Says who? In what sense? Partly discussed by other posters.
Greed is something we have discussed in Philosophy for thousands of years. It's not a new concept and has been discussed since the time we could record information up through Friedman. Governments have been charged over and over again through history with trying to limit and/or restrict greed. See what I stated regarding France and the founding of the USA for easy examples.
How nice of you to negate the primary point of that paragraph however. If Capitalism is at fault why has _every_ economic system seen the same issues when power gets entrenched? You can't answer that, so avoid it because it hurts your "capitalism is bad" statements?
"impartial regulation" undefined. And why would a system with impartial regulation stop hoarders from hoarding?
If regulations are applied to everyone uniformly, that would not be "impartial". To claim "impartial regulation" needs to be defined is idiocy. As with the first, you ignore the premise of my statements to back your conclusion that capitalism is bad statements. You don't believe corruption is the problem, it's "capitalism" right?
Communism never has been. Leninism degenerated quickly into state capitalism - what happens if one business owns almost everything?
Control is the conduit for power. As you indicate, exploiting others' ignorance is another way to achieve power - but, again, it's because it's easier to control the ignorant.
Control is not just a conduit for power. If one has no power how can they assert control? I think we agree on the premise that knowledge is a form of power, and that people use this for greed. That said, you may disagree with "greed" at which I'll tell you to go back and read a whole lot of Philosophy starting with Plato and moving up through Marx. I can't catch you up on that much education in a sentence or post here.
I countered everything you stated, there were no straw men. My points all had merit, and if you read them you can debate those points. Capitalism is no more a problem than claiming Republicans are the problem with the US Government. It's a nonsense way of avoiding discussion of the root issue. In the case of the economy the problem is corruption and condensation of power. The problems in the Government are from that same exact thing.
No it does not, correlation != causation and all that. Human nature is to hoard, and any society that has an economic system without impartial regulation will allow for the hoarders to hoard. The more unfair the system, the more you will see economic disparity. To blame "Capitalism" ignores every other form of economics we see today which all have massive separation between the "have's" and "have not". Communism is just as bad as Capitalism with this, and if you have any doubts head on over to China and Russia and see how they are fairing. Just as bad or worse than the USA, and neither of them use the Capitalist system of Economics. Where they have allowed experimental Capitalism we hear about how "Chun" and "Vladimir" have become wealthy and the Government comes in at a certain point and takes it all over, moving that generated wealth into the same hands that are controlling the rest of the economy.
Selfishness promotes control.
Chicken and Egg scenario. Power in too few hands is the real problem. Few in history have ever used power to help the masses, most in history have used their power for self interests. Power comes in many forms, but the greatest by far is knowledge. Socrates stated correctly that for society to succeed the masses must be highly educated in Philosophy and Rhetoric. This is in addition to other knowledge that a person would need for their job or daily life. As countries like the US have removed those classes from public education, you also see the selfish excel. They can, because a person today has difficulty recognizing even basic appeals to emotion, let alone complex manipulations in rhetoric.
Control of information is a type of control.
Again, you are confusing power and the word "control".
Control of the government is another type of control.
Control == Control obviously. As with previously mentioned items you should be trying to relate things to "Power". If you have friends in Government then you have power. You can define laws, create exceptions, legalize abuses that you can afford, and legalize morality that you can afford or your buddies can do that for you.
So powerful people will control both.
Wrong again, people in power will use that power to gain more power. This has nothing to do with Capitalism, it has everything to do with human nature. Every form of Government and Economic system has seen the same exact challenge. Mercantilism failed for the same reason Capitalism is failing. Not because the system is bad, but because the systems are full of corruption.
And so the modern role of signals intelligence: to watch you, to separate the majority who are of no consequence, from the minority who run a serious risk of making a difference.
The solution is a scaling back of capitalism. And not a replacement with Soviet state capitalism, either, even though their surveillance had nothing on modern UKUSA.
If you are wrong about the problem being "Capitalism" your solution can not be correct. The problem is corruption, and the solution is to wake people up and clean up the corruption. This happened in Rome and gave them a couple hundred more years. This happened in France and we saw France become a prosperous place for nearly 2 centuries. Cleaning corruption was also the reason that the USA was founded. We did good to make it this long without having to wake people up to take out the trash, but the time is a bit overdue.
