Exactly. Each party is very much in favor of cutting out unneeded spending. They just have different definitions of "unneeded" and tend to funnel any savings (and then some) towards their definitions of "needed" spending. All the while, they decry the other party for wasting money on what the other party thinks is important.
I'd actually go further than "economic vandalism." They're holding the government hostage unless their demands are met. Were this a group of Muslims with guns, we'd call them terrorists. Sadly, since it's politicians in suits, we only call it politics.
Actually, it's worse than that. They've tried the other means. They've launched dozens of "stop Obamacare" bills but all have failed because there just isn't Congressional support for it. They challenged it in the courts but the Supreme Court upheld it. Basically, they've run out of legal options to stop it from going into effect short of having a huge Republican majority and/or a Republican President next election cycle. They don't want to wait that long, though. So they're holding the government hostage unless Obamacare is killed (or delayed long enough for them to get said majority and kill it). If the Democrats and Obama don't agree to kill/delay Obamacare (a LAW which has been held up as Constitutional by the Supreme Court), then the Republicans will keep the government shut down.
Don't we have a name for groups of people who hold hostages unless their demands are met?
Depending on the stalker's actions and location, the police may do nothing. My wife and I were harassed by a woman online (long story but she's quite crazy: thinks she's a prophet of god etc etc etc). It was hard to deal with because we're in the US and she's in Canada. Eventually, she harassed someone in Canada who took legal action but even then all that happened was that the police stopped by and TOLD HER who reported her. (Like that wasn't going to make her double her efforts to harass the people "god" told her to harass.) She's still operating, bothering people online and jumping from account to account as they get suspended. She's been doing this for years and the police haven't done anything because she's stopped short of threatening physical violence. (She has contacted employers and companies that people work for, though, thus threatening economic harm.) Going to the police is a good idea, but don't just assume that they will handle the stalker.
Same here. My kids were buying tablet computers with saved up money and the Kindle Fire looked great. I especially loved the built-in parental control software. But locking into the Amazon store was a deal breaker. We got Galaxy Tab 2 tablets and supplemented them with apps for parental controls. I even added the Amazon App Store onto the tablets to take advantage of their free app of the day.
I was the victim of identity theft. Someone got access to my name, address, SSN, and DOB and used it to open up a credit card account in my name. (Thank you, Capital One, for not caring that the Mother's Maiden name was wrong! And for stonewalling both me and the police every step of the way in the name of YOUR liability.)
The credit agencies will recommend fraud alerts but these have two major flaws: 1) They are optional. Credit Card Company A *should* check for a fraud alert before issuing a credit card in your name, but doesn't *have* to. (You can bet that the ID thieves know which companies check and which don't.) 2) They expire after 90 days. Your information isn't going to magically disappear from the ID thieves after three months. It's out there for good now. So why should the check against ID theft expire?
If you freeze your credit then nobody (you or anyone else) can open a new line of credit on the account. If you actually do want to open a new line of credit (or get a loan or have a background check performed), you thaw your credit report for a set period of time. The downsides are that you have to pay for each thaw and you can't sign up for credit on the spot. (We actually consider the latter to be a perk. "Would you like to save 10% by getting our store card?" "No thanks. Credit frozen thanks to ID theft.")
Of course, the credit agencies HATE credit freezes because they make money by offering your credit file to anyone and everyone to send you offers for credit cards and the like. A frozen credit card file takes away that income opportunity.
Come to think of it, that's another bonus to freezing your credit file.
To be fair, they're not saying you can opt out of medical care, just "opt out" of getting prescription drugs.
Of course, try telling that to someone who needs to take a prescription to live (e.g. insulin) or to be functional in society (e.g. anti-anxiety medicine). Try telling them that it's "optional" for them to take that medicine. I'm sure they'll have a very different opinion than the DEA has.
functional equivalent of pouring gasoline on trillions of taxpayer dollars and burning them
At least that would have the advantage of keeping people warm during the winter. We could cut the DEA, ship billions of "burning dollars" to homeless shelters (to burn, not spend) and still come out ahead.
