At what point do we start putting these criminals away? They have broken every law on the books.
One of the most insidious effects of this sort of Panopticon-level data collection & analysis is that it works as well against prosecutors, judges, AGs, and even SCOTUS justices, as it does some CEO or key IT admin somewhere they're interested in compromising.
Parallel construction is blind, therefor the current US justice system no longer is. Along with every other government agency, bureau, department, etc, all the way down.
Total Information = Total Control
The US Government is under the control of those who control that information. Even if the target is squeaky-clean, they are perfectly capable of planting things like kiddie-porn or any other convenient data on a hard drive such that it would stand up to the type/depth of forensics used in the typical criminal trial.
Threatening to leak damaging private information, especially when it involves an elected official right before a(n) (re)election, works without even involving the justice system or making a public scene.
As you can see, the majority of the population supports this. Who are you to tell the people what's best for them?
Well let's see, he appears to be somebody who advocates for political and ideological changes by informing his fellows about what the government is up to and what the consequences may well be, thereby instilling fear in the public over government intrusions into their privacy and more.
A textbook terrorist using mass fear to accomplish his goals is what he appears to be (at least that's how the government press release will describe him after he's been detained for 'enhanced interrogation'.).
~Government checklist for initiating drone strikes on domestic threats.~
If the target adheres to, implements, and/or publicly promotes any individual item or subset from the following, the target may added to the strike list.
1: Unplug. Yes, unless you need that phone on, it goes off, or into airplane mode. The HTC One M8 has an extreme battery saver mode, when combined with airplane mode, makes a useful alarm clock.
2: Learn the basics of OpenPGP [1], and build a web of trust. One can even have keysigning parties, and done right, no computers need to be brought over... public key fingerprints and IDs can be printed on pieces of paper, and people can indicate that the printed item is theirs.
3: Use social networks minimally, if at all.
4: Use OpenPGP tools on top of messaging and other protocols.
5: Use a VPN service, or perhaps TOR behind the VPN service, since it is routine for admins to block TOR exit nodes, or any nodes relating to TOR.
6: Use containers [2] for web browsing, so the social media buttons on one site can't chat with the social media buttons on another.
7: Check your Web browser against Panopticlick, and fix it so it isn't unique.
8: Even if one doesn't use TOR, use a VPN. This at least keeps the ground level ISP from modifying your traffic... they have to either block it, throttle it, or let it through... and (for most purposes) can't modify it.
9: Assume that any data that leaves the machine is available for anyone. Encrypt your stuff, or face the consequences.
Privacy can't be bought. It is a Class A Felony under secret Federal intelligence service court directives.
[1]: OpenPGP can be PGP, NetPGP, GnuPG, or any of those tools that use the OpenPGP format.
[2]: Containers can be VMs, sandboxes, or even separate user accounts.
If you think Rand was advocating anything 'collectivist' at all, perfect or otherwise, then you could not have read the same 'Atlas Shrugged' that the rest of the planet has. Rand railed against the sort of collectivist/socialist policies & programs etc she saw gradually taking root in the West that she and her family suffered through while in the USSR.
I'm convinced you got fed your opinions on AS and Rand from your teachers/professors and/or your political/ideological peers.
Try actually reading a work before you try to take it apart, or else you risk looking the fool.
One thing I'm curious about - how in a Rand society can "informed and reasoned voting choices help" when the government is so powerless in such a setting?
Government power can be "weak" without being powerless. There are degrees and scopes of power.
Ah yes, the society full of perfect citizens so that there is no need for citizens to work together.
Nice straw man. I never said anything about "perfect" anything, nor is perfection required. I'm not talking about some fantasy society in your head. I'm talking about the US and the ideas and concepts the authors of the DoI/Constitution brought to life.
If you truly want to understand what I'm talking about, I suggest you read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers as a good starting point to understanding these concepts.
Ah - personal attack time I see. Maybe you are proving that point about the limitations of your education if you are resorting to that, maybe not, but you are comically far off the mark if you are pretending that I am a product of that system as I am assuming you are.
If your take-away from Atlas Shrugged is truly as you've indicated through your comments here, then either your education or your critical thinking abilities are in serious doubt.
