The question is important. The answer is even more important. The Anaconda system can produce answers about its environmental impact. And since I see no calls for scrapping the environmental impact reviews already in place, I expect we'll get them.
Considering the alternatives, Anaconda-type or petrofuel-type, I'm pretty hopeful about the Anacondas. But it's not faith - I want the answers, too.
On top of all the other problems with nukes (like dirty extraction that's dependent on an even tinier resource that's in even more unstable countries than oil is), we are now likely facing the rapid exhaustion of elements like indium and hafnium that are necessary for reactor control rods.
Nukes are a hugely top-heavy tech. That produce a huge problem in their waste, as well as extremely difficult security problems.
Geothermal is vastly more energy than even all the nukes we could produce. Other renewables can also vastly oversupply demand. If we'd subsidized any of them the way we've subsidized nukes for the past half-century and more, we'd already be well out of danger.
Actually, lots (perhaps all) of the sea currents have had their energies cranked up by the Greenhouse effect. Huge rivers of currents have been shoved away from their past courses, driven into more twists and turns, becoming more energetic as energy is stored in them. That energy also comes out, and contributes to effects like El Nino and other storm generation, like heated surfaces that encourage hurricane formation.
Taking energy out of those currents could be a double benefit. Getting the energy instead of burning more petrofuels (which makes the currents twistier), and damping the currents which have their own destructive power.
We need research to show the energy system effects of damping those currents' energetic flows. But such research is a lot more conclusive, because it can measure downstream some finite mechanics, rather than the global and subtle feedback effects of other energy systems.
Like any other energy "source" we've ever used, or likely will ever use, an "Anaconda" system won't be the only way we tap energy for use. But you've got to consider what an Anaconda-type generator would replace, and the comparative impacts of each. How much damage does a 100MW gas, oil or coal plant produce, compared to 100 Anacondas? Building, maintaining, fueling and cleaning up after the petrofuel plants is pretty messy, compared to the Anacondas. Especially after the Anaconda is first installed, as its energy-bearing material (the currents) is naturally replenished without waste or cost, compared to the long fuel lines for the furnaces.
There's very little if any C code that can't be written basically the same for Perl to interpret it basically the same way. The exception is direct memory access, but there are ways. And besides, I'd rather access memory through an API that really manages it, like making it hard to unexpectedly overflow buffers or grant access to unauthorized other users.
I'd love a Perl interpreter embedded in my browser. I'd love to have a Perl API directly to the browser app and the browser documents' DOM. I'd love to have a "Perl commandline" that returns text like usual, or that works on remote data by URL, or that returns icons or other data displayable in the browser.
Javascript is a pain in the ass. I'd rather have a Perl engine, and all the Perl modules and scripts, to run against my browser the way I usually run against my terminal window.
A lot of the energy we've trapped in our "atmosphere" is trapped in the seas that are closely linked with the air. Huge undersea currents, vast rivers of water dwarfing anything possible on our relatively dry continents, have been driven into ever more twisty paths, coiling around in a higher energy, chaotic state. But since it's all a long chain of energetic cycles, that energy eventually rises up into the air again. The El Nino / La Nina effects are one place where water pushes energy back into the air, or takes it out, depending on the phase of the cycle. And since a given volume of water contains so much more heat than the same volume of air, and even the same amount of energy can push around a much larger volume of air than the more massive water, those energized currents can (and will) push around the more turbulent winds (that then in turn force larger storm surges, which can also pump up the currents).
So harvesting energy from these currents could do more than just give us energy that replaces burning petrofuels like oil (which slows the Greenhouse Effect that's pushing more energy into these systems). They could also dampen the increased currents that store damaging excess energy.
These cycles are all linked together. Anywhere we can have an effect, we often have at least double the effect, considered throughout the downstream cycle. These current dampers could do quite a lot of good, perhaps more than meets the eye.
I really want phone UIs, security and battery life to finally support complete audio recordings of my entire life. It's got all kinds of uses, especially when some idiot tells me something, then denies they said it a few minutes later, or when they deny I told them something. With that kind of record, I could play back anything suspicious I "heard" to someone else. It would be a lot harder to get us both to "hear" something that wasn't actually audible, but rather projected as rays into our heads. Especially once we'd moved to a different place later on.
