Frankly, I'm bored with swatting down all your uninformed repetition of lunatic left babbling points.
You really don't know what you're talking about from a technical, legal or operational viewpointYou've. I've seen nothing in your posts which indicates actual depth of knowledge of laws, treaties, documents and timelines. You are woefully ignorant and a waste of time.
NSA hasn't been the No Such Agency since the early 1980s.
Jose Padilla collaborated with foreign powers to initiate an attack agasint the U.S. during a time of war which this is in all aspects of the law.
Nobody can be "stripped" of something which they don't have. Enemy combatants captured on the battlefield do not have civilian rights.
I'd expect you to come back with more stupid comments and not even comprehend the replies I've made. These are for the thinking person who might happen to come across the thread. I'll not respond to your lunacy any more.
"Spy on US citizens, done. Use torture, done. Round up and deny people's Habeas Corpus, done. Bush acts more like an emperor than previous presidents have."
No Spying on U.S. citizens unless they were actively engaged with terrorists or foreign powers. You know that as well as I do. Well, maybe you don't. The media hype was about intercepts of communications which pass through procesisng centers in the U.S. It shouldn't be any surprise that in the age of cell phones and satellites that laws based on copper wires are woefully inadequate and inappropriate. Long story short, the leadership of both parties agreed with the interpretation of law that would allow filtering at that point before the program was started.
What torture? There has only been sensory depravation. Nothing wrong with that at all. Oh, maybe you meant waterboarding. Funny, isn't that what we use to train our own special ops and frogmen? Isn't that what was just done by protesters to one of their own on Capital Hill? Hmmm...can't be much of a real torture, you know, like roasting children and serving them to their parents or hanging people from meat hooks and beating, whipping and electrocuting them such as the terrorists have been doing. Oh, maybe you meant the criminal behavior which a handful of soldiers did in Abu Gharab prison? Those would be same soldiers who were already under investigation for what they had done and the case was almost destroyed by the media tainting the evidence. Funny thing about Abu Gharab, that's where Saddam had one of his torture centers (you know, real torture where people are actually mained and killed.) The Americans came in and some of their people did stupid things and were prosecuted for it. Strange, the screaming and torture are back now that the Iraqis run that prison. Torture? Puh-lease.
Habeas Corpus? Isn't that for American citizens and American soil? For a minute there I thought you were serious. I thought you were going to mention the Geneva Accords but everyone knows those only apply to uniformed combatants of state powers. Fighters caught in civilian dress have always been treated as spies, subject to immediate execution if the captor so desires, by all nations at all times. Well, at least, nations which survive.
I've been travelling the U.S. for the past few years and haven't seen the prison camps President Bush has constructed where he put all the Muslims after he confiscated their possessions and gave them to white Americans. FDR did that as did all the Presidents who violated those precious treaties with the Indians. George Bush would have to have done it even more to be more of an emporer than previous presidents. I've never seen or heard of anyone's mail being censored in a program like FDR's. Hmmm...curious. He hasn't declared Martial Law and suspended Congress or the Supreme Court. Maybe there's still hope. If he does that, we can build a monument to him like we have for the other Presidents who have monuments in Washington D.C.
At least TRY to put forward cohesive ideas based on reality. A lot of what you've posted is predictably ludicrous. What's next, are you going to claim George Bush is personally trying to "poison the children" or "starve the elderly?"
Let's try this again. Safety glass becamse a requirement because of the cultural value that a producer is responsible for the product or service for a period of time afte the point of transaction. The socail value came first which led to the law. Laws are generally a codification of the morality of the society.
It is entirely ludicrous to think that the low level of wage taxation paid by illegal aliens compensates for the pull they create on the social support structure. They are at the bottom of the wage scale which means they will draw from the system if the opportunity is presented. They are also here illegally. They are NOT a net positive gain to the society. If cheap, unskilled, illiterate people were the key to financial prosperity, the financial structure of the world would be reversed. Your statement doesn't match the reality of the expenses they consume. Their children don't work, do they? No, but the consume taxes when they go to school and that's just the most simple and obvious example. It is not possible for the draw to exceed the deposit without bankrupting the system.
I agree with the economic argument that removal of the profit would reduce the attractiveness for the producers of drugs. At the same time, a society has a responsibility to protect it's citizens from harm. Where do we draw the line? Would you propose we let the country turn into a modern-day opium den a la the British drug war against China? Think about what you are proposing. You propose to create addicts and use them as a means of funding the government. What adjectives can adequately describe that proposal?!?!
I don't see anything important to the statement that the U.S. has 5% of the world population and 25% of the incarcerations. Are you complaining that the U.S. punishes criminals, catches them or how they are punished. We could take the more economical route and follow something akin to Muslim and Hindu justice by amputating limbs, blinding them or just go strait to executions. Maybe you're complaining that the U.S. is a country based on the rule of law and a legal system as opposed to capricious whim. I'm not sure.
You don't really believe the government shouldn't tell people what to do with their bodies. Your posts contradict themselves. All societies tell people what they can and can't do with their own bodies. All societies legislate morality. The government tells you every day in innumerable ways what you can and cannot do with your body. Is your only form of locomotion your own feet? Do you were clothes? What you really mean is you don't your particular favorite vices (as defined by society) to be illegal.
The idea that half of the U.S. doesn't have health insurance is pure propaganda lie. There are people who chose not to buy health insurance. That is their choice. Somehow I miss the point where you explained that the government can't tell you what you can do with your body and how that means they will force people to buy health insurance. There are about 300 million citizens of the U.S. and the highest claim for uninsured people has been around 40 million but that has never been proven beyond being a sound bite. When that ludicrous statement was brought up during the last Presdential election the methodology was exposed. People who were between jobs were included, people who chose not to buy insurance such as young people just getting started who chose to take the risk that nothing major will happen to them, etc. But...there are existing government programs and laws which ensure they will have health coverage if needed in that period. You really should do some proper research on this. Your statements are so preposterous that you would have been better off to not bring it up.
The AMA isn't the only thing which creates health care costs. There are a huge number of laws which prevent competition. We just had a big issue here where a private hospital was constructed in an area where the state decided we didn't need one. IOW, the state, itself, was limiting competition. C sections have gone
Yes, I know driving is a priveledge granted by the state to the residents. It was the best example I could think of on the spur of the moment and one which most people would understand.
