"If you think it is OK for airlines personel (or security personel) to search passengers and luggage for weapons and explosives, then you have already accepted that it is sometimes worthwhile to trade privacy for security."
You assume too much. If you don't go through airport security, then you have a travel time measured in days instead of hours to wherever you want to go. It's less trading liberty for security and more trading liberty for speed.
Just because they think they're making money doesn't actually mean they're making money. Part of the reason spammers are suing their ISPs and such is that they're not really making money ("I would have turned a profit this quarter if it weren't so hard to find an ISP...")
"Where is this obsession on "dealing" with a country come from? Why do you have to deal with a country?"
That's what sanctions are: A concerted effort to pretend the country doesn't exist. "Not dealing" with a country doesn't mean ignoring what they're doing and continuing to conduct business as usual with them, it means not having anything to do with the country in any way, shape or form. That's what the federal government is attempting to do by passing sanctions.
The problem comes about when the world starts to blame the other country's problems on the US sanctions. Cuba's biggest complaint about the US isn't that we're allowing people who make it to Miami to stay but that we're not buying their sugar. And that's before we look at all those Iraqi children the US killed with those sanctions France tried so hard to get rid of for the past decade or so...
"Imagien the result if every other country on earth should start to "deal" with counties they don't like? China would have started to deal with Taiwan"
I see somebody's not familiar with the "One China" policy...
"China would have started to deal with... Japan"
Japan still has no military to speak of (even less than the PRC). China's main complaint about Japan is that Japan isn't giving China enough money.
"Ignoring here means not going to war or placing sanctions, not to ignore it completly or quit paying attention to a country."
You seem to be confusing "completely ignoring them" with "giving them money anyway." Make up your mind on what you want and state it plainly.
"> Ignore them (Has little effect al la China)
Wored fine on Soviet Union. (in this context a little war over Vietnam/Afghanistan/some South-American contries don't count)"
Tell that to Tibet and Viet Nam. And note the US, since WWII, has never had anything even vaguely resembling "permanent normal trade relations" with the Soviet Union or any other signatory of the Warsaw Pact. Again, do you want to truly ignore them, or just pretend they're not doing anything bad?
"Cuba: Castro still rules...Do I really need to say more?"
While he's still in power, it's not because of American money. Talk to the EU about that one.
"Iraq: 600000 childrens dead under the sanctions; didn't work, Instead they strnghtened Saddams regime."
"Strengthened Sadam's regime?" Somebody's been paying too much attention to the Ministry of Information again...
"Libia: I would call it even. Sanctions have crippled their economy, but Ghadaffi still in power."
See previous reference to Cuba.
At any rate, you're coming off as extremely hypocritical with your calls to "ignore" these countries, or at least self-serving. The only kind of "ignorance" you seem to be looking for is the way you would "ignore" domestic abuse. In the international community, calling the police is out of the question. What you're suggesting is that you pretend an abusive parent doesn't beat their children instead of doing the half-way decent thing of turning your back on them.
"> The Death Star has cooling shafts which have a direct connection to the vaccum, therefore have no air whatever for cooling in them.
Why does it have to be air? You do know that NASA space suits are very well insulated to stop there astronuts from freezing right?"
You don't insulate space suits. Space, being a vacuum and all, kinda does that all by itself. You don't try to keep your astronaut from freezing, you try to keep him from roasting.
Speaking of vacuum, the poster was trying to point out that there were "cooling shafts" with nothing there to flow through the shafts.
"Why does a movie have to be scientifically accurate?"
If it's going to be set in space, it should at least pretend to be in space (ala B5) instead of, say, showing Midway footage against a black background. When I want to see space combat, I want to see space combat! Star Wars doesn't do that in any way, shape or form.
"He's close! He's too close!" So turn around and shoot him already!
The US is an active participant in the various SALT treaties and is eliminating its nuclear arsenal under the watchful eyes of the world in general and Russia (formerly USSR) in particular.
Instead of saying "we never had them," we destroy our ICBMs and have the scrap metal to proove it.
