Just remeber, there is no problem the gov't can't make worse.
How about anarachy?
(Sure, what the government does may be worse than anarchy -- but it can't make the anarchy any worse, since any governmental intervention into a state of anarchy by defition reduces the anarchy.)
The irony here, of course, is this: One of the major justifications for the Shuttle program in the first place was to allow on-site servicing of satellites so as to extend their useful lives. Now we're being told that the Shuttle is good only for building the ISS -- and we already know that the ISS is good only for justifying Shuttle missions.
I try to be a space advocate, but it's so hard playing my best when there are blockheads like this on the same team...
I see unfounded and baseless claims about Microsoft on/. all the time, nobody complains or feels aggrieved about those.
slashdot is not a news organization, despite its byline. There are no crack investigative journalists working for slashdot and no one pretends that there are. The BBC is a widely respected news source accorded respect by its viewers/listeners, who will tend to accept its pronouncements based on its reputation (recently tarnished anyway) for journalistic integrity. They have a responsibility to check their facts and not spin conspiracy theories for the heck of it.
The Hubble's orbital period is 96 minutes. Last I checked, the ocean is fairly sedentary
The Hubble is pretty sedentary, too, once you've matched orbits. People like to quote the ridiculous speeds at which things in orbit move, which are true -- relative to the Eart. But everything in a given orbit moves at basically the same speed.
Beowulf, of course, was performed live in front of an audience for what - 200 years? - before it was ever written down. It might, it just might, include certain elements of timing and pacing.
Of course, my mistake. I forgot exactly how crucial the reciters of Beowulf found such tools as orchestral soundtrack, jump cuts, closeups, and lighting... Because something works in one medium is, by itself, no guarantee it will work in another. You can't "translate" Lord of the Rings from book to movie. At best you can retell it, reinterpret it, and the needs of film are much removed from the needs of epic writing -- or of epic poetry. No matter what people like to claim, Tolkien didn't write the greatest fantasy novel ever -- because he didn't really write a novel. LOTR is an epic, indeed, was meant as a transcription of an epic ballad. It has some details in common with the novel but many things far removed.
Jackson's trilogy is an epic film, but it's a film, not an epic poem. And it's playing to an audience with a particular set of expectations as to the nature of film. You can hate Jackson for making a popular film -- I get the impression that people hate Jackson precisely because he made LOTR accessible to a larger audience -- but I think it's unfair to say "Tolkien would never have written that so it must be bad". Reasonable people can disagree on this, but I feel that most of the changes made improved the movie -- it allowed Jackson to tell a tale he loved in a manner that let people care about it. It's a little immature to whine that he let all these new people in...
If you don't like it, that's your prerogative. Ignore it. But don't bemoan how he's fallen from the truth faith... he's just preaching to a different audience.
You think that JRR guy knew a little about epics? Having translated Beowulf for example?
Yes, I absolutely loved all the films directed by J.R.R. Tolkien...
My point being, Tolkien wrote a brilliant epic and was a master of the craft -- that craft. It says nothing about whether he would have had the ability to translate his epic into a visual medium; I have to say, I pretty much doubt it. I guess I fall into the camp that sees Jackson's changes as improving the drama and pacing.
(And if the long drawn-out goodbye miffs you, imagine what showing the entire Scouring would have been.)
I'm not quite sure, someone might let me know - what is the attraction of attempting to explain something as abstract as quantum physics to lay people.
Other than the fact that it's cool and interesting in its own right? Or that the fruits of science aren't meant to be hoarded by the privileged few? How about because they are voters and it's in the best interest of the Republic that its citizens be informed as well as engaged? And that devices made possible by this discovery could someday be hugely important?
My advisor used to feel that as long as he understood, his research had succeeded. I never got that.
I'm just curious how you differentiate the "real physical phenomena" from the other stuff -- what is Newtonian physics, for example, except a best-guess explanation of observed phenomona? And we know that we we see can often mislead us. What makes duality "real" but Feynman sum-over-histories "unreal"?
