Note that I include the police when I mention the military.
No, you didn't.
They've turned into the "standing army" the Founding Fathers were so afraid of.
No, they haven't. Police and military are deployed under very different legal frameworks.
Maybe grab a hunting rifle and spend an afternoon strolling around Manhattan?
Well, I for one am glad that people like you can't do that.
But it disgusts me that so many other people expect me to join them in their sheep-hood.
But apparently it doesn't disgust you to benefit from the enormous wealth generated by their mutual cooperation and trust. If you don't like it, there are plenty of places you can go and carry your gun openly. Why not go there?
People's basic needs and desires in the US haven't changed: they want peace, safety, food on the table, and some entertainment. And they don't want to think about government too much. If it looks like there's a threat, they want their government to take care of it. The US is, and has been, powerful enough to deliver this, and governments have mostly done that. The best you can do is slowly convince them that some things that they used to think are threats really aren't.
Don't be a fool. Apparent intent is meaningless, effect is all that matters.
And the effect of TSA is slightly more trouble at the airport; not exactly evil.
The effect of the Iraq war is that an murderous dictator has been removed from power, more people are probably alive today than if Saddam had stayed in power, and Iraq has a chance at democracy (whether they take it is up to them). Not evil either.
You assume that "evil" always has to mean a big master plan.
I don't "assume" that; I was responding to a specific post in which the examples were all part of an evil master plan.
It is rarely human beings that are evil, more often than not it is the systems they create that are evil.
The system of American democracy is not evil. Even the system of German democracy is not evil (although less democratic).
How many generations do you think it will take to take back our government that way?
You are German, so please be clear about which government you want to take back. You don't get to take back my government, thank you very much.
And fighting politicians and lobbyists via the democratic means is stupid at best.
Are you planning a revolution? Or what?
You are engaging the home team on their home turf in their favourite game. How many generations do you think it will take to take back our government that way?
It's the teams people vote for. Short of putting a gun to people's heads, the only way you can change things is by changing people's minds. You can do that by going into media, creating a foundation, and doing a lot of other things other than becoming a politician. And lots of people have, in particular in the US.
Of course, in Germany, you face powerful state media, an unholy monetary and propaganda alliance between church and state, and stifling of free speech through an assortment of anti-free-speech laws. That's why Germany has been behind the US in terms of civil rights and freedoms. But German propaganda works so well, most Germans don't even realize it.
They stay silent because they're terrified of the military. They hope they're dead before the accountants show up.
You're paranoid. Fear of the US military is about as far removed from American's day-to-day lives as the fear of being hit by a meteor.
The "two" parts of the system haven't changed. There are the people who want to live free and live their lives in peace. And there and the people who want to tell everyone else how to live their lives.
Well, and you are obviously in the latter category, while most Americans are in the former.
This [wikipedia.org] is not the exception, but the rule... Given the 'right' circumstances any person is capable of evil deeds such as this. This happens faster and easier than most people like to admit...
What does that have to do with anything? If you fight wars, people will do these things. If you have orphanages, boarding schools, and prisons will do these things. That doesn't make wars, orphanages, boarding schools, or prisons automatically evil.
(And, no, I don't think "any" person is capable of doing that. A large percentage of the population is, but some percentage of the population just says "no".)
And you won't convince me that the Iraq war is morally just because Saddam was evil...
It's you who is reasoning in meaningless abstractions like "evil", not me.
Saddam killed a half a million people over the decade before the war. The war likely resulted in many more people surviving than if he had stayed in power. That alone is justification enough.
The fact that Bush lied, that his motivations may have been different, etc. is irrelevant. You could say the same about WWI and WWII, and US participation in those wars was still both just and beneficial.
Comparing subsidized phone prices is meaningless. You need to look at the unsubsidized price, and iPhone is one of the most expensive smartphones on the market.
As for Apple's "large R&D expense", Apple has no research to speak of at all. They do invest a fair amount of money in software development, but even there, they are using a lot of FOSS.
Well, if there's one thing Apple itself has proven, it's that there is a real market segment that will pay more for a better product and won't just go for the cheapest product in the niche.
