Lol. I'd just synthesize a camera from available parts...and go the microfiche route (store the film inside the suit I'm wearing...do it right, it's flexible, and who is going to rip open the shoulder pads / inner lining of a $2000 suit? If they're wrong, that's $2K from the security budget.) Meh...actually, if I used cellphone filters / trickery, I could collapse the data somewhat holographically...maybe (who is going to question the use of a cellphone wrapper on your person if you bring in / acquire some candy with the right characteristics? Red, blue, yellow, green, etc. on a piece of film...extraction via Photoshop later on.).
But then, who wants to wander into the lion's den to get what you want, when you can just chill outside? I imagine that the security reports they are using to build their zero-day database are coming to them via emails, or phone calls, or even from the vendors themselves. Why take on the castle (a secure installation), when the tavern is more surmountable (the vendors themselves)?
But then, this entire thing is a distraction. Let's be honest...going this route is filled with fail.
Bob, we know. Government officials readily monitor the web...and why wouldn't they? This is their job that is at stake. Their hope is not to fool anyone, in so far as I can tell, but to reach for that tired, old friend of politicians who have been caught red-handed: doubt. To instill doubt, if only for a moment, so that the entire game may be flipped back in their favor. It does not matter that they are eventually proven wrong, only that the pause came at the right moment for them to scurry out from underneath the knife's edge. They see the truth as a tool, a barb with which to provoke the 'enemy' to perform one way or the other; they do not prize it as something worthy of understanding beyond a cursory level.
The general public stopped caring a long time ago; but this new generation does seem to care. Me thinks the social contract of the US will be renegotiated on unhappy terms in the near future; violence and lies repaid in full.
Perhaps the polltakers are simply telling their masters what they want to hear? I know I would. Their masters have long since decided that the status quo is their god; all actions are taken to prevent action. As such, their masters will not believe that they have, perhaps, made a mistake; not even when they are being chased out of their palaces and buried near unpaved roads.
But even the blind can see that things are breaking everywhere, and all at once.
Ah, but the spying that has been going within the US has been contrary to its written law...its supreme written law. No one is arguing about spies (well, some people are, some people aren't; would be nice to get away from the institution, but then, we seem to be perpetually engaged in trying to outspy the other side), but that the spying that has been going on has violated, once again, the US Constitution. As such, this results in a supreme violation...which obviously bothers a lot of people; that the US government does not acknowledge this violation is escalating the situation from a 'don't do it again' to a 'well fuck, we've got a rotten government that needs to be replaced.' Perhaps the US is unaware that its own actions are providing automatic escalation.
And what, pray tell, do the progressives want to mold their America as? Have we not increasingly embraced progressive policies, as well as conservative ones, to our detriment?
Not quite. They formed their own nation, albeit from the vestiges of an older one, had diplomats, a government, a military, and so on. That typically does make a nation.
Now, whether that nation was recognized by its old host government...who cares? Is Taiwan a separate nation from China? China doesn't think so...and Taiwan tries to avoid angering China with its mannerisms...but they are, administratively, rather separate.
So, let's shut it down. All people for the war on terror will be cut off from the power they so love. And like an uprooted weed, it will wither and die.
Well, we revere all our military leaders...the more blood-thirsty, the higher the reverence. Perhaps it's not the type of reverence one wishes to be known for, but it is a form of reverence.
The ultimate question will be, was allowing the federal government to become stronger, under his watch, a mistake? Was it always an inevitability that the federal government would begin using terror drones at home, and include the heavy use of propaganda as a way of life, or was this, purely, due to Lincoln's influence? The emancipation of the slaves, a good thing, kind of gets erased from Lincoln's legacy if the trade off was the US making prisoners out of its citizens at a later date; because prisoners are slaves, subject to the whims of a hostile government and society to decide ultimately when they will be 'freed' and to what degree that they will be 'free.' The push to establish tighter boundaries when trade itself is failing, and thus, our economy, seems completely contrary to the wellness of the citizenry...and does, with the militarization of the police, seem to incline that we are not so much working to keep people out...but to wall ourselves in...which will, much like the Middle Kingdom's old policies, prove to be detrimental to our nation.
