that at $700 (starting) it's not really a viable alternative to a $400 PS4.
It is if you consider that besides playing games, you could also use the Alienware machine to develop your own games as well as do music production, video editing, web development, word processing, spreadsheets, run fluid dynamics numerical simulations as well as play all of the indie, F2P and other games that are PC-only. And you have a choice of keyboard or controller.
And, as you say, the Alienware system is considerably more powerful than the "$400 PS4". Plus, you're not giving any money to Sony, which is probably more important to me than all the other points combined.
You and I may disagree vehemently on other topics (like politics:P ) but here we can agree.
Without going on at length, I do things with my computer that the added power would help with. I also like to play games. The convenience of doing both well adds value from my perspective. As well as, as you say, avoiding giving more money to either Sony or MS.
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed..
Yes, it does, and the election results prove it...
No, it does not. Many groups were suppressed before and during the 2012 election by the IRS targeting and likely other means at the government's disposal as well. Possibly the NSA played a part in blackmailing certain key individuals and organizations as well.
Besides, in order for the voters to be able to consent and to make a reasoned choice, they have to know what the government is actually doing. They most certainly did not. That does not equal consent.
Regardless of elections, the part of my sentence that you left out when you quoted me is the operative part that supports my statement, which you did not address:
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.
When the government ignored (and continues to ignore) the restrictions on it's powers and scope that were part of the deal made with the people for consent, it forfeited that consent and forfeited it's legitimacy as a government.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
No. Clapper is a lying POS that needs to spend many decades (his remaining life) inside a super-max cell.
And he's far from the only one in this government (from both political parties) that belongs in a prison cell for the rest of their lives, and many executed for their crimes against all US citizens of all political/religious/ideological stripes and the betrayal of their Oaths of Office to protect and defend the US Constitution that have been highlighted by the string of scandals and revelations of late, and their outright lies under oath in response to questions.
This is not a (R) or (D) issue. They don't even bother keeping promises to their own Party's constituents unless it fits their agendas. They lie and betray everyone while defying and destroying the Rule of Law and constantly seeking to further restrict and redefine individual liberty and Constitutional Rights.
They see themselves as our masters and ALL of us as serfs. History demonstrates repeatedly that this is what happens when a government and those running it gain too much power relative to the people.
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.
Any species with the capabilities of "sending big rocks" wouldn't fear dinosaurs and rodents, nor fail to notice that their diabolic plan had failed so miserably.
They wouldn't even have to know for sure there was even any life. Just pick planets that are likely candidates for life to develop. As long as there is not sufficient time between strikes for life to develop intelligence and a technological civilization, they're safe.
Also, sending a "big rock", as in many miles in size, wouldn't be necessary. When you've got literally centuries to gain velocity, the size of the rock needed to create an extinction-level event decreases dramatically. Humans have the technology currently if we were to set our minds to actually doing it.
You basically just get the thing moving in the right direction and use gravity wells along the way for the lion's share of acceleration. Course-correction would be the only real challenge, as systems would need to operate over centuries.
A pretty big difference, although one that would only matter to a pathetic, cowardly species.
Pathetic and cowardly species? How about a species whose bottom line is survival in a very big and uncaring universe?
*You* might be willing to bet the survival of all life on Earth on a completely-alien species' good will, that may not even be carbon-based, never mind having an intelligence that shares a sense of right & wrong, with absolutely no evidence, but I'm not so sure everyone else is OK with that. Or should be OK with that.
Here's a thought: We may have already been hit by another intelligent species from another star system at least once, if not more.
There may be some alien race out there that simply searches for and identifies planets around other stars that might support life and sends big rocks every several-hundred-thousand years to make certain that no threat from a sufficiently-advanced race ever has a chance to develop.
I would say that the one thing almost all life in the universe shares is the instinct for and priority of survival first and foremost. That's a very dangerous thing when you're talking about first contact with an alien race.
Extinction, possibly of all life on Earth, is the price for getting it wrong.
that makes us a pretty formidible foe if push comes to shove.
See, here is where I think many are either failing to see or ignoring/dismissing an important real-world factor.
Given that;
1> Unless they're in some space federation/have regular interstellar contact with others they are just as clueless as we are as to how an alien race might react to detecting them with zero data.
2> Given [1] above, there is realistically a 50/50 chance on whether or not they will react with hostility just as they see the same odds from their side regarding humanity.
3> Given [1] & [2] above, the only safe move to assure that your species survives is to launch an immediate and extinction-level attack, one possibility being accelerating several sufficient-sized asteroids towards Earth (or the alien planet) so that by the time they arrive in the Sol system (or the alien's system), they're traveling at greater than a tenth of the speed of light.
