Errr, no.
First, Bin-ladin and his inner circle had been living in Afghanistan for quite some time prior to 9/11; and when the Bush Administration properly demanded that the Taliban hand Bin-Ladin over, they refused.
So? Roman Polanski was living in France for years; when the French refused to hand him over, did we attack them? No. Why? Because they had nothing to do with what he was accused of -- although they were in sympathy with the man. That was where he lived; not the source of the issue. Likewise, Bin Ladin was living somewhere sympathetic to his ideas; this is neither a surprise, nor a justification to attack the country.
Other than Saudi Arabia itself, I doubt sufficient cause could be found in the 9/11 attacks to make war on any other country; even Saudi Arabia is iffy. There's a very strong argument that can be made that 9/11 was not a state-sponsored action, but an action that came from, and was funded by, religious fundamentalists within the Saudi state. Who were living there with the happy compliance of the state, as per usual. Certainly there was no justification at all to attack Afghanistan. It would be like attacking France for sheltering Polanski. That's a matter for politicians, negotiation, etc. Which may or may not work.
And again, if refusing to turn someone over is justification for attacking a country, then the US is open to legitimate attack from Japan and Germany and several others for recent actions. And *certainly* if the killing of 3,000 is justification, then the US is open to attack from other countries, Vietnam and Iraq being two that come immediately to mind.
Second, the people that the US holds back aren't war criminals responsible for the brutal murder of 3,000+ citizens of a foreign power. Amazing how quickly people forget what UBL is really guilty of.
You think? How many innocent Iraqis is Bush responsible for murdering? A fuckload more than 3000. You see us turning him over to the Iraqi people? Oh, wait. Ol' Bushie-boy is an ex-president with his own security detail, residing in comfort. Guess we're not going to turn him over to the Iraqis after all, are we? And make no mistake, the man is a war criminal.
What about the Vietnam war, started on the basis of an incident we FABRICATED, the gulf of tonkin incident, how many Vietnamese did we kill in that war? Anyone turn over Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who authorized that particular fuckery? No. Huh. Funny thing, eh? We definitely have our share of war criminals, pal.
the decision to go into Iraq is almost indefensible
It is indefensible.
But the decision to invade Afghanistan was totally justified. Mullah Omar and the rest of his thugs were giving aid and comfort to globally-recognized terrorists responsible for heinous crimes, so going into Afghanistan was a no-brainer.
You're just repeating yourself now; this argument has already been disposed of.
From this page at wikipedia, under "Attackers and their motivation":
On September 27, 2001, the FBI released photos of the 19 hijackers, along with information about the possible nationalities and aliases of many.[79] Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon.[80] Mohamed Atta was the ringleader of the 19 hijackers.[81] According to Jerrold Post, a professor of psychology at George Washington University and former CIA officer, the hijackers were well-educated, mature adults, whose belief systems were fully formed.[82]
The causes of terrorism have gone unacknowledged because they have to be. To acknowledge them is to address excess influence on policy and media by the oil industries, by the military-industrial complex, by politicians playing the Fear card to win votes and power, it's to acknowledge the actions of the Israeli government and the US sponsorship of their actions, it's to acknowledge the US navy bombing resistance camps at the request of the Saudi regime, it's to acknowledge all sorts of things that the US government doesn't want to acknowledge. But like someone who's an alcoholic, compulsive eater or whatever, you can't address a problem if you don't acknowledge it is there.
All that, and instead of addressing the elephant in the room, you made excuses for it. Pachyderm: Acknowledging that consumption of mythology as if it were reality is a disease that is serving as the specific focal point of all this. Religion is a huge part of the problem. And it is no wonder, that people who build their lives around an imaginary friend, acquire their ethics from dogma instead of reason, and then read intriguing things like Qur'an (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them", turn out to be quite violent from time to time in service of their mythology. The "religion of peace", that comes from, folks.
Not that the Christians and their jealous god and pillars of salt and killing of children are any better, mind you, they're just on a downswing from their witchburning, blue-law-making, pogram-instigating ways at the moment. Here's some "happybrew" from the Christian mythology: "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." (Exodus 12:29-30)"
THAT is the real elephant in the room. Mythology and its canned, centuries old goatherder's thinking taken as a guide for reality. And you'll never get a single politician to address it. And that is definitely one of the big reasons why we are so fucked.
Whatever you want to call them. I feel absolutely zero need to respect the current PC terminology for these superstitious middle easterners, or their so-called "religion." It's a cult of reality-challenged people, just like every other religion, and just like every other religion, it breeds more reality-challenged people doing moronic things.
