This isn't a regular war where professional soldiers are fighting each other; this is a group of terrorists and insurgents targeting lawful combatants as well as civilians with everything they've got, at every opportunity.
Why?
Why isn't this a regular war?
Because it was started on false information, and for one express purpose: resources (but announced as "following the terrorists"). (Later, we announced that the purpose was regime change, and even that's rather despicable.)
If any other country decided they wanted something that was on American soil and started bombing us over it, yes, I'm sure that many of us basement-dwellers would pick up weapons, or find some way to fight back. When the forces are disproportional, so are the tactics.
I completely agree with the poster who said he's ashamed that his tax dollars go to support this. If only, when we paid taxes, we could decide via percentage allocation which programs to spend those taxes on (something like voting); then, regardless of the corruption/corruptibility of the legislation, the will of the people would be obeyed. Sure, there'd be temporary issues, like "nobody decided to pay for sanitation, so there's no trash pickup this year" -- and, the people would suffer for it, and would remember that next time it came to "vote with our dollars".
If some guy has CP on his computer, I honestly couldn't care less at this point. I'm jaded of the hysteria past the point of cynicism.
Completely agree. If some guy has pictures of a bank robbery on his computer, I also couldn't care less -- even if he had a gun-and-money fetish.
(Just to make my point clear: both classes of images are of the class "evidence that a crime was committed"; and in any case, I believe that "possession of images" should not be a law enforcement matter.)
In "The Matrix", there was a line about the 90s being the height of our civilization.
I used to work with an ex-cop, who still had a few loose ends to tie up and had to go to court a few times, after he had started the new job. The issue was child porn, and honestly I never discussed it with him beyond that, because I'm sure that like a large percentage of other investigations, he was not pursuing someone who first-hand abused a child, but merely "someone who was in possession of some images." That's really sad, and completely the wrong way for our society to attack, but I liked my job so kept my mouth shut.
It was a difficult situation, but unless they want to be routinely used as a weapon against innocent people, they need to tread very lightly until they have solid evidence.
I think that may be one of the "silver linings" of this event. Hopefully there will be more attempts like this that are discovered. If enough people hear about the damage being caused by a ridiculous law (possession of evidence that a crime was committed should not be illegal), perhaps that will either convince the legislators to fix the situation and repeal the law, and/or it may convince the police to tread more lightly when dealing with cases of such an ambiguous nature in the future (i.e., first person to investigate should be the person mailing the hard drive).
Of course, then I read the rest of your post about the drug "tips", and realize that we still have many legislative battles to overcome in order to be truly free. Which will likely never happen.
I'm surprised they aren't summarily castrating people without proof these days.
Well, they are summarily circumcising people. I mean, think about it: at birth, with no anesthetic (because that would mess the kid up, but this won't?), they unceremoniously deprive 40% of our children of their manhood! Ah, hell, there's only one person on here who agrees with such fervor, I keep seeing his sig. Yes, I'm bitter, I'll never have it back, nor the large amount of nerve cells that I also lost with that piece of flesh. And it wasn't even religion; it was "just what people did".
The other day I was thinking about drawing a picture of a child who had cut several of his fingers off, and was presenting his bloody hand to his mother, saying with pride, "See what I did mom? I'm helping my hands be more clean, too!" As a response to those idiots who believe that cutting pieces of your body off in non-medically-necessary surgery is a way to be more healthy.
And to bring this back to somewhat-on-topic:
After all, won't someone think of the children...
I believe that working to make non-consensual circumcision illegal does far more real "thinking of the children" and "helping the children" than any amount of "making it illegal to possess evidence of a crime" will ever do. (By "non-consensual" I mean one needs to be an adult in order to decide to remove parts of their body -- not that parents could consent for their children, as happesn now.)
I completely agree with everything you say. The trouble with the Randi prize, though, is as soon as something "supernatural" like electricity becomes understood and known by science, it is immediately ineligible to win the prize.
I practice Jin Shin Jyutsu, and other forms of energy healing. I feel a tingling when the energy is moving. (Others feel it as heat/cold, or as resistance/attraction, like a magnet.)
I can't prove that I feel this. I can't prove that it's working, and making me more healthy. That is; I can't prove it yet, because we don't have instruments sensitive enough to detect it (just as a couple centuries ago we couldn't detect atoms).
Some day, we will develop science to the point that it can say "hey, his fingertips are tingling right now, showing that energy is moving" -- and, I won't then win the prize, because then it will be natural, not supernatural.
It's great marketing on Randi's part, but can never, ever, be paid.
Apologies if I wasn't clear; I consider it "a day wasted" because all they were doing was discussing the price. Oracle has configured their sales force to require this huge amount of communication/planning time; those companies who choose to settle their needs in an hour, well, they get a worse deal than the VP you overheard.