Since neither we nor they would know whether or not such an attack is on the way due to the centuries-long timeframes, logically specie survival would depend on detecting other races and destroying them first while remaining undetected.
I'm not so sure that intentionally and pro-actively revealing our presence is such a great idea.
It's like the question of what happens if someday a human starship encounters an alien starship out in space. If you return to Earth without destroying the alien ship, the aliens will know where our home system is and can launch an extinction-level attack. Same thing for them.
At which point you charge them with destruction of evidence. They are claiming a crime was commited, and they destroyed the proof?
Except that every single time the claim will be that the suspect assaulted them and damaged the camera in the process.
Here in the US. the cops generally use the "Gosh, what a shame! The patrol car video/audio data from that *particular* incident of suspected police brutality/corruption/criminality/misconduct was lost (oh, the rest that implicates regular citizens is just fine) while sitting in the storage servers' hdd due to a 'technical malfunction', and sorry, there's no backups." excuse.
Rarely is this challenged by a criminal court/judge, although I think it has happened on some occasions where the story the cops told so strained credibility and was so unimaginative because of laziness/hubris/stupidity that even "friendly" judges/DAs/prosecutors couldn't ignore it.
Some local/State US police departments and court systems are much better about it than others, however, to be fair. It has not been the norm, sadly.
The MSNBC and CNN bit is a tired and obvious giveaway of a right-wing nutjob. Not that these stations aren't more left-leaning; it's the absolutely ridiculous suggestion that every single person working at MSNBC and CNN is a trusted Obama loyalist, that there are zero Republicans working anywhere in their ranks.
Yes, because we must find some minor detail, irrelevant to the point of the story, spoken in a hurried, frightened, clandestine meeting, with which to discredit and dismiss the entire thing. Standard PSYOPS response.
Then the capper:
"This is about the Marxist takeover of America"
In a country where corporations are clearly calling more and more of the shots, they want us to believe MARXISTS are taking over?
Oh, well, yes...we should not worry about anything the government does then. It's all those EBIL Capitalist businesses.. I forget...which corporation is the NSA/CIA/FBI/IRS/EPA owned & operated by? Because we know that the reference to Marxism was meant in an exclusively literal textbook manner and not at all as a rough description of the manner and methods employed, so it's perfectly logical to entirely dismiss and ridicule anything that might imply government wrongdoing.
How much do they pay you? Or have you drank so much koolaid that you do it for free? Are you hoping to land a job as an Interment-Resettlement Specialist when the SHTF?
"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky For I know that the hypnotized never lie" - "Won't Be Fooled Again" - The Who
It's a sad day when an American has to go to China for Sanctuary for reporting violations of the Bill of Rights.
No shit. It's like living in some kind of "Homeland" or other dystopian-future-themed computer game.
I guess the old "reality is stranger than fiction" truism still stands.
Maybe China or Russia will actually end up sending arms and funding to a future American resistance movement like the US has been doing around the world regarding rebels fighting against unfriendly regimes for many decades.
Interesting times, indeed. More than a bit surreal as well.
Don't worry. Those men with machine guns pointing down at us from the guard towers and razor wire will be there to protect us...from...something really scary, I'm sure. Like 7-yr-olds operating unlicensed, unregulated, cardboard-box lemonade stands in their driveway that aren't even inspected by the local health dept., don't provide free contraception to employees (5-yr-old sisters), or registered as a for-profit business with the IRS (shudder). Oh, the horror!
"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky For I know that the hypnotized never lie"
They can use our secrets to bust us (because what have we got to hide right?) But their secrets are super private "personal" sob sob, data. Off limits for our use against them.
Clearly the law is not so uniform after all....
"Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others."
"Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better."
~"Animal Farm" - Perceived as either a cautionary or instructional tale depending on your ideology and how it values the individual compared to the collective/State.
well you could imagine terrorists targeting a schoolbus, for example
They already did. That's what TFS/TFA are about. They used biometric iris scans instead of a bomb this time. That way, they can locate/track and terrorize them for the rest of the children's lives at the terrorists' convenience.
Its time to seriously consider moving the DOJ to a different branch of government, perhaps its own branch.
Rename it to the "Dept. of Jocularity". Truth in advertising. Calling that corrupt, power-grabbing, partisan-politicking, Rights-violating, pit of jackboots-in-suits a department of "Justice" is already a bad joke. Also, like stand-up comedians, they both try to "kill" and "slay" their audience. The DoJ audience's change of state is much more permanent and final in nature, however. Just ask Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexicans after that F&F DoJ gun-gag...oh, wait...
Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
Not if you believe that private, individual gun ownership should be highly restricted/regulated and/or outright prohibited at almost any cost, and that the ends justify the means, so that running guns to Mexican drug cartels resulting in innocent Mexican civilian and US law enforcement deaths, all as a propaganda scheme to attack the 2nd Amendment, is OK as long as nobody finds out.
Sort of like the Benghazi, AP, and IRS scandals. Those in power view the whistle-blowers as the problem, not their own illegal actions. That's the reason for the recent big push to ferret-out whistle blowers (or "national security threats", as the DoJ calls those exposing their corruption).
PROTIP: If you're a government official planning something that includes calculations of the risk of being caught by watchdog groups, exposed by journalists, and/or prosecuted by (the remaining small non-corrupt parts of) law enforcement or Congress, it's probably a very bad idea.
Particularly when it involves innocent people being brutally murdered as collateral damage or (in the case of Benghazi) being left to die to eliminate "loose ends" who could expose and/or testify against those in power
...difference in arrival time of signal at two locations produces hyperbola on map of possible origins.
One big problem is multipathing...signals (particularly with typical low-powered VHF/UHF tactical radios) in urban and rough country with plenty of mountains, caves, hills, valleys, cliffs, or conversely buildings, bridges, power lines, etc etc all splitting and bouncing the signal randomly in a continuously-changing manner (especially if the target is moving as well), resulting in multiple randomly-time-delayed and phase-shifted signals arriving at the radio-location receiving antenna(s) from one source.
As far as I'm aware, no system of the type you describe is in current combat service, or is a common piece of gear with frontline US military combat infantry. This, despite how useful it would be in Afghanistan against the Taliban and their ubiquitous handheld radios.
If there's a new system that's been deployed, I'd be curious to learn more. Do you have a link to info on the tactical system you described?
The right to personal self-defense and to the commonly-employed and current tools used to exercise that basic right to defend your life, that of your family, and of fellow-citizens, are primary and essential human rights. Without them, all other rights are meaningless. How does one exercise a right when dead? How free can one be if they have no legal ability to defend their right to continue living?
The right to life and its defense are NATURAL rights. These exist by virtue of the existence of the INDIVIDUAL.
No argument. I would consider human rights a subset of natural rights.
Unfortunately, a large portion of the world does not recognize many natural rights as human rights. The U.N. does not recognize the right of an individual to defend his life or that of his family, community, or nation. Just the opposite. They are promoting international treaties (UN Small arms Treaty) which contains controls and regulations on small arms that conflict with the US Constitution.
The UN Small Arms Treaty is actually a treaty to facilitate genocide and prevent the overthrow by revolution of existing regimes by controlling and restricting the ability...worldwide...of individuals and groups to obtain arms for their protection and defense.
The time will come when you can download plans to print or build a Terminator-esque robot. Though possibly not a humanoid, it would still be deadly.
And it'll be illegal to download the plans. Inevitably.
I would hope that by the time such technology came to be, we'd have advanced beyond the silly notion that one can effectively ban ideas or knowledge.
There are already plenty of detailed plans widely available for building all sorts of weapons that can be made at home with relatively little difficulty or expense.
There are plans and even parts kits available to allow almost anyone to build themselves a STEN sub-machine gun.
The only effective way to disarm US citizens is to kill a large portion of the population (maybe a majority) straight away, first thing, with no warning, then herd the remaining survivors into camps/gulags/prisons. There is simply far too many gun-making resources and too much materials, knowledge, and tools widely available in the US, never mind all the weapons already held by the people, to do it effectively any other way.
Considering the above, it would be a shame if all those FEMA camps that the government has recently been readying for use suddenly experienced a rash of fires and vandalism that left them unusable.
A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.
But this gun is only a gun, an unliscenced, unregulated gun that has proven to be less safe than an actual gun. I see no problem which what the police are saying here, but it is a very difficult thing to regulate.
There's no need to regulate. In fact killing another person is already illegal.
But, you don't understand! This is completely different! This is killing somebody with something built with plans downloaded over the internet!! On a computer!!!
Works for US patent submissions, right?
What in the world are they gonna do when the next-gen version of a firearm is invented and the plans widely released/distributed, and that can be made cheaply, quickly, and simply with common materials, and possibly doesn't even use "bullets" as we know them at all? Maybe some sort of electromagnetically-accelerated "micro-needler" or "micro-flechette" weapon, or something accelerated-plasma-based? "Give me a phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range."
