Because there is corroborating evidence daily in the news that is leading us to the very rational yet difficult conclusion that we should not believe a damn word our government tells us (especially the NSA). That doesn't exist for your bigfoot, alien abduction, or ghost story examples.
It IS bad that it has gotten this far. Democracies are founded on trust, and the NSA and recent administrations are shredding that by treating the citizenry as threats.
So your point is that America is a free country because you can be killed for what you say? Please keep in mind that the US had several opportunities to take Anwar into custody and give him a trial, a right that used to be afforded to US citizens.
I think opening a newspaper recently, and following anything happening regarding the NSA, Snowden, Manning, Greenwald, etc. might provide you with some circumstantial evidence that would indicate that the scenario described is plausible. Hell, even if it isn't true, I'm angry that things have gotten to the point that I can believe it. Further, now that Clapper has gone in front Congress and been caught lying without repercussions, even a flat denial from officials doesn't cut it for me anymore. This is a problem for our now seemingly nominal democracy. I heard a great line from Ron Paul - I may misquote: "The truth becomes treason in an empire of lies". We're there.
I think you need to include the whole supply chain when you look at a military now. Note how the NSA is headed by a general, look how many private suppliers and contractors, mercenary groups (PMCs in sanitized language) count the US military as the a critical client. Size per capita means nothing when you include this shadow segment of the military, and consider that the draft (while highly unlikely) is still on the books.
They are also a rare public face for an agency quite cloaked in secrecy. This necessitates this being part of their job description when the agency they work for is receiving scrutiny. Congress has proven that they won't provide constitutional oversight, so maybe we can starve them of talent by educating potential recruits to what they are doing.
However Obama did campaign on rolling back some of the damage that had happened before (closing Guantanamo, renditions, wars under false pretenses etc). He then picked hawk advisers, renewed the "patriot" act and Guantanamo is still there.
Because we've paid for it in blood with the creation of unions and the labor movement. We also pay taxes from our earnings to support a much better infrastructure, social safety net and (full circle) pay for our industrial security complex war machine.
You are looking at this the wrong way...why don't the third world workers deserve to be paid more?
Statistically, terrorism in the US doesn't exist, and should not occupy the mind-share and consume the budget that it does. Keeping children away from pools unsupervised, drunk driving prevention, fitness and anti-smoking campaigns would keep us all much safer, and on a much lower budget.
Clearly you haven't been around polar bears, or know much about them. They get up to 10 ft. long, and run up to 40km/h. Range on the spray is what, max 25 ft? In a generally windy environment, that's not a very good window of opportunity. They stalk people as food when hungry, and playing dead doesn't work. Shotguns are versatile, nozzles don't freeze, you can load them with rubber shot to go non lethal. They mostly avoid people, but if it doesn't, you need to be ready to defend yourself. - if you want to offer yourself up to the bear gods, go nuts, but for me, I'll accept that shotgun with a thanks, hoping I don't need it.
I think they are going about this the wrong way. MintyBoost devices (or an imported similar device) and a brick of AA batteries, in your closet beforehand. Banking on everyone to be mobile and these stand being accessible during a crisis is not realistic.
We can be fairly confident it hasn't. The public relations victory that would be achieved if something like that had been prevented would all but assure reelection for the sitting president at the time. Hell, if no one would leak, there would be lots of incentive to manufacture a prevented attack. We're creating the conditions with secret courts and swaths of classified information that we have little way to verify what we're told. Bigger picture, it's becoming increasingly prudent not to trust the government.
Another Canadian example was the now mostly defunct firearms registry - sold by backers as having a $2M cost, became $2B, and $2M was just the annual upkeep. Criminals.
Let's build an open source program that randomly searches words at random intervals and follows links to random depths in a background sandboxed browser that uses a standard browser identifier, from a regularly updated dictionary built from words in non-fiction current events books and news publications. Root your android phones, and build an app that will silently call/text random other users in the "free/unlimited" calling windows set by you.
If intent is still necessary to convict, and freedom of speech/association are still rights we have (I know those are big caveats), use of the apps alone wouldn't be grounds to convict for anything, and render data sets for the watchers much larger and arguably useless.