I don't care how much a phone or laptop costs, I want it to work and I want it to work well. Unfortunately, Apple's products don't; they do a few simple things quite well and fail miserably on anything complex. And their hardware quality is a decidedly mixed bag, with some of their harware being excellent, and others falling apart quickly. If Apple works for you, your needs are either very simple or you are an extremely patient man.
The "it just works" is a marketing meme totally divorced from the reality of using Apple products. Apple products have a great out-of-box experience: you turn them on and something fun happens. But after that, Apple products are often as much or more of a pain than other products.
The other thing people like about Apple is that it makes choice easy; it's not that all Apple products work spectacularly well together, it's that if you have one Apple product, the natural thing to do is to buy another one.
And, no, don't get an Android phone with your Apple desktops; Apple desktop apps don't play nice with Android (or anything else). The only thing that will work well for you is an iPhone. You can thank Apple for that.
Installing and syncing with iTunes is a big obstacle for non-computer people.
Furthermore, you don't need to plug in in order to get a backup; Android phones are effectively backed up in real time over the air.
As for consistency, sorry, but iPhone really is pretty bad there: apps are all over the place in terms of navigation, setting preferences, getting a menu, and search; Android, in contrast, has standard buttons for these basic functions.
iPhone is the phone for tech-loving geeks; Android is the phone for regular users who can't be bothered with Apple's complexity.
Do you want something that "just works" out of the box, but with somewhat limited customization options? Do you want something that's dead simple and requires little to no learning to use? Get an iPhone.
Yeah, the iPhone "just works" after you install iTunes on your desktop, go through the activation process, and figure out syncing and all that. After that, you have to deal with a lot of bizarre and inexplicable restrictions on what you can and cannot do with music, networking, etc.
Do you like to be able to modify every little facet of your phone, right down to the hardware it runs on? Do you not mind a small learning curve if it means more flexible overall operation? Get an Android phone.
Well, or if you want something that you just take out of the box, turn on, pick a user name, and have a working phone, then get an Android phone too. Android, unlike iPhone, really "just works".
The TSA is a nuisance, but I don't see how you can call it "evil".
And in what sense is the Iraq war "evil"? Many more people would probably have died over the last decade if Saddam had stayed in power, not because of WMD but because of his usual murderous activity.
At least, or at least, thats what some of the letters going around between the founding fathers were saying, right around the time of Shay's rebellion here in MA
First of all, which ones are you referring to? Secondly, I'm sure people had all sorts of motivations in participating in the writing of the Constitution. But individual motivations don't give the document its meaning or significance, that's determined by its eventual outcome and application. And the Constitution has been used to establish historically unprecedented liberties in the US.
Being realistic never meant you should just accept everything that is wrong. Compromising with evil makes you an accessory to evil.
All true, but that doesn't apply here. Laws like the US Patriot Act, organizations like the TSA, and wars like Iraq are ill-conceived and ineffective; they are not part of an evil master plan to subjugate Americans or take over the world. And if you treat them like that, you can't effectively work against them.
Educate yourself and others about politics and history, participate in the political process, donate, volunteer, write, expose, leak, whatever: that's the way things get better in a democracy. Dividing the world into "good" and "evil" is empty demagoguery.
The Nazi government of US of A has turned completely bat-shit insane. All it does is taking away personal freedoms from people
You're "bat-shit insane" if you think that that is anything like the Nazis. And you're totally ignorant of history if you think that the US is less free today than it was 50 or 100 years ago.
Yes, there are problems in the US, there always have been and there always will be; it's the nature of democracy and freedom. If we want to deal with those, citizens need to get smarter, more informed, and more politically and historicaly aware.
What we don't need is foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics like you.
I don't see anything "merely" about science and technology; it is what our entire society is based on. Lawyers, philosophers, politicians, judges, priests and other decision makers and influencers should be required to demonstrate a reasonable degree of understanding of logic, algebra, calculus, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and physics. Anybody in those positions who doesn't shouldn't be getting a degree or professional certification.
For a continent that was full of totalitarian regimes, military dictatorships, ethnic conflicts, and religious conflicts until recently, that murdered many millions at home and abroad out of blind hatred and for profit throughout the 20th century, that leads the world in weapons exports, and that is starting to lead the world in invasion of privacy, surveillance, and government control, Europeans sure complain a lot (if you're from South America or one of the other continents, things don't look much better).
