You're just redefining terms in contradictory fashion. There was no appeal to a divine being, hence no theocracy.
The essence of theocracy is not an appeal to a divine being. The essence of theocracy is claiming your national system reflects the "natural order of reality", which in times past was described in terms of gods and in Soviet Russia in terms of ideology, which described the both history, future and such details as how to make frost-proof wheat (with predicatable results). It even had its priest class: the Communist Party. It persecuted heretics and killed them, after extorting a confession about dealing with the Devil - excuse me, "counter-revolutionaries". And so on and so on.
In other words, theocracy is perhaps the ultimate expression of human hubris and unwarranted self-importance.
Putting the leader on a pedestal is not the same as saying the supernatural ruler in the sky has blessed your rule.
No, but claiming the entire world is going to see the light and join your nation because fate says so is.
The cost of this is extreme - by some estimates, most people pay 30-60% of their earnings for the year to support such a structure (if you don't understand the average 22% cost of goods as embedded income taxes, google for the Harvard economics study).
And after they do, the remaining 70-40% is still enough to cause the obesity epidemic. Percentages are meaningless when comparing two different cakes; it's the final size of your slice that matters.
And the more the US outsources, the less will be there when the USD loses its value.
Someone once likened private enterprise to the strong workhorse of economy. Well, guess what? Workhorses don't plow the fields unless the farmer makes them, they just sit around and eat the seed corn. Shake off the laizzes-faire, grab the reins and force the companies to send production back home.
And it's not "so much" of the population, it's every single human being who has ever existed. The current financial crisis is no more tangible, objective reality than Zeus was. The European Union is a system of interlocking myths, just like United States is. Democracy is a mythic system, monarchy was one, and priest-kings ruled by it. Everything in you that isn't harwired instinct is a myth, either instilled from outside or invented by you, constantly interpreting reality for you and making you see things which aren't really there - family, nation, corporation, law, etc. Remove those, and all that's left is "Chaos, a gaping pit, waiting to swallow us all."
So the relevant questions are not whether a particular myth is "real" (consistent with the metaphysical structure of physical reality, which is generally impossible to know at this time), but whether it is whether it's "true" (let's you accurately predict the consequences of various social actions) and "useful" (is likely to inspire people to productivity rather than murder, altough this obviously depends on your viewpoint and goals). That's why everyone should study various religions, specifically the structure of their mythology and its practical results. Mythology is the social equivalent of fundamental physics, it makes up our reality, and we either master it or it continues to master us.
However, I do NOT agree there's a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public space, not even in Germany.
Of course there is, the expectation is just different than at home. The problem with photos is that they can be used to track your movements after the fact, and as technology improves this is slowly but surely becoming utterly trivial. There is no expectation that you are not seen by other pedestrians but there is the expectation that the NSA can't get a list of all persons who's gaze lingered longer than average on the news stories about the missing Malaysian flight and who's path has taken them near a mosque more often than 3/4 of the population in the past year.
Situations change, and one of the changes computers are bringing is that it's actually technologically possible to stalk everyone 24/7, and process the resulting data. And unless other social and economic factors also undergo a massive shift, the only way to stop Western states from becoming nightmarish parodies of East Germany is to ban it from being used.
We've never had it better here in fact, than since that monstrosity of a union disappeared, and Russians could have had it just as good, were it not for Putin.
And yet when either old age or an "accident" does Putin in, the next leader will be about the same or worse. Putin might make a passable impression of a supervillain, but he's just a man; he didn't beat people into submission with his superpowers, he rose to power because he's the kind of person who gets power in a country like Russia.
So no, Russians couldn't have had it just as good were it not for Putin. Some details would be different, but the country would still be just as authoritarian and obsessed with domination. Lenin did away with the outer trappings but not the inner essence of Czarism, and added a cartful of "ends justify the means" to the mix, which then made Stalin the best available match for the resulting muderous abomination. The later leaders then renounced Stalin but not the essence of the system, and the ball simply kept rolling until the empire collapsed. But even then only the symbols and forms of Russian institutions changed, while the heart of the system went to live on. Which then led to Putin's being the next behind to keep the throne of Czars warm.