It's a little off balance to say everything the Federal Government does is the sole impetus of the President. He's not a dictator, he's the highest governmetn executive. I served a tour in the Air Force in South Dakota. There were periodic protests and such from some of the Lakotas about how their land had been taken. Let's ignore the aspect of what, exactly, is sacred land and to whom. Anywhere there has been a battle or important occurrence in history could qualify. One of the most important reasons we had so many ICBMs there was it's location as the center of the country which would give more time to respond to an incoming attack and also the land was predominantly shale which would shatter and absorb force. Given the question at the time was how to prevent a nuclear attack by being able to field a return attack, thus inhibiting a decapitation attack, it made perfect sense to put the facilities there. Something similar exists with just about everything else in society which involves our safety. We give up something to get something else. We "gave up" the rural slow dirt road lifestyle but we gained far better health and ability for emergency help (fire, medical, etc.) by going to paved roads. We give up a little anonymity for security when it's needed. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I fully agree with the Founding Father's statements that the populace must be strong enough to check the police, for example. I'm saying that the need to quickly and securely determine if someone is part of "us" is pretty fundamental to any society.
I don't have sufficient knowledge to know if the commonly-repeated statement that every treaty with the Indians was broken. (I won't use Native Americans because then it gets even weirder because if they really did migrate across from Russia and down through Canada, they're not really native, either...)
My point was that all people have some form of legitimate grievance in their past. I would not be surprised if 20 years from now things which were commohnly done 20 years ago seem horrendous. Two examples I can think of are forced ultrasound for pregnant women by the military doctors and flouride. I'm pretty sure frontal lobotomies were done up until some time in the 1970s to rpisoners and "insane" people, too, were't they? I don't know anything about forced sterilization of Indian women but the same tyep of lunacy continues today. Schools in Maine (I think) just decided to provide presecription birth control to 12 year-old kids without telling their parents. The state law makes it a crime to have sex with anyone under 14. margaret Snager, the founder of Planned Parenthood was big in the eugenics movement. That really started in the U.S. but the victor in war writes the history so that's been less public because we had to blame the evil Germans. PETA kills animals and wants to stop production of insulin which can only be made in animals. The thought foundation of all that stuff is evil. It seeks to destroy cultures by driving them to extinction.
I read your post as the typical "angry young man" rant claiming grievances which are too far removed to really be their own. It's nice to see that isn't your thought, just the way that particular post came across.
One more example to illustrate: I was volunteering at a youth Christian leadership conference in Charlotte a few years ago. One of the other guys was a 20-nothing black guy who was mouthing off about how "put down" he is because he's black. Yeah, riiiight. He was babbling about President Kennedy and all kinds of stuff. Well, the 60s racial issues were 2 generations ago. His being "put down" is far more his doing than something being done to him or it's a convenient excuse for lack of accomplishment. (This guy was intelligent and didn't have any obvious mental of physical disabilities other than attitude.) In contrast, I h
Spitzer is a Republican, that's true. The vast majority of the states which are issuing driver's licenses to non-citizens are Democrats. A NY Republican is pretty close to being a Democrat the same way a lot of deep South Democrats are close to being Republican. Party affiliation doesn't mean the person is fully beholden to the party's ideology.
The tripe that strong immigration laws are specifically against Mexicans has really played itself out. I've not made any comment about race and won't accept your attempt to assign such a premise to me. There is some historical truth to that. For example, marijuana criminalization started in the Southwest, apparently as a way to limit immigration. This is the year 2007. It's a very different society than even 1967. The issue isn't skin type, it's far more one of sustaining the societal values. By that, I mean the core values which form the basis of the society. For example, the U.S. has very strong laws about a manufacturer's responsibilities for a product or service after the sale. This manifests itself into being more responsible in design, manufacture and performance than in societies which have far more of a buyer beware culture. That's why so many things we tend to take for granted exist, such as safety glass in automobiles.
Immigration laws and enforcement need to be fixed, that is very true. The limit on extended work visas for skilled people are all assigned within one day because the demand is so high. The issue is not immigration, it is illegal aliens. No culture or society can survive an overwhelming influx of illiterate, unskilled people for a sustained period. The vast majority of the people coming here illegally from Mexico create a huge expense for the U.S. citizens, financially and also when viewed from public safety and societal cohesion viewpoints.
I've seen some interesting ideas to help curb the drug money and money transfer aspects. One of them was to have 2 types of U.S. currency. One would be valid only inside the coutry. That would put a crimp on physical shipments of U.S. money to the drug smugglers and also on illegal labor sending money out of the U.S.
There's also the aspect of non-citizens drawing on the social support system paid for by taxes on citizens. That is theft, no matter who does it or where. If I was in Germany and used their tax-supported social support system, that would be my theft.
There's also the aspect of illegal aliens not being protected by society's laws. This makes them easy prey for all kinds of predatory people, be they gangster criminals or employers. Are you familiar with the traditional plight of the sharecropper farmers? They would make an agreement with the landowner to raise the crops then the profit would be split. The law allowed the landowner to throw the sharecropper off the land before the harvest. It encouraged the landowner to steal from the sharecropper. A similar situation applies to illegal aliens.
In August there was a nationally prominent case where a construction company had illegal aliens working as welders on bridges. Those illegal aliens were not certified as being properly skilled to perform the work. Thus, they endangered other people.
The "solution" for Mexico and other Central and Southern American countries is not to export their unskilled people to the U.S. The "solution" is for their systems to grow into the 20th Century and beyond. For the most part, they have feudal governments. It's no surprise that people would want to come to the U.S., the land of opportunity, but that's not a long term solution. Some form of guest worker program where non-citizens could work in the U.S. for a period of time in a legal manner and contributing to the social support systems appropriately would be my personal choice. They wouldn't be allowed to immigrate here unless they returned to their home country and applied through the normal process. This would have the huge benefit for everyone of helping to bring more accountability to their home countries which would eventu
I was born in the U.S. which makes me as native as anyone else born here. I don't use grievances from multiple generations past in my family as justification for racist hatred and neither should you.
