Not to excuse there blatantly illegal searches, but to thing the whole system is some corrupt entity that s out to get everyone is simply wrong.
Sure. Even the Nazis weren't "out to get everyone" -- just troublemakers. Good Germans had nothing to fear from the SS.
(Yeah, yeah, Godwin's law, I lose, whatever.)
If you're a middle-class white American of mainstream religious and political beliefs, someone whose idea of a wild time is drinking four Bud Lights at a Kenny Chesney show, of course you've got nothing to fear from massive government surveillance. (Well, unless you used to date someone who worked at the NSA or something.) You can scamper about on your merry way knowing that the state is only interested in spying on deviants. You know the type. Malcontents. Dreamers. Granola peaceniks.
Good citizens like you have nothing to fear. You can feel safe, knowing the government is your friend. Heck, almost family! It's like having a protective old sibling watching you. I mean, watching out for you.
Fortunately, I keep "Google Play Services" cut off from the net via Droidwall. That should keep Google from fscking with the software on my phone without my review and permission.
*My* computer. *My* choice about whether to apply a software change.
They are not my parents. The highway code is not a set of moral values
Indeed. So why are nitwits screaming about "freedom" here? You don't have any moral freedom to speed on public roads. It is entirely appropriate for the government to set safety standards for vehicles allowed to operate on the public roads. It is entirely appropriate for those standards to include restrictions on top speed for such vehicles.
Rigidly applying the speed limits does little to serve that goal.
If your speed limits do not serve the end of public safety, then your limits need to be revised.
...and so you link to the Washington Times, and completely destroy any credibility you might have had.
Two problems. One, the mainstream press did cover the story. Two, old rocket engines and old chemical weapons shells in dumps and scrapyards tell us only that Iraq used to have WMD --- never a contentious point.
The conclusion that Iraq had no WMD at the time of the American attack isn't some liberal media (ha!) conspiracy, it's the conclusion of the gorram CIA.
Bush lied, and the Fox "News" set continues to lie, about Iraq.
Speaking of personal responsibility, they're holding him personally responsible for his actions.
...and we certainly can't have that! It undermines the whole basis of corporate capitalism.
This guy is an asshole. Anyone who bottles and resells tap water has a place in the special hell. Anyone who profits from exploiting the name of a great thinker ("Bucky"balls?) has a place in the special hell. He dissolved the company in order to avoid paying for the recall. Special hell.
Unless you're eating the depleted uranium, you probably aren't going to be affected by it.
Or breathing it.
"In military conflicts involving DU munitions, the major concern is inhalation of DU particles in aerosols arising from the impacts of DU-enhanced projectiles with their targets. When depleted uranium munitions penetrate armor or burn, they create depleted uranium oxides in the form of dust that can be inhaled or contaminate wounds. The Institute of Nuclear Technology-Radiation Protection of Attiki, Greece, has noted that "the aerosol produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites or can be inhaled by civilians and military personnel." The utilisation of DU in incendiary ammunition is controversial because of potential adverse health effects and its release into the environment." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Health_considerations
Something closer to what happened in the airline industry is what you want.
The airline industry takes people and cargo from one habitable place to another.
Something close to that for space would take people from one habitable place (Earth) to...where, exactly?
There is nowhere to go. "Going into space" is as pointless as "going into the air". Modulo a handful of thrill-seekers or performance artists, you go into the air in order to get somewhere. There is no destination for which you can go into space, that's worth getting there other than for extremely rich thrill-seekers or performance artists, or participants in international bigger-dick contents. Science missions can be done so much more cheaply with robots that we will never launch a human beyond Earth orbit on a science mission.
When private industry begins talking about doing the things that have traditionally been done within NASA for cheaper, this becomes an argument against increasing government funding for space exploration.
Not at all. Private industry has always contracted for NASA. Having private companies do things like supply runs to the ISS isn't a significant change; if they can do the scutwork cheaper it leaves more funds for NASA to do the science.
Private companies are not going to launch pure science missions. There's no profit in it. Science missions are going to remain NASA's bailiwick.The handful of commercially viable space missions (which will never involve sending humans beyond Earth orbit -- deep space is for robots) can be taken over by private industry.
How exactly does "picking which laws I want to enforce" get lumped into his oath to "faithfully execute" his office?
