Just because you can't discern a rational thought doesn't necessarily mean there is none.
I said
Every soldier on duty in Guantanamo Bay on this very day is betraying his oaths and a disgrace for his uniform. They don't even remotely live up to Army or Marine Corps Values they have sworn to defend with their lives.
To freshen your memories on what these honorable men and women have sworn, an excerpt of the linked "Soldier code" pages: Army Values:
Loyalty: Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other soldiers. Duty: Fulfill your obligations. Respect: Treat people as they should be treated. Selfless-Service: Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own. Honor: Live up to all the Army values. Integrity: Do what's right, legally and morally. Personal Courage: Face fear, danger, or adversity (Physical or Moral).
Corps Values:
Honor: Honor requires each Marine to exemplify the ultimate standard in ethical and moral conduct. Honor is many things; honor requires many things. A U.S. Marine must never lie, never cheat, never steal, but that is not enough. Much more is required. Each Marine must cling to an uncompromising code of personal integrity, accountable for his actions and holding others accountable for theirs. And, above all, honor mandates that a Marine never sully the reputation of his Corps.
Courage: Simply stated, courage is honor in action -- and more. Courage is moral strength, the will to heed the inner voice of conscience, the will to do what is right regardless of the conduct of others. It is mental discipline, an adherence to a higher standard. Courage means willingness to take a stand for what is right in spite of adverse consequences. This courage, throughout the history of the Corps, has sustained Marines during the chaos, perils, and hardships of combat. And each day, it enables each Marine to look in the mirror -- and smile.
Commitment: Total dedication to Corps and Country. Gung-ho Marine teamwork. All for one, one for all. By whatever name or cliche, commitment is a combination of (1) selfless determination and (2) a relentless dedication to excellence. Marines never give up, never give in, never willingly accept second best. Excellence is always the goal. And, when their active duty days are over, Marines remain reserve Marines, retired Marines, or Marine veterans. There is no such thing as an ex-Marine or former-Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Commitment never dies.
Tell me: How can a soldier sworn in on these values still service in a camp at Guantanamo Bay and not speak out?
Do you still know for that the Statue of Liberty stands? Do you remember the times, when the United States of America would welcome immigrants from all over the globe, hundreds of thousands of them, dozens of immigrant ships arriving in New York city every day for years? Do you remember what set the United States apart from all other nations? Does the word "Liberty" ring a bell to you, literally?
Good point, not to say "me too" on this. Would very much like to visit the US, but there are two factors that I can't possible take risk of:
-possible apprehension on little or no grounds, suspicion being enough
-possibly followed by lifelong interment and/or torture without court orders, attorney, notification of relatives and embassies,
in short: I'm not taking any risks of sudden and permanent "disappearing". No matter how big this risk may be for non-Arab-looking people, I won't take chances. I feel it is a shame for American ideals and values and I'm sure I couldn't hold back my opinion while in country, what places me at a higher risk than average.
I just wonder how military personell, sworn in on bible and constitution can be such a disgrace for their corps, their uniform and their country to torture anybody and follow orders to put them into jail forever without a court hearing. No matter how they present it, it is disgusting. That doesn't mean all terror suspects should be freed, terrorists should roam freely or whatever - but there absolutely needs to be a distinction between the Mob and the government. Not needing warrants, judges and courts to indefinetly put someone to jail makes this moot.
In the face of the camps at Guantanamo Bay, every respect fades, for the United States as a whole and the United States military in particular. Every soldier that stays on duty in Guantanamo Bay betrays his uniform and anything that it stands for, including the constitution and the most basic human dignity.
As long as there are officers on duty in the United States of America, that are able and willing to follow immoral and unconstitutional orders, I will refrain from coming closer than several thousand miles of US borders, neither on transit nor on business obligation.
Untrue, don't surrender so early. Show some spine and face it instead of whining: posting on Slashdot is not going to change the world, but it may be enough to change some minds.
Every forum is suitable for that if it has equal "transmitting" rights for all participants, many of them participating, from diverse social backgrounds, not too predetermined, curious and living all around the globe. If Slashdot doesn't fit these criteria, I don't know what does.
"Doing something" always involves talking to and convincing other people, at least to make them think or become aware of your issues. "Actual real action" would mean much more risk to yourself and "teammates", while providing little more results, possibly even less. Violent action is terrorism nowadays, everything that at least damages property is considered violent and therefore useless. Non-violent action is not for everyone and with the overabundance of activist groups for every lost cause, you'll be pretty much regarded as a hippie or loon by the general public.
Thanks, but a consistent, reasonable argument on a wide open forum for several hundred thousand diverse but more logical, more curios, more - yes - intelligent-than-average minds and readers beats any other activism every time, in my opinion.
Either that or hijacking the Fox News transponder channels, your choice. Can't reach a larger audience with fewer costs, that's for sure.
Can you please be a bit more precise on what your logs actually recorded? You surely did a reverse-DNS, so please give - or link - some information to answer the question you left burning: who (domains) searched what (topics, keywords)?
And what did you mean by the last sentence, why we might not want to be seeing? I'm not afraid, are you?
And the best of all: China made some really really good movies in the last months. Go see "House of flying daggers" if you haven't and maybe another, somehow similar movie "2046". These films go lengths beyond Hollywood stereotypes and are just refreshingly traditional at the same time.
Rent them, if the cinema isn't playing them, you wont regret it, I promise. An astonishing flurry of images, colors and emotions, not artsy emotions like French films have, but very transparent and breathtaking scenes. "House of flying daggers" was, at least for me, absolutely the best film of this year, no matter what comes in the next 11 months;)
China has finally overcome the unavoidable repetion in most recent Hollywood movies and that's quite a feat. Imagine the first "Matrix"-part was a love movie with exactly the same cool action, a morale, fun, atmosphere, magic and tragedy all into one... Sounds impossible, eh? Watch the preview if you like;)
Floppy discs and drives aren't reliable when they are factory-new, let alone used for 10 years or more.
