In all seriousness, they need to do something about the extensions. Refuse to host leaky ones or something. Extensions can't be Firefox's killer feature if they make it eat all of your RAM.
I can't agree more. Things are much better than they used to be, but oofda. So much for 640K -- FF is currently using up almost 1GB with about a dozen tabs open, and with AdBlock Plus, NoScript, IE Tab2, Firebug, User Agent Switcher.
The Salton Sea was formerly part of the Gulf of Cortez, at least until the Colorado River delta expanded across the gulf and blocked off the northern portion. The surface of the Sea is currently some 200 feet below sea level (i.e. the surface of the ocean), similar to Death Valley, and the size of the Sea fluctuates depending on changes in precipitation and how much river water is not diverted for other purposes. The Salton Sea is probably not permanent, and has in fact shrunk noticeably due to evaporation as the years have passed. The Wikipedia article has some photos of derelict structures that used to be on the Salton Sea shore.
Wouldn't it look better to just leave the primary volume unencrypted and then have an encrypted hidden volume?
If they don't think to look for it then they won't ask?
As I understand it, an encrypted volume still appears on the disk. If you have the encrypted volume in a separate partition, that's easy enough to find -- "oh, hey, what's all this data over here, then?" If you have the encrypted volume stored within the same partition as the unencrypted volume, then it shows up as a file in the unencrypted filesystem -- "oh, hey, what's all this data over here, then?"
The only way to have a hidden volume that you can plausibly hide is to hide it inside another encrypted volume. Properly configured, this obscures even the existence of the volume you want to hide.
If a half assed regime could down a multi-billion dollar super high tech weapon with shit bought at Home Depot, people might question if all those juicy contracts are really necessary.
Half-assed is hyphenated, you insensitive clod!
And, as they say, two half-asseds make an ass whole!
In Danish there are 3 correct plurals of virus: virusser, virus, and vira. The first is too ugly to live and the second is annoying because it's the same as the singular, so vira is in common use.
Very informative. Tusind tak!
(NB: Danish is the language of about half my ancestors, only three or four generations ago. I tried studying Danish from a book + audio set once, but the materials gave no indication for where glottal stops show up -- as in the name "Sørensen", for instance -- and I gave up out of frustration. Ah, well. Life's too short to waste time on badly done teaching materials.)
I think you are not quite doing justice to the subject. The Latin Language Forum has a rather longer treatment of it.
In Neo-Latin the plural is vira.
Interesting thread; I recall reading something along those lines some years ago, but clearly forgot the conclusion.
While this certainly fills in details lacking from my post, the issue at hand in Gotung's post and then in geekoid's reply was the proper plural in English. I'm not sure if a word borrowed from classical Latin into modern English should use Neo-Latin forms, at least not when there are already perfectly serviceable English forms available.
Since we now know that there are a plural number of infinities, it only stands to reason that "uncountable" should be extended to also have a plural form.
Further, although Latin is officially a "dead" language (ie: no longer evolving), there is no reason why it can't be undead and therefore still have new words added to the dictionary.
The word "virus" in the discussion here might derive from the Latin, but in modern English discourse the term has clearly been borrowed into the English language and is used as English. There's no need to change anything about Latin dictionary entries unless something changes in how Latin itself is used, as Latin.
...the really bad stuff that the evolution of these virii WILL produce at some point.
NOT. VIRII.
You sound like an idiot.
Indeed. The closest Latin word to virii would be viri, which is just the plural for vir, "a man". So I guess the GGP might be right -- "the evolution of these virii^Wmen" *has* produced some really bad stuff.
More pedantically though, assuming virii existed as the plural of some Latin word, the rules state that the singular would be virius -- still not virus, and not a word in any language that I'm aware of.
Going the other way from singular to plural and using basic Latin rules, many people might look at virus and assume you just change the -us to -i to make the plural, but that gives us viri again -- meaning "men" as the plural of "a man". Looking deeper, we find that the actual Latin word virus was uncountable, so it never even had a plural in Latin -- so applying Latin rules for deriving the plural is just silly.
