Problem is that the US isn't the 'most free' nation on Earth - not by a long shot.
Name one, and explain how it's more free (not "a better place to live" or "more friendly to the environment").
Problem is, US citizens don't live in a democracy, so can't affect the foreign policy of their ruling class. Think I'm wrong? Think again. They just voted out the Republicans in an absolute landslide which is largely recognised as being a rejection of Republican foreign policy, but you watch just how much that policy changes, both now AND when they get rid of Emperor Dubya.
Psst. We Americans have this thing called "Federalism", which intentionally limits the ability of any one election to dramatically shift the nation's course. 2006 was a mid-term election, meaning that only 4/12 of the democratically-elected national government were subject to voter approval -- after a twelve-year tilt towards our President's party. Federalism was designed to slow dramatic changes, like a sudden shift in policy when twelve years of a party's dominance end.
2008 is when the American Democratic System will be more flexible, when a full 10/12 of the national government will be up for voter approval, and 6/12 of our government is going to leave office by law. (There's still 1/3 of the national government that is going to be influenced by the current administration after 2008, as the judiciary is not democratically elected, but rather appointed to mostly lifetime terms by the other two branches.)
If you don't think that common Americans can change public policy -- well, it's black history month, and you should spend some time reading up on things like the Civil Rights movement, the beginning and end of Prohibition, or just the 1994 "Republican Revolution" that started our nation on its current path.
(We COULD have gone with a directly-elected parliamentary system, but we much rather like having something to moderate our public policy when we have such strong and ardent divisions as to how our country should go. Y'know, 'cause we're democratic.)
Do what Microsoft does: release a "not for business" version for cheap, and slap people with the full price when they actually make a profit.
Also are you implying that since Joe Sixpack can't afford Photoshop, he's missing out on his opportunity to make money from image editing? What about GIMP and other OSS solutions?
GIMP, Scribus, and OpenOffice are absolute terrible if you don't want to use them exactly like the developers want you to. If you can get them to work properly, you're not learning the trade--you've either already mastered the same school of the trade the developers follow, or you're learning OSS (which is its own, low-paying, skill).
And, yes, Adobe, Quark, and Microsoft do limit you to the subset of their UI and schools that they program for: but they spend a significantly greater amount of time actually finding out what their users want.
(And since OSS has a rather large bias against forking, we don't really see the benefit of competition that the three I listed have to compete with for their flagship apps.)
The war on drugs is about ensuring that citizens are addicted to indigenous drugs, and that the profits are centrally controlled.
Only if you count the war on cannabis as "the war on drugs." If you exclude that miscatagorized weed, you get almost exactly the purposes they say the War on Drugs is for.
If it weren't for use if illegal drugs, Richard Pryor would still be able to perform and Kurt Cobain would likely still be alive.
No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers.
Psst. You don't have to. The "DRM" in Vista is hardly more than what's in XP or OSX; it's just that the on-disk versions of MS-apps support it, rather than the on-update versions for XP.
No, a toner/drum assembly is $120. Toner is significantly less than that if you buy from a company that separates the two.
Spending $220 today can get you a networked, duplexing laser printer that will last your 50-sheet-a-year habit an amazing length of time. (20 years if nothing corrodes.)
If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so.
And if Ford saw business benefit to requiring Ford Gasoline in their engines, they would want to do so as well. Or if they wanted to create the Ford Expressway, allowing only Fords to be driven upon it.
Skype is arguing that we'll have a better wireless system if we have an wholly integrated wireless system -- that the spectrum, as a common good, should be shared in an open manner.
This isn't exactly rocket science or "New Deal" style expansion of government power. It's a request for a federal agency to take a look at the market, and do what it is legislatively required to do.
(And you don't get a vote on this. The entire reason for the FCC is to insulate the descision about the airwaves from politics.)
[water vapor] is [the gas most responsible for] the green house effect.
Yes, and your point is?
the problem with global warming is not the greenhouse effect per se, but rather its increase. Unless you have a 65,000 year trendline for water vapor, it's essentially irrelevant to the debate.
I think OPs piont was that we're not getting as much out of the increases in speed as we could if we maintained the same stringent efficiency standards as we had in those long lost days when it was necessary for the computation to finish in any practical time frame at all.
Quick. Name me five useful things that your desktop PC could do right now instead of running a GUI.
If those five (any five you pick!) don't outweigh the benefit of letting everyone with the brains to work a calculator have a computer, well, I think you just made my case.
Now, I am serious, what is wrong with the harddrives I choose that kills them so quickly?