Those who have to use floppies for their work and valuable data have my deepest sympathy.
Copy, verify, error, repeat, copy, verify, error, reformat, copy, verify, error, copy, verify:ok, transport to target site, read: error.
I have used floppy discs intensively, have opted for the best quality available in any tech supermarket and floppy discs still failed. The last disc of a backup set of 10 discs. At 98 percent complete, on the last cluster of the last file, always. I'm actually very bitter towards floppy drives and I never want to use one again unless Bill Gates pays me half his money to.
Anything inside your bag makes an excellent X-Ray footprint. As a kid I've carried numerous large and small SuperSoakers in my baggage on holidays. While the bags passed through the scanner, I curiously looked at the X-Ray screens, and voilà, the shape of my SuperSoakers were clearly to be seen. And they're made entirely of plastic.
What you carry in your handbag was not screened at that time and a ceramic knife wouldn't set off a metal detector, you mean. Today I wouldn't be surprised if they scanned everything, even the films inside the cameras just to be sure...
If non-metal objects wouldn't leave an X-Ray footprint, cancer detection by X-Ray screening would be useless, you know...
Beam diverges for 1 deg in your hand around 0,250 miles on a 15mi distant target, a=(sin(a)*b)/sin(b) to repeat my former AC comment. I frankly assume most cannot hold their hand steadier than 1 deg without some visual aids (read: ironsights and some visual clues like trees and the horizon).
Accuracy needed to shine a laser somewhere onto a 60m long and 10m high airplane body at a distance of 10km: horizontal no more than 0.34 deg, vertical no more than 0.06 deg.
If it's a commercial jet airliner, that target is moving at a speed of at least 700 km/h or ~200m/sec. That means it is moving vertically 1.15 deg in every single second in the view of our laser shooter. No chance to hit that, seriously. The chance of winning the lottery may be ten times as high...
And we were only trying to hit the hull and not the cockpit nor eyes of the pilot.
Eye burn damage from a publicly available ultra strong laser happens only after at least 0.10 seconds, so we would have to hit a target no more than 1cm in diameter (the pilot's retina) for more than that time. A target of 1 square centimeter, soaring through space and time with a velocity of 200m every second in a distance of 10'000 meters. Give up already, it's not possible, not by chance, not by malicious intent and neither by a thousand evil terrorists trying to multiply their chances nor not ultra-sophisticated computer equipment.
During landing and take-off, it may be possible. But at cruise speeds and altitudes, a plane and the pilot is for all intents and purposes invincible from publicly available laser pointers.
If you did, you'd know that it's nigh impossible to do. Aiming at an old piece of industry architecture, an old windmill or whatever and at a distance of more than 200 meters hitting that damn thing is nothing to be taken lightly. You simply don't know in which direction to move the pointer, as you got no clue if the dot is lower, higher, left or right of the target. Waving around a bit nets you a small blink when you hit it, but you can never stop your movement fast enough to keep it there.
Aiming briefly through the ironsights will be much better. Laser pointers are just needed when you're expecting close quarter combat and/or want to show potential hostage takers your ability to instant-headshot them if needed. No mid or long range shooter would like to give out his position that easily or have his target know what's coming, long before a single shot is fired...
You obviously never drove any German Autobahn, I'm sure. 100mph ~ 160kph and that's a normal vehicle speed over here. 130kph is officially "suggested" speed, but especially bike riders go lengths and lengths beyond that. 250kph ~ 155 mph is upper limit for most German motorbikers.
Trucks and heavy vehicles can go 80kph/50mph, buses 100kph/62mph and everything else is unlimited by law.
Compact cars, 3-doors etc. usually drive between 80kph (old and rugged cars/drivers) and 130kph with a few exceptions, notably Volkswagen "Lupo" and "Golf" in the "suicide engine" version with 120 or more HP, they are driven by lunatics 200kph or more no matter if the road is dry or below solid ice. But they are few and far between and you sure know why.
Middle-class goes between 140 and 200kph, that range usually covers the bulk of cars. High powered suicide versions exist in this class, too, with 200 or more HP. And people who own them drive accordingly, tendency stable - more airbags 'n stuff I suppose.
Cars beyond 200kph are less than 10%, usually the upper BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen models. They announce themselves from half a kilometre away with full headbeam and constant left turn indicator. If any driver is in front of them, they will brake at the last moment possible, if ever. Most other drivers cave in long before and leave the fastest inner lane rather quick if they see them approaching.
Tire popping is seldom cause for accidents, most of the time it's trucks or other vehicles breaking out of 80kph formation on 1st going into 2nd lane overtaking some while forcing a "regular" car going 180kph or less out from 2nd to 3rd fastest lane. Where they collide with a suicide compact or fast upper class car from behind.
I don't know that many Autobahn routes here in Germany, but I'd wager 30-40% of all routes are unlimited and 3-lane. The rest is 2-lane and limited to 120kph/75mph or 100kph, as the road condition permits. Autobahns passing larger cities are often limited for "lower noise level", near poorer cities for "speed control fills city coffers"-reason.
It is not uncommon to have limits on a road to exist for various reasons, wind, noise, whatever, but road condition permits MUCH higher speeds. Everyone drives according to road condition then, bearing the risk of being "flashed" by police with radar speed cameras. Poorer municipalities are actually notorious for this and you cannot drive more than 200kms without meeting one of these cameras if you're unlucky.
In cities, there are even more cameras. Can't drive longer than 30 minutes without seeing one in any city.
It is even possible to have the German police temporarily limit a normally unlimited stretch of 3-lane Autobahn to 80kph or less and then lurking for and cashing in on "speeders" at the end of that temp limit zone. Shameless entrapment.
Fines for speeding ~25 euros for less than 10km over, 50 euros for less than 20kms over and 100 or 200 euros for everything beyong, leading quickly to 2000 or losing license for more than 40 above.
