Historically one reason sticks out above all others when it comes to casus belli. People go to war when 2 things are satisfied : 1) they want to (for whatever reason, racism, jealousy, or even justified grievances. Grievances usually only justify a limited conflict, like capturing military superiority in a sea passage) 2) they think they can win
For Iran 1) is certainly true. I would even say it's obviously true. 2) not so much.
The US did have a court case about all domain seizures. Yes if you conduct business affairs in the US you're expected to send a representative to any court dispute on the matter, either you yourself, or a duly authorized lawyer, or anyone really, as long as they can prove to speak for you to the satisfaction of the court. That's what "due process" is.
If you won't, or even can't (in civil cases, which these are), the resulting government action is not a violation of due process anymore than seizing the bank account of someone convicted of fraud.
Although I'm sure the fraudster won't agree with that assessment, which seems to be what's happening here. But at some point, legal action leads to results. That's a good thing, even if you don't always agree with the judge.
You do realize that the US does have the power to revoke a domain, no matter what tld you register it with right ? All root nameservers are under US control, meaning the US can threaten any tld with annihilation quite credibly.
Yet they don't do that.
The UN is demanding control of EVERY nameserver in this proposal btw. Presumably they're not asking for this in order to avoid using it. These people do not have your best interests at heart, is that really so hard to see ?
You do realize that governments allowing freedom of expression are a minority at the UN, right ? Dictatorships are by far the majority, both by numbers of people and by numbers of countries. I'm sure they'll all agree that anything slightly controversial is to be kicked off the internet immediately.
Also handing someone a gun because you think them moronically incapable of using it... strikes me as a level of stupidity that borders on the imbecilic.
The U.S. has been imposing itself on the world since the end of WWII, and that's not going to change as long as the U.S. is in the position of dominance it's enjoyed since then.
True, mostly. I'm quite happy with the results by the way.
I trust a group made up of representatives from every country on earth a lot more than one comprised solely of representatives from just one of them, and that includes my own U.S. representatives. We gave birth to the TSA for Christ's sake. If anything stands testament to the abuse of authority, it's the fucking TSA.
Then you're insane. It would essentially end democratic control of the internet, as dictatorships and other oppressive regimes (islamic hellholes, communist states, "communist" states like China,...) essentially control the UN by shear numbers.
You really think they'd be an improvement over the US ? How can anyone in their right mind think like that ?
They're not asking to control their own internet. They can and do that today. They're asking to "jointly" control everyone else's internet.
Specifically these people. Don't worry ! He was cleared of all charges... by his nephew. I'm sure they had a big laugh about it around the dinner table. What do you expect from islamic theocracies ?
True, but you should keep in mind that the US is essentially only trying to impose copyright on the internet. What the UN clowns are trying to do will make you wish that the MPAA was the sole internet provider in the US.
The famed resiliency of the internet requires redundant connections, and economics by and large suppresses redundancy as inefficient except in cases where information is important enough to demand backup routes for the sake of guaranteed uptime.
The internet has porn and flamewars. That doesn't merit guaranteed uptime ?!???!!!!?
But how about you know what you're doing ? Failing that, make sure you have 2 hosts in the same vlan. Fucking up eth0 beyond the point where you can, if you know what you're doing, connect from a host in the same LAN is quite hard.
The problem here is the TV problem. Visual Studio 11 is free to use, but not free to produce. You're not the customer, you're the product that Microsoft is buying. And Microsoft wants you to produce metro applications, that drive demand for their new products (and phones/tablets), not drag users back to their previous products that people have already bought.
It's as simple as that.
Don't like being used ? Pay for what you need. It'll be a whole other story, even with the very same Microsoft products.
Btw: as a developer I thought I'd add that Visual Studio is a fast, usable and well-integrated IDE, it's also a very, very industrial one. It is much less elegant than most of the alternatives.
The problem was that these people walked straight into the reactor core (where they didn't have to be at all) on the idiotic assumption that they might have repaired the reactor, not knowing that they were stepping into a neutron microwave. For the simple reason that their bosses hadn't told them what was inside the building, or what it's effects were. They didn't notice, because the immediate effect of high radiation doses is that your body heats up - which nobody is going to find even remotely strange when running inside a burning building.