Until something is done to its national psychosis, Russia will always be a country where a leader like Putin is the best people can hope for, since he's the least nasty embodiment of Russian national spirit (which still makes him pretty damn nasty). Did I say leader? Because all decisions of importance are made by the nature of the Russian system, and Putin simply handles the logistics of implementing them, getting his share of the loot as payment.
Every country has the government it deserves, and Russia is no exception.
We don't want to be separated with friends by national borders just because some moron wants a toy state to play with.
National borders don't need to separate people any more than, say, city limits do. In a free country, crossing the border is a formality, and many neighbour states have dispensed with even those. It's empires who make a huge deal of borders; normal nations treat them as legislation handover points.
I don't know what you understand under socialist and dictatorship, but these 2 terms are mutually exclusive. USSR was fascist.
USSR was a secular theocracy. It treated Marxism - or "Dialectic Materialism" - as revealed truth, and as theocrats usually do, made more shit up as it went along. If and when reality disagreed with revelation, it got ignored or violently suppressed. And it never really changed: people got tired and disappointed with their prophet, just like they'd gotten tired and disappointed with the Czar earlier, and abandoned him. But the spirit of autocracy - the myth of divine leader - lived on, thus Putin is now enthroned as the new Czar, just like Stalin before him. Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss.
And no, USSR was not fascist. Fascism and Stalinism are both manifestations of something far older and nastier, a sickness that to some extent pervades all human societies. All who try to build a utopia reach the point where it seems the goal is just within range if they only sacrifice a few people to reach it. If they don't, the paradise remains flawed, and if they do, it turns into a nightmare - just like Soviet Union and various fascist regimes did.
Of course, the US also did exactly that to win the Cold War, and it seems the bill is now coming due. Time will tell how far the "land of the free" will fall before what it's unleashed is done with it.
But the fact that electric car advocate geeks will take issue with the above scenario and will make endless excuses for their technology and will dismiss very legitimate practical concerns with electric says a lot about how detached from reality the electric car movement really is right now.
The NSA hasn't been cancelled, or even had a major budget cut. Ergo clearly bad government programs and agencies continue. Has even one person responsible for that mess been fired?
Why would they be? The NSA "gets the job done". The job it's doing is dirty, but the fault for that lies on the feet of the people who gave it its mandate - ultimately American people.
Besides, even if the NSA was destroyed, the problem that gave it birth would still exist: taking national security to be a concern overriding all other considerations, including rights of individuals. As long as America is more important than Americans, something like the NSA will always exist.
However, the article's author throws around massive and mass as if they are also measuring the mass of the star "50% more massive than heavyweight Betelgeuse" - I don't think the actual astronomers are talking about mass...
Astronomers almost always measure stars by mass, both because it's more informative - mass determines things like fusion rate and lifespan - and because volume of a star is both hard to measure from distance and not really well defined, since stars are made of gas and thus don't have a well-defined surface.
That said, this particular article specifically says "1300 times the diameter of the Sun", which gives it about 7 million times the volume of the Sun.
for some reason it's seldom thought that we could just remove the bad policies that prevent price elasticity (which is a very important component to the free market).
Economy exists to fulfil people's needs. Price elasticity endagers this by putting people out of work. Some elasticity is necessary, since it acts as a control signal for production chains, but too much takes the system out of its operational parameters. This could be prevented by guaranteeing an unconditional sufficient minimum income to live on, but that conflicts with the prevailing mythology of justification through hard work, and would likely create its own problems. Not that there's much choice as automation proceeds to shift limiting factor of industrial output away from manpower to energy and raw materials.
It is irrational - but sadly common - to place maximum effectiveness of a system over the very end the system exists to achieve.
Man's hubris is large enough to obscure vision and good judgement. When we were little more than barely civilized, our insecurities probably collectively led us to this massive overcompensation that skewed our judgement of the other mammals' intelligence.