Personally, I think there will be bloodshed in the US soon. We've acted with pride with regards to our allies, and have over-stepped the bounds of good-taste. Our policies seem directed at trying to condense power into fewer and fewer hands, and contrary to statistics, it has not helped in any fashion, the people or the economy. We need not continue, but apparently there is an almost...self-loathing from Americans that demands we continue down the wrong course, until someone does the worst to us, to make it stop.
"The evidence suggests we have all descended from a single, unique event."
We are, I don't know, on a single planet, that is totally filled with life. We cannot trace, exactly, where life began on this planet; current thinking is the oceans, but which one spawned the first unicellular organism? And so on.
Nor does the absence of life, as we understand it, on nearby planets rule out, in any great way, the absence of life beyond our solar system. All we have are the facts, or what we believe are facts: we exist on this planet, and it appears to be filled with life; other planets / moons in our solar system, in so far, as we have studied to date, to not appear to have life, at least from the very limited data and understandings that we currently 'know'; there is so little data, that attempts at extrapolation from it are more likely to result in harm than good.
Or Earth may simply be a refueling point between points of interest. I imagine that aliens of some advanced races will have discovered an asymmetric process for creating anti-matter, or something like that; at which point, places like this solar system might just be the equivalent of a gas station. Whether they decide to fuel up from a gas giant, such as Neptune, or from a planet like Earth, may not be much of a decision, especially if they aren't looking for life, have no experience with lifeforms of this design, or have detected lifeforms and simply wish to avoid contact.
Or Earth may be a target of some consequence. Think about it: what if humanity does get off this rock, and pisses off the wrong people? They may decide, rather than fighting a war (with weapons, and so on, that humans excel at), to visit the Earth's immediate past, and introduce a virus that will render them incapable of posing a problem in the future; or they may just drop a black hole on the planet itself. Or mankind may find itself to be the enemy: some group of exo-haters decide to travel back in time to 'make sure those aliens never have a chance to set foot on this planet'; they sprinkle the right information, to the right groups, to ensure that first contact results in a very bad impression; possibly taking up positions in the military / other places where they can use their influence, quietly, to achieve their ends. Perhaps those aliens are being scapegoated for bad policy decisions, or perhaps they are simply a victim of 'they took our jobs!' Or even some, I don't know, environmentalists, who have seen the future, and think it should be greener.
Heck, there may even be the equivalent of alien socialites...people who just like stopping by, having a little fun, then moving on.
There are many, many reasons that Earth may or may not be on someone's roadmap, by intent or by accident. But I think we all know that if one of them shows up here, chances are the military will see them as a threat, and either try to pump them for information ("Tell us how to build a warp drive!"), or even for propaganda (if politicians get involved). Do you disagree? Does anyone disagree? Does anyone, at all, think that for a not small number of nations, first contact might be a little 'rough' for humanity? And there in lies the sadness -> denied contact for lack of maturation, because of some fear that others have come to enslave, or do harm, or what have you; denied contact, because humanity's own fear prevents it from moving forward.
Now, I could be wrong. Perhaps we will make a mistake, invite the wrong people down. But I'd rather make that mistake, that be ruled eternally by fear.
Me thinks you are boxing possible alien lifeforms in too small a probability. For all you know, those could be entire solar systems being converted to raw energy, to fuel interstellar drives, of a giant galactic war machine.
While the universe is, IMHO, probably filled with many fascinating and enlightened lifeforms...there are also just as many unenlightened and terrifying lifeforms out there. There may be energy lifeforms, plasma lifeforms, etc. of all shapes and sizes whom you can learn from, live with, and so on; and there are, perhaps, others for whom slavery, conquest, insanity, and raw greed are nonnegotiable. The question you need to really roll around in your head is: has mankind been visited by any of these enlightened types, and if so, how did that reception go? Were they mocked, slain, beaten, enslaved? If so, when a real terror shows up, it is doubtful that those peoples will send any kind of aid to mankind. If you have encountered one alien race, it would be foolish to believe that there were not many more.