They could have brought several truckloads of concrete and just poured it on top of the reactor (which they did after they noticed which 20 people had just died). That would have caused zero deaths, and would have stopped the spread of the toxic materials (the problem was that the reactor was so hot that it was vaporizing activated material even fissile material, which then rose into the air and contaminated the area. Nobody thought to check this, and you could literally have prevented 99% of the damage by covering the damn building with a blanket, rather the managers sent people straight into the radioactive cloud, literally sending them where they'd be breathing fissioning uranium, in addition to large quantities of activated materials. Why ? So they'd try the "off" button on the control panel)
My point is that the soviet administrators (much like today's managers) were perfectly willing to throw away dozens of lives on an extremely long shot that the reactor might be salvageable, for the purpose of saving some money and a lot of embarassement. They knew perfectly well people would start dropping like flies inside the reactor. They made people take those risks - by not telling them about the risk. They should be taken out and shot - repeatedly. And nobody should blame nuclear power for these deaths, or at least not any more than water is blamed for drowning people.
The reactor design was essentially the same deal. Soviet administrators were perfectly aware that you can use heavy water as a moderator, and that that is easy to produce inside a reactor. They knew about this, because they had built atomic bombs, and you can't build atomic bombs without a heavy water reactor. The reactor design was the way it was to save a few bucks, nothing more. They risked a lot of lives to save a few bucks, knowing they were causing a disaster. Then when the disaster came, they simply sent in a few people, hoping they'd figure out a way to undo their stupidity, instead of facing facts.
And who or what is responsible for the resulting casualties ? Ah, science of course ! Nuclear science. That doing that makes about as much sense as blaming the sea for dam breaches.
No it can't. Let me introduce you to an idea from economics. Suppose you have some resource, any resource. It costs 200 kAh (kilo-ampere-hours) to place, and pays 10 kAh per year in useful capacity.
At moment 0, you're down 190 kAh, and you've got to wait 40 (! not 20) years to build another. If you're useful lifetime is 20 years, it's essentially useless and merely exposes the owner to a large amount of risk with no actual benefit.
You see the problem (I'm using kAh instead of dollars to make it clear that you can't borrow any of this : it's not like money, it's more than a number)
Even this supposedly pro-nuclar article has lines that are decidedly unfair.
At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness.
Technically true, yet a brilliant lie : but it blames the wrong party. Also, it neglects to mention that we're talking about 31 people here, and that these people were essentially sent INTO the reactor by their superiors, who knew full well what would happen. Some socialist bureaucrats ordered people to their death without telling them. That's what happened, these were 100% preventable deaths even after the disaster had occurred. I guess what's true for capitalists is true for communists as well : human life is cheaper than causing managers slight inconvenieces or forcing them to admit mistakes.
Note that there's nothing inherently nuclear about those deaths. Soviet officials ordered many such people to their death, mostly sending them into situations where it was a given that they'd drown.
This argument hinges on whether there is a reasonable "default" position. Given the fact that very significant numbers of people disagree on this, I would say that either there is no default position, or that it at the very least isn't atheism. (and given the fact that I like to program AI systems, I would argue that this does not allow atheism as a default position, after all, for all those bots I leave running atheism is certainly false. Why would we -really- be any different ?)
The evidence for God is mostly historical, and anecdotes. It is, imho, stronger, even to a neutral mind, than the idea that there was at some point a person called Julius Caesar that rearranged a few political posts in Italy.
This of course does not pass the standard for evidence generally utilized in physics, but neither does any other historical evidence. So that's beside the point. And as you say, while proving the existence of God is not done, disproving that same existence is impossible (and there's the little matter that if God were to perform a few miracles in front of a physicist, which he arguably did, given at least a few historical physical books, we'd be in the exact same boat as before : some scientist claims God exist, majority scream "no evidence") (and in fact this happens regularly).
(and btw. it's more the generally accepted rules of physics that stand in the way. It is quite clear that even if a huge miracle happens in front of thousands of people, physics would not accept it, after all, that's not what physics is studying. It would be quite pointless to study miracles for anyone who wants to discover the laws of nature)
Note that this sort of argument does impose quite a few limitations on the God that can be believed under these circumstances. First, such a God would mostly leave the universe alone (a very uncommon trait in world religions, allah for example, is supposed to meddle in everything inconsistently according to muslim "holy" texts, while Krishna, by counterexample, would seem to satisfy this requirement). Furthermore such a God would have to be actively involved in the world, making changes.
Very few religions show evidence of an effort for internal consistency, most being wildly inconsistent. Christianity is a big exception in that, this is mostly accepted to be an artifact of the involvement of people trained in Ancient Greek science and philosophy in it's creation. Buddhism is a weird case in that it hardly makes any claims at all, really.
