Re:Don't build big *concave* glass buildings
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Building Melts Car
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· Score: 2
The first time is NOT understandable. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Does the "Archimedes death ray" ring a bell?
No, it was designed to burn ships. Sheesh, rays ringing a bell, how ridiculous.
Re:Don't build big *concave* glass buildings
on
Building Melts Car
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· Score: 1
I actually stayed at this place and happened to be sitting in the wrong spot on the pool deck soon after it opened. I quickly found another spot. Hard to believe the same guy would screw up the SAME WAY again.
Hey, if you can't be right, you can at least be consistent.
And here's a more relevant analogy. I work at a liquor vendor. I sell liquor every day, and it's perfectly legal. A guy walks in, appears over the legal drinking age, but I card him anyway, because I really don't want to sell alcohol to a minor. His license is valid, he's over the legal limit, and that's all I know about him. So I sell him his alcohol, and the alcoholic gets into his car, downs it all, and runs over his kid playing in the front yard. Did I do anything wrong? Nope, because what I was doing was legal and correct.
Another analogy. I'm a habitual shoplifter. I go to a store, and they have produce on sale right in front of the store. I don't even have to walk in to steal something! Exactly how much is the store responsible for making it easy for me to break the law?
A final analogy. I'm a woman living in an area where there is a common location for women to be attacked and raped (but still a rare occurrence). I happen to zip through this area because it's quicker than walking in the more public areas, and, surprisingly enough, I get raped (after all, the analogy doesn't work if the law isn't broken). Do I get charged as an accomplice for my own rape?
Now for a hypothetical. I have a friend who I know reads texts while driving. We'll call him my friend with poor risk-assessment skills (this isn't the only example). Let's say he lives in NJ, and that I don't know his driving schedule. When would I not be at risk, legally, due to texting him?
All of these examples have a common thread. Someone does something perfectly legal, and someone else makes a choice to break the law. Why would doing something that is perfectly legal, and not encouraging, aiding, or coercing someone to do something illegal make you responsible for their crimes?
Once you get used to it, the new Start menu is ok. You don't spend much time in there anyway.
This is the most qualified endorsement ever. Let's try it in a few other areas.
New boyfriend/girlfriend: Once you get used to him/her, he/she is ok. You don't spend much time with him/her anyway.
New car: Once you get used to it, it's ok. You don't spend much time in there anyway.
New restaurant: Once you get used to it, the food is ok. You don't spend much time eating in there anyway.
Do any of those sound reasonable or desirable to you? If that was the review you gave something to one of your friends, do you think they'd be interested in trying it out? So why on earth would you pay good money for something like this?
As an aside, I recommend you not try a career in marketing. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't normally reply to myself, but I watched the video, and other linked videos. Here's one from October 2011. Looks like this one wasn't entirely inconsistent with past behaviour.
Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
Of course it's testable. Here it is. Wait and observe until a few more large bodies hit the sun. Observe results. Done. Isn't this how most astronomy and astrophysics research is done?
Really, shat out by a cat (because it can't be digested by them) isn't very high on the list of weird shit we eat. Rotten grain juice, bug vomit, rotten beans, rotten bean juice, rotten milk, (non-human) milk, stuff that grows on shit, rotten milk with maggots in it (yes, really!). (Note that I don't bother counting eating bugs and dogs as weird.) Couple this with the fact that there are some plants whose seeds won't germinate until they've been eaten by the right animal, which says something about the integrity of the expelled seed, and I suspect the cat-shat coffee is cleaner and safer than some of the things I mentioned above.
Given that there are about 5 billion people in the world who believe in invisible sky fairies of some kind, the idea that "believes in invisible sky fairies" == "a risk to anyone around them" is a little flawed. Even if you include all the people who support the idea of bombing another group because of some insult to their invisible sky fairies or that other people should be forced to worship their invisible sky fairies (but wouldn't do a thing to advance "the cause"), you're probably lucky to get to more than a few percent, which admittedly gives a large number.
And of course, that group wouldn't include such upstanding individuals as Joseph Stalin and Ted Kaczynski. But please, let's not let anything like facts interfere with your irrational beliefs.
And right there, you just justified hiring more police/traffic commissioners to deal with it. Police chief: "We have evidence of 1500 unticketed traffic violations a day (far less than your number) based on the volume of evidence being sent in. Each of those is worth net $100, and will take 5 minutes to process. If we hire 15 people to process those, we will make a net $120,000 a day (assuming a cost of $2000/day per hire)." Mayor: "We'll start working on the new law tomorrow."
