People with that amount of expertise will hardly be challenged by sysadmin position. And without a challenge you'll get bored. As such, you'll never find people with such high qualifications in sysadmin position.
System administration is only as boring (or unchallenging) as you let it be. If you take "system administration" to mean that you're responsible for patching the driver to the tape jukebox the company bought you or tracking down the bug in the ACPI tables on the new server that's causing the secondary PCI bus to be configured incorrectly... well, my point is that there are plenty of ways to avoid being bored.
Generally, though -- if you can read and understand and diagnose and patch C (and, yes, are comfortable with the usual bevvy of scripting languages, and know enough about what's going on under the hood to have a good gut feel for debugging interesting problems), you're good; the folks who can't are the ones that annoy me.
Being 10x faster than XML to work with is entirely believable: If you're serializing directly to binary structures, those structures can be directly manipulated without any parsing at all... and if you need to do some byte-swapping and alignment adjustments to get them into and out of native form for your current processor, those are still operations which can be performed in a matter of a few CPU instructions, rather than through a few hundred KB of libraries.
I drink the XML kool-aid plenty -- but there are things it's good for, and things it's not. Serializing and parsing truly massive amounts of data is part of the latter set.
If you're using a Linux DNS server that's open source, why don't you just read through the source code and find out what changed, I mean, psht, it's so easy?
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Why the sarcasm? If you're hiring sysadmins who aren't also system-level developers, you're not hiring people who can Do The Job Right.
Granted, it's not realistic to read through every patch from upstream... but if it's something you consider that critical and are that suspicious of, yes, your staff should have the relevant expertise in-house to read and evaluate what's going on.
I agree that robbing the neighbor's home was no justification for the shooting.
However, running towards the man with the gun after he ordered them to freeze put him in fear for his life and thus give him justification which did not previously exist.
Being able to effectively defend oneself when charged at by an individual known to have criminal intent is hardly something which is only reasonable in the "wild west". Was going outside with the gun in the first place an ill-thought-out action? Absolutely. Was opening fire when the criminals ran obliquely towards him justified as done in self-defense? Absolutely. A police officer was witness to the entire incident, meaning that the testimony to the effect that they did in fact approach him was presumptively reliable.
On another note, we have a great deal of rural space populated by hostile wildlife. I have relatives by marriage who literally need to have a member of the family standing by with a shotgun to fend against alligators and water snakes when swimming on their property. In such an environment, private ownership of firearms is effectively a necessity.
Why did he point a gun at them in the first place? The dispatcher told him not to and to wait for the police.
I agree that not waiting for the dispatcher was a bad call. If it weren't for the officer's testimony about the moments leading up to the shooting itself, I would have been on the side of the prosecution for this one -- but if someone you know to be in the process of committing a criminal act and just ordered to freeze takes of running in a direction that brings them closer to you, that's grounds to be afraid for one's life, hence self-defense.
If I was the homeowner he "protected" I would sue him civilly.
It's also OK to shoot people knocking on your door to death, if they happen to be Japanese...
What intrigues me is that the poster seems to see nothing wrong with this attitude. It's almost like he thinks he is living in a lawless frontier land 200 years ago.....
Huh?
I'm oversimplifying here (I'm at work, and the textbook on Texas criminal law my wife was just issued is at home), but one of the requirements for a shooting is justified as "self-defense" (the grounds for deciding not to prosecute on this case) here in Texas is that one be legitimately afraid for one's life. Being charged at by someone you know to be a criminal is grounds for a reasonable person to be afraid for their life.
As there's no argument that a reasonable person should be afraid for their life at a mere knock on the door by a person of different ethnicity; I fail to see any merit in your comparison.
Yeah, but it's okay to shoot unarmed people you believe to be robbing your neighbor's house in the back with a shot gun there...so I guess it all evens out!
When you see a couple of strangers breaking the window on a neighbor's house and climbing in, that's a pretty well-founded belief.
Running when someone points a gun at you and tells you to freeze is also pretty damned stupid. If you believe the police officer who was an eyewitness, the folks in question ran at such a trajectory as to be closer to the neighbor with the gun when they were shot than they were when he told them to freeze -- which is exceptionally stupid, as it gives said party with the gun grounds to be legitimately afraid for their life, and thus the ability to shoot. If you're going to run away from the person with the gun who told you to freeze -- which is a bad idea to start with -- you want to run unambiguously away, not towards and then turn.