Germany has the most eased road laws in Europe, so nobody obeys the speed limit nowhere. In answer to that, speed limits are set much too low everywhere in hope the drivers will go their "usual 20kph" above and still keep on track. That way police and law enforcement can endlessly bilk drivers for their money while always having law on their side and public outrage silent. Nice trick, eh?
In Norway for example, 10kph over the limit are rather expensive: 200 eur, 600 for over 20kph. There, speed limits are set almost right, with around 5-10kph left above. Eastern Europe speed limits are equally hard for everyone carrying Euros in their pocket but speed limits are brutally true. Any limit posted is true to the letter if not a bit daring on a dry and sunny day.
What I can see, I can videotape. What I can hear, I can record.
If most else fails, I will film my own TV screen with my camcorder, the line from headphone-out plugged into it. Plain old cinema-piracy-style. And *then* put it on the internet or make a million copies and sell it cheap through illegal thrift stores. How do you prevent this? Mandatory watermark detection for all camcorders? What if I import them directly from China, Mexico, Russia or else? Arrest me for using illegal media equipment? Need to register typewriters and camcorders then like sometimes ago in Soviet Russia?;)
Have an Orwellian society or movie studios bitching about unlicensed movie copies. Can't have both. You decide, today.
If *all* else fails, we can still vote from the rooftops, tomorrow.
Excellent marketing, Geoffyboy, that's the spirit to win customers. Great!
I mean, why offer discounts, court these customer bastards with rebates and service - pah, just tell em up front that we don't like 'em and don't need their stinkin' money. We can live without 'em but they need us.
But wwwwait, stop. Wee talkin' 'bout drugs or movies or real products here?
They create a black market opportunity for organized groups of counterfeiters.
After every consumer has had some cheap copied digital content, they cannot be brought back into the flock, they're just lost for a sure revenue stream forever. If casual users cannot copy movies themselves, they will not buy them instead. Everyone has experienced that digital copies really cost nothing, in fact. Most are understanding they are paying for one-time costs of creating the content works, but they know for sure each additional copy costs zero bucks to make.
Try to convince them to pay 15 dollars for the DVD after some film enjoyed great box office success and already paid itself many times over?
I say, they will either skip on unavailable movies and watch others instead. Or wait until the geek next door produces a copy, the price falls, used DVDs appear on ebay and Amazon or illegal stores pop up in shady areas of the city.
And if not even Joe Geek can copy movies for mom & pop, Joe Geek will download them. If that fails he will procure them on emerging grey and black markets. And presto, you have a prohibition-style bootleg business going on everywhere. Great!
People generally won't go to see movies without an actor they already know in it because a movie night has become more expensive compared with former times because
films are more expensive, partly because
famous actors collect millions of dollars, but have to be used anyway because
People generally won't go to see movies without an actor they already know in it because repeat
I don't for sure. How many times have I seen iPods connected to the big stereo at a friend's house, playing music while some mobile phones rang repeatedly when more friends called. What to do with a phone-integrated music player, leave the room to talk? Turn down the music? Disconnect that thing from the stereo, go out of the crowded, noisy area to a room where you can talk and be understood?
Not exactly an out-of-world scenario, eh? I wouldn't want to talk with loud music playing in the background, much less stopping the music for everyone else.
Highly impractical, I say. And a continously refreshing RAM and spinning HDD doesn't quite add standby time and robustness to it.
It will surely break the space constraints in a small vehicle, but what about the possibility to build a steam powered hybrid engine? That way the steam turbine can run either at optimal rpm or not at all, while the electric motor brings optimal torque for a "satisfying driving experience" and whatnot.
Twice the weight is a serious argument against this idea, though. Harmful lead in the batteries is not, as lead recycling is pretty efficient nowadays.
As steam turbines run on anything that can heat up water, we might see extremely versatile cars. Wood pellets are the last hype in heating small homes, as they are eco-friendly made from wood processing waste, can be fed mechanically into a burner and store a lot of energy per weight. But then, it could all be impractical...
Any baby is a human creation. You and me are. A product of genes, memes and ideas of our parents and society, a peer group and some loved ones, influenced by chance and a small X. Children are repeating their parents all the time, performing pretty bad during their first years to be precise. Do they have rights anyway? Damn right.
The day you cannot tell a computer from a conscious being it will be a crime to shut it off, no questions asked. Protection equal to domesticed animals will be required much earlier, I'm sure.
Very nice, Dude. Authoritarian right from the start, couldn't be better to counter your drivel, thanks.
What others do with their freedom is none of your business, think about what you like, but everyone can do everything with his own freedoms, including wasting them or not doing anything at all. Except coercing others to give up theirs like you did. If you think only those people deserve freedom that want to use it now and in a view compatible to yours, then welcome the swastika armbands. Seriously.
Freedom can include participating in a way you or anyone else won't find useful or worthy.
And a government or nation doesn't need to murder millions to partially equal Nazi Germany. And yes, the United States may really be one of the most hideous and oppresive societies to exist. Like they said, in Soviet Russia, at least they knew they were being oppressed. And Nazis called a war exactly that, not weasel around with "military action" and terms like that. A two party system, bought politicians, invasions around the globe, many millions of civilians killed by the US military in the last 4 decades ain't helping much. And that's where the Nazi Germany reference kicks in: Nazi Germans were absolutely sure they did the right thing in their own ideology. And you cannot identify ideologies until you left them for a moment. You certainly can't. Your last statement stands for that, by declaring dissent mentally ill you're pretty much thinking in the realm of "treatment", "custody" and "re-education". In a clear authoritarian way of thinking. The difference to Nazis remaining only in the degree of cruelty, not worldview. Us and them, worthy vs. unworthy, sane and ill, doctor and patient, Fuehrer and Volk.
Ask sane Vietnamese or Iraqi people, if you think I'm ill.