I must say I have a fundamental problem with a government declaring that, under threat of death or imprisonment, I'm not allowed to defend my family, my community, or myself, and with being denied the current and essential tools for that defense. Police do not protect. They draw chalk outlines and *hopefully* find and arrest the suspected perpetrator(s) after the crime/violence has already occurred.
The right to personal self-defense and to the commonly-employed and current tools used to exercise that basic right to defend your life, that of your family, and of fellow-citizens, are primary and essential human rights. Without them, all other rights are meaningless. How does one exercise a right when dead? How free can one be if they have no legal ability to defend their right to continue living?
To remove the ability of people to defend themselves and their families is to make them a slave to anyone stronger, multiple attackers, or anyone who is armed. It gives the elderly, older children, and women a force-equalizer against a large and powerful male attacker. A rape whistle does no good when you're grabbed by the throat and being strangled. Likewise, the police are no help when a deadly threat is imminent and officers are minutes away at best.
And pretty easily trackable if they're broadcasting with enough power to send HD signals 3 miles.
Tracking down radio-frequency sources, especially low-altitude, low-power, mobile transmitters, is not so easy. Just look at the equipment and infrastructure used by the British to track the RF signal emitted by TVs (for licensing fees/penalties) and pirate FM broadcasting stations. Even with all that equipment, manpower, and infrastructure, their track record is far from stellar.
It's not something that most local or even most State police forces will have. The Feds don't have the resources and manpower to cover everywhere. The FCC has very limited resources to track very small low-power mobile transmitters, especially in a tactical situation. It's not like many military or paramilitary units have the capabilities, either.
All that is also assuming that the target transmitter's operator(s) take no countermeasures/precautions or try to make the search more difficult.
I expect that the authorities will simply pass laws & enact regulations forbidding private citizens from operating all but the smallest, most primitive, limited functionality and performance drones without a Federal anal-probe and a metric buttload of cash.
Myself, I want a fast (over 100kph), armored drone with a range of 10 miles-plus, a stay-aloft time of over an hour, equipped with targeting optics and a fully-auto weapon, like an AR-180-type high rate-of-fire small-caliber weapon (can carry more.22mag rounds than 9mm,.40 cal, or similar). Or maybe just a single or even a pair of small HE rockets.
Strictly for keeping the coyotes, etc, at bay on the back-forty, of course.:)
In any of the recent armed attacks in the US, were there any armed Americans whipping out their pistols to stop them?
The government prohibited legally-armed Americans from being present through "gun-free zones" in the majority of cases. The armed citizen that was present at Gabby Gifford's shooting withheld firing because of the danger to bystanders...which argues against the "wild shootout with mass innocent casualties" scenario typically trotted-out.
I think the whole hero-cowboy-shoot-em-up are just daydreams that castrated white men dream up trying to reclaim their power in modern society.
I disagree. You're not thinking. Just the opposite. You're emoting.
There are always a few examples, but most gun-owners aren't running to their closets to help police do their job.
You are correct here, as the job of the police is NOT to protect you, the individual citizen. The SCOTUS ruled that police have no duty to protect. They catch the bad guys after a crime is committed. The "protection" part is each individual's responsibility.
Guns that shoot the person who is pulling the trigger.
Good job. Now you've turned a simple rapist into a necrophiliac. He could have had a nice warm, live, victim to rape if she had not been armed with your "kill the user" defense weapon.
Hard to blow a "rape whistle" when the rapist has the unarmed woman around the throat.
If anyone thinks gun control or gun bans protect those who need protecting most over the long term, please watch this historical documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
Good job striking a blow for oppressive, intrusive government and against those uppity serfs thinking they have rights.
This isn't about political parties. In case you haven't noticed, the government (regardless of which Party is in office) is spying on and violating the rights of *everyone*, including the present administration's "friends" in the mainstream press (AP).
Reminds me of an abused wife that attacks the police who are trying to arrest the husband for beating her bloody.
Not trying to admin somebody else's systems, but...maybe you should consider upgrading your news feed to RFC 1149 or something else a bit swifter. Seems your current one is experiencing...umm...latency-related....uh...shall we say, "issues".
We (in the US) are already there. Just go read the recent news. IRS/TEA Party/medical records seizures, DoJ/reporters, etc etc. It's not "ooh, shiny!" Hollywood, but what in the real world ever is? The results (and the violation, terror, and suffering of innocents) are the same.
"But never mind all that stuff, I heard a fresh rumor about the new i-$DEVICE!!!1!!one!!"
Slashdot Mirror
You and I may disagree vehemently on other topics (like politics :P ) but here we can agree.
