So maybe we could just "transfer" the good stuff, above board, and cut out the covert ops. I'm hopeful that Wikileaks and/or its successors will help end such skullduggery. (I expect to eventually see someone come along and do to WikiLeaks what Facebook did to MySpace.)
If you modded the boiler so that it fully or semi bypassed the gas meter....
There's no way to do that without cutting into the line before the gas meter, or tampering with the meter itself -- both of which are the property of the gas company.
A more fitting example would be if I modded the boiler so that I could pump in other gas. For example, I put in a fitting and modified the burner so that I could hook up a propane tank as a backup in case gas service was interrupted. Yes, that enables me to use a stolen propane tank, but that's not a justification for criminalizing the mod.
All so-called "rights" are simply creations of society, not universal truths handed down by God.
The only sensible definition of rights I've come across is Kerry Thornley's:
There are at least seven natural rights, or the Tao of human activity in society possesses seven attributes, or people are like machines only in the respect that they don't work good if you neglect their maintenance requirements.
What are the maintenance requirements of the human being? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and food, clothing, shelter and medical care.
Keeping us confused and divided against one another about these rights, the multinational power elite teaches us in America that only life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights. In socialist nations they promote the view that only food,clothing, shelter and medical care are rights.
We are further encouraged to argue about whether rights must be earned or whether it is the duty of the government to guarantee them. Everyone necessarily struggles for their rights, and no government can ever guarantee anything except death and taxes.
All that bickering begs the relevant question: What can we do in voluntary cooperation to see that our natural rights, our intimate functional needs, are respected? Without that much, human beings are incapable of behaving as constructively rational and loving members of any population.
Is is a basic maintenance requirement of the human person to have a state-backed monopoly on the copying of creative works for the life of the author plus 70 years? Of course not.
Is it a good thing if authors get paid? Sure. Is a state-backed monopoly on the making of copies the best way to do that? No.
First off, let me remind everyone that cookies left in your browser's cookie cache can only be read by the domain that gave them to you.
Correct so far.
So maps.google.com can read cookies issued by mail.google.com but www.amazon.com cannot read or in any way know about cookies issued from www.newegg.com.
Technically correct, but missing the point. Amazon can know about your activities on newegg.com by buying ads there. (Ok, I don't think newegg.com actually has ads, but let's pretend.) Here's how it works:
1) You visit amazon.com, and they place a cookie in your browser. They associate this cookie with every book you even look at, every item you buy in their marketplace, etc.
3) You visit Newegg's site and browse over to the Android tablet department. Your browser loads the ad image -- from Amazon, sending the cookie sent in step 1). They can now add to their extensive profile on you, the fact that you were browsing for an Android Tablet on NewEgg.
This, of course, is a rather benign example, but it illustrates the mechanism by which information you never intended to disclose is gathered by rat-bastard web advertisers. There are far more invasive and nefarious tracking possibilities when Amazon -- or more likely, DoubleClick -- has ads on both, say, a blog site and a pr0n site. "Hmmm, here's a bunch of requests with cookie 7654321 and referer set to cskrat's home page on/., and here's a bunch of requests with cookie 7654321 that come from ads on redheadedsluts.com."
Most people like it when businesses remember them.
I like it when people remember me. I'm on more-or-less equal footing with the bartender who knows what beers I like, or the guy who runs the little martial arts supply store who knows that in my school we train with the three-foot hanbo and not the 4-foot jo.
If those people started deliberately following me around to other businesses, I'd find that very very creepy.
But that has nothing to do with Google, Amazon, etcetera. When powerful immortal sociopaths created by state fiat remember me -- and not only that, but work together to draw up a profile on me -- I have definite cause to get nervous.
I mean what are you going to do, force stores to stop using cameras?
Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Or at least heavily regulate their use.
My life is an ongoing work of art. Video surveillance of my person is the creation of a derivative work -- a violation of my subjectright.
Perhaps you are too young to remember this, but there was a time -- within the living memory of the older cadre of/.ers -- when you could go into a store and not be on a fscking camera.
But my point is: it's not going away and it's really not that bad.
It is that bad, and we can make it go away by passing laws that say, "If you do this bad thing, you are out of business."
Google and WSJ.com aren't calling me, I'm calling them. Why am I allowed to selectively choose who calls me via vetting them, but "businesses" can't?