I'd also like a complete video record. Maybe eventually a complete electromagnetic record of the space I move through. And, if these rays catch on, some extra parallax antennas to determine the direction whatever signal came from.
Oh, and I didn't say anything about your latest Rush Limbo gibberish about "individual rights", which is just this year's straw man argument. Some say a cucumber tastes better than a pickle, too.
Why don't you just start ranting about how you're going to shoot me, already? I mean, you're sure not busy protecting the Constitution (except your demented version of the 2nd Amendment) with that gun you spend nights sucking on. After all, I'm a "communist".
"Communist". If there's a better argument for why sickos like you shouldn't be listened to when you pretend to the respectability of Constitutional discussions, why you shouldn't be allowed to arm yourselves to the teeth and walk among us like a real person, it's got to be 50 years of watching jackasses like you say nonsense like that over and again, shooting yourselves in the face every time.
Compared to "knew everything", any real person's genius is "narrow". Mathematical theoretical physics is very narrow compared to "everything", even if it included a "theory of everything".
If Viacom can get away with this at Google, then what happens when Viacom (and other megacorps with copyrighted content) start demanding those records from much smaller porno video sites? Then they have blackmail records galore, and it will be much easier to pry them out of those little companies.
A treasure trove of blackmail on the whole world, submarining around the Web for a decade or more gathering value.
If the US courts rape our privacy like this, they've killed our country in a way trivially predictable by anyone understanding the value of privacy rights.
I bet there's a sneaky way around it, just like Relativity is a sneaky way around spacetime being linear. Curved spacetime sounds like a shortcut, not an obstacle, to me - if we can learn to work it cleverly.
Well, I said Einstein was the coolest since the toga wearing beach partiers. Feynman might have been the coolest since Einstein, or since the togas. Einstein married his cousin, Feynman married the love of his life but partied with strippers (and CalTech coeds) after his wife died young. Your call.
But then, Feynman was so cool that when he met Einstein as their careers overlapped briefly, Feynman was appropriately tonguetied.
I don't know exactly the economics of a maglev launcher. But they've got to be better than the energy we expend in a long shotgun blast launching rockets, since the energy can be expended over a longer time, with more precise controlled release, which means it can be a lot more efficient. And the resistance from the Earth to the propelling mechanics can offer half the reaction, rather than just spent fuel as a reaction mass, with a lot of the energy released as a vast amount of heated gas. Maglev instead of traditional rail reduces the friction, as does starting up in the Andes' thin air, and already 26 miles further (plus a a few miles of mountain) further from the Earth's gravitational center than the poles, or other higher elevations.
There might be a case to make for launching by rail in an evacuated tunnel, accelerated by stationary electromagnets (railgun), so the payload has no air resistance or any mass useful only in that initial launch stage, then some kind of scramjet that requires low air density and high speed, perhaps with short wings for lift, until it's high enough in a parabolic orbit that solar sails can be deployed to power it into higher orbit before it comes fallign parabolicly back to Earth. Different lifting techs for different conditions through the launch orbits.
I think that those different conditions throughout a launch that are exploited by only a single tech means that at least some of the phases aren't the most efficient way to get through them. The ways I'm proposing each use the available conditions to get lift, with the minimum mass (and its drag) accelerated to get there.
The Cold War was a real war. Even when the bullets and bombs weren't going off, which was most of the time, around the whole world, it was a real war.
When a government does something to another government to damage the other country, or to gain an asset that enables that damage, that's war. It doesn't matter if the two governments have other business. Especially if that other business is weakening the target country without any risk to the country that's winning.
Just because Mr Bircher doesn't answer doesn't mean he isn't at war. In fact, since he's at war he probably knows it, even if he won't admit it. He probably thinks that he's fighting the war better by not admitting it, or even if he doesn't believe that, he's following orders from someone who does.
Not admitting there's a war is a good way to lose it. Just as pretending the Iraq War was a war before we started it, for no good reasons, on lies, was a good way to lose that one.
Business as usual over at Mr Bircher's office has lost this country more in the past 7-8 years than all the unambiguous wars we've fought in our entire history.
You said I'm selectively editing the Constitution.
I said that I would like to see it applied correctly, not in the completely perverted way that the courts have been applying it under long and strong pressure from the arms industry. And that I'd like to see it amended.
That is not selectively editing the Constitution. That is following it, including its application and amendment.