When Congress passes an unconstitutional law -- which many drugs laws are -- for the POTUS to enforce it would be a violation of his oath. Of course, they do it anyway.:-/
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed just seven years after the Bill of Rights. The Bill Of Rights was pretty dormant until the 1930s, and nobody took that "equal protection" bit seriously until the 1960s.
When that day comes, in whomever's lifetime, when nobody has to work anymore, where will people get food from? Where will people get energy from? Where will people get entertainment from?
If/when that day comes, we will be getting food from robot farmers (other than a handful of human artisans whose idea of play is gardening), our energy from orbital photovoltaic stations run by robots, and we will entertain each other via our play. (I'd love to try to spend more time entertaining you with music, poetry, and a novel I've got an idea for, but I have to hack e-commerce software to pay the bills.)
Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work but the rest of us have menial jobs
Well, that's another vision of the future. That one, there's a cure for. that, though it does have messy side-effects.
The alternative is the company is never forced to pay, so yes that is clearly better.
No, there's another alternative, and you mention it: "expand the size of our government", at least in certain areas. If government is going to create a system that concentrates economic power, via the creation of "property rights" and "corporations" and the like, it has to be big enough to regulate the use of that power.
Increasing the "size" (though how do you measure that? What's the metric?) of the part of government that regulates big businesses to ensure fair dealing, while decreasing the "size" of the parts of government that criminalize private behavior (e.g., drug use) and that impose American will on foreign nations could give us a "smaller" government that is still capable of keeping powerful business interests from exploiting people.
Yes, it does. Pointing out that the "Tea Party" phenomenon was created and hyped by Fox, however, is not "crazy talk", it's the only conclusion anyone paying attention can reach.
The Tea Party: Populism of the privileged: "This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole."
Fox News spent weeks promoting apparent tea party scam: "Fox News heavily promoted the Tea Party Express; the Our Country Deserves Better PAC even used Fox's promotion in a fundraising email. Then Fox's Griff Jenkins hit the trail with the Express, following that bus around the country, throwing journalistic integrity aside as he declared its riders "the America that Washington forgot.""
Not really significant to the overall point, but yes, it does seem that complaints from only one Palestinian rights group have been covered in the news to date.
Your article quotes an ATF agent saying no, mine quotes an ATF agent saying yes.
Your article quotes an ATF agent talking about "inner-city gang members in Chattanooga". Really, Chattanooga?!?! Not New York, not LA, not Baltimore or Chicago, but...Chattanooga? You're going to take that tiny city as representative of what happens in the nation as a whole?
The Frontline piece I cited doesn't just quote an ATF agent -- I wouldn't trust an ATF agent's word on the color of the sky. It cites an NIJ study where they actually asked convicts where they got their guns. Only 5% said that they stole it. Several similar studies are cited by Wachtel in a paper here, which then goes to to analyze guns recovered in the LA area and pretty much blows the "most crooks steal their guns" hypothesis out of the water.
Your reading comprehension is low. It was done for cars. It helped reduce car theft.
What you said was that "it was made illegal to leave an unlocked car running with the keys in it". That is not the same as "it was made illegal to have your car stolen". The former is a form of the "attractive nuisance" doctrine; the later is victim blaming, a severe form of ass-like behavior.
(It would be in keeping with standard practice for you to provide a link and a citation to your claim about a reduction in car theft, BTW.)
There are already laws in some areas requiring people to keep their guns locked up. Whether or not that's useful or Constitutional, it is quite different than criminalizing being the victim of a theft.
While most criminal firearms in the U.S. today are diverted from the legitimate market, if that source were ever to dry up it would have very little impact on the availability of firearms to criminals. Folks making meth today would turn their labs into machine shops.
And now with 3-D printing, and CNC milling? Fugeddaboutit.
The number one source of guns for criminals is theft.
No, it's not. Seriously, dude, this is one of those times where a minute with your favorite search engine can save you from looking like an ass...
Make it a crime to have your guns stolen,
...but then, if you believe that being the victim of a crime can itself be made a crime, it'll take more than fact-checking to stop you from looking like an ass.
Except, really, they didn't. They "came for" -- i.e., put on their "be on the lookout" list -- several different classes of non-profits, including "Open Source", "Occupy", "Free Palestine", and "Tea Party" groups, all at the same time. No "first they came for" about it.