I think what the poster is trying to say here is that car enthusiasts are a bit myopic with how they rank cars. To me (and I suspect many consumers), an efficient, reliable, low total cost of ownership car with respectable safety ratings is the pinnacle of cars. I don't define my worth by the machine I drive. Enthusiasts don't get excited about these things, and likely don't drive Civics or Corollas.
Heard a story on the radio (CBC) the other day about scattered incidents being observed in several states this year of Monsanto GMO corn crops with insecticide engineered in to stop rootworms losing effectiveness as the rootworms have developed immunity. So now farmers are paying more for their seed AND having to deal with the rootworms with traditional insecticides.
I was 10 years old you insensitive clod! Not really, but many of the people upset with this might be. 10 years is a long time in tech.
The difference is in the buy in. Cellphones track the user. They bought into that, and do everyday when they carry one. It is also difficult to use a cell camera surreptitiously - it's fairly obvious what you are doing holding it stiff armed at a weird angle.
The glasses track outwardly, and within a few generations will likely be indistinguishable from regular prescription glasses. You think ads being against Google policy is a good thing? Then where is the revenue play? The analytics and data collected about what you are looking at. When you look at me wearing the glasses, I am the target being collected, sold and profited from.
On the flip side, imagine the value of advertising billboards when Google can literally quantify eyeball time, and location - and they create a bidding process similar to their search ad words for physical location based ads? Pupil dilation in response to stimulus? Google's revenue isn't from search, it is from ads. If Google can analyze involuntary responses like pupil dilation in the aggregate (or heartbeat via camera - see Xbox One announcement), imagine how powerful their advertising campaigns and data would be. And to top it off they convinced you to buy the probe...
Agreed. Also, I remember the 80's when the select few people who had cell phones/car phones where seen as self important douches. Now everyone is a self important douche with a cellphone!
Just like cellphones, the glasses will become less intrusive.
Yet we'll throw wheelbarrows of money and human capital at statistical non-events like terrorism, while seasonal flu alone kills 37K annually in the US. Spare me...
If it's an algorithm making the trade on false news, you can't convince me that this is a rational market. You use the word "someone" falsely. These trades aren't mostly individual investors weighing their appetite for risk, it's banks and funds, using the capital aggregated from depositors, who are handed the losses or gains, having very little control over the entire process. And, 2008 proved the losses of these reckless institutions will be passed on to the taxpayer (the real loser). Until that gets fixed, the market is broken.
If the money didn't change hands after all was said and done, fine, but there is a winner and a loser on each trade. Given how much the market affects pensions, municipal finances and the economy on the whole, just because the total value recovered, doesn't mean those caught selling on the way down weren't devastated.
The FBI looking at the torrents of footage would be looking for behavioral signs in the crowd, (i.e. not watching the race, multiple people moving in tandem, not looking panicked after the blasts, proximity during the attack etc.) and video to review is much more valuable than stills, which the armchair analysts were looking at. I watched the reddit threads fairly closely, and saw people flag a person tending to a child in a stroller as suspicious behavior. In the still photo where the stroller was obscured, it would appear that way. The context that you can gain from video is far more useful, and the lack of this context is what leads to the jumps to conclusions we saw. The internet won't ever compete in a case like this without the video, which likely will never be shared.
Please tell me you aren't involved in the sciences (or social sciences for that matter)...I mean, there are zero other variables in your model other than availability of guns right?
The real issue is, absolute safety does not exist. The government can only keep you safe if you give them absolute powers, which are not synonymous with a free democracy. We the people need to recognize this. Terrorism is not going to go away, especially when we keep falling over ourselves to hand over freedoms (and cash) at the slightest provocation. We will go bankrupt protecting ourselves from bogeymen who can outlay rounding error dollars compared to what it costs to build the aparatus to make some people feel safe. We need to be honest with ourselves, and take responsibility for our own safety. Not everyone needs or wants to carry a gun, but we shouldn't stand in the way of those who want to exercise that freedom. Their intensions aren't only selfish. Yes, not everyone should be allowed to have one. There is a middle ground option that we should consider.
Those costs are externalities, as they wish taxes to be, just like the byproducts of all the helicopter fuel they burn. They are taught to maximize those in their fancy schools.
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I don't think "literally" means what you think it does...