You, however, are such an insane liar that you will lie to my face about what I just said, that is perfectly clear.
You yammering zombies get nothing more from me, when all you are is the sick inversion of America. Fuck you, and all you've done to deserve much more disrespect than I can fit in a Slashdot post.
Usually pop culture gets these people's character pretty wrong. Elvis, for example, is "the King", when he was just a singing truck driver.
But Einstein they got pretty right. Sure, he didn't know everything, was smart really only within his very narrow discipline of mathematical theoretical physics. Einstein himself used to say "I really only ever had 4 good ideas, and 2 were wrong". But the couple he was right about, he was really right.
And with the wild hair, the pacifism, the "same suit every day so I don't have to waste time thinking about it", and the snappy short equations that explain everything, he's probably the coolest smart guy since they all used to wear togas and live on wine and souvlaki on the beach.
Yes, you're lying about my opposition to the 2nd Amendment. I think it's bunk. I want to get rid of it. I know that it doesn't mean that anyone can have whatever weapon they want, without Congress infringing those rights.
But that doesn't mean I'm editing the Constitution. The Constitution says that we have the power to change the Constitution, that the courts have the power to interpret it. So I want the courts to interpret it correctly, despite the difficulty of the poorly constructed 2nd Amendment. And I want us to repeal it in favor of an Amendment making the government protect our rights to defend ourselves, which could indeed include handguns, but isn't the open-ended rule with a long-obsolete "militia" basis that got crammed into the Constitution and kept there by the gun fetish lobby.
I'm not going to bother shooting down each of the Republican talking points you eat up from that fat junkie Rush Limbo. They're all lies. But I'm also not saying that Democrats aren't crooked. Just not as crooked as Republcians, as is totally obvious from the way Republicans always leave the country when they're done raping it, compared to how Democrats leave it.
Republicans are worse. Let's leave aside all the pardoned Iran/Contra and Watergate criminals. That list I pointed to has many times more the indicted and convicted felons than you just posted. And that doesn't include any of the unindicted people who Bush's government monopoly left at large. But yours does include people who the Republican Congress and many Nixon/Reagan/Bush appointed partisan judges convicted for political reasons. And the ones who are on that Republican list include 6 pages of pedophiles, and a page of Christian Coalition leaders who raped their own children.
Sick fucking Republicans. And you people lied us into the Iraq War, and all the other catastrophes that have brought this country so low while your crazy criminals had the power monopoly for so long. But still you don't shut up: you think you idiots have something worth hearing after all you've destroyed. You're so corrupt that you didn't even notice that your credibility was among the first things you ruined.
Oh, and as for "congenital", I fucked your mother. But you're not my fault. Asshole.
Of all the questions collected for John Bircher, only ">34 comments rated a "5" score, of which only 25 were questions. Mr Bircher answered 17 questions (including two by the same questioner). One of the unanswered Score 5 questions was mine, "Are We At War?":
What is the "cyber command" doing to protect the US from current serious attacks on major Federal government sites, including the attacks on sensitive Congressional sites [slashdot.org] reported this week?
Is there any traditional military precedent for tolerating these attacks to the extent we do? Is that hesitancy making us weaker, so our eventual delayed military (or "cyber-military") response will be compromised from winning the conflict to our satisfaction?
At what point do these attacks constitute acts of war, does that need to be declared by Congress, and how does the "cyber command" change its response at that point?
Some other questions about cyberwar with China were answered by Mr Bircher, but they were nonanswers about actual operational warfare, which is legitimately secret:
5) "China"
by je ne sais quoi
What is the U.S. Army doing to protect U.S. sensitive information from the frequent number of cyber-attacks originating from inside the People's Republic of China? Is it primarily defensive?
U.S. sensitive information requires safeguarding, no matter who may be probing or attacking our systems in order to gain access to this information. This fact demands that we undertake all protective measures possible... and we are.
6) "Hacker war..."
by Notquitecajun
I doubt you could REALLY answer this, but Is the US military playing any sort of role in the semi-underground "hacker war" that appears to be going on between China and the US?
You're right NQC... I really can't answer this. Beyond the sensitive nature of the subject, I simply don't know because it is well beyond my scope of responsibility. There's a laundry list of government organizations focusing on the threats to our nation and to our military TODAY. Remember - I'm focusing on how to operate in and through cyberspace in the future.