I don't fault the grand jury for deciding not to prosecute; I would have gone the same way.
Gotcha; that makes sense. Again, much of what's different is (effectively) PR tactics (which isn't to undercut them -- particularly for someone representing a country, words and tone are exceedingly important!), but wanting to see concrete changes in how this impacts day-to-day political work is entirely reasonable.
I think the death penalty compromise he worked out in the state senate is perhaps one of the better examples on that subject -- but I'm at work right now and don't have the time to do my homework and write up a good post on the topic. If I get a chance to do so, I'll come back with another reply here.
That's one interpretation, to be sure; in context, though, it's not how I read the statement. If you can point at evidence that your interpretation is more valid than mine, great. Otherwise, you're welcome to your cynicism -- but that's one drink I've had quite enough of, thanks; for now, I'm sticking to the kool-aid.:)
If he is truly for change, what bi-partisan legislation has he submitted? How many Republican or Independent bills has he voted for?
As I said: The 'change' Obama speaks of isn't in terms of what he votes for, but how he gets support for it.
Meaning if you're looking for 'change' to mean "being a Democrat that acts and talks and votes like a Republican", you're looking in the wrong place. That's not to say that there isn't any cross- party legislation in his record -- particularly in the state Senate -- but that it's not what he's talking about when he promises "change", so I fail to see the relevance to this discussion.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
If the best you can find is a single quote that Obama apologized for as soon as it was shown how it sounded out-of-context, he's not doing so bad -- McCain says things offensive to people on the Democratic side of the aisle pretty much constantly (and without apology at all).
Obama was trying to explain to a group of rich Californians that the reason rural Pennsylvaniants traditionally vote on Republican wedge issues (and express bitterness towards said Californian elite) is that they don't believe that anyone who claims they're going to change things economically are ever going to follow through -- and that history has justified those beliefs. The point being made wasn't that guns or religion are bad things or products of bitterness, but that they're what people fall back on as issues to vote on when they don't believe that either candidate is going to make a real difference in their day-to-day lives... but that if they could be convinced that a candidate really did support an economic plan that would help them personally, the traditional wedge issues wouldn't be in the way. The goal was to point out that when folks fell back to voting on things they cared about aside from economic issues, they did so for genuine reasons -- trying to humanize a Republican-leaning voting block that an audience of rich Democrats would typically consider The Enemy; unfortunately, in trying to make that point, he misspoke badly.
Claiming this single out-of-context quote represents a tendency towards use of anti-religion rhetoric is inconsistent with the rest of his record -- he has called openly for religious language to be more widely accepted in the political arena, is willing to discuss abortion in moral terms (which quite a lot of Democrats aren't willing to consider at all), and has written and spoken extensively on the topic.
So -- the goal wasn't to stir up hatred or fear; the goal was to explain (in answer to a question at a fundraiser) how he could garner some traditionally-Republican votes. Unfortunately, it came out about as badly has could have happened, and his opponents (including his Democratic primary opponent) jumped on it hard... raising the doubt we have now.
It's not factually wrong; it's just... selectively reflective of the truth.
The FISA bill allows warrantless wiretapping of international calls made by American citizens only under emergency protocols. It allows warrantless wiretapping of folks who aren't American citizens pretty much indiscriminately. That certainly does make the large-scale warrantless wiretapping of communications by American citizens which has allegedly occurred under Bush (we can't tell, of course, because the courts are being blocked from investigating the matter in the name of national security... which I certainly agree is bogus) thoroughly illegal on an ongoing basis.
The really sad thing is that otherwise intelligent people like yourself buy that spiel, hook line and sinker.
I buy it because I see it happening. Traditional Left politicians don't go talk to churches; traditional politicians going around the country speak the messages that the folks they're talking to want to hear, instead of talking about fuel efficiency in Detroit and the need for financial regulation when visiting New York. Traditional politicians use boilerplate language that rouses up the base on wedge issues like abortion, without regard for the division it creates.
Regarding the allegations of surrogates playing dirty pool -- some of that will always happen; he's got the support of the Democratic party, and like any other large political party they have independent resources who will do whatever they see as appropriate to the party's success. For it to be a question of personal ethics on the part of the individual so supported, there needs to be a record of personal intent and/or knowing nonrepudiation.