As far as I'm concerned, our ideal path here is to crash develop electric vehicles, never buy another drop of oil from them, never let another one across our borders, and never send them another red cent. Let them eat sand, to vaguely paraphrase Marie Antoinette, and with about as much concern as her delivery.
Muslims don't come from any particular group of humans
Sure they do. They come from a nice mix of the gullible, the ignorant, and the reality-challenged. The same place Christians come from. It's purest superstition. They live their lives -- and die -- by/for an imaginary friend. They're natural idiots, or people of sadly lost potential made idiotic by consumption of mythology.
Afghanistan most certainly had something to do with the attack on us.
Yes? Well, where's your data? Did they pay for it? No, the Saudis did. Were there any Afghani nationals involved in the attack itself? No, there were not. Was the attack made with Afghani weapons? I don't recall any goats being thrown, or passengers being subdued with poppies. Please enlighten us all. What was it that Afghanistan contributed to the attacks such that we were so outraged that we didn't go after the actual sources of the attackers, or those who funded it? The stage is yours.
The government is put in place BY YOU, to protect YOU, and can be changed any time, by, you guessed it: YOU.
Wrong, incidental, and wrong.
Candidates are selected by the two political parties. Without input from the citizens. Any protection we get is a side effect of a congress that is no more than a rubber stamp for big corporate interests and in particular military corporate interests, because that's where the money and the perks and the re-electability are. Not by votes - by who the party picks. The only change we can make is to the next one or two persons picked by the parties. Who will, absolutely guaranteed, have precisely the same agenda as the last one. Our political system has very little indeed to do with the citizens. Oh sure, it's a great spectacle, but you're picking from column A or B selected by the parties, not by the people, and there are no other options.
As much as I hate to defend one of Bush's decisions, this isn't true. Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refused to hand him over because (1) they didn't believe he was linked to the 9/11 attacks and (2) he was a "guest" in their country.
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see us attacking Egypt? No. Lebanon? No. The UAE? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Instead, we attacked Iraq (a total WTF) and Afghanistan, a country uninvolved in the attack; no nationals, no funding.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries. A, B, C, D, etc.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because you don't agree with how they do things, then holy chickenshit, you'd *really* better duck, because there's a whole line of countries that can say that about us.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because they're screwed up internally, that is, not obeying their constitution or other founding papers... yeah, you guessed it, duck. because we're so far away from our constitution it can't be seen from here.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
Before the digital camera you had to look through the viewfinder - there was no other way.
That's not true. Look at a video that shows camera work on any TV show made in the 50s or 60s. You can see that the cameras being used have monitors on board that give them a preview of the output of the camera, which is what allows them to set up, prior to being committed to recording by the control room. Electronic preview of image(s) prior to recording. It's obvious. It's so obvious they had it figured out half a century ago. As to which button does it, or if it is digital in nature somewhere along the path... feh. Still bloody obvious.
For that matter, ham radio SSTV units (ie ROBOT 400 by ROBOT inc.) have had digital camera preview displays since (at least) 1976. You could preview on the monitor, you could shoot into ram and not commit, etc. Again, as soon as you have a camera that makes recordings of any type, the idea of "preview" is so bloody obvious it's almost painful.
We have all either surrendered, or acquiesced to having taken, our most important liberties; we have received in return lip service with regards to safety; we have allowed our government to sunder the constitution in general and the bill of rights in particular; and we are now in a position where none of this may be fixed, as the government is now operating well outside any authorized bounds and exerting power in an almost entirely arbitrary manner.
No-one can stop and read every detail of every agreement required to live even a basic modern existence. It simply isn't possible.
That, to be blunt, is nonsense. I never click anything I don't read, nor do I sign anything I don't read. Rarely inconveniences me in any way. Often keeps me from getting into things that are unsavory (credit cards are a good example of this.) You protest too much - you're just lazy. Or incompetent. Or both.
Finally, I find your entire position to be ethically horrible. The idea that everyone in the world should have to be a legal expert
That's a strawman. My position is, if you don't understand it, don't sign it. So no one has to be a legal expert. If you don't understand an agreement, and you really want what they're offering, call a lawyer. If you don't want to call a lawyer, but you can't understand it, then you probably don't want it. But if you *do* want it so badly that you'll agree to whatever, then by Darwin, I hope you enjoy it. And I'll laugh like a hyena when you're standing there whining "but I didn't KNOW!"
IMHO, you're out of your mind if you agree to things you don't understand, or even worse, haven't read.
The law in every jurisdiction with which I am familiar recognises this difficulty, overtly, in several ways. For one thing, for any contract to be valid, there must be a meeting of minds: both parties have to genuinely understand what is being agreed.