Then again, mankind might get lucky. Someone might see the potential of removing this race from destruction's path, despite previous actions. But if the NSA and friends...WWII and human experimentation....are anything to go by, perhaps destruction might not be bad thing for the human race, right? Does the Universe need another race of people who see the conquest of the heavens as a form of 'Manifest Destiny'? Who think being peaceful is being weak? Surely the hundreds of millions of other races will certainly be okay with mankind trying to create new conflicts./s And of course, military authoritarianism...in light of races possibly capable of bending space and time itself, would really go over well; such obtuse proclamations, deceit, and other actions will, no doubt, keep mankind locked in the same unhappy spiral that, if my eyes are receiving valid data, threatens to destroy mankind time and time again.
I wonder, if any of those lifeforms visit here, what they will find. If the genomic data I've come across is correct, one more major war, and humanity will not have to worry about aliens; their descendents will be so hopelessly dependent on various machines and surgeries for life support, due to genetic illnesses, that in time, they may become extinct. A pity, since there are, I would think, many lifeforms in the galaxy for whom the simple analysis of the human genome and repair of its flaws (the result of inbreeding) might be as easy to fix as placing a band-aid on a small child's scraped knee. But given the paranoia of government as of late, and general economic malaise...well, as I said, who knows what anyone will find when they get here.
Yes, but to certain people, it's not that they committed a crime that's the problem, but that it has been reported. The US, and various government agencies, enjoy charging others with crimes...they do not enjoy being charged with crimes themselves...and they react like anyone who has enjoyed privileged immunity to the negatives of their actions for a long period of time, as in, they do not know how to react to being on the other end of the sword, and thus, act like the criminals they've sought to prosecute. It's especially demeaning and humbling to them, as it overturns their own self-image as crusaders of justice ("Wait, we're the villains? That can't be! We're the good guys! You must be the villain!"), as well as forces them to realize that their character assassinations are just that, character assassinations (it's so much easier if the Judge / Jury has never been on the other end of the sword, ever, and thus do not know the effects of even a threat of its use; this makes it easier for the DA to paint an image of a person having criminal mannerisms and behaviors; now they are finding that they've been misled, for much of their lives, about what is and is not evil...and admittedly, that frightens them; what Judge / Jury wishes to admit that they fell for the DA's theatrics, time and time again? Or that innocents were sold into slavery, executed, or otherwise imprisoned on their watch, and with their gracious consent?).
Snowden is not hated because he 'betrayed' the US in any sense of the word, but because he showed people that the US has a dark underbelly. The people copping the 'betrayal / traitor' talk are the people who are afraid...they don't want to be seen not taughting the official story line; keep your head down, repeat the lies that you are told, believe them if you have to, and you will get through this...this is their thinking. To that end, there are, perhaps, more than a handful of politicians who are scared sh*tless that their watercooler talk on their cellphones / secure lines is sitting in a special folder on the NSA Director's personal computer; that fear alone is enough to guarantee their loyalty. And that's not accounting for the digital trickery that a thousand or so programmers, under control of the NSA, can achieve if evidence ever needs to be manufactured.
So this is the problem the NSA is faced with: they are breaking the highest laws of the land to achieve their ends. Theft, murder, rape, lies...all of these are considered necessary in the course of their actions. And no one is willing to tell them "Give it a miss."
Bob, former NSA types have come out and said that using 'the right channels' doesn't work.
Snowden's choices for asylum are obvious -> they are places where a SEAL team cannot be inserted without a major war erupting. As we've seen previously, the US will override the individual sovereignty of any lesser nation, to extract what it wants.
So feed the cattle some garlic, or whatever derivative agrees with a ruminant's digestive system. The allistatin in the cloves is an antibiotic, and a broad spectrum one at that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allistatin
Now, whether anyone wants to be around cattle after being force fed garlic is another matter...the smell will probably be quite frightful.