Time and money mean nothing to them. Power means everything. If they try to grab this power and lose, nothing bad will happen. Sure they'll have wasted time and money, but that's the tax payers' stuff. Who cares, really? However, if they try this power grab and succeed, then they've got a shiny new weapon in the fight against drugs (where "fight against drugs" is a code name for "get more power for ourselves").
There are many reports that the NSA weakened encryption to aid their spying efforts. Even putting aside the NSA's spying, weakened encryption means greater likelihood of a hacker cracking your encryption which weakens the security of the Internet. Even if I were crazy enough to support the NSA spying, I'd still see weakened encryption as a threat to everyone.
Sadly, it looks like we're headed towards no public schools (at least here in NY) and not in a way that is even remotely good. After a round of developmentally inappropriate testing pushed by big businesses (and the politicians they contribute to) to "evaluate" teachers, they found that only 30% of kids passed. So the Governor suggested using the "death penalty" against public schools that didn't pass.
The only schools that would be left? Private schools and charter schools. The former are fine, but the latter are run by corporations which treat the school like a business. They take public funds but are exempt from the testing and can refuse any student they want to for any reason. (For example, if the student would need special services and so would constitute a "financial burden".) So the governor would turn our state into a system where kids were either taught by businesses or had to pay to get into an expensive private school. If you aren't rich and have a child who requires special services, too bad. (Maybe they'll keep one underfunded public school open to house these kids and so they can point to it as being so horrible and proof that the charter schools are so wonderful.)
Whatever your opinion of government-run public schools is, surely a business-run public school has got to be worse!
Why not let the RIAA and MPAA write curriculum? Thanks to Common Core and Race to the Top, we are already paying big businesses such as Pearson tons of money to write curriculum that teachers aren't allowed to veer from. Then we pay these companies more to administer tons of non-developmentally-appropriate tests which parents and teachers are forbidden from seeing. Then, when the kids inevitably fail (in New York, only 30% of kids passed the tests... many of these kids were straight A students who were now considered failures), these companies "helpfully" have textbooks, teacher seminars, extra help sessions for students, instruction for administrators, etc all designed to improve the students' scores on the tests the companies wrote. And all available for a price, of course.
Don't even get me started on our education commissioner who was looking into taking legal action against parents who refused to let their kids take these tests.
Then there's the fact that charter schools are being pushed hard. These are schools which take public school funds, but are run by businesses, don't need to take any of the tests, don't require their teachers to have any sort of training in education, can pick and choose which students are allowed in. (Bad grades? You're out. Need special services? You're out.) Politicians seem to love charter schools so much and push them whenever they can. Governor Andrew Cuomo has already suggested using the "death penalty" for public schools that don't pass the overly hard tests. Of course, you can guess what he would replace them with. (No comments from him on what would happen to the kids that the charter schools refused to serve. Would a K-12 education become only for the select few that businesses decide can have it?)
I have a fifth grader and first grader who are dealing with all of this now so, yes, I might be a bit bitter.
Those who insist they can text while driving safely sound (to me) just like those people who argue that they can safely drive while drunk. Yes, you might have done it once or twice before without incident. You might have even done it a dozen times. Congrats. However, the next time might be the time that your streak of luck ends and you wind up killing or seriously injuring someone.
I know that the lure of the incoming message can be tough to fight. I've heard my phone buzz and had the "I'll be fine if I just check it quickly" thought pop into my head. I resist it though until I reach a spot where I can pull over (if I'm expecting an important message) or until I reach my destination. There is no text message so important that it can't wait.
While speeding, drunk driving, and texting while driving might not cause harm directly, they increase the risk to the point that nobody can seriously claim to be "driving safely" while doing this. (For these purposes, I'm not defining "speeding" as going 5mph over the speed limit but instead going WAY over the speed limit. For example, doing 60mph in a 30mph zone.)