That's not how it actually works. The law is full of bullshittery. No ex post facto laws, right? Wrong. Guilty until proven innocent, right? Wrong. No searches without probable cause right? Wrong. Better the guilty go free than the innocent be punished, right? Wrong. Every person is entitled to a proper defense, right? Wrong - you're entitled to the defense you can afford, or a PD, which is often worse than no defense at all. The law is like a sewer. You don't want any on you, because you'll stink way longer than you can tolerate. Which, again, is why you should never agree to something you don't understand. Lease, shrink-wrappery, GPL, social website, *anything* that says "release" anywhere in its title, marriage certificate, cellphone contract... doesn't matter. If you don't understand it, it's a bad idea to agree to it. Your idea, that you can merrily agree to everything in sight and claim you didn't know what you were doing... that's just stupid and will inevitably deliver problems right to your doorstep.
Further, your way leads right to the lawyer. If you want out of one of these agreements you were so dim as to agree to without knowing what you are doing, you're going to have to convince a judge of a great deal of dimwittery on your part, and odds are, unless your IQ resembles your shoesize, you're not going to be able to do it, leaving you out legal fees, time, and whatever your agreement has imposed upon yourself.
My way only leads to a lawyer in the most extreme case - if I really want something I can't understand the agreement for. I'm 55 and it's only happened twice in my lifetime, both times with complex real estate transactions. The lawyer was worth the coin, both times.
it's unlikely that a significant portion of the satellites would be affected by any single event.
On the contrary. The GPS constellation consists of fast-orbiting spacecraft. Period is about 11 hours. So all that must happen is an event that lasts 11 hours and has sufficient energy to do the job. The reserve sats (block IIR) orbit at the same rate; they'd be just as fried as the block II and block IIA sats.
For GPS to work, you need a minimum of three working sats within LOS of the antenna; the position fix is determined from the downward intercept of three spheres centered on the sats. Anyone who is depending on this, and suddenly loses it, may be in serious trouble. And it's not all that easy to whip out a sextant in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in your SUV (I'm really not sure how many expeditions actually carry a sextant, for that matter. I don't own one, and I do know how to use one.)
Here, take a look at this charmer, happened only 2 years ago: X-class flare. Pay particular attention to the duration.
It's more likely they're planning to turn it off because the European GPS equivalent is set to go online soon.
All it'll take to turn every one of the satellites in both systems into fried orbital junk is one little hiccup from the sun in the right direction. It is extremely foolish to turn off this system; once off, it will degrade even if left physically in place, and it won't be functional when needed -- which will be very suddenly.
The odds of non-satellite based navigation being needed eventually near 100%. Such solar "hiccups" have happened several times since the middle of last century. Some destroyed equipment on the ground -- and at those energies, nothing in orbit is likely to survive intact. That's not to say we've seen the worst the sun can do, either. Prior to the last century, high energy solar events had only non electronic technologies to induce current in; most likely weren't even noticed beyond a curious increase in corrosion here and there.
It never fails to astonish me how foolish our government can be.
But that's not the point. Saying that you're going to be an arsehole in the small print of an agreement almost no-one is going to read
Actually, it is the point. If you agree to exchange X for Y without understanding what X is, that does not make the author of the agreement an "arsehole"; that makes you someone who needs a cluebatting.
If you don't understand an agreement, stop and don't agree. If you do understand it, but don't think the terms fair, don't agree. Agreeing without reading and understanding is unforgivably dimwitted. If you are truly that ignorant and clueless, you need a lawyer, parent, or some other competent figure to manage your life for you.
Did your original agreement say it was subject to changes? If so, if the changes made are in line with what you originally agreed with, then you're only experiencing what you said was ok, in return for whatever utility Facebook appeared to offer to you. If not, again, call a lawyer. Facebook's got some deep pockets; damages should cover your legal expenses easily if there is a clear violation.
Personally, I don't see the point of said "sharing" information I want closely held, but I'm an old guy. Anything I post, I know is ok to go forth and multiply.
And, if you simply can't control what you post, there is always the pre-emptive option; get off Facebook before you post something that damages your privacy.
That's pretty arrogant. What would you consider a better alternative for people interested in practical solutions to mechanical problems, and curiosity about the latest planes, cars, etc?
Doesn't matter one whit if there's a better alternative, or not. The fact is, the quality of the magazine is extremely low, and the responsibility for that lies with the editorial staff, or whoever is controlling the editorial staff. Content is minimally informative, often incorrect, poorly researched, and at times outright nonsensical.
As for what I'd suggest, that's easy: The web. Print is largely dead, and to the extent that it isn't, it probably should be. Google it.
It sounds like you're looking down on people that like to work on their own cars and fix their own sinks.