One thing to note is that your attorney needs to refuse the polygraph, not you. If you refuse, the prosecutor can and normally will use that as evidence in the trial. "The defendant refused to take a Polygraph!" is just as bad as "The defendant failed the polygraph" to a huge percentage of jurors.
If you are going to be a biased prick, at least get the bias right. Jews and Islam are also anti-gay. It's not just "the Jesus people."
Of course the most important consideration is that until roughly 30 years ago ALL Industrial nations considered homosexuality a mental disorder, including the USA. Many "Modern" nations still consider homosexuality a psychological disorder today. If you have doubts, you rush right on over to India, China, or Russia and tell the authorities you want to marry someone of the same sex and watch the reaction. Make sure your friends Youtube that vein popper to play along side the video you have planned.
The US has become as open as any of the European nations in regards to Homosexuality. That has nothing to do with incest however, which is a legal consideration that would be all but impossible to legalize for "marriage". The states could not possible track and ensure exceptions first off, but as someone else mentioned there is also a tremendous amount of psychological considerations that would halt any legalization long before any Religion got involved.
In other words, you can stop spanking it to thoughts of your two sisters "gettin it own" at least in a legal and married sense.
So you believe that Google's initial use of cheap hardware (most of it disposed of by other businesses) with clustered software was not an "idea" that was rather unique at the time? At a time when everyone and their brother that was "big" was buying bigger and bigger machines. Their software concept for clustering was what every programming is?
That is blatantly incorrect. Even with GridEngine we in the industry were getting our first E10K with 64 processors around the time Google started. GridEngine could not handle what Google needed, so they rolled their own software and methods for clustering. Many of those "ideas" were adopted later by cluster companies like Veritas.
You really can't read a thread as a conversation? Let me help.
You: Yes, but they had one idea of their own that launched Google. That's links-as-metadata idea of indexing. It was a good idea, but nothing since then has been "from the top".
Me: Come now, be fair. They had many different ideas with Google. Search and meta-data is of course the biggie, but they also had many other innovations. Hardware implementation and use comes immediately to mind. While HA was not new, Google came up with a very cheap and easy method for HA.
You: Larry and Sergy aren't google. Google is a collection of some of the best software engineers in the country(with most of their talent being wasted on getting more people to click ads).
Me: No shit! Where did I state that they were all of Google? I said that you were wrong that there was only 1 idea to start Google, and gave examples of at least 2 other ideas they had. When Google started, there was very little "click" advertising so you are trying to re-write history to fit your bias. When Google started the majority of ads were still pay-per page ads like the Newspapers.
You: I was talking about how people's talent was being wasted today, not the pre-doubleclick history of google.
You were wrong to deny my first point, but instead of admitting you were wrong you make false claims. You end up at a completely different point than you start, in a completely different era! Good grief, I feel like I'm explaining the basics of communication to an autistic kid!
Yes, but they had one idea of their own that launched Google. That's links-as-metadata idea of indexing. It was a good idea, but nothing since then has been "from the top".
That is what you started with, and what I made a correction to. It is easy to claim "wrong" when you not only move the goal post half way across the globe, but time travel with it as well.
There is no change in facts if you claim a machine searches through your email vs. a human searching through your email. Your email is still being searched. In fact I would state that the machine is much worse for numerous reasons (lack of morality, indiscriminate targeting, faster methods of processing, etc...). If it was restricted to human viewing and listening only, we would have many more whistle blowers and many more stories to generate outrage.
If you deny facts to support your belief then there is no possible way to have a rational discussion. That and the consistent ad hominem in place of facts or positions makes me question why I have previously defended you. Have fun in what ever fantasy land you are living in, and no I won't make the mistake of trying to defend someone that lacks the ability to have a rational discourse again.
No shit! Where did I state that they were all of Google? I said that you were wrong that there was only 1 idea to start Google, and gave examples of at least 2 other ideas they had. When Google started, there was very little "click" advertising so you are trying to re-write history to fit your bias. When Google started the majority of ads were still pay-per page ads like the Newspapers.
Come now, be fair. They had many different ideas with Google. Search and meta-data is of course the biggie, but they also had many other innovations. Hardware implementation and use comes immediately to mind. While HA was not new, Google came up with a very cheap and easy method for HA.