I'm sorry, but this is clearly not an area you've studied much. I've studied it a bit, and I have an engineer buddy who has studied it extensively. He just bought a Maker-Bot 2, and he designed the bike used to produce the resin model in this video.
The code for running any decent machine is either G-Code or something proprietary that can be translated from G-Code. Yes, that's the same code used to drive laser cutters and CNC machines. Likewise, most of the extruded materials printers use very standard materials - ABS, nylon, etc. This means, first, that anyone can provide the materials, so long as it's the right diameter (I've seen two or three sizes). Also good for the consumer. Liquid- or powder- based printers may be more proprietary, but that's not something I've investigated (they're more often used in commercial applications). Moreover, since the code is the same as for a CNC machine or laser cutter, you have far more flexibility for design materials than just a variety of plastic-like materials. You can have a home CNC for $5k, and use a far wider variety of stock. (This is just one of the reasons I wonder why someone would bother making plastic gun parts.)
Experienced model designers will certainly make better models, since things like material, tolerances, and FEA (Finite Element Analysis, stress testing) need to be addressed. Less experienced designers will make poorer designs, as always.
I suspect there are some very proprietary 3D printers out there, for some definition of 3D printer. But there are plenty of very flexible options in the $2k to $5k range, and for those who don't bother to research before paying their money, well, it's not the first time a fool and his money were parted.
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." No, we're not there, and no, personally-priced 3D printers aren't there yet, but they will be. Couple that with freely available models/routines for making things and you have cottage-industry-like manufacturing points with the consistency of industry. I mean, really. Just how many centuries were factories of one kind or another in use? Out of how many millenia of civilization? I'd be unsurprised if the preferred model changed, although probably not in my lifetime. Even if the production model doesn't change, the delivery model certainly will. What we have is grossly inefficient, and people like Amazon are happy to take our money to change that.
Thinking out loud, I'd consider the potatoes thing to be more of a feature than a bug, assuming they were indeed out of stock of 5-lb bags and didn't screw you on the price difference, etc.
If your dinner's recipe was totally messed up by not having any potatoes, you'd be pretty pissed. But getting a few to hold you over seems like a reasonable gesture.
I guess the point is that it speaks to the issue of customer service for deliveries in general. It's more than just getting the groceries to your doorstep, they need to build in other above-and-beyond services as well.
Not if you're paying the premium you normally would for those four potatoes. They probably cost between 25 and 50% of the price for the bag.
You've clearly never been in a warehouse. Buy whatever you want. Your order will be packaged up in an efficient size for transportation (sub-packaged for easy carrying into your house), put in a truck selected for the load to be carried with the coverage to deliver it to your door in a reasonable timeframe, and the truck will probably spend 10 minutes at each stop. More users will only make it more efficient. Less variety will only have a slight benefit to making it more efficient, and only if they want you to spend the money for those items that they choose not to carry elsewhere. Because Amazon is all about the limited selection.
Before urbanization, we used to order much of what we bought from catalogs. You could order everything from shoelaces to a prefab house kit from the Sears Catalog, and if you lived in a rural place, you pretty much had to mail-order.
And before that, we had giant bazaars. Still do in a lot of parts of the world. And before that, you made it yourself or you didn't have it. And after the current trend, you may very well just make whatever you want or need at home. Oh look, another thing where varying levels of technology causes cycles!
Hummers are dangerous to other people. The Model S isn't. The Model S is definitively safer for the occupants. The Hummer isn't.
Moreover, Hummers will have a higher center of gravity, both absolutely and proportionally - they will flip more easily. This is doubtless part of the reason they have such a wide wheelbase, to help mitigate that.
Weight has three effects when it comes to safety: acceleration rate, deceleration rate, and control on a turn/risk of flipping. The acceleration rate is clearly not a problem. The deceleration rate can be determined by the quality of brakes, and I'm sure Tesla made sure they were at least sufficient. Throwing a significant percentage of the unloaded weight within 1 foot (30 cm) off the ground, rather than the 2 or 3 feet (60 or 90 cm) something like a Hummer would have effectively takes care of the third.
People are just wondering how you're planning a marriage at your funeral.
If the GPP is a girl, there are plenty of Chinese parents who will be happy to do it for her. Of course, if the GPP is a guy, it might be up to his parents to find the corpse to steal. And you thought the GPP was odd.