Dictatorships hurts everyone, pederasts only a few. Hunting molesters is orders of magnitude easier than toppling dictators.
Bittorrent doesn't stop anything. Freenet may do. Dictatorship relies on population and media control, threats to dissenting individuals and general manipulation of public opinion. Free speech is the only way to prevent establishment of a dictatorship or to overcome it. If the only available opinions are the state-controlled ones, dictatorship can last MUCH longer than with numerous independent views. Without information and organization, you'd never topple dictators. If you don't have an army ten times larger than the dictator's standing-by to free you, that is.
You are being naive about the security and stability of government and power itself, feeling the western world invulnerable to corruption and seizing of power. But no nation or government is.
But if a few children are being exploited, does this mean you have a free society at all?
That way we will never have any free society. A few will always suffer, slip through social security, police, control, command. Even in the most Orwellian society, people slip through. If one suffering child is enough to make our freedom nil and void, then I can't help it anyway.
1. That doesn't say anything about the network
2. How legit is content in p2p anyway?
3. But not in equally secure ways. How to distribute a video of a war crime if the government turns into a militaristic fascism some day in the future?
4. To use Freenet we are reqired to mirror content which I find disgusting. This is to ensure nobody can censor anything. If we ever could, Freenet would be useless. Freedom means that I everyone is required to support speech that he doesn't agree with. There is no need to protect popular and non-controversial opinions, but disputed ones. And to anonymize all authors of information is the best way to ensure a free form of information about political matters, governmental crimes, sociological problems and whatnot. Which means everyone should support Freenet or any other form of free speech.
5. Some of the content might be useful people of our own country some day now or in the future. You can never predict what's gonna happen and certainly not rest in vain. "Government is like fire" someone much wiser than me said and I'm sure you find out who. Finding and mirroring known content violates anonymity and "plausible denial" in case of prosecution, be it child porn or political dissent.
There's just no possibility to implement a filter for bad content without opening the floodgates to filter out merely unwanted content. A politically dissenting video has identical properties to a child porn video. Same data format, enormous hindrance for distribution, legal, personal or death treaths for those who distribute it - so either you're protecting pederasts or you're losing the impenetrable fortress against dictatorship. Zero or one, copy all bits or none, have anymous and therefore safe dissidents as well as pederasts or don't.
Free choice or sheeple following security scares, anyone can choose freely. I hope my children and theirs can have that choice, too, when they grow up.
The problem with freedom is always the same: giving freedom up is easy, fast and brings total security (except if you're a jew, a kurd or a palestinian or whatever the target-du-jour is) - but regaining freedom once lost is impossible. Almost.
Goedels Theorem to the resuce: "Any formal system that is free of contradiction and capable of proving enough statements about mathematics has undecidable propositions that are True."
So any formal system is either contradicting itself or incomplete.
A definition of human creativity, if you ask me. And a sound explanation of why formal theories can never lend perfect solutions to problems, but can only compare different strategies against each other (but never "autoselect" one, because it may miss the best strategy)
Can't have the fortunes of a computer algorithm, precision, deterministic and reproducible results without its drawbacks, the total lack of creativity. Simulating real brains may be possible, but not without the drawbacks of real humans, amplified by several orders of magnitude in speed. Quantum-related effects don't matter as they could also be simulated or simply offset by another billion of a billion silicon neurons;) Moore certainly is on our side at that...
I don't know which electronic intelligence I like best. Just replacing humans with all traits doesn't make sense to me. Why reinvent the wheel? We have enough creative intelligence but we lack algorithmic, deterministic and computational intelligence, so we should focus on that...
To paraphrase an old expert's opinion, while not even being an expert: it depends
In a digital network, you either have a central authority able to control all data flow or you have none. There is no middle ground, I fear. So you either have a "watchful eye", if I might call it that, above you, screening all your traffic. Or you don't.
If you accept a central authority, no problem. But remember, they can check you silently and must do so everytime you say, send or receive anything through the net. They will need to monitor your opinion, your preferences, your private and casual conversations and worse.
What makes this central network authority a prime target for bribery and despotism. Like the police today. Anyone, even law enforcement officers, have their price and/or can fail in their morale. While a police investigation leaves a paper trail, has multiple officers involved and has an electable politician or sheriff behind it, network auditing has not. Criminal investigation usually happens after a crime was committed and affects those related to a crime, but scene network screening has to run regularly and affects everyone. On one hand they need to have proof to convict you, on the other the proof is a set of bytes with no identifying properties.
Short: anti-authoritarian movements can be tracked, silenced and imprisoned more easily if you have a central authority scanning traffic.
The main goal of Freenet is to prevent usurpation of power by the executive branch. Those in power will always reject dissent and sooner or later try to use a subverted law against true freedom of speech.
In my own humble opinion I can say freedom all is a higher goal than protection of few children. Now mod me down, flame me to oblivion, whatever you like. Call me stone-hearted if you like, but if I must choose between truly free speech, truly anonymous and open or prevention of children's suffering, I chose the first.
Dictatorship in one country hurts more children than all molesters can do worldwide. Preventing dictatorship is the best way to help and care for all children. Chasing molesters only helps a few.
And I will not let my emotion for hopeless underage victims overwhelm my rational thoughts. I will not trade "a good thing" for "no bad thing" as this will lead me nowhere. And I will never ever become a tool of population control, spreading memes of fear and scare for a threat that is perceived way out of proportion if you look closely.
Humans are no tougher than civilization as a whole. Civilization will form again, but much different than now. No matter what, I prefer civilization. Survival of the fittest is a rather hard task without civilization when you're living in northern Europe. Not that I'm not strong enough or what, but bears to hunt for their warm skin are rather sparse here at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you can't discern a rational thought doesn't necessarily mean there is none.