Before you go on a tangent and claim it's only big brother tinfoil hat censorship, let me give a list of reasons to consider it possible. Without answers from Twitter and other sites that block, claiming "whoops" is no more and nor less valid than the subject (censorship). Even with answers, it's not beyond many of these companies to outright lie, so we should be scrutinizing their answers.
1. Money. Google/Twitter may not have pay links on the site and see no revenue from click ads. While this may not be the only cause of a block, it sure could impact how fast they respond to fixing a site blocked.
2. Group Pressure. We have seen this with numerous groups, they have a couple people flooding complaints against a site, broadcast, or print article that they don't like. We have also seen this from groups that are not Religious, so don't just blame those idiots from Westboro Baptist Church.
3. Appeasing Big Brother. The NYT, CNN, and others have had numerous whistle blowers telling you that these companies censor works that the Government does not find favorable. It would be safe to assume that they also censor on their own prior to receiving a stop order from the administration.
4. Big Brother. This comes in so many forms today with our massive and intrusive Government that it can not be discounted. Many of these people share resources, so it's not going to be hard to use this network to block content people don't want out. Yes there big ole maps that shows how all of these massive companies and governments are tied together. Since there are bunches of these covering various categories I'll let you search and look at them all.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that all 4 of these things happened here, or that even 1 of them happened. I'm claiming that to not consider it possible is rather idiotic given everything know. Anyone that blindly trusts one of these large technical companies or a Government agency today is a fool. The only way to start breaking up the corruption is to question everything, scrutinize everything, and of course report when bad things happen on every available channel in order to avoid some of the blocking.
What the government is saying is you can't tell the difference in today's world: Terrorist don't wear uniforms.
Wrong, that is not what the Government is saying. They are saying that it's perfectly legal to spy on citizens in what ever fashion they wish. Go listen to or read every speech given by the NSA, FBI, and defenders of PRISM. They all parrot the same lines, and interestingly it was released today that the NSA gave them all "talking points" referencing fear mongering tactics when defending the program. The talking points document is searchable and was found through a FOIA request.
*facepalm* The Tin Foil is strong with this one.
Really, you still resort to ad hominem to support your delusion (or perhaps the delusion you wish others to have) instead of reading facts after being warned? You do know that what I stated is not only factual, but was backed as factual by Courts on several occasions. The easiest to find would be the Michigan Lawsuit regarding the underwear bomber. I'll ask again, do you need someone to Google that for you? I can stoop to LMGTFY links if you insist.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Please tell me why if "rule of law" and "good for society" were so important, the declaration of independence didn't open with that instead? Answer: Because the purpose of a democracy (or a republic, if you want to be a pedant) is not to create a great country, but to create great people.
What does the Declaration of Independence have to do with the rule of Law? or your MLK quote, or your Lincoln quote?, or your own made up ad hominem? Setting up more straw man is all I can think of. You can't be daft enough to be trying to claim that the USA is a pure Democracy and is not a Democratic Republic. You could not believe that false information is made factual by ad hominem and straw men. Yet this is your only approach!
There are no straw men left standing!
Funny how again after your ad hominem and fallacy is removed the only thing remaining for you to defend are two false statements. If you are just going to respond with more fallacy and fantasy, please don't bother. Fact checking is really not that difficult, even if it is time consuming. Nor is it difficult to have civil dialogue which you claim we should be able to have based on our education and vision of our founding fathers.
I know what the word means, I was pointing to the difference between espionage/surveillance and spying. Spying is what a military would do, espionage and surveillance is what the NSA has been doing.
I said that was the case... FIFTY YEARS AGO.
Sorry, that is not what you stated. That may be what you meant, but that is not what you stated. You stated "but the doctrine hasn't changed in 50 years: Knowledge of the enemies communications and positions is what wins wars. It's how Germany kicked the everloving shit out of Europe when referencing "FIFTY YEARS AGO".
When giving your statement, you also refer only to the Military applications of "spying" which is what I stated is a misnomer (mislabeled, inaccurate description). What people are upset about is not "spying", they are upset about Government surveillance and espionage against non-military targets. It's been conveniently lumped into a single category, but it's not accurate in a lump category.
