You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
The "tragedy of errors" bit is applicable to Pearl Harbor, more so than the Gulf of Tonkin. Exactly what happened to the USS Maine is disputed, we'll never know for sure, but the simplest explanation (remember Occam's Razor) is an accidental explosion in her coal bunkers. This was the hypothesis of Admiral Rickover, who investigated the historical record, and whatever else one can say about him you can't dispute his thoroughness and talent for engineering.
There are conspiracy theories surrounding both the USS Maine and Pearl Harbor but none of them pass the smell test. People can never accept the simple explanation for tragic events, it's easier for them to believe that shadowy figures were at play rather than accept the fact that incompetence occasionally combines with bad luck. Ronald Reagan was shot by some mental defective who was trying to impress Jodie Foster. Would people have accepted that explanation if he had died? Scary thought: What if someone shoots the current President? More likely than not it would be that simple, some mentally deranged individual, but almost nobody would be willing to accept that.
Here it seems you accept that we live in a might-makes-right world of battling empires.
We do. This is the real world, not Star Trek, there hasn't been an awakening of all humanity that has showed us the error of our ways. The only thing keeping our aggressive tendencies somewhat in check is the fear of mutual destruction. Be happy for that bit at least; we simply flirt with total war these days, we don't actually engage in it.
Meanwhile, you can read online of peer reviewed studies showing circumcision does decrease the transmission rate of certain STD
If you're relying on circumcision for public health your country is already screwed. There are countries where circumcision is virtually non-existent that have HIV rates considerably lower than the United States. Conversely, there are countries where it's nearly universal that have rates considerably higher than the US. The US, incidentally, falls somewhere in the middle, and circumcision rates vary based on ethic background, age, and region.
The WHO would be better served promoting condom use than circumcision. Would you stick your circumcised dick into someone with an unknown STD status without using a condom?
Richard Stallman suggests that if you carry a cell phone, you're being tracked.
Duh. That's kind of how they work. The cellular network can't deliver calls or data to your phone if it doesn't have a general idea of where you are. If Verizon knows then it's a simple matter for anyone else to find out, ranging from NSA to the private investigator working for your wife's divorce lawyer.
Mein Kampf can be found in virtually every library in the United States. I had assumed it was the same in every country that values free speech. You should read it; it's a painful slog of atrocious writing but it's an important read nonetheless.
What if someone close to me, or not, died, and I was the last person who read information online about the manner in which they died? If someone commits suicide, and I recently looked it up. That could be "evidence" of a murder! Should I become a suspect, based on that alone?
This is at best a fundamental misunderstanding of how law enforcement actually works, at worst a total straw man.
1. The NSA doesn't concern itself with murder. The overwhelming majority of murders in the United States are handled at the State level.
2. Local law enforcement isn't going to put you on the radar because of a Wikipedia search. They won't even know about your search history unless you appear on their radar for other reasons and the investigation develops enough for search warrants.
3. If an investigation does progress that far and you have a search history that suggests a furtherance of the crime being investigated..... well, probably time to call a lawyer.
What if, while in the course of designing a videogame, I looked up information about how weapons work? Everything from handguns to atom-bombs - for accuracy's sake? Do I deserve to be on a watchlist because I could be planning something?
It takes more to get on a watchlist than Google searches. Watchlists are pointless if the signal to noise ratio is too low. Filling them with people who Googled atomic weapons design is self-defeating. Go ahead, click on the link, it's not going to pop up on a screen at NSA. As much as it may pain our egos, the lion's share of us are fat and unimportant.
If people look over their shoulders before searching, pause before contributing to controversial articles, or refrain from sharing verifiable but unpopular information, Wikimedia and the world are poorer for it.
I suspect that the Wikipedia group think suppresses more contributions than any real or imagined fear of the NSA.
Glad they're using my donation for server costs though, which I believe was the headline the last time they pestered me for money. At least when my local PBS station begs me for money they spend it on things that are more than tangentially related to delivering the product that I use and love.
The left recently stopped using "illegal immigrant" in favor of "undocumented immigrant." The GWB administration tried to replace "suicide bomber" with "homicide bomber." One side of the abortion debate describes foes as "anti-choice" rather than "pro-life." People in politics play word games. This is not new, news for nerds, or limited to the State of Florida.
Thanks for the flamebait Slashdot, it was a slow evening and I've got lots of popcorn.