I said
Every soldier on duty in Guantanamo Bay on this very day is betraying his oaths and a disgrace for his uniform. They don't even remotely live up to Army or Marine Corps Values they have sworn to defend with their lives.
To freshen your memories on what these honorable men and women have sworn, an excerpt of the linked "Soldier code" pages:
Army Values:
Loyalty: Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other soldiers.
Duty: Fulfill your obligations.
Respect: Treat people as they should be treated.
Selfless-Service: Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own.
Honor: Live up to all the Army values.
Integrity: Do what's right, legally and morally.
Personal Courage: Face fear, danger, or adversity (Physical or Moral).
Corps Values:
Honor: Honor requires each Marine to exemplify the ultimate standard in ethical and moral conduct. Honor is many things; honor requires many things. A U.S. Marine must never lie, never cheat, never steal, but that is not enough. Much more is required. Each Marine must cling to an uncompromising code of personal integrity, accountable for his actions and holding others accountable for theirs. And, above all, honor mandates that a Marine never sully the reputation of his Corps.
Courage: Simply stated, courage is honor in action -- and more. Courage is moral strength, the will to heed the inner voice of conscience, the will to do what is right regardless of the conduct of others. It is mental discipline, an adherence to a higher standard. Courage means willingness to take a stand for what is right in spite of adverse consequences. This courage, throughout the history of the Corps, has sustained Marines during the chaos, perils, and hardships of combat. And each day, it enables each Marine to look in the mirror -- and smile.
Commitment: Total dedication to Corps and Country. Gung-ho Marine teamwork. All for one, one for all. By whatever name or cliche, commitment is a combination of (1) selfless determination and (2) a relentless dedication to excellence. Marines never give up, never give in, never willingly accept second best. Excellence is always the goal. And, when their active duty days are over, Marines remain reserve Marines, retired Marines, or Marine veterans. There is no such thing as an ex-Marine or former-Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Commitment never dies.
Tell me: How can a soldier sworn in on these values still service in a camp at Guantanamo Bay and not speak out?
They will keep saying to themselves they're only following orders, but following orders doesn't count in the end.
Do you still know for that the Statue of Liberty stands? Do you remember the times, when the United States of America would welcome immigrants from all over the globe, hundreds of thousands of them, dozens of immigrant ships arriving in New York city every day for years? Do you remember what set the United States apart from all other nations? Does the word "Liberty" ring a bell to you, literally?
Good point, not to say "me too" on this. Would very much like to visit the US, but there are two factors that I can't possible take risk of:
-possible apprehension on little or no grounds, suspicion being enough
-possibly followed by lifelong interment and/or torture without court orders, attorney, notification of relatives and embassies,
in short: I'm not taking any risks of sudden and permanent "disappearing". No matter how big this risk may be for non-Arab-looking people, I won't take chances. I feel it is a shame for American ideals and values and I'm sure I couldn't hold back my opinion while in country, what places me at a higher risk than average.
I just wonder how military personell, sworn in on bible and constitution can be such a disgrace for their corps, their uniform and their country to torture anybody and follow orders to put them into jail forever without a court hearing. No matter how they present it, it is disgusting. That doesn't mean all terror suspects should be freed, terrorists should roam freely or whatever - but there absolutely needs to be a distinction between the Mob and the government. Not needing warrants, judges and courts to indefinetly put someone to jail makes this moot.
In the face of the camps at Guantanamo Bay, every respect fades, for the United States as a whole and the United States military in particular. Every soldier that stays on duty in Guantanamo Bay betrays his uniform and anything that it stands for, including the constitution and the most basic human dignity.
As long as there are officers on duty in the United States of America, that are able and willing to follow immoral and unconstitutional orders, I will refrain from coming closer than several thousand miles of US borders, neither on transit nor on business obligation.
Untrue, don't surrender so early. Show some spine and face it instead of whining: posting on Slashdot is not going to change the world, but it may be enough to change some minds.
Every forum is suitable for that if it has equal "transmitting" rights for all participants, many of them participating, from diverse social backgrounds, not too predetermined, curious and living all around the globe. If Slashdot doesn't fit these criteria, I don't know what does.
"Doing something" always involves talking to and convincing other people, at least to make them think or become aware of your issues. "Actual real action" would mean much more risk to yourself and "teammates", while providing little more results, possibly even less. Violent action is terrorism nowadays, everything that at least damages property is considered violent and therefore useless. Non-violent action is not for everyone and with the overabundance of activist groups for every lost cause, you'll be pretty much regarded as a hippie or loon by the general public.
Thanks, but a consistent, reasonable argument on a wide open forum for several hundred thousand diverse but more logical, more curios, more - yes - intelligent-than-average minds and readers beats any other activism every time, in my opinion.
Either that or hijacking the Fox News transponder channels, your choice. Can't reach a larger audience with fewer costs, that's for sure.
Can you please be a bit more precise on what your logs actually recorded? You surely did a reverse-DNS, so please give - or link - some information to answer the question you left burning: who (domains) searched what (topics, keywords)?
And what did you mean by the last sentence, why we might not want to be seeing? I'm not afraid, are you?
And the best of all: China made some really really good movies in the last months. Go see "House of flying daggers" if you haven't and maybe another, somehow similar movie "2046". These films go lengths beyond Hollywood stereotypes and are just refreshingly traditional at the same time.
;)
;)
Rent them, if the cinema isn't playing them, you wont regret it, I promise. An astonishing flurry of images, colors and emotions, not artsy emotions like French films have, but very transparent and breathtaking scenes. "House of flying daggers" was, at least for me, absolutely the best film of this year, no matter what comes in the next 11 months
China has finally overcome the unavoidable repetion in most recent Hollywood movies and that's quite a feat. Imagine the first "Matrix"-part was a love movie with exactly the same cool action, a morale, fun, atmosphere, magic and tragedy all into one... Sounds impossible, eh? Watch the preview if you like
Floppy discs and drives aren't reliable when they are factory-new, let alone used for 10 years or more.