Here's a suggestions, Europe: start defending yourself and let the US troops go home. Everybody will be happier, and then you will see yourself what it takes to keep Russia out of Europe, to keep Germany from expanding again, and to ensure a steady and stable suppy of raw materials.
It's unlikely that this is going to catch on in Europe; wireless Internet is so cheap and widely available, any carrier that tried would just bleed customers.
You can do everything right and you *will* get cancer, provided something else doesn't kill you first. It's inevitable, and the same with heart disease, infections, and dementia.
And those cancers generally (with a few exceptions) fall into two categories: those that are fairly inexpensive to treat, and those that will consume enormous resources and then still kill you quickly after a lot of suffering. It's the same with the other big killers.
Hence: reasonable health care need not be expensive.
Scale invariance always demonstrates one thing clearly. Wherever it occurs for a real phenomenon, there is no sharp line between two or more things that are usually being called by different names
Mathematically, you can easily have scale invariant distributions that are mixtures of different component distributions. So, the conclusion that scale invariance implies a single cause is just wrong.
Every pundit who claims that "State Funded", or "Islamosupremicist" or "Clifford the big red Terrorist" brand terrorism requires special solutions such as waterboarding or extraordinary rendition, even though previous terrorist acts could be addressed through the normal court system,
All those terrorists may use the same means for executing their terrorist attacks, so you would expect them to kill people with the same scaling laws. But their motivations and psychology are totally different, so how you identify, police, and prosecute them can reasonably differ for each of them.
You are misapplying mathematics and statistics in the same way the author is; your conclusions are totally overreaching.
Slashdot Mirror
Europe already has mandatory retention of Internet connection data (which hosts you connect to, but not search terms... yet).
Note that I include the police when I mention the military.
No, you didn't.
They've turned into the "standing army" the Founding Fathers were so afraid of.
No, they haven't. Police and military are deployed under very different legal frameworks.
Maybe grab a hunting rifle and spend an afternoon strolling around Manhattan?
Well, I for one am glad that people like you can't do that.
But it disgusts me that so many other people expect me to join them in their sheep-hood.
But apparently it doesn't disgust you to benefit from the enormous wealth generated by their mutual cooperation and trust. If you don't like it, there are plenty of places you can go and carry your gun openly. Why not go there?
People's basic needs and desires in the US haven't changed: they want peace, safety, food on the table, and some entertainment. And they don't want to think about government too much. If it looks like there's a threat, they want their government to take care of it. The US is, and has been, powerful enough to deliver this, and governments have mostly done that. The best you can do is slowly convince them that some things that they used to think are threats really aren't.
According to Apple fanboys, like multitasking, cloud computing and network booting is a disaster, horrible, awful... until Apple invents it first!
Don't be a fool. Apparent intent is meaningless, effect is all that matters.
And the effect of TSA is slightly more trouble at the airport; not exactly evil.
The effect of the Iraq war is that an murderous dictator has been removed from power, more people are probably alive today than if Saddam had stayed in power, and Iraq has a chance at democracy (whether they take it is up to them). Not evil either.
You assume that "evil" always has to mean a big master plan.
I don't "assume" that; I was responding to a specific post in which the examples were all part of an evil master plan.
It is rarely human beings that are evil, more often than not it is the systems they create that are evil.
The system of American democracy is not evil. Even the system of German democracy is not evil (although less democratic).
How many generations do you think it will take to take back our government that way?
You are German, so please be clear about which government you want to take back. You don't get to take back my government, thank you very much.
And fighting politicians and lobbyists via the democratic means is stupid at best.
Are you planning a revolution? Or what?
You are engaging the home team on their home turf in their favourite game. How many generations do you think it will take to take back our government that way?
It's the teams people vote for. Short of putting a gun to people's heads, the only way you can change things is by changing people's minds. You can do that by going into media, creating a foundation, and doing a lot of other things other than becoming a politician. And lots of people have, in particular in the US.
Of course, in Germany, you face powerful state media, an unholy monetary and propaganda alliance between church and state, and stifling of free speech through an assortment of anti-free-speech laws. That's why Germany has been behind the US in terms of civil rights and freedoms. But German propaganda works so well, most Germans don't even realize it.