Because you are a human being with rights, and Google and WSJ.com are corporations whose very existence is (in theory) subject to the provision that it serves the public good.
Why am I allowed to choose who I associate with, but websites can't?
Apologists for big business trying to label invasive exploitation of customers as "freedom of association" only serves to show how weak their argument is. Commerce and trade are not the same as other forms of association. That's why the federal government is empowered to regulate interstate commerce -- which Google, WSJ.com, and just about all other on-line businesses are engaged in -- and not interstate "association".
Let the free market work, all will be well.
No, in real life the sort of "free market" you're advocating means the freedom of those with market power to screw over those who don't.
That's your opinion, but it's someone else's rights you are talking about. If I said your rights should be abridged...
No. Copyright is not a "right" in the sense that freedom of speech is a right, or the right of self-defense; it is an arbitrary creation of government.
Either humanity will eventually colonize other places (at least in our own solar system) or we will go extinct. Its a natural progression.
Eventually, we go extinct either way, in a big rip, big crunch, or heat death of the universe.
But assuming you're arguing that we have to colonize other planets because eventually the Earth will be uninhabitable, it seems far more likely to me that a mature technological species would dedicate itself to keeping the homeworld clean and comfortable: meteor defense, climate engineering, perhaps even eventually stellar engineering, all done by robots while we organic lifeforms stay in the comfort of near-Earth space. "Put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket!", as the cliche goes.
I bet people like you complained when one of their tribesmen built a slightly bigger ship more suitable for travel between islands. You would be the person saying "Nope. The ocean is endless, all that exists is the land behind us." or "There is no reason to go look for new lands over the ocean because its economically unfeasible to bring goods back from whatever lands may exist over the sea."
You do know that that later statement was true for most of human history, right? Spain went bankrupt trying to exploit the "New World", and would have done far better to pour its resources into strengthening the domestic economy. Columbus's critics were, for the most part, in fact right.
And it must cease because modern civilization can't exist in the climate of fear he is trying to create.
Wait wait wait.
The U.S. is pursuing two wars of aggression. Al Qaeda and its sympathizers are commiting violent acts of terrorism. North Korea has fired on a South Korean village. But it's WikiLeaks that's trying to create a climate of fear, buy...publishing information that governments and their sociopathic offspring, large corporations, don't want you to have.
The definition I have always heard of American Exceptionalism has more to do with a country that is still an infant compared to most others becoming a world leader/dominant power in just a few centuries using the same humans and not having any unique power due to natural resources, but just by giving individuals the power to control their own destinies more than had been possible on a large scale in any other country.
What a distorted view of American history.
The U.S. rose to power because people of European decent used superior military technology to commit genocide against the natives of land that was both highly fertile and well-forested. (Wood was the oil of the time.) After forming their own nation, those people continued to use slavery and theft to power their economy's expansion up until they were well industrialized. (Via, it ought to be noted, numerous patent violations.)
While the powers of Europe tore each other up in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, WWI, and WWII, Americans kept stealing land from Indians (and later, from Hawaiians, Filipinos, and other people with fewer guns) and exploiting people of African ancestry and building a strong industrial base. American experienced booms after WWI and WWII by exporting goods to war-ravaged Europe; as the British Empire declined, the U.S. was set to step into the vacuum for a few decades. (I suspect, though, that in the histories a thousand years from now, the U.S. will be a footnote to the British Empire the way Constantinople is a footnote to Rome.) The U.S. then dissipated itself on the "Cold War", running up enormous debt in a dick-size competition with the U.S.S.R.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of the all-American idea of constitutional representative democracy, and proud that the bootprints on Luna are American. And we are the country that taught the world to rock-and-roll, thank you very much. But this "American exceptionalism" nonsense is an ahistorical, anti-intelelctual embarrassment.
Yet America is still one of the few countries willing to honestly face its past and try to redress things it's done wrong.
Really? Have reparations for violations of treaties with the Native nations gone through while I wasn't looking? Have we removed the official monuments to the pro-slavery terrorist organization, the "Confederacy", which once enjoyed support in the South -- and which a shocking number of contemporary Americans still support? Have we compensated the Americans of Japanese heritage who were rounded up into concentration camps during WWII?