Accidents can be caused by many factors. You could encounter bad weather and find yourself unable to stop. You could make a bad driving decision. Or you could engage in activities that are well-known to decrease your driving abilities and which should not be done while driving. If the accident wasn't the fault of the driver (e.g. caused by weather and not the driver's behavior), no penalty should be issued. If a bad driving decision was made, a penalty should be issued, but not severe. (At least not the first time. repeat offenders should quickly get their license taken away at the very least.) If, however, you got drunk and decided to drive or thought that it would be harmless to text your friends while going down the highway at 60mph, then you have no sympathy from me when you get into an accident. If you are drunk, take a cab home or have someone sober drive you. If you *really* need to text someone, find a spot to stop, text your friend, and then drive off again.
This kind of thing has been going on for as long as there have been online comments about products. One of the first sites I ran was an infomercial product review site. I got some great reviews saying how good or awful products were (tip: don't buy Epil-Stop). I would also get a sudden flood of positive reviews on a product. At that time, the fake reviewers weren't too sophisticated so you could tell that the 100 positive reviews from 100 "different people" were coming from the same IP address. I'd junk them but even at the time it was a lot of effort for what was a one man operation. I can sympathize with the comments moderation teams at Yelp, Amazon, and any other place that accepts user comments on products but tries to weed out fake ones.
So seven years ago, the Mythbusters defeated a high end alarm system using simple techniques. Now you can buy a smartphone for much less that contains that technology - still able to be defeated by the same methods. The march of technology!
I said this too when the "fingerprint scanner" broke. The response I got was that the Mythbusters episode was from 2006 and this technology obviously read subdermal layers, etc, etc, etc. Imagine my surprise (by which I mean the lack thereof) that the device can be beaten with techniques the Mythbusters employed seven years ago.
Having gone to an Orthodox temple for awhile* where the rabbi was a staunch Creationist (Young Earth, not less) and very anti-science, I can attest that one big reason is that science is scary to these people. You see, they like the comfort of "knowing" what is going on in the world. How was the world created? Read Genesis and find out. Genesis hasn't changed in a thousand years and likely won't change in the next thousand. Meanwhile, science is saying one thing today and then something different tomorrow. Science changes with every new discovery.
Now, you and I might say "but that's science's greatest strength" and we would be right. But to creationists, a "how did it happen" story that changes isn't comforting. Instead, the certainty of "In the beginning...." is touted as a strength and the changing nature of science is put forward as a weakness. (Much in the same way that a politician who changes his view when new information is brought to light might be painted as "flip flopping" for daring to change positions.)
So the answer to "Why do they keep pushing Intelligent Design" is that they want to prevent science by all means necessary and return to a world where the answer to everything was just "pray harder**."
* I went to that temple only because I was living with my parents at the time and they were members there so I got membership for free. My tongue paid for the membership, though, every time I bit it when the rabbi went on a "science is weak for changing" rant. That wasn't the time or place for an argument... especially since many of the congregants believed the same thing. I'd have a better chance of changing a person's mind by posting "Why Windows is superior to Linux" on Slashdot!
** Note that they also believe that "pray harder" only works if you adopt THEIR religion's god. And not just their religion's god, but the particular sect of their religion's god. Any variation, no matter how slight, will render "pray harder" ineffective (in their minds). Of course, this can be applied after the fact. You tried to pray away your sickness and you got worse so obviously that means that you didn't accept their god properly and fully. Shame on you!
Except instead of "Sudo make me a sandwich", the response is "Make me a sandwich or the terrorists win." Then give knowledge of this to lawmakers and others in positions of power who want certain legislation passed. As long as they can "elevate permissions" via the "terrorist command", this will continue.
The Telco's are not the ones being spied on, so they're not the 'protagonist' in any lawsuit.
That's the first thing I thought the court meant. That since nobody who was being secretly spied upon protested, the secret spying could continue. Of course, if someone who was being secretly spied upon DID protest, they would first have to prove standing - that they were secretly being spied upon - without having access to any classified materials which proved they were being spied upon... An impossible task which ensures that nobody can challenge the law.
However, challenging it is treason. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/09/12/228239/yahoo-ceo-says-it-would-be-treason-to-decline-to-cooperate-with-the-nsa
Therefore, since nobody challenged it, it is just fine to do.
(This ends our lesson in Secret Court Logic. Any resemblance to Real World Logic is completely accidental and will be fixed immediately.)