No. I'm looking down on a magazine that does a crappy job of collecting "news" about what's new and interesting, abstracting said news to the point of fluffy idiocy, and then printing it without checking their facts.
I'm all for home brewing one's home (I built the entire interior of my home into an old church that was no more than a box when we bought it, did all the wiring, and the lady of the house did all the trim work and finish work) and fixing one's own appliances and plumbing and the like (I just fixed my furnace a couple of weeks ago... the sensor for backed up moisture in the condensing collector failed.) I'd rather stab myself with a pencil than call a contractor to do something for me. Fixing stuff and building stuff is fun. Not to mention oodles less expensive.
I am simply of the opinion that Popular Mechanics is a really poorly put together magazine that panders to not so much people who want to fix things, but to not very bright people who want to fix things, and takes advantage of them by mistreating them specifically with crappy information, presented in a crappy manner.
Now, me... I am one of those people who likes to fix things. Reading Popular Mechanics to learn how, though, is kind of like trying to wash my face with a cactus. I'll pick what I want to work on, and then I'll research what I need to do. At no time am I likely to refer to Popular Mechanics for help. Because they suck.
But by your logic, if a mentally disabled child had pictures taken of them, it would be okay since they would never understand or care (1st paragraph)
That's precisely correct.
One has to ask, in restricting the taking and/or distribution of these photographs: Who are we protecting, and what are we protecting them from?
The answer, it seems to me, is the person(s) we wish to protect are those in the photographs; and we're trying to protect them from any mental harm that might come about from the knowledge that others might view said photographs and consequently assume certain traits, which they would find objectionable, applied to the subject(s.)
Since in your example, the person can't be harmed mentally, what others might think becomes irrelevant. Consequently, what we might think of as protection, isn't.
If harm were to occur in other areas -- property, physical, financial -- we already have laws to deal with those issues. So clearly, that's not what should be addressed when considering the issue of photography.
Note that I'm not saying this is law; I'm saying this is the reality of it. The law, sad to say, is a confused muddle created primarily by a very small set of individuals who have self-serving agendas unrelated to the actual needs of the people they are supposed to be serving.
I don't think it's unfair at all. Drawing cartoons, framing up a basic home, and making simple furniture is hardly the domain of only bright people. Popular mechanics simply doesn't aim very high. In terms of articles, many are purest garbage, printed without significant editorial care for accuracy or fact-checking; many are "bites", that pernicious trend towards being as minimal as possible, while at the same time being over-hyped. Very similar to network television.
If you want thoughtful articles with some actual depth, I suggest Scientific American. With both magazines at hand, I think the difference in the audience they address is patently obvious. If you don't find it so, I'd be surprised.
It may not be politically correct to talk about it, but the fact is, we're only as equal as we are. Magazines like popular mechanics specifically target people who would get glassy-eyed and drool if they tried to read Scientific American. Magazines like Scientific American target people who would use Popular Mechanics as kindling.
If a comment is already spam, then as far as I'm concerned it's a perfectly legitimate target for an on-topic thread re-start. It keeps the discussions from having the entire top set of posts be full of "frist pist" and other spam. My comment, being 100% on-topic, unlike its parent, is not spam.
You simply need to learn what a low-value post actually is. For instance, your post was 100% off-topic, and since I (probably ill-advisedly) bothered to reply to it... so is this.:)
Facebook is designed not just to collect data, but also metadata which allows our privacy to be violated in an entirely new way.
If you agreed to it when you accepted Facebook's user agreement, then your privacy is not being violated. So all you have to do here is review that agreement and see if the data, or metadata, is covered in the document you said "sure, fine" to when you joined Facebook. If it's not in there, then you should call a lawyer. If it is, you're actually complaining about something you did, not what Facebook is doing.
They [users] are not the ones shelling the dollars over to FB.
Yes, in fact, they are. Facebook users give money to the advertisers, and the advertisers, in turn, give a portion of that back to Facebook. Any advertiser that gives money to Facebook and doesn't get more than that from Facebook users doesn't do it for long, I assure you. If Facebook mistreats its users, this will directly affect its income stream. Likewise, if it serves them well, that will also affect its income stream.
If one chooses to put any particular detail on Facebook, then one is explicitly saying I am sharing this with the "friends" I have selected on Facebook; in that regard, because those other people are party to the information, they may elect to share it further, or not -- because you gave the information to them openly, without any particular agreement, that information now belongs to the other party as much as it does to you.
Depending on the user agreement one accepts when one joins Facebook, you may have also stipulated that Facebook itself is party to your information, and in that case, again, Facebook can share it, or not, according to the terms of the agreement you accepted in order to enjoy whatever it is Facebook offers.