Yes, you'll find America museum exhibits that tell you how bad those things were and expressing sorrow. You'll also find Japanese museum exhibits that tell you how bad Japanese imperialism was, and I'm sure you'll find similar exhibits in other nations. So on what basis do you make your claim? It sounds like more American "exceptionalism".
If you think America is overly nationalistic what do you think about China? Russia?
Americans nationalism sucks. Chinese nationalism sucks. Russian nationalism sucks.
These documents are far too strategically damaging to the U.S. and its public/not-so-public allies to have been revealed in bulk.
The strategic interests of the U.S. government, the ruling investment class, and the military-industrial complex, are not the interests of the people of the U.S. or of the world.
Wikileaks should be exposing corruption, wrongdoing, and illegality.
More than that, this leak helps us Americans know what the hell our government is doing around the world. That's vital for any democratic nation. Wikileaks is giving power back to the people.
However, deciding to release all classified information you can get your hands on is not whistle-blowing.
But that's not what happened. All of the Wikileaks releases have been redacted. You might think they should have redacted more thoroughly, fine; but the fact that they did some redaction makes it impossible to claim that they decided to "release all classified information you can get your hands on".
Let's say he thought the French president had BO and was lazy....There is no reason to ever mention it in public though. It doesn't really help you at all, and it's one of those polite things everyone publicly pretends hasn't happened.
And the release of these cables isn't really going to change that. It might make for an awkward social moment here and there, but nothing policy-changing, exactly because everyone will publicly pretend it hasn't happened.
They're not going to force you to use the app store. That's retarded and you're retarded for thinking it.
They've already forced that on two platforms. It's "retarded" to not consider the possibility of them applying the same strategy to their remaining platform. I mean, how is Jobs going to bring you "freedom from porn" if you can install whatever unapproved software you like?
I fear that Apple will use the inroads it makes with the Mac App Store to further restrict what users of future Macs can do. It couldn't retroactively lock down Macs the way it's locked down the iOS devices, not without creating a firestorm. But it could someday decide to sell only iOS machines, or declare that new machines running some future Mac OS -- not next summer's Mac OSX "Lion" version, apparently -- would work only under the same principles. I believe this is the endgame, but I'm hoping for the best.
(Oh, and Apple-fanboi mods: I'm not trolling. Disagreement != trolling.)
We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin.
Really? Decades of civil forfeiture in the War on (Some) Drugs; the erosion of First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights under said War; the Waco massacre, where military assets were brought in using said War as a justification; the stolen election of 2000; the illegal invasion of Iraq; the authorization of torture...and it's revoking a couple of domain names that prompts you to comment on "the final nails in the Constitution's coffin"?
I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution.
I really wish that people would learn the difference between federalism and a republic, and that the current incident has nothing to do with either and is all about the denial of due process.
The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.
I'm pretty sure most Texans have no interest in anarchy, more's the pity. Anyway, the fed took on a greater role for a reason -- we tried the "weak fed, strong states" thing and it failed miserably. It's what enabled segregation, and the corruption of the Gilded Age. If you want smaller government, first you have to get rid of big business.
I didn't hand control over to anyone. I can install just about any software I care to on this machine and Steve Jobs is not going to show up with a baseball bat.
US Constitution was completely silent on the issue of slavery (it did not support it nor oppose it)
Debunked in another response.
and the 3/5 clause actually made it EASIER to get rid of slavery in the end because it reduced the political power of the slaveholding states?
No, it increased the political power of the slaveholding states. If they were only granted representation based based on their free population, same as stats without slaves, they'd have been at a disadvantage.
The founding fathers didn't include slavery in the constitution. Slavery wasn't mentioned at all until it was abolished.
The historical ignorance of my fellow Americans never ceases to astound me. No, the word "slavery" doesn't appear in the Constitution, but the framers included it in the document via various euphemisms:
"...according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Those "other Persons" who counted as three fifths of a human being were slaves.
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person." What sort of persons are "imported" into a state and taxed? Slaves. The Framers built in a clause that Congress couldn't ban the import of slaves until at least 1808.
"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." I.e., escaped slaves must be handed back even if they make it to a free state.
of course that amendment didn't really abolish slavery it made the citizens of the individual states that united into citizens of the federal government that was supposed to negotiate with foreign powers on behalf of the individual and independent member states.