If you disagree with this, I would argue you are specifically reassessing the credibility of historical sources based on your current ideology, at which point you might as well state we need to prepare for the end of the world (hey it's nearly July 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends).
I am led to the conclusion that atheism is merely currently in vogue, and that it will be a passing thing. When taken up close, while science does disprove quite a few religions, it does not disprove a few. And while science also does not disprove atheism, it cannot prove that either. So really, there are a few valid scientific positions, Christianity and atheism among them, with very little support either way. This leads me to believe that it's mostly a psychological phenomenon that's happening here, currently pushing atheism, and not some fundamental understanding. This also implies that the pendulum will swing back at some point.
You do realize malaria used to be pretty much anywhere out of the polar region right ? It was fought by destroying the natural habitat of the mosquito (ie. by destroying swamps), and that worked pretty fucking well. By contrast, fighting malaria with medicine without destroying the natural environment that supported it has had only limited success keeping malaria away from the rich only at best (and even in that, limited success). Meanwhile, medicine has caused resistant strains to pop up that could once again spread.
We could do something similar for tornadoes. They are dependant on certain structures, a large region of essentially air moving upwards. If we were to launch large structures into the ocean that break the connection between the top and the bottom of that thing it would at least weaken them. Another option is to heat up the air above them, for which weapons might be useful.
Here's my view. If we're serious about controlling the weather, we shouldn't be mucking about with tiny effects somewhere deep down the chain. We should find out how to directly influence the weather, and go out and do it. Changing some parameter that has near-random effects on any specific locale is bound to cause people to move even if the overall effect is good. If we don't fix global warming, some coastal areas might become difficult to live at, if we do fix global warming loads of inhabited places (e.g. Canada, Russia, Alaska, Northern Europe) will become uninhabitable again. And any effect in between will simply move the tornadoes, leading to another round of moving.
You want to stop tornadoes ? Let's find a way to directly attack and destroy any funnels. Want to destroy malaria ? Destroy all swamps worldwide. Want permafrost ? Wait, who the hell wants that ?
We're humans, dammit ! Counting on gaia to be merciful when we "do right by the earth" will only lead to mountains of corpses. Nature will not reward us for good behavior. Rather, we should bend nature to our will, kicking and screaming.
If wishing something happened made it so, then why didn't Obama change the US into a heaven on earth ? Frankly, I hope you're right. I just think you're wrong.
In India > 800 million people live on 2$ per day. Are you seriously suggesting they are progressive thinkers ? I'm not saying it's their doing or their fault or anything like that. I just find it really hard to believe it is any other way.
Simple : he assumes that indian ideology is pro-blocking the internet (which it on average clearly is, no matter the local situation), and then attempts to show that his own ideology is more advanced than this mythical average indian ideology. Which is partially true, if a gross generalization.
He is wrong in the way you say. But you also paint the situation much nicer than it really is : India is in an long-winded war with Pakistan (heh non-muslim vs muslim... I wonder who attacked first). The large majority of Indians are not very progressive, only a very vocal minority (at least on the internet) is.
As for the topic at hand, you know perfectly well this is not about blocking a few sites. This is about a challenge to the power of the government to dictate reality to it's peoples. If they wanted 2 or 3 sites they'd ask for just that. But they're asking for a process that will essentially guarantee them any blocks they want in the future.
Well, that makes a change from the normal bleating on about how sacred freedom of speech is in the US, and how important due process and the rights of the individual are.
No it isn't. "Pledging allegiance and actively plotting to kill Americans" does that sound like speech ?
(for those who don't know, it's only speech if you DO NOT intend to carry out those acts described, or have them carried out, or even if you just have a vague intention of having someone somewhere do that. The difference is quite simple. If a union leader were to publish in a paper "It would be good if someone murder such-and-such's family before the final meeting on friday" that would be extremely illegal, and may results in decades of imprisonment, yet if a journalist on the other coast wrote the exact same thing it would be constitutionally protected speech (it would still be skirting the edges, but you get the difference, right ?))
Slashdot Mirror
Historically one reason sticks out above all others when it comes to casus belli. People go to war when 2 things are satisfied :
1) they want to (for whatever reason, racism, jealousy, or even justified grievances. Grievances usually only justify a limited conflict, like capturing military superiority in a sea passage)
2) they think they can win
For Iran 1) is certainly true. I would even say it's obviously true. 2) not so much.