Let's suppose for a second that Yahoo's CEO was telling the truth when she said that refusing to comply with the NSA was treason. Now suppose you run an ISP (or any other business for that matter) and you are approached by the NSA. Chances are they aren't going to ask politely whether they can spy on your network/customers. Instead, they'll order you to comply with threats of treason, expensive lawsuits, having your business shut down, etc. if you don't immediately fall in line. Anyone who pushes back after the threats could find the NSA making business (and life) hard for them until they comply. This is an organization that used their database to spy on their own girlfriends, do you really think harassing a business that is being "troublesome" would raise any ethical quandaries with them?.
Well, Facebook I avoid for reasons other than the real name requirement. (I'd list the reasons, but let's just summarize it as "Every Facebook Story That Appears Here Ever.") In the case of Google, being caught using a fake name can mean getting your Google account axed. As I actually use my Google account for other purposes, that would badly impact me. I could open a new Google account and just use it for Google+, but then I'd have to switch between my real name account and fake name account. That's a lot of effort to go through just to use a social network that I really don't care about. So I simply don't use it.
Not on Slashdot (my account predates getting married and having kids... back in the days when I only had myself to worry about and didn't think anything bad could come of having my real name out there), but on my blog/Twitter/etc. My wife and I use pseudonyms because we often discuss parenting issues and will post photos of our kids. We don't want someone tracking us or our kids down, though, so we don't use real names and obviously don't use our address or name of our kids' school. It's not impossible to track us down, but it makes it hard for some random Internet stalker (yes, I've encountered at least one) to call my work to "report" me to my boss for crimes she imagines I committed. (Said Internet stalker has harassed lots of people online and has contacted at least 1 person's employer because he used his real names/place of business online.)
One of the big reasons why I don't use Facebook or Google+ (besides lack of time to be on a million social networking sites), is that they require that you use (and reveal to the world) your real name. (If they really wanted to require real names but support pseudonyms, it wouldn't be hard to devise a system where your real name was hidden to all and your pseudonym was displayed instead.)
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Each party is very much in favor of cutting out unneeded spending. They just have different definitions of "unneeded" and tend to funnel any savings (and then some) towards their definitions of "needed" spending. All the while, they decry the other party for wasting money on what the other party thinks is important.
I'd actually go further than "economic vandalism." They're holding the government hostage unless their demands are met. Were this a group of Muslims with guns, we'd call them terrorists. Sadly, since it's politicians in suits, we only call it politics.
Actually, it's worse than that. They've tried the other means. They've launched dozens of "stop Obamacare" bills but all have failed because there just isn't Congressional support for it. They challenged it in the courts but the Supreme Court upheld it. Basically, they've run out of legal options to stop it from going into effect short of having a huge Republican majority and/or a Republican President next election cycle. They don't want to wait that long, though. So they're holding the government hostage unless Obamacare is killed (or delayed long enough for them to get said majority and kill it). If the Democrats and Obama don't agree to kill/delay Obamacare (a LAW which has been held up as Constitutional by the Supreme Court), then the Republicans will keep the government shut down.
Don't we have a name for groups of people who hold hostages unless their demands are met?
Depending on the stalker's actions and location, the police may do nothing. My wife and I were harassed by a woman online (long story but she's quite crazy: thinks she's a prophet of god etc etc etc). It was hard to deal with because we're in the US and she's in Canada. Eventually, she harassed someone in Canada who took legal action but even then all that happened was that the police stopped by and TOLD HER who reported her. (Like that wasn't going to make her double her efforts to harass the people "god" told her to harass.) She's still operating, bothering people online and jumping from account to account as they get suspended. She's been doing this for years and the police haven't done anything because she's stopped short of threatening physical violence. (She has contacted employers and companies that people work for, though, thus threatening economic harm.) Going to the police is a good idea, but don't just assume that they will handle the stalker.
Same here. My kids were buying tablet computers with saved up money and the Kindle Fire looked great. I especially loved the built-in parental control software. But locking into the Amazon store was a deal breaker. We got Galaxy Tab 2 tablets and supplemented them with apps for parental controls. I even added the Amazon App Store onto the tablets to take advantage of their free app of the day.
Freeze your credit.
