In a case like this, I don't think private notification of the imminent release of a tool is necessarily a good option for someone like Soghoian. It would have been interesting to see the TSA's reaction in that case. My prediction: the FBI would have raided anyway, and we would never have heard about the issue except in an after-the-fact kind of way, with Soghoian having been suitably intimidated into being less public with his claims. The administration would have succeeded in keeping this whole issue quiet for a while longer.
It's similar to the situation with any whistleblower, in which confidential information may have to be released in the interests of exposing a problem. Whistleblowers might try to get a situation resolved with their higher-ups first, but the last thing they're going to do is say "if you don't do something about this, I'm going to the press". The reason is because they fear retaliation which, happening outside the public eye, they are not in a good position to deal with. Soghoian was in exactly that situation.
The usual situation with security researchers is that you're dealing with a private company, and you're not their employee, so there's a limit to what they can do to retaliate against you. Reporting a security flaw at this level, about something so directly associated with the 9/11 attacks, to an administration with a bad record in this area and with a political interest in not being exposed as incompetent, does not necessarily follow the same rules as reporting an IE exploit to Microsoft.
FWIW, there's no need for a person to be a "terrorist" for them to be a danger
Sure. But what I'm saying is that if you look at Soghoian's stated intent, and at his work, it's clear that he is not in this to harm the interests of the United States - quite the opposite, in fact. Of course, whether or not he did harm those interests may be a matter of opinion. But given his intent, a matter like this could be resolved in a more civilized fashion than the alleged 2am raid on his home. Of course, I agree with you that there may be facts we don't know: how Soghoian handled his first interview with the FBI, etc. But again, discretion on the part of prosecutors and other officials should come into play here. Using the power of government to intimidate private citizens in order to protect the interests of the U.S. is one thing; using it to protect the interests of the adminstration in not being exposed as incompetent is quite another. The latter behavior is common in the kind of countries that the U.S. tends to invade in order to topple their dictators.
I honestly don't understand your point. I'm perfectly aware of exploit notification procedures, I consult in the security area myself. However, this hole was well-known enough that a senator had written about it, and U.S. senators aren't known for their tech savvy and awareness of security exploits. So what's the point of privately notifying anyone? The T.S.A. had received written notification already, and the matter had been raised in the press. Even if Soghoian had sent his own notification to the T.S.A., it is extremely unlikely that they would have done anything about it, and it's also doubtful that the response to his ultimate exploit publication would have been any different.
However, nothing had been done about it for 20 months, and there weren't even any announcements or known plans to do anything. Soghoian's means may be questionable, and I don't argue the fact that he should have to answer for his actions to some extent, but rather than respond with the full power & might of the U.S. government in order to, effectively, help suppress the national dialogue about security, this whole thing could be handled in a civilized manner. Soghoian is a citizen (I assume), and there's no evidence that he's a terrorist.
What Soghoian has really demonstrated is that in the environment of fear and paranoia that the terrorists have successfully created, that the U.S. government can too easily be provoked into behaving in a way disturbingly similar to someone like Saddam Hussein, sending the equivalent of the Republican Guard to intimidate and terrorize someone who has raised awkward questions about the regime.
How do you know he broke the law? Because of a Slashdot summary? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that he intended to use these boarding passes. Despite what you claim, intent is a factor in many such cases: for example, you have to have the intent to enter into a conspiracy.
When you jump to conclusions about the guilt of a fellow citizen (innocent until proven guilty, remember!), be careful that you're not undermining your own rights and freedoms. As someone else mentioned, this is a case that could have benefited from some prosecutorial discretion.
When the power and might of the Federal government is brought to bear on an individual citizen who clearly is not a terrorist or even an ordinary criminal, you have to ask yourself what the agenda is. In this case, it seems pretty clear: to intimidate people who want to raise questions about national security measures. The behavior of Congressman Markey and the FBI in this case is anti-democratic.
I came to the U.S. from a country which had real oppression, and I have to say that things here are starting to look eerily familiar.
There are LOTS of ways to make something like this known without doing something stupid like this guy did.
