One is about a good idea of using a peer's storage for backup (a more general plan would be to split your backups between multiple peers a'la RAID). My parents' and mine systems do this too.
The other is about the institutions' unfortunate use of Exchange... Nothing to celebrate on this one.
The danger in using insecure voting machines is that a single fraudster can swing an election by many votes, making it much more likely that their intervention affected the final outcome.
And yet this is just want the GP-post wants — a centralized system, where a single breach could affect not a couple of thousands, but millions of votes in one deal.
Korea was a conventional war against a standing army of 350,000 heavily backed by the Chinese
So? Iraq's army was big too. The difference in the equipment and morale levels are much bigger, so we routed it very quickly and with very few casualties from either side.
In Iraq, we have best equipped and trained force of 150,000 solders ever assembled and they're getting their asses handed to them by 10,000 insurgents.
They are? Well, I suppose, I recognize you — your kind was proclaiming, we got "bogged down" every time a tank would stop to refuel in 2003:) But that's irrelevant — all our fancy technology is of limited use against determined insurgents, who happily kill fellow Iraqis just to embarrass us (and to settle some centuries-old scores). This is the stage, to which we, thankfully, never got in neither Korea, nor Japan, nor Germany before that. But the value of technology is still demonstrably awesome, and that's the point.
The 600,000 figure includes those directly killed in the conflict with bombs, bullets, etc.
References?
And those are lowball estimates. I'm told that internal Pentagon numbers put the figures closer to 1,000,000.
You are told? Very interesting... By who?
Target lists including these structures have leaked from the Pentagon. There is gun camera footage showing hospitals (and ambulances) being deliberately targeted.
That would be a war-crime. Even if it happened, it would not be on any official list. I'm tempted to just call you a liar, but I'll wait 24 hours for evidence, before I do that.
We destroyed all but one power plant in the nation (we bombed ALL of them, one survived)... None of this has been rebuilt.
Laughable. If this were true, there'd be no electricity in Iraq today. Yet there is — there are even cellular phones (which need recharging and cell-towers, which in their turn need plenty of juice) — and almost everybody has one. The air conditioners are quite abundant too. Slashdot posted interview with somebody setting up an ISP in Iraq — people blog from there.
You, sir, really are a liar in other words. Go waste somebody else's time...
It's been much better than the Korean War — which was not a disaster either. Iraq war just did not match our expectations, hence the common feeling, that it is "a disaster". It is not — not in comparision...
You seem to be forgetting the 35,000 wounded soldiers.
No — you are forgetting all the wounded in Korea. Even if we add all of the wounded and the killed Americans in Iraq together, we'll still get a lesser number than 50,000.
And what about the 600,000 dead Iraqis
Uncounted millions of Koreans have perished... BTW, your figure of 600,000 is a very rough estimate of the upper boundary of the real number (which nobody knows). Your figure includes, for example, the estimated number of children not born due to the conflict — the methodology simply looked at how large the population should've been using the pre-war growth rates vs. the number of people present (in various regions of the country). Figures from other conflicts tend to count the actual victims...
For another example of a lower-tech war, the Iran-Iraq war resulted in about 900,000 victims — lower than in the Korean conflict, but much higher than today.
The US strategy of "shock and awe" in the early days of the war destroyed most of Iraq's remaining infrastructure (like hospitals, sewage treatment, water treatment, power plants, etc.)
US never targeted these, and — thanks to our technology — we avoided destroying most of these things (unlike, say, during the low-tech WW2 carpet-bombing). If any got destroyed accidentally, we rebuilt them quickly. Our enemies, of course, are working hard destroying the infrastructure, but that's neither our fault, nor our technology's.
None of this helps win "hearts and minds".
This and the rest of your rant are off-topic — we are discussing, whether technology helps reduce the casualties in war.
So now we have a bunch of robots running around. That should mean less soldiers getting killed, right?
Yes, very likely. The high-tech of the war is astounding. We lost 50K Americans in the Korean War, for example — plus about half a million Chinese soldiers died and millions of Koreans (civilians and not).
This war? Less then 4K dead Americans. Technology helps a great deal — and not only to the side, that has it.
Wrong: Bot soldiers will eventually be used to do suicide missions that the meat variety won't do. That means more intense and grubby conflict which means more injury and deaths - not less.
The second sentence does not follow from the first. Quite the opposite. For example, instead of calling on Air Force to level a building with a sniper-nest on the roof, using these bots our forces could deal with the sniper without leaving dozens of residents homeless (and some dead).