Your next statements again deal with Military, not domestic spying. Yes we should know if Russia is massing troops in front of Sara Palin's house because she is not always on the porch looking. Yes we should know where China's nukes are and how many they have. Yes we should have a way to gauge someone's military capacity, I never discounted that. No point in trying to argue points I agree with.
Then however, you go to the fear mongering. Take away the far mongering appeals to emotion and what do you have? The argument that the US Government needs to spy on every US citizen to ensure us that someone from Yemen does not drive a car bomb into a building. You are confusing border security with domestic espionage and surveillance, they are two vastly separate areas for concern. Mentioning that both parties wanting the surveillance is a straw man. It does not change whether it should be done or not, nor does it change the fact that it has been happening.
"Nothing good can come from this level of spying and information gathering. Nothing! "
We caught the boston bomber in a matter of days... using surveillance information from civilian resources. Shop cameras. Cell phones. Television footage. You can't say that "nothing" good comes from it. You might be able to say "not much" good comes of it... small comfort I suppose to the victims, but go ahead and say it. But surveillance has caught many criminals so far. You can argue that's not enough to justify what's going on, but you're being either incredibly naive, or so biased as to be effectively blind, if you say there has been no benefit.
None of that had anything to do with the NSA or PRISM. Nothing! The programs didn't prevent the event, and they had nothing to do with capturing the alleged criminals.
I'll go one up on you. Every plot foiled that the Government is crediting to the surveillance state has been a setup by the FBI. Everything from the underwear bomber to the present that the FBI has raided, has been facilitated and "handled" by the FBI. They have taken people and given them money and plans, and even the non-functional bombs that they tried to detonate when they were "miraculously captured". The joke is on you, do you get it?
Your entire post is nothing but conjecture, doomsday prophecy, and knee-jerk reactionism. It doesn't even attempt to ask the most fundamental question here: Why did they do it? You offer absolutely nothing for motive. You put nothing on the table to bargain with. You give neither me, nor your representatives, nor anyone who has read any of your comments in this thread, any reason to act. It is simply a propaganda piece without any real substance or analysis.
Conjecture and doomsday? Go back and read it again. There is no doomsday anything, but I do claim that nothing good can happen with that much information in the Gover
I have seen many interesting posts from the same person, which opens the possibility that it's not point whoring but rather trying to instigate further debate. I often attempt to initiate debate myself, so am guilty of not "whoring" in my opinion but rather arguing an alternative view. Many of the more interesting people and posts on this site may not be precise with certain information, use incorrect generalizations, etc.. but that does not imply they are simply whoring or shilling. There are those too, but, I don' think so with this person.
Nobody here understands the capabilities of tens of thousands of people that understand basic SQL and Perl/Python? Don't answer that, I'm showing how idiotic your claim is. They don't need to read all of your email, they only need to have something pop up in a generic query running against a set of data.
By ignoring reality "your opinions are flawed and worthless.". I would warn you against self incriminating fallacy, but your statements in this thread are full of fallacy.
Seriously, your government probably isn't reading your email. Think about the number of emails sent each day, excluding spam. But, assuming you live in the USA, your government is storing your emails, and if you ever become interesting to them they can read your emails (including where they were sent from, who to/from, etc), listen to most of the phone calls you made (it's digital, and not much data), txts you sent/received, see where your phone went and who was nearby, etc.
This is a speculation, and worth just as much as the person claiming that they are individually being watched. Neither of you know because the program is secret, and all of the activities and actions associated with the program are secret. You _assume_ no nefarious intent, someone else _assumes_ that there is nefarious intent, and neither of you can prove your case and both of you are making an assumption. This is why JFK stated "The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings [...] " (and you should take note of the complete and full speech).
I agree with the rest of your statements, regarding them wanting more data. I'm more concerned with this modern mentality that a new nasty tyranny or dictatorship can't happen "here", where "here" is what ever Government you currently live under. It _can_ happen "here", and in fact it has been moving in this direction in dozens of countries that consider themselves above the influence of human nature.
Since when has free speech been squashed in the US?
Is this a serious question? Did you bother to stop and read any history at all, look at any recent laws at all, or read what I wrote above?