Then let me finish for you. Given the numbers you calculated, the biggest object, with the highest reasonable density, in the closest orbit, would have one billionth the effect of the moon (60m vs 56km, cubed). So, in a place like the Bay of Fundy, with some of the largest tides in the world (16m), you still couldn't measure the difference with a ruler.
Listen sport I am ignorant about a lot of things but I started my programming and system design career over 25 years ago so I am perfectly capable of making an informed decision when it comes to choosing a browser. My first decision was made more than a few years ago was to not even use Firefox. Never needed to use it professionally or personally. However, in regards to this article isn't Firefox an Open Source system. All you need to do is download the code, remove the things you don't want or like, build, and deploy. Catastrophe avoided.
Good, then you probably know about about:config. You won't even have to change the source code. I'm sure the setting is in there. My mom, on the other hand, doesn't, nor should she. And I doubt she even knows about 3rd-party cookies, and I certainly am not interested in trying to explain it to her. OTOH, I know she's interested in privacy, but has no idea about the details of the html protocols. Not unlike the majority of web users. Are they not entitled to a reasonable degree of privacy?
Likewise, the majority of people in North America don't know how to drive standard, or stop faster or more safely than ABS allows. I suppose their safety doesn't matter, too.
Ostensibly, this isn't proof of the absence of god or heaven.
The (theological) argument can be made that all humans die until God resurrects them at the end of the world. Their souls are sleeping/in an unknown state until this happens.
So, unless you were dead long enough that the "end of the world" happened, and then woke up and no heaven/angels, it doesn't mean much from a Biblical standpoint.
Even from a scientific standpoint, this means nothing. One data point, and a lack of evidence is not evidence of something lacking. The second is why we can't prove God doesn't exist.
Without the advertising based revenue you will see nothing but pay walls. Once this happens you will have to fend off the morons who think asking them to pay for content equates to censorship. If cookies really upset your universe you can tighten up your browser settings and move on with your life.
And if you're too ignorant about the issue to make a decision, the makers of your browser may also make a decision on how they handle it. Such as Mozilla is doing now.
Don't be fooled, all browsers take a stance on this decision, one way or another. Mozilla is just the first to take this stance. We'll see how popular it is.
Yes, I'm sure you've never used a VCR, or a computer, or any of the other cool things that came out of the Apollo program, which, when you get right down to it, is ego on a national scale. And willing lives were taken in the process. And, given the odds you're an American, you're part of a country which was founded, in part, by people who were woefully unequipped to live where they went, and many of them died in the first few years. And we've benefited by people spending their lives, and many of them losing them in the process, in exploring one of the last and most dangerous frontiers on our planet (Jacques Cousteau is one who didn't die performing his research).
People throw their lives away all the time. You might see what this group is doing as pure ego stroking. I'll agree that that is certainly a component. I'm unwilling to concede that that means nothing good will come of it, though. Of course, you're entitled to your opinion, as well. I'll assume you won't be one of the volunteers or patrons of this little project. So quit pissing and moaning, and support something you believe in, instead.
Yes, but if they have a target they can analyze the data with respect to that target. If you get on their radar they can pull up & analyze everything they have on you. And it's cheap to store massive amounts of data. What it comes down to is the government will have supreme power over anybody they don't like... which is not a good thing.
They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me. My problem is what they could be intending to do with it. They are saving our lives forever in the databases and storing it forever, and often there are leaks like with Snowden. So if Snowden can leak all this, what happens to all the stuff the NSA has on us over the years? Could someday someone at the NSA decide to go rogue and leak it all?
Look up the term false positive. Now, imagine that the NSA does really well, and only has 1:10,000 false positives. If they test people with previous suspicious activity or where there is a warning from outside the system, the odds of it being wrong is 1 in 10,000. If they test everyone, there will be 30,000 false positives. For every cycle of tests for the population. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
So, you say, just get the false positive rate lower. The new term to look up is diminishing returns. It will cost a substantial amount to get the false positive rate to 1:100,000 from 1:10,000 (which will leave a mere 3,000 people being victimized by the government). Assuming, of course, that you're worried at all about false negatives. I suspect you'd need a new three-letter agency at least as big as the NSA to get to 1:1,000,000 false positives while keeping the false negatives at a reasonable rate.
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The first time is NOT understandable. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Does the "Archimedes death ray" ring a bell?