But since Tea Party groups were essentially created by Fox "News", you heard a hell of a lot about that. Not so much about Palestinian rights groups having the exact same problem.
Why use a multibillion dollar tried and tested launch facility, like the ones in Florida and Califorinia, when you can build a new one in a poor location?
Dude, they've been lighting off the big fireworks from Wallops since 1945.
I'm sorry, but you're incorrect. Since the 1950s, "moon shot" means shooting a rocket at the moon. Nothing is implied in the term about what's on or inside the rocket.
We have the knowledge, but not the industrial base. We couldn't build a Saturn V in a year.
If we put as much effort in to getting to the moon as we did then, like say the fate of the earth depended on it, I'm sure we could go in a year or two.
But it doesn't. The Apollo program, and most of manned spaceflight in the 1960s, was a bigger dick contest with the USSR with little science content.
The lower cost and increasing capability of unmanned probes means that there's nothing we can send human beings to do on Luna or beyond that's worth the cost of sending them there. And that will remain true for the foreseeable future.
"But manned missions to deep space are inspiring!" you say? So is a performance of Beethoven's 5th. Maybe manned space flight should compete for NEA funding. I like gigantic art projects as much as anyone, but when our planet is facing a sustainability crisis we should focus resources on the survival of civilization.
"But look at all the spin-off technologies! We'd never have had mircocompters without Apollo!" you say If you want advances in practical technologies, it's more efficient to put your resources directly into developing those practical technologies.
There are reasons why no one has gone beyond LEO in decades.
Nothing is "comprised of" anything else. The word you are looking for is composed.
"3: compose, constitute
"Usage Discussion of COMPRISE
"Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres" -- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise
Sorry, but when usage has been established for over two centuries, it's incorrect to label it incorrect.
(I'd still advice using "composed of" or "made up of" in preference to "comprised of", though. )
Should you take guidance from people who have been proven to lie?
The NSA is a deeply schizophrenic organization. On one side you have people seeking to defend and secure Americans' computer systems and networks against crackers, foreign spies, and the like. They'll propose BS like key escrow, but they're actually fairly honest: they know if there is a backdoor they can use, their adversaries can use it too.
On the other hand you have people seeking to break into computer systems and networks, including those of Americans. They oughta be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the text you quoted. There are ads. These ads do not include tracking, they're based only on your search terms and general location.
Sure. Even the Nazis weren't "out to get everyone" -- just troublemakers. Good Germans had nothing to fear from the SS.
(Yeah, yeah, Godwin's law, I lose, whatever.)
If you're a middle-class white American of mainstream religious and political beliefs, someone whose idea of a wild time is drinking four Bud Lights at a Kenny Chesney show, of course you've got nothing to fear from massive government surveillance. (Well, unless you used to date someone who worked at the NSA or something.) You can scamper about on your merry way knowing that the state is only interested in spying on deviants. You know the type. Malcontents. Dreamers. Granola peaceniks.
Good citizens like you have nothing to fear. You can feel safe, knowing the government is your friend. Heck, almost family! It's like having a protective old sibling watching you. I mean, watching out for you.
Can't speak for shiny new phones. It works on my Epic 4G running Gingerbread. I'll keep Android FW in mind when I upgrade, though.
Fortunately, I keep "Google Play Services" cut off from the net via Droidwall. That should keep Google from fscking with the software on my phone without my review and permission.
*My* computer. *My* choice about whether to apply a software change.
Not only is the median a type of average, but for a normal distribution -- a Gaussian "bell curve" -- all three types of average -- median, mean, and mode -- are the same value.
Now you know.
Indeed. So why are nitwits screaming about "freedom" here? You don't have any moral freedom to speed on public roads. It is entirely appropriate for the government to set safety standards for vehicles allowed to operate on the public roads. It is entirely appropriate for those standards to include restrictions on top speed for such vehicles.
If your speed limits do not serve the end of public safety, then your limits need to be revised.
...and so you link to the Washington Times, and completely destroy any credibility you might have had.
Two problems. One, the mainstream press did cover the story. Two, old rocket engines and old chemical weapons shells in dumps and scrapyards tell us only that Iraq used to have WMD --- never a contentious point.