Waking up, and finding myself stereo-typed into one job, one branch, or another. I like the idea of mastering each branch fully, but find that there's never enough time to do everything I'd like to do, or learn everything I'd like to learn. And of course, your job becomes your life...I don't know why, but I had ideas, when younger, of changing that equation, of making jobs more efficient, so more time could be spent elsewhere (leisure, edification, etc.)...and yet, I seem to be spending all my time repairing damaged items or chasing dead-ends, rather than pursuing these agendas. It's like my equation has been turned on its head...and I don't know by whom, or why. Computers are supposed to be freeing man from his burdens, and in doing so, helping advance themselves; instead, they seem to be acting as balls and chains...or worse, in the case of the NSA, where they are being used to spy on people.
Even the work I am doing on my autodidactic program (human learning) or evolutionary program (machine learning) feels like I am chiseling away at a granite mountain with a wooden spoon. Why is this kind of programming so difficult, yet the algorithms to spy on one another seem to flow from the heavens themselves?
Or not. To be honest, the strategies to remove a problematic government are numerous...in much the same way as the strategies to remove a human are numerous.
There's the 'nice' approach, which is petitioning...and may or may not work. Then there's the 'you done fucked up' approach, which involves going in and manually removing the problem. Ultimately, the US government will decide whether or not we've crossed the line into the second approach...after all, everyone is watching to see what they do now that this NSA stuff (as well as others) is out in broad daylight. If it has gone overboard, at the moment it thinks it has won...well, that's usually when everything becomes unwoven.
The melting pot thing has been, IMHO, always been more an observation of fact, rather than an ideal. That is to say, the melting of several different kinds of metals together does, at times, give birth, to a stronger alloy. You don't want to use a weapon of pure iron up against someone using a blade of forged steel...your blade will crack in two when the blades meet. Unfortunately, the process is, as we've seen, closer to serendipity when a new alloy is discovered, especially since the science is still maturing; in other words, the US may be creating a lot of useful alloys, so to speak, but at times the furnace is running too hot for the right crystalline structure to appear for one alloy, or too cold for another. And that's not even touching on the madness of Uranium-type alloys (people) who are allotropic, and damn near impossible to work with / alloy with except under certain time-based circumstances.
And simple teaching of the US being a melting pot is not the same as it in action. In much the same sense as identifying programmers who are struggling (an earlier article) is not the same as finding a way to help them succeed. Identifying the alloys that are coming out of a furnace is one thing...improving the alloys that flow out of it is something else.
Indeed. "Reduce 50%" doesn't give much information, more of a general guideline, unless someone likes magic; and it also speaks of someone who is issuing orders with zero knowledge of the damage they will cause. A smarter approach would have been "Could you review our current contracts with vendors, and see if we couldn't renegotiate some of them, or find new vendors for the same items, albeit at a lower cost? No sense paying $75 / CAL, when we can get them for $50 / CAL from someone else. Should be we paying $500 / license for VS 2012 Professional, when we can get VS 2012 Premium for $250 / license? And who decided that we were going to pay the OEMs to install an extra 4GB of RAM in each of the new workstations for $200 per machine?"
Indeed, with just a few waves of the magic open source wand, money is saved, servers / software is transitioned, and nothing of importance is lost.
Allow me: "Hey...Bob, we've switched everyone over to that new email server you guys put together, but the guys in Sales / Marketing are complaining that Outlook won't sync properly with it." "Well Dave, that's because it doesn't support MS's proprietary extensions, etc. But they can use Thunderbird, which duplicates much of that functionality." "So, it doesn't work with Outlook, huh? Is this going to be a problem with the [insert software] we use to keep our field Sales / Marketing people and their phones / whatever synched? It is, isn't it?" "Well, we can replace those apps as well..."
Open source is fine, but it's not magic...and people saying "Hey, just switch" are forgetting that there is, at the very least, a one time cost associated with that switch. I say at the very least, because now you're responsible for many of your own softwares...which means changing things around a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
Lol. I'd just synthesize a camera from available parts...and go the microfiche route (store the film inside the suit I'm wearing...do it right, it's flexible, and who is going to rip open the shoulder pads / inner lining of a $2000 suit? If they're wrong, that's $2K from the security budget.) Meh...actually, if I used cellphone filters / trickery, I could collapse the data somewhat holographically...maybe (who is going to question the use of a cellphone wrapper on your person if you bring in / acquire some candy with the right characteristics? Red, blue, yellow, green, etc. on a piece of film...extraction via Photoshop later on.).