Without going on at length, I do things with my computer that the added power would help with. I also like to play games. The convenience of doing both well adds value from my perspective. As well as, as you say, avoiding giving more money to either Sony or MS.
Strat
No, it does not. Many groups were suppressed before and during the 2012 election by the IRS targeting and likely other means at the government's disposal as well. Possibly the NSA played a part in blackmailing certain key individuals and organizations as well.
Besides, in order for the voters to be able to consent and to make a reasoned choice, they have to know what the government is actually doing. They most certainly did not. That does not equal consent.
Regardless of elections, the part of my sentence that you left out when you quoted me is the operative part that supports my statement, which you did not address:
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.
When the government ignored (and continues to ignore) the restrictions on it's powers and scope that were part of the deal made with the people for consent, it forfeited that consent and forfeited it's legitimacy as a government.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Strat
Technically, if you believe the NSA has no direct access,...
You mean, exist in a reality where there are no secret NSA rooms mirroring all the data from major carriers?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/11/09/2040206/ex-att-tech-says-nsa-monitors-all-web-traffic
No. Clapper is a lying POS that needs to spend many decades (his remaining life) inside a super-max cell.
And he's far from the only one in this government (from both political parties) that belongs in a prison cell for the rest of their lives, and many executed for their crimes against all US citizens of all political/religious/ideological stripes and the betrayal of their Oaths of Office to protect and defend the US Constitution that have been highlighted by the string of scandals and revelations of late, and their outright lies under oath in response to questions.
This is not a (R) or (D) issue. They don't even bother keeping promises to their own Party's constituents unless it fits their agendas. They lie and betray everyone while defying and destroying the Rule of Law and constantly seeking to further restrict and redefine individual liberty and Constitutional Rights.
They see themselves as our masters and ALL of us as serfs. History demonstrates repeatedly that this is what happens when a government and those running it gain too much power relative to the people.
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.
Strat
Any species with the capabilities of "sending big rocks" wouldn't fear dinosaurs and rodents, nor fail to notice that their diabolic plan had failed so miserably.
They wouldn't even have to know for sure there was even any life. Just pick planets that are likely candidates for life to develop. As long as there is not sufficient time between strikes for life to develop intelligence and a technological civilization, they're safe.
Also, sending a "big rock", as in many miles in size, wouldn't be necessary. When you've got literally centuries to gain velocity, the size of the rock needed to create an extinction-level event decreases dramatically. Humans have the technology currently if we were to set our minds to actually doing it.
You basically just get the thing moving in the right direction and use gravity wells along the way for the lion's share of acceleration. Course-correction would be the only real challenge, as systems would need to operate over centuries.
Strat
A pretty big difference, although one that would only matter to a pathetic, cowardly species.
Pathetic and cowardly species? How about a species whose bottom line is survival in a very big and uncaring universe?
*You* might be willing to bet the survival of all life on Earth on a completely-alien species' good will, that may not even be carbon-based, never mind having an intelligence that shares a sense of right & wrong, with absolutely no evidence, but I'm not so sure everyone else is OK with that. Or should be OK with that.
Here's a thought: We may have already been hit by another intelligent species from another star system at least once, if not more.
There may be some alien race out there that simply searches for and identifies planets around other stars that might support life and sends big rocks every several-hundred-thousand years to make certain that no threat from a sufficiently-advanced race ever has a chance to develop.
I would say that the one thing almost all life in the universe shares is the instinct for and priority of survival first and foremost. That's a very dangerous thing when you're talking about first contact with an alien race.
Extinction, possibly of all life on Earth, is the price for getting it wrong.
Strat
that makes us a pretty formidible foe if push comes to shove.
See, here is where I think many are either failing to see or ignoring/dismissing an important real-world factor.
Given that;
1> Unless they're in some space federation/have regular interstellar contact with others they are just as clueless as we are as to how an alien race might react to detecting them with zero data.
2> Given [1] above, there is realistically a 50/50 chance on whether or not they will react with hostility just as they see the same odds from their side regarding humanity.
3> Given [1] & [2] above, the only safe move to assure that your species survives is to launch an immediate and extinction-level attack, one possibility being accelerating several sufficient-sized asteroids towards Earth (or the alien planet) so that by the time they arrive in the Sol system (or the alien's system), they're traveling at greater than a tenth of the speed of light.
Since neither we nor they would know whether or not such an attack is on the way due to the centuries-long timeframes, logically specie survival would depend on detecting other races and destroying them first while remaining undetected.
I'm not so sure that intentionally and pro-actively revealing our presence is such a great idea.