The conclusion that Iraq had no WMD at the time of the American attack isn't some liberal media (ha!) conspiracy, it's the conclusion of the gorram CIA.
Bush lied, and the Fox "News" set continues to lie, about Iraq.
This guy is an asshole. Anyone who bottles and resells tap water has a place in the special hell. Anyone who profits from exploiting the name of a great thinker ("Bucky"balls?) has a place in the special hell. He dissolved the company in order to avoid paying for the recall. Special hell.
Some more neutral coverage than the WSJ's:
Or breathing it.
"In military conflicts involving DU munitions, the major concern is inhalation of DU particles in aerosols arising from the impacts of DU-enhanced projectiles with their targets. When depleted uranium munitions penetrate armor or burn, they create depleted uranium oxides in the form of dust that can be inhaled or contaminate wounds. The Institute of Nuclear Technology-Radiation Protection of Attiki, Greece, has noted that "the aerosol produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites or can be inhaled by civilians and military personnel." The utilisation of DU in incendiary ammunition is controversial because of potential adverse health effects and its release into the environment." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Health_considerations
The airline industry takes people and cargo from one habitable place to another.
Something close to that for space would take people from one habitable place (Earth) to...where, exactly?
There is nowhere to go. "Going into space" is as pointless as "going into the air". Modulo a handful of thrill-seekers or performance artists, you go into the air in order to get somewhere. There is no destination for which you can go into space, that's worth getting there other than for extremely rich thrill-seekers or performance artists, or participants in international bigger-dick contents. Science missions can be done so much more cheaply with robots that we will never launch a human beyond Earth orbit on a science mission.
Not at all. Private industry has always contracted for NASA. Having private companies do things like supply runs to the ISS isn't a significant change; if they can do the scutwork cheaper it leaves more funds for NASA to do the science.
Private companies are not going to launch pure science missions. There's no profit in it. Science missions are going to remain NASA's bailiwick.The handful of commercially viable space missions (which will never involve sending humans beyond Earth orbit -- deep space is for robots) can be taken over by private industry.
When Congress passes an unconstitutional law -- which many drugs laws are -- for the POTUS to enforce it would be a violation of his oath. Of course, they do it anyway. :-/
When was that?
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed just seven years after the Bill of Rights. The Bill Of Rights was pretty dormant until the 1930s, and nobody took that "equal protection" bit seriously until the 1960s.
If/when that day comes, we will be getting food from robot farmers (other than a handful of human artisans whose idea of play is gardening), our energy from orbital photovoltaic stations run by robots, and we will entertain each other via our play. (I'd love to try to spend more time entertaining you with music, poetry, and a novel I've got an idea for, but I have to hack e-commerce software to pay the bills.)
Well, that's another vision of the future. That one, there's a cure for. that, though it does have messy side-effects.
No, there's another alternative, and you mention it: "expand the size of our government", at least in certain areas. If government is going to create a system that concentrates economic power, via the creation of "property rights" and "corporations" and the like, it has to be big enough to regulate the use of that power.
Increasing the "size" (though how do you measure that? What's the metric?) of the part of government that regulates big businesses to ensure fair dealing, while decreasing the "size" of the parts of government that criminalize private behavior (e.g., drug use) and that impose American will on foreign nations could give us a "smaller" government that is still capable of keeping powerful business interests from exploiting people.
Yes, it does. Pointing out that the "Tea Party" phenomenon was created and hyped by Fox, however, is not "crazy talk", it's the only conclusion anyone paying attention can reach.
Chuck Todd admits FOX News created and hypes the Tea Party Movement
How Talk Radio and FOX News created the Tea Party
The Tea Party: Populism of the privileged: "This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole."
Fox News spent weeks promoting apparent tea party scam: "Fox News heavily promoted the Tea Party Express; the Our Country Deserves Better PAC even used Fox's promotion in a fundraising email. Then Fox's Griff Jenkins hit the trail with the Express, following that bus around the country, throwing journalistic integrity aside as he declared its riders "the America that Washington forgot.""
Tea Party Promotion by Fox News
And there's the usual beautiful job by The Daily Show showing Fox clips puffing up the teabagger protests.
Not really significant to the overall point, but yes, it does seem that complaints from only one Palestinian rights group have been covered in the news to date.