No, the truth is nastier: if elephants are not intelligent, it's okay to shoot them for ivory. If pigs are not intelligent, it's okay to slaughter them for delicious bacon. And so forth.
This is, of course, the exact same way humans treat each other too. In the past, suitable victims were determined on the basis of race or religion; in this more civilized time, the prime factor seems to be socioeconomic status.
It's not hubris that's at the core of human evil, it's the willingness to lie to ourselves whenever it's convenient.
I do not mean to be insincere, but why would the government or anyone else for that matter directly pay the victims of a natural disaster $500,000?
I can understand a large amount of money being diverted by the government or charities to help the victims recover, either physically with homes or psychologically with mental health services.
Power. The disaster had a human component of insufficient preparation, with Fukushima being the most famous part of it. Letting the government maintain control over relief funds can very easily turn into extortion: "I have this nice house. You could have it... If you told all these nice journalists there was nothing more we could had done."
It doesn't necessarily have to be the intention of the government. A badly traumatised person is hypersensitive to danger, and will perceive everything in terms of possible threats. But also, Japanese culture does seem to put a lot of value in saving face and loyalty to the superior, so a bureaucrat might experience a conflict of interests and misjudge, perceiving his duties to include things they don't.
Also, having money lets people to reintegrate to the economy, while having access to aid services doesn't. Poverty and trauma are a bad starter combo for rebuilding your life.
It takes time and effort to heal, not necessarily money.
It takes time and security to heal, and that includes financial security. As long as you have to divert all your energy into ensuring basic necessities, you will at most cover over the scars. And untreated trauma is a nasty thing: it twists your perspective and leads to irrational behaviour. Apart from this leading to personal tragedy, having hundreds of thousands of irrational people in a stressful situation is a recipe for trouble.
Arab oil-producing companies have been found backing environmental groups, to fight the introduction of new supply into their markets, which would depress prices.
Of course, the actual effect of this is to ensure North America gets to keep its reserves until later, when both the need and price will be even higher. At the same time, higher oil prices encourage investment into alternative means of energy, possibly allowing the entire supply to be exported at that time - and thus used as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
It's best to swallow the pill of peak oil while there's still reserves to use in an emergency.
Sorry, but wind and solar won't get the oranges from the groves in Florida to markets in Maine.
A solar-powered zeppelin might. Automate it, and it might even be economical; let drones hitch rides for a small fee, attaching and detaching (and charging) en-route, and it might be profitable enough to launch a new industry. And didn't Amazon plan to start delivering books by drones?
The whole reason America (and the rest of the world) relies so heavily on trucking is that airplanes use a lot of fuel, while railroads require a lot of maintenance. There's a clear business opportunity for a mode of transport that is fuel-efficient (=cheap), reasonable fast and doesn't depend on infrastructure or land between the endpoints.
And even if zeppelins don't work, the fact is that oil is getting more and more expensive, so if oranges depend on oil for transport, so will they. An economy that depends on an exhaustible resource for a vital function is doomed to collapse. A better power source must be found.
Oil is a nice thing to have, but keeping China and Japan from going to war with each other is far more important because that conflict would fundamentally affect the US and Europe's economies.
Oil shortage would also fundamentally affect the US and Europe's economies by utterly annihilating them, followed by their populations. We're not talking about a bookkeeping problem like the current financial crisis, but an actual total end to almost all production. After all, even France, which runs on nuclear energy, still needs oil to transport goods, including food.
It's fun to live at the end of the era and see the abyss open wide and deep before us, eh? And nothing but windmills and a few failing old nukes to keep our technical civilization, just taking off now, afloat to cross it. And at the same time people like cayenne8 whine when anyone so much as mentions the controls.
Kinda makes one wonder if humanity's not currently encountering the Great Filter.
Government is NOT supposed to be there to try to define or guide my behaviors.
As long as your behaviours have consequences that extend beyond yourself, yes it is.