Of course, it could easily be the case that you understand fully the concepts presented in AS and you simply don't believe men can rule themselves and build a free and open society and must have a King or ruling elites in charge and making all decisions, and so are being intentionally obtuse in railing against these concepts and ideas.
Whatever the case, this article & discussion are about to go to the archives, so I'm done here. I'm sure there will be many opportunities in future article discussions to further this discussion.
With respect, that's how capitalism started instead of the way it's going. It's why you have other things to temper it, first the Church and now government. The way Rand suggests that there should be a small and ineffective government without a rampant crony-capitalist oligarchy happening via some magic is part of her damage.
Nothing magical at all. It, however, does require citizens who are willing to do their homework and make informed and reasoned voting choices.
Thanks to the decades of destruction I've watched being waged upon the US education system by the government and their teacher union accomplices, educated and informed citizens are most definitely the exception rather than the rule these days. Your take-away from 'Atlas Shrugged' proves the point.
To have a government powerful enough to provide all the social 'safety nets' and giveaways means having a government that is a ripe target for corruption both from within and without.
Nobody bribes a politician or political body that does not have the power to accomplish their goals. Same principle applies to computer networks. Better a network of stand-alone machines each with their own security systems, than a server/dumb terminal system where an attacker needs only compromise 1 machine to control the entire network.
Freedom is a zero-sum game in that the only way government gains power is by taking power away from States and citizens respectively.
I thought the entire point was that you could "shrug" and do the job so badly that everyone would wish you never took it in the first place:)
Wow, are you trolling here?
Point was that the people who actually produce will stop producing if/when government takes away too much of the fruits of their labor and/or tries to assume control of their business.
Oh great - quoting a Russian as evidence about how democracy doesn't work. If Stalin planted Rand to fuck up US politics he couldn't have done a better job.
LOLwut!? You must not have done well with reading & comprehension in school. Either that, or you're too lazy to do your own reading and simply accept what others tell you.
AS rails against exactly the kind of authoritarian oligarchy that is now on the verge of doing what all the foreign enemies of the US could not accomplish in over 200 years: The destruction of the US as a prosperous and relatively free & open society.
So why should events that man did not create or cause prove man CANNOT create or cause similar events?
Why should we believe that things that occurred before humans existed and continue to occur today are suddenly *NOW*, specifically and to a significant degree, the result of humans and their activities?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You want to convince people to make major sweeping changes that would negatively impact the standard of living of large populations (or as in the case of China, keep them from reaching a comparable standard of living to Western nations), you'd better have some damned convincing and overwhelming evidence to back it up, as well as a damned convincing solution.
"Hockey sticks" and carbon-credit exchanges (the Roman Catholic Church used to call these permission-slips to break the rules "indulgences") are neither.
Also keep in mind that increasing energy prices affect the poorest the most. Reducing some CO2 statistic by an amount too small to measure is "cold" comfort to freezing children in winter.
I believe in general that humans shouldn't crap in their own nest, so to speak, as much as is practical, given that the goal is to advance the standard of living for as many people as possible while increasing our scientific knowledge and technical/industrial capability to eventually move the harmful/polluting/dangerous industrial/technical activities off of Earth almost entirely.
An industrial civilization doesn't reach the stars without burning some fossil fuel and splitting some atoms along the way. I can't imagine an agrarian non-industrial civilization ever reaching the stars, more likely some planet-wide catastrophe will wipe them out or they'll become extinct as essential resources are eventually exhausted.
"The secret is to keep banging the rocks together, kids!" --HHGTTG
So what they're saying is in the Central Plains there won't necessarily be less precipitation but hotter temperatures will cause the soil to dry out more exacerbating the drought situation.
"They" have said many things in the past, and were flat out wrong. I see no reason to treat this any differently.
Saying humans are significant sounds sciencey but you need to provide actual evidence for that statement, not just some hand waving.
FTFY
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So far, scientists can't even get their climate models to match previous known conditions and outcomes. I think more proof is required before radically lowering standards of living and destroying national and world economies while plunging the poorest into even deeper levels of Hell.
Of course, for those to whom such results empower themselves and their ideological/political ends and objectives, any excuse that furthers attaining those results are "...settled science, now STFU and GTFO! Lalalala! I can't hear you!"