And then, like I said, that VP is convinced that following Oracle's song and dance steps is worth it, because of the savings (i.e., rather than being irate that there is so much inefficiency built into the sales process, which allows Oracle to make such steep discounts on a regular basis).
It's like my sister's math-absent childhood, "But I just had to buy it because it was on sale, look at how much I saved!" Yeah, OK sis, put that in the bank.
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense -- business sense, that is, not customer sense. Like the other responder, SQLite3 has been enough for my needs, for now...
Pretty amazing, that a company (Oracle) can convince a highly-paid manager that wasting a day on negotiations is an enjoyable experience! That the salesman has cleared his complete schedule for this one customer -- well, that also speaks volumes.
Yeah, the other reply said what I was basically going to say: the webserver uses a single database user. Sure, there might be millions of "users" in your web application, but they're never hitting the database; they do not exist as database users. But that seems trivially obvious so there must be something else you're getting at re: CALs are bad?
I wonder what company will be next to pull out of China?
To me, it sounds like Hong Kong just became China's Delaware, where 90% of our corporations are based out of due to corporation-friendly legislation. Only thing that would prevent me from packing up and moving operations to Hong Kong would be the bullet my family would have to pay for, which may be deterrent enough to keep everyone from following Google's move.
I wonder if a Chinese blogger can quote the same section of their criminal code, and be arrested for doing so based on that code? No, I don't wonder; it seems reasonable that alerting others to the censoring nature of our oppressors will lead to jail time/death ("any other means" would include discussing the law). But, it would be interesting to find confirmation.
It's not "my stuff" that I'd be worried about in such a situation. It's, "my safety", "my life", and "my wife's and daughter's aversion to rape". In those circumstances, yes, deadly force is appropriate.
How do we know that isn't the case for ANYONE targeted by our Armies using ANY technology.
YES! Exactly.
I remember in 2004/2005 or so, there was this short-lived drama on TNT (? One of the cable channels, anyway), called "Over There", which chronicled a group of soldiers in Iraq.
In one of the episodes, they "found" a house which had a lot of money in the walls. Owner comes home, armed, sees people looting, starts shooting; owner ends up dead.
While watching that episode, I got a really eerie, creepy feeling that perhaps some of our actual military targets aren't "military" so much as economic. Really saddened me, but wth was I going to do about it? Thankfully, we have the ACLU, which has offices at numerous latitude/longitude pairs.
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Why?
Why isn't this a regular war?
Because it was started on false information, and for one express purpose: resources (but announced as "following the terrorists"). (Later, we announced that the purpose was regime change, and even that's rather despicable.)
If any other country decided they wanted something that was on American soil and started bombing us over it, yes, I'm sure that many of us basement-dwellers would pick up weapons, or find some way to fight back. When the forces are disproportional, so are the tactics.
I completely agree with the poster who said he's ashamed that his tax dollars go to support this. If only, when we paid taxes, we could decide via percentage allocation which programs to spend those taxes on (something like voting); then, regardless of the corruption/corruptibility of the legislation, the will of the people would be obeyed. Sure, there'd be temporary issues, like "nobody decided to pay for sanitation, so there's no trash pickup this year" -- and, the people would suffer for it, and would remember that next time it came to "vote with our dollars".
I only have a remaining eye, you insensitive clod!
Good luck in life.
I think your parenthetical quote explains a lot about the actual environment there -- and is also likely why people hold those views.
Completely agree. If some guy has pictures of a bank robbery on his computer, I also couldn't care less -- even if he had a gun-and-money fetish.
(Just to make my point clear: both classes of images are of the class "evidence that a crime was committed"; and in any case, I believe that "possession of images" should not be a law enforcement matter.)
In "The Matrix", there was a line about the 90s being the height of our civilization.
I used to work with an ex-cop, who still had a few loose ends to tie up and had to go to court a few times, after he had started the new job. The issue was child porn, and honestly I never discussed it with him beyond that, because I'm sure that like a large percentage of other investigations, he was not pursuing someone who first-hand abused a child, but merely "someone who was in possession of some images." That's really sad, and completely the wrong way for our society to attack, but I liked my job so kept my mouth shut.
I think that may be one of the "silver linings" of this event. Hopefully there will be more attempts like this that are discovered. If enough people hear about the damage being caused by a ridiculous law (possession of evidence that a crime was committed should not be illegal), perhaps that will either convince the legislators to fix the situation and repeal the law, and/or it may convince the police to tread more lightly when dealing with cases of such an ambiguous nature in the future (i.e., first person to investigate should be the person mailing the hard drive).
Of course, then I read the rest of your post about the drug "tips", and realize that we still have many legislative battles to overcome in order to be truly free. Which will likely never happen.