All the conditions you give above, are circumstances under which people are considered to have waived their rights as ordinary citizens
Irrelevant. The point was in response to the GP's ridiculous assertion about the "current understanding" of gun rights in the United States. It is not and never has been an "understanding" in the United States that everybody should or can have firearms.
I had to get permission from our County Court Judge before I could legally touch a handgun, never mind own or carry one. He could have said no for almost any reason that he wanted. The law says I can't have a license unless I have "proper cause" but does not define what proper cause is.
It is literally a felony to pick up a handgun in New York State without a license. If you so much as touch a pistol without a license you go directly to jail without passing go or collecting $200. That's been the "current understanding" in New York State since 1911, so you'll forgive me if I can't take people like the GP seriously.
And I could be wrong, but item 8, as I understand it, is a State issue, not Federal.
Shouldn't be done anywhere it's inappropriate for a heterosexual couple to do the same. I really don't feel like watching anybody go to first base while I'm trying to eat dinner, thank you very much....
Ah, gun nut, one of the favorite insults of the anti-rights crowd. Much easier to demean those that disagree with you rather than respond to their points, eh?
You're the one who claimed, emphasis mine: "the current understanding of gun rights in the USA is a late 1900s dirty harry style invention of anyone should have a gun." Don't try and backpedal away from it now.
I could respond to your silly training argument by pointing out:
1. Driving is a privilege, not a constitutionally recognized right.
2. The prefatory clause is not a limiting clause. It was not imagined as such by the people who wrote it nor ever interpreted that way by a court.
Of course, what's the point of having that discussion? You've got the facts so hopelessly wrong that I believe your ignorance is willful. One bloody Google search would have been enough to dispel your misinformed belief about the "current understanding of gun rights in the usa" and you couldn't even be bothered to do that.
Automatic weapons have been heavily regulated since the 1930s, were further regulated in the 1980s, and the civilian ownership thereof is exceedingly rare.
You're thinking of semi-automatic weapons, like the AR-15 which look like their automatic counterparts, but are in fact no deadlier than any semi-automatic firearm. The United States Government has been selling surplus semi-automatic military issue firearms to the general public for decades, so it's a bit late to claim that semi-automatic firearms represent a level of firepower that should be unavailable to civilians.
I will concede that the provocative asshats who open carry AR-15s into Starbucks are just that, provocative asshats trying to piss people off for no reason. I view them the same way I view gay couples that engage in PDA in inappropriate settings (read: anywhere it would be inappropriate for a heterosexual couple to do the same) solely to piss people off.
1. Are a convicted felon.
2. Are a convicted domestic abuser.
3. Are currently charged with any crime punishable by a year or more in prison.
4. Are an unlawful user of any controlled substance.
5. Are addicted to any controlled substance, even one lawfully proscribed.
6. Have been dishonorably discharged from the United States military.
7. Have renounced your American citizenship.
8. Are the subject of an order of protection.
9. Are a fugitive from justice.
10. Are in the United States illegally.
Those are just the people proscribed from ownership under Federal law. Many States have tougher laws and add even more people to the list. Some (my home state, New York) go further and treat gun rights as a privilege, requiring a license, which is doled out at the whim of local bureaucrats who can deny you for virtually any reason they wish.
Point being, nowhere in the United States does the "current understanding" of gun rights say anyone should have firearms. Do you actually know what the existing body of Federal, State, and Local law has to say on this subject or are you just repeating talking points you read somewhere?
but if we're talking about gun control doing the same thing with an 18th century amendment is somehow good? Pick one, conservatives.
You realize that you're using the 1st Amendment on a computer, right? I'll turn in my modern firearm in favor of a musket when you exchange your computer for a printing press.
3D printing will never, by itself, make Star Trek replicators a reality
But I want to make a cup of Earl Grey by converting energy into matter, at enormous cost, because it's clearly easier than having a tank of water and recycling it as needed.:)
Ah, I remember Slamd64. I had that puppy on my first ever 64 bit machine, it took a few years for Slackware to jump on the 64 bit train.
I don't see the issue with using it as a server in a production environment, particularly if you roll servers with a specific role rather than trying to Swiss Army Knife them. If you monitor slackware-current they're as responsive as any distro with security updates and the package management isn't that cumbersome. Of course, if you're using Slackware the odds are good that you've compiled your own daemons and should be on top of patches/security updates yourself.