Call me old-fashioned, but I do rejoice at my side's progress...
Artillery projectiles and bombs were "deciding" when to blow up for well over a century now...
Their logic was far more simplistic, of course.
Various traps where harmful "robots" too — mechanisms, designed to kill their intended victim automatically. These traps, and their descendants — land-mines — have killed many thousands of unintended victims since.
Our technology is progressing, and so does the military section of it... Although this weapon is novel, there is nothing new in principle here.
I didn't interpret that quite the same way, since it was a question (indicated by the question mark at the end)
There an ancient joke on the subject. A local congregation is choosing a new rabbi. They are just about to agree on the candidate, when one of them rises up and asks: "Jews! Can a man, whose daughter is a prostitute be a good rabbin?" The candidate is rejected...
Afterwards the rejected man asks the one, who posed the question: "What did you mean? I don't even have a daughter..." To which the answer, of course, is: "Oh, I was just asking a question".
if they post an inflammatory story, they get more comments, maybe even more pageviews, what does that translate into? Ad revenue!
Yes, some blame the radicalization of media on this phenomenon. However, eventually people get tired of the site and the revenue drops... One hopes...
One, submit better stories.. or
The story-submissions are abudnant and diverse — just look at the firehose. What an editor picks for posting is based on his convictions...
Two, go read Digg.. yeah I didn't think so.
Or install Adblock. Or would that be "stealing"?..
Look at the story-twisting here. The title is "A Year In Prison For a 20-Second Film Clip?" The text, however, reads: "If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine."
Emphasys mine, of course. The law provides for up to a year here, it seems, and she is rather unlikely to get any of that, if the write-up tells the truth...
KDawson's attempts to spread the DailyKos fearmongering to/. really ought to end. I can almost see a line running through his screen: "BushNazi alert: ELEVATED".
The real problem here is paroles, saw it on the news that although he got 25 years sentence, in some cases they get out on parole after 6 years, and hardly anyone gets more than 16 years or real jail time.
16 is still very long. It is one year longer, than the longest sentence in USSR. 6 may be short, but it is, probably, in cases, the man is judged to have completely reformed...
The purpose of punishment is not to exact vengeance — it is to deter crimes and to comfort the victims.
If anything could be done to the man to bring his victims back to life, it should be done. But there is nothing we can do...
For attempted fucking murder? Are you crazy? If someone tried to kill you or someone you love, I doubt you'd be so forgiving.
You are right, it is likely, I would not be forgiving, and I'd be demanding a harsh penalty. Being in a calm state that I am today, I can say, I'd be wrong, however...
He fled the country, was laundering money, and (most egregiously) was trying to hire a hitman to kill one of the children of a witness against him.
Still excessive in my opinion. American sentences boggle one's mind... After Stalin's death the maximum sentence in USSR was reduced from 25 years to 15 — although many crimes were still punishable by death (as they are here) and one also got to spend their days in much harsher conditions than in the US.
The main difference here is that in the US sentences are added up upon one another, whereas in most of the rest of the world they run concurrently. It could be argued, that American system continues to deter criminals after their first crime, while the other system makes the subsequent crimes "free". On the other hand, once a crook has accumulated enough years in US, their subsequent crimes are also free, because any sentence will be, in effect, a life one. With a considerable sentencing leeway given to judges, in neither system do the subsequent crimes need to be "free".
Increasing the harshness of the punishment hardens the criminals and makes them more likely to escalate violence. There is a well known historical precedent from medieval Europe, where a local baron instituted death penalty for highway robbers. Having nothing more to risk, the robbers started killing their victims instead of simply robbing them...
What works best is the inevitability of punishment, rather then the harshness of it. 25% of the spammers receiving a 1 year sentence would deter more scumbags, than 2 of them (a fraction of a percent) getting publicly chopped up on a wheel.
Judging by what I read on this site, a Joe User is running the risk of all of these horrors regardless of whether or not there is a warning printed on the packaging.
I mean, whether or not the warning is justified, all of these terrible things you list could still happen — because the corporations (sitting in their big corporation buildings acting all corporationy) have nothing better to do...
I'd guess, the plaintiffs are doing Joe User a disfavor — should FTC side with them and the warning get removed, the poor schmuck's whole life may be ruined without him getting so much as a warning...
A complaint filed by the Computer & Communications Industry Association [...]
The write-up forgot to mention, who the complaint was filed with. It is with the FTC.