It's really sad that you can't see that.
I think it's really sad you can't see past your cynicism. How will we ever get something different if people refuse to recognize it when it's there, or (as is the case w/ the FISA thing) who reject the good because they're disappointed that "good" isn't "perfect"?
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but that's not an exact quote but an attempt to distill the gist of something which was initially expressed over the course of multiple paragraphs.
I read the public-safety parts of that statement as boilerplate. Frankly, a politician who includes a bit of boilerplate in a written statement on a related topic (after all, the purported purpose of these wiretaps was antiterrorism) but otherwise generally leaves that discussion alone doesn't worry me nearly as much as the one who opens even verbal discussions by steering the topic towards terrorism and makes fighting said bogeyman a core part of his political identity.
Why does congress need to pass any bill with an immunity provision? Wait for the next president, and then pass the law. It is only six months away (Thank God!) Whoever it is, the next president will be an improvement over W.
Are you sure? Someone else in this thread has already posted a link to McCain's ACLU scorecard, and he's been vocally pro-wiretapping from the beginning.
Instead, he hid behind the "look! bogeymen!" scare-tactics and provided a waffly excuse of "legitimate threats" this and "terrorists" that without ever actually specifying what these vague apparitions lurking in the dark are. THAT, to me, is where his political colors really showed.
It's where he showed what he's afraid of, anyhow -- being painted as yet another of those naive peacenicks. I read that as boilerplate language intended to deflect attack, rather than an appeal to his base for support on those grounds. He certainly doesn't do the "lookie, terrorists!" thing in speeches and interviews, while it's frequently McCain's first resort.
The whole thing is disappointing, I'll agree. He's still lightyears better than McCain.
...if you weren't reading his books or listening to his speeches (as opposed to the sound bites), I suppose you could miss it. The "new kind of politics" he discusses isn't a change in what he as a Democrat supports; the change is in how he goes about supporting it.
If you've been paying attention to American politics lately, you'll notice that you've got the Left and the Right, and they pretty much hate each other. The Left paints the Right as being a bunch of religious war-mongering nutjobs who hate people having freedoms their religion proscribes, and the Right paints the Left as being a bunch of new-age peacenick nutjobs with no regard for personal accountability who hate their religion.
The 'change' Obama speaks of isn't in terms of what he votes for, but how he gets support for it. No more using religion as a wedge -- or trying to avoid it altogether. No more using fear to try to drive votes ("but the terrrorists will get you!"). Read A Call To Renewal, and appreciate how its message different from the way Democratic politicians have behaved in the past. Obama is promising a presidency which is serious about the "uniter, not a divider" thing, even while still effectively backing the Democrats' agenda -- by coaching that agenda in terms that speak to more than just the Democratic base. For someone young enough to have never seen American politics that aren't divisive, that's genuine change.
The 'hope' Obama speaks of is getting past all this petty divisiveness and reversing the actions which have destroyed our reputation in the world. Except for the getting-past-the-divisiveness part, that's something all Democrats want to do. This is neither unrealistic or poorly defined.
So there you are -- real promises and expectations, described by 'hope' this and 'change' that.
If he's going to be nothing more than a sock puppet for crypto-fascist republicans and their propaganda ministers at fox news, we are screwed either way this election.
When did begrudgingly accepting a compromise mean "being a sock puppet"? I swear, you people have this out of proportion.
The immunity offered by this bill is retroactive only; it does not extend into the future. People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness if we're going to heal some of the hatred between the Right and Left.
I would call the intelligence and honesty of both Obama and McCain into question. They are just good politicians.
I disagree with those who dispute Obama's honesty, but I can't say that it's an illegitimate discussion to have; there is evidence (which I personally consider weak and uncompelling) which can be used to make a case to that effect.
On what reasonable grounds can Obama's intelligence be disputed? The man graduated from Harvard at the top of his class. He's a published author, and (in my view as a reader) a damned good one. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and if you're going to argue that Obama is unintelligent, you need to provide some support -- as the contrary evidence is quite compelling indeed.
How about a kill switch to prevent a First Post? Of course, the problem is how to get posts starting from second if there's no first.