The US did have a court case about all domain seizures. Yes if you conduct business affairs in the US you're expected to send a representative to any court dispute on the matter, either you yourself, or a duly authorized lawyer, or anyone really, as long as they can prove to speak for you to the satisfaction of the court. That's what "due process" is.
If you won't, or even can't (in civil cases, which these are), the resulting government action is not a violation of due process anymore than seizing the bank account of someone convicted of fraud.
Although I'm sure the fraudster won't agree with that assessment, which seems to be what's happening here. But at some point, legal action leads to results. That's a good thing, even if you don't always agree with the judge.
You do realize that the US does have the power to revoke a domain, no matter what tld you register it with right ? All root nameservers are under US control, meaning the US can threaten any tld with annihilation quite credibly.
Yet they don't do that.
The UN is demanding control of EVERY nameserver in this proposal btw. Presumably they're not asking for this in order to avoid using it. These people do not have your best interests at heart, is that really so hard to see ?
You do realize that governments allowing freedom of expression are a minority at the UN, right ? Dictatorships are by far the majority, both by numbers of people and by numbers of countries. I'm sure they'll all agree that anything slightly controversial is to be kicked off the internet immediately.
Also handing someone a gun because you think them moronically incapable of using it ... strikes me as a level of stupidity that borders on the imbecilic.
The U.S. has been imposing itself on the world since the end of WWII, and that's not going to change as long as the U.S. is in the position of dominance it's enjoyed since then.
True, mostly. I'm quite happy with the results by the way.
I trust a group made up of representatives from every country on earth a lot more than one comprised solely of representatives from just one of them, and that includes my own U.S. representatives. We gave birth to the TSA for Christ's sake. If anything stands testament to the abuse of authority, it's the fucking TSA.
Then you're insane. It would essentially end democratic control of the internet, as dictatorships and other oppressive regimes (islamic hellholes, communist states, "communist" states like China, ...) essentially control the UN by shear numbers.
You really think they'd be an improvement over the US ? How can anyone in their right mind think like that ?
They're not asking to control their own internet. They can and do that today. They're asking to "jointly" control everyone else's internet.
Specifically these people. Don't worry ! He was cleared of all charges ... by his nephew. I'm sure they had a big laugh about it around the dinner table. What do you expect from islamic theocracies ?
True, but you should keep in mind that the US is essentially only trying to impose copyright on the internet. What the UN clowns are trying to do will make you wish that the MPAA was the sole internet provider in the US.
The famed resiliency of the internet requires redundant connections, and economics by and large suppresses redundancy as inefficient except in cases where information is important enough to demand backup routes for the sake of guaranteed uptime.
The internet has porn and flamewars. That doesn't merit guaranteed uptime ?!???!!!!?
Illustration of the principles of secrecy
But how about you know what you're doing ? Failing that, make sure you have 2 hosts in the same vlan. Fucking up eth0 beyond the point where you can, if you know what you're doing, connect from a host in the same LAN is quite hard.
In all honesty defeating nato is like defeating the french when they're not even trying.
Yes, but they'll only do so 40 years later ... at which point, what's the problem exactly ?
The problem here is the TV problem. Visual Studio 11 is free to use, but not free to produce. You're not the customer, you're the product that Microsoft is buying. And Microsoft wants you to produce metro applications, that drive demand for their new products (and phones/tablets), not drag users back to their previous products that people have already bought.
It's as simple as that.
Don't like being used ? Pay for what you need. It'll be a whole other story, even with the very same Microsoft products.
Btw: as a developer I thought I'd add that Visual Studio is a fast, usable and well-integrated IDE, it's also a very, very industrial one. It is much less elegant than most of the alternatives.
The problem was that these people walked straight into the reactor core (where they didn't have to be at all) on the idiotic assumption that they might have repaired the reactor, not knowing that they were stepping into a neutron microwave. For the simple reason that their bosses hadn't told them what was inside the building, or what it's effects were. They didn't notice, because the immediate effect of high radiation doses is that your body heats up - which nobody is going to find even remotely strange when running inside a burning building.