If a U.S. Senator, who used his press machine to publicize this and sent a letter to the T.S.A., couldn't get anything done about it, why would a student have better luck? What he did is one of the few ways to call serious attention for something like this.
Okay, so you have me interested. Can you elaborate on just what an "embeddable scripting language" is? I mean, I have an idea, but go about it as if I have no clue.
It's a language that can be integrated into an application at the source code level, so that the language becomes part of the application and has access to all that application's internal structures. This allows you to easily write programs which control (or "script") the application. This is one of the most successful software development strategies ever invented: many well-known programs use the approach, which is not a coincidence, since having a scripting language makes a program much more customizable and controllable, which makes it more useful and more likely to succeed.
Today, the most common example of an embedded scripting language is Javascript, which is embedded in web browsers. Games in particular have benefitted from this approach, because the scripting languages allow both the game developers and users to easily create new levels, implement new behaviors, etc. Unreal Tournament
A few more classic examples are AutoCAD (Lisp), Emacs (Lisp), and The Gimp (Scheme). Those are all variations on Lisp for a reason: Lisp and its cousin, Scheme, are easy to implement, because they have a simple syntax and their features are built out from a small core. This means that the part of the language that's implemented in a lower-level language like C tends to be fairly small and focused, which makes it easier to integrate with an application. It also means that much of the rest of the scripting language is implemented in the scripting language itself, so the fact that the core language is small is not too much of a limiting factor, and it's often possible for users or third-parties to extend the language in significant ways, even without access to the main application's source code.
Lua fits the bill quite nicely as a language which follows similar small-core design principles to Scheme, but with a more familiar syntax. That's part of why it's used in more than a dozen games (see its wikipedia entry).
And, just to let you know, I feel like your argument is well written and compelling.
Thanks! You're undermining your trolling credentials, though.;)
I will say, though, that my argument against new languages that don't bring anything significantly new in architecture to the table (the way C++ did over C) applies equally to (insert new programming language here) as it does to the (thankfully short-lived in popularity) spoken "language" of Ebonics.
Me done agrees wif dat. However, usually by the time a new language is creating some buzz beyond its inventor's own hype, there's some reason that people are using it over the competition. You just have to figure out whether those reasons hold any interest for you. The question "Why another language for me?" can have a different answer than "Why another language?" in general.
I answered the original question in a general way, because it was stated generally, i.e. "Why another language". In Lua's case specifically, it has borrowed important features from Scheme and Icon, so for those who insist on only learning popular languages with familiar syntaxes, it might be a way to gain familiarity with some interesting capabilities that you won't find in standard Python, Ruby, or Java.
But I don't think anyone is arguing that you should learn Lua specifically just because it's there. You might learn Lua if you're looking for a lightweight embeddable scripting language, in which case it's one of the better choices available; or if you're working with one of the systems in which it's already embedded, in which case Lua is a foregone conclusion. So the answer to the question you seem to be asking, which is why does Lua even exist, is that it fills certain needs better than most of its competition. That doesn't mean everyone should learn it.
The even more general answer to the question of "why another language" is that languages are incredibly multi-dimensional constructs, and each of their many features interact in subtle ways, impacting everything from the way code can be expressed in a language, to the characteristics of an implementation. For example, the features of Lua impact the size of its implementation, which affects how easy it is to embed in another application; and those features are well-chosen to match the needs of the embedded scripting environment. At the same time, the list of things that Lua doesn't have built-in support for is long, so there are many contexts in which you wouldn't choose it.
If you've ever written a language, even a toy one for a class or for your own interest, you know that almost every feature you choose precludes other features, other ways of doing something. Some languages try to make this into a virtue ("there's only one way to do it", or whatever), but every language has its limits designed into it as clearly as its features. Saying "why another language" makes about as much sense as saying "why another type of food", "why another type of car", or "why aren't all humans just clones of Albert Einstein, or maybe David Hasselhoff".
Like text editors, it would be better to focus on fewer targets and add features
The history of programming languages shows that this is a good way to kill a language. Languages are a delicate balance between enabling you to express things, and preventing you from expressing things. You can't just throw the kitchen sink in there and expect the result to be usable. People design new programming languages because they perceive limitations in the ones they already know, limitations that often can't just be overcome by adding features.