Prevent the first five posts from being either Anonymous Cowards or user accounts registered within the last three days.
Not that it's exactly a "kill switch", per se, as that requires some entity with control, as opposed to an automated process doing its job.
And there's always the risk that terrorists could find ways to crack a plane's kill switch in mid-air. When the plane is approaching JFK, wait until it is headed towards Manhattan and then immobilize the pilot's controls.
I believe the airplane kill switches discussed previously are intended to force the plane to an autopilot mode programmed with a large number of no-fly zones, as opposed to simply immobilizing the controls.
That said, it's still up in the air on features for those; I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate winner allows full remote control; that is somewhere the implementation (and operational) security needs to be bulletproof.
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System administration is only as boring (or unchallenging) as you let it be. If you take "system administration" to mean that you're responsible for patching the driver to the tape jukebox the company bought you or tracking down the bug in the ACPI tables on the new server that's causing the secondary PCI bus to be configured incorrectly... well, my point is that there are plenty of ways to avoid being bored.
Generally, though -- if you can read and understand and diagnose and patch C (and, yes, are comfortable with the usual bevvy of scripting languages, and know enough about what's going on under the hood to have a good gut feel for debugging interesting problems), you're good; the folks who can't are the ones that annoy me.
Hey -- building or patching executables opcode-by-opcode is a time-honored tradition among crackers, old-school virus writers and masochists.
Granted, hex isn't *quite* binary...
Being 10x faster than XML to work with is entirely believable: If you're serializing directly to binary structures, those structures can be directly manipulated without any parsing at all... and if you need to do some byte-swapping and alignment adjustments to get them into and out of native form for your current processor, those are still operations which can be performed in a matter of a few CPU instructions, rather than through a few hundred KB of libraries.
I drink the XML kool-aid plenty -- but there are things it's good for, and things it's not. Serializing and parsing truly massive amounts of data is part of the latter set.
Why the sarcasm? If you're hiring sysadmins who aren't also system-level developers, you're not hiring people who can Do The Job Right.
Granted, it's not realistic to read through every patch from upstream... but if it's something you consider that critical and are that suspicious of, yes, your staff should have the relevant expertise in-house to read and evaluate what's going on.
As I understand it, it failed within France, so now they're trying to implement it via the EU (where it will, incidentally, also apply to France).
I agree that robbing the neighbor's home was no justification for the shooting.
However, running towards the man with the gun after he ordered them to freeze put him in fear for his life and thus give him justification which did not previously exist.
Being able to effectively defend oneself when charged at by an individual known to have criminal intent is hardly something which is only reasonable in the "wild west". Was going outside with the gun in the first place an ill-thought-out action? Absolutely. Was opening fire when the criminals ran obliquely towards him justified as done in self-defense? Absolutely. A police officer was witness to the entire incident, meaning that the testimony to the effect that they did in fact approach him was presumptively reliable.
On another note, we have a great deal of rural space populated by hostile wildlife. I have relatives by marriage who literally need to have a member of the family standing by with a shotgun to fend against alligators and water snakes when swimming on their property. In such an environment, private ownership of firearms is effectively a necessity.
I agree that not waiting for the dispatcher was a bad call. If it weren't for the officer's testimony about the moments leading up to the shooting itself, I would have been on the side of the prosecution for this one -- but if someone you know to be in the process of committing a criminal act and just ordered to freeze takes of running in a direction that brings them closer to you, that's grounds to be afraid for one's life, hence self-defense.
What tort could you argue?
Huh?
I'm oversimplifying here (I'm at work, and the textbook on Texas criminal law my wife was just issued is at home), but one of the requirements for a shooting is justified as "self-defense" (the grounds for deciding not to prosecute on this case) here in Texas is that one be legitimately afraid for one's life. Being charged at by someone you know to be a criminal is grounds for a reasonable person to be afraid for their life.
As there's no argument that a reasonable person should be afraid for their life at a mere knock on the door by a person of different ethnicity; I fail to see any merit in your comparison.
When you see a couple of strangers breaking the window on a neighbor's house and climbing in, that's a pretty well-founded belief.