Those who have to use floppies for their work and valuable data have my deepest sympathy.
Copy, verify, error, repeat, copy, verify, error, reformat, copy, verify, error, copy, verify:ok, transport to target site, read: error.
I have used floppy discs intensively, have opted for the best quality available in any tech supermarket and floppy discs still failed. The last disc of a backup set of 10 discs. At 98 percent complete, on the last cluster of the last file, always. I'm actually very bitter towards floppy drives and I never want to use one again unless Bill Gates pays me half his money to.
Anything inside your bag makes an excellent X-Ray footprint. As a kid I've carried numerous large and small SuperSoakers in my baggage on holidays. While the bags passed through the scanner, I curiously looked at the X-Ray screens, and voilà, the shape of my SuperSoakers were clearly to be seen. And they're made entirely of plastic.
What you carry in your handbag was not screened at that time and a ceramic knife wouldn't set off a metal detector, you mean. Today I wouldn't be surprised if they scanned everything, even the films inside the cameras just to be sure...
If non-metal objects wouldn't leave an X-Ray footprint, cancer detection by X-Ray screening would be useless, you know...
Beam diverges for 1 deg in your hand around 0,250 miles on a 15mi distant target, a=(sin(a)*b)/sin(b) to repeat my former AC comment. I frankly assume most cannot hold their hand steadier than 1 deg without some visual aids (read: ironsights and some visual clues like trees and the horizon).
Accuracy needed to shine a laser somewhere onto a 60m long and 10m high airplane body at a distance of 10km: horizontal no more than 0.34 deg, vertical no more than 0.06 deg.
If it's a commercial jet airliner, that target is moving at a speed of at least 700 km/h or ~200m/sec. That means it is moving vertically 1.15 deg in every single second in the view of our laser shooter. No chance to hit that, seriously. The chance of winning the lottery may be ten times as high...
And we were only trying to hit the hull and not the cockpit nor eyes of the pilot.
Eye burn damage from a publicly available ultra strong laser happens only after at least 0.10 seconds, so we would have to hit a target no more than 1cm in diameter (the pilot's retina) for more than that time. A target of 1 square centimeter, soaring through space and time with a velocity of 200m every second in a distance of 10'000 meters. Give up already, it's not possible, not by chance, not by malicious intent and neither by a thousand evil terrorists trying to multiply their chances nor not ultra-sophisticated computer equipment.
During landing and take-off, it may be possible. But at cruise speeds and altitudes, a plane and the pilot is for all intents and purposes invincible from publicly available laser pointers.
Hehe, you never tried it, did you?
If you did, you'd know that it's nigh impossible to do. Aiming at an old piece of industry architecture, an old windmill or whatever and at a distance of more than 200 meters hitting that damn thing is nothing to be taken lightly. You simply don't know in which direction to move the pointer, as you got no clue if the dot is lower, higher, left or right of the target. Waving around a bit nets you a small blink when you hit it, but you can never stop your movement fast enough to keep it there.
Aiming briefly through the ironsights will be much better. Laser pointers are just needed when you're expecting close quarter combat and/or want to show potential hostage takers your ability to instant-headshot them if needed. No mid or long range shooter would like to give out his position that easily or have his target know what's coming, long before a single shot is fired...
You obviously never drove any German Autobahn, I'm sure. 100mph ~ 160kph and that's a normal vehicle speed over here. 130kph is officially "suggested" speed, but especially bike riders go lengths and lengths beyond that. 250kph ~ 155 mph is upper limit for most German motorbikers.
Trucks and heavy vehicles can go 80kph/50mph, buses 100kph/62mph and everything else is unlimited by law.
Compact cars, 3-doors etc. usually drive between 80kph (old and rugged cars/drivers) and 130kph with a few exceptions, notably Volkswagen "Lupo" and "Golf" in the "suicide engine" version with 120 or more HP, they are driven by lunatics 200kph or more no matter if the road is dry or below solid ice. But they are few and far between and you sure know why.
Middle-class goes between 140 and 200kph, that range usually covers the bulk of cars. High powered suicide versions exist in this class, too, with 200 or more HP. And people who own them drive accordingly, tendency stable - more airbags 'n stuff I suppose.
Cars beyond 200kph are less than 10%, usually the upper BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen models. They announce themselves from half a kilometre away with full headbeam and constant left turn indicator. If any driver is in front of them, they will brake at the last moment possible, if ever. Most other drivers cave in long before and leave the fastest inner lane rather quick if they see them approaching.
Tire popping is seldom cause for accidents, most of the time it's trucks or other vehicles breaking out of 80kph formation on 1st going into 2nd lane overtaking some while forcing a "regular" car going 180kph or less out from 2nd to 3rd fastest lane. Where they collide with a suicide compact or fast upper class car from behind.
I don't know that many Autobahn routes here in Germany, but I'd wager 30-40% of all routes are unlimited and 3-lane. The rest is 2-lane and limited to 120kph/75mph or 100kph, as the road condition permits. Autobahns passing larger cities are often limited for "lower noise level", near poorer cities for "speed control fills city coffers"-reason.
It is not uncommon to have limits on a road to exist for various reasons, wind, noise, whatever, but road condition permits MUCH higher speeds. Everyone drives according to road condition then, bearing the risk of being "flashed" by police with radar speed cameras. Poorer municipalities are actually notorious for this and you cannot drive more than 200kms without meeting one of these cameras if you're unlucky.
In cities, there are even more cameras. Can't drive longer than 30 minutes without seeing one in any city. It is even possible to have the German police temporarily limit a normally unlimited stretch of 3-lane Autobahn to 80kph or less and then lurking for and cashing in on "speeders" at the end of that temp limit zone. Shameless entrapment.
Fines for speeding ~25 euros for less than 10km over, 50 euros for less than 20kms over and 100 or 200 euros for everything beyong, leading quickly to 2000 or losing license for more than 40 above.