No, it was designed to burn ships. Sheesh, rays ringing a bell, how ridiculous.
I actually stayed at this place and happened to be sitting in the wrong spot on the pool deck soon after it opened. I quickly found another spot. Hard to believe the same guy would screw up the SAME WAY again.
Hey, if you can't be right, you can at least be consistent.
And here's a more relevant analogy. I work at a liquor vendor. I sell liquor every day, and it's perfectly legal. A guy walks in, appears over the legal drinking age, but I card him anyway, because I really don't want to sell alcohol to a minor. His license is valid, he's over the legal limit, and that's all I know about him. So I sell him his alcohol, and the alcoholic gets into his car, downs it all, and runs over his kid playing in the front yard. Did I do anything wrong? Nope, because what I was doing was legal and correct.
Another analogy. I'm a habitual shoplifter. I go to a store, and they have produce on sale right in front of the store. I don't even have to walk in to steal something! Exactly how much is the store responsible for making it easy for me to break the law?
A final analogy. I'm a woman living in an area where there is a common location for women to be attacked and raped (but still a rare occurrence). I happen to zip through this area because it's quicker than walking in the more public areas, and, surprisingly enough, I get raped (after all, the analogy doesn't work if the law isn't broken). Do I get charged as an accomplice for my own rape?
Now for a hypothetical. I have a friend who I know reads texts while driving. We'll call him my friend with poor risk-assessment skills (this isn't the only example). Let's say he lives in NJ, and that I don't know his driving schedule. When would I not be at risk, legally, due to texting him?
All of these examples have a common thread. Someone does something perfectly legal, and someone else makes a choice to break the law. Why would doing something that is perfectly legal, and not encouraging, aiding, or coercing someone to do something illegal make you responsible for their crimes?
Once you get used to it, the new Start menu is ok. You don't spend much time in there anyway.
This is the most qualified endorsement ever. Let's try it in a few other areas.
New boyfriend/girlfriend: Once you get used to him/her, he/she is ok. You don't spend much time with him/her anyway.
New car: Once you get used to it, it's ok. You don't spend much time in there anyway.
New restaurant: Once you get used to it, the food is ok. You don't spend much time eating in there anyway.
Do any of those sound reasonable or desirable to you? If that was the review you gave something to one of your friends, do you think they'd be interested in trying it out? So why on earth would you pay good money for something like this?
As an aside, I recommend you not try a career in marketing. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't normally reply to myself, but I watched the video, and other linked videos. Here's one from October 2011. Looks like this one wasn't entirely inconsistent with past behaviour.
Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand ... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
Of course it's testable. Here it is. Wait and observe until a few more large bodies hit the sun. Observe results. Done. Isn't this how most astronomy and astrophysics research is done?
Maybe not.
Really, shat out by a cat (because it can't be digested by them) isn't very high on the list of weird shit we eat. Rotten grain juice, bug vomit, rotten beans, rotten bean juice, rotten milk, (non-human) milk, stuff that grows on shit, rotten milk with maggots in it (yes, really!). (Note that I don't bother counting eating bugs and dogs as weird.) Couple this with the fact that there are some plants whose seeds won't germinate until they've been eaten by the right animal, which says something about the integrity of the expelled seed, and I suspect the cat-shat coffee is cleaner and safer than some of the things I mentioned above.
Given that there are about 5 billion people in the world who believe in invisible sky fairies of some kind, the idea that "believes in invisible sky fairies" == "a risk to anyone around them" is a little flawed. Even if you include all the people who support the idea of bombing another group because of some insult to their invisible sky fairies or that other people should be forced to worship their invisible sky fairies (but wouldn't do a thing to advance "the cause"), you're probably lucky to get to more than a few percent, which admittedly gives a large number.
And of course, that group wouldn't include such upstanding individuals as Joseph Stalin and Ted Kaczynski. But please, let's not let anything like facts interfere with your irrational beliefs.
And right there, you just justified hiring more police/traffic commissioners to deal with it. Police chief: "We have evidence of 1500 unticketed traffic violations a day (far less than your number) based on the volume of evidence being sent in. Each of those is worth net $100, and will take 5 minutes to process. If we hire 15 people to process those, we will make a net $120,000 a day (assuming a cost of $2000/day per hire)." Mayor: "We'll start working on the new law tomorrow."