You are confusing the 13th and 14th Amendments.
The States were not "individual and independent". We tried that under the Articles of Confederation. It failed miserably. The States gave up a large part of their sovereignty under the Constitution -- they couldn't "enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post
facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility," nor "lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports", nor "lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a
foreign power, or engage in war".
It is true that many people fought in the civil war over the issue of slavery. But the war happened because Lincoln wanted to strengthen and centralize the federal government and because he attacked the wealth base of pretty much all the prominent figures in the south.
Oh, bullshit. The "Civil War" happened because a bunch of slave-owning terrorists were fearful that people were turning against their morally bankrupt way of life.
The previous regime was in violation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Gulf War and numerous UN resolutions passed subsequent to that agreement. The Iraq War was perfectly legal under American and international law.
Incorrect. The invasion of Iraq was not authorized by the U.N., which is (oddly enough) the only body with the legal authority to authorize the use of force to enforce U.N. resolutions.
In other words, claiming the Iraq invasion was legal because Iraq had not complied with U.N. resolutions is rather like claiming that stealing your neighbors stuff is legal because he had unpaid parking tickets -- you were just enforcing the fine, after all.
As for American law, Bush lied to Congress to get them to sign off on the invasion, and authorized the use of torture. He is guilty of war crimes, and it shames our nation that he will likely never face justice.
While there is truth to the assertion that some private schools are much better than others, this doesn't take into account how bad many government schools are.
Nor does it take into account how good many government schools are; nor does it take into account that private schools get to select their students, while public schools systems don't.
We do not have a public school system in the U.S. -- we have thousands. Each county generally runs its own system, with a bit of oversight and funding at the state level. I live in a narrow strip of Baltimore County between Baltimore City (an independent city, Baltimore is essentially a county unto itself) and Howard County.
As one last aside, note that since 1970 real spending per pupil at government schools in the U.S. has more than doubled, with - so far - nothing to show for it.
Nonsense. Since 1970, public schools have had to provide increasing special education, more ESOL education, more free and reduced price meals. They've also introduced more gifted education and AP classes, which didn't exist (or at least, weren't widespread) in 1970. Schools have also become a delivery point for a wide array of social services, which accounts for a very large chunk of spending. Finally, public schools also provide transportation for students -- you may have noticed some increase in gasoline prices since 1970.
In spite of these extra costs, public school expenditures are lower than secular private schools; they spend a bit more than Catholic schools, but get slightly better outcomes. (Note that "expenditure" and "tuition" are very different things, thanks to grants; for example, one school in McLean, Virginia, had a tuition of $25,890 and spending of $35,665.) There are cheaper private schools, but they're usually poor performers. You get what you pay for, and overall, public school price/performance is in line with private schools. The problem is systems like Baltimore; and it's not just the schools that are the problem there, there are enormous issues of economic and social justice at work.
I attended both private and public schools in the U.S., and I learned far more in private schools.
Private schools in the U.S. mostly fall into three categories: conservative, non-Catholic Christian schools, which generally have low per-student spending, poorly qualified teachers, and poor student achievement; Catholic schools, which have both per-student spending and student achivement that's a bit less than public schools; and expensive private schools, usually either Hebrew schools or not religiously affiliated, which spend more money and have better student achievement than public schools. (Note that this expense may not be borne directly by students in the form of tuition.)
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Iran was a functioning democracy -- but wouldn't give us oil on favorable terms. So we covertly "transferred" a monarchy to them. When that didn't work out so well, we covertly "transferred" weapons and military intelligence and training to their neighbor Iraq.
So maybe we could just "transfer" the good stuff, above board, and cut out the covert ops. I'm hopeful that Wikileaks and/or its successors will help end such skullduggery. (I expect to eventually see someone come along and do to WikiLeaks what Facebook did to MySpace.)
There's no way to do that without cutting into the line before the gas meter, or tampering with the meter itself -- both of which are the property of the gas company.
A more fitting example would be if I modded the boiler so that I could pump in other gas. For example, I put in a fitting and modified the burner so that I could hook up a propane tank as a backup in case gas service was interrupted. Yes, that enables me to use a stolen propane tank, but that's not a justification for criminalizing the mod.