But then, who wants to wander into the lion's den to get what you want, when you can just chill outside? I imagine that the security reports they are using to build their zero-day database are coming to them via emails, or phone calls, or even from the vendors themselves. Why take on the castle (a secure installation), when the tavern is more surmountable (the vendors themselves)?
But then, this entire thing is a distraction. Let's be honest...going this route is filled with fail.
Oh, like those are the only methods for getting things out. It exists, therefore a leak of it will exist somewhere.
Bob, we know. Government officials readily monitor the web...and why wouldn't they? This is their job that is at stake. Their hope is not to fool anyone, in so far as I can tell, but to reach for that tired, old friend of politicians who have been caught red-handed: doubt. To instill doubt, if only for a moment, so that the entire game may be flipped back in their favor. It does not matter that they are eventually proven wrong, only that the pause came at the right moment for them to scurry out from underneath the knife's edge. They see the truth as a tool, a barb with which to provoke the 'enemy' to perform one way or the other; they do not prize it as something worthy of understanding beyond a cursory level.
The general public stopped caring a long time ago; but this new generation does seem to care. Me thinks the social contract of the US will be renegotiated on unhappy terms in the near future; violence and lies repaid in full.
Perhaps the polltakers are simply telling their masters what they want to hear? I know I would. Their masters have long since decided that the status quo is their god; all actions are taken to prevent action. As such, their masters will not believe that they have, perhaps, made a mistake; not even when they are being chased out of their palaces and buried near unpaved roads.
But even the blind can see that things are breaking everywhere, and all at once.
Ah, but the spying that has been going within the US has been contrary to its written law...its supreme written law. No one is arguing about spies (well, some people are, some people aren't; would be nice to get away from the institution, but then, we seem to be perpetually engaged in trying to outspy the other side), but that the spying that has been going on has violated, once again, the US Constitution. As such, this results in a supreme violation...which obviously bothers a lot of people; that the US government does not acknowledge this violation is escalating the situation from a 'don't do it again' to a 'well fuck, we've got a rotten government that needs to be replaced.' Perhaps the US is unaware that its own actions are providing automatic escalation.
And what, pray tell, do the progressives want to mold their America as? Have we not increasingly embraced progressive policies, as well as conservative ones, to our detriment?
Not quite. They formed their own nation, albeit from the vestiges of an older one, had diplomats, a government, a military, and so on. That typically does make a nation.
Now, whether that nation was recognized by its old host government...who cares? Is Taiwan a separate nation from China? China doesn't think so...and Taiwan tries to avoid angering China with its mannerisms...but they are, administratively, rather separate.
So, let's shut it down. All people for the war on terror will be cut off from the power they so love. And like an uprooted weed, it will wither and die.
Well, we revere all our military leaders...the more blood-thirsty, the higher the reverence. Perhaps it's not the type of reverence one wishes to be known for, but it is a form of reverence.
The ultimate question will be, was allowing the federal government to become stronger, under his watch, a mistake? Was it always an inevitability that the federal government would begin using terror drones at home, and include the heavy use of propaganda as a way of life, or was this, purely, due to Lincoln's influence? The emancipation of the slaves, a good thing, kind of gets erased from Lincoln's legacy if the trade off was the US making prisoners out of its citizens at a later date; because prisoners are slaves, subject to the whims of a hostile government and society to decide ultimately when they will be 'freed' and to what degree that they will be 'free.' The push to establish tighter boundaries when trade itself is failing, and thus, our economy, seems completely contrary to the wellness of the citizenry...and does, with the militarization of the police, seem to incline that we are not so much working to keep people out...but to wall ourselves in...which will, much like the Middle Kingdom's old policies, prove to be detrimental to our nation.