I'm sorry, but this is clearly not an area you've studied much. I've studied it a bit, and I have an engineer buddy who has studied it extensively. He just bought a Maker-Bot 2, and he designed the bike used to produce the resin model in this video.
The code for running any decent machine is either G-Code or something proprietary that can be translated from G-Code. Yes, that's the same code used to drive laser cutters and CNC machines. Likewise, most of the extruded materials printers use very standard materials - ABS, nylon, etc. This means, first, that anyone can provide the materials, so long as it's the right diameter (I've seen two or three sizes). Also good for the consumer. Liquid- or powder- based printers may be more proprietary, but that's not something I've investigated (they're more often used in commercial applications). Moreover, since the code is the same as for a CNC machine or laser cutter, you have far more flexibility for design materials than just a variety of plastic-like materials. You can have a home CNC for $5k, and use a far wider variety of stock. (This is just one of the reasons I wonder why someone would bother making plastic gun parts.)
Experienced model designers will certainly make better models, since things like material, tolerances, and FEA (Finite Element Analysis, stress testing) need to be addressed. Less experienced designers will make poorer designs, as always.
I suspect there are some very proprietary 3D printers out there, for some definition of 3D printer. But there are plenty of very flexible options in the $2k to $5k range, and for those who don't bother to research before paying their money, well, it's not the first time a fool and his money were parted.
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." No, we're not there, and no, personally-priced 3D printers aren't there yet, but they will be. Couple that with freely available models/routines for making things and you have cottage-industry-like manufacturing points with the consistency of industry. I mean, really. Just how many centuries were factories of one kind or another in use? Out of how many millenia of civilization? I'd be unsurprised if the preferred model changed, although probably not in my lifetime. Even if the production model doesn't change, the delivery model certainly will. What we have is grossly inefficient, and people like Amazon are happy to take our money to change that.
I can't say. But I can't see them prorating you the price for those 4 potatoes as opposed to 5 lbs?
Thinking out loud, I'd consider the potatoes thing to be more of a feature than a bug, assuming they were indeed out of stock of 5-lb bags and didn't screw you on the price difference, etc.
If your dinner's recipe was totally messed up by not having any potatoes, you'd be pretty pissed. But getting a few to hold you over seems like a reasonable gesture.
I guess the point is that it speaks to the issue of customer service for deliveries in general. It's more than just getting the groceries to your doorstep, they need to build in other above-and-beyond services as well.
Not if you're paying the premium you normally would for those four potatoes. They probably cost between 25 and 50% of the price for the bag.
You've clearly never been in a warehouse. Buy whatever you want. Your order will be packaged up in an efficient size for transportation (sub-packaged for easy carrying into your house), put in a truck selected for the load to be carried with the coverage to deliver it to your door in a reasonable timeframe, and the truck will probably spend 10 minutes at each stop. More users will only make it more efficient. Less variety will only have a slight benefit to making it more efficient, and only if they want you to spend the money for those items that they choose not to carry elsewhere. Because Amazon is all about the limited selection.
Before urbanization, we used to order much of what we bought from catalogs. You could order everything from shoelaces to a prefab house kit from the Sears Catalog, and if you lived in a rural place, you pretty much had to mail-order.
And before that, we had giant bazaars. Still do in a lot of parts of the world. And before that, you made it yourself or you didn't have it. And after the current trend, you may very well just make whatever you want or need at home. Oh look, another thing where varying levels of technology causes cycles!
Hummers are dangerous to other people. The Model S isn't. The Model S is definitively safer for the occupants. The Hummer isn't.
Moreover, Hummers will have a higher center of gravity, both absolutely and proportionally - they will flip more easily. This is doubtless part of the reason they have such a wide wheelbase, to help mitigate that.
Weight has three effects when it comes to safety: acceleration rate, deceleration rate, and control on a turn/risk of flipping. The acceleration rate is clearly not a problem. The deceleration rate can be determined by the quality of brakes, and I'm sure Tesla made sure they were at least sufficient. Throwing a significant percentage of the unloaded weight within 1 foot (30 cm) off the ground, rather than the 2 or 3 feet (60 or 90 cm) something like a Hummer would have effectively takes care of the third.
People are just wondering how you're planning a marriage at your funeral.
If the GPP is a girl, there are plenty of Chinese parents who will be happy to do it for her. Of course, if the GPP is a guy, it might be up to his parents to find the corpse to steal. And you thought the GPP was odd.