You do realize that we have "Free Speech Zones" in the US as of very recent laws, and those zones still require permits in most cases. Go find 100 other people to gather with you in protest and see what happens (No, I won't bail you out). You do know that at least 2 teenagers went to jail for posting on Facebook with the exact same terminology that young men have used as intimidating rhetoric for centuries. You do realize that there are countless News outlets that do not release any "Press" that the Government does not approve first (New York Post has had several whistle blowers which should be a quick Google start).
To claim that we are not as bad as another country does not change facts, it makes you look like an idiot. It's like a Chinese person arguing that China is better than North Korea because in China they only go to jail for life for protesting, they don't get killed for it. They are also squelching free speech, only the methods and punishments are different.
This pretty much describes anyone who is hyperventilating about this whole spying non-sense.
Then you go from a failure to think critically directly to an ad hominem and appeal to emotion. So far, I don't think very highly of your comments. You can't discount anything I claimed, you simply ignore it and slander anyone that does not agree.
The general public does a much better job than any government could ever do in this regard.
Idiocy! If the public is uninformed or intentionally mislead, that is not the public's fault. This is not an uncommon issue, and has happened time and time again through history when power gets entrenched in the same hands for too long.
And for the record the US constitution only applies to US citizens but everyone else is fair game.
That statement is a lie. Go read the US Constitution. You don't even have to study it, just read it.
Anyone wishing to have a meaningful discussion about the NSA also needs to factor in all the other countries who do the exact same thing
On that statement I will tell you that you are either a sock puppet or lack any critical thinking abilities. Don't bother to reply, either shill somewhere else or try and heal your broken head.
Are you trying to claim that the NSA was only spying on military targets for military purposes? No, don't answer that because that's what you are trying to claim. Please go back to the pr0n site and let the grown ups talk.
While you make a nice speech you have a huge misnomer in your statements. We are not seeing a "spying on enemies and troops"! If it was only spying on the military of foreign agencies, people would not have an issue with it. It is spying and tracking individuals who are NOT military. It is spying on allies with the same fervor you would an enemy. It is spying on businesses who are not working for a foreign military.
This spying has resulted in squashing free speech in the US, Germany, the UK, Italy, etc.. These are not military actions by foreign enemies, these are people that are not content with what their selected leaders are doing. Police show up before rallies in both countries (I have friends and relatives in Germany and live in the US) and start arresting people. They insert agent provocateurs in some of these events to disrupt movements (Canada, the US and Germany are all proven to have done this).
This spying has resulted in massive misinformation campaigns against real world problems. They can see where people are getting data and disrupt communications. They see hot debate topics and flood the media outlets with disinformation and ad homimen when they can't disrupt the data.
If it was _only_ military spying like you hint at we would probably be happy about it, but even this has become either a honey pot or distortion. Look at the whole of the Middle East as well as North Korea for examples.
The fear people have is that this data is being gathered for the same reason the SS cataloged and monitored every German. Do something someone does not like and you are a "sympathizer" and killed or jailed. We already see buds of this happening.
Nothing good can come from this level of spying and information gathering. Nothing! To claim that we all claim "Oh noes" without considering all of the facts and consequences based on historical evidence is not only unfair, but absolutely wrong. Perhaps _you_ have not paid attention or not weighed much, but many of us have!
I'll go a bit further and say the obvious implication which you hint at. It's not a "listening post for the US", it's a "partnership in a massive world wide spying program". Germany, Spain, Italy, UK, Australia, Canada, they are all in on it.
Funny that all of these people are bitching about the US doing it when they are not complaining about their own countries collusion and benefits from this spy ring.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, at first I thought it was adblock/noscript. There is nothing here to view even after I disabled those extensions.
Human nature is to hoard,
Says who? In what sense? Partly discussed by other posters.
Greed is something we have discussed in Philosophy for thousands of years. It's not a new concept and has been discussed since the time we could record information up through Friedman. Governments have been charged over and over again through history with trying to limit and/or restrict greed. See what I stated regarding France and the founding of the USA for easy examples.
How nice of you to negate the primary point of that paragraph however. If Capitalism is at fault why has _every_ economic system seen the same issues when power gets entrenched? You can't answer that, so avoid it because it hurts your "capitalism is bad" statements?
"impartial regulation" undefined. And why would a system with impartial regulation stop hoarders from hoarding?
If regulations are applied to everyone uniformly, that would not be "impartial". To claim "impartial regulation" needs to be defined is idiocy. As with the first, you ignore the premise of my statements to back your conclusion that capitalism is bad statements. You don't believe corruption is the problem, it's "capitalism" right?