Having a discussion is fine but it needs to be based in reality and the reality is CO2 is a major factor in the climate change we are seeing.
How much of a change are we actually seeing and how much of a factor CO2 actually is and how much is due to humans are wide-open questions and far, far from settled. I'm not sure what it is you're advocating, but it's not a discussion if you demand main points of opposition be conceded before any talk begins. It's more like "elections" in N. Korea or Iran.
It's not necessarily less precipitation overall that will cause the megadroughts but higher temperatures that will cause the soil to dry our more than during past droughts.
Not necessarily true. Droughts also occur because precipitation cycles move location due to geological or other natural causes, not necessarily because of a change in air/ground temperature or drop in average frequency or quantity, the rainfall location(s) just move(s).
The present-day Kalahari Desert in Africa used to be a mega-lake named Lake Makgadikgadi.
Significant changes in climate patterns have happened over relatively short periods of time in the past, and massive changes have occurred with some regularity over longer time periods. None of these occurrences were influenced in any significant & meaningful way by mankind. The scale and amounts of energy expended over the time periods that any of those changes took are far beyond the capability of humans for the foreseeable future
To even theoretically cause a measurable and statistically-meaningful change would require a Borg-like singularity and concentration of effort & purpose of the entire human race at current and foreseeable near-future technology levels/abilities our species is capable of.
The amount of inertia in a planetary size system (and that's if we exclude Solar variability induced changes and gravitational forces from other bodies, etc) in motion over such long geologic periods with such massive forces already steering it are many orders of magnitude too large for mankind to be able to cause any truly meaningful long term changes in any direction over a time-frame of only 200-300 years.
And as long as I'm already posting in a thread about AGW and will naturally be down-modded by group SlashThink for having the 'wrong' views, for those who love to trumpet "settled science! consensus! denier!", remember that "Big Bang Theory" and how those who thought the universe was eternal were crackpot nutjobs because it was "settled science"? Seems that bit of "settled science!" may be in serious doubt.
Beware anyone who tries to shut down discussion or silence opposing viewpoints, whether it be by arresting journalists and smashing printing presses or through propaganda campaigns of malicious ridicule and personal destruction.
I understand the argument being used here, and having never used Megaupload I can't comment on what it's primary purpose truly appeared to be. But how is this different from the business of any other cloud storage provider? Don't they all make money by providing a publicly accessible "drop box" for people to put whatever data they want onto?
What is different between Megaupload and OneDrive, DropBox, Mega.co.nz, and all the others? Why shouldn't their employees be criminally prosecuted?
One step at a time.
Actually, after the legal groundwork and precedents are created for establishing the ability for the US government to do just that, they will be mostly left alone if they willingly cooperate with spying on their users for the NSA etc and maintain a relatively low profile.
The more people they can collect evidence of criminal activity on, the more people they have leverage over. Just as they threatened this guy with prosecution for watching one of the copyrighted movies unless he caved, this will be used on others.
There's nothing to prevent it being used in totally unrelated investigations. "Either inform/work/cooperate for/with us to get dirt on these political targets or we bust you on felony copyright infringement charge!s, and if you've ever coded anything that facilitates infringement in any way, with additional felony copyright infringement facilitation charges!"
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
Primary users have authority to interfere with secondary users in any band, whether it is pure FCC, pure NTIA, or a mix.
This term, I do not think it means what you think it means.
A Primary User in radio spectrum jargon means the entity(s)/group(s) primarily licensed to use a specific piece of the radio spectrum. As such, the FBI is most definitely not a Primary User of the spectrum assigned to cellphones.
To argue otherwise would be to argue against 80 years of FCC regulatory terms and definitions, including their interpretation and implementation to date.
Seeing as your primary premise is incorrect, the rest of your argument is moot.
Doesn't that sound a whole lot like a list of addresses the police would love to have?
Why, are you worried that the police will come arrest you in the middle of the night just because you don't want amateur pilots sending drones over your house?
All the recent scandals involving the government violating civil rights (IRS political targeting, NSA/parallel construction, refusal to come clean on 'stingray' cellphone interception, etc etc) give legitimate and logical reason for serious concerns by law-abiding citizens concerning how and for what purposes government will employ this technology against them.