Applying English rules for plural formation to the *countable* *English* word virus gives us the proper plural form viruses.
Any vaccine will ruin a test for antibodies. What we need is a direct test for the bacteria.
It lives in the lungs... FOR GOD SAKES!
Not just there. My grandmother-in-law had a dormant colony discovered in her rectum. Whee.
Well some Indian had clearly blown smoke up her ass at some point in the past.
In her case, it would have had to have been a "feather" Indian, not a "dot" Indian -- she spent most of her life in Texas, and never left North America.
Insurance is the very definition of getting someone else to pay for you.
I'm not sure you understand how insurance works. Whether or not insurance means getting someone else to pay for you depends entirely on how much you've paid into the system, and how much insurance payout you (successfully) claim.
In a very simple example, if I've paid $150/mo for five years and only make one claim of $500, of which only $200 is over my deductible, the insurance company is ahead by $8,800.
In the specific context of TB vaccinations, I rather doubt that the cost of a child's vaccination will exceed the revenue brought in by the parents' insurance payments for that month.
That doesn't stop him arguing the facts, it just means the court won't listen. Which in some ways is where the crux of these extradition cases (O'Dwyr, McKinnon, even the Assange one to a degree) - there are no issues with getting a "fair trial" or humane treatment in the other country *in theory*, we just don't trust them in practice.
Reminds me of that old schtick, "I wish I lived in Theory -- everything works there."
Of course, if he gets to the US, he then may face a completely different trial under US law, where he will be able to argue facts, not just points of law...
Oh, dear -- you sound confused. When the RIAA can claim billions in damages from piracy, even as profits rise and studies show that music downloaders are likely to buy more music than people who don't download, I think it's been clearly established that US court cases don't have a lot to do with these "facts" that you mention, at least when it comes to the media conglomerates.
Now you know why many small countries are trying to build nukes. They need protection against a certain global abuser.
This is currently modded "Score:2, Troll", which looks to me like evidence that folks are modding Troll when they don't like what the poster has to say -- as the actual comment content is fully on the money in any broad global politics sense.
The simple truth of the matter is that the US is the world's biggest bully right now. Given the precarious nature of the US's position, what with oil dependency, a weak currency that depends on OPEC only accepting dollars even as many oil producers talk about accepting different currencies, and the rising strengths of the BRICS nations, among other changing issues, the US has been stepping up its worldwide saber-rattling and bombing runs. Less-powerful nations who are not aligned with the US view the US as a threat, probably correctly, particularly those nations that do not have nukes and who do have things the US wants. In Iran's case, it's clearly oil; in North Korea's case, it's probably more the old real estate dictum of location, location, location.
Mods, don't use the Troll mod to disagree with someone -- post a rebuttal instead. The Troll mod is intended for folks actually trolling -- riling others up with intentionally misleading and -- this is important -- bogus posts. That fellow who used to post controversial chiropractic quackery? That was a troll. TheDarkMaster posting a controversial, but arguably quite correct, analysis of global political realities? That is not a troll.
No one's forcing them to do any of those things. I think we need to get past the idea that if you invest money that you deserve a profit, and any laws that protect that profit are good ones.
Sooooo....isn't that the definition of an investment? Because you're expecting to get some profit? I think what you're proposing would simply discourage people from investing.
Your comment on its own sounds like you're talking just about investing, in a somewhat disjointed way. However, in the context of dbet's preceding comment, it sounds more like you're advocating any law that props up any profit model, which would be horribly destructive to society -- and which many could (and some already do) argue is already much of what's wrong with US lawmaking these days.
EFF: This bill will infringe on users' rights, burden ISP's and search engines, and create a climate where corporations and the media industry completely control the internet with no oversight.
I imagined the second line a bit differently:
Representative: Well, you've made an excellent point--well argued, reasonable, and strongly supported. And in fact that's what this bill is supposed to do, so I don't see any problems here. All in favor?
Even hospital personnel with only occasional, incidental proximity to x-ray devices wear film badges. I'm honestly surprised that people operating technology that emits ionizing radiation aren't wearing exposure devices already!