Personally, I think there will be bloodshed in the US soon. We've acted with pride with regards to our allies, and have over-stepped the bounds of good-taste. Our policies seem directed at trying to condense power into fewer and fewer hands, and contrary to statistics, it has not helped in any fashion, the people or the economy. We need not continue, but apparently there is an almost...self-loathing from Americans that demands we continue down the wrong course, until someone does the worst to us, to make it stop.
And one day, for bio-warfare. Much like we do with some dolphins...
"The evidence suggests we have all descended from a single, unique event."
We are, I don't know, on a single planet, that is totally filled with life. We cannot trace, exactly, where life began on this planet; current thinking is the oceans, but which one spawned the first unicellular organism? And so on.
Nor does the absence of life, as we understand it, on nearby planets rule out, in any great way, the absence of life beyond our solar system. All we have are the facts, or what we believe are facts: we exist on this planet, and it appears to be filled with life; other planets / moons in our solar system, in so far, as we have studied to date, to not appear to have life, at least from the very limited data and understandings that we currently 'know'; there is so little data, that attempts at extrapolation from it are more likely to result in harm than good.
Or Earth may simply be a refueling point between points of interest. I imagine that aliens of some advanced races will have discovered an asymmetric process for creating anti-matter, or something like that; at which point, places like this solar system might just be the equivalent of a gas station. Whether they decide to fuel up from a gas giant, such as Neptune, or from a planet like Earth, may not be much of a decision, especially if they aren't looking for life, have no experience with lifeforms of this design, or have detected lifeforms and simply wish to avoid contact.
Or Earth may be a target of some consequence. Think about it: what if humanity does get off this rock, and pisses off the wrong people? They may decide, rather than fighting a war (with weapons, and so on, that humans excel at), to visit the Earth's immediate past, and introduce a virus that will render them incapable of posing a problem in the future; or they may just drop a black hole on the planet itself. Or mankind may find itself to be the enemy: some group of exo-haters decide to travel back in time to 'make sure those aliens never have a chance to set foot on this planet'; they sprinkle the right information, to the right groups, to ensure that first contact results in a very bad impression; possibly taking up positions in the military / other places where they can use their influence, quietly, to achieve their ends. Perhaps those aliens are being scapegoated for bad policy decisions, or perhaps they are simply a victim of 'they took our jobs!' Or even some, I don't know, environmentalists, who have seen the future, and think it should be greener.
Heck, there may even be the equivalent of alien socialites...people who just like stopping by, having a little fun, then moving on.
There are many, many reasons that Earth may or may not be on someone's roadmap, by intent or by accident. But I think we all know that if one of them shows up here, chances are the military will see them as a threat, and either try to pump them for information ("Tell us how to build a warp drive!"), or even for propaganda (if politicians get involved). Do you disagree? Does anyone disagree? Does anyone, at all, think that for a not small number of nations, first contact might be a little 'rough' for humanity? And there in lies the sadness -> denied contact for lack of maturation, because of some fear that others have come to enslave, or do harm, or what have you; denied contact, because humanity's own fear prevents it from moving forward.
Now, I could be wrong. Perhaps we will make a mistake, invite the wrong people down. But I'd rather make that mistake, that be ruled eternally by fear.
Me thinks you are boxing possible alien lifeforms in too small a probability. For all you know, those could be entire solar systems being converted to raw energy, to fuel interstellar drives, of a giant galactic war machine.
While the universe is, IMHO, probably filled with many fascinating and enlightened lifeforms...there are also just as many unenlightened and terrifying lifeforms out there. There may be energy lifeforms, plasma lifeforms, etc. of all shapes and sizes whom you can learn from, live with, and so on; and there are, perhaps, others for whom slavery, conquest, insanity, and raw greed are nonnegotiable. The question you need to really roll around in your head is: has mankind been visited by any of these enlightened types, and if so, how did that reception go? Were they mocked, slain, beaten, enslaved? If so, when a real terror shows up, it is doubtful that those peoples will send any kind of aid to mankind. If you have encountered one alien race, it would be foolish to believe that there were not many more.