"that the host country should be forced to allow him to do so"
How would you know that the person really wants to leave their country and come to the US when expressing that desire is a felony? The only way around that is military force to coerce the other government to allowing its people to do that, which makes you seem quite the hypocrite looking at what you had to say about apartheid...
And then there's the question of "Who pays for the plane ticket?"
"Communism was quite popular among intelligentsia for a long time,"
As a philosophy, yes, but in practice it has the nasty habit of rounding up and butchering the "intelligentsia" you mention. See Viet Nam, Cambodia, USSR, PRC for examples.
"The US promotes the concept of self-determination, and then simply waltzes into other countries and forces a government and political system on them."
You mean like returning political escapees to their original country? After all, it's "their" government, what right do we have to offer them "assylum?"
"The corrupt regime or the people over whom it has dominion? They aren't the same thing."
When it comes to hiring, they may as well be.
First off, such governments don't like the idea of people contrary to their own opinions leaving the country, especially when they're going someplace where they're allowed to badmouth their government. See Cuba. If they're able to put their resume on Monster, it's because the government let them, and anybody the government allows to work for you should logically be treated with large amounts of suspicion.
If these people are allowed to leave the country to work, the government usually makes sure that there's some income coming back to them. For example, the government will make sure that the worker still has relatives in the Worker's Paradise for the worker to send (taxable) income back to. (Which would, BTW, violate US laws).
This all assumes that the person is willing/allowed to relocate outside the country. If the potential employee is unable or unwilling to come to the business, it would be illegal from the US POV for the business to go to the employee (because, again, tax dollars would be going to the government).
"I suppose you think it's perfictly alright for a club keep out black people?"
As long as they're not getting any government money, it's well within their First Amendment rights to do so. Whether or not they want to deal with the PR is another issue.
"or for a company not to hire mexicans?"
My, how interestingly vague that statement is. That could mean anything from "natural-born US citizen of Mexican descent," it could mean "illegal Mexican aliens," or just about anything in between. But why muddy up a perfectly good troll with details?
"Just because you own something dosn't mean you should be able to do whatever the hell you want on it."
As long as it's not infringing on anybody else's rights (and no, you don't have the right to join somebody else's private organization), that's exactly what it means.
"During the space fights you heard explosions and swoosh sounds of lasers. But in space there is no air to transmit sound."
At least they weren't using "sonic charges" in space! Oh, wait...
But forget the bad physics, how about the freakin' moronic bad guys? Let's look at Ep II for a moment:
We blew up the landing pad and missed our target. Let's now send two tiny worms to kill the senator instead of, say, blowing up the whole damned city block.
Why kill her myself when I can send an intermediary to screw it up for me?
How good of an assasin can you be if you have your delivery system come back to you?
At the very least, couldn't you have given it the IQ to have it not come back to you if it's being followed or held on to?
You think you blew up Obi-Wan's ship. Just in case you didn't, why not make sure he's stranded by going off to blow up that hyperdrive thingie he has to leave up in space? You know, the one that may as well have "Please blow me up!" written on it in big neon letters (WTF, do the Jedi have their spacecraft designed by committee?).
I can understand not having a decent enough sensor array to catch that one tiny ship of Obi-Wan's coming into the system. But how do you explain not noticing the incoming Jedi fleet AND the incoming clone fleet? Ever heard of "radar," people?
He has a light saber. You have ranged weaponry. So why do you feel the need to get close enough to get your head chopped off?
When all is said and done, maybe you should have made sure that Jengo Fett wasn't a complete freakin' moron before deciding to make millions of clones of him. No wonder those cloen troops were dropping like flies...
And I haven't even gone into the whole "Natalie Portman falls for psychotic stalker" bit. Must be Lucas' attempt to win back the geek crowd...
"AGH! How can I choose between my first position in line for Star Wars: Episode 3 and being part of the Wookie Army?!?!?"
Be a wookie. That way you're already wearing a mask and won't have to hide your face in shame when it comes to light that you were involved in the steaming pile Ep III is bound to be.