They stay silent because they're terrified of the military. They hope they're dead before the accountants show up.
You're paranoid. Fear of the US military is about as far removed from American's day-to-day lives as the fear of being hit by a meteor.
The "two" parts of the system haven't changed. There are the people who want to live free and live their lives in peace. And there and the people who want to tell everyone else how to live their lives.
Well, and you are obviously in the latter category, while most Americans are in the former.
This [wikipedia.org] is not the exception, but the rule... Given the 'right' circumstances any person is capable of evil deeds such as this. This happens faster and easier than most people like to admit...
What does that have to do with anything? If you fight wars, people will do these things. If you have orphanages, boarding schools, and prisons will do these things. That doesn't make wars, orphanages, boarding schools, or prisons automatically evil.
(And, no, I don't think "any" person is capable of doing that. A large percentage of the population is, but some percentage of the population just says "no".)
And you won't convince me that the Iraq war is morally just because Saddam was evil...
It's you who is reasoning in meaningless abstractions like "evil", not me.
Saddam killed a half a million people over the decade before the war. The war likely resulted in many more people surviving than if he had stayed in power. That alone is justification enough.
The fact that Bush lied, that his motivations may have been different, etc. is irrelevant. You could say the same about WWI and WWII, and US participation in those wars was still both just and beneficial.
Comparing subsidized phone prices is meaningless. You need to look at the unsubsidized price, and iPhone is one of the most expensive smartphones on the market.
As for Apple's "large R&D expense", Apple has no research to speak of at all. They do invest a fair amount of money in software development, but even there, they are using a lot of FOSS.
Well, if there's one thing Apple itself has proven, it's that there is a real market segment that will pay more for a better product and won't just go for the cheapest product in the niche.
I don't care how much a phone or laptop costs, I want it to work and I want it to work well. Unfortunately, Apple's products don't; they do a few simple things quite well and fail miserably on anything complex. And their hardware quality is a decidedly mixed bag, with some of their harware being excellent, and others falling apart quickly. If Apple works for you, your needs are either very simple or you are an extremely patient man.
The "it just works" is a marketing meme totally divorced from the reality of using Apple products. Apple products have a great out-of-box experience: you turn them on and something fun happens. But after that, Apple products are often as much or more of a pain than other products.
The other thing people like about Apple is that it makes choice easy; it's not that all Apple products work spectacularly well together, it's that if you have one Apple product, the natural thing to do is to buy another one.
And, no, don't get an Android phone with your Apple desktops; Apple desktop apps don't play nice with Android (or anything else). The only thing that will work well for you is an iPhone. You can thank Apple for that.
Installing and syncing with iTunes is a big obstacle for non-computer people.
Furthermore, you don't need to plug in in order to get a backup; Android phones are effectively backed up in real time over the air.
As for consistency, sorry, but iPhone really is pretty bad there: apps are all over the place in terms of navigation, setting preferences, getting a menu, and search; Android, in contrast, has standard buttons for these basic functions.
iPhone is the phone for tech-loving geeks; Android is the phone for regular users who can't be bothered with Apple's complexity.
Do you want something that "just works" out of the box, but with somewhat limited customization options? Do you want something that's dead simple and requires little to no learning to use? Get an iPhone.
Yeah, the iPhone "just works" after you install iTunes on your desktop, go through the activation process, and figure out syncing and all that. After that, you have to deal with a lot of bizarre and inexplicable restrictions on what you can and cannot do with music, networking, etc.
Do you like to be able to modify every little facet of your phone, right down to the hardware it runs on? Do you not mind a small learning curve if it means more flexible overall operation? Get an Android phone.
Well, or if you want something that you just take out of the box, turn on, pick a user name, and have a working phone, then get an Android phone too. Android, unlike iPhone, really "just works".
The language that was better than awk+shell. Didn't have much more going for it than that.
I'd prefer that the people who just want to be left alone (you know...the mainly silent majority) be allowed to have their voice heard.
Nobody is keeping them. They stay "silent" because they are reasonably happy.
You know. Like those people who elected Obama.
I elected Obama. For a country that elected Bush before him, he is a reasonable compromise between the different parts of the electorate.