Innocent until proven guilty applies only to sentencing in a court of law. It does not mean law enforcement and national security are prohibited from discovery. If a cop pulls your car over and asks for your license, the law requires you to provide legal identification.
Don't act like a self-contradicting troll. It's very unbecoming.
You've totally missed my point. It's not possible to track every person all the time.
Methinks you really don't understand the scal eof what you're proposing would be possible.
Your premise is also flawed. Would you propose no police because some are corrupt? Would you propose never using electronic communication because you might be watched? That's not rational unless you want to live like a beduin.
"Tracking your every move" is science fiction movies. It can't work in reality. 300+ million people making how many transactions per day? (Transasction meaning passing through a doorway, traffic light, using a PC, flipping on a light switch, etc.) The FUD about NSA phone filtering by computer misses the point. The computers are used to whittle down the extranneous stuff to a "manageable" percent of things which might need to be examined. Even so, exponential growth of transactions by billions of people far outstrip the ability to monitor everything. All it takes is a little experience with transaction modeling to see how complex this stuff gets and how large the datasets get.
A subset of transactions can be tracked, sort of. Every time you use a credit card a transaction is tracked, analyzed and profiled. The alternative is a cash-only society which would necessitate a fully armed populace and slow commerce to a crawl. That's a totally different, though related, issue and it's FUD when the topic is secure ID.
I understand the caution, though. I certainly wouldn't want everything about me in a centralized location "helpfully administered" by the Federal government. The potential for manipulative population control would be too great.
ID needs to be secure, somehow, or it's nothing more than a fancy "My name is" sticker. I'm guessing the Constitutionality of driver's licenses for non-citizens hasn't really been tested un the reciprocity principle yet. Suppose State A does not allow it and State B does, whose law has precedence? State A could claim State B's drivers are an unreasonable risk and threat to State A citizens. Not such an easy issue.
Wow. I can't imagine that. I've voted in Illinois, South Dakota and North Carolina. Each time I had to present the voter registration card for which I had to show Social Security card, Driver's License and/or Birth Certificate.
I guess this just reinforces the need for a universal ID of some sort to prove citizenship.
IIRC, one of the Great Lakes states was going to require photo ID for voting then there were complaints that would discriminate against poor people so they state offered to give the IDs for free. My guess is the move to some form of US National ID is inevitable. If you think about it from a legal/law 3enforcement perspective, it's a whole lot easier to throw someone out of the country if they can't prove citizenship than to mess with any number of violations they commit while here. You know what I mean, the illegal alien who runs over someone while driving without a driver's license or is caught shoplifting or something like that. The total cost to society would be less.
State IDs are on the verge of being irrelelvant because the states are starting to issue them to non-citizens. There must be a way to discriminate between citizen and non-citizen for many essential foundations of any sovereign society such as voting. There are only two reasons I can imagine why the Democrats want to simultaneously prohibit Federal ID while destroying State ID integrity:
1) Dissolve US sovereignty 2) Weaken State sovereignty and strengthen Federal sovereignty 3) Contrariansm for the sake of contrarianism 4) Exacerbating the problem so they can "solve" it if they gain control of the Federal government
Europeans have a national ID card and a driver's license. They are 2 separate and distinct documents. That seems to be where the U.S. is heading. IMNSHO, that will be a huge waste of money and resources. If State IDs (driver's licenses) are limited to proven citizens then the data can be cross-referenced electronically. This is an important aspect of "open borders" between the States and free flow of trade across State borders.
The Patriot Act gets a lot of negative comments here on Slashdot but some aspects of it are really, really good. For example, it's a lot easier for the Police to quickly determine if a person has an outstanding warrant in another state. I've personally seen how it allows the Police and credit card companies track use of stolen cards in real time and catch the thieves in the process of using the stolen cards within 30 minutes of the theft. That kind of integrated data couldn't happen without some form of co-operation.
Why they don't link the Social Security numbers to these ID searches is beyond me. If a Policeman pulls a car over for speeding in, say, Massachusetts and the driver has a driver's license issued in Maryland but to a stolen Social Security number (I can't remember if Maryland uses Social Security number for the driver's license number, some states do that.), shouldn't the Policeman be informed of that? An ID is only as good as the data on it. For ID to have any value, it must be verifiable and trustworthy.
Words have definitions. The definition of "exactly" is "exact", not "near to" or "around the area of", "sort of" or "in the vicinity". Break a rip or rip a muscle, you'll be able to tell exactly where it hurts with a lot higher degree of accuracy than dull pressure on 1/4 of your front or back. The only thing this vest simlulates is pressure in a relative area of your torso, it's nowhere near "exactly" what you would feel. Again, Slashdot hyperbole. This thing is about as "exact" as a Nintendo power glove.
No. Your statement was opinion derived from ignorance. It is not rational to claim a diminished basis strengthens the derivative.
Investigative responsibility depends on structure and laws. The FCC, like many other large entities, has its own internal investigations group. That's the appropriate place for an investigation to start from cost and familiarity aspects. That was true of the Bill Clinton ATF just as it is true of the George Bush FCC.
This is not a Fifth Amendment issue any more than the Police impounding your car if you've been speeding excessively.
This reads more like an expansion of the Neutrality Act which came after WWI (I think) that makes it illegal to provide material support against a foreign government with whom the U.S. is not at war. This looks like an expansion beyond armaments, combat vehicles, etc. and into things like, for example, cell phones. Remember the people who have been caught buying lots of disposable cell phones so they can be used to trigger bombs?
About a month ago the Feds also busted a very influential and historically significant Laotian general who was preparing arms for the Muong to fight against the Laotian Communist government who rapes and tortures them.
I see this at a different level than patterns and antipatterns (btw: Skip McCormick is a very good friend of mine. We wrote software together before he helped write the antipattern books.)
I see it as the skill of being able to look at anything and find the repetitive behavior or redundant characteristics. The best example I can give is the way humans stereotype as a way of reducing mental clutter. A chair might have any of a bazillion different forms but we reduce it to the stereotype "chair" and use that as our conceptual construct.