Communism never has been. Leninism degenerated quickly into state capitalism - what happens if one business owns almost everything?
You are claim that Communism is using the Capitalist economic system! With an ignorant and biased statement like "Leninism degenerated into capitalism" I'm staggered that you would write such a blatant lie. I think you should do some studying, because Communism does NOT use Capitalism as it's main form of economy. As I stated there have been experiments which get pulled back into the Party once there has been enough success.
Control is the conduit for power. As you indicate, exploiting others' ignorance is another way to achieve power - but, again, it's because it's easier to control the ignorant.
Control is not just a conduit for power. If one has no power how can they assert control? I think we agree on the premise that knowledge is a form of power, and that people use this for greed. That said, you may disagree with "greed" at which I'll tell you to go back and read a whole lot of Philosophy starting with Plato and moving up through Marx. I can't catch you up on that much education in a sentence or post here.
I countered everything you stated, there were no straw men. My points all had merit, and if you read them you can debate those points. Capitalism is no more a problem than claiming Republicans are the problem with the US Government. It's a nonsense way of avoiding discussion of the root issue. In the case of the economy the problem is corruption and condensation of power. The problems in the Government are from that same exact thing.
Capitalism promotes selfishness.
No it does not, correlation != causation and all that. Human nature is to hoard, and any society that has an economic system without impartial regulation will allow for the hoarders to hoard. The more unfair the system, the more you will see economic disparity. To blame "Capitalism" ignores every other form of economics we see today which all have massive separation between the "have's" and "have not". Communism is just as bad as Capitalism with this, and if you have any doubts head on over to China and Russia and see how they are fairing. Just as bad or worse than the USA, and neither of them use the Capitalist system of Economics. Where they have allowed experimental Capitalism we hear about how "Chun" and "Vladimir" have become wealthy and the Government comes in at a certain point and takes it all over, moving that generated wealth into the same hands that are controlling the rest of the economy.
Selfishness promotes control.
Chicken and Egg scenario. Power in too few hands is the real problem. Few in history have ever used power to help the masses, most in history have used their power for self interests. Power comes in many forms, but the greatest by far is knowledge. Socrates stated correctly that for society to succeed the masses must be highly educated in Philosophy and Rhetoric. This is in addition to other knowledge that a person would need for their job or daily life. As countries like the US have removed those classes from public education, you also see the selfish excel. They can, because a person today has difficulty recognizing even basic appeals to emotion, let alone complex manipulations in rhetoric.
Control of information is a type of control.
Again, you are confusing power and the word "control".
Control of the government is another type of control.
Control == Control obviously. As with previously mentioned items you should be trying to relate things to "Power". If you have friends in Government then you have power. You can define laws, create exceptions, legalize abuses that you can afford, and legalize morality that you can afford or your buddies can do that for you.
So powerful people will control both.
Wrong again, people in power will use that power to gain more power. This has nothing to do with Capitalism, it has everything to do with human nature. Every form of Government and Economic system has seen the same exact challenge. Mercantilism failed for the same reason Capitalism is failing. Not because the system is bad, but because the systems are full of corruption.
And so the modern role of signals intelligence: to watch you, to separate the majority who are of no consequence, from the minority who run a serious risk of making a difference.
The solution is a scaling back of capitalism. And not a replacement with Soviet state capitalism, either, even though their surveillance had nothing on modern UKUSA.
If you are wrong about the problem being "Capitalism" your solution can not be correct. The problem is corruption, and the solution is to wake people up and clean up the corruption. This happened in Rome and gave them a couple hundred more years. This happened in France and we saw France become a prosperous place for nearly 2 centuries. Cleaning corruption was also the reason that the USA was founded. We did good to make it this long without having to wake people up to take out the trash, but the time is a bit overdue.
One thing to note is that your attorney needs to refuse the polygraph, not you. If you refuse, the prosecutor can and normally will use that as evidence in the trial. "The defendant refused to take a Polygraph!" is just as bad as "The defendant failed the polygraph" to a huge percentage of jurors.
If you are going to be a biased prick, at least get the bias right. Jews and Islam are also anti-gay. It's not just "the Jesus people."