First guess? Your system has a dirty power supply. (Unless you have a high-quality PSU and have a line-noise-filtering UPS, this is entirely possible.)
This article has told me one thing: it's time to get a RAID setup. I've been looking at RAID 5, but two things still trouble me, the price and the performance hit. Does anyone have any information on just how much a performance hit I might experience if I have to access the HD a lot?
RAID 5 is not a great deal more than RAID 0 with a fancy backup. You need to get yourself a good RAID controller (in hardware), and go from there. You should be able to do classic RAID 1 (two drives only) without any perceptible performance hit with a good hardware controller.
If you're still using IDE, switching to SATA would almost certainly eat up any performance hit you would otherwise experience.
And if that doesn't work, do what Windows Vista does: get yourself a large flash drive, and use that for short-term storage.
Now, there are some who might claim that this was not a threat of violence
Yes, there are. But none of those people are judges or lawyers.
What you did is protected by the US Constitution. Go find yourself a lawyer, NOW. You need to know your rights and duties in relation to your state's laws.
what cops in the US perceive as justifiable cause for randomly stopping and questioning citizens.
They don't need any cause at all to stop and ask a question. They're human beings, and can ask whatever the heck they want to. In some parts of the country, you can even learn a police officer's name and (gasp!) develop a friendly relationship with them that has nothing whatsoever to do with them thinking you broke the law.
Go to the appropriate elected official, complain, and if they don't do something, go campaign full-bore for their next opponent.
We live in a democracy, and there isn't one single person (including me) who works for the government who can't be held to account by an election.
(In NY, the local police are headed by either a directly elected sheriff, a directly-elected police chief, or a appointed-by-the-mayor police chief.)
Oh, and if by "server you badly" you mean that they actually harassed you, caused you unreasonable discomfort, or actually abused their authority, well, that's why we have lawyers.
This just proves that religion is perverted and anti-progressive.
And you, sir, just provided all the proof anyone will ever need to stand up and argue for their religion.
The only religion that's by-nature perverted and anti-progressive is capital-A Atheism. Every other religion admits a discordance with what science can prove and what they believe. Only Atheism stands up and says "I know that you are wrong, and it's a scientific fact."
(I mean no disrespect to lowercase-a atheists, for whom the term "agnostic" was coined.)
Wii is trying to be the iPod of consoles but how can you really when the market when your competitors iPods are just/if not more capable and the only difference is the peripherals?
The Wiimote is not a peripheral. The "Wii remote" is the central part of the system. It's not an iPod vs. an iPod. It's an iPod vs. a CD-player.
(And, really, the iPod of iPods, namely the iPod, sells so well partially BECAUSE of all of its peripherals.)
However, all glider did was provide a way for people to cheat
And that's a tort against the game company. ("tort" is "something that you can be sued over." Not necessarily a crime, but still something that's a bad idea.)
It's almost the exact same tort as, oh, a P2P company that encourages sharing of copyrighted music. And it's the same legal principle that applies to, oh, hiring someone else to kill your mother.
There is still NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the temperature changes we're seeing nowadays aren't [just] part of some long term cyclical effect that we haven't yet been able to detect,
Wrong. We have the (rapidly shrinking) antarctic ice, whose layers of melt-and-freeze give us a record stretching back some 65,000 years. In all that time -- eight times longer than since the dawn of civilization -- we can observe correlating CO2 and temperature levels. In all of those cycles, not ONCE has the CO2 gotten to the point where it is now.
If it's a "long-term" effect, it's long-term in a species-ending geological sense. It may be "just natural", but if so it'll still end us if we don't do something to offset and moderate it.
And, even if it's just a natural cycle, embracing the scientific status quo is a means for American Profit. Or do you really think that somehow all of the American genius vanished after WWII? A new paradigm that rewards innovation will mean American profits. Maybe different Americans, maybe the same Americans -- but unless you own a large GM portfolio, you really don't care.
There's a reason why certain species of mice are used for these sorts of laboratory experiments: they're nearly identical to humans.
there are exactly two reasons why we perform tests on certain mice. You're focused on reason #2 -- namely, "a high past correlation of harm in these creatures to harm in Humans." #1 is "the short lifespan and low genetic variety make for a highly economical test pool."
Mice are significantly different than humans: for example, a 5 ft/lbs blow to the chest isn't much to a human, but it's death to a mouse.
I'm all for electric cars, but we'll need a lot more than a good battery to make it practical.