Then again, mankind might get lucky. Someone might see the potential of removing this race from destruction's path, despite previous actions. But if the NSA and friends...WWII and human experimentation....are anything to go by, perhaps destruction might not be bad thing for the human race, right? Does the Universe need another race of people who see the conquest of the heavens as a form of 'Manifest Destiny'? Who think being peaceful is being weak? Surely the hundreds of millions of other races will certainly be okay with mankind trying to create new conflicts./s And of course, military authoritarianism...in light of races possibly capable of bending space and time itself, would really go over well; such obtuse proclamations, deceit, and other actions will, no doubt, keep mankind locked in the same unhappy spiral that, if my eyes are receiving valid data, threatens to destroy mankind time and time again.
I wonder, if any of those lifeforms visit here, what they will find. If the genomic data I've come across is correct, one more major war, and humanity will not have to worry about aliens; their descendents will be so hopelessly dependent on various machines and surgeries for life support, due to genetic illnesses, that in time, they may become extinct. A pity, since there are, I would think, many lifeforms in the galaxy for whom the simple analysis of the human genome and repair of its flaws (the result of inbreeding) might be as easy to fix as placing a band-aid on a small child's scraped knee. But given the paranoia of government as of late, and general economic malaise...well, as I said, who knows what anyone will find when they get here.
Yes, but to certain people, it's not that they committed a crime that's the problem, but that it has been reported. The US, and various government agencies, enjoy charging others with crimes...they do not enjoy being charged with crimes themselves...and they react like anyone who has enjoyed privileged immunity to the negatives of their actions for a long period of time, as in, they do not know how to react to being on the other end of the sword, and thus, act like the criminals they've sought to prosecute. It's especially demeaning and humbling to them, as it overturns their own self-image as crusaders of justice ("Wait, we're the villains? That can't be! We're the good guys! You must be the villain!"), as well as forces them to realize that their character assassinations are just that, character assassinations (it's so much easier if the Judge / Jury has never been on the other end of the sword, ever, and thus do not know the effects of even a threat of its use; this makes it easier for the DA to paint an image of a person having criminal mannerisms and behaviors; now they are finding that they've been misled, for much of their lives, about what is and is not evil...and admittedly, that frightens them; what Judge / Jury wishes to admit that they fell for the DA's theatrics, time and time again? Or that innocents were sold into slavery, executed, or otherwise imprisoned on their watch, and with their gracious consent?).
Snowden is not hated because he 'betrayed' the US in any sense of the word, but because he showed people that the US has a dark underbelly. The people copping the 'betrayal / traitor' talk are the people who are afraid...they don't want to be seen not taughting the official story line; keep your head down, repeat the lies that you are told, believe them if you have to, and you will get through this...this is their thinking. To that end, there are, perhaps, more than a handful of politicians who are scared sh*tless that their watercooler talk on their cellphones / secure lines is sitting in a special folder on the NSA Director's personal computer; that fear alone is enough to guarantee their loyalty. And that's not accounting for the digital trickery that a thousand or so programmers, under control of the NSA, can achieve if evidence ever needs to be manufactured.
So this is the problem the NSA is faced with: they are breaking the highest laws of the land to achieve their ends. Theft, murder, rape, lies...all of these are considered necessary in the course of their actions. And no one is willing to tell them "Give it a miss."
Bob, former NSA types have come out and said that using 'the right channels' doesn't work.
Snowden's choices for asylum are obvious -> they are places where a SEAL team cannot be inserted without a major war erupting. As we've seen previously, the US will override the individual sovereignty of any lesser nation, to extract what it wants.
Now tell him to stop doing things which make the American people angry.
So feed the cattle some garlic, or whatever derivative agrees with a ruminant's digestive system. The allistatin in the cloves is an antibiotic, and a broad spectrum one at that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allistatin
Now, whether anyone wants to be around cattle after being force fed garlic is another matter...the smell will probably be quite frightful.