Germany has the most eased road laws in Europe, so nobody obeys the speed limit nowhere. In answer to that, speed limits are set much too low everywhere in hope the drivers will go their "usual 20kph" above and still keep on track. That way police and law enforcement can endlessly bilk drivers for their money while always having law on their side and public outrage silent. Nice trick, eh?
In Norway for example, 10kph over the limit are rather expensive: 200 eur, 600 for over 20kph. There, speed limits are set almost right, with around 5-10kph left above. Eastern Europe speed limits are equally hard for everyone carrying Euros in their pocket but speed limits are brutally true. Any limit posted is true to the letter if not a bit daring on a dry and sunny day.
What I can see, I can videotape. What I can hear, I can record.
;)
If most else fails, I will film my own TV screen with my camcorder, the line from headphone-out plugged into it. Plain old cinema-piracy-style. And *then* put it on the internet or make a million copies and sell it cheap through illegal thrift stores. How do you prevent this? Mandatory watermark detection for all camcorders? What if I import them directly from China, Mexico, Russia or else? Arrest me for using illegal media equipment? Need to register typewriters and camcorders then like sometimes ago in Soviet Russia?
Have an Orwellian society or movie studios bitching about unlicensed movie copies. Can't have both. You decide, today.
If *all* else fails, we can still vote from the rooftops, tomorrow.
Excellent marketing, Geoffyboy, that's the spirit to win customers. Great!
I mean, why offer discounts, court these customer bastards with rebates and service - pah, just tell em up front that we don't like 'em and don't need their stinkin' money. We can live without 'em but they need us.
But wwwwait, stop. Wee talkin' 'bout drugs or movies or real products here?
I want to add a third:
They create a black market opportunity for organized groups of counterfeiters.
After every consumer has had some cheap copied digital content, they cannot be brought back into the flock, they're just lost for a sure revenue stream forever. If casual users cannot copy movies themselves, they will not buy them instead. Everyone has experienced that digital copies really cost nothing, in fact. Most are understanding they are paying for one-time costs of creating the content works, but they know for sure each additional copy costs zero bucks to make.
Try to convince them to pay 15 dollars for the DVD after some film enjoyed great box office success and already paid itself many times over?
I say, they will either skip on unavailable movies and watch others instead. Or wait until the geek next door produces a copy, the price falls, used DVDs appear on ebay and Amazon or illegal stores pop up in shady areas of the city.
And if not even Joe Geek can copy movies for mom & pop, Joe Geek will download them. If that fails he will procure them on emerging grey and black markets. And presto, you have a prohibition-style bootleg business going on everywhere. Great!
People generally won't go to see movies without an actor they already know in it because
a movie night has become more expensive compared with former times because
films are more expensive, partly because
famous actors collect millions of dollars, but have to be used anyway because
People generally won't go to see movies without an actor they already know in it because
repeat
I don't for sure. How many times have I seen iPods connected to the big stereo at a friend's house, playing music while some mobile phones rang repeatedly when more friends called. What to do with a phone-integrated music player, leave the room to talk? Turn down the music? Disconnect that thing from the stereo, go out of the crowded, noisy area to a room where you can talk and be understood?
Not exactly an out-of-world scenario, eh? I wouldn't want to talk with loud music playing in the background, much less stopping the music for everyone else.
Highly impractical, I say. And a continously refreshing RAM and spinning HDD doesn't quite add standby time and robustness to it.
It will surely break the space constraints in a small vehicle, but what about the possibility to build a steam powered hybrid engine? That way the steam turbine can run either at optimal rpm or not at all, while the electric motor brings optimal torque for a "satisfying driving experience" and whatnot.
Twice the weight is a serious argument against this idea, though. Harmful lead in the batteries is not, as lead recycling is pretty efficient nowadays.
As steam turbines run on anything that can heat up water, we might see extremely versatile cars. Wood pellets are the last hype in heating small homes, as they are eco-friendly made from wood processing waste, can be fed mechanically into a burner and store a lot of energy per weight. But then, it could all be impractical...
Any baby is a human creation. You and me are. A product of genes, memes and ideas of our parents and society, a peer group and some loved ones, influenced by chance and a small X. Children are repeating their parents all the time, performing pretty bad during their first years to be precise. Do they have rights anyway? Damn right.
The day you cannot tell a computer from a conscious being it will be a crime to shut it off, no questions asked. Protection equal to domesticed animals will be required much earlier, I'm sure.
Very nice, Dude. Authoritarian right from the start, couldn't be better to counter your drivel, thanks.
What others do with their freedom is none of your business, think about what you like, but everyone can do everything with his own freedoms, including wasting them or not doing anything at all. Except coercing others to give up theirs like you did. If you think only those people deserve freedom that want to use it now and in a view compatible to yours, then welcome the swastika armbands. Seriously.
Freedom can include participating in a way you or anyone else won't find useful or worthy.
And a government or nation doesn't need to murder millions to partially equal Nazi Germany. And yes, the United States may really be one of the most hideous and oppresive societies to exist. Like they said, in Soviet Russia, at least they knew they were being oppressed. And Nazis called a war exactly that, not weasel around with "military action" and terms like that. A two party system, bought politicians, invasions around the globe, many millions of civilians killed by the US military in the last 4 decades ain't helping much. And that's where the Nazi Germany reference kicks in: Nazi Germans were absolutely sure they did the right thing in their own ideology. And you cannot identify ideologies until you left them for a moment. You certainly can't. Your last statement stands for that, by declaring dissent mentally ill you're pretty much thinking in the realm of "treatment", "custody" and "re-education". In a clear authoritarian way of thinking. The difference to Nazis remaining only in the degree of cruelty, not worldview. Us and them, worthy vs. unworthy, sane and ill, doctor and patient, Fuehrer and Volk.
Ask sane Vietnamese or Iraqi people, if you think I'm ill.