Corporations are nothing more than representatives of individuals. Behind every "corporate interest" is an individual or collection of individuals who share the same interest.
Bzzzt. Simply untrue, but thank you for playing. Corporations are not "nothing more" than collections of individuals. They have a separate legal existence than the "individuals" who make them up. The origin of "corporation" is LLC, or "limited liability corporation". If corporations were nothing more than collections of individuals, then those individuals would be liable for the actions of the corporations and would, potentially, risk their assets on the decisions and actions of the corporations.
Until relatively recently (1830 or so? I'm no historian), that's how it worked: A "company" really was just a group of people who shared a business interest; metaphotically, they travelled through the business world ("accompanied") each other. An LLC is entirely different. It's one reason why the "invention" of the LLC is credited as helping spur the Industrial Revolution, especially in the States.
Since an LLC has a legal existence separate from the shareholders who own it and from the officers who run it, I think it's disingenuous to claim it is "nothing more" than a collection of individual people. That's like saying that the US Army is "nothing more" than a collection of people with guns.
Anyway, as applied to "privacy issues" a fraud on the market analysis is n o t g o i n g t o w o r k. I would say a suit based on that behavior borders on frivolous. I mean c'mon.
Well, it depends on how seriously people take privacy. Evidence right now is that people will trade it for an extra bag of Fritos. But if it were highly valued, then companies that violate privacy would be punished in the marketplace. That further would mean that companies that violate privacy would be punished in the stock market, since one could reasonably expect their earnings to suffer. But now we have a motive for the Northwest lie -- and it is reasonable to say it was done to prop up the price, which would otherwise have taken a hit.
I'm not sure if you can convince a judge that privacy concerns drive public opinion enough to affect stock prices, but the argument isn't prima facie silly.
Uh.... despite the loudness of the claim you are making, you don't seem to have many facts at hand to support you.
When I have to choose between an unsupported claim by someone that a thing doesn't work, and an unsupported claim that it does, made by someone trying to sell me the thing, I think it's wise to go with the naysayer. The burden of proof is definitely on the manufacturer. And lucid dreaming seems to be well-documented enough that its existence can be granted -- but (a) this device promises more than lucid dreaming and (b) lucid dreaming happens enough to people without this device that one wonders if the company's "testimonials" are just the normal results one'd expect from a random sample.
In other words, it is incumbent on the company to present statistical surveys done in a double-blind scientifically valid manner. The doubter is not required to disprove all claims; claimants are required to prove their claims.
If you searched google for Javascript menu, you'd get a billion results for companies that sell DHTML/Javascript menus...but you wouldn't (easily) be able to find an informative article on how to make one yourself.
A lot of people's complaints about searching the Net come from a very narrow idea of search terms. Although sometimes I get swamped with commercial sites, I am generally able to find 6-8 useful pages on the first page of Google's results. For example, try
javascript menu tutorial
and you get 10 solid results on page 1.
On New Year's Eve I decided to test the searchability of the Net by tracking down a song I've been looking for over the past decade. The issue was, I didn't know the artist, album, or title, and it was instrumental so I couldn't search on lyrics. What I did know was that a clip of the song had been used in an Amtrak commercial campaign around 1994.
Armed just with that, I was able to correctly find the song using only Google and maybe ten minutes. So I don't exactly buy laments about the unsearchability of the Net.
Re:Beavis..this is the coolest thing i have ever s
on
Your Own Mecha
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
eventually armies will tire of "remote control" warfare and mass murder of troops
That's a very fiction-oriented view of the military. They're interested in winning, period, and will evaluate new weapons on their ability to contribute to that goal and on the opportunity cost of adopting the weapons system.
Of course, since armies are led by people, it's entirely possible that mechs will be developed and adopted because "they look cool" and fall into fashion with the right person at the right time. But eventually, I predict, they will be abandoned because the weapons concept just doesn't make sense operationally.