I've also noticed, over time, how different a single situation can appear depending on the van tage point. The photos from the Led Zeppelin album "In Through the Out Door" are a good example. So are many optical illusions. R. C. Sproul has a wonderful examination of Israelites and Romans classing in which he explains how thier different world views helped shape the conflicts. During a Myers-Briggs session I saw two groups describe the same room. One was an architect's drawing, the other described the color and character of the room. Both were correct but from different vantagve points.
Patterns in formal math are just as valid as the patterns in music or classical art forms but appear to happen in different parts of the brain or with different codifications of thought. The limitations I think most people who are too "math geeky" have is the lack of internalization that all human valuations are subjective. It's harder for them to view a situation from multiple concurrent vantage points which limits their ability to be good designers.
Sorry. I should have typed "set theory", not just "sets".
You're familiar with the term "normalization" as it relates to databases, right?
OK, the idea I'm trying to communicate is this concept applies to far more than just text/numerical data. It also applies to people processes. Designing a tool has a large component of recognizing repetitive actions and optimizing them. My point is that people who don't have a habit of looking at situations from multiple viewpoints and methods of symbolism tend NOT to see the "big picture" of a process. Designing a truly useful tool usually means looking at the needs from multiple viewpoints.
It's the difference between UI design and coding an algorithm. Covey has a classic example of a lumbering operation where the people are all excited about how efficient they are but they're cutting in the wrong forest. Designing is different than coding.
Yup. The key to design is pattern recognition. The mathematical idea of sets is somewhat similar but people who are too strong in math tend to think in only one dimension, for lack of a better term. Classic forms of literature and music also have patterns but the thought process is different than numbers for the sake of numbers. Those people also tend to be good designers.
I love your analogy. It's the same thing I've used for the past few years when dealing with overly self-important computer programmers. They're technicians, not designers. To put things in perspective, they're the auto mechanics of the information age.
For the record, I've worked on both sides of this issue. I've been a programmer working on mission critical encryption devices for "national assets." and also designed complete systems.
This is nothing new. There are 2 ways to deal with crime/war: response and prevention.
A little simple research will show plenty of times when this has happened in the past. One very good example was the American-born student who pursued how to construct a nuclear device. Most decent public libraries will probably have the condensed version of the story in Reader's Digest back issues. This student did things like call DuPont and explain how he needed to make a controlled explosive blanket to compress a sphere on all sides with a specified amount of force. The DuPont folks told him which products and how to do it. There were a lot of other things like this. At the time, such information was not restricted and the Feds calmped down hard to change that situation.
Similar things have happened with gene-splitting and mutation of biological materials (The book Demon in the Freezer gives some good detail.)
Backbone infrastructure information has been classified or re-classified and removed from public dissemination because of its potential for high ROI (for lack of a better term) for sabotage.
This program looks like codification and methodology to better find out questionable activities.
Certainly, there is a point where interest in civil engineering is different from intelligence gathering to case a facility for future attack. At what point do all the factors indicate plausible danger? That's hard to say. Things like the prohibition of photography of federal buildings (which includes all Post Offices) seem quite excessive but it's probably a lot easier to make a simple rule than trying to harden every conceivable weakness and turn everyone into anti-terrorist specialists.
The first thing this news brought to my mind was how such a method would have been beneficial when a bunch of foreign flight students wanted instruction on flying, but not landing, jumbo jets.
This program doesn't look that much different than posters I saw in college that said something like "There are 100 sets of eyes for the campus police and 35,000 students. We can't be everywhere to protect everyone all the time. Report suspicious activity."
The goal is to catch sabotage/terrorism in the planning stage. There isn't a "smoking gun" at that point. Guns only smoke after they're fired.
Hmmm...smoking guns...kind of makes you think of Virginia Tech, too, doesn't it? There wasn't a proper environment to report and remove Hu, even though he was a dangerous lunatic and this was well known for a long time before he went on his shooting spree.
Quote: Here's a hint for you left-ponders -- the Daily Mail is the UK equivalent of Fox: a racist rag which will print anything which puts muslims, women, gays, trades-unionists or the working class in a bad light. Check snopes before posting a story from them.
Really? The "equivalent of Fox"? Which "Fox" would that be? FoxNews has the most statistically balanced criticism/praise of both left and right political leanings and an almost perfectly equal number of left and right commentators. This has been documented a number of times through various studies in Universities examining number of occurrences of criticisms and the backgrounds of newscasters. FoxNews is so "racist" they have Black, East Indian, Latino and Asian hosts. Contrast that with, say, MSNBC, who was justifiably called out for having only white males as evening hosts.
Yes, it's a monstrously ignorant AND arrogant statement. The writer condescends that anyone other than "developers" has depth of thought.
Besides the comment above concerning the juggling of a large number of time-sensitive tasks, there are many, many different types of thought and operating environments.
I've been a software developer, a salesmen and an executive. Each role has its own focus and its own "style" of thinking. Most developers can't sell because they can't properly communicate with people who are interested in the result, not the tool itself. Technical people also tend to get very, very jealous of salespeople who are perceived as "playing" all the time. Being good at anything takes investment, effort, guts and skill. Ask the average software developer to make 10 cold calls on the phone to potential clients and see what happens.
There's a wonderful scene in the Zulu Dawn movie where the British infantry men need ammunition. Their supply sergeant makes them stand in line and will only give them one box at a time following procedures. He's so focussed on the task and enamored with his skill at performing it he totally misses the big picture and the soldiers can't get the ammunition they need.
Likewise, I can't tell you the number of times I've watched a designer screw up a presentation because he's clueless about the non-verbal queues from the prospects or how to speak confidently and at the level of details the client wants. They usually don't comprehend the business of business or the impact of many decisions they make upon the clients. Are they "bad" people? No, they're just ignorant and unaware. Their focus might be just what is needed to get the little details right and go from "almost there" to "it works." but it takes many different personality, activity and communication styles working as a team to have any kind of real success.
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Frankly, I'm bored with swatting down all your uninformed repetition of lunatic left babbling points.
You really don't know what you're talking about from a technical, legal or operational viewpointYou've. I've seen nothing in your posts which indicates actual depth of knowledge of laws, treaties, documents and timelines. You are woefully ignorant and a waste of time.
NSA hasn't been the No Such Agency since the early 1980s.
Jose Padilla collaborated with foreign powers to initiate an attack agasint the U.S. during a time of war which this is in all aspects of the law.