From a programmer's point of view, a good reason to learn a new language is to expand your mental horizons. It can be a passable substitute for actually studying computer science (which you clearly haven't done, if you're asking "why another language?") Don't just learn an array of similar languages, like Python and Ruby. If you already know a popular OO language, then learn a language like Scheme, ML, or Erlang, or if you really want some nerdy metaphorical hair on your chest, learn Haskell (although you might want to start with one of the others first). Then you'll understand "why another language".
No, the parent thinks that his country would be better off without people who think differently than he. Jihadists think the world would be better off without people who think differently than they. The parent seems perfectly willing to use the same kind of measures that were used during the 1950's communist purge in the U.S. I'd rather deal with the occasional terrorist attack on a city, planted by foreign enemies, than with my countrymen systematically trying to exterminate the point of view of those they don't agree with. Both he and the jihadists are exhibiting an extreme form of intolerance, and whether you use bombs to perpetuate that intolerance is an implementation detail. It's the corruption of the human spirit that is the true evil here, and that's exhibited by the OP as much as by any jihadist.
He is a liberal leftist freedom-hating jihad-supporting communist
Jesus Christ, are you serious? Talk about being part of the problem, and not the solution. Do you see no danger in this labelling of everyone who doesn't think like you as "freedom-hating", "communist", etc.? Have you ever heard of Senator McCarthy? In the end, do you really think there's any significant difference between your extremist position and that of a jihadist who wants to blow up your city? Actually, there is a difference: you're talking about your fellow countrymen as though they're the enemy - in fact, you're directly identifying them with who you perceive as your enemy. There's a serious problem with that, and it's located inside your head.
that doesn't stop me, or anyone else i know, from gambling online.
...yet. But the enforcement efforts in this area are just in their infancy, and ramping up quickly. If you use a credit card or Paypal to pay an online gambling vendor, that's going to become much more difficult. The difference between this and, say, the war on drugs is that there are much more direct lines of communication of both data and money between you and the ultimate vendor, and that's easier for the feds to interfere with. Your tax money at work.
There's more to it than that. I don't think many people on Slashdot are arguing against technological advancement. It's more a question of arguing against the characterization of what's happening. Web 2.0 seems to be more of a social phenomenon than anything else, and many characterizations of Web 2.0 seem completely out of whack with what's actually happening, or what's actually changed.
Also, the Slashdot audience is more aware than most of the horrible technical kludges which underly Web 2.0: for example, Ajax is not a technology for the ages, that's for sure - it's a hackish workaround for a kludgey system which became wildly popular because of how unbearably restrictive what went before was.
When the Ajax honeymoon is over, there's going to be a helluva hangover: millions of lines of unmaintainable code that will either break and become unusable, or doom future browsers to forever being backward compatible, or more likely, some hellish combination of both. We better hope Web 3.0 kicks ass for real.
Web 2.0 is not a technological advance. It's a state of mind, experienced by people of an artistic bent who want to feel that they are experiencing history in the making, regardless of what form it takes, as long as it's somehow technological, because technology is the new spirituality.
That works until they find someone bloody-minded enough to rewrite the Perl program. I've done that, with a Perl program consisting of about 10,000 lines total, which behaved almost randomly because of how badly it was written (originally by a high school student). That conversion was one of the most lucrative short-term contracts I've ever had, although it was also one of the most painful to do - that Perl code was *horrible*, and there was no detailed specification other than the code itself.
This isn't about conspiracy theories, or even whether the fertilizer theory is valid. It's about a basic flaw in your argument: that the problem with using fertilizer is that it would be visible from the moon.
That's trivially false, as I pointed out. Whether or not the fertilizer theory is valid, your argument against it is invalid, because its premise is false. This logical error, combined with the lack of openness to consider non-obvious possibilities, is exactly why I joked that you won't be getting an analyst job at the CIA.
Of course, given the CIA's record recently, you actually might fit right in.
Guess you won't be getting that analyst job at the CIA. It would be trivially easy to truck that fertilizer into a cave or mine somewhere, spread out over time, and detonate it when you're good and ready.