The only sensible definition of rights I've come across is Kerry Thornley's:
Is is a basic maintenance requirement of the human person to have a state-backed monopoly on the copying of creative works for the life of the author plus 70 years? Of course not.
Is it a good thing if authors get paid? Sure. Is a state-backed monopoly on the making of copies the best way to do that? No.
Correct so far.
Technically correct, but missing the point. Amazon can know about your activities on newegg.com by buying ads there. (Ok, I don't think newegg.com actually has ads, but let's pretend.) Here's how it works:
1) You visit amazon.com, and they place a cookie in your browser. They associate this cookie with every book you even look at, every item you buy in their marketplace, etc.
2) Amazon puts a couple of ads for the Kindle on newegg.com, in different categories . In those ads are img tags with src like http://ads.amazon.com/ad12345?category=mac, http://ads.amazon.com/ad12345?category=amd, http://ads.amazon.com/ad12345?category=android, etc.
3) You visit Newegg's site and browse over to the Android tablet department. Your browser loads the ad image -- from Amazon, sending the cookie sent in step 1). They can now add to their extensive profile on you, the fact that you were browsing for an Android Tablet on NewEgg.
This, of course, is a rather benign example, but it illustrates the mechanism by which information you never intended to disclose is gathered by rat-bastard web advertisers. There are far more invasive and nefarious tracking possibilities when Amazon -- or more likely, DoubleClick -- has ads on both, say, a blog site and a pr0n site. "Hmmm, here's a bunch of requests with cookie 7654321 and referer set to cskrat's home page on /., and here's a bunch of requests with cookie 7654321 that come from ads on redheadedsluts.com."
I like it when people remember me. I'm on more-or-less equal footing with the bartender who knows what beers I like, or the guy who runs the little martial arts supply store who knows that in my school we train with the three-foot hanbo and not the 4-foot jo.
If those people started deliberately following me around to other businesses, I'd find that very very creepy.
But that has nothing to do with Google, Amazon, etcetera. When powerful immortal sociopaths created by state fiat remember me -- and not only that, but work together to draw up a profile on me -- I have definite cause to get nervous.
Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Or at least heavily regulate their use.
My life is an ongoing work of art. Video surveillance of my person is the creation of a derivative work -- a violation of my subjectright.
Perhaps you are too young to remember this, but there was a time -- within the living memory of the older cadre of /.ers -- when you could go into a store and not be on a fscking camera.
It is that bad, and we can make it go away by passing laws that say, "If you do this bad thing, you are out of business."
Because you are a human being with rights, and Google and WSJ.com are corporations whose very existence is (in theory) subject to the provision that it serves the public good.
Apologists for big business trying to label invasive exploitation of customers as "freedom of association" only serves to show how weak their argument is. Commerce and trade are not the same as other forms of association. That's why the federal government is empowered to regulate interstate commerce -- which Google, WSJ.com, and just about all other on-line businesses are engaged in -- and not interstate "association".
No, in real life the sort of "free market" you're advocating means the freedom of those with market power to screw over those who don't.
No. Copyright is not a "right" in the sense that freedom of speech is a right, or the right of self-defense; it is an arbitrary creation of government.
Eventually, we go extinct either way, in a big rip, big crunch, or heat death of the universe.
But assuming you're arguing that we have to colonize other planets because eventually the Earth will be uninhabitable, it seems far more likely to me that a mature technological species would dedicate itself to keeping the homeworld clean and comfortable: meteor defense, climate engineering, perhaps even eventually stellar engineering, all done by robots while we organic lifeforms stay in the comfort of near-Earth space. "Put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket!", as the cliche goes.
You do know that that later statement was true for most of human history, right? Spain went bankrupt trying to exploit the "New World", and would have done far better to pour its resources into strengthening the domestic economy. Columbus's critics were, for the most part, in fact right.
Wait wait wait.
The U.S. is pursuing two wars of aggression. Al Qaeda and its sympathizers are commiting violent acts of terrorism. North Korea has fired on a South Korean village. But it's WikiLeaks that's trying to create a climate of fear, buy...publishing information that governments and their sociopathic offspring, large corporations, don't want you to have.
Dude. Take your meds.
What a distorted view of American history.