Nobody can be "stripped" of something which they don't have. Enemy combatants captured on the battlefield do not have civilian rights.
I'd expect you to come back with more stupid comments and not even comprehend the replies I've made. These are for the thinking person who might happen to come across the thread. I'll not respond to your lunacy any more.
"Spy on US citizens, done. Use torture, done. Round up and deny people's Habeas Corpus, done. Bush acts more like an emperor than previous presidents have."
No Spying on U.S. citizens unless they were actively engaged with terrorists or foreign powers. You know that as well as I do. Well, maybe you don't. The media hype was about intercepts of communications which pass through procesisng centers in the U.S. It shouldn't be any surprise that in the age of cell phones and satellites that laws based on copper wires are woefully inadequate and inappropriate. Long story short, the leadership of both parties agreed with the interpretation of law that would allow filtering at that point before the program was started.
What torture? There has only been sensory depravation. Nothing wrong with that at all. Oh, maybe you meant waterboarding. Funny, isn't that what we use to train our own special ops and frogmen? Isn't that what was just done by protesters to one of their own on Capital Hill? Hmmm...can't be much of a real torture, you know, like roasting children and serving them to their parents or hanging people from meat hooks and beating, whipping and electrocuting them such as the terrorists have been doing. Oh, maybe you meant the criminal behavior which a handful of soldiers did in Abu Gharab prison? Those would be same soldiers who were already under investigation for what they had done and the case was almost destroyed by the media tainting the evidence. Funny thing about Abu Gharab, that's where Saddam had one of his torture centers (you know, real torture where people are actually mained and killed.) The Americans came in and some of their people did stupid things and were prosecuted for it. Strange, the screaming and torture are back now that the Iraqis run that prison. Torture? Puh-lease.
Habeas Corpus? Isn't that for American citizens and American soil? For a minute there I thought you were serious. I thought you were going to mention the Geneva Accords but everyone knows those only apply to uniformed combatants of state powers. Fighters caught in civilian dress have always been treated as spies, subject to immediate execution if the captor so desires, by all nations at all times. Well, at least, nations which survive.
I've been travelling the U.S. for the past few years and haven't seen the prison camps President Bush has constructed where he put all the Muslims after he confiscated their possessions and gave them to white Americans. FDR did that as did all the Presidents who violated those precious treaties with the Indians. George Bush would have to have done it even more to be more of an emporer than previous presidents. I've never seen or heard of anyone's mail being censored in a program like FDR's. Hmmm...curious. He hasn't declared Martial Law and suspended Congress or the Supreme Court. Maybe there's still hope. If he does that, we can build a monument to him like we have for the other Presidents who have monuments in Washington D.C.
At least TRY to put forward cohesive ideas based on reality. A lot of what you've posted is predictably ludicrous. What's next, are you going to claim George Bush is personally trying to "poison the children" or "starve the elderly?"
Let's try this again. Safety glass becamse a requirement because of the cultural value that a producer is responsible for the product or service for a period of time afte the point of transaction. The socail value came first which led to the law. Laws are generally a codification of the morality of the society.
It is entirely ludicrous to think that the low level of wage taxation paid by illegal aliens compensates for the pull they create on the social support structure. They are at the bottom of the wage scale which means they will draw from the system if the opportunity is presented. They are also here illegally. They are NOT a net positive gain to the society. If cheap, unskilled, illiterate people were the key to financial prosperity, the financial structure of the world would be reversed. Your statement doesn't match the reality of the expenses they consume. Their children don't work, do they? No, but the consume taxes when they go to school and that's just the most simple and obvious example. It is not possible for the draw to exceed the deposit without bankrupting the system.
I agree with the economic argument that removal of the profit would reduce the attractiveness for the producers of drugs. At the same time, a society has a responsibility to protect it's citizens from harm. Where do we draw the line? Would you propose we let the country turn into a modern-day opium den a la the British drug war against China? Think about what you are proposing. You propose to create addicts and use them as a means of funding the government. What adjectives can adequately describe that proposal?!?!
I don't see anything important to the statement that the U.S. has 5% of the world population and 25% of the incarcerations. Are you complaining that the U.S. punishes criminals, catches them or how they are punished. We could take the more economical route and follow something akin to Muslim and Hindu justice by amputating limbs, blinding them or just go strait to executions. Maybe you're complaining that the U.S. is a country based on the rule of law and a legal system as opposed to capricious whim. I'm not sure.
You don't really believe the government shouldn't tell people what to do with their bodies. Your posts contradict themselves. All societies tell people what they can and can't do with their own bodies. All societies legislate morality. The government tells you every day in innumerable ways what you can and cannot do with your body. Is your only form of locomotion your own feet? Do you were clothes? What you really mean is you don't your particular favorite vices (as defined by society) to be illegal.
The idea that half of the U.S. doesn't have health insurance is pure propaganda lie. There are people who chose not to buy health insurance. That is their choice. Somehow I miss the point where you explained that the government can't tell you what you can do with your body and how that means they will force people to buy health insurance. There are about 300 million citizens of the U.S. and the highest claim for uninsured people has been around 40 million but that has never been proven beyond being a sound bite. When that ludicrous statement was brought up during the last Presdential election the methodology was exposed. People who were between jobs were included, people who chose not to buy insurance such as young people just getting started who chose to take the risk that nothing major will happen to them, etc. But...there are existing government programs and laws which ensure they will have health coverage if needed in that period. You really should do some proper research on this. Your statements are so preposterous that you would have been better off to not bring it up.
The AMA isn't the only thing which creates health care costs. There are a huge number of laws which prevent competition. We just had a big issue here where a private hospital was constructed in an area where the state decided we didn't need one. IOW, the state, itself, was limiting competition. C sections have gone
Yes, I know driving is a priveledge granted by the state to the residents. It was the best example I could think of on the spur of the moment and one which most people would understand.