The only piece missing from either all-electric or "real hybrid" is a good* battery. Every Other Problem is a question of just putting existing technology into practice.
(By "good", I mean a battery that will let the vehicle run for at least 20 miles between charges, without adding unreasonably to the battery weight.)
There are only two ways you can change a corporate culture. One is to be a company officer, and impose the change. The other is to get together with everyone else on the bottom and work together to change it. You don't need to over-specialize or be protective, you just need to stand alongside everyone else in your niche and tell the boss when enough is enough.
Doctors have entire schools and medical boards. Lawyers have the bar. Why geeks can't have their own "Technologist's Guild" or something is just hubris.
It gets even worse. You have to follow up with [Windowskey-R] CMD [Enter] to get it to finally load. FWIW...
Not in Vista. In Vista, you can just hit windows key and type a command name; the start menu auto-searches for what you want. It's a very nice addition that should be promptly stolen by Linux and Apple.
Slashdotters are smart enough to "know the difference"; in that if you _REALLY_ wanted to comment on the book, having bought it, and encouraging others to buy it, then you'd put a non-referral link.
No, he'd just give the name or ISBN. A "non-referal link" is just a free gift to Amazon: the price is EXACTLY the same, and if you decide to use a non-referral link instead of a referral link... well, you're giving extra money to Amazon that you didn't have to.
It's like not tipping your waitress and instead handing the 20% to the manager. It's asinine.
(The "real" reason why there's a flood of "no referral" link is the same reason/. uses B&N instead of Amazon, even though they're the same site and system. Amazon.com landed in the "bad company" list along with Microsoft, Dell, and most others because of their One-Click patent. The rational response is to post a link to someplace OTHER than Amazon, or post a charity referral link... this "no referral" crap is just stupid.)
Personally, I see three classes of Office users and there seems to be a reasonable argument that there should be three seperate classes of Word/Office for these people
What argument?
The obvious counter-argument is "different programs make it hard to move from one class to another."
You might have a good argument for having Office display more than two modes, but that's about it.
How much longer will it be until we have to present a National ID card to take out a loan, open a bank account, cross state lines, and more?
Loan / banking: Today. Go ahead, try and open any kind of fiscal account without government-issued identification.
Cross state lines: Never. Maybe to cross NATIONAL borders, but barring national revolt you won't see anyone suggest that the free-reign United States be clamped down on a state-line basis. (Now, there might be an "ID to enter state park or book a room", but that's something seperate.)
So, what about those who can afford their own planes? Will they be allowed more anonymity than those with fewer resources?
Those who can afford their own planes know they have to file detailed flight plans each time they go, and their ordinary transactions are so large they have to report a significant share of them due to money laundering laws.
What about purchasing items like automobiles?
You can't drive a car without registering that specific car as your property. Heck, in your automobile you're broadcasting a simple code to identify your household to anyone withing SIGHT.
How about healthcare? Those that can afford to pay for services completely will not have to worry about health care insurance and therefore will not be tracked.
Doctors should track their case incidents in similar fashions regardless of source of payment; doing so aids in diagnosis of future cases and identification of epidemics.
National ID card will essentially enable all sorts of purchase related tracking to take place. You can now welcome federally mandated and controlled tracking and access to guns.
Yes. If you fire a gun, you should be able to stand up before a jury of your peers and say why. If you cannot justify the discharge, you shouldn't even have the gun drawn.
The government has little business telling you that you cannot have a gun and cannot fire it without prior approval, but they are entirely within their purpose to require that you justify the discharge after the fact.
You can also kiss any anonymity away when dealing with private corporations as the National ID card will enable any and all transactions through banks, individuals and more to be closely monitored.
Except for those that deal with cash, you mean. If a merchant refuses to take cash for any transaction up to and including buying a house, you can pretty much just get up and walk away. That's what "legal tender" means.
What happened to common sense and the political middle road?
It woke up from the GNU/AOL privacy fanatacism, and realized that the rest of us have a solid need to identify the wackos when they start making waves.
"Life" contains all that is necessary for life -- food, clean water, and clean air.
"Liberty" contains all that is necessary for one to have liberty -- a choice of dwelling and the possibility to find permanent shelter by reasonable means.
And every conceivable right is protected by the United States Constitution -- see Amendment IX, IIRC.
What if TSR had patented "hit points?" Or, "the idea that one hit doesn't kill the player"?
They would have licensed it, managed it badly, and the patent would have been hocked to a bank to keep them afloat a bit longer into the 90s. At worst, WotC might not have bought them.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is that the US isn't the 'most free' nation on Earth - not by a long shot.