And the reality is that the cops don't in general give one fuck of one shit about probable cause if they can get the arrest to stick in court.
If they can get the arrest to stick in court, then the judge agreed that there was probable cause, and can usually back that up, otherwise there's grounds for appeal. So what you're saying is that cops care about probable cause to the extent that judges do, which is quite a bit, in practice. This has nothing to do with "living in a library".
We don't live in a library. We live in the real world, in which the laws are usually shat upon by all involved - especially those who are supposed to be upholding them
"Usually" shat upon by "all" involved? You're being irrational, and it won't help make things any better, because you just come off as both hysterical and ignorant. Tens of thousands of arrests and court hearings happen every day, and in most of them, justice is done just fine. Sure, there are cases where racism, bias, and whatever else skew the results, but they're the exception.
Consider this little item: One supreme court justice illegally stopped the florida recount in 2000. If the highest court in the land is willing to take blatantly illegal actions, do you really believe that you're going to get fair treatment anywhere?
I'm no happier about the result of that election than you are, but you're not being very rational. We're discussing what happens with people who are arrested, and the rights and conditions under which such an arrest can be considered legal, and made to stand. The connection to the Florida situation is marginal, at best. In that case, there's no body to which habeas corpus applies, for example. And the reason you're not bringing up examples of murderers being held without probable cause is because, guess what, it just doesn't happen that much.
Your picture is in the dictionary under naive.
And by the sounds of it, I'll see your picture on TV at one of those ineffective protests against global trade, full of ignorant people yelling about stuff they don't understand - the modern-day equivalent of Luddites. Get a clue -- if you have some real beef about the way the world works, you have an obligation to yourself to educate yourself about what's really going on. Otherwise, you're just ranting at all the wrong things. Try to learn to put what you see in TV in its proper perspective.
The human race might not be able to sustain its current CO2 emission rates. You can't count on that to happen without more knowledge, but it brings up an important point. We don't know that global warming will become a genuine problem.
But the problem is that if global warming does become a genuine problem, by the time we have irrefutable evidence of that, it'll be too late. This is the worst kind of problem for humans, who are little better than frogs when it comes to detecting that they're being slowly boiled. Your post exhibits all the signs of that weakness. Simply studying global warming until we have a better understanding of the problem is not enough. We know we're pumping huge amounts of a problematic gas into the atmosphere, and we know that this isn't a good thing - we just don't know exactly how bad it is, but indications are that it could ultimately be disastrous.
There are some similarities with the fear that terrorists could detonate a nuclear weapon in a city. We don't know that this will ever become a genuine problem. This does make it difficult to decide what resources to invest in guarding against the threat. There's no right answer: we're trying to protect ourselves against future events which may never happen, and we don't even have good ways to calculate their likelihood.
The difference is, even if a terrorist nuclear detonation in NYC killed millions of people, while horrible, that still wouldn't be the end of the world, and at that point, even if we hadn't done anything to prevent such attacks up until that point, we could start getting serious about it, and it would make a difference. If global warming starts becoming a serious problem for humans, it'll be too late, and it could literally be the end of the world, at least for human life on Earth as we know it.
There are two kinds of "conservative" at war here: those who are conservative about finances, economic productivity etc., potentially at a severe cost to the future of humanity; and those who are conservative about the survival of the human species on a planet worth surviving on. If you belong to the latter group, none of the arguments you've raised have much merit, so I take it you belong to the former group. How do you justify that to yourself? Is it purely short-termism, i.e. "I won't live long enough to suffer the worst of the consequences, so to hell with it"?
Good, you apparently have a finely-honed sense of skepticism. Now, you simply have to learn to combine that with your intelligence, and don't allow yourself to be driven by the knee-jerk response to stories in the media whose full context you don't seem to currently understand.
The reality is that ordinary criminals, such as murderers, have all the rights they've always had, including that they can't legally be arrested without probable cause. If someone is arrested without probable cause, habeas corpus still applies, i.e. they can't be held in jail for long without being charged, and if their lawyer can show that they were arrested without probable cause, a judge will set them free.