"Putting these warnings on broadcasts, videotapes, and DVDs is both misleading and threatening."
I don't think, it is illegal to mislead (other than in advertising) or even to threaten (other than with violence). Would be nice, if FTC stops it somehow, of course, just to keep things cleaner...
The left wingnut bias comes from turning every stupid decision made by ANYONE in the last years into a right wing conspiracy and attempting to draw lines to blame it on the administration.
The left wingnuts don't discriminate. They seek (and "find") conspiracy in every decision — stupid and otherwise.
It is quite possible, that the right wingnuts are the same — I just don't see them as often. Maybe,/. ought to add one to the team of editors... Or, better yet, get rid of Mr. Dawson.
It was the autumn of 2004 and hundreds of people were claiming, that, if Bush wins again, they'll move to Canada...
It is now the summer of 2007, and Mr. Dawson — who, apparently, decided to stick around back then — is busy trying to turn/. into some sort of DailyKos. Fair enough — he believes in it, so he fights for it.
But recently his postings were all about Canada turning less and less appealing to his kind. So, where is he going to move, if a Republican wins again next year? Or, if he is a Canadian, where will he go, if Canada continues to align its laws with America's?
This post is not entirely off-topic, really — many of the articles posted by Mr. Dawson are so obviously (left-)biased, the editor's persona becomes a fair part of the topic. Plus, with tags like "republicansarenazis" used by this guy just a week or so ago, no on-topic discussion is really warranted — by Godwin's Law, at least...
its pretty clear that for all your talk of technology and advantages, you see this as a situation where you (the christian west) needs to fight against them (the muslim east)
Neat geographical boundaries you got there... Why, then, are the 23 Koreans (oops, make that 22) being held hostage hundreds of miles West from their homes?
your world-view is very beneficial to people in the business of selling oil and weapons
First, it would be downright uncomfortable to have them stand around with no support for 8 hours a day.
Standing is uncomfortable with or without footwear — even though it is easier without. Fortunately, they don't need to stand for 8 hours. They take frequent breaks, and rotate...
Second, it limits their ability as a security officer. Imagine them having to give chase to someone while in your bare feet.
That would be fine — they would be able to run faster, actually — it is not like they wear running shoes today.
That said, most of the TSA guys I saw would not be able to "give chase" to a turtle... Fortunately, they don't need to do that either — airports are relatively small and you don't need to chase anyone, if you can raise an alarm and have the person apprehended by your colleagues posted just about everywhere in the place.
There is nothing unsanitary about walking a few feet without shoes, especially on a dry, hard surface. You can't spread any diseases that way.
Viruses can survive on the dry, hard door knobs for 24 hours. If whoever walked through the gates 5 minutes before me had a viral foot illness of some sort (such as HFHF), the subsequent passengers can pick it up — even through the socks — a wonderful thing to bring with you to vacation or a business trip.
If you are so concerned, wear socks or something.
I do — and I throw them out after the fact, leading to rather undignifying looks from the TSA people.
As far as having the TSA employees barefoot: that's just an incredibly stupid idea. I don't think more needs to be said.
Of course, there needs to be. You can't just call something stupid (credibly or otherwise) without substantiating. What's wrong with the idea? If the place is good enough for us to walk, certainly it is fine for the TSA folks.
Treat passengers with dignity. That, in my opinion, is the most important part. It does not cost very much — hardly anything at all.
For example, if you force people to remove their shoes (and I always refused to do that, when it was still optional — until a year or so ago), do keep the floor sparkling clean in the area — and make sure, TSA employees are bare-feet too as a reassurance. Thousands of people cross those spots daily — it is not only undignifying, but also unsanitary to be walking there without footware.
For crying out loud — a Ukrainian airport provides travelers boarding a JFK-bound flight with disposable footwear. Can JFK not do the same?
When I made myself a pair out of paper-towels, the TSA-thugs at JFK (both the drone and his supervisor) insisted, I take them off too...
Of course, my calling them names (as I just did) only further alienates them and contributes to the problems, which Mr. Hawley is trying to solve...
Nor could we destroy one of their cities in just a few minutes...
So?
Definitely too late to hide anything so trivial as Saturn V blueprints from them.
Maybe. Maybe not — I'm not an expert on the rocket design, but others on this board have mentioned, that Saturn V is, pretty much, an ICBM (and this is the reason it sucked for manned flight). The point was, trying to make getting to its blueprints harder is a legitimate part of making it harder for our enemies to harm us (whether we "deserve it" or not).