And as long as you brag about being lazy and irresponsible, it's useless to whine that the big bad government babysits you. Don't want a nanny state? Grow up and prove you don't need one to make you clean up after yourself.
It it NOT wrong to judge someone by their actions or their words.
If you truly believe that, "GameMaster", why don't you tell us your real name, address, and other personally identifying information? Or did you mean it's okay to judge someone else, but not you?
Your right not to be judged goes away when you "stand up and remove all doubt", as the saying goes.
And this is another thing: we aren't talking about being judged. We're talking about being punished. Anonymity lets people air their piece, whether it's a political view, a proposition for a new economic system, or speculation about your mother's sexual activities, without risking their life or livelihood. It's what lets freedom of speech to exist in reality, not just theory, and for everyone, not just those with nothing to lose.
This is, of course, terrible for those who would rather see anyone who disagrees with them made examples of. Authoritarianism is an illness we still can't cure. But anonymity allows us to limit its deadly effect on society.
The founder of bitcoin stopped having a right to be left alone by the media when he chose to design, release, and cultivate a digital currency.
You are the judge of who has what rights on what conditions, now?
You don't get to have your cake and eat it too, there are consequences for actions.
Except for you. You get to publish your views on Slashdot without having to wonder who might hear and take offence. It's these other people who need to live in the Panopticon. Not you. Never you. Always someone else.
Given the influence and wealth it has given them I'm very interested to know who they are. I don't think that's unthical and I think the fact 'whoever they may be' has put effort into remaining anonymous means they must have known people would try to work out who they were when they designed it.
Interesting ethical question, indeed. The thing is, anonymity lets you act without threat of retaliation. That retaliation doesn't need to come in the form of secret police or even a crazy gunman; no, in our society simply having your employment prospects lowered creates an extremely effective chilling effect. And that means that exposing people who wish to remain anonymous is ethical if, and only if, you agree that everyone's actions should be judged by the rich and the powerful, and only independently wealthy people should have any real freedom of action or opinion.
So basically, anonymity would be illegal in a libertarian plutocracy or absolute monarchy and a guaranteed right in a free world, with real countries going somewhere in the middle.
Re:Too Little, Too Late & MtGox
on
The New PHP
·
· Score: 1
A Bloat-A-Matic? Like this?
"Bloat" is unnecessary code that makes a program run slower. Your example is not bloated, just verbose. Given a suitable wire API, it'll likely run faster than parsing SQL requsts sent as text strings. Also, do note that dynamically building complex expressions is far more convenient when you can treat subtrees as objects. Building strings representing complex logic programmatically quickly becomes a complete mess.
However, if you really want to compile said text strings while serving user requests, do something like
compiled_sql = sql_compile("Select blah blah")
And have sql_compile throw an exception if the expression contains string literals. In other words, remove the ability to use anything but prepared statements and the ability to use string literals in said prepared statements, and SQL injection attacks go away.
Bloated:
Verbose, and ridiculously so. Do you think intentionally making up a convoluted interface refutes anything? Especially since you're applying an API meant for preventing SQL injection attacks to mathematical expressions, where it's presumably impossible to wreak havoc no matter what values of B, C or D you supply.
Slashdot Mirror
The essence of theocracy is not an appeal to a divine being. The essence of theocracy is claiming your national system reflects the "natural order of reality", which in times past was described in terms of gods and in Soviet Russia in terms of ideology, which described the both history, future and such details as how to make frost-proof wheat (with predicatable results). It even had its priest class: the Communist Party. It persecuted heretics and killed them, after extorting a confession about dealing with the Devil - excuse me, "counter-revolutionaries". And so on and so on.
In other words, theocracy is perhaps the ultimate expression of human hubris and unwarranted self-importance.
No, but claiming the entire world is going to see the light and join your nation because fate says so is.
And after they do, the remaining 70-40% is still enough to cause the obesity epidemic. Percentages are meaningless when comparing two different cakes; it's the final size of your slice that matters.