It's like the question of what happens if someday a human starship encounters an alien starship out in space. If you return to Earth without destroying the alien ship, the aliens will know where our home system is and can launch an extinction-level attack. Same thing for them.
Strat
Here in the US. the cops generally use the "Gosh, what a shame! The patrol car video/audio data from that *particular* incident of suspected police brutality/corruption/criminality/misconduct was lost (oh, the rest that implicates regular citizens is just fine) while sitting in the storage servers' hdd due to a 'technical malfunction', and sorry, there's no backups." excuse.
Rarely is this challenged by a criminal court/judge, although I think it has happened on some occasions where the story the cops told so strained credibility and was so unimaginative because of laziness/hubris/stupidity that even "friendly" judges/DAs/prosecutors couldn't ignore it.
Some local/State US police departments and court systems are much better about it than others, however, to be fair. It has not been the norm, sadly.
Strat
The MSNBC and CNN bit is a tired and obvious giveaway of a right-wing nutjob. Not that these stations aren't more left-leaning; it's the absolutely ridiculous suggestion that every single person working at MSNBC and CNN is a trusted Obama loyalist, that there are zero Republicans working anywhere in their ranks.
Yes, because we must find some minor detail, irrelevant to the point of the story, spoken in a hurried, frightened, clandestine meeting, with which to discredit and dismiss the entire thing. Standard PSYOPS response.
Then the capper:
"This is about the Marxist takeover of America"
In a country where corporations are clearly calling more and more of the shots, they want us to believe MARXISTS are taking over?
Oh, well, yes...we should not worry about anything the government does then. It's all those EBIL Capitalist businesses.. I forget...which corporation is the NSA/CIA/FBI/IRS/EPA owned & operated by? Because we know that the reference to Marxism was meant in an exclusively literal textbook manner and not at all as a rough description of the manner and methods employed, so it's perfectly logical to entirely dismiss and ridicule anything that might imply government wrongdoing.
How much do they pay you? Or have you drank so much koolaid that you do it for free? Are you hoping to land a job as an Interment-Resettlement Specialist when the SHTF?
"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie" - "Won't Be Fooled Again" - The Who
Strat
It's a sad day when an American has to go to China for Sanctuary for reporting violations of the Bill of Rights.
No shit. It's like living in some kind of "Homeland" or other dystopian-future-themed computer game.
I guess the old "reality is stranger than fiction" truism still stands.
Maybe China or Russia will actually end up sending arms and funding to a future American resistance movement like the US has been doing around the world regarding rebels fighting against unfriendly regimes for many decades.
Interesting times, indeed. More than a bit surreal as well.
And it may be a lot closer than most think. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749
Strat
This is a farce unlike any seen on this planet for more than a thousand years.
Spoiler alert: It ends badly.
That's putting it mildly.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749
Btw, if you're looking for a job, the Army NG is looking to fill Internment-Resettlement Specialist positions.
http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/legal-and-law-enforcement/internment-resettlement-specialist.html
FM 3-39.40/50 Internment and Resettlement Operations: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/12_USA/120522.FM-3-39.50.pdf
Don't worry. Those men with machine guns pointing down at us from the guard towers and razor wire will be there to protect us...from...something really scary, I'm sure. Like 7-yr-olds operating unlicensed, unregulated, cardboard-box lemonade stands in their driveway that aren't even inspected by the local health dept., don't provide free contraception to employees (5-yr-old sisters), or registered as a for-profit business with the IRS (shudder). Oh, the horror!
"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie"
~ The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Strat
I believe this is under the control of [those who pull the strings of] our elected officials.
FTFY
Strat
They can use our secrets to bust us (because what have we got to hide right?)
But their secrets are super private "personal" sob sob, data. Off limits for our use against them.
Clearly the law is not so uniform after all....
"Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others."
"Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better."
~"Animal Farm" - Perceived as either a cautionary or instructional tale depending on your ideology and how it values the individual compared to the collective/State.
Strat
well you could imagine terrorists targeting a schoolbus, for example
They already did. That's what TFS/TFA are about. They used biometric iris scans instead of a bomb this time. That way, they can locate/track and terrorize them for the rest of the children's lives at the terrorists' convenience.
Strat
Its time to seriously consider moving the DOJ to a different branch of government, perhaps its own branch.
Rename it to the "Dept. of Jocularity". Truth in advertising. Calling that corrupt, power-grabbing, partisan-politicking, Rights-violating, pit of jackboots-in-suits a department of "Justice" is already a bad joke. Also, like stand-up comedians, they both try to "kill" and "slay" their audience. The DoJ audience's change of state is much more permanent and final in nature, however. Just ask Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexicans after that F&F DoJ gun-gag...oh, wait...