Name one, and explain how it's more free (not "a better place to live" or "more friendly to the environment").
Problem is, US citizens don't live in a democracy, so can't affect the foreign policy of their ruling class. Think I'm wrong? Think again. They just voted out the Republicans in an absolute landslide which is largely recognised as being a rejection of Republican foreign policy, but you watch just how much that policy changes, both now AND when they get rid of Emperor Dubya.
Psst. We Americans have this thing called "Federalism", which intentionally limits the ability of any one election to dramatically shift the nation's course. 2006 was a mid-term election, meaning that only 4/12 of the democratically-elected national government were subject to voter approval -- after a twelve-year tilt towards our President's party. Federalism was designed to slow dramatic changes, like a sudden shift in policy when twelve years of a party's dominance end.
2008 is when the American Democratic System will be more flexible, when a full 10/12 of the national government will be up for voter approval, and 6/12 of our government is going to leave office by law. (There's still 1/3 of the national government that is going to be influenced by the current administration after 2008, as the judiciary is not democratically elected, but rather appointed to mostly lifetime terms by the other two branches.)
If you don't think that common Americans can change public policy -- well, it's black history month, and you should spend some time reading up on things like the Civil Rights movement, the beginning and end of Prohibition, or just the 1994 "Republican Revolution" that started our nation on its current path.
(We COULD have gone with a directly-elected parliamentary system, but we much rather like having something to moderate our public policy when we have such strong and ardent divisions as to how our country should go. Y'know, 'cause we're democratic.)
How is said company supposed to determine that?
Do what Microsoft does: release a "not for business" version for cheap, and slap people with the full price when they actually make a profit.
Also are you implying that since Joe Sixpack can't afford Photoshop, he's missing out on his opportunity to make money from image editing? What about GIMP and other OSS solutions?
GIMP, Scribus, and OpenOffice are absolute terrible if you don't want to use them exactly like the developers want you to. If you can get them to work properly, you're not learning the trade--you've either already mastered the same school of the trade the developers follow, or you're learning OSS (which is its own, low-paying, skill).
And, yes, Adobe, Quark, and Microsoft do limit you to the subset of their UI and schools that they program for: but they spend a significantly greater amount of time actually finding out what their users want.
(And since OSS has a rather large bias against forking, we don't really see the benefit of competition that the three I listed have to compete with for their flagship apps.)
The war on drugs is about ensuring that citizens are addicted to indigenous drugs, and that the profits are centrally controlled.
Only if you count the war on cannabis as "the war on drugs." If you exclude that miscatagorized weed, you get almost exactly the purposes they say the War on Drugs is for.
If it weren't for use if illegal drugs, Richard Pryor would still be able to perform and Kurt Cobain would likely still be alive.
No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers.
Psst. You don't have to. The "DRM" in Vista is hardly more than what's in XP or OSX; it's just that the on-disk versions of MS-apps support it, rather than the on-update versions for XP.
Because the toner is $120+
No, a toner/drum assembly is $120. Toner is significantly less than that if you buy from a company that separates the two.
Spending $220 today can get you a networked, duplexing laser printer that will last your 50-sheet-a-year habit an amazing length of time. (20 years if nothing corrodes.)
If the cell provides saw business benefit in opening their network, they would do so.
And if Ford saw business benefit to requiring Ford Gasoline in their engines, they would want to do so as well. Or if they wanted to create the Ford Expressway, allowing only Fords to be driven upon it.
Skype is arguing that we'll have a better wireless system if we have an wholly integrated wireless system -- that the spectrum, as a common good, should be shared in an open manner.
This isn't exactly rocket science or "New Deal" style expansion of government power. It's a request for a federal agency to take a look at the market, and do what it is legislatively required to do.
(And you don't get a vote on this. The entire reason for the FCC is to insulate the descision about the airwaves from politics.)
[water vapor] is [the gas most responsible for] the green house effect.
Yes, and your point is?
the problem with global warming is not the greenhouse effect per se, but rather its increase. Unless you have a 65,000 year trendline for water vapor, it's essentially irrelevant to the debate.
I think OPs piont was that we're not getting as much out of the increases in speed as we could if we maintained the same stringent efficiency standards as we had in those long lost days when it was necessary for the computation to finish in any practical time frame at all.
Quick. Name me five useful things that your desktop PC could do right now instead of running a GUI.
If those five (any five you pick!) don't outweigh the benefit of letting everyone with the brains to work a calculator have a computer, well, I think you just made my case.