So we still don't know anything more about the political and legal relationship between the civilian government and the military, while we hear sporadic reports of a war raging between us and China.
These claims are wrong about what the Web used to be:
'Is [the Web] still the Web if you can't navigate directly to specific content? Is it still the Web if the content can't be indexed and searched? Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices? Is it still the Web if you can't view source?'
The Web has always pointed to content that couldn't be navigated "directly" (with a single click, if that statement means anything). In fact, the original Web (from 1990-1993-1995-1998-whenever) always had content that required intermediary steps. Mostly to build state: login with a password, or a "click trail" that set variables passed in URL or POST data. But also lots of content that couldn't even be opened in the browser itself, requiring external "helper applications". Like RealAudio or any other realtime playable media, lots of image formats, and of course the Acrobat that still opens an external app from most browsers.
Little or none of that content was ever indexed before. And in fact most content wasn't indexed at all, certainly not before Altavista came along at least 5 years into the game, and surely not as completely and precisely (and accessibly, which is the most important) as by Google.
The range of clients and devices that are mostly or completely useful for finding and consuming everything on the Web is extremely broad and diverse now. In the beginning, only the fastest PCs could do it. Now, Web access is embedded in lightswitches, not to mention mobile phones, watches, cars, and all kinds of damn fool novelties.
And of course most of the most valuable and useful parts of the Web have never been available with "view source". The CGI and other server code and databases have never been viewable like HTML source. The browsers themselves in the original Web were all closed source. Whether Internet Explorer, Netscape, Spyglass, AOL, or any other browser, all the source was secret, except the tiny fraction that was the HTML (how it actually worked "under the hood" was unknowable). As were of course most of the Webservers, since they were one of Netscape's or Microsoft's IIS (except for the original NCSA and CERN servers, which quickly became a minority). So in fact only a little bit, the HTML, was viewable, and the vast majority was secret, unavailable, anyone's guess.
So yes, it's still the Web. It's even more what we wanted it to be: all the info and apps in the world linked by simple clicks from any computer attached to the Internet. And the Web's explosive growth and demands for open source have made open source the standard expectation, even if it's still growing to become the standard delivery. And not just on the Web, but on all software (and hardware too) that we use, even as the Web has become the main software and hardware that we use.
Of course, lying about the Web, about the 1990s Web or any given snapshot, is about as old as the Web itself. So why shouldn't the Web catch fire with lies claiming the old Web was some kind of open source paradise that it wasn't, that today's Web actually is?
No, I don't selectively edit the Constitution. You're just lying.
Just like when you put Clinton in the same category with Nixon and Bush. Especially because the point is that Bush is the president now, and Clinton, Reagan and Bush Sr are not a problem we can do anything about anymore.
My point is that Republicans are worse. Find me a list that's equivalent to this (incomplete) list of "Republican felons and their indicted brethren". No one is saying that Clinton (or Johnson, or Andrew Jackson) were "good". That is a straw man. What I'm saying, a point that actually matters, is that Bush is really bad, Nixon was almost as bad, and they're Republicans. Being Republican is an extreme brand of evil that Democrats don't come close to.
But since you're just a blatant liar, why shouldn't you defend Republicans?
In the 1970s, Bell (while it was still around and ruled the world) researched exactly which colors are most usable on the monochrome monitors of the time. They found that green (a bright green, like the Windows standard color "Light Green") on black was the easiest to read for the longest time for the most people. But they also found that yellow (an amber yellow, a little darker than the Windows standard color "Light Yellow") is the clearest, for most accurate reading, even if not for the longest time.
The judge making this senile ruling is Louis Stanton, who was born in 1927, 81 years ago. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan, 23 years ago.
Most Americans have to retire when they're 65. This guy is still sitting there, ruling on American activities that were invented only when he was already past retirement age.
Let him rule on whips & buggies. He's obviously unfit to rule on Internet privacy, and has even forgotten the 4th Amendment.
The statement that Viacom getting every individual user's history, regardless of any individual's actions (whether they even viewed a Viacom-originated clip) will invade each user's privacy is not "speculative". It is a 100% guarantee that those millions of people's privacy will be invaded, though assured protection by Google's privacy policy.