Guess how highly educated the average TSA line worker is. Now compare this with the average education level for hospital personnel. I suspect this disparity might have something to do with the lack of dosimeters among TSA workers.
Somehow I missed noticing it in the preview, but the line you reply to here was actually from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. I must have borked the markup, as the quote tags clearly didn't work the way I'd intended.
That aside, I fully agree with the points you make, and I was actually trying to make similar points in reply to Gr8Apes.
I screwed up the markup -- the "and how is it against the law" paragraph in my previous post was instead from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. Apologies for the confusion.
The next three quotes are actually what I wrote, but your reply makes me think that you think I was replying to you? Gr8Apes brought up Yemen and the war "proclamation" in his post, as I intended to quote in my reply. I fully agree that you (Jane Q. Public) said none of those things.
In the same mien, my exhortation to read the Constitution and Bill of Rights were directed at Gr8Apes. I've read your posts over the years with interest precisely because you come across as well-versed in US political history as you do.
... or maybe something is horribly wrong with Slashdot today? I hit the "Reply to This" link under Gr8Apes post, and my reply to that does appear just now as properly below Gr8Apes post -- does it show up differently for you?
"... Maybe we should strap black boxes to all our politicians."
Don't be foolish, they would explode from all the weaving, diving, bobbing, feints, corrections, double-backs and plowing through verbal feces (the black boxes, not the politicians.
Exploding politicians would still be nice.
(At least, ones that explode if they do too much weaving, diving, bobbing, feints, corrections, double-backs and plowing through verbal feces.)
However, no attempt was made to capture al-Awlaki. Instead a concerted (successful) attempt was made to assassinate him, and in fact in such a way that capture was not ever possible. The act was against both U.S. and international law.
No, it is NOT "black and white". It's just plain black. It wasn't war, it was murder. According to the law.
And how is it against the law? The strike was done in Yemen, with Yemen's permission and approval. So no sovereignty was violated, no treaties broken. So what law(s) were broken? You'd have to come up with that before it can be called murder. And it is a black and white case. The US killed him under a war proclamation. You may disagree with that, but that's also black and white.
You attempt to justify this by stating that Yemen's sovereignty was not violated, but this is wholly irrelevant. The issue is not whether Yemen as a state was aggrieved -- the issue is that the US government is openly assassinating people without any recourse to due process protections guaranteed under the Constitution. And please read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- they actually aren't that long, and you'll find that they distinguish between citizens and people or persons, with most of the rights and protections applying broadly to this latter category (i.e., to everybody, regardless of citizenship).
Assuming that US law still counts for something, then how is it possibly anything other than murder to kill al-Awlaki (and two weeks later his 16-year-old son) without any attempt at applying due process? For example, what was he charged with? Who issued his arrest warrant? How was arrest attempted? Who was put in immediate danger of bodily harm, and how, to justify the application of deadly force during the attempted arrest?
But there were no charges, not proper formal legal charges. There was no arrest warrant issued. There was no arrest attempted. No one was in immediate danger of harm.
You also attempt to make the case that there was some sort of "war proclamation" that justifies this, which suggests that you're a bit confused about war legalities. War in any legal sense is declared by the US Congress, not "proclaimed". And, for that matter, there have only ever been five declared wars that the US has participated in throughout the whole course of US history. More here. The only two in the 20th century were WWI and WWII; none have yet been declared in the 21st century. (Think about that for a moment. For all the war the US wages, most of it isn't even legal by the US's own standards.)
Your argument fails, due to misinformation. Please, read the foundational documents of US law. You will learn much. Notably, you will find that the underlying legal framework of the US is designed to be as fair and impartial as possible, precisely in order to protect against the "we don't like you so we're going to kill you" kind of indiscriminate state behavior that the US government is increasingly fond of.
Everybody says they are the "good guys". Who comes right out and says they are evil? The world isn't black and white, anyways, though the fight against Hitler and his dictator allies was about as black and white as it gets.