I was the victim of identity theft. Someone got access to my name, address, SSN, and DOB and used it to open up a credit card account in my name. (Thank you, Capital One, for not caring that the Mother's Maiden name was wrong! And for stonewalling both me and the police every step of the way in the name of YOUR liability.)
The credit agencies will recommend fraud alerts but these have two major flaws: 1) They are optional. Credit Card Company A *should* check for a fraud alert before issuing a credit card in your name, but doesn't *have* to. (You can bet that the ID thieves know which companies check and which don't.) 2) They expire after 90 days. Your information isn't going to magically disappear from the ID thieves after three months. It's out there for good now. So why should the check against ID theft expire?
If you freeze your credit then nobody (you or anyone else) can open a new line of credit on the account. If you actually do want to open a new line of credit (or get a loan or have a background check performed), you thaw your credit report for a set period of time. The downsides are that you have to pay for each thaw and you can't sign up for credit on the spot. (We actually consider the latter to be a perk. "Would you like to save 10% by getting our store card?" "No thanks. Credit frozen thanks to ID theft.")
Of course, the credit agencies HATE credit freezes because they make money by offering your credit file to anyone and everyone to send you offers for credit cards and the like. A frozen credit card file takes away that income opportunity.
Come to think of it, that's another bonus to freezing your credit file.
This site has some good information on Credit Freezes including links/phone numbers to freeze your credit file: http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/personal-finance-credit/credit-freeze-and-thaw-guide/nFbL/
To be fair, they're not saying you can opt out of medical care, just "opt out" of getting prescription drugs.
Of course, try telling that to someone who needs to take a prescription to live (e.g. insulin) or to be functional in society (e.g. anti-anxiety medicine). Try telling them that it's "optional" for them to take that medicine. I'm sure they'll have a very different opinion than the DEA has.
Of course, the DEA would argue against Orangutan rights. The DEA's run by a bunch of baboons!
At least that would have the advantage of keeping people warm during the winter. We could cut the DEA, ship billions of "burning dollars" to homeless shelters (to burn, not spend) and still come out ahead.
Time and money mean nothing to them. Power means everything. If they try to grab this power and lose, nothing bad will happen. Sure they'll have wasted time and money, but that's the tax payers' stuff. Who cares, really? However, if they try this power grab and succeed, then they've got a shiny new weapon in the fight against drugs (where "fight against drugs" is a code name for "get more power for ourselves").
There are many reports that the NSA weakened encryption to aid their spying efforts. Even putting aside the NSA's spying, weakened encryption means greater likelihood of a hacker cracking your encryption which weakens the security of the Internet. Even if I were crazy enough to support the NSA spying, I'd still see weakened encryption as a threat to everyone.
Sadly, it looks like we're headed towards no public schools (at least here in NY) and not in a way that is even remotely good. After a round of developmentally inappropriate testing pushed by big businesses (and the politicians they contribute to) to "evaluate" teachers, they found that only 30% of kids passed. So the Governor suggested using the "death penalty" against public schools that didn't pass.
The only schools that would be left? Private schools and charter schools. The former are fine, but the latter are run by corporations which treat the school like a business. They take public funds but are exempt from the testing and can refuse any student they want to for any reason. (For example, if the student would need special services and so would constitute a "financial burden".) So the governor would turn our state into a system where kids were either taught by businesses or had to pay to get into an expensive private school. If you aren't rich and have a child who requires special services, too bad. (Maybe they'll keep one underfunded public school open to house these kids and so they can point to it as being so horrible and proof that the charter schools are so wonderful.)
Whatever your opinion of government-run public schools is, surely a business-run public school has got to be worse!
Why not let the RIAA and MPAA write curriculum? Thanks to Common Core and Race to the Top, we are already paying big businesses such as Pearson tons of money to write curriculum that teachers aren't allowed to veer from. Then we pay these companies more to administer tons of non-developmentally-appropriate tests which parents and teachers are forbidden from seeing. Then, when the kids inevitably fail (in New York, only 30% of kids passed the tests... many of these kids were straight A students who were now considered failures), these companies "helpfully" have textbooks, teacher seminars, extra help sessions for students, instruction for administrators, etc all designed to improve the students' scores on the tests the companies wrote. And all available for a price, of course.