The 4th Amendment says our privacy right will be protected by due process. A judge who rules that 100% certainty is "speculative" is not the process we're due. Google should fight this tyrannical ruling. And that judge should be forced to retire.
Those two companies collectively represent a vast amount of Web consumer traffic, even if they're not actually combined into a single entity. Investigating them should probably be a matter of course, like inspecting a deep, complex mine shaft essential to a nation's infrastructure. Or a large freight rail combine. Or a chain of regional airports throughout, say, the upper plains states, but a lot bigger and more important.
Since the proposed merger will have monopolistic effects on a market with drastically narrowed choices of independent media, it's a good reason to search anyway. If they can find anything else going seriously wrong, now is the time to look.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is important. The answer is even more important. The Anaconda system can produce answers about its environmental impact. And since I see no calls for scrapping the environmental impact reviews already in place, I expect we'll get them.
Considering the alternatives, Anaconda-type or petrofuel-type, I'm pretty hopeful about the Anacondas. But it's not faith - I want the answers, too.
On top of all the other problems with nukes (like dirty extraction that's dependent on an even tinier resource that's in even more unstable countries than oil is), we are now likely facing the rapid exhaustion of elements like indium and hafnium that are necessary for reactor control rods.
Nukes are a hugely top-heavy tech. That produce a huge problem in their waste, as well as extremely difficult security problems.
Geothermal is vastly more energy than even all the nukes we could produce. Other renewables can also vastly oversupply demand. If we'd subsidized any of them the way we've subsidized nukes for the past half-century and more, we'd already be well out of danger.
Actually, lots (perhaps all) of the sea currents have had their energies cranked up by the Greenhouse effect. Huge rivers of currents have been shoved away from their past courses, driven into more twists and turns, becoming more energetic as energy is stored in them. That energy also comes out, and contributes to effects like El Nino and other storm generation, like heated surfaces that encourage hurricane formation.
Taking energy out of those currents could be a double benefit. Getting the energy instead of burning more petrofuels (which makes the currents twistier), and damping the currents which have their own destructive power.
We need research to show the energy system effects of damping those currents' energetic flows. But such research is a lot more conclusive, because it can measure downstream some finite mechanics, rather than the global and subtle feedback effects of other energy systems.
Like any other energy "source" we've ever used, or likely will ever use, an "Anaconda" system won't be the only way we tap energy for use. But you've got to consider what an Anaconda-type generator would replace, and the comparative impacts of each. How much damage does a 100MW gas, oil or coal plant produce, compared to 100 Anacondas? Building, maintaining, fueling and cleaning up after the petrofuel plants is pretty messy, compared to the Anacondas. Especially after the Anaconda is first installed, as its energy-bearing material (the currents) is naturally replenished without waste or cost, compared to the long fuel lines for the furnaces.
There's very little if any C code that can't be written basically the same for Perl to interpret it basically the same way. The exception is direct memory access, but there are ways. And besides, I'd rather access memory through an API that really manages it, like making it hard to unexpectedly overflow buffers or grant access to unauthorized other users.
I'd love a Perl interpreter embedded in my browser. I'd love to have a Perl API directly to the browser app and the browser documents' DOM. I'd love to have a "Perl commandline" that returns text like usual, or that works on remote data by URL, or that returns icons or other data displayable in the browser.
Javascript is a pain in the ass. I'd rather have a Perl engine, and all the Perl modules and scripts, to run against my browser the way I usually run against my terminal window.
A lot of the energy we've trapped in our "atmosphere" is trapped in the seas that are closely linked with the air. Huge undersea currents, vast rivers of water dwarfing anything possible on our relatively dry continents, have been driven into ever more twisty paths, coiling around in a higher energy, chaotic state. But since it's all a long chain of energetic cycles, that energy eventually rises up into the air again. The El Nino / La Nina effects are one place where water pushes energy back into the air, or takes it out, depending on the phase of the cycle. And since a given volume of water contains so much more heat than the same volume of air, and even the same amount of energy can push around a much larger volume of air than the more massive water, those energized currents can (and will) push around the more turbulent winds (that then in turn force larger storm surges, which can also pump up the currents).
So harvesting energy from these currents could do more than just give us energy that replaces burning petrofuels like oil (which slows the Greenhouse Effect that's pushing more energy into these systems). They could also dampen the increased currents that store damaging excess energy.