A Libertarian like myself would point out, the government has no business banning drugs, because a free citizen ought to remain free to kill/harm himself in any fashion he chooses.
I'm quite sure that there were numerous reasons to prosecute 'El Chapo' [wikipedia.org] for things other than illegal drug dealing. Browsing the wiki page we have murder, torture, bribery, and everything else you'd expect from a drug cartel leader.
The point being that there would be no illegal drug cartels if there were no illegal drug markets to exploit. "El Chapo" would be just another petty street hoodlum. The US experiment with Prohibition and the rise & fall of the numerous alcohol-smuggling-related gangs during that period and after would seem to bear this out.
Now, maybe, as the AC below suggests, the entire government has to keep all of its documents ready for publishing from the moment they are created (with the necessary black-outs specified by each document's very author or his boss) â" and publish them automatically after certain number of years. But that would require an actual dramatic change in how the government bureaucracy operates â" a change well beyond the ability (perhaps, even imagination) of not only the community organizer we've got, but even of a seasoned CEO, who almost replaced him the last time...
Just to go farther out there 'where no bureaucrat has gone before' so to speak, how about government not collecting and storing so much data of such personal and sensitive nature in the first damned place? Maybe if the government were not involved as deeply and in as many areas as they currently are, this would not be as much of a problem to begin with.
Seems like instead of having to sort through and process everything afterwards, the government should start just releasing everything as it goes, keeping only things that really have to be secret redacted in the first place. Sounds a lot better than a government created problem letting the government off the hook for transparency.
Only Terrorists* and Child Molesters* want a default-open government!
Why do you support Terrorists* and Child Molesters*?
We have to destroy the Free Market*...err...Freedom*...err...Privacy*...err...Rule of Law*...err...Civil Rights*...err...Transparency*, yeah! Transparency*!...in order to Save* it! ---- *-See the most recent Classified government guidelines for the latest official definitions of these terms.
After all, the act of doing that abuse is illegal, but disseminating it is pure speech. Therefore you should be all up your government's ass demanding the removal of the laws against KP right? Write them a stern letter telling them they should remove all anti-KP laws for reasons of free speech and not bar you or investigate you for a potential paedophile.
Or are restrictions on free speech sometimes acceptable to you, unlike the cases where you pop up with "FREE SPEECH! FREEEEEEE SPPEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHH!!!!".
Yes, because making sure people are aware of the horrors of allowing tyrants to run wild is the same as kiddie-porn in your mind, right?
We can only be thankful you are the only one who has to live in your skull.
Please explain for me - why do adults need to SEE a human being getting roasted alive? What informational value does that have?
You're right, and while you're at it, all those pictures and reels of film footage of the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge massacres, and all the other atrocities being made publicly available likewise must serve no good purpose.
After all, people have never repeated history they were simply told about or only read about in some dry text, right?
You should write a stern letter to the Holocaust Museum right away informing them they need to shut down operations immediately. Let us know what they have to say./s
I shudder to think what will happen when they tell the dupes they must off themselves, per Jim Jones, for the good of the planet. They'll probably do it.
Not quite.
The way it's worked in similar situations through history is to tell the dupes "It's *that* group/race/religion/ideology/etc's fault!"
"GET THEM!!!"
Rinse & repeat until the number and racial/political/religious/ideological makeup of the dupes are within the desired range.
The AGW scaremongering is a huge enabler for those who wish for more/expanded government power and higher taxation.
So, how much has for instance GW Bush increased taxes using AGW scaremongering as excuse ?
How do I answer such a question from someone who doesn't even know that only the Legislative Branch, e.g. Congress, has the power to create, abolish, raise, or lower federal taxes, not the Executive Branch, e.g. the POTUS?
Go finish school and drop the partisan blinders (I hold equal disgust & disdain for both major US Parties), then you can come back and talk with the grown-ups and be taken seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't want us to be able to keep anything at all secret. And they want to keep all their stuff secret.
That could change.
It's not like the hardware is not available.
http://www.testequipmentdepot....
http://www.testequipmentdepot....
http://www.testequipmentdepot....
Strat
At what point do we start putting these criminals away? They have broken every law on the books.