Either way it's not a deal breaker for a production server, unless you need a big company to hold your hand for everything, and in that instance why not just runa Windows server?
He actually gave financial support to a group which actively tried to deny human rights
Marriage is a human right now? Seriously? It's just a fucking legal state. It's not required to love someone.
I'm in favor of what has foolishly been described "marriage equality" but that doesn't mean I'm going to get behind the destruction of someone's career merely because he happens to hold an opposing opinion. Y'all have gone too far with the vilification of people who disagree with you. I once suggested that we get Government out of the "marriage" business altogether, no marriage as such but civil unions for everyone who desires the legal benefits (medical decisions, property inheritance, and so on) of what is currently called marriage. Let any two consenting adults enter into a civil union, even siblings; the legal state of marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with "love."
For that suggestion I was immediately attacked as homophobic. WTF?
Enjoy your virtual lynch mobs and group-think. I'm happy we're making progress on this front but it does not need to be a zero sum game between equality and free speech. People are free to express differing points of view and should not be destroyed for doing so.
At the time he gave the money his position was so far out of the mainstream that the current sitting President of the United States of America agreed with him.
Do you really think it was appropriate to drive him out of his job because of a political opinion that's shared by nearly half the country? That's absurd. Were you one of the people who changed your profile pictures to "Je suis Charlie" after the Paris attacks? Because that would be incredibly fucking ironic.
There's always Slackware. I still use it as "go to" distro for both desktop and server roles. It's not as sexy other distros but there's no better way to learn Linux. I highly doubt Patrick is going to jump on the systemd bandwagon any time soon, if ever.
Slashdot Mirror
You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
The "tragedy of errors" bit is applicable to Pearl Harbor, more so than the Gulf of Tonkin. Exactly what happened to the USS Maine is disputed, we'll never know for sure, but the simplest explanation (remember Occam's Razor) is an accidental explosion in her coal bunkers. This was the hypothesis of Admiral Rickover, who investigated the historical record, and whatever else one can say about him you can't dispute his thoroughness and talent for engineering.
There are conspiracy theories surrounding both the USS Maine and Pearl Harbor but none of them pass the smell test. People can never accept the simple explanation for tragic events, it's easier for them to believe that shadowy figures were at play rather than accept the fact that incompetence occasionally combines with bad luck. Ronald Reagan was shot by some mental defective who was trying to impress Jodie Foster. Would people have accepted that explanation if he had died? Scary thought: What if someone shoots the current President? More likely than not it would be that simple, some mentally deranged individual, but almost nobody would be willing to accept that.
Here it seems you accept that we live in a might-makes-right world of battling empires.
We do. This is the real world, not Star Trek, there hasn't been an awakening of all humanity that has showed us the error of our ways. The only thing keeping our aggressive tendencies somewhat in check is the fear of mutual destruction. Be happy for that bit at least; we simply flirt with total war these days, we don't actually engage in it.
Meanwhile, you can read online of peer reviewed studies showing circumcision does decrease the transmission rate of certain STD
If you're relying on circumcision for public health your country is already screwed. There are countries where circumcision is virtually non-existent that have HIV rates considerably lower than the United States. Conversely, there are countries where it's nearly universal that have rates considerably higher than the US. The US, incidentally, falls somewhere in the middle, and circumcision rates vary based on ethic background, age, and region.
The WHO would be better served promoting condom use than circumcision. Would you stick your circumcised dick into someone with an unknown STD status without using a condom?
Richard Stallman suggests that if you carry a cell phone, you're being tracked.
Duh. That's kind of how they work. The cellular network can't deliver calls or data to your phone if it doesn't have a general idea of where you are. If Verizon knows then it's a simple matter for anyone else to find out, ranging from NSA to the private investigator working for your wife's divorce lawyer.
Thanks for the insight RMS.
The only way to avoid technical surveillance is to keep everything sensitive away from email or phone calls or instant messages.
"Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink."
It was good advice before the electronic era and remains so today. For reasons a lot more applicable to us mere mortals than NSA and CIA.
Remember that your vote counts just as much as the vote of the average youtube/facebook/twitter comment writer.
Depends on which State you live in......
mein kampf. What was going on in that man's mind?
Mein Kampf can be found in virtually every library in the United States. I had assumed it was the same in every country that values free speech. You should read it; it's a painful slog of atrocious writing but it's an important read nonetheless.