The U.S. rose to power because people of European decent used superior military technology to commit genocide against the natives of land that was both highly fertile and well-forested. (Wood was the oil of the time.) After forming their own nation, those people continued to use slavery and theft to power their economy's expansion up until they were well industrialized. (Via, it ought to be noted, numerous patent violations.)
While the powers of Europe tore each other up in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, WWI, and WWII, Americans kept stealing land from Indians (and later, from Hawaiians, Filipinos, and other people with fewer guns) and exploiting people of African ancestry and building a strong industrial base. American experienced booms after WWI and WWII by exporting goods to war-ravaged Europe; as the British Empire declined, the U.S. was set to step into the vacuum for a few decades. (I suspect, though, that in the histories a thousand years from now, the U.S. will be a footnote to the British Empire the way Constantinople is a footnote to Rome.) The U.S. then dissipated itself on the "Cold War", running up enormous debt in a dick-size competition with the U.S.S.R.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of the all-American idea of constitutional representative democracy, and proud that the bootprints on Luna are American. And we are the country that taught the world to rock-and-roll, thank you very much. But this "American exceptionalism" nonsense is an ahistorical, anti-intelelctual embarrassment.
Really? Have reparations for violations of treaties with the Native nations gone through while I wasn't looking? Have we removed the official monuments to the pro-slavery terrorist organization, the "Confederacy", which once enjoyed support in the South -- and which a shocking number of contemporary Americans still support? Have we compensated the Americans of Japanese heritage who were rounded up into concentration camps during WWII?
Yes, you'll find America museum exhibits that tell you how bad those things were and expressing sorrow. You'll also find Japanese museum exhibits that tell you how bad Japanese imperialism was, and I'm sure you'll find similar exhibits in other nations. So on what basis do you make your claim? It sounds like more American "exceptionalism".
Americans nationalism sucks. Chinese nationalism sucks. Russian nationalism sucks.
Indeed. How dare they resist our illegal invasion of their country without putting on a uniform first.
I've been following the excellent coverage at The Guardian, and I can categorically say that they should have.
The strategic interests of the U.S. government, the ruling investment class, and the military-industrial complex, are not the interests of the people of the U.S. or of the world.
And these cable do that. They show that U.S. diplomats were directed to engage in illegal espionage against United Nations officials.
More than that, this leak helps us Americans know what the hell our government is doing around the world. That's vital for any democratic nation. Wikileaks is giving power back to the people.
But that's not what happened. All of the Wikileaks releases have been redacted. You might think they should have redacted more thoroughly, fine; but the fact that they did some redaction makes it impossible to claim that they decided to "release all classified information you can get your hands on".
And the release of these cables isn't really going to change that. It might make for an awkward social moment here and there, but nothing policy-changing, exactly because everyone will publicly pretend it hasn't happened.
On the other hand, learning that the U.S. is instructing diplomats to engage in espionage against U.N. officials, or that our "friends" in Saudi Arabia are pushing the U.S. to attack Iran -- Americans need to know that. If the price is an awkward moment in the receiving line at some diplomatic function, it's cheaply got.
Because that diplomat is working for the American public.
At least, in theory. In reality, it seems from these documents that American diplomats are working for the military-intelligence-industrial complex.
Concur. UPS == the suck, and I will not use them if there are other practical alternatives. For small packages, USPS Priority Mail is the way to go.
They've already forced that on two platforms. It's "retarded" to not consider the possibility of them applying the same strategy to their remaining platform. I mean, how is Jobs going to bring you "freedom from porn" if you can install whatever unapproved software you like?
I think Dan Gilmore's got it right:
(Oh, and Apple-fanboi mods: I'm not trolling. Disagreement != trolling.)
Really? Decades of civil forfeiture in the War on (Some) Drugs; the erosion of First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights under said War; the Waco massacre, where military assets were brought in using said War as a justification; the stolen election of 2000; the illegal invasion of Iraq; the authorization of torture...and it's revoking a couple of domain names that prompts you to comment on "the final nails in the Constitution's coffin"?
I really wish that people would learn the difference between federalism and a republic, and that the current incident has nothing to do with either and is all about the denial of due process.
I'm pretty sure most Texans have no interest in anarchy, more's the pity. Anyway, the fed took on a greater role for a reason -- we tried the "weak fed, strong states" thing and it failed miserably. It's what enabled segregation, and the corruption of the Gilded Age. If you want smaller government, first you have to get rid of big business.