It's a little off balance to say everything the Federal Government does is the sole impetus of the President. He's not a dictator, he's the highest governmetn executive. I served a tour in the Air Force in South Dakota. There were periodic protests and such from some of the Lakotas about how their land had been taken. Let's ignore the aspect of what, exactly, is sacred land and to whom. Anywhere there has been a battle or important occurrence in history could qualify. One of the most important reasons we had so many ICBMs there was it's location as the center of the country which would give more time to respond to an incoming attack and also the land was predominantly shale which would shatter and absorb force. Given the question at the time was how to prevent a nuclear attack by being able to field a return attack, thus inhibiting a decapitation attack, it made perfect sense to put the facilities there. Something similar exists with just about everything else in society which involves our safety. We give up something to get something else. We "gave up" the rural slow dirt road lifestyle but we gained far better health and ability for emergency help (fire, medical, etc.) by going to paved roads. We give up a little anonymity for security when it's needed. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I fully agree with the Founding Father's statements that the populace must be strong enough to check the police, for example. I'm saying that the need to quickly and securely determine if someone is part of "us" is pretty fundamental to any society.
I don't have sufficient knowledge to know if the commonly-repeated statement that every treaty with the Indians was broken. (I won't use Native Americans because then it gets even weirder because if they really did migrate across from Russia and down through Canada, they're not really native, either...)
My point was that all people have some form of legitimate grievance in their past. I would not be surprised if 20 years from now things which were commohnly done 20 years ago seem horrendous. Two examples I can think of are forced ultrasound for pregnant women by the military doctors and flouride. I'm pretty sure frontal lobotomies were done up until some time in the 1970s to rpisoners and "insane" people, too, were't they? I don't know anything about forced sterilization of Indian women but the same tyep of lunacy continues today. Schools in Maine (I think) just decided to provide presecription birth control to 12 year-old kids without telling their parents. The state law makes it a crime to have sex with anyone under 14. margaret Snager, the founder of Planned Parenthood was big in the eugenics movement. That really started in the U.S. but the victor in war writes the history so that's been less public because we had to blame the evil Germans. PETA kills animals and wants to stop production of insulin which can only be made in animals. The thought foundation of all that stuff is evil. It seeks to destroy cultures by driving them to extinction.
I read your post as the typical "angry young man" rant claiming grievances which are too far removed to really be their own. It's nice to see that isn't your thought, just the way that particular post came across.
One more example to illustrate: I was volunteering at a youth Christian leadership conference in Charlotte a few years ago. One of the other guys was a 20-nothing black guy who was mouthing off about how "put down" he is because he's black. Yeah, riiiight. He was babbling about President Kennedy and all kinds of stuff. Well, the 60s racial issues were 2 generations ago. His being "put down" is far more his doing than something being done to him or it's a convenient excuse for lack of accomplishment. (This guy was intelligent and didn't have any obvious mental of physical disabilities other than attitude.) In contrast, I h
Spitzer is a Republican, that's true. The vast majority of the states which are issuing driver's licenses to non-citizens are Democrats. A NY Republican is pretty close to being a Democrat the same way a lot of deep South Democrats are close to being Republican. Party affiliation doesn't mean the person is fully beholden to the party's ideology.
The tripe that strong immigration laws are specifically against Mexicans has really played itself out. I've not made any comment about race and won't accept your attempt to assign such a premise to me. There is some historical truth to that. For example, marijuana criminalization started in the Southwest, apparently as a way to limit immigration. This is the year 2007. It's a very different society than even 1967. The issue isn't skin type, it's far more one of sustaining the societal values. By that, I mean the core values which form the basis of the society. For example, the U.S. has very strong laws about a manufacturer's responsibilities for a product or service after the sale. This manifests itself into being more responsible in design, manufacture and performance than in societies which have far more of a buyer beware culture. That's why so many things we tend to take for granted exist, such as safety glass in automobiles.
Immigration laws and enforcement need to be fixed, that is very true. The limit on extended work visas for skilled people are all assigned within one day because the demand is so high. The issue is not immigration, it is illegal aliens. No culture or society can survive an overwhelming influx of illiterate, unskilled people for a sustained period. The vast majority of the people coming here illegally from Mexico create a huge expense for the U.S. citizens, financially and also when viewed from public safety and societal cohesion viewpoints.
I've seen some interesting ideas to help curb the drug money and money transfer aspects. One of them was to have 2 types of U.S. currency. One would be valid only inside the coutry. That would put a crimp on physical shipments of U.S. money to the drug smugglers and also on illegal labor sending money out of the U.S.
There's also the aspect of non-citizens drawing on the social support system paid for by taxes on citizens. That is theft, no matter who does it or where. If I was in Germany and used their tax-supported social support system, that would be my theft.
There's also the aspect of illegal aliens not being protected by society's laws. This makes them easy prey for all kinds of predatory people, be they gangster criminals or employers. Are you familiar with the traditional plight of the sharecropper farmers? They would make an agreement with the landowner to raise the crops then the profit would be split. The law allowed the landowner to throw the sharecropper off the land before the harvest. It encouraged the landowner to steal from the sharecropper. A similar situation applies to illegal aliens.
In August there was a nationally prominent case where a construction company had illegal aliens working as welders on bridges. Those illegal aliens were not certified as being properly skilled to perform the work. Thus, they endangered other people.
The "solution" for Mexico and other Central and Southern American countries is not to export their unskilled people to the U.S. The "solution" is for their systems to grow into the 20th Century and beyond. For the most part, they have feudal governments. It's no surprise that people would want to come to the U.S., the land of opportunity, but that's not a long term solution. Some form of guest worker program where non-citizens could work in the U.S. for a period of time in a legal manner and contributing to the social support systems appropriately would be my personal choice. They wouldn't be allowed to immigrate here unless they returned to their home country and applied through the normal process. This would have the huge benefit for everyone of helping to bring more accountability to their home countries which would eventu
I was born in the U.S. which makes me as native as anyone else born here. I don't use grievances from multiple generations past in my family as justification for racist hatred and neither should you.
Innocent until proven guilty applies only to sentencing in a court of law. It does not mean law enforcement and national security are prohibited from discovery. If a cop pulls your car over and asks for your license, the law requires you to provide legal identification.
Don't act like a self-contradicting troll. It's very unbecoming.
You've totally missed my point. It's not possible to track every person all the time.
Methinks you really don't understand the scal eof what you're proposing would be possible.