Well, they are summarily circumcising people. I mean, think about it: at birth, with no anesthetic (because that would mess the kid up, but this won't?), they unceremoniously deprive 40% of our children of their manhood! Ah, hell, there's only one person on here who agrees with such fervor, I keep seeing his sig. Yes, I'm bitter, I'll never have it back, nor the large amount of nerve cells that I also lost with that piece of flesh. And it wasn't even religion; it was "just what people did".
The other day I was thinking about drawing a picture of a child who had cut several of his fingers off, and was presenting his bloody hand to his mother, saying with pride, "See what I did mom? I'm helping my hands be more clean, too!" As a response to those idiots who believe that cutting pieces of your body off in non-medically-necessary surgery is a way to be more healthy.
And to bring this back to somewhat-on-topic:
I believe that working to make non-consensual circumcision illegal does far more real "thinking of the children" and "helping the children" than any amount of "making it illegal to possess evidence of a crime" will ever do. (By "non-consensual" I mean one needs to be an adult in order to decide to remove parts of their body -- not that parents could consent for their children, as happesn now.)
Is that Wolverine's personal source code repository?
You can also buy fences on Craigslist.
I completely agree with everything you say. The trouble with the Randi prize, though, is as soon as something "supernatural" like electricity becomes understood and known by science, it is immediately ineligible to win the prize.
I practice Jin Shin Jyutsu, and other forms of energy healing. I feel a tingling when the energy is moving. (Others feel it as heat/cold, or as resistance/attraction, like a magnet.)
I can't prove that I feel this. I can't prove that it's working, and making me more healthy. That is; I can't prove it yet, because we don't have instruments sensitive enough to detect it (just as a couple centuries ago we couldn't detect atoms).
Some day, we will develop science to the point that it can say "hey, his fingertips are tingling right now, showing that energy is moving" -- and, I won't then win the prize, because then it will be natural, not supernatural.
It's great marketing on Randi's part, but can never, ever, be paid.
Okay now you're just making shit up.
If I get a letter, I'll start my Postal Campaign.
Apologies if I wasn't clear; I consider it "a day wasted" because all they were doing was discussing the price. Oracle has configured their sales force to require this huge amount of communication/planning time; those companies who choose to settle their needs in an hour, well, they get a worse deal than the VP you overheard.
And then, like I said, that VP is convinced that following Oracle's song and dance steps is worth it, because of the savings (i.e., rather than being irate that there is so much inefficiency built into the sales process, which allows Oracle to make such steep discounts on a regular basis).
It's like my sister's math-absent childhood, "But I just had to buy it because it was on sale, look at how much I saved!" Yeah, OK sis, put that in the bank.
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense -- business sense, that is, not customer sense. Like the other responder, SQLite3 has been enough for my needs, for now...
Pretty amazing, that a company (Oracle) can convince a highly-paid manager that wasting a day on negotiations is an enjoyable experience! That the salesman has cleared his complete schedule for this one customer -- well, that also speaks volumes.
Yeah, the other reply said what I was basically going to say: the webserver uses a single database user. Sure, there might be millions of "users" in your web application, but they're never hitting the database; they do not exist as database users. But that seems trivially obvious so there must be something else you're getting at re: CALs are bad?
I love his name, it always reminds me of my joke that you'll now never get out of your head: "She opened her mouth, and he Shatner!"
To me, it sounds like Hong Kong just became China's Delaware, where 90% of our corporations are based out of due to corporation-friendly legislation. Only thing that would prevent me from packing up and moving operations to Hong Kong would be the bullet my family would have to pay for, which may be deterrent enough to keep everyone from following Google's move.
Holy shit what a sad future. Here I was betting on nanotechnology/singularity, and politics "wins out."
I wonder if a Chinese blogger can quote the same section of their criminal code, and be arrested for doing so based on that code? No, I don't wonder; it seems reasonable that alerting others to the censoring nature of our oppressors will lead to jail time/death ("any other means" would include discussing the law). But, it would be interesting to find confirmation.
It's not "my stuff" that I'd be worried about in such a situation. It's, "my safety", "my life", and "my wife's and daughter's aversion to rape". In those circumstances, yes, deadly force is appropriate.
Exactly. "One man's freedom fighter is another man's insurgent/terrorist."
YES! Exactly.
I remember in 2004/2005 or so, there was this short-lived drama on TNT (? One of the cable channels, anyway), called "Over There", which chronicled a group of soldiers in Iraq.
In one of the episodes, they "found" a house which had a lot of money in the walls. Owner comes home, armed, sees people looting, starts shooting; owner ends up dead.
While watching that episode, I got a really eerie, creepy feeling that perhaps some of our actual military targets aren't "military" so much as economic. Really saddened me, but wth was I going to do about it? Thankfully, we have the ACLU, which has offices at numerous latitude/longitude pairs.
You just opened up a whole new level of comfort. Thanks!
It seems you're the silly one, for assuming that any form of life wouldn't have an input and output port. Ports need probing!