Now, if you're suspected of terrorism, then High Fuehrer Bush's nonsense comes into play, but no-one who's only suspected of murdering his wife has yet been classified as a terrorist. Not that that couldn't happen, and not that Bush's nonsense isn't a bad thing which needs to be fixed. But try to keep a sense of perspective about how it does and doesn't apply.
Your ignorance only makes the situation worse, it doesn't help to correct it.
MAD worked between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, though, right up until the collapse of the latter. As the Black Adder dialog says, this was "sort of a war", i.e. the Cold War, but it was a lot better than nukes going off in cities. In that situation, what was the alternative? Treaties? Peace? Ahahaha, you're so cute.
Slashdot Mirror
In a case like this, I don't think private notification of the imminent release of a tool is necessarily a good option for someone like Soghoian. It would have been interesting to see the TSA's reaction in that case. My prediction: the FBI would have raided anyway, and we would never have heard about the issue except in an after-the-fact kind of way, with Soghoian having been suitably intimidated into being less public with his claims. The administration would have succeeded in keeping this whole issue quiet for a while longer.
It's similar to the situation with any whistleblower, in which confidential information may have to be released in the interests of exposing a problem. Whistleblowers might try to get a situation resolved with their higher-ups first, but the last thing they're going to do is say "if you don't do something about this, I'm going to the press". The reason is because they fear retaliation which, happening outside the public eye, they are not in a good position to deal with. Soghoian was in exactly that situation.
The usual situation with security researchers is that you're dealing with a private company, and you're not their employee, so there's a limit to what they can do to retaliate against you. Reporting a security flaw at this level, about something so directly associated with the 9/11 attacks, to an administration with a bad record in this area and with a political interest in not being exposed as incompetent, does not necessarily follow the same rules as reporting an IE exploit to Microsoft.
Sure. But what I'm saying is that if you look at Soghoian's stated intent, and at his work, it's clear that he is not in this to harm the interests of the United States - quite the opposite, in fact. Of course, whether or not he did harm those interests may be a matter of opinion. But given his intent, a matter like this could be resolved in a more civilized fashion than the alleged 2am raid on his home. Of course, I agree with you that there may be facts we don't know: how Soghoian handled his first interview with the FBI, etc. But again, discretion on the part of prosecutors and other officials should come into play here. Using the power of government to intimidate private citizens in order to protect the interests of the U.S. is one thing; using it to protect the interests of the adminstration in not being exposed as incompetent is quite another. The latter behavior is common in the kind of countries that the U.S. tends to invade in order to topple their dictators.
I honestly don't understand your point. I'm perfectly aware of exploit notification procedures, I consult in the security area myself. However, this hole was well-known enough that a senator had written about it, and U.S. senators aren't known for their tech savvy and awareness of security exploits. So what's the point of privately notifying anyone? The T.S.A. had received written notification already, and the matter had been raised in the press. Even if Soghoian had sent his own notification to the T.S.A., it is extremely unlikely that they would have done anything about it, and it's also doubtful that the response to his ultimate exploit publication would have been any different.
However, nothing had been done about it for 20 months, and there weren't even any announcements or known plans to do anything. Soghoian's means may be questionable, and I don't argue the fact that he should have to answer for his actions to some extent, but rather than respond with the full power & might of the U.S. government in order to, effectively, help suppress the national dialogue about security, this whole thing could be handled in a civilized manner. Soghoian is a citizen (I assume), and there's no evidence that he's a terrorist.
What Soghoian has really demonstrated is that in the environment of fear and paranoia that the terrorists have successfully created, that the U.S. government can too easily be provoked into behaving in a way disturbingly similar to someone like Saddam Hussein, sending the equivalent of the Republican Guard to intimidate and terrorize someone who has raised awkward questions about the regime.
How do you know he broke the law? Because of a Slashdot summary? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that he intended to use these boarding passes. Despite what you claim, intent is a factor in many such cases: for example, you have to have the intent to enter into a conspiracy.
When you jump to conclusions about the guilt of a fellow citizen (innocent until proven guilty, remember!), be careful that you're not undermining your own rights and freedoms. As someone else mentioned, this is a case that could have benefited from some prosecutorial discretion.