Your article quotes an ATF agent talking about "inner-city gang members in Chattanooga". Really, Chattanooga?!?! Not New York, not LA, not Baltimore or Chicago, but...Chattanooga? You're going to take that tiny city as representative of what happens in the nation as a whole?
The Frontline piece I cited doesn't just quote an ATF agent -- I wouldn't trust an ATF agent's word on the color of the sky. It cites an NIJ study where they actually asked convicts where they got their guns. Only 5% said that they stole it. Several similar studies are cited by Wachtel in a paper here, which then goes to to analyze guns recovered in the LA area and pretty much blows the "most crooks steal their guns" hypothesis out of the water.
What you said was that "it was made illegal to leave an unlocked car running with the keys in it". That is not the same as "it was made illegal to have your car stolen". The former is a form of the "attractive nuisance" doctrine; the later is victim blaming, a severe form of ass-like behavior.
(It would be in keeping with standard practice for you to provide a link and a citation to your claim about a reduction in car theft, BTW.)
There are already laws in some areas requiring people to keep their guns locked up. Whether or not that's useful or Constitutional, it is quite different than criminalizing being the victim of a theft.
Yes, they are. Zip guns are almost trivial, they were commonly made by juvenile delinquents in the 1950s. Indian villagers with simple tools can make guns, while back-alley gunsmiths in the Philippines today turn out not just simple pipe guns but submachine guns. Resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Poland were also able to set up clandestine gun factories.
While most criminal firearms in the U.S. today are diverted from the legitimate market, if that source were ever to dry up it would have very little impact on the availability of firearms to criminals. Folks making meth today would turn their labs into machine shops.
And now with 3-D printing, and CNC milling? Fugeddaboutit.
No, it's not. Seriously, dude, this is one of those times where a minute with your favorite search engine can save you from looking like an ass...
Except, really, they didn't. They "came for" -- i.e., put on their "be on the lookout" list -- several different classes of non-profits, including "Open Source", "Occupy", "Free Palestine", and "Tea Party" groups, all at the same time. No "first they came for" about it.
But since Tea Party groups were essentially created by Fox "News", you heard a hell of a lot about that. Not so much about Palestinian rights groups having the exact same problem.
Then you're reading it wrong.
Dude, they've been lighting off the big fireworks from Wallops since 1945.
The word is still in use. And it took me only a few minutes to find this 1958 citation where "moon shot" refers to a potential Russian mission to set a small payload to the moon, and this 1959 one where it's used to refer to Lunik II. And this. And this.
I'm sorry, but you're incorrect. Since the 1950s, "moon shot" means shooting a rocket at the moon. Nothing is implied in the term about what's on or inside the rocket.
We have the knowledge, but not the industrial base. We couldn't build a Saturn V in a year.
But it doesn't. The Apollo program, and most of manned spaceflight in the 1960s, was a bigger dick contest with the USSR with little science content.
The lower cost and increasing capability of unmanned probes means that there's nothing we can send human beings to do on Luna or beyond that's worth the cost of sending them there. And that will remain true for the foreseeable future.
"But manned missions to deep space are inspiring!" you say? So is a performance of Beethoven's 5th. Maybe manned space flight should compete for NEA funding. I like gigantic art projects as much as anyone, but when our planet is facing a sustainability crisis we should focus resources on the survival of civilization.
"But look at all the spin-off technologies! We'd never have had mircocompters without Apollo!" you say If you want advances in practical technologies, it's more efficient to put your resources directly into developing those practical technologies.
There are reasons why no one has gone beyond LEO in decades.
"3: compose, constitute
"Usage Discussion of COMPRISE
"Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres" -- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise
Sorry, but when usage has been established for over two centuries, it's incorrect to label it incorrect.
(I'd still advice using "composed of" or "made up of" in preference to "comprised of", though. )
The NSA is a deeply schizophrenic organization. On one side you have people seeking to defend and secure Americans' computer systems and networks against crackers, foreign spies, and the like. They'll propose BS like key escrow, but they're actually fairly honest: they know if there is a backdoor they can use, their adversaries can use it too.
On the other hand you have people seeking to break into computer systems and networks, including those of Americans. They oughta be first against the wall when the revolution comes.