Someone once likened private enterprise to the strong workhorse of economy. Well, guess what? Workhorses don't plow the fields unless the farmer makes them, they just sit around and eat the seed corn. Shake off the laizzes-faire, grab the reins and force the companies to send production back home.
Because people can't live apart from society, and a society is is its myths. Or, as Baelish put it: "Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over until we forget that it's a lie." Myths are the reality people live in, "objective reality" is just the scenery.
And it's not "so much" of the population, it's every single human being who has ever existed. The current financial crisis is no more tangible, objective reality than Zeus was. The European Union is a system of interlocking myths, just like United States is. Democracy is a mythic system, monarchy was one, and priest-kings ruled by it. Everything in you that isn't harwired instinct is a myth, either instilled from outside or invented by you, constantly interpreting reality for you and making you see things which aren't really there - family, nation, corporation, law, etc. Remove those, and all that's left is "Chaos, a gaping pit, waiting to swallow us all."
So the relevant questions are not whether a particular myth is "real" (consistent with the metaphysical structure of physical reality, which is generally impossible to know at this time), but whether it is whether it's "true" (let's you accurately predict the consequences of various social actions) and "useful" (is likely to inspire people to productivity rather than murder, altough this obviously depends on your viewpoint and goals). That's why everyone should study various religions, specifically the structure of their mythology and its practical results. Mythology is the social equivalent of fundamental physics, it makes up our reality, and we either master it or it continues to master us.
Of course there is, the expectation is just different than at home. The problem with photos is that they can be used to track your movements after the fact, and as technology improves this is slowly but surely becoming utterly trivial. There is no expectation that you are not seen by other pedestrians but there is the expectation that the NSA can't get a list of all persons who's gaze lingered longer than average on the news stories about the missing Malaysian flight and who's path has taken them near a mosque more often than 3/4 of the population in the past year.
Situations change, and one of the changes computers are bringing is that it's actually technologically possible to stalk everyone 24/7, and process the resulting data. And unless other social and economic factors also undergo a massive shift, the only way to stop Western states from becoming nightmarish parodies of East Germany is to ban it from being used.
Gates is nearing 60, he isn't going to be exerting control over anything for much longer.
Indeed. Our way of establishing tribal superiority is superior.
And yet when either old age or an "accident" does Putin in, the next leader will be about the same or worse. Putin might make a passable impression of a supervillain, but he's just a man; he didn't beat people into submission with his superpowers, he rose to power because he's the kind of person who gets power in a country like Russia.
So no, Russians couldn't have had it just as good were it not for Putin. Some details would be different, but the country would still be just as authoritarian and obsessed with domination. Lenin did away with the outer trappings but not the inner essence of Czarism, and added a cartful of "ends justify the means" to the mix, which then made Stalin the best available match for the resulting muderous abomination. The later leaders then renounced Stalin but not the essence of the system, and the ball simply kept rolling until the empire collapsed. But even then only the symbols and forms of Russian institutions changed, while the heart of the system went to live on. Which then led to Putin's being the next behind to keep the throne of Czars warm.
Until something is done to its national psychosis, Russia will always be a country where a leader like Putin is the best people can hope for, since he's the least nasty embodiment of Russian national spirit (which still makes him pretty damn nasty). Did I say leader? Because all decisions of importance are made by the nature of the Russian system, and Putin simply handles the logistics of implementing them, getting his share of the loot as payment.
Every country has the government it deserves, and Russia is no exception.
National borders don't need to separate people any more than, say, city limits do. In a free country, crossing the border is a formality, and many neighbour states have dispensed with even those. It's empires who make a huge deal of borders; normal nations treat them as legislation handover points.
USSR was a secular theocracy. It treated Marxism - or "Dialectic Materialism" - as revealed truth, and as theocrats usually do, made more shit up as it went along. If and when reality disagreed with revelation, it got ignored or violently suppressed. And it never really changed: people got tired and disappointed with their prophet, just like they'd gotten tired and disappointed with the Czar earlier, and abandoned him. But the spirit of autocracy - the myth of divine leader - lived on, thus Putin is now enthroned as the new Czar, just like Stalin before him. Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss.