They could have brought several truckloads of concrete and just poured it on top of the reactor (which they did after they noticed which 20 people had just died). That would have caused zero deaths, and would have stopped the spread of the toxic materials (the problem was that the reactor was so hot that it was vaporizing activated material even fissile material, which then rose into the air and contaminated the area. Nobody thought to check this, and you could literally have prevented 99% of the damage by covering the damn building with a blanket, rather the managers sent people straight into the radioactive cloud, literally sending them where they'd be breathing fissioning uranium, in addition to large quantities of activated materials. Why ? So they'd try the "off" button on the control panel)
My point is that the soviet administrators (much like today's managers) were perfectly willing to throw away dozens of lives on an extremely long shot that the reactor might be salvageable, for the purpose of saving some money and a lot of embarassement. They knew perfectly well people would start dropping like flies inside the reactor. They made people take those risks - by not telling them about the risk. They should be taken out and shot - repeatedly. And nobody should blame nuclear power for these deaths, or at least not any more than water is blamed for drowning people.
The reactor design was essentially the same deal. Soviet administrators were perfectly aware that you can use heavy water as a moderator, and that that is easy to produce inside a reactor. They knew about this, because they had built atomic bombs, and you can't build atomic bombs without a heavy water reactor. The reactor design was the way it was to save a few bucks, nothing more. They risked a lot of lives to save a few bucks, knowing they were causing a disaster. Then when the disaster came, they simply sent in a few people, hoping they'd figure out a way to undo their stupidity, instead of facing facts.
And who or what is responsible for the resulting casualties ? Ah, science of course ! Nuclear science. That doing that makes about as much sense as blaming the sea for dam breaches.
And if you could borrow watt-hours from some magical source, that would be a great way to think about it.
No it can't. Let me introduce you to an idea from economics. Suppose you have some resource, any resource. It costs 200 kAh (kilo-ampere-hours) to place, and pays 10 kAh per year in useful capacity.
At moment 0, you're down 190 kAh, and you've got to wait 40 (! not 20) years to build another. If you're useful lifetime is 20 years, it's essentially useless and merely exposes the owner to a large amount of risk with no actual benefit.
You see the problem (I'm using kAh instead of dollars to make it clear that you can't borrow any of this : it's not like money, it's more than a number)
"But they're building them ! They must be good !"
Well the same is true for women's shoes.
Even this supposedly pro-nuclar article has lines that are decidedly unfair.
At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness.
Technically true, yet a brilliant lie : but it blames the wrong party. Also, it neglects to mention that we're talking about 31 people here, and that these people were essentially sent INTO the reactor by their superiors, who knew full well what would happen. Some socialist bureaucrats ordered people to their death without telling them. That's what happened, these were 100% preventable deaths even after the disaster had occurred. I guess what's true for capitalists is true for communists as well : human life is cheaper than causing managers slight inconvenieces or forcing them to admit mistakes.
Note that there's nothing inherently nuclear about those deaths. Soviet officials ordered many such people to their death, mostly sending them into situations where it was a given that they'd drown.
This argument hinges on whether there is a reasonable "default" position. Given the fact that very significant numbers of people disagree on this, I would say that either there is no default position, or that it at the very least isn't atheism. (and given the fact that I like to program AI systems, I would argue that this does not allow atheism as a default position, after all, for all those bots I leave running atheism is certainly false. Why would we -really- be any different ?)
The evidence for God is mostly historical, and anecdotes. It is, imho, stronger, even to a neutral mind, than the idea that there was at some point a person called Julius Caesar that rearranged a few political posts in Italy.
This of course does not pass the standard for evidence generally utilized in physics, but neither does any other historical evidence. So that's beside the point. And as you say, while proving the existence of God is not done, disproving that same existence is impossible (and there's the little matter that if God were to perform a few miracles in front of a physicist, which he arguably did, given at least a few historical physical books, we'd be in the exact same boat as before : some scientist claims God exist, majority scream "no evidence") (and in fact this happens regularly).
(and btw. it's more the generally accepted rules of physics that stand in the way. It is quite clear that even if a huge miracle happens in front of thousands of people, physics would not accept it, after all, that's not what physics is studying. It would be quite pointless to study miracles for anyone who wants to discover the laws of nature)
Note that this sort of argument does impose quite a few limitations on the God that can be believed under these circumstances. First, such a God would mostly leave the universe alone (a very uncommon trait in world religions, allah for example, is supposed to meddle in everything inconsistently according to muslim "holy" texts, while Krishna, by counterexample, would seem to satisfy this requirement). Furthermore such a God would have to be actively involved in the world, making changes.