One of the most insidious effects of this sort of Panopticon-level data collection & analysis is that it works as well against prosecutors, judges, AGs, and even SCOTUS justices, as it does some CEO or key IT admin somewhere they're interested in compromising.
Parallel construction is blind, therefor the current US justice system no longer is. Along with every other government agency, bureau, department, etc, all the way down.
Total Information = Total Control
The US Government is under the control of those who control that information. Even if the target is squeaky-clean, they are perfectly capable of planting things like kiddie-porn or any other convenient data on a hard drive such that it would stand up to the type/depth of forensics used in the typical criminal trial.
Threatening to leak damaging private information, especially when it involves an elected official right before a(n) (re)election, works without even involving the justice system or making a public scene.
Strat
As you can see, the majority of the population supports this. Who are you to tell the people what's best for them?
Well let's see, he appears to be somebody who advocates for political and ideological changes by informing his fellows about what the government is up to and what the consequences may well be, thereby instilling fear in the public over government intrusions into their privacy and more.
A textbook terrorist using mass fear to accomplish his goals is what he appears to be (at least that's how the government press release will describe him after he's been detained for 'enhanced interrogation'.).
Strat
That's a strawman, economic studies show it costs 1% or so of GWP to respond to AGW
Other economic studies disagree.
If you want to discuss those you need to bring science to the table to back up your positions like the scientists do.
Hockey stick charts built on 'massaged' data and failed computer models unable to even accurately model past, known patterns is not 'science'.
That's Alchemy, aka snake-oil.
Strat
~Government checklist for initiating drone strikes on domestic threats.~
If the target adheres to, implements, and/or publicly promotes any individual item or subset from the following, the target may added to the strike list.
1: Unplug. Yes, unless you need that phone on, it goes off, or into airplane mode. The HTC One M8 has an extreme battery saver mode, when combined with airplane mode, makes a useful alarm clock.
2: Learn the basics of OpenPGP [1], and build a web of trust. One can even have keysigning parties, and done right, no computers need to be brought over... public key fingerprints and IDs can be printed on pieces of paper, and people can indicate that the printed item is theirs.
3: Use social networks minimally, if at all.
4: Use OpenPGP tools on top of messaging and other protocols.
5: Use a VPN service, or perhaps TOR behind the VPN service, since it is routine for admins to block TOR exit nodes, or any nodes relating to TOR.
6: Use containers [2] for web browsing, so the social media buttons on one site can't chat with the social media buttons on another.
7: Check your Web browser against Panopticlick, and fix it so it isn't unique.
8: Even if one doesn't use TOR, use a VPN. This at least keeps the ground level ISP from modifying your traffic... they have to either block it, throttle it, or let it through... and (for most purposes) can't modify it.
9: Assume that any data that leaves the machine is available for anyone. Encrypt your stuff, or face the consequences.
Privacy can't be bought. It is a Class A Felony under secret Federal intelligence service court directives.
[1]: OpenPGP can be PGP, NetPGP, GnuPG, or any of those tools that use the OpenPGP format.
[2]: Containers can be VMs, sandboxes, or even separate user accounts.
FTFY
Strat
You've never read Atlas Shrugged.
If you think Rand was advocating anything 'collectivist' at all, perfect or otherwise, then you could not have read the same 'Atlas Shrugged' that the rest of the planet has. Rand railed against the sort of collectivist/socialist policies & programs etc she saw gradually taking root in the West that she and her family suffered through while in the USSR.
I'm convinced you got fed your opinions on AS and Rand from your teachers/professors and/or your political/ideological peers.
Try actually reading a work before you try to take it apart, or else you risk looking the fool.
Strat
One thing I'm curious about - how in a Rand society can "informed and reasoned voting choices help" when the government is so powerless in such a setting?
Government power can be "weak" without being powerless. There are degrees and scopes of power.
Ah yes, the society full of perfect citizens so that there is no need for citizens to work together.
Nice straw man. I never said anything about "perfect" anything, nor is perfection required. I'm not talking about some fantasy society in your head. I'm talking about the US and the ideas and concepts the authors of the DoI/Constitution brought to life.