Agreed; by then, Germany had really run off the rails. I also feel we did right by Japan, when we rebooted their society after the war and turned them into a Western-style state that is vastly more free and efficient than it was.
I'm not taking any issue with your comment about rebooting Japan. And I don't take issue with your comment about Japan being freer than it was under the Tôjô regime.
However, the bit about "turned them into a Western-style state that is vastly more... efficient than it was" suggests you've not spent much time living there. For all its outward trappings, Japan really isn't all that Western:
The emphasis is very much on the group, not the individual.
Authority is treated in a very different way.
Conflict is avoided much more than what we see in the US or Europe.
Japanese efficiency might not be as recent or as Western as you make it out to be. Read up on the story of engineering the Mitsubishi Zero for one example. Or look to how Toyota's just-in-time inventory management beat the pants off Detroit for another example.
Ideas of personal interconnectedness and what each person owes everyone else in their lives are very different than in the West (a bit like karma, only backwards -- doing something good for someone when they're down is seen as taking advantage of them, because now they owe you; see Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword for an analysis that still holds broadly true some 70 years later).
Ideas of time are different as well -- the US business obsession with quarterly earnings, and the consequent downward spiral in overall economic activity, just doesn't happen there, and companies still draft plans for the coming five to ten years (I'm not saying that these get followed to the letter, but even just thinking about things that far out leads to different behavior).
Stereotypes aren't something to be abhorred and avoided, as in the US, but instead are a real basic part of how society functions, part of the cognitive streamlining that eases different kinds of social interrelations.
These are just a few of the bigger differences that I can come up with off the cuff. The biggest change in Japan from getting smacked down by the US was a broad realization that the Japanese people are not the best, not the godliest people, simply by dint of losing. Thinking they were the best led to mass hubris, out of the belief that everyone else was somehow less human. (... Some might extend that to the way the US has been behaving lately, but that's grist for a different mill.) From most else that I've read and heard about, however, Japan wasn't all that Westernized in the process. Modern Japanese culture has more in common with South Korea (and possibly even China?) than it does with the US or UK or EU.
Slashdot Mirror
Multi-threading in JS is handled by web workers.
Oh, great! So now we're outsourcing even more textile jobs to anyone willing to work online, is that it? Sheesh!
(On a more serious note, thank you for that informative link.)
In all seriousness, they need to do something about the extensions. Refuse to host leaky ones or something. Extensions can't be Firefox's killer feature if they make it eat all of your RAM.
I can't agree more. Things are much better than they used to be, but oofda. So much for 640K -- FF is currently using up almost 1GB with about a dozen tabs open, and with AdBlock Plus, NoScript, IE Tab2, Firebug, User Agent Switcher.
Cheers,
The Salton Sea was formerly part of the Gulf of Cortez, at least until the Colorado River delta expanded across the gulf and blocked off the northern portion. The surface of the Sea is currently some 200 feet below sea level (i.e. the surface of the ocean), similar to Death Valley, and the size of the Sea fluctuates depending on changes in precipitation and how much river water is not diverted for other purposes. The Salton Sea is probably not permanent, and has in fact shrunk noticeably due to evaporation as the years have passed. The Wikipedia article has some photos of derelict structures that used to be on the Salton Sea shore.
Cheers,
Wouldn't it look better to just leave the primary volume unencrypted and then have an encrypted hidden volume?
If they don't think to look for it then they won't ask?
As I understand it, an encrypted volume still appears on the disk. If you have the encrypted volume in a separate partition, that's easy enough to find -- "oh, hey, what's all this data over here, then?" If you have the encrypted volume stored within the same partition as the unencrypted volume, then it shows up as a file in the unencrypted filesystem -- "oh, hey, what's all this data over here, then?"
The only way to have a hidden volume that you can plausibly hide is to hide it inside another encrypted volume. Properly configured, this obscures even the existence of the volume you want to hide.
Cheers,
If a half assed regime could down a multi-billion dollar super high tech weapon with shit bought at Home Depot, people might question if all those juicy contracts are really necessary.
Half-assed is hyphenated, you insensitive clod!
And, as they say, two half-asseds make an ass whole!