Dr. Evil: "Son, meet my nemesis, Austin Powers" Scott Evil: "What is he doing here? Why don't you just kill him?" Dr. Evil: "No son, I have a better plan." Scott Evil: "Why don't I go up to my room, get my gun, and shoot him here!!!"
"Dr. David Carpenter, Dean at the School of Public Health, State University of New York believes it is likely that up to 30% of all childhood cancers come from exposure to EMFs"
Solution: Use sunscreen.
Seriously, that sentence is so decidedly vague that I'm tempted to say it was intentional to scare up more research money. "Electromagnetic frequencies" is such a vague term that you don't know if he's talking about shortwave radio or gamma radiation (or anything in between). I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of the EMF that 30% are overexposed to is UV, which (surprise surprise!) causes cancer.
The trojan relies on the "added features" of certain SMTP clients to install itself. So it seems the problem isn't with SMTP itself so much as any e-mail client that does anything more than display text messages.
Turn off HTML, turn off references to external files, turn off scripting, and don't click on suspicious-looking files. Much easier than trying to redefine SMTP if you ask me...
"They are legally required to give you all of this information, if you ask."
Only if they're selling something. They don't have to if they're "non-profit" or if they're a political party trying to get your vote. They also get to use pre-recorded messages, something else disallowed to people trying to sell something.
Personally, I think that declaring some types of speech more allowable than others sounds rather unconstitutional, but apparently that's just me...
"It is illegal for them to call cell phones."
That's news to me. Where is the law in question? And does it apply to everybody, or just people trying to sell something?
"IMHO, politics in the USA is focused way too much at the federal level."
I agree, but I think this happens because media follows the money. In the past century the federal government (whether by accident or by design) has found itself in control of a great deal of money, money which usually comes directly from the citizens themselves without any intervention from state or local governments (Sixteenth Amendment).
State and local governments, on the other hand, play with less money, are often constitutionally prevented from deficit spending, and in recent decades has become more and more reliant on federal spending. State and local governments do have more influence in our lives, but usually not in ways that is immediately accessable as a dollar figure (zoning, roads, etc.)
If you want to see attention drawn away from the federal government, give the states some say in how the federal government operates (by, say, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment). If nothing else it would make states more "important" in the eyes of the media because of their effect on the actions of the federal government.
E-voting (ignoring all the inherent problems of such a scheme) will only really draw new apathetic voters.
With truly random apathetic votes, they will not have any real effect on the election results.
Implementing e-voting is not cheap.
I'm against e-voting because I don't see the point in spending money to change absolutely nothing.
Of course, I'm also against the concept because it introduces unnecesary complecations into the voting process where problems can occur (why do you need Twenty-First Century technology to do something that Nineteenth Century technology can do just as well with less room for error?), but that's another subject.
"It's not worth driving down to the voting booth,"
Unless you live in the middle of BFE, you could comfortably walk to the polling place.
"waiting in line,"
Come back later. They're generally open all day. Or there's nothing keeping you from getting an absentee ballot before-hand.
"but if this process were easy though, it could help clear things up."
Riiiight... As soon as they do this, you (or someone quite like you) will come up with "Oh, it's too difficult to find the URL, type in my ID... We need democracy through TiVo!"
"I think this would have an age-gap stopper though, since you're mostly going to see the younger people getting into the "e-voting is cool" phase"
The voting mechanism/= the decision making process. "Cool, I can vote on my computer! For what, though?" The people who are too lazy to go to a polling place to vote are definitely too lazy to make an informed decision one way or the other.
"What we really need though, is a system to be able to vote on issues that are important to us."
We have those already. They're called "referenda." You write up an issue, get a few hundred of your friends to agree with it and POOF: Instant election. If "e-voting" weren't the only part of civics that could attract your attention for more than five seconds ("Oooh... shiney!"), you might have known that.
"along with combined citizen votes (net-votes, etc) - at least we'd have more say in things."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Do you really want a government that works the same way as "American Idol?" Moreso than it already does?
(T)here are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues the next.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you think it is OK for airlines personel (or security personel) to search passengers and luggage for weapons and explosives, then you have already accepted that it is sometimes worthwhile to trade privacy for security."