In addition they have the ability to be armed with all the normal military arms...but simply "pick up" or "flip over" most wheeled vehicles without firing a shot!
If that were a desirable ability, we could put hydraulic lift rams on existing vehicles. We don't because, in fact, it's hard to do and not particularly useful. On the other hand, the human form factor means that the mech is critically balanced when upright -- a nudge from a traditional vehicle or a hit from a high-impulse round could conceivably knock the mech over. I think mechs come out on the losing side of this comparision, too.
Re:Beavis..this is the coolest thing i have ever s
on
Your Own Mecha
·
· Score: 1
Blockquoth the poster:
How the hell did this thread about the "world's largest robot capable of carrying a person" turn into a military discussion.
Mech warriors are a staple of science fiction, or more accurately, of anime. It's a natural branch point for the discussion.
Not to mention the fact that the cockpit not only lacks armor, but is exposed. What is this, Dorothy-1?
No, it's Zion. (Because if my enemy's favorite weapon was pinchy tentacles, I know I'd design an open-air cockpit into my main line of defense...):)
Re:Beavis..this is the coolest thing i have ever s
on
Your Own Mecha
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Blockquoth the poster:
First, even tanks- as tough as they are, are preety easy to destroy. Just get a clean shot.
Um, no. A clean shot with what? Your grandma's 22 isn't going to bring down an M1A1 Abrams. Neither is your nephew's AK47 or indeed any small-arms. A heavy chain machine gun won't either. And while it's true that there are a distressingly large number of Warsaw Pact derivative (and unfortunately even NATO derivative) rocket-propelled grenade launchers out there, successful operation of an anti-tank weapon is not plug-and-play.
They are vulnerable to mined roads, etc. But then, so is everything (except hovercraft?)
Same thing with Blackhawk
The Blackhawk is a helicopter. It's intrinsically fragile. (Even the Apache -- which is the combat helicopter you probably meant to reference -- turned out to be surprisingly vulnerable even to small arms fire.)
But the helicopters are not nearly as vulnerable as a mech would be. Despite forty years of cool anime, it's time for the fanboys to understand: Mech warriors are a dumb idea and a waste of resources. The human form is not particularly well-adapted for industrial warfare, and it offers no advantages for modern weapon systems. Indeed, I think you can argue well that the human form forces compromises that detract from combat effectiveness.
That's one of the lessons of Matrix Revolutions: There is no way -- even with $100 million -- to make mech warriors look less than stupid, because they are instrinsically stupid.
I don't think it's undemocratic; By voting "none of the above", more people said that they (actively) did not want Candidate X, than said that they did. To allow that candidate to run in a revote would be against the expressed wishes of all of those people. It would also open the opportunity for the parties to just decide to blow more money on the same candidate in the hopes that the "none of the above" voters will be suggestible and buy into the marketing.
You have to choose your poison. Non-binding none-of-the-aboves favor the big parties, who can keep running their candidates in run-off elections. But binding NOTA voting favors marginal parties, who can concentrate on bringing down "the establishment" parties, then run whomever they want. So which do you want: The corruption of the established parties or the chance for a really wacko party to gain ascendancy?
However, I have to point out what about the free speech rights of the anti-abortion fanatics?
In what way? The only thing I can see is the exclusion zone around a clinic's entrance, which is an accommodation to balance their right to protest with the clinic's right to conduct business. Several jurisdictions have passed ordinances that would effectively eliminate the protests, and they have been consistently shot down by courts.
There is also the case of activists who visit actual violence on clinics or the practioners, but those have been prosecuted (correctly) under existing laws based on the damage done, not the motivation.
for me protecting racism under free speech is like protecting burning down churches under religious freedom
Burning a church is handily covered under arson laws -- laws which prohibit the burning of buildings regardless of political "content". That is, it is illegal to burn down any building; therefore, it is illegal to burn down a church. On the other hand, the case in FL does not propose to ban all videogames -- only those that don't conform to someone's idea of what "should" be allowed.