However, assuming you have even one friend on Facebook, by the very act of posting something there, you're taking the risk that the other person or people in your friends list may elect to further share that information. This is a choice you made. Your information may now travel to places you didn't plan on because you chose to share it. You still had a choice, and if "sharing" is something that you want to do, then you must accept the potential that the other parties may consider your information not part of the class of things they will won't share. This arises naturally because information that is important to you may be (probably is) of little consequence to others. And of course this applies to Facebook as per the user agreement you agreed to.
In a nutshell, privacy arises as a consequence of socially understood boundaries relating to access; the understanding can arise formally, as an agreement (like Facebook) or it can be culturally infused, like you don't read someone else's diary. It can be legally backed up, such as opening a letter addressed to someone else. It can often be hardened: encryption, bars, etc. In all cases, boundaries that are in the most basic sense (prior to being hardened) easy to cross, are laid out, and you are expected not to cross them.
All Popular Mechanics does is demonstrate that the people populating the middle and left of the IQ Gaussian are active consumers. In this, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Enquirer, Fox News, and any number of other amazingly low quality media outlets.
Slashdot Mirror
So? Roman Polanski was living in France for years; when the French refused to hand him over, did we attack them? No. Why? Because they had nothing to do with what he was accused of -- although they were in sympathy with the man. That was where he lived; not the source of the issue. Likewise, Bin Ladin was living somewhere sympathetic to his ideas; this is neither a surprise, nor a justification to attack the country.
Other than Saudi Arabia itself, I doubt sufficient cause could be found in the 9/11 attacks to make war on any other country; even Saudi Arabia is iffy. There's a very strong argument that can be made that 9/11 was not a state-sponsored action, but an action that came from, and was funded by, religious fundamentalists within the Saudi state. Who were living there with the happy compliance of the state, as per usual. Certainly there was no justification at all to attack Afghanistan. It would be like attacking France for sheltering Polanski. That's a matter for politicians, negotiation, etc. Which may or may not work.
And again, if refusing to turn someone over is justification for attacking a country, then the US is open to legitimate attack from Japan and Germany and several others for recent actions. And *certainly* if the killing of 3,000 is justification, then the US is open to attack from other countries, Vietnam and Iraq being two that come immediately to mind.
You think? How many innocent Iraqis is Bush responsible for murdering? A fuckload more than 3000. You see us turning him over to the Iraqi people? Oh, wait. Ol' Bushie-boy is an ex-president with his own security detail, residing in comfort. Guess we're not going to turn him over to the Iraqis after all, are we? And make no mistake, the man is a war criminal.
What about the Vietnam war, started on the basis of an incident we FABRICATED, the gulf of tonkin incident, how many Vietnamese did we kill in that war? Anyone turn over Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who authorized that particular fuckery? No. Huh. Funny thing, eh? We definitely have our share of war criminals, pal.
It is indefensible.
You're just repeating yourself now; this argument has already been disposed of.
From this page at wikipedia, under "Attackers and their motivation":
The reference [80] leads here.
All that, and instead of addressing the elephant in the room, you made excuses for it. Pachyderm: Acknowledging that consumption of mythology as if it were reality is a disease that is serving as the specific focal point of all this. Religion is a huge part of the problem. And it is no wonder, that people who build their lives around an imaginary friend, acquire their ethics from dogma instead of reason, and then read intriguing things like Qur'an (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them", turn out to be quite violent from time to time in service of their mythology. The "religion of peace", that comes from, folks.
Not that the Christians and their jealous god and pillars of salt and killing of children are any better, mind you, they're just on a downswing from their witchburning, blue-law-making, pogram-instigating ways at the moment. Here's some "happybrew" from the Christian mythology: "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." (Exodus 12:29-30)"
THAT is the real elephant in the room. Mythology and its canned, centuries old goatherder's thinking taken as a guide for reality. And you'll never get a single politician to address it. And that is definitely one of the big reasons why we are so fucked.
Yes? Back it up. Otherwise, bullshit.
Whatever you want to call them. I feel absolutely zero need to respect the current PC terminology for these superstitious middle easterners, or their so-called "religion." It's a cult of reality-challenged people, just like every other religion, and just like every other religion, it breeds more reality-challenged people doing moronic things.
As far as I'm concerned, our ideal path here is to crash develop electric vehicles, never buy another drop of oil from them, never let another one across our borders, and never send them another red cent. Let them eat sand, to vaguely paraphrase Marie Antoinette, and with about as much concern as her delivery.
Sure they do. They come from a nice mix of the gullible, the ignorant, and the reality-challenged. The same place Christians come from. It's purest superstition. They live their lives -- and die -- by/for an imaginary friend. They're natural idiots, or people of sadly lost potential made idiotic by consumption of mythology.
