefits you see are only visible to tech people, and we're outnumbered 100 to 1 by Joe Consumer.
If Linux was so wonderful, then it would have gained some traction, but it hasn't for many reasons beyond the technical. Yes, for a long time MS used its position to prevent anyone else from coming along, that mattered more back in the Win 3.1 and Win 95 days, but as I said, once Windows XP came out, it largely no longer mattered, XP was "good enough" for most people.
With Windows 7, they have further cemented that place, for any driver issues that XP ever had, 7 fixed most of them. I used to keep a USB stick with drivers for almost everything I had to support with me whenever I was working on XP boxes. With 7, I have stopped bothering because the vast majority of stuff auto installs without a hitch (or a reboot).
XP required a lot of rebooting, 7 requires a lot less. Still some, but for the average user it just isn't an issue.
There is a reason Dell and the like stopped offering Linux, it was more trouble than it was worth. There is a reason Linux has about 1% marketshare on desktops, people like you use it, but almost no one else does.
And that's just the way it is... promoting technical superiority won't change that...
You can block Google's trackers, same way you block ads.
If this is a concern of yours, don't have a cell phone, that is, frankly, your only real option. Everything else is just wishful thinking.
It isn't about the flavor of Android that you install, my understanding is that you can't disable the E911 tracking built into cell phones these days, it is hardwired in the radio interface layer (RIL) and can't be disabled, even with a fresh format and wipe, it is a legal requirement that any device connected to cell phone services must have it or the carrier can be fined.
But they don't want to be explicitly told about it...
People like being lied too, they want to hear what they want to hear, not the truth.
Or have you not watched who the people elect year after year? :)
The internet changed all of that. Acquiring knowledge now costs such a tiny, tiny amount, that we can afford to give it away to every single member of the human race...
Providing the raw data of knowledge isn't expensive, providing a good Internet connection and a useful computer can be, in many parts of the world they are just not wired for it. Even more, there are a billion people without electricity or running water, they have more pressing issues than access to the Internet.
What does that say about us, as a people?
That we are human beings, and humans have something called "human nature". It won't change just because 3 billion people can read Wikipedia.
The infrastructure doesn't cost money, it costs whatever we could have built instead of the infrastructure.
"Money" is just an easy way to keep track of the value of "stuff", we could go back to barter and skip "money". We could dump money and go back to using gold and silver, but frankly money works better in the modern world than those systems.
Now, if your argument that providing Internet access to a billion people is more useful than another aircraft carrier, fair enough. Except that those billion people would much prefer running water and working toilets first.
There will be another 9/11. Another Snowden. Another Pearl Harbor. These things cannot be prevented
Actually, you don't know that. Frankly, there have been a number of things that have happened in the past 50 years that could have gone the other way, the Cuban Missile Crisis stands out in my mind, but there are others. And we don't know about more recent events.
Frankly, while it is true that we could spend that money on drunk-driving (as you say) and get a "known" result, the fact is that drunk-driving is never going to threaten the existence of the United States of America. Some terrorist with a nuclear weapon might, and it is those types of threats that they are trying to catch.
I do agree that they are throwing out, perhaps too big a dragnet, trying to catch everything, but seeing far too little. More human intel, less computer intel, would be helpful, but frankly I don't really know since I don't work there and I'm not in those meetings.
Let me give you an example...
Obama ran in 2008 on closing the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay. It was a major campaign promise. Still hasn't been closed 5 years later. Why?
Candidate Obama looked at the information in 2008 just like you do and said, "this isn't America, this isn't what we stand for, I'll close this".
President Obama in 2009 sits down on Jan 20th and the CIA sits down and shows him the "notebook" with all the bits of info that will never become public. They show him why he can't do what he promised to do. Now he has more information, know he knows what they really do, and thus it is still open.
As much as he "wants" to close it, he now knows why he can't. Frankly, the average person doesn't want to know what the government does in their name, perhaps killing innocent people in order to keep us safe. It isn't a perfect system, but there really are bad people in the world who want to kill us, what would you suggest doing about that?
I can switch to Bing, or Yahoo, or whatever... I can't switch to the "other" American Government when I'm unhappy with the one that I have.
What if we divided America in half, right down the center. Each side created a "new Federal Government" for their half and competed for citizens by offering a government that worked for them. Everyone was a "citizen" of both countries and could freely travel to either side, if one side wanted to attract more people, they would have to offer a better government.
Competition in government! :)
http://youtu.be/lK_cdkpazjI
That is the "Sight" video, well worth watching. Give it 20 years, half of us will embed these chips in our eyes to allow us to do what you see in the video. And of course this will make us permanently traceable by the government, only a few will figure out how to encrypt it and hide, most will just became data packets for the NSA.
And you're right, people will actually pay for that. :) But it is pretty cool and people will want that, so there you go, our future.
But the funny thing is, I doubt that cash will remain the way it is now for very long. Give it 20 years, we'll probably have government traceable credit chips to replace cash.
It will be in the name of preventing drug dealers and criminals and money laundering and all that, but it will also make it very hard to do anything financial that the government can't detect.
The truth is, way, way too many things are illegal, and not just minor illegal, but felonies.
You're right, everyone breaks some law, somewhere. There is a saying, "it's a poor cop who can't find something to write you a ticket for".
So the fact is, phones or no phones, privacy or no privacy, the real problem is the endless laws for anything and everything. If we don't get that turned back, nothing else will matter.
Sooner or later, we'll all get embedded with chips, the "features" will be worth it to most people. You or I might not, our parents won't, but the next generation will and won't see anything wrong with it.
Phones, technology, privacy, tracking, that isn't the issue, the issue is the power we have given government over our lives in the form of making a million things illegal. If we don't change that, it won't matter.
Why do you think the big push was made to give everyone a VISA or MC debit card? It provides the banks with an incredible amount of information about you that they can then sell.
Given that my debt cards pay me rewards and I pay them nothing, frankly I don't mind, it isn't like my trips to Walmart are secret or anything.
Another reason why Google should want their Wallet to become used everywhere. Imagine the treasure trove of information if they don't even have to get into the V/MC business, yet can see "everything" you buy because you use your phone as a wallet.
Frankly, for them to have that much information about me, I'd like the phone for free. :)
Not sure if "campus police" qualify for that however.