Your premise is also flawed. Would you propose no police because some are corrupt? Would you propose never using electronic communication because you might be watched? That's not rational unless you want to live like a beduin.
"Tracking your every move" is science fiction movies. It can't work in reality. 300+ million people making how many transactions per day? (Transasction meaning passing through a doorway, traffic light, using a PC, flipping on a light switch, etc.) The FUD about NSA phone filtering by computer misses the point. The computers are used to whittle down the extranneous stuff to a "manageable" percent of things which might need to be examined. Even so, exponential growth of transactions by billions of people far outstrip the ability to monitor everything. All it takes is a little experience with transaction modeling to see how complex this stuff gets and how large the datasets get.
A subset of transactions can be tracked, sort of. Every time you use a credit card a transaction is tracked, analyzed and profiled. The alternative is a cash-only society which would necessitate a fully armed populace and slow commerce to a crawl. That's a totally different, though related, issue and it's FUD when the topic is secure ID.
I understand the caution, though. I certainly wouldn't want everything about me in a centralized location "helpfully administered" by the Federal government. The potential for manipulative population control would be too great.
ID needs to be secure, somehow, or it's nothing more than a fancy "My name is" sticker. I'm guessing the Constitutionality of driver's licenses for non-citizens hasn't really been tested un the reciprocity principle yet. Suppose State A does not allow it and State B does, whose law has precedence? State A could claim State B's drivers are an unreasonable risk and threat to State A citizens. Not such an easy issue.
Wow. I can't imagine that. I've voted in Illinois, South Dakota and North Carolina. Each time I had to present the voter registration card for which I had to show Social Security card, Driver's License and/or Birth Certificate.
I guess this just reinforces the need for a universal ID of some sort to prove citizenship.
IIRC, one of the Great Lakes states was going to require photo ID for voting then there were complaints that would discriminate against poor people so they state offered to give the IDs for free. My guess is the move to some form of US National ID is inevitable. If you think about it from a legal/law 3enforcement perspective, it's a whole lot easier to throw someone out of the country if they can't prove citizenship than to mess with any number of violations they commit while here. You know what I mean, the illegal alien who runs over someone while driving without a driver's license or is caught shoplifting or something like that. The total cost to society would be less.
State IDs are on the verge of being irrelelvant because the states are starting to issue them to non-citizens. There must be a way to discriminate between citizen and non-citizen for many essential foundations of any sovereign society such as voting. There are only two reasons I can imagine why the Democrats want to simultaneously prohibit Federal ID while destroying State ID integrity:
1) Dissolve US sovereignty
2) Weaken State sovereignty and strengthen Federal sovereignty
3) Contrariansm for the sake of contrarianism
4) Exacerbating the problem so they can "solve" it if they gain control of the Federal government
Europeans have a national ID card and a driver's license. They are 2 separate and distinct documents. That seems to be where the U.S. is heading. IMNSHO, that will be a huge waste of money and resources. If State IDs (driver's licenses) are limited to proven citizens then the data can be cross-referenced electronically. This is an important aspect of "open borders" between the States and free flow of trade across State borders.
The Patriot Act gets a lot of negative comments here on Slashdot but some aspects of it are really, really good. For example, it's a lot easier for the Police to quickly determine if a person has an outstanding warrant in another state. I've personally seen how it allows the Police and credit card companies track use of stolen cards in real time and catch the thieves in the process of using the stolen cards within 30 minutes of the theft. That kind of integrated data couldn't happen without some form of co-operation.
Why they don't link the Social Security numbers to these ID searches is beyond me. If a Policeman pulls a car over for speeding in, say, Massachusetts and the driver has a driver's license issued in Maryland but to a stolen Social Security number (I can't remember if Maryland uses Social Security number for the driver's license number, some states do that.), shouldn't the Policeman be informed of that? An ID is only as good as the data on it. For ID to have any value, it must be verifiable and trustworthy.
Words have definitions. The definition of "exactly" is "exact", not "near to" or "around the area of", "sort of" or "in the vicinity". Break a rip or rip a muscle, you'll be able to tell exactly where it hurts with a lot higher degree of accuracy than dull pressure on 1/4 of your front or back. The only thing this vest simlulates is pressure in a relative area of your torso, it's nowhere near "exactly" what you would feel. Again, Slashdot hyperbole. This thing is about as "exact" as a Nintendo power glove.
How do 8 air bags, 4 in front and 4 in back, translate into " capable of delivering hits and shots exactly where you would feel them"?
Not possible. Gimmick. Hyperbole of the Slashdot variety, similar to "everybody thinks xxx"...
You are confusing "intelligence" and "wisdon" while also disregarding law.
No. Your statement was opinion derived from ignorance. It is not rational to claim a diminished basis strengthens the derivative.
Investigative responsibility depends on structure and laws. The FCC, like many other large entities, has its own internal investigations group. That's the appropriate place for an investigation to start from cost and familiarity aspects. That was true of the Bill Clinton ATF just as it is true of the George Bush FCC.
Your post should be modded down for ignorance; lack of knowledge.
The FCC is in WHICH branch of the Federal government? By definition it's usually going to follow the desires of its boss.
Betamax failed because Sony wouldn't license the tech to other manufacturers at an affordable rate.
The common belief is that porn made the VCR desired in households. The porn producers were smart enough to set a low price point.
Those are 2 very different things.
These have been in use in prisons for a while. They're even on a Modern Marvels episode about new police equipment.
FFFFFFFFUD!
This is not a Fifth Amendment issue any more than the Police impounding your car if you've been speeding excessively.
This reads more like an expansion of the Neutrality Act which came after WWI (I think) that makes it illegal to provide material support against a foreign government with whom the U.S. is not at war. This looks like an expansion beyond armaments, combat vehicles, etc. and into things like, for example, cell phones. Remember the people who have been caught buying lots of disposable cell phones so they can be used to trigger bombs?
About a month ago the Feds also busted a very influential and historically significant Laotian general who was preparing arms for the Muong to fight against the Laotian Communist government who rapes and tortures them.
Good example. How many math-only types would know anything about Plato? The cave analogy is appropriate.
I see this at a different level than patterns and antipatterns (btw: Skip McCormick is a very good friend of mine. We wrote software together before he helped write the antipattern books.)