I don't care if racism "blames" someone for something that they cannot choose. That's utterly irrelevant. What matters is that racism is an expression of personal beliefs (as wrong-headed as they might be) and the state must NEVER take up the business of deciding "correct" belief. The odds are simply too great that the state -- or those in charge in the state -- will eventually choose self-centered or even evil beliefs to support and will suppress legitimate or even vital minority opinions.
Living in an actual free society is hard, because you must suspends your own certainty and your belief in your own moral infallibility, and allow things you cannot stomach to persist. "Winners" should be picked by the citizenry, and that can only happen when the citizenry has to opportunity to hear any viewpoint in the free marketplace of ideas -- without some other small fraction of the citizenry choosing what is "appropriate".
Do you honestly feel that racism is best countered by suppression, by driving people underground, by handing down edicts? That isn't how the US made what strides we have. The civil rights movement in the United States flourished in the 1960s because people were allowed to speak -- because the evil and ugliness of racism was shown. It was allowed to compete in the market of ideas and it lost -- because civil rights advocates were able to show the inconsistency of the existing law with the higher ideals that Americans claim to live by. That could only be accomplished by facing the forces of racism head-on -- not by pushing them into dark corners where they could fester unseen.
Free speech means free speech for everyone and every ideology -- elsewise, it isn't free speech at all.
i think racism has nothing to do with free speech and has no right to be protected
Unfortunately, you're wrong. (IMHO, of course.) That's why freedom is hard. If we only protected the speech that didn't offend anyone, we'd end up drowning in pabulum. (If you protect only the speech that doens't offend you, you're a tyrant.) Even repulsive ideas merit protection.
It's really a question of faith in the citizenry. Those who call for banning games, or banning racist speech, or banning gangsta rap, show that they do not really believe in democracy. I happen to believe that, in the free marketplace of ideas, the repulsive and evil will be shown as being repulsive and evil. Instead of banning speech you don't like, counter it with valid speech. Sure it's harder -- but America is advanced citizenship, buddy, and it's going to be hard.
Finally, keep in mind that many of the ideas we hold today began as distinctly minority views that only slowly won out as the truth. In the 1850s, in the interest of promoting civil harmony, the US could have justified banning abolitionists from publishing their tracts. Would that have been a good thing?
Gah. Are you saying that something must be explicitly uttered to be "speech"? So songs are out, since you sing songs and don't "speak" them. Even explicitly political songs (like Tom Lerher or 1960s folk songs) would be unprotected.
Or, and so would written copies of speeches that were given -- since the written copy is not itself spoken, so it's not "speech". And don't go trying to hide behind freedom of the press -- a handwritten copy or handmade poster isn't printed on a "press", so your logic demands that it be unprotected. So is anything that comes off a laser printer or an inkjet printer, since neither is a "press". By the same token, TV news is not covered by the First Amendment either -- at least, not the graphic parts, since they are "spoken" and they aren't printed in a "press".
It astonishes me how many self-described (and ill-described) "conservatives" want to overturn 200 years of established constitutional law, usually just to score some transient points.
Slashdot Mirror
How about anarachy?
(Sure, what the government does may be worse than anarchy -- but it can't make the anarchy any worse, since any governmental intervention into a state of anarchy by defition reduces the anarchy.)
The irony here, of course, is this: One of the major justifications for the Shuttle program in the first place was to allow on-site servicing of satellites so as to extend their useful lives. Now we're being told that the Shuttle is good only for building the ISS -- and we already know that the ISS is good only for justifying Shuttle missions.
I try to be a space advocate, but it's so hard playing my best when there are blockheads like this on the same team...
On the other hand, serving lots of liquids and having a "no bathroom break" policy can help cut meetings short...
slashdot is not a news organization, despite its byline. There are no crack investigative journalists working for slashdot and no one pretends that there are. The BBC is a widely respected news source accorded respect by its viewers/listeners, who will tend to accept its pronouncements based on its reputation (recently tarnished anyway) for journalistic integrity. They have a responsibility to check their facts and not spin conspiracy theories for the heck of it.