These cycles are all linked together. Anywhere we can have an effect, we often have at least double the effect, considered throughout the downstream cycle. These current dampers could do quite a lot of good, perhaps more than meets the eye.
I really want phone UIs, security and battery life to finally support complete audio recordings of my entire life. It's got all kinds of uses, especially when some idiot tells me something, then denies they said it a few minutes later, or when they deny I told them something. With that kind of record, I could play back anything suspicious I "heard" to someone else. It would be a lot harder to get us both to "hear" something that wasn't actually audible, but rather projected as rays into our heads. Especially once we'd moved to a different place later on.
I'd also like a complete video record. Maybe eventually a complete electromagnetic record of the space I move through. And, if these rays catch on, some extra parallax antennas to determine the direction whatever signal came from.
Now I'm a "communist".
Oh, and I didn't say anything about your latest Rush Limbo gibberish about "individual rights", which is just this year's straw man argument. Some say a cucumber tastes better than a pickle, too.
Why don't you just start ranting about how you're going to shoot me, already? I mean, you're sure not busy protecting the Constitution (except your demented version of the 2nd Amendment) with that gun you spend nights sucking on. After all, I'm a "communist".
"Communist". If there's a better argument for why sickos like you shouldn't be listened to when you pretend to the respectability of Constitutional discussions, why you shouldn't be allowed to arm yourselves to the teeth and walk among us like a real person, it's got to be 50 years of watching jackasses like you say nonsense like that over and again, shooting yourselves in the face every time.
Compared to "knew everything", any real person's genius is "narrow". Mathematical theoretical physics is very narrow compared to "everything", even if it included a "theory of everything".
If Viacom can get away with this at Google, then what happens when Viacom (and other megacorps with copyrighted content) start demanding those records from much smaller porno video sites? Then they have blackmail records galore, and it will be much easier to pry them out of those little companies.
A treasure trove of blackmail on the whole world, submarining around the Web for a decade or more gathering value.
If the US courts rape our privacy like this, they've killed our country in a way trivially predictable by anyone understanding the value of privacy rights.
I bet there's a sneaky way around it, just like Relativity is a sneaky way around spacetime being linear. Curved spacetime sounds like a shortcut, not an obstacle, to me - if we can learn to work it cleverly.
So far, Einstein has been right about everything, except that quantum mechanics is wrong.
Well, I said Einstein was the coolest since the toga wearing beach partiers. Feynman might have been the coolest since Einstein, or since the togas. Einstein married his cousin, Feynman married the love of his life but partied with strippers (and CalTech coeds) after his wife died young. Your call.
But then, Feynman was so cool that when he met Einstein as their careers overlapped briefly, Feynman was appropriately tonguetied.
Relativity vs QM in a nutshell.
I don't know exactly the economics of a maglev launcher. But they've got to be better than the energy we expend in a long shotgun blast launching rockets, since the energy can be expended over a longer time, with more precise controlled release, which means it can be a lot more efficient. And the resistance from the Earth to the propelling mechanics can offer half the reaction, rather than just spent fuel as a reaction mass, with a lot of the energy released as a vast amount of heated gas. Maglev instead of traditional rail reduces the friction, as does starting up in the Andes' thin air, and already 26 miles further (plus a a few miles of mountain) further from the Earth's gravitational center than the poles, or other higher elevations.
There might be a case to make for launching by rail in an evacuated tunnel, accelerated by stationary electromagnets (railgun), so the payload has no air resistance or any mass useful only in that initial launch stage, then some kind of scramjet that requires low air density and high speed, perhaps with short wings for lift, until it's high enough in a parabolic orbit that solar sails can be deployed to power it into higher orbit before it comes fallign parabolicly back to Earth. Different lifting techs for different conditions through the launch orbits.
I think that those different conditions throughout a launch that are exploited by only a single tech means that at least some of the phases aren't the most efficient way to get through them. The ways I'm proposing each use the available conditions to get lift, with the minimum mass (and its drag) accelerated to get there.
The Cold War was a real war. Even when the bullets and bombs weren't going off, which was most of the time, around the whole world, it was a real war.
When a government does something to another government to damage the other country, or to gain an asset that enables that damage, that's war. It doesn't matter if the two governments have other business. Especially if that other business is weakening the target country without any risk to the country that's winning.