Very few religions show evidence of an effort for internal consistency, most being wildly inconsistent. Christianity is a big exception in that, this is mostly accepted to be an artifact of the involvement of people trained in Ancient Greek science and philosophy in it's creation. Buddhism is a weird case in that it hardly makes any claims at all, really.
If you disagree with this, I would argue you are specifically reassessing the credibility of historical sources based on your current ideology, at which point you might as well state we need to prepare for the end of the world (hey it's nearly July 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends).
I am led to the conclusion that atheism is merely currently in vogue, and that it will be a passing thing. When taken up close, while science does disprove quite a few religions, it does not disprove a few. And while science also does not disprove atheism, it cannot prove that either. So really, there are a few valid scientific positions, Christianity and atheism among them, with very little support either way. This leads me to believe that it's mostly a psychological phenomenon that's happening here, currently pushing atheism, and not some fundamental understanding. This also implies that the pendulum will swing back at some point.
You do realize malaria used to be pretty much anywhere out of the polar region right ? It was fought by destroying the natural habitat of the mosquito (ie. by destroying swamps), and that worked pretty fucking well. By contrast, fighting malaria with medicine without destroying the natural environment that supported it has had only limited success keeping malaria away from the rich only at best (and even in that, limited success). Meanwhile, medicine has caused resistant strains to pop up that could once again spread.
We could do something similar for tornadoes. They are dependant on certain structures, a large region of essentially air moving upwards. If we were to launch large structures into the ocean that break the connection between the top and the bottom of that thing it would at least weaken them. Another option is to heat up the air above them, for which weapons might be useful.
Here's my view. If we're serious about controlling the weather, we shouldn't be mucking about with tiny effects somewhere deep down the chain. We should find out how to directly influence the weather, and go out and do it. Changing some parameter that has near-random effects on any specific locale is bound to cause people to move even if the overall effect is good. If we don't fix global warming, some coastal areas might become difficult to live at, if we do fix global warming loads of inhabited places (e.g. Canada, Russia, Alaska, Northern Europe) will become uninhabitable again. And any effect in between will simply move the tornadoes, leading to another round of moving.
You want to stop tornadoes ? Let's find a way to directly attack and destroy any funnels. Want to destroy malaria ? Destroy all swamps worldwide. Want permafrost ? Wait, who the hell wants that ?
We're humans, dammit ! Counting on gaia to be merciful when we "do right by the earth" will only lead to mountains of corpses. Nature will not reward us for good behavior. Rather, we should bend nature to our will, kicking and screaming.
If wishing something happened made it so, then why didn't Obama change the US into a heaven on earth ? Frankly, I hope you're right. I just think you're wrong.
In India > 800 million people live on 2$ per day. Are you seriously suggesting they are progressive thinkers ? I'm not saying it's their doing or their fault or anything like that. I just find it really hard to believe it is any other way.
Simple : he assumes that indian ideology is pro-blocking the internet (which it on average clearly is, no matter the local situation), and then attempts to show that his own ideology is more advanced than this mythical average indian ideology. Which is partially true, if a gross generalization.
He is wrong in the way you say. But you also paint the situation much nicer than it really is : India is in an long-winded war with Pakistan (heh non-muslim vs muslim ... I wonder who attacked first). The large majority of Indians are not very progressive, only a very vocal minority (at least on the internet) is.
As for the topic at hand, you know perfectly well this is not about blocking a few sites. This is about a challenge to the power of the government to dictate reality to it's peoples. If they wanted 2 or 3 sites they'd ask for just that. But they're asking for a process that will essentially guarantee them any blocks they want in the future.
Well, that makes a change from the normal bleating on about how sacred freedom of speech is in the US, and how important due process and the rights of the individual are.
No it isn't. "Pledging allegiance and actively plotting to kill Americans" does that sound like speech ?
(for those who don't know, it's only speech if you DO NOT intend to carry out those acts described, or have them carried out, or even if you just have a vague intention of having someone somewhere do that. The difference is quite simple. If a union leader were to publish in a paper "It would be good if someone murder such-and-such's family before the final meeting on friday" that would be extremely illegal, and may results in decades of imprisonment, yet if a journalist on the other coast wrote the exact same thing it would be constitutionally protected speech (it would still be skirting the edges, but you get the difference, right ?))
Actually we will know. At the very latest in 75 years. Probably sooner.
No.
It doesn't involve cars or programming languages.
Obama is like php where Bush is like c++, would be a better one.
The difference is that they have to convince a neutral third party that they cannot threaten or hurt to do this.