Running when someone points a gun at you and tells you to freeze is also pretty damned stupid. If you believe the police officer who was an eyewitness, the folks in question ran at such a trajectory as to be closer to the neighbor with the gun when they were shot than they were when he told them to freeze -- which is exceptionally stupid, as it gives said party with the gun grounds to be legitimately afraid for their life, and thus the ability to shoot. If you're going to run away from the person with the gun who told you to freeze -- which is a bad idea to start with -- you want to run unambiguously away, not towards and then turn.
I don't fault the grand jury for deciding not to prosecute; I would have gone the same way.
Gotcha; that makes sense. Again, much of what's different is (effectively) PR tactics (which isn't to undercut them -- particularly for someone representing a country, words and tone are exceedingly important!), but wanting to see concrete changes in how this impacts day-to-day political work is entirely reasonable.
I think the death penalty compromise he worked out in the state senate is perhaps one of the better examples on that subject -- but I'm at work right now and don't have the time to do my homework and write up a good post on the topic. If I get a chance to do so, I'll come back with another reply here.
That's one interpretation, to be sure; in context, though, it's not how I read the statement. If you can point at evidence that your interpretation is more valid than mine, great. Otherwise, you're welcome to your cynicism -- but that's one drink I've had quite enough of, thanks; for now, I'm sticking to the kool-aid. :)
As I said: The 'change' Obama speaks of isn't in terms of what he votes for, but how he gets support for it.
Meaning if you're looking for 'change' to mean "being a Democrat that acts and talks and votes like a Republican", you're looking in the wrong place. That's not to say that there isn't any cross-
party legislation in his record -- particularly in the state Senate -- but that it's not what he's talking about when he promises "change", so I fail to see the relevance to this discussion.
If the best you can find is a single quote that Obama apologized for as soon as it was shown how it sounded out-of-context, he's not doing so bad -- McCain says things offensive to people on the Democratic side of the aisle pretty much constantly (and without apology at all).
Obama was trying to explain to a group of rich Californians that the reason rural Pennsylvaniants traditionally vote on Republican wedge issues (and express bitterness towards said Californian elite) is that they don't believe that anyone who claims they're going to change things economically are ever going to follow through -- and that history has justified those beliefs. The point being made wasn't that guns or religion are bad things or products of bitterness, but that they're what people fall back on as issues to vote on when they don't believe that either candidate is going to make a real difference in their day-to-day lives... but that if they could be convinced that a candidate really did support an economic plan that would help them personally, the traditional wedge issues wouldn't be in the way. The goal was to point out that when folks fell back to voting on things they cared about aside from economic issues, they did so for genuine reasons -- trying to humanize a Republican-leaning voting block that an audience of rich Democrats would typically consider The Enemy; unfortunately, in trying to make that point, he misspoke badly.
Claiming this single out-of-context quote represents a tendency towards use of anti-religion rhetoric is inconsistent with the rest of his record -- he has called openly for religious language to be more widely accepted in the political arena, is willing to discuss abortion in moral terms (which quite a lot of Democrats aren't willing to consider at all), and has written and spoken extensively on the topic.
So -- the goal wasn't to stir up hatred or fear; the goal was to explain (in answer to a question at a fundraiser) how he could garner some traditionally-Republican votes. Unfortunately, it came out about as badly has could have happened, and his opponents (including his Democratic primary opponent) jumped on it hard... raising the doubt we have now.
It's not factually wrong; it's just... selectively reflective of the truth.
The FISA bill allows warrantless wiretapping of international calls made by American citizens only under emergency protocols. It allows warrantless wiretapping of folks who aren't American citizens pretty much indiscriminately. That certainly does make the large-scale warrantless wiretapping of communications by American citizens which has allegedly occurred under Bush (we can't tell, of course, because the courts are being blocked from investigating the matter in the name of national security... which I certainly agree is bogus) thoroughly illegal on an ongoing basis.
I buy it because I see it happening. Traditional Left politicians don't go talk to churches; traditional politicians going around the country speak the messages that the folks they're talking to want to hear, instead of talking about fuel efficiency in Detroit and the need for financial regulation when visiting New York. Traditional politicians use boilerplate language that rouses up the base on wedge issues like abortion, without regard for the division it creates.
Regarding the allegations of surrogates playing dirty pool -- some of that will always happen; he's got the support of the Democratic party, and like any other large political party they have independent resources who will do whatever they see as appropriate to the party's success. For it to be a question of personal ethics on the part of the individual so supported, there needs to be a record of personal intent and/or knowing nonrepudiation.