Just because Mr Bircher doesn't answer doesn't mean he isn't at war. In fact, since he's at war he probably knows it, even if he won't admit it. He probably thinks that he's fighting the war better by not admitting it, or even if he doesn't believe that, he's following orders from someone who does.
Not admitting there's a war is a good way to lose it. Just as pretending the Iraq War was a war before we started it, for no good reasons, on lies, was a good way to lose that one.
Business as usual over at Mr Bircher's office has lost this country more in the past 7-8 years than all the unambiguous wars we've fought in our entire history.
You said I'm selectively editing the Constitution.
I said that I would like to see it applied correctly, not in the completely perverted way that the courts have been applying it under long and strong pressure from the arms industry. And that I'd like to see it amended.
That is not selectively editing the Constitution. That is following it, including its application and amendment.
You, however, are such an insane liar that you will lie to my face about what I just said, that is perfectly clear.
You yammering zombies get nothing more from me, when all you are is the sick inversion of America. Fuck you, and all you've done to deserve much more disrespect than I can fit in a Slashdot post.
Usually pop culture gets these people's character pretty wrong. Elvis, for example, is "the King", when he was just a singing truck driver.
But Einstein they got pretty right. Sure, he didn't know everything, was smart really only within his very narrow discipline of mathematical theoretical physics. Einstein himself used to say "I really only ever had 4 good ideas, and 2 were wrong". But the couple he was right about, he was really right.
And with the wild hair, the pacifism, the "same suit every day so I don't have to waste time thinking about it", and the snappy short equations that explain everything, he's probably the coolest smart guy since they all used to wear togas and live on wine and souvlaki on the beach.
Yes, you're lying about my opposition to the 2nd Amendment. I think it's bunk. I want to get rid of it. I know that it doesn't mean that anyone can have whatever weapon they want, without Congress infringing those rights.
But that doesn't mean I'm editing the Constitution. The Constitution says that we have the power to change the Constitution, that the courts have the power to interpret it. So I want the courts to interpret it correctly, despite the difficulty of the poorly constructed 2nd Amendment. And I want us to repeal it in favor of an Amendment making the government protect our rights to defend ourselves, which could indeed include handguns, but isn't the open-ended rule with a long-obsolete "militia" basis that got crammed into the Constitution and kept there by the gun fetish lobby.
I'm not going to bother shooting down each of the Republican talking points you eat up from that fat junkie Rush Limbo. They're all lies. But I'm also not saying that Democrats aren't crooked. Just not as crooked as Republcians, as is totally obvious from the way Republicans always leave the country when they're done raping it, compared to how Democrats leave it.
Republicans are worse. Let's leave aside all the pardoned Iran/Contra and Watergate criminals. That list I pointed to has many times more the indicted and convicted felons than you just posted. And that doesn't include any of the unindicted people who Bush's government monopoly left at large. But yours does include people who the Republican Congress and many Nixon/Reagan/Bush appointed partisan judges convicted for political reasons. And the ones who are on that Republican list include 6 pages of pedophiles, and a page of Christian Coalition leaders who raped their own children.
Sick fucking Republicans. And you people lied us into the Iraq War, and all the other catastrophes that have brought this country so low while your crazy criminals had the power monopoly for so long. But still you don't shut up: you think you idiots have something worth hearing after all you've destroyed. You're so corrupt that you didn't even notice that your credibility was among the first things you ruined.
Oh, and as for "congenital", I fucked your mother. But you're not my fault. Asshole.
Of all the questions collected for John Bircher, only ">34 comments rated a "5" score, of which only 25 were questions. Mr Bircher answered 17 questions (including two by the same questioner). One of the unanswered Score 5 questions was mine, "Are We At War?":
Some other questions about cyberwar with China were answered by Mr Bircher, but they were nonanswers about actual operational warfare, which is legitimately secret:
So we still don't know anything more about the political and legal relationship between the civilian government and the military, while we hear sporadic reports of a war raging between us and China.
But at least some of us are asking the questions.
These claims are wrong about what the Web used to be:
The Web has always pointed to content that couldn't be navigated "directly" (with a single click, if that statement means anything). In fact, the original Web (from 1990-1993-1995-1998-whenever) always had content that required intermediary steps. Mostly to build state: login with a password, or a "click trail" that set variables passed in URL or POST data. But also lots of content that couldn't even be opened in the browser itself, requiring external "helper applications". Like RealAudio or any other realtime playable media, lots of image formats, and of course the Acrobat that still opens an external app from most browsers.