Dictatorships hurts everyone, pederasts only a few. Hunting molesters is orders of magnitude easier than toppling dictators.
Bittorrent doesn't stop anything. Freenet may do. Dictatorship relies on population and media control, threats to dissenting individuals and general manipulation of public opinion. Free speech is the only way to prevent establishment of a dictatorship or to overcome it. If the only available opinions are the state-controlled ones, dictatorship can last MUCH longer than with numerous independent views. Without information and organization, you'd never topple dictators. If you don't have an army ten times larger than the dictator's standing-by to free you, that is.
You are being naive about the security and stability of government and power itself, feeling the western world invulnerable to corruption and seizing of power. But no nation or government is.
But if a few children are being exploited, does this mean you have a free society at all?
That way we will never have any free society. A few will always suffer, slip through social security, police, control, command. Even in the most Orwellian society, people slip through. If one suffering child is enough to make our freedom nil and void, then I can't help it anyway.
1. That doesn't say anything about the network
2. How legit is content in p2p anyway?
3. But not in equally secure ways. How to distribute a video of a war crime if the government turns into a militaristic fascism some day in the future?
4. To use Freenet we are reqired to mirror content which I find disgusting. This is to ensure nobody can censor anything. If we ever could, Freenet would be useless. Freedom means that I everyone is required to support speech that he doesn't agree with. There is no need to protect popular and non-controversial opinions, but disputed ones. And to anonymize all authors of information is the best way to ensure a free form of information about political matters, governmental crimes, sociological problems and whatnot. Which means everyone should support Freenet or any other form of free speech.
5. Some of the content might be useful people of our own country some day now or in the future. You can never predict what's gonna happen and certainly not rest in vain. "Government is like fire" someone much wiser than me said and I'm sure you find out who. Finding and mirroring known content violates anonymity and "plausible denial" in case of prosecution, be it child porn or political dissent.
There's just no possibility to implement a filter for bad content without opening the floodgates to filter out merely unwanted content. A politically dissenting video has identical properties to a child porn video. Same data format, enormous hindrance for distribution, legal, personal or death treaths for those who distribute it - so either you're protecting pederasts or you're losing the impenetrable fortress against dictatorship. Zero or one, copy all bits or none, have anymous and therefore safe dissidents as well as pederasts or don't.
Free choice or sheeple following security scares, anyone can choose freely. I hope my children and theirs can have that choice, too, when they grow up.
The problem with freedom is always the same: giving freedom up is easy, fast and brings total security (except if you're a jew, a kurd or a palestinian or whatever the target-du-jour is) - but regaining freedom once lost is impossible. Almost.
Goedels Theorem to the resuce: "Any formal system that is free of contradiction and capable of proving enough statements about mathematics has undecidable propositions that are True."
;) Moore certainly is on our side at that...
So any formal system is either contradicting itself or incomplete.
A definition of human creativity, if you ask me. And a sound explanation of why formal theories can never lend perfect solutions to problems, but can only compare different strategies against each other (but never "autoselect" one, because it may miss the best strategy)
Can't have the fortunes of a computer algorithm, precision, deterministic and reproducible results without its drawbacks, the total lack of creativity. Simulating real brains may be possible, but not without the drawbacks of real humans, amplified by several orders of magnitude in speed. Quantum-related effects don't matter as they could also be simulated or simply offset by another billion of a billion silicon neurons
I don't know which electronic intelligence I like best. Just replacing humans with all traits doesn't make sense to me. Why reinvent the wheel? We have enough creative intelligence but we lack algorithmic, deterministic and computational intelligence, so we should focus on that...
To paraphrase an old expert's opinion, while not even being an expert: it depends
In a digital network, you either have a central authority able to control all data flow or you have none. There is no middle ground, I fear. So you either have a "watchful eye", if I might call it that, above you, screening all your traffic. Or you don't.
If you accept a central authority, no problem. But remember, they can check you silently and must do so everytime you say, send or receive anything through the net. They will need to monitor your opinion, your preferences, your private and casual conversations and worse.
What makes this central network authority a prime target for bribery and despotism. Like the police today. Anyone, even law enforcement officers, have their price and/or can fail in their morale. While a police investigation leaves a paper trail, has multiple officers involved and has an electable politician or sheriff behind it, network auditing has not. Criminal investigation usually happens after a crime was committed and affects those related to a crime, but scene network screening has to run regularly and affects everyone. On one hand they need to have proof to convict you, on the other the proof is a set of bytes with no identifying properties.
Short: anti-authoritarian movements can be tracked, silenced and imprisoned more easily if you have a central authority scanning traffic.
The main goal of Freenet is to prevent usurpation of power by the executive branch. Those in power will always reject dissent and sooner or later try to use a subverted law against true freedom of speech.
In my own humble opinion I can say freedom all is a higher goal than protection of few children. Now mod me down, flame me to oblivion, whatever you like. Call me stone-hearted if you like, but if I must choose between truly free speech, truly anonymous and open or prevention of children's suffering, I chose the first.
Dictatorship in one country hurts more children than all molesters can do worldwide. Preventing dictatorship is the best way to help and care for all children. Chasing molesters only helps a few.
And I will not let my emotion for hopeless underage victims overwhelm my rational thoughts. I will not trade "a good thing" for "no bad thing" as this will lead me nowhere. And I will never ever become a tool of population control, spreading memes of fear and scare for a threat that is perceived way out of proportion if you look closely.
You are sure the other shoppers are not body-snatched zombies? Haven't you heard a distinct "fnord" somewhere within the static?
They're coming! Now where's my chaingun?
Humans are no tougher than civilization as a whole. Civilization will form again, but much different than now. No matter what, I prefer civilization. Survival of the fittest is a rather hard task without civilization when you're living in northern Europe. Not that I'm not strong enough or what, but bears to hunt for their warm skin are rather sparse here at the moment.