If you truly want to understand what I'm talking about, I suggest you read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers as a good starting point to understanding these concepts.
Ah - personal attack time I see. Maybe you are proving that point about the limitations of your education if you are resorting to that, maybe not, but you are comically far off the mark if you are pretending that I am a product of that system as I am assuming you are.
If your take-away from Atlas Shrugged is truly as you've indicated through your comments here, then either your education or your critical thinking abilities are in serious doubt.
Of course, it could easily be the case that you understand fully the concepts presented in AS and you simply don't believe men can rule themselves and build a free and open society and must have a King or ruling elites in charge and making all decisions, and so are being intentionally obtuse in railing against these concepts and ideas.
Whatever the case, this article & discussion are about to go to the archives, so I'm done here. I'm sure there will be many opportunities in future article discussions to further this discussion.
Strat
With respect, that's how capitalism started instead of the way it's going. It's why you have other things to temper it, first the Church and now government. The way Rand suggests that there should be a small and ineffective government without a rampant crony-capitalist oligarchy happening via some magic is part of her damage.
Nothing magical at all. It, however, does require citizens who are willing to do their homework and make informed and reasoned voting choices.
Thanks to the decades of destruction I've watched being waged upon the US education system by the government and their teacher union accomplices, educated and informed citizens are most definitely the exception rather than the rule these days. Your take-away from 'Atlas Shrugged' proves the point.
To have a government powerful enough to provide all the social 'safety nets' and giveaways means having a government that is a ripe target for corruption both from within and without.
Nobody bribes a politician or political body that does not have the power to accomplish their goals. Same principle applies to computer networks. Better a network of stand-alone machines each with their own security systems, than a server/dumb terminal system where an attacker needs only compromise 1 machine to control the entire network.
Freedom is a zero-sum game in that the only way government gains power is by taking power away from States and citizens respectively.
Strat
I thought the entire point was that you could "shrug" and do the job so badly that everyone would wish you never took it in the first place :)
Wow, are you trolling here?
Point was that the people who actually produce will stop producing if/when government takes away too much of the fruits of their labor and/or tries to assume control of their business.
Strat
OK then, a Russian railing against capitalism. Happy now?
You've still completely missed the entire point of AS.
It's not capitalism Rand rails against in AS, it's those who would destroy capitalism and individual liberty by creating a crony-capitalist oligarchy.
You know, like what is happening currently in the US, and being carried out by both major political parties.
Strat
Oh great - quoting a Russian as evidence about how democracy doesn't work. If Stalin planted Rand to fuck up US politics he couldn't have done a better job.
LOLwut!? You must not have done well with reading & comprehension in school. Either that, or you're too lazy to do your own reading and simply accept what others tell you.
AS rails against exactly the kind of authoritarian oligarchy that is now on the verge of doing what all the foreign enemies of the US could not accomplish in over 200 years: The destruction of the US as a prosperous and relatively free & open society.
Strat
So why should events that man did not create or cause prove man CANNOT create or cause similar events?
Why should we believe that things that occurred before humans existed and continue to occur today are suddenly *NOW*, specifically and to a significant degree, the result of humans and their activities?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You want to convince people to make major sweeping changes that would negatively impact the standard of living of large populations (or as in the case of China, keep them from reaching a comparable standard of living to Western nations), you'd better have some damned convincing and overwhelming evidence to back it up, as well as a damned convincing solution.
"Hockey sticks" and carbon-credit exchanges (the Roman Catholic Church used to call these permission-slips to break the rules "indulgences") are neither.
Also keep in mind that increasing energy prices affect the poorest the most. Reducing some CO2 statistic by an amount too small to measure is "cold" comfort to freezing children in winter.
I believe in general that humans shouldn't crap in their own nest, so to speak, as much as is practical, given that the goal is to advance the standard of living for as many people as possible while increasing our scientific knowledge and technical/industrial capability to eventually move the harmful/polluting/dangerous industrial/technical activities off of Earth almost entirely.
An industrial civilization doesn't reach the stars without burning some fossil fuel and splitting some atoms along the way. I can't imagine an agrarian non-industrial civilization ever reaching the stars, more likely some planet-wide catastrophe will wipe them out or they'll become extinct as essential resources are eventually exhausted.