Don't even get me started on our education commissioner who was looking into taking legal action against parents who refused to let their kids take these tests.
Then there's the fact that charter schools are being pushed hard. These are schools which take public school funds, but are run by businesses, don't need to take any of the tests, don't require their teachers to have any sort of training in education, can pick and choose which students are allowed in. (Bad grades? You're out. Need special services? You're out.) Politicians seem to love charter schools so much and push them whenever they can. Governor Andrew Cuomo has already suggested using the "death penalty" for public schools that don't pass the overly hard tests. Of course, you can guess what he would replace them with. (No comments from him on what would happen to the kids that the charter schools refused to serve. Would a K-12 education become only for the select few that businesses decide can have it?)
I have a fifth grader and first grader who are dealing with all of this now so, yes, I might be a bit bitter.
Those who insist they can text while driving safely sound (to me) just like those people who argue that they can safely drive while drunk. Yes, you might have done it once or twice before without incident. You might have even done it a dozen times. Congrats. However, the next time might be the time that your streak of luck ends and you wind up killing or seriously injuring someone.
I know that the lure of the incoming message can be tough to fight. I've heard my phone buzz and had the "I'll be fine if I just check it quickly" thought pop into my head. I resist it though until I reach a spot where I can pull over (if I'm expecting an important message) or until I reach my destination. There is no text message so important that it can't wait.
While speeding, drunk driving, and texting while driving might not cause harm directly, they increase the risk to the point that nobody can seriously claim to be "driving safely" while doing this. (For these purposes, I'm not defining "speeding" as going 5mph over the speed limit but instead going WAY over the speed limit. For example, doing 60mph in a 30mph zone.)
Accidents can be caused by many factors. You could encounter bad weather and find yourself unable to stop. You could make a bad driving decision. Or you could engage in activities that are well-known to decrease your driving abilities and which should not be done while driving. If the accident wasn't the fault of the driver (e.g. caused by weather and not the driver's behavior), no penalty should be issued. If a bad driving decision was made, a penalty should be issued, but not severe. (At least not the first time. repeat offenders should quickly get their license taken away at the very least.) If, however, you got drunk and decided to drive or thought that it would be harmless to text your friends while going down the highway at 60mph, then you have no sympathy from me when you get into an accident. If you are drunk, take a cab home or have someone sober drive you. If you *really* need to text someone, find a spot to stop, text your friend, and then drive off again.
This kind of thing has been going on for as long as there have been online comments about products. One of the first sites I ran was an infomercial product review site. I got some great reviews saying how good or awful products were (tip: don't buy Epil-Stop). I would also get a sudden flood of positive reviews on a product. At that time, the fake reviewers weren't too sophisticated so you could tell that the 100 positive reviews from 100 "different people" were coming from the same IP address. I'd junk them but even at the time it was a lot of effort for what was a one man operation. I can sympathize with the comments moderation teams at Yelp, Amazon, and any other place that accepts user comments on products but tries to weed out fake ones.
So seven years ago, the Mythbusters defeated a high end alarm system using simple techniques. Now you can buy a smartphone for much less that contains that technology - still able to be defeated by the same methods. The march of technology!
I said this too when the "fingerprint scanner" broke. The response I got was that the Mythbusters episode was from 2006 and this technology obviously read subdermal layers, etc, etc, etc. Imagine my surprise (by which I mean the lack thereof) that the device can be beaten with techniques the Mythbusters employed seven years ago.
Having gone to an Orthodox temple for awhile* where the rabbi was a staunch Creationist (Young Earth, not less) and very anti-science, I can attest that one big reason is that science is scary to these people. You see, they like the comfort of "knowing" what is going on in the world. How was the world created? Read Genesis and find out. Genesis hasn't changed in a thousand years and likely won't change in the next thousand. Meanwhile, science is saying one thing today and then something different tomorrow. Science changes with every new discovery.