Yes? Well, where's your data? Did they pay for it? No, the Saudis did. Were there any Afghani nationals involved in the attack itself? No, there were not. Was the attack made with Afghani weapons? I don't recall any goats being thrown, or passengers being subdued with poppies. Please enlighten us all. What was it that Afghanistan contributed to the attacks such that we were so outraged that we didn't go after the actual sources of the attackers, or those who funded it? The stage is yours.
Wrong, incidental, and wrong.
Candidates are selected by the two political parties. Without input from the citizens. Any protection we get is a side effect of a congress that is no more than a rubber stamp for big corporate interests and in particular military corporate interests, because that's where the money and the perks and the re-electability are. Not by votes - by who the party picks. The only change we can make is to the next one or two persons picked by the parties. Who will, absolutely guaranteed, have precisely the same agenda as the last one. Our political system has very little indeed to do with the citizens. Oh sure, it's a great spectacle, but you're picking from column A or B selected by the parties, not by the people, and there are no other options.
So what? That was entirely post-attack. The attack was paid for by Saudis, and executed by nationals from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.
Now, do you see Iraq in that list? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see Afghanistan there? Fuck no, you don't. Do you see us attacking Egypt? No. Lebanon? No. The UAE? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Instead, we attacked Iraq (a total WTF) and Afghanistan, a country uninvolved in the attack; no nationals, no funding.
And if you think it's ok to attack a country because they don't want to hand someone over, then you better start ducking, because the US holds people back from all manner of countries. A, B, C, D, etc.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because you don't agree with how they do things, then holy chickenshit, you'd *really* better duck, because there's a whole line of countries that can say that about us.
If you think it's ok to attack a country because they're screwed up internally, that is, not obeying their constitution or other founding papers... yeah, you guessed it, duck. because we're so far away from our constitution it can't be seen from here.
But I think you might agree with me that if someone attacks you, then you have some justification to hit back at where they come from and/or who paid/ordered the act. Let me repeat, just for the sake of trying to point the objective facts to you:
That's not true. Look at a video that shows camera work on any TV show made in the 50s or 60s. You can see that the cameras being used have monitors on board that give them a preview of the output of the camera, which is what allows them to set up, prior to being committed to recording by the control room. Electronic preview of image(s) prior to recording. It's obvious. It's so obvious they had it figured out half a century ago. As to which button does it, or if it is digital in nature somewhere along the path... feh. Still bloody obvious.
For that matter, ham radio SSTV units (ie ROBOT 400 by ROBOT inc.) have had digital camera preview displays since (at least) 1976. You could preview on the monitor, you could shoot into ram and not commit, etc. Again, as soon as you have a camera that makes recordings of any type, the idea of "preview" is so bloody obvious it's almost painful.
These patents are ludicrous.
Wheras the truth is:
We have all either surrendered, or acquiesced to having taken, our most important liberties; we have received in return lip service with regards to safety; we have allowed our government to sunder the constitution in general and the bill of rights in particular; and we are now in a position where none of this may be fixed, as the government is now operating well outside any authorized bounds and exerting power in an almost entirely arbitrary manner.
There's a short version, too: We're fucked.
That, to be blunt, is nonsense. I never click anything I don't read, nor do I sign anything I don't read. Rarely inconveniences me in any way. Often keeps me from getting into things that are unsavory (credit cards are a good example of this.) You protest too much - you're just lazy. Or incompetent. Or both.
That's a strawman. My position is, if you don't understand it, don't sign it. So no one has to be a legal expert. If you don't understand an agreement, and you really want what they're offering, call a lawyer. If you don't want to call a lawyer, but you can't understand it, then you probably don't want it. But if you *do* want it so badly that you'll agree to whatever, then by Darwin, I hope you enjoy it. And I'll laugh like a hyena when you're standing there whining "but I didn't KNOW!"
IMHO, you're out of your mind if you agree to things you don't understand, or even worse, haven't read.
That's not how it actually works. The law is full of bullshittery. No ex post facto laws, right? Wrong. Guilty until proven innocent, right? Wrong. No searches without probable cause right? Wrong. Better the guilty go free than the innocent be punished, right? Wrong. Every person is entitled to a proper defense, right? Wrong - you're entitled to the defense you can afford, or a PD, which is often worse than no defense at all. The law is like a sewer. You don't want any on you, because you'll stink way longer than you can tolerate. Which, again, is why you should never agree to something you don't understand. Lease, shrink-wrappery, GPL, social website, *anything* that says "release" anywhere in its title, marriage certificate, cellphone contract... doesn't matter. If you don't understand it, it's a bad idea to agree to it. Your idea, that you can merrily agree to everything in sight and claim you didn't know what you were doing... that's just stupid and will inevitably deliver problems right to your doorstep.