"The secret is to keep banging the rocks together, kids!" --HHGTTG
Strat
So what they're saying is in the Central Plains there won't necessarily be less precipitation but hotter temperatures will cause the soil to dry out more exacerbating the drought situation.
"They" have said many things in the past, and were flat out wrong. I see no reason to treat this any differently.
Saying humans are significant sounds sciencey but you need to provide actual evidence for that statement, not just some hand waving.
FTFY
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So far, scientists can't even get their climate models to match previous known conditions and outcomes. I think more proof is required before radically lowering standards of living and destroying national and world economies while plunging the poorest into even deeper levels of Hell.
Of course, for those to whom such results empower themselves and their ideological/political ends and objectives, any excuse that furthers attaining those results are "...settled science, now STFU and GTFO! Lalalala! I can't hear you!"
Having a discussion is fine but it needs to be based in reality and the reality is CO2 is a major factor in the climate change we are seeing.
How much of a change are we actually seeing and how much of a factor CO2 actually is and how much is due to humans are wide-open questions and far, far from settled. I'm not sure what it is you're advocating, but it's not a discussion if you demand main points of opposition be conceded before any talk begins. It's more like "elections" in N. Korea or Iran.
Strat
It's not necessarily less precipitation overall that will cause the megadroughts but higher temperatures that will cause the soil to dry our more than during past droughts.
Not necessarily true. Droughts also occur because precipitation cycles move location due to geological or other natural causes, not necessarily because of a change in air/ground temperature or drop in average frequency or quantity, the rainfall location(s) just move(s).
The present-day Kalahari Desert in Africa used to be a mega-lake named Lake Makgadikgadi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Other prehistoric lakes here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Significant changes in climate patterns have happened over relatively short periods of time in the past, and massive changes have occurred with some regularity over longer time periods. None of these occurrences were influenced in any significant & meaningful way by mankind. The scale and amounts of energy expended over the time periods that any of those changes took are far beyond the capability of humans for the foreseeable future
To even theoretically cause a measurable and statistically-meaningful change would require a Borg-like singularity and concentration of effort & purpose of the entire human race at current and foreseeable near-future technology levels/abilities our species is capable of.
The amount of inertia in a planetary size system (and that's if we exclude Solar variability induced changes and gravitational forces from other bodies, etc) in motion over such long geologic periods with such massive forces already steering it are many orders of magnitude too large for mankind to be able to cause any truly meaningful long term changes in any direction over a time-frame of only 200-300 years.
And as long as I'm already posting in a thread about AGW and will naturally be down-modded by group SlashThink for having the 'wrong' views, for those who love to trumpet "settled science! consensus! denier!", remember that "Big Bang Theory" and how those who thought the universe was eternal were crackpot nutjobs because it was "settled science"? Seems that bit of "settled science!" may be in serious doubt.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-b...
Beware anyone who tries to shut down discussion or silence opposing viewpoints, whether it be by arresting journalists and smashing printing presses or through propaganda campaigns of malicious ridicule and personal destruction.
Strat
I understand the argument being used here, and having never used Megaupload I can't comment on what it's primary purpose truly appeared to be. But how is this different from the business of any other cloud storage provider? Don't they all make money by providing a publicly accessible "drop box" for people to put whatever data they want onto?
What is different between Megaupload and OneDrive, DropBox, Mega.co.nz, and all the others? Why shouldn't their employees be criminally prosecuted?
One step at a time.
Actually, after the legal groundwork and precedents are created for establishing the ability for the US government to do just that, they will be mostly left alone if they willingly cooperate with spying on their users for the NSA etc and maintain a relatively low profile.
The more people they can collect evidence of criminal activity on, the more people they have leverage over. Just as they threatened this guy with prosecution for watching one of the copyrighted movies unless he caved, this will be used on others.
There's nothing to prevent it being used in totally unrelated investigations. "Either inform/work/cooperate for/with us to get dirt on these political targets or we bust you on felony copyright infringement charge!s, and if you've ever coded anything that facilitates infringement in any way, with additional felony copyright infringement facilitation charges!"
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Strat
Primary users have authority to interfere with secondary users in any band, whether it is pure FCC, pure NTIA, or a mix.