Reality of course is different.
The Hubble is pretty sedentary, too, once you've matched orbits. People like to quote the ridiculous speeds at which things in orbit move, which are true -- relative to the Eart. But everything in a given orbit moves at basically the same speed.
Of course, my mistake. I forgot exactly how crucial the reciters of Beowulf found such tools as orchestral soundtrack, jump cuts, closeups, and lighting... Because something works in one medium is, by itself, no guarantee it will work in another. You can't "translate" Lord of the Rings from book to movie. At best you can retell it, reinterpret it, and the needs of film are much removed from the needs of epic writing -- or of epic poetry. No matter what people like to claim, Tolkien didn't write the greatest fantasy novel ever -- because he didn't really write a novel. LOTR is an epic, indeed, was meant as a transcription of an epic ballad. It has some details in common with the novel but many things far removed.
Jackson's trilogy is an epic film, but it's a film, not an epic poem. And it's playing to an audience with a particular set of expectations as to the nature of film. You can hate Jackson for making a popular film -- I get the impression that people hate Jackson precisely because he made LOTR accessible to a larger audience -- but I think it's unfair to say "Tolkien would never have written that so it must be bad". Reasonable people can disagree on this, but I feel that most of the changes made improved the movie -- it allowed Jackson to tell a tale he loved in a manner that let people care about it. It's a little immature to whine that he let all these new people in...
If you don't like it, that's your prerogative. Ignore it. But don't bemoan how he's fallen from the truth faith
Yes, I absolutely loved all the films directed by J.R.R. Tolkien...
My point being, Tolkien wrote a brilliant epic and was a master of the craft -- that craft. It says nothing about whether he would have had the ability to translate his epic into a visual medium; I have to say, I pretty much doubt it. I guess I fall into the camp that sees Jackson's changes as improving the drama and pacing.
(And if the long drawn-out goodbye miffs you, imagine what showing the entire Scouring would have been.)
Other than the fact that it's cool and interesting in its own right? Or that the fruits of science aren't meant to be hoarded by the privileged few? How about because they are voters and it's in the best interest of the Republic that its citizens be informed as well as engaged? And that devices made possible by this discovery could someday be hugely important?
My advisor used to feel that as long as he understood, his research had succeeded. I never got that.
I'm just curious how you differentiate the "real physical phenomena" from the other stuff -- what is Newtonian physics, for example, except a best-guess explanation of observed phenomona? And we know that we we see can often mislead us. What makes duality "real" but Feynman sum-over-histories "unreal"?
Bzzzt. Simply untrue, but thank you for playing. Corporations are not "nothing more" than collections of individuals. They have a separate legal existence than the "individuals" who make them up. The origin of "corporation" is LLC, or "limited liability corporation". If corporations were nothing more than collections of individuals, then those individuals would be liable for the actions of the corporations and would, potentially, risk their assets on the decisions and actions of the corporations.
Until relatively recently (1830 or so? I'm no historian), that's how it worked: A "company" really was just a group of people who shared a business interest; metaphotically, they travelled through the business world ("accompanied") each other. An LLC is entirely different. It's one reason why the "invention" of the LLC is credited as helping spur the Industrial Revolution, especially in the States.
Since an LLC has a legal existence separate from the shareholders who own it and from the officers who run it, I think it's disingenuous to claim it is "nothing more" than a collection of individual people. That's like saying that the US Army is "nothing more" than a collection of people with guns.
Well, it depends on how seriously people take privacy. Evidence right now is that people will trade it for an extra bag of Fritos. But if it were highly valued, then companies that violate privacy would be punished in the marketplace. That further would mean that companies that violate privacy would be punished in the stock market, since one could reasonably expect their earnings to suffer. But now we have a motive for the Northwest lie -- and it is reasonable to say it was done to prop up the price, which would otherwise have taken a hit.