I'm here all week, folks. Try the veal.
...now where's that scotch...
In Danish there are 3 correct plurals of virus: virusser, virus, and vira. The first is too ugly to live and the second is annoying because it's the same as the singular, so vira is in common use.
Very informative. Tusind tak!
(NB: Danish is the language of about half my ancestors, only three or four generations ago. I tried studying Danish from a book + audio set once, but the materials gave no indication for where glottal stops show up -- as in the name "Sørensen", for instance -- and I gave up out of frustration. Ah, well. Life's too short to waste time on badly done teaching materials.)
I think you are not quite doing justice to the subject. The Latin Language Forum has a rather longer treatment of it.
In Neo-Latin the plural is vira.
Interesting thread; I recall reading something along those lines some years ago, but clearly forgot the conclusion.
While this certainly fills in details lacking from my post, the issue at hand in Gotung's post and then in geekoid's reply was the proper plural in English. I'm not sure if a word borrowed from classical Latin into modern English should use Neo-Latin forms, at least not when there are already perfectly serviceable English forms available.
Cheers,
Since we now know that there are a plural number of infinities, it only stands to reason that "uncountable" should be extended to also have a plural form.
Further, although Latin is officially a "dead" language (ie: no longer evolving), there is no reason why it can't be undead and therefore still have new words added to the dictionary.
The word "virus" in the discussion here might derive from the Latin, but in modern English discourse the term has clearly been borrowed into the English language and is used as English. There's no need to change anything about Latin dictionary entries unless something changes in how Latin itself is used, as Latin.
Cheers,
...the really bad stuff that the evolution of these virii WILL produce at some point.
NOT. VIRII.
You sound like an idiot.
Indeed. The closest Latin word to virii would be viri, which is just the plural for vir, "a man". So I guess the GGP might be right -- "the evolution of these virii^Wmen" *has* produced some really bad stuff.
More pedantically though, assuming virii existed as the plural of some Latin word, the rules state that the singular would be virius -- still not virus, and not a word in any language that I'm aware of.
Going the other way from singular to plural and using basic Latin rules, many people might look at virus and assume you just change the -us to -i to make the plural, but that gives us viri again -- meaning "men" as the plural of "a man". Looking deeper, we find that the actual Latin word virus was uncountable , so it never even had a plural in Latin -- so applying Latin rules for deriving the plural is just silly.
Applying English rules for plural formation to the *countable* *English* word virus gives us the proper plural form viruses.
Cheers,
No, the researchers are themselves a highly evolved mutation of the influenza virus.
Which mean that they can't produce offspring unless they infect you?
Whatever you do, don't click the link!
:-P
Any vaccine will ruin a test for antibodies. What we need is a direct test for the bacteria.
It lives in the lungs... FOR GOD SAKES!
Not just there. My grandmother-in-law had a dormant colony discovered in her rectum. Whee.
Well some Indian had clearly blown smoke up her ass at some point in the past.
In her case, it would have had to have been a "feather" Indian, not a "dot" Indian -- she spent most of her life in Texas, and never left North America.
Any vaccine will ruin a test for antibodies. What we need is a direct test for the bacteria.
It lives in the lungs... FOR GOD SAKES!
Not just there. My grandmother-in-law had a dormant colony discovered in her rectum. Whee.
Insurance is the very definition of getting someone else to pay for you.
I'm not sure you understand how insurance works. Whether or not insurance means getting someone else to pay for you depends entirely on how much you've paid into the system, and how much insurance payout you (successfully) claim.
In a very simple example, if I've paid $150/mo for five years and only make one claim of $500, of which only $200 is over my deductible, the insurance company is ahead by $8,800.
In the specific context of TB vaccinations, I rather doubt that the cost of a child's vaccination will exceed the revenue brought in by the parents' insurance payments for that month.
Cheers,
That doesn't stop him arguing the facts, it just means the court won't listen. Which in some ways is where the crux of these extradition cases (O'Dwyr, McKinnon, even the Assange one to a degree) - there are no issues with getting a "fair trial" or humane treatment in the other country *in theory*, we just don't trust them in practice.