Little or none of that content was ever indexed before. And in fact most content wasn't indexed at all, certainly not before Altavista came along at least 5 years into the game, and surely not as completely and precisely (and accessibly, which is the most important) as by Google.
The range of clients and devices that are mostly or completely useful for finding and consuming everything on the Web is extremely broad and diverse now. In the beginning, only the fastest PCs could do it. Now, Web access is embedded in lightswitches, not to mention mobile phones, watches, cars, and all kinds of damn fool novelties.
And of course most of the most valuable and useful parts of the Web have never been available with "view source". The CGI and other server code and databases have never been viewable like HTML source. The browsers themselves in the original Web were all closed source. Whether Internet Explorer, Netscape, Spyglass, AOL, or any other browser, all the source was secret, except the tiny fraction that was the HTML (how it actually worked "under the hood" was unknowable). As were of course most of the Webservers, since they were one of Netscape's or Microsoft's IIS (except for the original NCSA and CERN servers, which quickly became a minority). So in fact only a little bit, the HTML, was viewable, and the vast majority was secret, unavailable, anyone's guess.
So yes, it's still the Web. It's even more what we wanted it to be: all the info and apps in the world linked by simple clicks from any computer attached to the Internet. And the Web's explosive growth and demands for open source have made open source the standard expectation, even if it's still growing to become the standard delivery. And not just on the Web, but on all software (and hardware too) that we use, even as the Web has become the main software and hardware that we use.
Of course, lying about the Web, about the 1990s Web or any given snapshot, is about as old as the Web itself. So why shouldn't the Web catch fire with lies claiming the old Web was some kind of open source paradise that it wasn't, that today's Web actually is?
No, I don't selectively edit the Constitution. You're just lying.
Just like when you put Clinton in the same category with Nixon and Bush. Especially because the point is that Bush is the president now, and Clinton, Reagan and Bush Sr are not a problem we can do anything about anymore.
My point is that Republicans are worse. Find me a list that's equivalent to this (incomplete) list of "Republican felons and their indicted brethren". No one is saying that Clinton (or Johnson, or Andrew Jackson) were "good". That is a straw man. What I'm saying, a point that actually matters, is that Bush is really bad, Nixon was almost as bad, and they're Republicans. Being Republican is an extreme brand of evil that Democrats don't come close to.
But since you're just a blatant liar, why shouldn't you defend Republicans?
In the 1970s, Bell (while it was still around and ruled the world) researched exactly which colors are most usable on the monochrome monitors of the time. They found that green (a bright green, like the Windows standard color "Light Green") on black was the easiest to read for the longest time for the most people. But they also found that yellow (an amber yellow, a little darker than the Windows standard color "Light Yellow") is the clearest, for most accurate reading, even if not for the longest time.
The judge making this senile ruling is Louis Stanton, who was born in 1927, 81 years ago. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan, 23 years ago.
Most Americans have to retire when they're 65. This guy is still sitting there, ruling on American activities that were invented only when he was already past retirement age.
Let him rule on whips & buggies. He's obviously unfit to rule on Internet privacy, and has even forgotten the 4th Amendment.
The statement that Viacom getting every individual user's history, regardless of any individual's actions (whether they even viewed a Viacom-originated clip) will invade each user's privacy is not "speculative". It is a 100% guarantee that those millions of people's privacy will be invaded, though assured protection by Google's privacy policy.
The 4th Amendment says our privacy right will be protected by due process. A judge who rules that 100% certainty is "speculative" is not the process we're due. Google should fight this tyrannical ruling. And that judge should be forced to retire.
Those two companies collectively represent a vast amount of Web consumer traffic, even if they're not actually combined into a single entity. Investigating them should probably be a matter of course, like inspecting a deep, complex mine shaft essential to a nation's infrastructure. Or a large freight rail combine. Or a chain of regional airports throughout, say, the upper plains states, but a lot bigger and more important.
Since the proposed merger will have monopolistic effects on a market with drastically narrowed choices of independent media, it's a good reason to search anyway. If they can find anything else going seriously wrong, now is the time to look.
I thought Europeans spend $0.35-50 per text they send.