When the power and might of the Federal government is brought to bear on an individual citizen who clearly is not a terrorist or even an ordinary criminal, you have to ask yourself what the agenda is. In this case, it seems pretty clear: to intimidate people who want to raise questions about national security measures. The behavior of Congressman Markey and the FBI in this case is anti-democratic.
I came to the U.S. from a country which had real oppression, and I have to say that things here are starting to look eerily familiar.
If a U.S. Senator, who used his press machine to publicize this and sent a letter to the T.S.A., couldn't get anything done about it, why would a student have better luck? What he did is one of the few ways to call serious attention for something like this.
But Senator Schumer detailed this weakness more than a year ago: http://www.senate.gov/~schumer/SchumerWebsite/pre
So what, exactly, would one have to do to draw attention to it, beyond having a Senator describe it in detail on a government website?
The TSA were notified of the vulnerability more than a year ago by Senator Schumer: http://www.senate.gov/~schumer/SchumerWebsite/pres sroom/press_releases/2005/PR4123.aviationsecurity0 21305.html ...so this wasn't some unknown flaw.
It's a language that can be integrated into an application at the source code level, so that the language becomes part of the application and has access to all that application's internal structures. This allows you to easily write programs which control (or "script") the application. This is one of the most successful software development strategies ever invented: many well-known programs use the approach, which is not a coincidence, since having a scripting language makes a program much more customizable and controllable, which makes it more useful and more likely to succeed.
Today, the most common example of an embedded scripting language is Javascript, which is embedded in web browsers. Games in particular have benefitted from this approach, because the scripting languages allow both the game developers and users to easily create new levels, implement new behaviors, etc. Unreal Tournament
A few more classic examples are AutoCAD (Lisp), Emacs (Lisp), and The Gimp (Scheme). Those are all variations on Lisp for a reason: Lisp and its cousin, Scheme, are easy to implement, because they have a simple syntax and their features are built out from a small core. This means that the part of the language that's implemented in a lower-level language like C tends to be fairly small and focused, which makes it easier to integrate with an application. It also means that much of the rest of the scripting language is implemented in the scripting language itself, so the fact that the core language is small is not too much of a limiting factor, and it's often possible for users or third-parties to extend the language in significant ways, even without access to the main application's source code.
Lua fits the bill quite nicely as a language which follows similar small-core design principles to Scheme, but with a more familiar syntax. That's part of why it's used in more than a dozen games (see its wikipedia entry).
Thanks! You're undermining your trolling credentials, though. ;)
Me done agrees wif dat. However, usually by the time a new language is creating some buzz beyond its inventor's own hype, there's some reason that people are using it over the competition. You just have to figure out whether those reasons hold any interest for you. The question "Why another language for me?" can have a different answer than "Why another language?" in general.
I answered the original question in a general way, because it was stated generally, i.e. "Why another language". In Lua's case specifically, it has borrowed important features from Scheme and Icon, so for those who insist on only learning popular languages with familiar syntaxes, it might be a way to gain familiarity with some interesting capabilities that you won't find in standard Python, Ruby, or Java.
But I don't think anyone is arguing that you should learn Lua specifically just because it's there. You might learn Lua if you're looking for a lightweight embeddable scripting language, in which case it's one of the better choices available; or if you're working with one of the systems in which it's already embedded, in which case Lua is a foregone conclusion. So the answer to the question you seem to be asking, which is why does Lua even exist, is that it fills certain needs better than most of its competition. That doesn't mean everyone should learn it.
The even more general answer to the question of "why another language" is that languages are incredibly multi-dimensional constructs, and each of their many features interact in subtle ways, impacting everything from the way code can be expressed in a language, to the characteristics of an implementation. For example, the features of Lua impact the size of its implementation, which affects how easy it is to embed in another application; and those features are well-chosen to match the needs of the embedded scripting environment. At the same time, the list of things that Lua doesn't have built-in support for is long, so there are many contexts in which you wouldn't choose it.
If you've ever written a language, even a toy one for a class or for your own interest, you know that almost every feature you choose precludes other features, other ways of doing something. Some languages try to make this into a virtue ("there's only one way to do it", or whatever), but every language has its limits designed into it as clearly as its features. Saying "why another language" makes about as much sense as saying "why another type of food", "why another type of car", or "why aren't all humans just clones of Albert Einstein, or maybe David Hasselhoff".