Reminds me of that old schtick, "I wish I lived in Theory -- everything works there."
Ah, well.
Of course, if he gets to the US, he then may face a completely different trial under US law, where he will be able to argue facts, not just points of law...
Oh, dear -- you sound confused. When the RIAA can claim billions in damages from piracy, even as profits rise and studies show that music downloaders are likely to buy more music than people who don't download, I think it's been clearly established that US court cases don't have a lot to do with these "facts" that you mention, at least when it comes to the media conglomerates.
Now you know why many small countries are trying to build nukes. They need protection against a certain global abuser.
This is currently modded "Score:2, Troll", which looks to me like evidence that folks are modding Troll when they don't like what the poster has to say -- as the actual comment content is fully on the money in any broad global politics sense.
The simple truth of the matter is that the US is the world's biggest bully right now. Given the precarious nature of the US's position, what with oil dependency, a weak currency that depends on OPEC only accepting dollars even as many oil producers talk about accepting different currencies, and the rising strengths of the BRICS nations, among other changing issues, the US has been stepping up its worldwide saber-rattling and bombing runs. Less-powerful nations who are not aligned with the US view the US as a threat, probably correctly, particularly those nations that do not have nukes and who do have things the US wants. In Iran's case, it's clearly oil; in North Korea's case, it's probably more the old real estate dictum of location, location, location.
Mods, don't use the Troll mod to disagree with someone -- post a rebuttal instead. The Troll mod is intended for folks actually trolling -- riling others up with intentionally misleading and -- this is important -- bogus posts. That fellow who used to post controversial chiropractic quackery? That was a troll. TheDarkMaster posting a controversial, but arguably quite correct, analysis of global political realities? That is not a troll.
Cheers,
No one's forcing them to do any of those things. I think we need to get past the idea that if you invest money that you deserve a profit, and any laws that protect that profit are good ones.
Sooooo....isn't that the definition of an investment? Because you're expecting to get some profit? I think what you're proposing would simply discourage people from investing.
Your comment on its own sounds like you're talking just about investing, in a somewhat disjointed way. However, in the context of dbet's preceding comment, it sounds more like you're advocating any law that props up any profit model, which would be horribly destructive to society -- and which many could (and some already do) argue is already much of what's wrong with US lawmaking these days.
EFF: This bill will infringe on users' rights, burden ISP's and search engines, and create a climate where corporations and the media industry completely control the internet with no oversight.
I imagined the second line a bit differently:
Representative: Well, you've made an excellent point--well argued, reasonable, and strongly supported. And in fact that's what this bill is supposed to do, so I don't see any problems here. All in favor?
For those unfamiliar with the concept "face", it's the social equivalent of getting modded -1
So what happens when you lose Facebook? It's been so long since I logged in, I've forgotten how. Does that mean I get modded -1000000000?
Even hospital personnel with only occasional, incidental proximity to x-ray devices wear film badges. I'm honestly surprised that people operating technology that emits ionizing radiation aren't wearing exposure devices already!
Guess how highly educated the average TSA line worker is. Now compare this with the average education level for hospital personnel. I suspect this disparity might have something to do with the lack of dosimeters among TSA workers.
Somehow I missed noticing it in the preview, but the line you reply to here was actually from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. I must have borked the markup, as the quote tags clearly didn't work the way I'd intended.
That aside, I fully agree with the points you make, and I was actually trying to make similar points in reply to Gr8Apes.
Cheers,
I screwed up the markup -- the "and how is it against the law" paragraph in my previous post was instead from the post by Gr8Apes that I was replying to. Apologies for the confusion.
The next three quotes are actually what I wrote, but your reply makes me think that you think I was replying to you? Gr8Apes brought up Yemen and the war "proclamation" in his post, as I intended to quote in my reply. I fully agree that you (Jane Q. Public) said none of those things.
In the same mien, my exhortation to read the Constitution and Bill of Rights were directed at Gr8Apes. I've read your posts over the years with interest precisely because you come across as well-versed in US political history as you do.