Now, I am serious, what is wrong with the harddrives I choose that kills them so quickly?
First guess? Your system has a dirty power supply. (Unless you have a high-quality PSU and have a line-noise-filtering UPS, this is entirely possible.)
This article has told me one thing: it's time to get a RAID setup. I've been looking at RAID 5, but two things still trouble me, the price and the performance hit. Does anyone have any information on just how much a performance hit I might experience if I have to access the HD a lot?
RAID 5 is not a great deal more than RAID 0 with a fancy backup. You need to get yourself a good RAID controller (in hardware), and go from there. You should be able to do classic RAID 1 (two drives only) without any perceptible performance hit with a good hardware controller.
If you're still using IDE, switching to SATA would almost certainly eat up any performance hit you would otherwise experience.
And if that doesn't work, do what Windows Vista does: get yourself a large flash drive, and use that for short-term storage.
Now, there are some who might claim that this was not a threat of violence
Yes, there are. But none of those people are judges or lawyers.
What you did is protected by the US Constitution. Go find yourself a lawyer, NOW. You need to know your rights and duties in relation to your state's laws.
what cops in the US perceive as justifiable cause for randomly stopping and questioning citizens.
They don't need any cause at all to stop and ask a question. They're human beings, and can ask whatever the heck they want to. In some parts of the country, you can even learn a police officer's name and (gasp!) develop a friendly relationship with them that has nothing whatsoever to do with them thinking you broke the law.
If the police serve me badly, what can I do?
Go to the appropriate elected official, complain, and if they don't do something, go campaign full-bore for their next opponent.
We live in a democracy, and there isn't one single person (including me) who works for the government who can't be held to account by an election.
(In NY, the local police are headed by either a directly elected sheriff, a directly-elected police chief, or a appointed-by-the-mayor police chief.)
Oh, and if by "server you badly" you mean that they actually harassed you, caused you unreasonable discomfort, or actually abused their authority, well, that's why we have lawyers.
This just proves that religion is perverted and anti-progressive.
And you, sir, just provided all the proof anyone will ever need to stand up and argue for their religion.
The only religion that's by-nature perverted and anti-progressive is capital-A Atheism. Every other religion admits a discordance with what science can prove and what they believe. Only Atheism stands up and says "I know that you are wrong, and it's a scientific fact."
(I mean no disrespect to lowercase-a atheists, for whom the term "agnostic" was coined.)
Wii is trying to be the iPod of consoles but how can you really when the market when your competitors iPods are just/if not more capable and the only difference is the peripherals?
The Wiimote is not a peripheral. The "Wii remote" is the central part of the system. It's not an iPod vs. an iPod. It's an iPod vs. a CD-player.
(And, really, the iPod of iPods, namely the iPod, sells so well partially BECAUSE of all of its peripherals.)
However, all glider did was provide a way for people to cheat
And that's a tort against the game company. ("tort" is "something that you can be sued over." Not necessarily a crime, but still something that's a bad idea.)
It's almost the exact same tort as, oh, a P2P company that encourages sharing of copyrighted music. And it's the same legal principle that applies to, oh, hiring someone else to kill your mother.
There is still NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the temperature changes we're seeing nowadays aren't [just] part of some long term cyclical effect that we haven't yet been able to detect,
Wrong. We have the (rapidly shrinking) antarctic ice, whose layers of melt-and-freeze give us a record stretching back some 65,000 years. In all that time -- eight times longer than since the dawn of civilization -- we can observe correlating CO2 and temperature levels. In all of those cycles, not ONCE has the CO2 gotten to the point where it is now.
If it's a "long-term" effect, it's long-term in a species-ending geological sense. It may be "just natural", but if so it'll still end us if we don't do something to offset and moderate it.
And, even if it's just a natural cycle, embracing the scientific status quo is a means for American Profit. Or do you really think that somehow all of the American genius vanished after WWII? A new paradigm that rewards innovation will mean American profits. Maybe different Americans, maybe the same Americans -- but unless you own a large GM portfolio, you really don't care.
There's a reason why certain species of mice are used for these sorts of laboratory experiments: they're nearly identical to humans.
there are exactly two reasons why we perform tests on certain mice. You're focused on reason #2 -- namely, "a high past correlation of harm in these creatures to harm in Humans." #1 is "the short lifespan and low genetic variety make for a highly economical test pool."
Mice are significantly different than humans: for example, a 5 ft/lbs blow to the chest isn't much to a human, but it's death to a mouse.