Further, your way leads right to the lawyer. If you want out of one of these agreements you were so dim as to agree to without knowing what you are doing, you're going to have to convince a judge of a great deal of dimwittery on your part, and odds are, unless your IQ resembles your shoesize, you're not going to be able to do it, leaving you out legal fees, time, and whatever your agreement has imposed upon yourself.
My way only leads to a lawyer in the most extreme case - if I really want something I can't understand the agreement for. I'm 55 and it's only happened twice in my lifetime, both times with complex real estate transactions. The lawyer was worth the coin, both times.
On the contrary. The GPS constellation consists of fast-orbiting spacecraft. Period is about 11 hours. So all that must happen is an event that lasts 11 hours and has sufficient energy to do the job. The reserve sats (block IIR) orbit at the same rate; they'd be just as fried as the block II and block IIA sats.
For GPS to work, you need a minimum of three working sats within LOS of the antenna; the position fix is determined from the downward intercept of three spheres centered on the sats. Anyone who is depending on this, and suddenly loses it, may be in serious trouble. And it's not all that easy to whip out a sextant in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in your SUV (I'm really not sure how many expeditions actually carry a sextant, for that matter. I don't own one, and I do know how to use one.)
Here, take a look at this charmer, happened only 2 years ago: X-class flare. Pay particular attention to the duration.
All it'll take to turn every one of the satellites in both systems into fried orbital junk is one little hiccup from the sun in the right direction. It is extremely foolish to turn off this system; once off, it will degrade even if left physically in place, and it won't be functional when needed -- which will be very suddenly.
The odds of non-satellite based navigation being needed eventually near 100%. Such solar "hiccups" have happened several times since the middle of last century. Some destroyed equipment on the ground -- and at those energies, nothing in orbit is likely to survive intact. That's not to say we've seen the worst the sun can do, either. Prior to the last century, high energy solar events had only non electronic technologies to induce current in; most likely weren't even noticed beyond a curious increase in corrosion here and there.
It never fails to astonish me how foolish our government can be.
Actually, it is the point. If you agree to exchange X for Y without understanding what X is, that does not make the author of the agreement an "arsehole"; that makes you someone who needs a cluebatting.
If you don't understand an agreement, stop and don't agree. If you do understand it, but don't think the terms fair, don't agree. Agreeing without reading and understanding is unforgivably dimwitted. If you are truly that ignorant and clueless, you need a lawyer, parent, or some other competent figure to manage your life for you.
Check the Facebook user agreement, and that'll tell you if it's true. If it isn't, call a lawyer. If it is, shut up or quit Facebook.
Did your original agreement say it was subject to changes? If so, if the changes made are in line with what you originally agreed with, then you're only experiencing what you said was ok, in return for whatever utility Facebook appeared to offer to you. If not, again, call a lawyer. Facebook's got some deep pockets; damages should cover your legal expenses easily if there is a clear violation.
Personally, I don't see the point of said "sharing" information I want closely held, but I'm an old guy. Anything I post, I know is ok to go forth and multiply.
And, if you simply can't control what you post, there is always the pre-emptive option; get off Facebook before you post something that damages your privacy.
Doesn't matter one whit if there's a better alternative, or not. The fact is, the quality of the magazine is extremely low, and the responsibility for that lies with the editorial staff, or whoever is controlling the editorial staff. Content is minimally informative, often incorrect, poorly researched, and at times outright nonsensical.
As for what I'd suggest, that's easy: The web. Print is largely dead, and to the extent that it isn't, it probably should be. Google it.
No. I'm looking down on a magazine that does a crappy job of collecting "news" about what's new and interesting, abstracting said news to the point of fluffy idiocy, and then printing it without checking their facts.
I'm all for home brewing one's home (I built the entire interior of my home into an old church that was no more than a box when we bought it, did all the wiring, and the lady of the house did all the trim work and finish work) and fixing one's own appliances and plumbing and the like (I just fixed my furnace a couple of weeks ago... the sensor for backed up moisture in the condensing collector failed.) I'd rather stab myself with a pencil than call a contractor to do something for me. Fixing stuff and building stuff is fun. Not to mention oodles less expensive.
I am simply of the opinion that Popular Mechanics is a really poorly put together magazine that panders to not so much people who want to fix things, but to not very bright people who want to fix things, and takes advantage of them by mistreating them specifically with crappy information, presented in a crappy manner.