I'm not sure if you can convince a judge that privacy concerns drive public opinion enough to affect stock prices, but the argument isn't prima facie silly.
Of course, first he'd have to give up his current job, as head of the Patent & Trademark Office...
When I have to choose between an unsupported claim by someone that a thing doesn't work, and an unsupported claim that it does, made by someone trying to sell me the thing, I think it's wise to go with the naysayer. The burden of proof is definitely on the manufacturer. And lucid dreaming seems to be well-documented enough that its existence can be granted -- but (a) this device promises more than lucid dreaming and (b) lucid dreaming happens enough to people without this device that one wonders if the company's "testimonials" are just the normal results one'd expect from a random sample.
In other words, it is incumbent on the company to present statistical surveys done in a double-blind scientifically valid manner. The doubter is not required to disprove all claims; claimants are required to prove their claims.
Now, see here. Everyone knows that the plural of "moose" is "meese".
A lot of people's complaints about searching the Net come from a very narrow idea of search terms. Although sometimes I get swamped with commercial sites, I am generally able to find 6-8 useful pages on the first page of Google's results. For example, try
and you get 10 solid results on page 1.
On New Year's Eve I decided to test the searchability of the Net by tracking down a song I've been looking for over the past decade. The issue was, I didn't know the artist, album, or title, and it was instrumental so I couldn't search on lyrics. What I did know was that a clip of the song had been used in an Amtrak commercial campaign around 1994.
Armed just with that, I was able to correctly find the song using only Google and maybe ten minutes. So I don't exactly buy laments about the unsearchability of the Net.
That's a very fiction-oriented view of the military. They're interested in winning, period, and will evaluate new weapons on their ability to contribute to that goal and on the opportunity cost of adopting the weapons system.
Of course, since armies are led by people, it's entirely possible that mechs will be developed and adopted because "they look cool" and fall into fashion with the right person at the right time. But eventually, I predict, they will be abandoned because the weapons concept just doesn't make sense operationally.
If that were a desirable ability, we could put hydraulic lift rams on existing vehicles. We don't because, in fact, it's hard to do and not particularly useful. On the other hand, the human form factor means that the mech is critically balanced when upright -- a nudge from a traditional vehicle or a hit from a high-impulse round could conceivably knock the mech over. I think mechs come out on the losing side of this comparision, too.
Mech warriors are a staple of science fiction, or more accurately, of anime. It's a natural branch point for the discussion.
No, it's Zion. (Because if my enemy's favorite weapon was pinchy tentacles, I know I'd design an open-air cockpit into my main line of defense...)
Um, no. A clean shot with what? Your grandma's 22 isn't going to bring down an M1A1 Abrams. Neither is your nephew's AK47 or indeed any small-arms. A heavy chain machine gun won't either. And while it's true that there are a distressingly large number of Warsaw Pact derivative (and unfortunately even NATO derivative) rocket-propelled grenade launchers out there, successful operation of an anti-tank weapon is not plug-and-play.
They are vulnerable to mined roads, etc. But then, so is everything (except hovercraft?)
The Blackhawk is a helicopter. It's intrinsically fragile. (Even the Apache -- which is the combat helicopter you probably meant to reference -- turned out to be surprisingly vulnerable even to small arms fire.)
But the helicopters are not nearly as vulnerable as a mech would be. Despite forty years of cool anime, it's time for the fanboys to understand: Mech warriors are a dumb idea and a waste of resources. The human form is not particularly well-adapted for industrial warfare, and it offers no advantages for modern weapon systems. Indeed, I think you can argue well that the human form forces compromises that detract from combat effectiveness.
That's one of the lessons of Matrix Revolutions: There is no way -- even with $100 million -- to make mech warriors look less than stupid, because they are instrinsically stupid.
For which, remember, they've even won a Nobel Prize.