What else do you call attempting to hide behind a giant wall of technology from enemies who lack the ability to really harm you even without it? I'd say that fear of a fair fight is the very definition of cowardice.
Nope, it is a smart use of one's advantages (in our case — technology). You would not expect a boxer with equal command of both hands to limit himself to using only the right one, would you?
I can't have someone sign a paper contract, and then go and change everything around, and them make them bound to said contract.
Of course you can. You just need to include in the contract a clause giving you the right to change it all. Persuading the other party to sign such a thing would be very difficult in the material world, but on the Internet people seem to be agreeing to just about anything to get a free ring-tone.
On the other hand, there is a small library-worth of laws regulating, what can not be enforced even if part of a signed contract, and this new ruling is simply adding another item.
And making it harder for America's enemies (such as Iran and North Korea) to build their own ICBMs is a good goal.
Once a great nation was told "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Are you trying to refute my point or something? I don't see the relation... We did not have enemies, who could destroy a city of ours within minutes, so we did not have anything to fear. We do have such enemies now, so we try to reduce this threat. Where do you see "cowardice" here?
What happened to my country, and will you cowards please give it back?
Why don't you run for presidency? You can start by appearing at the next town-hall meeting and participating...
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really ruling out my having any expertise based on my application of it to my family?..
So, you — while admitting to have no disaster-recovery plans/setups — feel comfortable enough to talk about anyone else's "expertise"?..
You better have arguments better than the "I'm leery", if you come with an architecture proposal to me, dear...
One is about a good idea of using a peer's storage for backup (a more general plan would be to split your backups between multiple peers a'la RAID). My parents' and mine systems do this too.
The other is about the institutions' unfortunate use of Exchange... Nothing to celebrate on this one.
And yet this is just want the GP-post wants — a centralized system, where a single breach could affect not a couple of thousands, but millions of votes in one deal.
Maybe, that's why he is posting as an AC...
I've seen some robust language on this site, but I don't remember such concentration of it getting moderated to such levels (5 Insightful ATM).
One developmentally-challenged dimwit (timmarhy) could happen, but where did the 3-4 others come from to mod him up?
So? Iraq's army was big too. The difference in the equipment and morale levels are much bigger, so we routed it very quickly and with very few casualties from either side.
They are? Well, I suppose, I recognize you — your kind was proclaiming, we got "bogged down" every time a tank would stop to refuel in 2003 :) But that's irrelevant — all our fancy technology is of limited use against determined insurgents, who happily kill fellow Iraqis just to embarrass us (and to settle some centuries-old scores). This is the stage, to which we, thankfully, never got in neither Korea, nor Japan, nor Germany before that. But the value of technology is still demonstrably awesome, and that's the point.
References?
You are told? Very interesting... By who?
That would be a war-crime. Even if it happened, it would not be on any official list. I'm tempted to just call you a liar, but I'll wait 24 hours for evidence, before I do that.
Laughable. If this were true, there'd be no electricity in Iraq today. Yet there is — there are even cellular phones (which need recharging and cell-towers, which in their turn need plenty of juice) — and almost everybody has one. The air conditioners are quite abundant too. Slashdot posted interview with somebody setting up an ISP in Iraq — people blog from there.
You, sir, really are a liar in other words. Go waste somebody else's time...
It's been much better than the Korean War — which was not a disaster either. Iraq war just did not match our expectations, hence the common feeling, that it is "a disaster". It is not — not in comparision...
No — you are forgetting all the wounded in Korea. Even if we add all of the wounded and the killed Americans in Iraq together, we'll still get a lesser number than 50,000.
Uncounted millions of Koreans have perished... BTW, your figure of 600,000 is a very rough estimate of the upper boundary of the real number (which nobody knows). Your figure includes, for example, the estimated number of children not born due to the conflict — the methodology simply looked at how large the population should've been using the pre-war growth rates vs. the number of people present (in various regions of the country). Figures from other conflicts tend to count the actual victims...
For another example of a lower-tech war, the Iran-Iraq war resulted in about 900,000 victims — lower than in the Korean conflict, but much higher than today.
US never targeted these, and — thanks to our technology — we avoided destroying most of these things (unlike, say, during the low-tech WW2 carpet-bombing). If any got destroyed accidentally, we rebuilt them quickly. Our enemies, of course, are working hard destroying the infrastructure, but that's neither our fault, nor our technology's.