What if someone close to me, or not, died, and I was the last person who read information online about the manner in which they died? If someone commits suicide, and I recently looked it up. That could be "evidence" of a murder! Should I become a suspect, based on that alone?
This is at best a fundamental misunderstanding of how law enforcement actually works, at worst a total straw man.
1. The NSA doesn't concern itself with murder. The overwhelming majority of murders in the United States are handled at the State level.
2. Local law enforcement isn't going to put you on the radar because of a Wikipedia search. They won't even know about your search history unless you appear on their radar for other reasons and the investigation develops enough for search warrants.
3. If an investigation does progress that far and you have a search history that suggests a furtherance of the crime being investigated..... well, probably time to call a lawyer.
What if, while in the course of designing a videogame, I looked up information about how weapons work? Everything from handguns to atom-bombs - for accuracy's sake? Do I deserve to be on a watchlist because I could be planning something?
It takes more to get on a watchlist than Google searches. Watchlists are pointless if the signal to noise ratio is too low. Filling them with people who Googled atomic weapons design is self-defeating. Go ahead, click on the link, it's not going to pop up on a screen at NSA. As much as it may pain our egos, the lion's share of us are fat and unimportant.
If people look over their shoulders before searching, pause before contributing to controversial articles, or refrain from sharing verifiable but unpopular information, Wikimedia and the world are poorer for it.
I suspect that the Wikipedia group think suppresses more contributions than any real or imagined fear of the NSA.
Glad they're using my donation for server costs though, which I believe was the headline the last time they pestered me for money. At least when my local PBS station begs me for money they spend it on things that are more than tangentially related to delivering the product that I use and love.
No, those fraternities hate all other races, and thats ok.
Are you fucking serious? So, "We're the master race." is okay but "Niggers are inferior." is not?!?
Racism is fucking racism. If you're going to call it out don't get selective about it.
So we're now at the stage of "banning it"?
The left recently stopped using "illegal immigrant" in favor of "undocumented immigrant." The GWB administration tried to replace "suicide bomber" with "homicide bomber." One side of the abortion debate describes foes as "anti-choice" rather than "pro-life." People in politics play word games. This is not new, news for nerds, or limited to the State of Florida.
Thanks for the flamebait Slashdot, it was a slow evening and I've got lots of popcorn.
it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy
And yet you couldn't provide a single link. Not even to Wikipedia.
Most credible historians shoot down such notions, FYI.
It doesn't matter how the government is structured. You will never find one agency working at cross purposes with another for very long.
Ah, if only Government was half as organized as you think it is....
All the conditions you give above, are circumstances under which people are considered to have waived their rights as ordinary citizens
Irrelevant. The point was in response to the GP's ridiculous assertion about the "current understanding" of gun rights in the United States. It is not and never has been an "understanding" in the United States that everybody should or can have firearms.
I had to get permission from our County Court Judge before I could legally touch a handgun, never mind own or carry one. He could have said no for almost any reason that he wanted. The law says I can't have a license unless I have "proper cause" but does not define what proper cause is.
It is literally a felony to pick up a handgun in New York State without a license. If you so much as touch a pistol without a license you go directly to jail without passing go or collecting $200. That's been the "current understanding" in New York State since 1911, so you'll forgive me if I can't take people like the GP seriously.
And I could be wrong, but item 8, as I understand it, is a State issue, not Federal.
You are wrong.
Or even gay people kissing in public.
Shouldn't be done anywhere it's inappropriate for a heterosexual couple to do the same. I really don't feel like watching anybody go to first base while I'm trying to eat dinner, thank you very much....
Gun nut logic.
Ah, gun nut, one of the favorite insults of the anti-rights crowd. Much easier to demean those that disagree with you rather than respond to their points, eh?
You're the one who claimed, emphasis mine: "the current understanding of gun rights in the USA is a late 1900s dirty harry style invention of anyone should have a gun ." Don't try and backpedal away from it now.
I could respond to your silly training argument by pointing out:
1. Driving is a privilege, not a constitutionally recognized right.
2. The prefatory clause is not a limiting clause. It was not imagined as such by the people who wrote it nor ever interpreted that way by a court.
Of course, what's the point of having that discussion? You've got the facts so hopelessly wrong that I believe your ignorance is willful. One bloody Google search would have been enough to dispel your misinformed belief about the "current understanding of gun rights in the usa" and you couldn't even be bothered to do that.