Now, you and I might say "but that's science's greatest strength" and we would be right. But to creationists, a "how did it happen" story that changes isn't comforting. Instead, the certainty of "In the beginning...." is touted as a strength and the changing nature of science is put forward as a weakness. (Much in the same way that a politician who changes his view when new information is brought to light might be painted as "flip flopping" for daring to change positions.)
So the answer to "Why do they keep pushing Intelligent Design" is that they want to prevent science by all means necessary and return to a world where the answer to everything was just "pray harder**."
* I went to that temple only because I was living with my parents at the time and they were members there so I got membership for free. My tongue paid for the membership, though, every time I bit it when the rabbi went on a "science is weak for changing" rant. That wasn't the time or place for an argument... especially since many of the congregants believed the same thing. I'd have a better chance of changing a person's mind by posting "Why Windows is superior to Linux" on Slashdot!
** Note that they also believe that "pray harder" only works if you adopt THEIR religion's god. And not just their religion's god, but the particular sect of their religion's god. Any variation, no matter how slight, will render "pray harder" ineffective (in their minds). Of course, this can be applied after the fact. You tried to pray away your sickness and you got worse so obviously that means that you didn't accept their god properly and fully. Shame on you!
Well, it's sort of like this XKCD cartoon: http://xkcd.com/149/
Except instead of "Sudo make me a sandwich", the response is "Make me a sandwich or the terrorists win." Then give knowledge of this to lawmakers and others in positions of power who want certain legislation passed. As long as they can "elevate permissions" via the "terrorist command", this will continue.
That's the first thing I thought the court meant. That since nobody who was being secretly spied upon protested, the secret spying could continue. Of course, if someone who was being secretly spied upon DID protest, they would first have to prove standing - that they were secretly being spied upon - without having access to any classified materials which proved they were being spied upon... An impossible task which ensures that nobody can challenge the law.
Yes, they were supposed to challenge this.
However, challenging it is treason. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/09/12/228239/yahoo-ceo-says-it-would-be-treason-to-decline-to-cooperate-with-the-nsa
Therefore, since nobody challenged it, it is just fine to do.
(This ends our lesson in Secret Court Logic. Any resemblance to Real World Logic is completely accidental and will be fixed immediately.)
Let's suppose for a second that Yahoo's CEO was telling the truth when she said that refusing to comply with the NSA was treason. Now suppose you run an ISP (or any other business for that matter) and you are approached by the NSA. Chances are they aren't going to ask politely whether they can spy on your network/customers. Instead, they'll order you to comply with threats of treason, expensive lawsuits, having your business shut down, etc. if you don't immediately fall in line. Anyone who pushes back after the threats could find the NSA making business (and life) hard for them until they comply. This is an organization that used their database to spy on their own girlfriends, do you really think harassing a business that is being "troublesome" would raise any ethical quandaries with them?.
Well, Facebook I avoid for reasons other than the real name requirement. (I'd list the reasons, but let's just summarize it as "Every Facebook Story That Appears Here Ever.") In the case of Google, being caught using a fake name can mean getting your Google account axed. As I actually use my Google account for other purposes, that would badly impact me. I could open a new Google account and just use it for Google+, but then I'd have to switch between my real name account and fake name account. That's a lot of effort to go through just to use a social network that I really don't care about. So I simply don't use it.
Not on Slashdot (my account predates getting married and having kids... back in the days when I only had myself to worry about and didn't think anything bad could come of having my real name out there), but on my blog/Twitter/etc. My wife and I use pseudonyms because we often discuss parenting issues and will post photos of our kids. We don't want someone tracking us or our kids down, though, so we don't use real names and obviously don't use our address or name of our kids' school. It's not impossible to track us down, but it makes it hard for some random Internet stalker (yes, I've encountered at least one) to call my work to "report" me to my boss for crimes she imagines I committed. (Said Internet stalker has harassed lots of people online and has contacted at least 1 person's employer because he used his real names/place of business online.)
One of the big reasons why I don't use Facebook or Google+ (besides lack of time to be on a million social networking sites), is that they require that you use (and reveal to the world) your real name. (If they really wanted to require real names but support pseudonyms, it wouldn't be hard to devise a system where your real name was hidden to all and your pseudonym was displayed instead.)