... or maybe something is horribly wrong with Slashdot today? I hit the "Reply to This" link under Gr8Apes post, and my reply to that does appear just now as properly below Gr8Apes post -- does it show up differently for you?
Cheers,
"... Maybe we should strap black boxes to all our politicians."
Don't be foolish, they would explode from all the weaving, diving, bobbing, feints, corrections, double-backs and plowing through verbal feces (the black boxes, not the politicians.
Exploding politicians would still be nice.
(At least, ones that explode if they do too much weaving, diving, bobbing, feints, corrections, double-backs and plowing through verbal feces.)
However, no attempt was made to capture al-Awlaki. Instead a concerted (successful) attempt was made to assassinate him, and in fact in such a way that capture was not ever possible. The act was against both U.S. and international law.
No, it is NOT "black and white". It's just plain black. It wasn't war, it was murder. According to the law.
And how is it against the law? The strike was done in Yemen, with Yemen's permission and approval. So no sovereignty was violated, no treaties broken. So what law(s) were broken? You'd have to come up with that before it can be called murder. And it is a black and white case. The US killed him under a war proclamation. You may disagree with that, but that's also black and white.
You attempt to justify this by stating that Yemen's sovereignty was not violated, but this is wholly irrelevant. The issue is not whether Yemen as a state was aggrieved -- the issue is that the US government is openly assassinating people without any recourse to due process protections guaranteed under the Constitution. And please read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- they actually aren't that long, and you'll find that they distinguish between citizens and people or persons, with most of the rights and protections applying broadly to this latter category (i.e., to everybody, regardless of citizenship).
Assuming that US law still counts for something, then how is it possibly anything other than murder to kill al-Awlaki (and two weeks later his 16-year-old son) without any attempt at applying due process? For example, what was he charged with? Who issued his arrest warrant? How was arrest attempted? Who was put in immediate danger of bodily harm, and how, to justify the application of deadly force during the attempted arrest?
But there were no charges, not proper formal legal charges. There was no arrest warrant issued. There was no arrest attempted. No one was in immediate danger of harm.
You also attempt to make the case that there was some sort of "war proclamation" that justifies this, which suggests that you're a bit confused about war legalities. War in any legal sense is declared by the US Congress, not "proclaimed". And, for that matter, there have only ever been five declared wars that the US has participated in throughout the whole course of US history. More here. The only two in the 20th century were WWI and WWII; none have yet been declared in the 21st century. (Think about that for a moment. For all the war the US wages, most of it isn't even legal by the US's own standards.)
Your argument fails, due to misinformation. Please, read the foundational documents of US law. You will learn much. Notably, you will find that the underlying legal framework of the US is designed to be as fair and impartial as possible, precisely in order to protect against the "we don't like you so we're going to kill you" kind of indiscriminate state behavior that the US government is increasingly fond of.
Everybody says they are the "good guys". Who comes right out and says they are evil? The world isn't black and white, anyways, though the fight against Hitler and his dictator allies was about as black and white as it gets.
Agreed; by then, Germany had really run off the rails. I also feel we did right by Japan, when we rebooted their society after the war and turned them into a Western-style state that is vastly more free and efficient than it was.
I'm not taking any issue with your comment about rebooting Japan. And I don't take issue with your comment about Japan being freer than it was under the Tôjô regime.
However, the bit about "turned them into a Western-style state that is vastly more ... efficient than it was" suggests you've not spent much time living there. For all its outward trappings, Japan really isn't all that Western:
These are just a few of the bigger differences that I can come up with off the cuff. The biggest change in Japan from getting smacked down by the US was a broad realization that the Japanese people are not the best, not the godliest people, simply by dint of losing. Thinking they were the best led to mass hubris, out of the belief that everyone else was somehow less human. (... Some might extend that to the way the US has been behaving lately, but that's grist for a different mill.) From most else that I've read and heard about, however, Japan wasn't all that Westernized in the process. Modern Japanese culture has more in common with South Korea (and possibly even China?) than it does with the US or UK or EU.
Cheers,