Strat
Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
Not if you believe that private, individual gun ownership should be highly restricted/regulated and/or outright prohibited at almost any cost, and that the ends justify the means, so that running guns to Mexican drug cartels resulting in innocent Mexican civilian and US law enforcement deaths, all as a propaganda scheme to attack the 2nd Amendment, is OK as long as nobody finds out.
Sort of like the Benghazi, AP, and IRS scandals. Those in power view the whistle-blowers as the problem, not their own illegal actions. That's the reason for the recent big push to ferret-out whistle blowers (or "national security threats", as the DoJ calls those exposing their corruption).
PROTIP: If you're a government official planning something that includes calculations of the risk of being caught by watchdog groups, exposed by journalists, and/or prosecuted by (the remaining small non-corrupt parts of) law enforcement or Congress, it's probably a very bad idea.
Particularly when it involves innocent people being brutally murdered as collateral damage or (in the case of Benghazi) being left to die to eliminate "loose ends" who could expose and/or testify against those in power
Strat
...difference in arrival time of signal at two locations produces hyperbola on map of possible origins.
One big problem is multipathing...signals (particularly with typical low-powered VHF/UHF tactical radios) in urban and rough country with plenty of mountains, caves, hills, valleys, cliffs, or conversely buildings, bridges, power lines, etc etc all splitting and bouncing the signal randomly in a continuously-changing manner (especially if the target is moving as well), resulting in multiple randomly-time-delayed and phase-shifted signals arriving at the radio-location receiving antenna(s) from one source.
As far as I'm aware, no system of the type you describe is in current combat service, or is a common piece of gear with frontline US military combat infantry. This, despite how useful it would be in Afghanistan against the Taliban and their ubiquitous handheld radios.
If there's a new system that's been deployed, I'd be curious to learn more. Do you have a link to info on the tactical system you described?
Strat
No argument. I would consider human rights a subset of natural rights.
Unfortunately, a large portion of the world does not recognize many natural rights as human rights. The U.N. does not recognize the right of an individual to defend his life or that of his family, community, or nation. Just the opposite. They are promoting international treaties (UN Small arms Treaty) which contains controls and regulations on small arms that conflict with the US Constitution.
The UN Small Arms Treaty is actually a treaty to facilitate genocide and prevent the overthrow by revolution of existing regimes by controlling and restricting the ability...worldwide...of individuals and groups to obtain arms for their protection and defense.
Strat
The time will come when you can download plans to print or build a Terminator-esque robot. Though possibly not a humanoid, it would still be deadly.
And it'll be illegal to download the plans. Inevitably.
I would hope that by the time such technology came to be, we'd have advanced beyond the silly notion that one can effectively ban ideas or knowledge.
There are already plenty of detailed plans widely available for building all sorts of weapons that can be made at home with relatively little difficulty or expense.
There are plans and even parts kits available to allow almost anyone to build themselves a STEN sub-machine gun.
Plans: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2624298/sten-mk2-complete-machine-instructions
STEN Mk III Parts kits $125: https://www.apexgunparts.com/product_info.php/cPath/51/products_id/1435
"Can't stop the signal, Mal." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVF9lZ-i_ss
The only effective way to disarm US citizens is to kill a large portion of the population (maybe a majority) straight away, first thing, with no warning, then herd the remaining survivors into camps/gulags/prisons. There is simply far too many gun-making resources and too much materials, knowledge, and tools widely available in the US, never mind all the weapons already held by the people, to do it effectively any other way.
Considering the above, it would be a shame if all those FEMA camps that the government has recently been readying for use suddenly experienced a rash of fires and vandalism that left them unusable.
Strat
But, you don't understand! This is completely different! This is killing somebody with something built with plans downloaded over the internet!! On a computer!!!
Works for US patent submissions, right?
What in the world are they gonna do when the next-gen version of a firearm is invented and the plans widely released/distributed, and that can be made cheaply, quickly, and simply with common materials, and possibly doesn't even use "bullets" as we know them at all? Maybe some sort of electromagnetically-accelerated "micro-needler" or "micro-flechette" weapon, or something accelerated-plasma-based? "Give me a phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range."
I must say I have a fundamental problem with a government declaring that, under threat of death or imprisonment, I'm not allowed to defend my family, my community, or myself, and with being denied the current and essential tools for that defense. Police do not protect. They draw chalk outlines and *hopefully* find and arrest the suspected perpetrator(s) after the crime/violence has already occurred.