Waking up, and finding myself stereo-typed into one job, one branch, or another. I like the idea of mastering each branch fully, but find that there's never enough time to do everything I'd like to do, or learn everything I'd like to learn. And of course, your job becomes your life...I don't know why, but I had ideas, when younger, of changing that equation, of making jobs more efficient, so more time could be spent elsewhere (leisure, edification, etc.)...and yet, I seem to be spending all my time repairing damaged items or chasing dead-ends, rather than pursuing these agendas. It's like my equation has been turned on its head...and I don't know by whom, or why. Computers are supposed to be freeing man from his burdens, and in doing so, helping advance themselves; instead, they seem to be acting as balls and chains...or worse, in the case of the NSA, where they are being used to spy on people.
Even the work I am doing on my autodidactic program (human learning) or evolutionary program (machine learning) feels like I am chiseling away at a granite mountain with a wooden spoon. Why is this kind of programming so difficult, yet the algorithms to spy on one another seem to flow from the heavens themselves?
Nonsense. Let's write it in all known languages, and make all interpretations authoritative.
Or not. To be honest, the strategies to remove a problematic government are numerous...in much the same way as the strategies to remove a human are numerous.
There's the 'nice' approach, which is petitioning...and may or may not work. Then there's the 'you done fucked up' approach, which involves going in and manually removing the problem. Ultimately, the US government will decide whether or not we've crossed the line into the second approach...after all, everyone is watching to see what they do now that this NSA stuff (as well as others) is out in broad daylight. If it has gone overboard, at the moment it thinks it has won...well, that's usually when everything becomes unwoven.
Lol. Nope. Charging / discharging the battery, you will take a hit. Transmission over power lines? Taking a hit.
Now, it may, in the long run, be superior to petroleum tech, but let's not start lying.
The melting pot thing has been, IMHO, always been more an observation of fact, rather than an ideal. That is to say, the melting of several different kinds of metals together does, at times, give birth, to a stronger alloy. You don't want to use a weapon of pure iron up against someone using a blade of forged steel...your blade will crack in two when the blades meet. Unfortunately, the process is, as we've seen, closer to serendipity when a new alloy is discovered, especially since the science is still maturing; in other words, the US may be creating a lot of useful alloys, so to speak, but at times the furnace is running too hot for the right crystalline structure to appear for one alloy, or too cold for another. And that's not even touching on the madness of Uranium-type alloys (people) who are allotropic, and damn near impossible to work with / alloy with except under certain time-based circumstances.
And simple teaching of the US being a melting pot is not the same as it in action. In much the same sense as identifying programmers who are struggling (an earlier article) is not the same as finding a way to help them succeed. Identifying the alloys that are coming out of a furnace is one thing...improving the alloys that flow out of it is something else.
Indeed. "Reduce 50%" doesn't give much information, more of a general guideline, unless someone likes magic; and it also speaks of someone who is issuing orders with zero knowledge of the damage they will cause. A smarter approach would have been "Could you review our current contracts with vendors, and see if we couldn't renegotiate some of them, or find new vendors for the same items, albeit at a lower cost? No sense paying $75 / CAL, when we can get them for $50 / CAL from someone else. Should be we paying $500 / license for VS 2012 Professional, when we can get VS 2012 Premium for $250 / license? And who decided that we were going to pay the OEMs to install an extra 4GB of RAM in each of the new workstations for $200 per machine?"
Indeed, with just a few waves of the magic open source wand, money is saved, servers / software is transitioned, and nothing of importance is lost.
Allow me: "Hey...Bob, we've switched everyone over to that new email server you guys put together, but the guys in Sales / Marketing are complaining that Outlook won't sync properly with it." "Well Dave, that's because it doesn't support MS's proprietary extensions, etc. But they can use Thunderbird, which duplicates much of that functionality." "So, it doesn't work with Outlook, huh? Is this going to be a problem with the [insert software] we use to keep our field Sales / Marketing people and their phones / whatever synched? It is, isn't it?" "Well, we can replace those apps as well..."
Open source is fine, but it's not magic...and people saying "Hey, just switch" are forgetting that there is, at the very least, a one time cost associated with that switch. I say at the very least, because now you're responsible for many of your own softwares...which means changing things around a bit.
Hmm...I prefer a top of the line human and AI pilots, personally. So they can cover each other's weaknesses.