This and the rest of your rant are off-topic — we are discussing, whether technology helps reduce the casualties in war.
Yes, very likely. The high-tech of the war is astounding. We lost 50K Americans in the Korean War, for example — plus about half a million Chinese soldiers died and millions of Koreans (civilians and not).
This war? Less then 4K dead Americans. Technology helps a great deal — and not only to the side, that has it.
The second sentence does not follow from the first. Quite the opposite. For example, instead of calling on Air Force to level a building with a sniper-nest on the roof, using these bots our forces could deal with the sniper without leaving dozens of residents homeless (and some dead).
Call me old-fashioned, but I do rejoice at my side's progress...
Artillery projectiles and bombs were "deciding" when to blow up for well over a century now...
Their logic was far more simplistic, of course.
Various traps where harmful "robots" too — mechanisms, designed to kill their intended victim automatically. These traps, and their descendants — land-mines — have killed many thousands of unintended victims since.
Our technology is progressing, and so does the military section of it... Although this weapon is novel, there is nothing new in principle here.
There an ancient joke on the subject. A local congregation is choosing a new rabbi. They are just about to agree on the candidate, when one of them rises up and asks: "Jews! Can a man, whose daughter is a prostitute be a good rabbin?" The candidate is rejected...
Afterwards the rejected man asks the one, who posed the question: "What did you mean? I don't even have a daughter..." To which the answer, of course, is: "Oh, I was just asking a question".
Yes, some blame the radicalization of media on this phenomenon. However, eventually people get tired of the site and the revenue drops... One hopes...
The story-submissions are abudnant and diverse — just look at the firehose. What an editor picks for posting is based on his convictions...
Or install Adblock. Or would that be "stealing"?..
Look at the story-twisting here. The title is "A Year In Prison For a 20-Second Film Clip?" The text, however, reads: "If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine."
Emphasys mine, of course. The law provides for up to a year here, it seems, and she is rather unlikely to get any of that, if the write-up tells the truth...
KDawson's attempts to spread the DailyKos fearmongering to /. really ought to end. I can almost see a line running through his screen: "BushNazi alert: ELEVATED".
16 is still very long. It is one year longer, than the longest sentence in USSR. 6 may be short, but it is, probably, in cases, the man is judged to have completely reformed...
The purpose of punishment is not to exact vengeance — it is to deter crimes and to comfort the victims.
If anything could be done to the man to bring his victims back to life, it should be done. But there is nothing we can do...
You are right, it is likely, I would not be forgiving, and I'd be demanding a harsh penalty. Being in a calm state that I am today, I can say, I'd be wrong, however...
Still excessive in my opinion. American sentences boggle one's mind... After Stalin's death the maximum sentence in USSR was reduced from 25 years to 15 — although many crimes were still punishable by death (as they are here) and one also got to spend their days in much harsher conditions than in the US.
The main difference here is that in the US sentences are added up upon one another, whereas in most of the rest of the world they run concurrently. It could be argued, that American system continues to deter criminals after their first crime, while the other system makes the subsequent crimes "free". On the other hand, once a crook has accumulated enough years in US, their subsequent crimes are also free, because any sentence will be, in effect, a life one. With a considerable sentencing leeway given to judges, in neither system do the subsequent crimes need to be "free".
Increasing the harshness of the punishment hardens the criminals and makes them more likely to escalate violence. There is a well known historical precedent from medieval Europe, where a local baron instituted death penalty for highway robbers. Having nothing more to risk, the robbers started killing their victims instead of simply robbing them...
What works best is the inevitability of punishment, rather then the harshness of it. 25% of the spammers receiving a 1 year sentence would deter more scumbags, than 2 of them (a fraction of a percent) getting publicly chopped up on a wheel.
Judging by what I read on this site, a Joe User is running the risk of all of these horrors regardless of whether or not there is a warning printed on the packaging.
I mean, whether or not the warning is justified, all of these terrible things you list could still happen — because the corporations (sitting in their big corporation buildings acting all corporationy) have nothing better to do...
I'd guess, the plaintiffs are doing Joe User a disfavor — should FTC side with them and the warning get removed, the poor schmuck's whole life may be ruined without him getting so much as a warning...
The write-up forgot to mention, who the complaint was filed with. It is with the FTC.
I don't think, it is illegal to mislead (other than in advertising) or even to threaten (other than with violence). Would be nice, if FTC stops it somehow, of course, just to keep things cleaner...