This term, I do not think it means what you think it means.
A Primary User in radio spectrum jargon means the entity(s)/group(s) primarily licensed to use a specific piece of the radio spectrum. As such, the FBI is most definitely not a Primary User of the spectrum assigned to cellphones.
To argue otherwise would be to argue against 80 years of FCC regulatory terms and definitions, including their interpretation and implementation to date.
Seeing as your primary premise is incorrect, the rest of your argument is moot.
Strat
All the recent scandals involving the government violating civil rights (IRS political targeting, NSA/parallel construction, refusal to come clean on 'stingray' cellphone interception, etc etc) give legitimate and logical reason for serious concerns by law-abiding citizens concerning how and for what purposes government will employ this technology against them.
Strat
The point being that there would be no illegal drug cartels if there were no illegal drug markets to exploit. "El Chapo" would be just another petty street hoodlum. The US experiment with Prohibition and the rise & fall of the numerous alcohol-smuggling-related gangs during that period and after would seem to bear this out.
Strat
Now, maybe, as the AC below suggests, the entire government has to keep all of its documents ready for publishing from the moment they are created (with the necessary black-outs specified by each document's very author or his boss) â" and publish them automatically after certain number of years. But that would require an actual dramatic change in how the government bureaucracy operates â" a change well beyond the ability (perhaps, even imagination) of not only the community organizer we've got, but even of a seasoned CEO, who almost replaced him the last time...
Just to go farther out there 'where no bureaucrat has gone before' so to speak, how about government not collecting and storing so much data of such personal and sensitive nature in the first damned place? Maybe if the government were not involved as deeply and in as many areas as they currently are, this would not be as much of a problem to begin with.
Strat
Seems like instead of having to sort through and process everything afterwards, the government should start just releasing everything as it goes, keeping only things that really have to be secret redacted in the first place. Sounds a lot better than a government created problem letting the government off the hook for transparency.
Only Terrorists* and Child Molesters* want a default-open government!
Why do you support Terrorists* and Child Molesters*?
We have to destroy the Free Market*...err...Freedom*...err...Privacy*...err...Rule of Law*...err...Civil Rights*...err...Transparency*, yeah! Transparency*!...in order to Save* it!
----
*-See the most recent Classified government guidelines for the latest official definitions of these terms.
Strat
...Freedom is not free.
Strat
After all, the act of doing that abuse is illegal, but disseminating it is pure speech. Therefore you should be all up your government's ass demanding the removal of the laws against KP right? Write them a stern letter telling them they should remove all anti-KP laws for reasons of free speech and not bar you or investigate you for a potential paedophile.
Or are restrictions on free speech sometimes acceptable to you, unlike the cases where you pop up with "FREE SPEECH! FREEEEEEE SPPEEEEEEEEEEECHHHHH!!!!".
Yes, because making sure people are aware of the horrors of allowing tyrants to run wild is the same as kiddie-porn in your mind, right?
We can only be thankful you are the only one who has to live in your skull.
Strat
Please explain for me - why do adults need to SEE a human being getting roasted alive? What informational value does that have?
You're right, and while you're at it, all those pictures and reels of film footage of the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge massacres, and all the other atrocities being made publicly available likewise must serve no good purpose.
After all, people have never repeated history they were simply told about or only read about in some dry text, right?
You should write a stern letter to the Holocaust Museum right away informing them they need to shut down operations immediately. Let us know what they have to say. /s
Strat
I shudder to think what will happen when they tell the dupes they must off themselves, per Jim Jones, for the good of the planet. They'll probably do it.
Not quite.
The way it's worked in similar situations through history is to tell the dupes "It's *that* group/race/religion/ideology/etc's fault!"
"GET THEM!!!"
Rinse & repeat until the number and racial/political/religious/ideological makeup of the dupes are within the desired range.
Strat
How do I answer such a question from someone who doesn't even know that only the Legislative Branch, e.g. Congress, has the power to create, abolish, raise, or lower federal taxes, not the Executive Branch, e.g. the POTUS?
Go finish school and drop the partisan blinders (I hold equal disgust & disdain for both major US Parties), then you can come back and talk with the grown-ups and be taken seriously.
Strat