It is likely that this will no longer be the case if you continue with the Apple platform. They have already begun to move the Mac toward the same walled-garden, censored model as the iPad. No, jerkwad Jobs won't come over with a baseball bat, he'll just make it difficult-to-impossible for you to install any non-Apple-approved software on your box in the first place.
Debunked in another response.
No, it increased the political power of the slaveholding states. If they were only granted representation based based on their free population, same as stats without slaves, they'd have been at a disadvantage.
The historical ignorance of my fellow Americans never ceases to astound me. No, the word "slavery" doesn't appear in the Constitution, but the framers included it in the document via various euphemisms:
"...according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Those "other Persons" who counted as three fifths of a human being were slaves.
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person." What sort of persons are "imported" into a state and taxed? Slaves. The Framers built in a clause that Congress couldn't ban the import of slaves until at least 1808.
"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." I.e., escaped slaves must be handed back even if they make it to a free state.
You are confusing the 13th and 14th Amendments.
The States were not "individual and independent". We tried that under the Articles of Confederation. It failed miserably. The States gave up a large part of their sovereignty under the Constitution -- they couldn't "enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility," nor "lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports", nor "lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war".
Oh, bullshit. The "Civil War" happened because a bunch of slave-owning terrorists were fearful that people were turning against their morally bankrupt way of life.
Incorrect. The invasion of Iraq was not authorized by the U.N., which is (oddly enough) the only body with the legal authority to authorize the use of force to enforce U.N. resolutions.
In other words, claiming the Iraq invasion was legal because Iraq had not complied with U.N. resolutions is rather like claiming that stealing your neighbors stuff is legal because he had unpaid parking tickets -- you were just enforcing the fine, after all.
As for American law, Bush lied to Congress to get them to sign off on the invasion, and authorized the use of torture. He is guilty of war crimes, and it shames our nation that he will likely never face justice.
Nor does it take into account how good many government schools are; nor does it take into account that private schools get to select their students, while public schools systems don't.
We do not have a public school system in the U.S. -- we have thousands. Each county generally runs its own system, with a bit of oversight and funding at the state level. I live in a narrow strip of Baltimore County between Baltimore City (an independent city, Baltimore is essentially a county unto itself) and Howard County.
Where I live, the schools are decent-to-good; half of Baltimore County public high schools were ranked in the top six percent of high schools by Newsweek, and 85% of graduates go on immediately to higher education. But in a few minutes I can be in Baltimore City -- as seen on The Wire -- which a few years ago had one of the lowest on-time graduation rates in the country, less that 40%, and 11 schools were failing so badly that the State of Maryland tried to take them over directly; there has been marked improvement the past few years, but it's still an underperforming system. Or in a few minutes I can be in Howard County, one of the richest counties in the U.S., where the graduation rate is over 93%, and average SAT scores are over 1100 on the old 1600 point scale.
Nonsense. Since 1970, public schools have had to provide increasing special education, more ESOL education, more free and reduced price meals. They've also introduced more gifted education and AP classes, which didn't exist (or at least, weren't widespread) in 1970. Schools have also become a delivery point for a wide array of social services, which accounts for a very large chunk of spending. Finally, public schools also provide transportation for students -- you may have noticed some increase in gasoline prices since 1970.
In spite of these extra costs, public school expenditures are lower than secular private schools; they spend a bit more than Catholic schools, but get slightly better outcomes. (Note that "expenditure" and "tuition" are very different things, thanks to grants; for example, one school in McLean, Virginia, had a tuition of $25,890 and spending of $35,665.) There are cheaper private schools, but they're usually poor performers. You get what you pay for, and overall, public school price/performance is in line with private schools. The problem is systems like Baltimore; and it's not just the schools that are the problem there, there are enormous issues of economic and social justice at work.
Private schools in the U.S. mostly fall into three categories: conservative, non-Catholic Christian schools, which generally have low per-student spending, poorly qualified teachers, and poor student achievement; Catholic schools, which have both per-student spending and student achivement that's a bit less than public schools; and expensive private schools, usually either Hebrew schools or not religiously affiliated, which spend more money and have better student achievement than public schools. (Note that this expense may not be borne directly by students in the form of tuition.)