The left wingnuts don't discriminate. They seek (and "find") conspiracy in every decision — stupid and otherwise.
It is quite possible, that the right wingnuts are the same — I just don't see them as often. Maybe, /. ought to add one to the team of editors... Or, better yet, get rid of Mr. Dawson.
If a customer saw the higher price and agreed to buy anyway, Dell would not owe anything.
It was the autumn of 2004 and hundreds of people were claiming, that, if Bush wins again, they'll move to Canada...
It is now the summer of 2007, and Mr. Dawson — who, apparently, decided to stick around back then — is busy trying to turn /. into some sort of DailyKos. Fair enough — he believes in it, so he fights for it.
But recently his postings were all about Canada turning less and less appealing to his kind. So, where is he going to move, if a Republican wins again next year? Or, if he is a Canadian, where will he go, if Canada continues to align its laws with America's?
This post is not entirely off-topic, really — many of the articles posted by Mr. Dawson are so obviously (left-)biased, the editor's persona becomes a fair part of the topic. Plus, with tags like "republicansarenazis" used by this guy just a week or so ago, no on-topic discussion is really warranted — by Godwin's Law, at least...
Neat geographical boundaries you got there... Why, then, are the 23 Koreans (oops, make that 22) being held hostage hundreds of miles West from their homes?
Oh, boy, "oil and weapons"... Rrright...
Standing is uncomfortable with or without footwear — even though it is easier without. Fortunately, they don't need to stand for 8 hours. They take frequent breaks, and rotate...
That would be fine — they would be able to run faster, actually — it is not like they wear running shoes today.
That said, most of the TSA guys I saw would not be able to "give chase" to a turtle... Fortunately, they don't need to do that either — airports are relatively small and you don't need to chase anyone, if you can raise an alarm and have the person apprehended by your colleagues posted just about everywhere in the place.
Viruses can survive on the dry, hard door knobs for 24 hours. If whoever walked through the gates 5 minutes before me had a viral foot illness of some sort (such as HFHF), the subsequent passengers can pick it up — even through the socks — a wonderful thing to bring with you to vacation or a business trip.
I do — and I throw them out after the fact, leading to rather undignifying looks from the TSA people.
Of course, there needs to be. You can't just call something stupid (credibly or otherwise) without substantiating. What's wrong with the idea? If the place is good enough for us to walk, certainly it is fine for the TSA folks.
Treat passengers with dignity. That, in my opinion, is the most important part. It does not cost very much — hardly anything at all.
For example, if you force people to remove their shoes (and I always refused to do that, when it was still optional — until a year or so ago), do keep the floor sparkling clean in the area — and make sure, TSA employees are bare-feet too as a reassurance. Thousands of people cross those spots daily — it is not only undignifying, but also unsanitary to be walking there without footware.
For crying out loud — a Ukrainian airport provides travelers boarding a JFK-bound flight with disposable footwear. Can JFK not do the same?
When I made myself a pair out of paper-towels, the TSA-thugs at JFK (both the drone and his supervisor) insisted, I take them off too...
Of course, my calling them names (as I just did) only further alienates them and contributes to the problems, which Mr. Hawley is trying to solve...
So?
Maybe. Maybe not — I'm not an expert on the rocket design, but others on this board have mentioned, that Saturn V is, pretty much, an ICBM (and this is the reason it sucked for manned flight). The point was, trying to make getting to its blueprints harder is a legitimate part of making it harder for our enemies to harm us (whether we "deserve it" or not).
Nope, it is a smart use of one's advantages (in our case — technology). You would not expect a boxer with equal command of both hands to limit himself to using only the right one, would you?
Or do you want us to begin outfitting our youth with suicide belts to fight our enemies's "fairly" (preferably — in their houses of worship and during the funeral processions)? Or would you rather we have leveled Iraqi cities the way we did German and Japanese ones 60 years ago?
Of course you can. You just need to include in the contract a clause giving you the right to change it all. Persuading the other party to sign such a thing would be very difficult in the material world, but on the Internet people seem to be agreeing to just about anything to get a free ring-tone.
On the other hand, there is a small library-worth of laws regulating, what can not be enforced even if part of a signed contract, and this new ruling is simply adding another item.
Are you trying to refute my point or something? I don't see the relation... We did not have enemies, who could destroy a city of ours within minutes, so we did not have anything to fear. We do have such enemies now, so we try to reduce this threat. Where do you see "cowardice" here?
Why don't you run for presidency? You can start by appearing at the next town-hall meeting and participating...