Automatic weapons have been heavily regulated since the 1930s, were further regulated in the 1980s, and the civilian ownership thereof is exceedingly rare.
You're thinking of semi-automatic weapons, like the AR-15 which look like their automatic counterparts, but are in fact no deadlier than any semi-automatic firearm. The United States Government has been selling surplus semi-automatic military issue firearms to the general public for decades, so it's a bit late to claim that semi-automatic firearms represent a level of firepower that should be unavailable to civilians.
I will concede that the provocative asshats who open carry AR-15s into Starbucks are just that, provocative asshats trying to piss people off for no reason. I view them the same way I view gay couples that engage in PDA in inappropriate settings (read: anywhere it would be inappropriate for a heterosexual couple to do the same) solely to piss people off.
the current understanding of gun rights in the USA is a late 1900s dirty harry style invention of anyone should have a gun
Unless you:
1. Are a convicted felon.
2. Are a convicted domestic abuser.
3. Are currently charged with any crime punishable by a year or more in prison.
4. Are an unlawful user of any controlled substance.
5. Are addicted to any controlled substance, even one lawfully proscribed.
6. Have been dishonorably discharged from the United States military.
7. Have renounced your American citizenship.
8. Are the subject of an order of protection.
9. Are a fugitive from justice.
10. Are in the United States illegally.
Those are just the people proscribed from ownership under Federal law. Many States have tougher laws and add even more people to the list. Some (my home state, New York) go further and treat gun rights as a privilege, requiring a license, which is doled out at the whim of local bureaucrats who can deny you for virtually any reason they wish.
Point being, nowhere in the United States does the "current understanding" of gun rights say anyone should have firearms. Do you actually know what the existing body of Federal, State, and Local law has to say on this subject or are you just repeating talking points you read somewhere?
but if we're talking about gun control doing the same thing with an 18th century amendment is somehow good? Pick one, conservatives.
You realize that you're using the 1st Amendment on a computer, right? I'll turn in my modern firearm in favor of a musket when you exchange your computer for a printing press.
3D printing will never, by itself, make Star Trek replicators a reality
But I want to make a cup of Earl Grey by converting energy into matter, at enormous cost, because it's clearly easier than having a tank of water and recycling it as needed. :)
Ah, I remember Slamd64. I had that puppy on my first ever 64 bit machine, it took a few years for Slackware to jump on the 64 bit train.
I don't see the issue with using it as a server in a production environment, particularly if you roll servers with a specific role rather than trying to Swiss Army Knife them. If you monitor slackware-current they're as responsive as any distro with security updates and the package management isn't that cumbersome. Of course, if you're using Slackware the odds are good that you've compiled your own daemons and should be on top of patches/security updates yourself.
Either way it's not a deal breaker for a production server, unless you need a big company to hold your hand for everything, and in that instance why not just runa Windows server?
He actually gave financial support to a group which actively tried to deny human rights
Marriage is a human right now? Seriously? It's just a fucking legal state. It's not required to love someone.
I'm in favor of what has foolishly been described "marriage equality" but that doesn't mean I'm going to get behind the destruction of someone's career merely because he happens to hold an opposing opinion. Y'all have gone too far with the vilification of people who disagree with you. I once suggested that we get Government out of the "marriage" business altogether, no marriage as such but civil unions for everyone who desires the legal benefits (medical decisions, property inheritance, and so on) of what is currently called marriage. Let any two consenting adults enter into a civil union, even siblings; the legal state of marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with "love."
For that suggestion I was immediately attacked as homophobic. WTF?
Enjoy your virtual lynch mobs and group-think. I'm happy we're making progress on this front but it does not need to be a zero sum game between equality and free speech. People are free to express differing points of view and should not be destroyed for doing so.
At the time he gave the money his position was so far out of the mainstream that the current sitting President of the United States of America agreed with him.
Do you really think it was appropriate to drive him out of his job because of a political opinion that's shared by nearly half the country? That's absurd. Were you one of the people who changed your profile pictures to "Je suis Charlie" after the Paris attacks? Because that would be incredibly fucking ironic.
There's always Slackware. I still use it as "go to" distro for both desktop and server roles. It's not as sexy other distros but there's no better way to learn Linux. I highly doubt Patrick is going to jump on the systemd bandwagon any time soon, if ever.