And no, USSR was not fascist. Fascism and Stalinism are both manifestations of something far older and nastier, a sickness that to some extent pervades all human societies. All who try to build a utopia reach the point where it seems the goal is just within range if they only sacrifice a few people to reach it. If they don't, the paradise remains flawed, and if they do, it turns into a nightmare - just like Soviet Union and various fascist regimes did.
Of course, the US also did exactly that to win the Cold War, and it seems the bill is now coming due. Time will tell how far the "land of the free" will fall before what it's unleashed is done with it.
Poe's law strikes again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive
It's a pity Tesla's wireless transmission of electricity didn't work, otherwise all vehicles would be electric.
Why would they be? The NSA "gets the job done". The job it's doing is dirty, but the fault for that lies on the feet of the people who gave it its mandate - ultimately American people.
Besides, even if the NSA was destroyed, the problem that gave it birth would still exist: taking national security to be a concern overriding all other considerations, including rights of individuals. As long as America is more important than Americans, something like the NSA will always exist.
Because, as we all know, nations are eternal, can never collapse or experience hardship, and don't compete with each other.
Astronomers almost always measure stars by mass, both because it's more informative - mass determines things like fusion rate and lifespan - and because volume of a star is both hard to measure from distance and not really well defined, since stars are made of gas and thus don't have a well-defined surface.
That said, this particular article specifically says "1300 times the diameter of the Sun", which gives it about 7 million times the volume of the Sun.
Economy exists to fulfil people's needs. Price elasticity endagers this by putting people out of work. Some elasticity is necessary, since it acts as a control signal for production chains, but too much takes the system out of its operational parameters. This could be prevented by guaranteeing an unconditional sufficient minimum income to live on, but that conflicts with the prevailing mythology of justification through hard work, and would likely create its own problems. Not that there's much choice as automation proceeds to shift limiting factor of industrial output away from manpower to energy and raw materials.
It is irrational - but sadly common - to place maximum effectiveness of a system over the very end the system exists to achieve.
No, the truth is nastier: if elephants are not intelligent, it's okay to shoot them for ivory. If pigs are not intelligent, it's okay to slaughter them for delicious bacon. And so forth.
This is, of course, the exact same way humans treat each other too. In the past, suitable victims were determined on the basis of race or religion; in this more civilized time, the prime factor seems to be socioeconomic status.
It's not hubris that's at the core of human evil, it's the willingness to lie to ourselves whenever it's convenient.
Power. The disaster had a human component of insufficient preparation, with Fukushima being the most famous part of it. Letting the government maintain control over relief funds can very easily turn into extortion: "I have this nice house. You could have it... If you told all these nice journalists there was nothing more we could had done."
It doesn't necessarily have to be the intention of the government. A badly traumatised person is hypersensitive to danger, and will perceive everything in terms of possible threats. But also, Japanese culture does seem to put a lot of value in saving face and loyalty to the superior, so a bureaucrat might experience a conflict of interests and misjudge, perceiving his duties to include things they don't.
Also, having money lets people to reintegrate to the economy, while having access to aid services doesn't. Poverty and trauma are a bad starter combo for rebuilding your life.
It takes time and security to heal, and that includes financial security. As long as you have to divert all your energy into ensuring basic necessities, you will at most cover over the scars. And untreated trauma is a nasty thing: it twists your perspective and leads to irrational behaviour. Apart from this leading to personal tragedy, having hundreds of thousands of irrational people in a stressful situation is a recipe for trouble.
Of course, the actual effect of this is to ensure North America gets to keep its reserves until later, when both the need and price will be even higher. At the same time, higher oil prices encourage investment into alternative means of energy, possibly allowing the entire supply to be exported at that time - and thus used as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
It's best to swallow the pill of peak oil while there's still reserves to use in an emergency.