Then let me finish for you. Given the numbers you calculated, the biggest object, with the highest reasonable density, in the closest orbit, would have one billionth the effect of the moon (60m vs 56km, cubed). So, in a place like the Bay of Fundy, with some of the largest tides in the world (16m), you still couldn't measure the difference with a ruler.
Listen sport I am ignorant about a lot of things but I started my programming and system design career over 25 years ago so I am perfectly capable of making an informed decision when it comes to choosing a browser. My first decision was made more than a few years ago was to not even use Firefox. Never needed to use it professionally or personally. However, in regards to this article isn't Firefox an Open Source system. All you need to do is download the code, remove the things you don't want or like, build, and deploy. Catastrophe avoided.
Good, then you probably know about about:config. You won't even have to change the source code. I'm sure the setting is in there. My mom, on the other hand, doesn't, nor should she. And I doubt she even knows about 3rd-party cookies, and I certainly am not interested in trying to explain it to her. OTOH, I know she's interested in privacy, but has no idea about the details of the html protocols. Not unlike the majority of web users. Are they not entitled to a reasonable degree of privacy?
Likewise, the majority of people in North America don't know how to drive standard, or stop faster or more safely than ABS allows. I suppose their safety doesn't matter, too.
Ostensibly, this isn't proof of the absence of god or heaven. The (theological) argument can be made that all humans die until God resurrects them at the end of the world. Their souls are sleeping/in an unknown state until this happens. So, unless you were dead long enough that the "end of the world" happened, and then woke up and no heaven/angels, it doesn't mean much from a Biblical standpoint.
Even from a scientific standpoint, this means nothing. One data point, and a lack of evidence is not evidence of something lacking. The second is why we can't prove God doesn't exist.
Without the advertising based revenue you will see nothing but pay walls. Once this happens you will have to fend off the morons who think asking them to pay for content equates to censorship. If cookies really upset your universe you can tighten up your browser settings and move on with your life.
And if you're too ignorant about the issue to make a decision, the makers of your browser may also make a decision on how they handle it. Such as Mozilla is doing now.
Don't be fooled, all browsers take a stance on this decision, one way or another. Mozilla is just the first to take this stance. We'll see how popular it is.
Yes, I'm sure you've never used a VCR, or a computer, or any of the other cool things that came out of the Apollo program, which, when you get right down to it, is ego on a national scale. And willing lives were taken in the process. And, given the odds you're an American, you're part of a country which was founded, in part, by people who were woefully unequipped to live where they went, and many of them died in the first few years. And we've benefited by people spending their lives, and many of them losing them in the process, in exploring one of the last and most dangerous frontiers on our planet (Jacques Cousteau is one who didn't die performing his research).
People throw their lives away all the time. You might see what this group is doing as pure ego stroking. I'll agree that that is certainly a component. I'm unwilling to concede that that means nothing good will come of it, though. Of course, you're entitled to your opinion, as well. I'll assume you won't be one of the volunteers or patrons of this little project. So quit pissing and moaning, and support something you believe in, instead.
Yes, but if they have a target they can analyze the data with respect to that target. If you get on their radar they can pull up & analyze everything they have on you. And it's cheap to store massive amounts of data. What it comes down to is the government will have supreme power over anybody they don't like... which is not a good thing.
They should just analyze every bit of information they receive. I don't have a problem with the NSA collecting information about me. My problem is what they could be intending to do with it. They are saving our lives forever in the databases and storing it forever, and often there are leaks like with Snowden. So if Snowden can leak all this, what happens to all the stuff the NSA has on us over the years? Could someday someone at the NSA decide to go rogue and leak it all?
Look up the term false positive. Now, imagine that the NSA does really well, and only has 1:10,000 false positives. If they test people with previous suspicious activity or where there is a warning from outside the system, the odds of it being wrong is 1 in 10,000. If they test everyone, there will be 30,000 false positives. For every cycle of tests for the population. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
So, you say, just get the false positive rate lower. The new term to look up is diminishing returns. It will cost a substantial amount to get the false positive rate to 1:100,000 from 1:10,000 (which will leave a mere 3,000 people being victimized by the government). Assuming, of course, that you're worried at all about false negatives. I suspect you'd need a new three-letter agency at least as big as the NSA to get to 1:1,000,000 false positives while keeping the false negatives at a reasonable rate.
You're right, doing things for silly reasons like patriotism, religious freedom, and the joy of discovery never brought us new or better things. So why bother?