I'm all for electric cars, but we'll need a lot more than a good battery to make it practical.
The only piece missing from either all-electric or "real hybrid" is a good* battery. Every Other Problem is a question of just putting existing technology into practice.
(By "good", I mean a battery that will let the vehicle run for at least 20 miles between charges, without adding unreasonably to the battery weight.)
Sorry to be complaining without a solution.
Unionize.
There are only two ways you can change a corporate culture. One is to be a company officer, and impose the change. The other is to get together with everyone else on the bottom and work together to change it. You don't need to over-specialize or be protective, you just need to stand alongside everyone else in your niche and tell the boss when enough is enough.
Doctors have entire schools and medical boards. Lawyers have the bar. Why geeks can't have their own "Technologist's Guild" or something is just hubris.
Not in Vista. In Vista, you can just hit windows key and type a command name; the start menu auto-searches for what you want. It's a very nice addition that should be promptly stolen by Linux and Apple.
Slashdotters are smart enough to "know the difference"; in that if you _REALLY_ wanted to comment on the book, having bought it, and encouraging others to buy it, then you'd put a non-referral link.
/. uses B&N instead of Amazon, even though they're the same site and system. Amazon.com landed in the "bad company" list along with Microsoft, Dell, and most others because of their One-Click patent. The rational response is to post a link to someplace OTHER than Amazon, or post a charity referral link... this "no referral" crap is just stupid.)
No, he'd just give the name or ISBN. A "non-referal link" is just a free gift to Amazon: the price is EXACTLY the same, and if you decide to use a non-referral link instead of a referral link... well, you're giving extra money to Amazon that you didn't have to.
It's like not tipping your waitress and instead handing the 20% to the manager. It's asinine.
(The "real" reason why there's a flood of "no referral" link is the same reason
Personally, I see three classes of Office users and there seems to be a reasonable argument that there should be three seperate classes of Word/Office for these people
What argument?
The obvious counter-argument is "different programs make it hard to move from one class to another."
You might have a good argument for having Office display more than two modes, but that's about it.
How much longer will it be until we have to present a National ID card to take out a loan, open a bank account, cross state lines, and more?
Loan / banking: Today. Go ahead, try and open any kind of fiscal account without government-issued identification.
Cross state lines: Never. Maybe to cross NATIONAL borders, but barring national revolt you won't see anyone suggest that the free-reign United States be clamped down on a state-line basis. (Now, there might be an "ID to enter state park or book a room", but that's something seperate.)
So, what about those who can afford their own planes? Will they be allowed more anonymity than those with fewer resources?
Those who can afford their own planes know they have to file detailed flight plans each time they go, and their ordinary transactions are so large they have to report a significant share of them due to money laundering laws.
What about purchasing items like automobiles?
You can't drive a car without registering that specific car as your property. Heck, in your automobile you're broadcasting a simple code to identify your household to anyone withing SIGHT.
How about healthcare? Those that can afford to pay for services completely will not have to worry about health care insurance and therefore will not be tracked.
Doctors should track their case incidents in similar fashions regardless of source of payment; doing so aids in diagnosis of future cases and identification of epidemics.
National ID card will essentially enable all sorts of purchase related tracking to take place. You can now welcome federally mandated and controlled tracking and access to guns.
Yes. If you fire a gun, you should be able to stand up before a jury of your peers and say why. If you cannot justify the discharge, you shouldn't even have the gun drawn.
The government has little business telling you that you cannot have a gun and cannot fire it without prior approval, but they are entirely within their purpose to require that you justify the discharge after the fact.
You can also kiss any anonymity away when dealing with private corporations as the National ID card will enable any and all transactions through banks, individuals and more to be closely monitored.
Except for those that deal with cash, you mean. If a merchant refuses to take cash for any transaction up to and including buying a house, you can pretty much just get up and walk away. That's what "legal tender" means.
What happened to common sense and the political middle road?
It woke up from the GNU/AOL privacy fanatacism, and realized that the rest of us have a solid need to identify the wackos when they start making waves.
"Life" contains all that is necessary for life -- food, clean water, and clean air.
"Liberty" contains all that is necessary for one to have liberty -- a choice of dwelling and the possibility to find permanent shelter by reasonable means.
And every conceivable right is protected by the United States Constitution -- see Amendment IX, IIRC.
What if TSR had patented "hit points?" Or, "the idea that one hit doesn't kill the player"?
They would have licensed it, managed it badly, and the patent would have been hocked to a bank to keep them afloat a bit longer into the 90s. At worst, WotC might not have bought them.