Now, me... I am one of those people who likes to fix things. Reading Popular Mechanics to learn how, though, is kind of like trying to wash my face with a cactus. I'll pick what I want to work on, and then I'll research what I need to do. At no time am I likely to refer to Popular Mechanics for help. Because they suck.
That's precisely correct.
One has to ask, in restricting the taking and/or distribution of these photographs: Who are we protecting, and what are we protecting them from?
The answer, it seems to me, is the person(s) we wish to protect are those in the photographs; and we're trying to protect them from any mental harm that might come about from the knowledge that others might view said photographs and consequently assume certain traits, which they would find objectionable, applied to the subject(s.)
Since in your example, the person can't be harmed mentally, what others might think becomes irrelevant. Consequently, what we might think of as protection, isn't.
If harm were to occur in other areas -- property, physical, financial -- we already have laws to deal with those issues. So clearly, that's not what should be addressed when considering the issue of photography.
Note that I'm not saying this is law; I'm saying this is the reality of it. The law, sad to say, is a confused muddle created primarily by a very small set of individuals who have self-serving agendas unrelated to the actual needs of the people they are supposed to be serving.
I don't think it's unfair at all. Drawing cartoons, framing up a basic home, and making simple furniture is hardly the domain of only bright people. Popular mechanics simply doesn't aim very high. In terms of articles, many are purest garbage, printed without significant editorial care for accuracy or fact-checking; many are "bites", that pernicious trend towards being as minimal as possible, while at the same time being over-hyped. Very similar to network television.
If you want thoughtful articles with some actual depth, I suggest Scientific American. With both magazines at hand, I think the difference in the audience they address is patently obvious. If you don't find it so, I'd be surprised.
It may not be politically correct to talk about it, but the fact is, we're only as equal as we are. Magazines like popular mechanics specifically target people who would get glassy-eyed and drool if they tried to read Scientific American. Magazines like Scientific American target people who would use Popular Mechanics as kindling.
If a comment is already spam, then as far as I'm concerned it's a perfectly legitimate target for an on-topic thread re-start. It keeps the discussions from having the entire top set of posts be full of "frist pist" and other spam. My comment, being 100% on-topic, unlike its parent, is not spam.
You simply need to learn what a low-value post actually is. For instance, your post was 100% off-topic, and since I (probably ill-advisedly) bothered to reply to it... so is this. :)
If you agreed to it when you accepted Facebook's user agreement, then your privacy is not being violated. So all you have to do here is review that agreement and see if the data, or metadata, is covered in the document you said "sure, fine" to when you joined Facebook. If it's not in there, then you should call a lawyer. If it is, you're actually complaining about something you did, not what Facebook is doing.
Yes, in fact, they are. Facebook users give money to the advertisers, and the advertisers, in turn, give a portion of that back to Facebook. Any advertiser that gives money to Facebook and doesn't get more than that from Facebook users doesn't do it for long, I assure you. If Facebook mistreats its users, this will directly affect its income stream. Likewise, if it serves them well, that will also affect its income stream.
If one chooses to put any particular detail on Facebook, then one is explicitly saying I am sharing this with the "friends" I have selected on Facebook; in that regard, because those other people are party to the information, they may elect to share it further, or not -- because you gave the information to them openly, without any particular agreement, that information now belongs to the other party as much as it does to you.
Depending on the user agreement one accepts when one joins Facebook, you may have also stipulated that Facebook itself is party to your information, and in that case, again, Facebook can share it, or not, according to the terms of the agreement you accepted in order to enjoy whatever it is Facebook offers.
However, assuming you have even one friend on Facebook, by the very act of posting something there, you're taking the risk that the other person or people in your friends list may elect to further share that information. This is a choice you made. Your information may now travel to places you didn't plan on because you chose to share it. You still had a choice, and if "sharing" is something that you want to do, then you must accept the potential that the other parties may consider your information not part of the class of things they will won't share. This arises naturally because information that is important to you may be (probably is) of little consequence to others. And of course this applies to Facebook as per the user agreement you agreed to.
In a nutshell, privacy arises as a consequence of socially understood boundaries relating to access; the understanding can arise formally, as an agreement (like Facebook) or it can be culturally infused, like you don't read someone else's diary. It can be legally backed up, such as opening a letter addressed to someone else. It can often be hardened: encryption, bars, etc. In all cases, boundaries that are in the most basic sense (prior to being hardened) easy to cross, are laid out, and you are expected not to cross them.
If you want to know more (or argue) about how privacy actually works, I've written at length about it here.
All Popular Mechanics does is demonstrate that the people populating the middle and left of the IQ Gaussian are active consumers. In this, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Enquirer, Fox News, and any number of other amazingly low quality media outlets.