How "radically inclusive" of you!
Because there is corroborating evidence daily in the news that is leading us to the very rational yet difficult conclusion that we should not believe a damn word our government tells us (especially the NSA). That doesn't exist for your bigfoot, alien abduction, or ghost story examples.
It IS bad that it has gotten this far. Democracies are founded on trust, and the NSA and recent administrations are shredding that by treating the citizenry as threats.
So your point is that America is a free country because you can be killed for what you say? Please keep in mind that the US had several opportunities to take Anwar into custody and give him a trial, a right that used to be afforded to US citizens.
I think opening a newspaper recently, and following anything happening regarding the NSA, Snowden, Manning, Greenwald, etc. might provide you with some circumstantial evidence that would indicate that the scenario described is plausible. Hell, even if it isn't true, I'm angry that things have gotten to the point that I can believe it. Further, now that Clapper has gone in front Congress and been caught lying without repercussions, even a flat denial from officials doesn't cut it for me anymore. This is a problem for our now seemingly nominal democracy. I heard a great line from Ron Paul - I may misquote: "The truth becomes treason in an empire of lies". We're there.
I think you need to include the whole supply chain when you look at a military now. Note how the NSA is headed by a general, look how many private suppliers and contractors, mercenary groups (PMCs in sanitized language) count the US military as the a critical client. Size per capita means nothing when you include this shadow segment of the military, and consider that the draft (while highly unlikely) is still on the books.
They are also a rare public face for an agency quite cloaked in secrecy. This necessitates this being part of their job description when the agency they work for is receiving scrutiny. Congress has proven that they won't provide constitutional oversight, so maybe we can starve them of talent by educating potential recruits to what they are doing.
However Obama did campaign on rolling back some of the damage that had happened before (closing Guantanamo, renditions, wars under false pretenses etc). He then picked hawk advisers, renewed the "patriot" act and Guantanamo is still there.
Because we've paid for it in blood with the creation of unions and the labor movement. We also pay taxes from our earnings to support a much better infrastructure, social safety net and (full circle) pay for our industrial security complex war machine.
You are looking at this the wrong way...why don't the third world workers deserve to be paid more?
Statistically, terrorism in the US doesn't exist, and should not occupy the mind-share and consume the budget that it does. Keeping children away from pools unsupervised, drunk driving prevention, fitness and anti-smoking campaigns would keep us all much safer, and on a much lower budget.
Clearly you haven't been around polar bears, or know much about them. They get up to 10 ft. long, and run up to 40km/h. Range on the spray is what, max 25 ft? In a generally windy environment, that's not a very good window of opportunity. They stalk people as food when hungry, and playing dead doesn't work. Shotguns are versatile, nozzles don't freeze, you can load them with rubber shot to go non lethal. They mostly avoid people, but if it doesn't, you need to be ready to defend yourself. - if you want to offer yourself up to the bear gods, go nuts, but for me, I'll accept that shotgun with a thanks, hoping I don't need it.
I think they are going about this the wrong way. MintyBoost devices (or an imported similar device) and a brick of AA batteries, in your closet beforehand. Banking on everyone to be mobile and these stand being accessible during a crisis is not realistic.
We can be fairly confident it hasn't. The public relations victory that would be achieved if something like that had been prevented would all but assure reelection for the sitting president at the time. Hell, if no one would leak, there would be lots of incentive to manufacture a prevented attack. We're creating the conditions with secret courts and swaths of classified information that we have little way to verify what we're told. Bigger picture, it's becoming increasingly prudent not to trust the government.
Another Canadian example was the now mostly defunct firearms registry - sold by backers as having a $2M cost, became $2B, and $2M was just the annual upkeep. Criminals.
Let's build an open source program that randomly searches words at random intervals and follows links to random depths in a background sandboxed browser that uses a standard browser identifier, from a regularly updated dictionary built from words in non-fiction current events books and news publications. Root your android phones, and build an app that will silently call/text random other users in the "free/unlimited" calling windows set by you.
If intent is still necessary to convict, and freedom of speech/association are still rights we have (I know those are big caveats), use of the apps alone wouldn't be grounds to convict for anything, and render data sets for the watchers much larger and arguably useless.