You assume too much. If you don't go through airport security, then you have a travel time measured in days instead of hours to wherever you want to go. It's less trading liberty for security and more trading liberty for speed.
"Spammers do seem to make money, don't they?"
Just because they think they're making money doesn't actually mean they're making money. Part of the reason spammers are suing their ISPs and such is that they're not really making money ("I would have turned a profit this quarter if it weren't so hard to find an ISP...")
"Where is this obsession on "dealing" with a country come from? Why do you have to deal with a country?"
That's what sanctions are: A concerted effort to pretend the country doesn't exist. "Not dealing" with a country doesn't mean ignoring what they're doing and continuing to conduct business as usual with them, it means not having anything to do with the country in any way, shape or form. That's what the federal government is attempting to do by passing sanctions.
The problem comes about when the world starts to blame the other country's problems on the US sanctions. Cuba's biggest complaint about the US isn't that we're allowing people who make it to Miami to stay but that we're not buying their sugar. And that's before we look at all those Iraqi children the US killed with those sanctions France tried so hard to get rid of for the past decade or so...
"Imagien the result if every other country on earth should start to "deal" with counties they don't like? China would have started to deal with Taiwan"
I see somebody's not familiar with the "One China" policy...
"China would have started to deal with... Japan"
Japan still has no military to speak of (even less than the PRC). China's main complaint about Japan is that Japan isn't giving China enough money.
"Ignoring here means not going to war or placing sanctions, not to ignore it completly or quit paying attention to a country."
You seem to be confusing "completely ignoring them" with "giving them money anyway." Make up your mind on what you want and state it plainly.
"> Ignore them (Has little effect al la China)
Wored fine on Soviet Union. (in this context a little war over Vietnam/Afghanistan/some South-American contries don't count)"
Tell that to Tibet and Viet Nam. And note the US, since WWII, has never had anything even vaguely resembling "permanent normal trade relations" with the Soviet Union or any other signatory of the Warsaw Pact. Again, do you want to truly ignore them, or just pretend they're not doing anything bad?
"Cuba: Castro still rules...Do I really need to say more?"
While he's still in power, it's not because of American money. Talk to the EU about that one.
"Iraq: 600000 childrens dead under the sanctions; didn't work, Instead they strnghtened Saddams regime."
"Strengthened Sadam's regime?" Somebody's been paying too much attention to the Ministry of Information again...
"Libia: I would call it even. Sanctions have crippled their economy, but Ghadaffi still in power."
See previous reference to Cuba.
At any rate, you're coming off as extremely hypocritical with your calls to "ignore" these countries, or at least self-serving. The only kind of "ignorance" you seem to be looking for is the way you would "ignore" domestic abuse. In the international community, calling the police is out of the question. What you're suggesting is that you pretend an abusive parent doesn't beat their children instead of doing the half-way decent thing of turning your back on them.
"> The Death Star has cooling shafts which have a direct connection to the vaccum, therefore have no air whatever for cooling in them.
Why does it have to be air? You do know that NASA space suits are very well insulated to stop there astronuts from freezing right?"
You don't insulate space suits. Space, being a vacuum and all, kinda does that all by itself. You don't try to keep your astronaut from freezing, you try to keep him from roasting.
Speaking of vacuum, the poster was trying to point out that there were "cooling shafts" with nothing there to flow through the shafts.
"Why does a movie have to be scientifically accurate?"
If it's going to be set in space, it should at least pretend to be in space (ala B5) instead of, say, showing Midway footage against a black background. When I want to see space combat, I want to see space combat! Star Wars doesn't do that in any way, shape or form.
"He's close! He's too close!" So turn around and shoot him already!
The US is an active participant in the various SALT treaties and is eliminating its nuclear arsenal under the watchful eyes of the world in general and Russia (formerly USSR) in particular.
Instead of saying "we never had them," we destroy our ICBMs and have the scrap metal to proove it.