The history of programming languages shows that this is a good way to kill a language. Languages are a delicate balance between enabling you to express things, and preventing you from expressing things. You can't just throw the kitchen sink in there and expect the result to be usable. People design new programming languages because they perceive limitations in the ones they already know, limitations that often can't just be overcome by adding features.
From a programmer's point of view, a good reason to learn a new language is to expand your mental horizons. It can be a passable substitute for actually studying computer science (which you clearly haven't done, if you're asking "why another language?") Don't just learn an array of similar languages, like Python and Ruby. If you already know a popular OO language, then learn a language like Scheme, ML, or Erlang, or if you really want some nerdy metaphorical hair on your chest, learn Haskell (although you might want to start with one of the others first). Then you'll understand "why another language".
No, the parent thinks that his country would be better off without people who think differently than he. Jihadists think the world would be better off without people who think differently than they. The parent seems perfectly willing to use the same kind of measures that were used during the 1950's communist purge in the U.S. I'd rather deal with the occasional terrorist attack on a city, planted by foreign enemies, than with my countrymen systematically trying to exterminate the point of view of those they don't agree with. Both he and the jihadists are exhibiting an extreme form of intolerance, and whether you use bombs to perpetuate that intolerance is an implementation detail. It's the corruption of the human spirit that is the true evil here, and that's exhibited by the OP as much as by any jihadist.
Jesus Christ, are you serious? Talk about being part of the problem, and not the solution. Do you see no danger in this labelling of everyone who doesn't think like you as "freedom-hating", "communist", etc.? Have you ever heard of Senator McCarthy? In the end, do you really think there's any significant difference between your extremist position and that of a jihadist who wants to blow up your city? Actually, there is a difference: you're talking about your fellow countrymen as though they're the enemy - in fact, you're directly identifying them with who you perceive as your enemy. There's a serious problem with that, and it's located inside your head.
There's more to it than that. I don't think many people on Slashdot are arguing against technological advancement. It's more a question of arguing against the characterization of what's happening. Web 2.0 seems to be more of a social phenomenon than anything else, and many characterizations of Web 2.0 seem completely out of whack with what's actually happening, or what's actually changed.
Also, the Slashdot audience is more aware than most of the horrible technical kludges which underly Web 2.0: for example, Ajax is not a technology for the ages, that's for sure - it's a hackish workaround for a kludgey system which became wildly popular because of how unbearably restrictive what went before was.
When the Ajax honeymoon is over, there's going to be a helluva hangover: millions of lines of unmaintainable code that will either break and become unusable, or doom future browsers to forever being backward compatible, or more likely, some hellish combination of both. We better hope Web 3.0 kicks ass for real.
Web 2.0 is not a technological advance. It's a state of mind, experienced by people of an artistic bent who want to feel that they are experiencing history in the making, regardless of what form it takes, as long as it's somehow technological, because technology is the new spirituality.
I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.
This is the funniest comment I've ever seen on Slashdot. Thank you.
That works until they find someone bloody-minded enough to rewrite the Perl program. I've done that, with a Perl program consisting of about 10,000 lines total, which behaved almost randomly because of how badly it was written (originally by a high school student). That conversion was one of the most lucrative short-term contracts I've ever had, although it was also one of the most painful to do - that Perl code was *horrible*, and there was no detailed specification other than the code itself.
This isn't about conspiracy theories, or even whether the fertilizer theory is valid. It's about a basic flaw in your argument: that the problem with using fertilizer is that it would be visible from the moon.
That's trivially false, as I pointed out. Whether or not the fertilizer theory is valid, your argument against it is invalid, because its premise is false. This logical error, combined with the lack of openness to consider non-obvious possibilities, is exactly why I joked that you won't be getting an analyst job at the CIA.
Of course, given the CIA's record recently, you actually might fit right in.
Guess you won't be getting that analyst job at the CIA. It would be trivially easy to truck that fertilizer into a cave or mine somewhere, spread out over time, and detonate it when you're good and ready.