You have to choose your poison. Non-binding none-of-the-aboves favor the big parties, who can keep running their candidates in run-off elections. But binding NOTA voting favors marginal parties, who can concentrate on bringing down "the establishment" parties, then run whomever they want. So which do you want: The corruption of the established parties or the chance for a really wacko party to gain ascendancy?
In what way? The only thing I can see is the exclusion zone around a clinic's entrance, which is an accommodation to balance their right to protest with the clinic's right to conduct business. Several jurisdictions have passed ordinances that would effectively eliminate the protests, and they have been consistently shot down by courts.
There is also the case of activists who visit actual violence on clinics or the practioners, but those have been prosecuted (correctly) under existing laws based on the damage done, not the motivation.
Burning a church is handily covered under arson laws -- laws which prohibit the burning of buildings regardless of political "content". That is, it is illegal to burn down any building; therefore, it is illegal to burn down a church. On the other hand, the case in FL does not propose to ban all videogames -- only those that don't conform to someone's idea of what "should" be allowed.
I don't care if racism "blames" someone for something that they cannot choose. That's utterly irrelevant. What matters is that racism is an expression of personal beliefs (as wrong-headed as they might be) and the state must NEVER take up the business of deciding "correct" belief. The odds are simply too great that the state -- or those in charge in the state -- will eventually choose self-centered or even evil beliefs to support and will suppress legitimate or even vital minority opinions.
Living in an actual free society is hard, because you must suspends your own certainty and your belief in your own moral infallibility, and allow things you cannot stomach to persist. "Winners" should be picked by the citizenry, and that can only happen when the citizenry has to opportunity to hear any viewpoint in the free marketplace of ideas -- without some other small fraction of the citizenry choosing what is "appropriate".
Do you honestly feel that racism is best countered by suppression, by driving people underground, by handing down edicts? That isn't how the US made what strides we have. The civil rights movement in the United States flourished in the 1960s because people were allowed to speak -- because the evil and ugliness of racism was shown. It was allowed to compete in the market of ideas and it lost -- because civil rights advocates were able to show the inconsistency of the existing law with the higher ideals that Americans claim to live by. That could only be accomplished by facing the forces of racism head-on -- not by pushing them into dark corners where they could fester unseen.
Free speech means free speech for everyone and every ideology -- elsewise, it isn't free speech at all.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. (IMHO, of course.) That's why freedom is hard. If we only protected the speech that didn't offend anyone, we'd end up drowning in pabulum. (If you protect only the speech that doens't offend you, you're a tyrant.) Even repulsive ideas merit protection.
It's really a question of faith in the citizenry. Those who call for banning games, or banning racist speech, or banning gangsta rap, show that they do not really believe in democracy. I happen to believe that, in the free marketplace of ideas, the repulsive and evil will be shown as being repulsive and evil. Instead of banning speech you don't like, counter it with valid speech. Sure it's harder -- but America is advanced citizenship, buddy, and it's going to be hard.
Finally, keep in mind that many of the ideas we hold today began as distinctly minority views that only slowly won out as the truth. In the 1850s, in the interest of promoting civil harmony, the US could have justified banning abolitionists from publishing their tracts. Would that have been a good thing?
Gah. Are you saying that something must be explicitly uttered to be "speech"? So songs are out, since you sing songs and don't "speak" them. Even explicitly political songs (like Tom Lerher or 1960s folk songs) would be unprotected.
Or, and so would written copies of speeches that were given -- since the written copy is not itself spoken, so it's not "speech". And don't go trying to hide behind freedom of the press -- a handwritten copy or handmade poster isn't printed on a "press", so your logic demands that it be unprotected. So is anything that comes off a laser printer or an inkjet printer, since neither is a "press". By the same token, TV news is not covered by the First Amendment either -- at least, not the graphic parts, since they are "spoken" and they aren't printed in a "press".
It astonishes me how many self-described (and ill-described) "conservatives" want to overturn 200 years of established constitutional law, usually just to score some transient points.