"that the host country should be forced to allow him to do so"
How would you know that the person really wants to leave their country and come to the US when expressing that desire is a felony? The only way around that is military force to coerce the other government to allowing its people to do that, which makes you seem quite the hypocrite looking at what you had to say about apartheid...
And then there's the question of "Who pays for the plane ticket?"
"Communism was quite popular among intelligentsia for a long time,"
As a philosophy, yes, but in practice it has the nasty habit of rounding up and butchering the "intelligentsia" you mention. See Viet Nam, Cambodia, USSR, PRC for examples.
"The US promotes the concept of self-determination, and then simply waltzes into other countries and forces a government and political system on them."
You mean like returning political escapees to their original country? After all, it's "their" government, what right do we have to offer them "assylum?"
Make up your damned mind...
When it comes to hiring, they may as well be.
"If I own a gun, it doesn't mean I can do whatever I want with it."
Yes, you are, so long as you're not putting anybody else (or their property) at risk by doing so.
"Ditto for a car, and so on."
You can do whatever you damned well please with your car as long as it's not on state-own roads.
"I suppose you think it's perfictly alright for a club keep out black people?"
As long as they're not getting any government money, it's well within their First Amendment rights to do so. Whether or not they want to deal with the PR is another issue.
"or for a company not to hire mexicans?"
My, how interestingly vague that statement is. That could mean anything from "natural-born US citizen of Mexican descent," it could mean "illegal Mexican aliens," or just about anything in between. But why muddy up a perfectly good troll with details?
"Just because you own something dosn't mean you should be able to do whatever the hell you want on it."
As long as it's not infringing on anybody else's rights (and no, you don't have the right to join somebody else's private organization), that's exactly what it means.
At least they weren't using "sonic charges" in space! Oh, wait...
But forget the bad physics, how about the freakin' moronic bad guys? Let's look at Ep II for a moment:
- We blew up the landing pad and missed our target. Let's now send two tiny worms to kill the senator instead of, say, blowing up the whole damned city block.
- Why kill her myself when I can send an intermediary to screw it up for me?
- How good of an assasin can you be if you have your delivery system come back to you?
- At the very least, couldn't you have given it the IQ to have it not come back to you if it's being followed or held on to?
- You think you blew up Obi-Wan's ship. Just in case you didn't, why not make sure he's stranded by going off to blow up that hyperdrive thingie he has to leave up in space? You know, the one that may as well have "Please blow me up!" written on it in big neon letters (WTF, do the Jedi have their spacecraft designed by committee?).
- I can understand not having a decent enough sensor array to catch that one tiny ship of Obi-Wan's coming into the system. But how do you explain not noticing the incoming Jedi fleet AND the incoming clone fleet? Ever heard of "radar," people?
- He has a light saber. You have ranged weaponry. So why do you feel the need to get close enough to get your head chopped off?
- When all is said and done, maybe you should have made sure that Jengo Fett wasn't a complete freakin' moron before deciding to make millions of clones of him. No wonder those cloen troops were dropping like flies...
And I haven't even gone into the whole "Natalie Portman falls for psychotic stalker" bit. Must be Lucas' attempt to win back the geek crowd..."AGH! How can I choose between my first position in line for Star Wars: Episode 3 and being part of the Wookie Army?!?!?"
Be a wookie. That way you're already wearing a mask and won't have to hide your face in shame when it comes to light that you were involved in the steaming pile Ep III is bound to be.
Dr. Evil: "Son, meet my nemesis, Austin Powers"
Scott Evil: "What is he doing here? Why don't you just kill him?"
Dr. Evil: "No son, I have a better plan."
Scott Evil: "Why don't I go up to my room, get my gun, and shoot him here!!!"
"How, in the scheme of the whole freaking universe, does it matter if there is a duplicate post?"
For every dupe you see, there is another unrelated interesting article that got rejected to make room for it.
"Dr. David Carpenter, Dean at the School of Public Health, State University of New York believes it is likely that up to 30% of all childhood cancers come from exposure to EMFs"
Solution: Use sunscreen.