I think it's really sad you can't see past your cynicism. How will we ever get something different if people refuse to recognize it when it's there, or (as is the case w/ the FISA thing) who reject the good because they're disappointed that "good" isn't "perfect"?
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but that's not an exact quote but an attempt to distill the gist of something which was initially expressed over the course of multiple paragraphs.
I read the public-safety parts of that statement as boilerplate. Frankly, a politician who includes a bit of boilerplate in a written statement on a related topic (after all, the purported purpose of these wiretaps was antiterrorism) but otherwise generally leaves that discussion alone doesn't worry me nearly as much as the one who opens even verbal discussions by steering the topic towards terrorism and makes fighting said bogeyman a core part of his political identity.
Are you sure? Someone else in this thread has already posted a link to McCain's ACLU scorecard, and he's been vocally pro-wiretapping from the beginning.
It's where he showed what he's afraid of, anyhow -- being painted as yet another of those naive peacenicks. I read that as boilerplate language intended to deflect attack, rather than an appeal to his base for support on those grounds. He certainly doesn't do the "lookie, terrorists!" thing in speeches and interviews, while it's frequently McCain's first resort.
The whole thing is disappointing, I'll agree. He's still lightyears better than McCain.
...if you weren't reading his books or listening to his speeches (as opposed to the sound bites), I suppose you could miss it. The "new kind of politics" he discusses isn't a change in what he as a Democrat supports; the change is in how he goes about supporting it.
If you've been paying attention to American politics lately, you'll notice that you've got the Left and the Right, and they pretty much hate each other. The Left paints the Right as being a bunch of religious war-mongering nutjobs who hate people having freedoms their religion proscribes, and the Right paints the Left as being a bunch of new-age peacenick nutjobs with no regard for personal accountability who hate their religion.
The 'change' Obama speaks of isn't in terms of what he votes for, but how he gets support for it. No more using religion as a wedge -- or trying to avoid it altogether. No more using fear to try to drive votes ("but the terrrorists will get you!"). Read A Call To Renewal, and appreciate how its message different from the way Democratic politicians have behaved in the past. Obama is promising a presidency which is serious about the "uniter, not a divider" thing, even while still effectively backing the Democrats' agenda -- by coaching that agenda in terms that speak to more than just the Democratic base. For someone young enough to have never seen American politics that aren't divisive, that's genuine change.
The 'hope' Obama speaks of is getting past all this petty divisiveness and reversing the actions which have destroyed our reputation in the world. Except for the getting-past-the-divisiveness part, that's something all Democrats want to do. This is neither unrealistic or poorly defined.
So there you are -- real promises and expectations, described by 'hope' this and 'change' that.
Sorry 'bout the formatting; messed up my closing italics tag above.
Explicitly and unambiguously illegal, that is, in such a way that the telcos can't be told that they're going to be able to weasel out of it again.
When did begrudgingly accepting a compromise mean "being a sock puppet"? I swear, you people have this out of proportion.
The immunity offered by this bill is retroactive only; it does not extend into the future. People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness if we're going to heal some of the hatred between the Right and Left.
I disagree with those who dispute Obama's honesty, but I can't say that it's an illegitimate discussion to have; there is evidence (which I personally consider weak and uncompelling) which can be used to make a case to that effect.
On what reasonable grounds can Obama's intelligence be disputed? The man graduated from Harvard at the top of his class. He's a published author, and (in my view as a reader) a damned good one. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and if you're going to argue that Obama is unintelligent, you need to provide some support -- as the contrary evidence is quite compelling indeed.
I doubt it. A tumor is "human life" (human DNA, is alive), but it's on par with a tapeworm morally as well.
Prevent the first five posts from being either Anonymous Cowards or user accounts registered within the last three days.
Not that it's exactly a "kill switch", per se, as that requires some entity with control, as opposed to an automated process doing its job.
I believe the airplane kill switches discussed previously are intended to force the plane to an autopilot mode programmed with a large number of no-fly zones, as opposed to simply immobilizing the controls.
That said, it's still up in the air on features for those; I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate winner allows full remote control; that is somewhere the implementation (and operational) security needs to be bulletproof.