The right to personal self-defense and to the commonly-employed and current tools used to exercise that basic right to defend your life, that of your family, and of fellow-citizens, are primary and essential human rights. Without them, all other rights are meaningless. How does one exercise a right when dead? How free can one be if they have no legal ability to defend their right to continue living?
To remove the ability of people to defend themselves and their families is to make them a slave to anyone stronger, multiple attackers, or anyone who is armed. It gives the elderly, older children, and women a force-equalizer against a large and powerful male attacker. A rape whistle does no good when you're grabbed by the throat and being strangled. Likewise, the police are no help when a deadly threat is imminent and officers are minutes away at best.
I'll just leave this here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
Strat
And pretty easily trackable if they're broadcasting with enough power to send HD signals 3 miles.
Tracking down radio-frequency sources, especially low-altitude, low-power, mobile transmitters, is not so easy. Just look at the equipment and infrastructure used by the British to track the RF signal emitted by TVs (for licensing fees/penalties) and pirate FM broadcasting stations. Even with all that equipment, manpower, and infrastructure, their track record is far from stellar.
It's not something that most local or even most State police forces will have. The Feds don't have the resources and manpower to cover everywhere. The FCC has very limited resources to track very small low-power mobile transmitters, especially in a tactical situation. It's not like many military or paramilitary units have the capabilities, either.
All that is also assuming that the target transmitter's operator(s) take no countermeasures/precautions or try to make the search more difficult.
I expect that the authorities will simply pass laws & enact regulations forbidding private citizens from operating all but the smallest, most primitive, limited functionality and performance drones without a Federal anal-probe and a metric buttload of cash.
Myself, I want a fast (over 100kph), armored drone with a range of 10 miles-plus, a stay-aloft time of over an hour, equipped with targeting optics and a fully-auto weapon, like an AR-180-type high rate-of-fire small-caliber weapon (can carry more .22mag rounds than 9mm, .40 cal, or similar). Or maybe just a single or even a pair of small HE rockets.
Strictly for keeping the coyotes, etc, at bay on the back-forty, of course. :)
Strat
In any of the recent armed attacks in the US, were there any armed Americans whipping out their pistols to stop them?
The government prohibited legally-armed Americans from being present through "gun-free zones" in the majority of cases. The armed citizen that was present at Gabby Gifford's shooting withheld firing because of the danger to bystanders...which argues against the "wild shootout with mass innocent casualties" scenario typically trotted-out.
I think the whole hero-cowboy-shoot-em-up are just daydreams that castrated white men dream up trying to reclaim their power in modern society.
I disagree. You're not thinking. Just the opposite. You're emoting.
There are always a few examples, but most gun-owners aren't running to their closets to help police do their job.
You are correct here, as the job of the police is NOT to protect you, the individual citizen. The SCOTUS ruled that police have no duty to protect. They catch the bad guys after a crime is committed. The "protection" part is each individual's responsibility.
I'll just leave this here for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
Strat
Guns that shoot the person who is pulling the trigger.
Good job. Now you've turned a simple rapist into a necrophiliac. He could have had a nice warm, live, victim to rape if she had not been armed with your "kill the user" defense weapon.
Hard to blow a "rape whistle" when the rapist has the unarmed woman around the throat.
If anyone thinks gun control or gun bans protect those who need protecting most over the long term, please watch this historical documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
Strat
I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong.
Well to be fair, he's only completely wrong on the *facts*. Other than that... :)
Strat
This was moderated "Flamebait"? Really?
Good job striking a blow for oppressive, intrusive government and against those uppity serfs thinking they have rights.
This isn't about political parties. In case you haven't noticed, the government (regardless of which Party is in office) is spying on and violating the rights of *everyone*, including the present administration's "friends" in the mainstream press (AP).
Reminds me of an abused wife that attacks the police who are trying to arrest the husband for beating her bloody.
Strat
We're getting closer to "Enemy of the State".
"Closer"!?!?
Not trying to admin somebody else's systems, but...maybe you should consider upgrading your news feed to RFC 1149 or something else a bit swifter. Seems your current one is experiencing...umm...latency-related....uh...shall we say, "issues".
We (in the US) are already there. Just go read the recent news. IRS/TEA Party/medical records seizures, DoJ/reporters, etc etc. It's not "ooh, shiny!" Hollywood, but what in the real world ever is? The results (and the violation, terror, and suffering of innocents) are the same.
"But never mind all that stuff, I heard a fresh rumor about the new i-$DEVICE!!!1!!one!!"
Strat