The TSA is a nuisance, but I don't see how you can call it "evil".
And in what sense is the Iraq war "evil"? Many more people would probably have died over the last decade if Saddam had stayed in power, not because of WMD but because of his usual murderous activity.
How is that relevant? What "degree of evil" would you assign to the current actions and with what justification?
As long as we let them write
Who is this "they"? Those are people like you and me, they just happened to go to law school and become politicians.
The only way to get enough power to make any sort of effective change
Good! It should take a lot of work for people to get enough power to make any sort of effective change.
At least, or at least, thats what some of the letters going around between the founding fathers were saying, right around the time of Shay's rebellion here in MA
First of all, which ones are you referring to? Secondly, I'm sure people had all sorts of motivations in participating in the writing of the Constitution. But individual motivations don't give the document its meaning or significance, that's determined by its eventual outcome and application. And the Constitution has been used to establish historically unprecedented liberties in the US.
Being realistic never meant you should just accept everything that is wrong. Compromising with evil makes you an accessory to evil.
All true, but that doesn't apply here. Laws like the US Patriot Act, organizations like the TSA, and wars like Iraq are ill-conceived and ineffective; they are not part of an evil master plan to subjugate Americans or take over the world. And if you treat them like that, you can't effectively work against them.
Educate yourself and others about politics and history, participate in the political process, donate, volunteer, write, expose, leak, whatever: that's the way things get better in a democracy. Dividing the world into "good" and "evil" is empty demagoguery.
The Nazi government of US of A has turned completely bat-shit insane. All it does is taking away personal freedoms from people
You're "bat-shit insane" if you think that that is anything like the Nazis. And you're totally ignorant of history if you think that the US is less free today than it was 50 or 100 years ago.
Yes, there are problems in the US, there always have been and there always will be; it's the nature of democracy and freedom. If we want to deal with those, citizens need to get smarter, more informed, and more politically and historicaly aware.
What we don't need is foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics like you.
I don't see anything "merely" about science and technology; it is what our entire society is based on. Lawyers, philosophers, politicians, judges, priests and other decision makers and influencers should be required to demonstrate a reasonable degree of understanding of logic, algebra, calculus, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and physics. Anybody in those positions who doesn't shouldn't be getting a degree or professional certification.
For a continent that was full of totalitarian regimes, military dictatorships, ethnic conflicts, and religious conflicts until recently, that murdered many millions at home and abroad out of blind hatred and for profit throughout the 20th century, that leads the world in weapons exports, and that is starting to lead the world in invasion of privacy, surveillance, and government control, Europeans sure complain a lot (if you're from South America or one of the other continents, things don't look much better).
Here's a suggestions, Europe: start defending yourself and let the US troops go home. Everybody will be happier, and then you will see yourself what it takes to keep Russia out of Europe, to keep Germany from expanding again, and to ensure a steady and stable suppy of raw materials.
It's unlikely that this is going to catch on in Europe; wireless Internet is so cheap and widely available, any carrier that tried would just bleed customers.
You can do everything right and still get cancer.
You can do everything right and you *will* get cancer, provided something else doesn't kill you first. It's inevitable, and the same with heart disease, infections, and dementia.
And those cancers generally (with a few exceptions) fall into two categories: those that are fairly inexpensive to treat, and those that will consume enormous resources and then still kill you quickly after a lot of suffering. It's the same with the other big killers.
Hence: reasonable health care need not be expensive.
Scale invariance always demonstrates one thing clearly. Wherever it occurs for a real phenomenon, there is no sharp line between two or more things that are usually being called by different names
Mathematically, you can easily have scale invariant distributions that are mixtures of different component distributions. So, the conclusion that scale invariance implies a single cause is just wrong.
Every pundit who claims that "State Funded", or "Islamosupremicist" or "Clifford the big red Terrorist" brand terrorism requires special solutions such as waterboarding or extraordinary rendition, even though previous terrorist acts could be addressed through the normal court system,
All those terrorists may use the same means for executing their terrorist attacks, so you would expect them to kill people with the same scaling laws. But their motivations and psychology are totally different, so how you identify, police, and prosecute them can reasonably differ for each of them.
You are misapplying mathematics and statistics in the same way the author is; your conclusions are totally overreaching.