Seriously, that sentence is so decidedly vague that I'm tempted to say it was intentional to scare up more research money. "Electromagnetic frequencies" is such a vague term that you don't know if he's talking about shortwave radio or gamma radiation (or anything in between). I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of the EMF that 30% are overexposed to is UV, which (surprise surprise!) causes cancer.
The trojan relies on the "added features" of certain SMTP clients to install itself. So it seems the problem isn't with SMTP itself so much as any e-mail client that does anything more than display text messages.
Turn off HTML, turn off references to external files, turn off scripting, and don't click on suspicious-looking files. Much easier than trying to redefine SMTP if you ask me...
"The virus writer would have been smarter to send notices to IRC, or muliple email addresses. Or use broadcasts a la the SQL worm."
If the spammer had two braincells to rub together to figure that one out, would they be in the spam business to begin with?
No no, that was last month. Now you have to work the Iraqi Ministry of Information into your posts.
"It's the same reasoning behind the ban of fax-based advertising (there was a court case on that a couple months back) and anti-spam legislation."
Two more laws that leave loopholes for non-profits and political campaigns...
Kinda hard to buy a judge when you need to buy 218 congresscritters and 67 Senators to get rid of them.
"And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling judges!"
"They are legally required to give you all of this information, if you ask."
Only if they're selling something. They don't have to if they're "non-profit" or if they're a political party trying to get your vote. They also get to use pre-recorded messages, something else disallowed to people trying to sell something.
Personally, I think that declaring some types of speech more allowable than others sounds rather unconstitutional, but apparently that's just me...
"It is illegal for them to call cell phones."
That's news to me. Where is the law in question? And does it apply to everybody, or just people trying to sell something?
"IMHO, politics in the USA is focused way too much at the federal level."
I agree, but I think this happens because media follows the money. In the past century the federal government (whether by accident or by design) has found itself in control of a great deal of money, money which usually comes directly from the citizens themselves without any intervention from state or local governments (Sixteenth Amendment).
State and local governments, on the other hand, play with less money, are often constitutionally prevented from deficit spending, and in recent decades has become more and more reliant on federal spending. State and local governments do have more influence in our lives, but usually not in ways that is immediately accessable as a dollar figure (zoning, roads, etc.)
If you want to see attention drawn away from the federal government, give the states some say in how the federal government operates (by, say, repealing the Seventeenth Amendment). If nothing else it would make states more "important" in the eyes of the media because of their effect on the actions of the federal government.
- Voters are apathetic.
- Apathetic voters vote in a truly random fashion.
- E-voting (ignoring all the inherent problems of such a scheme) will only really draw new apathetic voters.
- With truly random apathetic votes, they will not have any real effect on the election results.
- Implementing e-voting is not cheap.
I'm against e-voting because I don't see the point in spending money to change absolutely nothing.Of course, I'm also against the concept because it introduces unnecesary complecations into the voting process where problems can occur (why do you need Twenty-First Century technology to do something that Nineteenth Century technology can do just as well with less room for error?), but that's another subject.
Unless you live in the middle of BFE, you could comfortably walk to the polling place.
"waiting in line,"
Come back later. They're generally open all day. Or there's nothing keeping you from getting an absentee ballot before-hand.
"but if this process were easy though, it could help clear things up."
Riiiight... As soon as they do this, you (or someone quite like you) will come up with "Oh, it's too difficult to find the URL, type in my ID... We need democracy through TiVo!"
"I think this would have an age-gap stopper though, since you're mostly going to see the younger people getting into the "e-voting is cool" phase"
The voting mechanism
"What we really need though, is a system to be able to vote on issues that are important to us."
We have those already. They're called "referenda." You write up an issue, get a few hundred of your friends to agree with it and POOF: Instant election. If "e-voting" weren't the only part of civics that could attract your attention for more than five seconds ("Oooh... shiney!"), you might have known that.
"along with combined citizen votes (net-votes, etc) - at least we'd have more say in things."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Do you really want a government that works the same way as "American Idol?" Moreso than it already does?
Where's the "kaboom?" There was supposed to be a moon-shattering "kaboom!"