"Provably-correct" is a concept from mathematics and logic, not physics.
If they can get the arrest to stick in court, then the judge agreed that there was probable cause, and can usually back that up, otherwise there's grounds for appeal. So what you're saying is that cops care about probable cause to the extent that judges do, which is quite a bit, in practice. This has nothing to do with "living in a library".
"Usually" shat upon by "all" involved? You're being irrational, and it won't help make things any better, because you just come off as both hysterical and ignorant. Tens of thousands of arrests and court hearings happen every day, and in most of them, justice is done just fine. Sure, there are cases where racism, bias, and whatever else skew the results, but they're the exception.
I'm no happier about the result of that election than you are, but you're not being very rational. We're discussing what happens with people who are arrested, and the rights and conditions under which such an arrest can be considered legal, and made to stand. The connection to the Florida situation is marginal, at best. In that case, there's no body to which habeas corpus applies, for example. And the reason you're not bringing up examples of murderers being held without probable cause is because, guess what, it just doesn't happen that much.
And by the sounds of it, I'll see your picture on TV at one of those ineffective protests against global trade, full of ignorant people yelling about stuff they don't understand - the modern-day equivalent of Luddites. Get a clue -- if you have some real beef about the way the world works, you have an obligation to yourself to educate yourself about what's really going on. Otherwise, you're just ranting at all the wrong things. Try to learn to put what you see in TV in its proper perspective.
But the problem is that if global warming does become a genuine problem, by the time we have irrefutable evidence of that, it'll be too late. This is the worst kind of problem for humans, who are little better than frogs when it comes to detecting that they're being slowly boiled. Your post exhibits all the signs of that weakness. Simply studying global warming until we have a better understanding of the problem is not enough. We know we're pumping huge amounts of a problematic gas into the atmosphere, and we know that this isn't a good thing - we just don't know exactly how bad it is, but indications are that it could ultimately be disastrous.
There are some similarities with the fear that terrorists could detonate a nuclear weapon in a city. We don't know that this will ever become a genuine problem. This does make it difficult to decide what resources to invest in guarding against the threat. There's no right answer: we're trying to protect ourselves against future events which may never happen, and we don't even have good ways to calculate their likelihood.
The difference is, even if a terrorist nuclear detonation in NYC killed millions of people, while horrible, that still wouldn't be the end of the world, and at that point, even if we hadn't done anything to prevent such attacks up until that point, we could start getting serious about it, and it would make a difference. If global warming starts becoming a serious problem for humans, it'll be too late, and it could literally be the end of the world, at least for human life on Earth as we know it.
There are two kinds of "conservative" at war here: those who are conservative about finances, economic productivity etc., potentially at a severe cost to the future of humanity; and those who are conservative about the survival of the human species on a planet worth surviving on. If you belong to the latter group, none of the arguments you've raised have much merit, so I take it you belong to the former group. How do you justify that to yourself? Is it purely short-termism, i.e. "I won't live long enough to suffer the worst of the consequences, so to hell with it"?
Good, you apparently have a finely-honed sense of skepticism. Now, you simply have to learn to combine that with your intelligence, and don't allow yourself to be driven by the knee-jerk response to stories in the media whose full context you don't seem to currently understand.
The reality is that ordinary criminals, such as murderers, have all the rights they've always had, including that they can't legally be arrested without probable cause. If someone is arrested without probable cause, habeas corpus still applies, i.e. they can't be held in jail for long without being charged, and if their lawyer can show that they were arrested without probable cause, a judge will set them free.
Now, if you're suspected of terrorism, then High Fuehrer Bush's nonsense comes into play, but no-one who's only suspected of murdering his wife has yet been classified as a terrorist. Not that that couldn't happen, and not that Bush's nonsense isn't a bad thing which needs to be fixed. But try to keep a sense of perspective about how it does and doesn't apply.
Your ignorance only makes the situation worse, it doesn't help to correct it.
MAD worked between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, though, right up until the collapse of the latter. As the Black Adder dialog says, this was "sort of a war", i.e. the Cold War, but it was a lot better than nukes going off in cities. In that situation, what was the alternative? Treaties? Peace? Ahahaha, you're so cute.