A solar-powered zeppelin might. Automate it, and it might even be economical; let drones hitch rides for a small fee, attaching and detaching (and charging) en-route, and it might be profitable enough to launch a new industry. And didn't Amazon plan to start delivering books by drones?
The whole reason America (and the rest of the world) relies so heavily on trucking is that airplanes use a lot of fuel, while railroads require a lot of maintenance. There's a clear business opportunity for a mode of transport that is fuel-efficient (=cheap), reasonable fast and doesn't depend on infrastructure or land between the endpoints.
And even if zeppelins don't work, the fact is that oil is getting more and more expensive, so if oranges depend on oil for transport, so will they. An economy that depends on an exhaustible resource for a vital function is doomed to collapse. A better power source must be found.
Oil shortage would also fundamentally affect the US and Europe's economies by utterly annihilating them, followed by their populations. We're not talking about a bookkeeping problem like the current financial crisis, but an actual total end to almost all production. After all, even France, which runs on nuclear energy, still needs oil to transport goods, including food.
It's fun to live at the end of the era and see the abyss open wide and deep before us, eh? And nothing but windmills and a few failing old nukes to keep our technical civilization, just taking off now, afloat to cross it. And at the same time people like cayenne8 whine when anyone so much as mentions the controls.
Kinda makes one wonder if humanity's not currently encountering the Great Filter.
As long as your behaviours have consequences that extend beyond yourself, yes it is.
And as long as you brag about being lazy and irresponsible, it's useless to whine that the big bad government babysits you. Don't want a nanny state? Grow up and prove you don't need one to make you clean up after yourself.
If you truly believe that, "GameMaster", why don't you tell us your real name, address, and other personally identifying information? Or did you mean it's okay to judge someone else, but not you?
And this is another thing: we aren't talking about being judged. We're talking about being punished. Anonymity lets people air their piece, whether it's a political view, a proposition for a new economic system, or speculation about your mother's sexual activities, without risking their life or livelihood. It's what lets freedom of speech to exist in reality, not just theory, and for everyone, not just those with nothing to lose.
This is, of course, terrible for those who would rather see anyone who disagrees with them made examples of. Authoritarianism is an illness we still can't cure. But anonymity allows us to limit its deadly effect on society.
You are the judge of who has what rights on what conditions, now?
Except for you. You get to publish your views on Slashdot without having to wonder who might hear and take offence. It's these other people who need to live in the Panopticon. Not you. Never you. Always someone else.
Interesting ethical question, indeed. The thing is, anonymity lets you act without threat of retaliation. That retaliation doesn't need to come in the form of secret police or even a crazy gunman; no, in our society simply having your employment prospects lowered creates an extremely effective chilling effect. And that means that exposing people who wish to remain anonymous is ethical if, and only if, you agree that everyone's actions should be judged by the rich and the powerful, and only independently wealthy people should have any real freedom of action or opinion.
So basically, anonymity would be illegal in a libertarian plutocracy or absolute monarchy and a guaranteed right in a free world, with real countries going somewhere in the middle.
"Bloat" is unnecessary code that makes a program run slower. Your example is not bloated, just verbose. Given a suitable wire API, it'll likely run faster than parsing SQL requsts sent as text strings. Also, do note that dynamically building complex expressions is far more convenient when you can treat subtrees as objects. Building strings representing complex logic programmatically quickly becomes a complete mess.
However, if you really want to compile said text strings while serving user requests, do something like
compiled_sql = sql_compile("Select blah blah")
And have sql_compile throw an exception if the expression contains string literals. In other words, remove the ability to use anything but prepared statements and the ability to use string literals in said prepared statements, and SQL injection attacks go away.
Verbose, and ridiculously so. Do you think intentionally making up a convoluted interface refutes anything? Especially since you're applying an API meant for preventing SQL injection attacks to mathematical expressions, where it's presumably impossible to wreak havoc no matter what values of B, C or D you supply.
Well done, the man of straw is dead.
But such process doesn't actually exist, since bugs exist so they must occasionally get through the validation.