I see it as the skill of being able to look at anything and find the repetitive behavior or redundant characteristics. The best example I can give is the way humans stereotype as a way of reducing mental clutter. A chair might have any of a bazillion different forms but we reduce it to the stereotype "chair" and use that as our conceptual construct.
I've also noticed, over time, how different a single situation can appear depending on the van tage point. The photos from the Led Zeppelin album "In Through the Out Door" are a good example. So are many optical illusions. R. C. Sproul has a wonderful examination of Israelites and Romans classing in which he explains how thier different world views helped shape the conflicts. During a Myers-Briggs session I saw two groups describe the same room. One was an architect's drawing, the other described the color and character of the room. Both were correct but from different vantagve points.
Patterns in formal math are just as valid as the patterns in music or classical art forms but appear to happen in different parts of the brain or with different codifications of thought. The limitations I think most people who are too "math geeky" have is the lack of internalization that all human valuations are subjective. It's harder for them to view a situation from multiple concurrent vantage points which limits their ability to be good designers.
Sorry. I should have typed "set theory", not just "sets".
You're familiar with the term "normalization" as it relates to databases, right?
OK, the idea I'm trying to communicate is this concept applies to far more than just text/numerical data. It also applies to people processes. Designing a tool has a large component of recognizing repetitive actions and optimizing them. My point is that people who don't have a habit of looking at situations from multiple viewpoints and methods of symbolism tend NOT to see the "big picture" of a process. Designing a truly useful tool usually means looking at the needs from multiple viewpoints.
It's the difference between UI design and coding an algorithm. Covey has a classic example of a lumbering operation where the people are all excited about how efficient they are but they're cutting in the wrong forest. Designing is different than coding.
Yup. The key to design is pattern recognition. The mathematical idea of sets is somewhat similar but people who are too strong in math tend to think in only one dimension, for lack of a better term. Classic forms of literature and music also have patterns but the thought process is different than numbers for the sake of numbers. Those people also tend to be good designers.
I love your analogy. It's the same thing I've used for the past few years when dealing with overly self-important computer programmers. They're technicians, not designers. To put things in perspective, they're the auto mechanics of the information age.
For the record, I've worked on both sides of this issue. I've been a programmer working on mission critical encryption devices for "national assets." and also designed complete systems.
This is nothing new. There are 2 ways to deal with crime/war: response and prevention.
A little simple research will show plenty of times when this has happened in the past. One very good example was the American-born student who pursued how to construct a nuclear device. Most decent public libraries will probably have the condensed version of the story in Reader's Digest back issues. This student did things like call DuPont and explain how he needed to make a controlled explosive blanket to compress a sphere on all sides with a specified amount of force. The DuPont folks told him which products and how to do it. There were a lot of other things like this. At the time, such information was not restricted and the Feds calmped down hard to change that situation.
Similar things have happened with gene-splitting and mutation of biological materials (The book Demon in the Freezer gives some good detail.)
Backbone infrastructure information has been classified or re-classified and removed from public dissemination because of its potential for high ROI (for lack of a better term) for sabotage.
This program looks like codification and methodology to better find out questionable activities.
Certainly, there is a point where interest in civil engineering is different from intelligence gathering to case a facility for future attack. At what point do all the factors indicate plausible danger? That's hard to say. Things like the prohibition of photography of federal buildings (which includes all Post Offices) seem quite excessive but it's probably a lot easier to make a simple rule than trying to harden every conceivable weakness and turn everyone into anti-terrorist specialists.
The first thing this news brought to my mind was how such a method would have been beneficial when a bunch of foreign flight students wanted instruction on flying, but not landing, jumbo jets.
This program doesn't look that much different than posters I saw in college that said something like "There are 100 sets of eyes for the campus police and 35,000 students. We can't be everywhere to protect everyone all the time. Report suspicious activity."
The goal is to catch sabotage/terrorism in the planning stage. There isn't a "smoking gun" at that point. Guns only smoke after they're fired.
Hmmm...smoking guns...kind of makes you think of Virginia Tech, too, doesn't it? There wasn't a proper environment to report and remove Hu, even though he was a dangerous lunatic and this was well known for a long time before he went on his shooting spree.
Quote: Here's a hint for you left-ponders -- the Daily Mail is the UK
equivalent of Fox: a racist rag which will print anything which puts
muslims, women, gays, trades-unionists or the working class in a
bad light. Check snopes before posting a story from them.
Really? The "equivalent of Fox"? Which "Fox" would that be? FoxNews has the most statistically balanced criticism/praise of both left and right political leanings and an almost perfectly equal number of left and right commentators. This has been documented a number of times through various studies in Universities examining number of occurrences of criticisms and the backgrounds of newscasters. FoxNews is so "racist" they have Black, East Indian, Latino and Asian hosts. Contrast that with, say, MSNBC, who was justifiably called out for having only white males as evening hosts.
Yes, it's a monstrously ignorant AND arrogant statement. The writer condescends that anyone other than "developers" has depth of thought.
Besides the comment above concerning the juggling of a large number of time-sensitive tasks, there are many, many different types of thought and operating environments.
I've been a software developer, a salesmen and an executive. Each role has its own focus and its own "style" of thinking. Most developers can't sell because they can't properly communicate with people who are interested in the result, not the tool itself. Technical people also tend to get very, very jealous of salespeople who are perceived as "playing" all the time. Being good at anything takes investment, effort, guts and skill. Ask the average software developer to make 10 cold calls on the phone to potential clients and see what happens.
There's a wonderful scene in the Zulu Dawn movie where the British infantry men need ammunition. Their supply sergeant makes them stand in line and will only give them one box at a time following procedures. He's so focussed on the task and enamored with his skill at performing it he totally misses the big picture and the soldiers can't get the ammunition they need.
Likewise, I can't tell you the number of times I've watched a designer screw up a presentation because he's clueless about the non-verbal queues from the prospects or how to speak confidently and at the level of details the client wants. They usually don't comprehend the business of business or the impact of many decisions they make upon the clients. Are they "bad" people? No, they're just ignorant and unaware. Their focus might be just what is needed to get the little details right and go from "almost there" to "it works." but it takes many different personality, activity and communication styles working as a team to have any kind of real success.