I think what the poster is trying to say here is that car enthusiasts are a bit myopic with how they rank cars. To me (and I suspect many consumers), an efficient, reliable, low total cost of ownership car with respectable safety ratings is the pinnacle of cars. I don't define my worth by the machine I drive. Enthusiasts don't get excited about these things, and likely don't drive Civics or Corollas.
Heard a story on the radio (CBC) the other day about scattered incidents being observed in several states this year of Monsanto GMO corn crops with insecticide engineered in to stop rootworms losing effectiveness as the rootworms have developed immunity. So now farmers are paying more for their seed AND having to deal with the rootworms with traditional insecticides.
And for that matter, where were you?
I was 10 years old you insensitive clod! Not really, but many of the people upset with this might be. 10 years is a long time in tech.
The difference is in the buy in. Cellphones track the user. They bought into that, and do everyday when they carry one. It is also difficult to use a cell camera surreptitiously - it's fairly obvious what you are doing holding it stiff armed at a weird angle.
The glasses track outwardly, and within a few generations will likely be indistinguishable from regular prescription glasses. You think ads being against Google policy is a good thing? Then where is the revenue play? The analytics and data collected about what you are looking at. When you look at me wearing the glasses, I am the target being collected, sold and profited from.
On the flip side, imagine the value of advertising billboards when Google can literally quantify eyeball time, and location - and they create a bidding process similar to their search ad words for physical location based ads? Pupil dilation in response to stimulus? Google's revenue isn't from search, it is from ads. If Google can analyze involuntary responses like pupil dilation in the aggregate (or heartbeat via camera - see Xbox One announcement), imagine how powerful their advertising campaigns and data would be. And to top it off they convinced you to buy the probe...
Agreed. Also, I remember the 80's when the select few people who had cell phones/car phones where seen as self important douches. Now everyone is a self important douche with a cellphone!
Just like cellphones, the glasses will become less intrusive.
Yet we'll throw wheelbarrows of money and human capital at statistical non-events like terrorism, while seasonal flu alone kills 37K annually in the US. Spare me...
If it's an algorithm making the trade on false news, you can't convince me that this is a rational market. You use the word "someone" falsely. These trades aren't mostly individual investors weighing their appetite for risk, it's banks and funds, using the capital aggregated from depositors, who are handed the losses or gains, having very little control over the entire process. And, 2008 proved the losses of these reckless institutions will be passed on to the taxpayer (the real loser). Until that gets fixed, the market is broken.
If the money didn't change hands after all was said and done, fine, but there is a winner and a loser on each trade. Given how much the market affects pensions, municipal finances and the economy on the whole, just because the total value recovered, doesn't mean those caught selling on the way down weren't devastated.
The FBI looking at the torrents of footage would be looking for behavioral signs in the crowd, (i.e. not watching the race, multiple people moving in tandem, not looking panicked after the blasts, proximity during the attack etc.) and video to review is much more valuable than stills, which the armchair analysts were looking at. I watched the reddit threads fairly closely, and saw people flag a person tending to a child in a stroller as suspicious behavior. In the still photo where the stroller was obscured, it would appear that way. The context that you can gain from video is far more useful, and the lack of this context is what leads to the jumps to conclusions we saw. The internet won't ever compete in a case like this without the video, which likely will never be shared.
Please tell me you aren't involved in the sciences (or social sciences for that matter)...I mean, there are zero other variables in your model other than availability of guns right?
The real issue is, absolute safety does not exist. The government can only keep you safe if you give them absolute powers, which are not synonymous with a free democracy. We the people need to recognize this. Terrorism is not going to go away, especially when we keep falling over ourselves to hand over freedoms (and cash) at the slightest provocation. We will go bankrupt protecting ourselves from bogeymen who can outlay rounding error dollars compared to what it costs to build the aparatus to make some people feel safe. We need to be honest with ourselves, and take responsibility for our own safety. Not everyone needs or wants to carry a gun, but we shouldn't stand in the way of those who want to exercise that freedom. Their intensions aren't only selfish. Yes, not everyone should be allowed to have one. There is a middle ground option that we should consider.
Those costs are externalities, as they wish taxes to be, just like the byproducts of all the helicopter fuel they burn. They are taught to maximize those in their fancy schools.