Of course the most important consideration is that until roughly 30 years ago ALL Industrial nations considered homosexuality a mental disorder, including the USA. Many "Modern" nations still consider homosexuality a psychological disorder today. If you have doubts, you rush right on over to India, China, or Russia and tell the authorities you want to marry someone of the same sex and watch the reaction. Make sure your friends Youtube that vein popper to play along side the video you have planned.
The US has become as open as any of the European nations in regards to Homosexuality. That has nothing to do with incest however, which is a legal consideration that would be all but impossible to legalize for "marriage". The states could not possible track and ensure exceptions first off, but as someone else mentioned there is also a tremendous amount of psychological considerations that would halt any legalization long before any Religion got involved.
In other words, you can stop spanking it to thoughts of your two sisters "gettin it own" at least in a legal and married sense.
Because you deny facts and say so. Impeccable logical skills.
No, I'm not new here. I attempt to teach and it's often a frustrating and fruitless pursuit :/
So you believe that Google's initial use of cheap hardware (most of it disposed of by other businesses) with clustered software was not an "idea" that was rather unique at the time? At a time when everyone and their brother that was "big" was buying bigger and bigger machines. Their software concept for clustering was what every programming is?
That is blatantly incorrect. Even with GridEngine we in the industry were getting our first E10K with 64 processors around the time Google started. GridEngine could not handle what Google needed, so they rolled their own software and methods for clustering. Many of those "ideas" were adopted later by cluster companies like Veritas.
You really can't read a thread as a conversation? Let me help.
You: Yes, but they had one idea of their own that launched Google. That's links-as-metadata idea of indexing. It was a good idea, but nothing since then has been "from the top".
Me: Come now, be fair. They had many different ideas with Google. Search and meta-data is of course the biggie, but they also had many other innovations. Hardware implementation and use comes immediately to mind. While HA was not new, Google came up with a very cheap and easy method for HA.
You: Larry and Sergy aren't google. Google is a collection of some of the best software engineers in the country(with most of their talent being wasted on getting more people to click ads).
Me: No shit! Where did I state that they were all of Google? I said that you were wrong that there was only 1 idea to start Google, and gave examples of at least 2 other ideas they had. When Google started, there was very little "click" advertising so you are trying to re-write history to fit your bias. When Google started the majority of ads were still pay-per page ads like the Newspapers.
You: I was talking about how people's talent was being wasted today, not the pre-doubleclick history of google.
You were wrong to deny my first point, but instead of admitting you were wrong you make false claims. You end up at a completely different point than you start, in a completely different era! Good grief, I feel like I'm explaining the basics of communication to an autistic kid!
Yes, but they had one idea of their own that launched Google. That's links-as-metadata idea of indexing. It was a good idea, but nothing since then has been "from the top".
That is what you started with, and what I made a correction to. It is easy to claim "wrong" when you not only move the goal post half way across the globe, but time travel with it as well.
There is no change in facts if you claim a machine searches through your email vs. a human searching through your email. Your email is still being searched. In fact I would state that the machine is much worse for numerous reasons (lack of morality, indiscriminate targeting, faster methods of processing, etc...). If it was restricted to human viewing and listening only, we would have many more whistle blowers and many more stories to generate outrage.
Wrong. You're wrong. Because wrong.
If you deny facts to support your belief then there is no possible way to have a rational discussion. That and the consistent ad hominem in place of facts or positions makes me question why I have previously defended you. Have fun in what ever fantasy land you are living in, and no I won't make the mistake of trying to defend someone that lacks the ability to have a rational discourse again.
Larry and Sergy aren't google.
No shit! Where did I state that they were all of Google? I said that you were wrong that there was only 1 idea to start Google, and gave examples of at least 2 other ideas they had. When Google started, there was very little "click" advertising so you are trying to re-write history to fit your bias. When Google started the majority of ads were still pay-per page ads like the Newspapers.
Come now, be fair. They had many different ideas with Google. Search and meta-data is of course the biggie, but they also had many other innovations. Hardware implementation and use comes immediately to mind. While HA was not new, Google came up with a very cheap and easy method for HA.
Before you go on a tangent and claim it's only big brother tinfoil hat censorship, let me give a list of reasons to consider it possible. Without answers from Twitter and other sites that block, claiming "whoops" is no more and nor less valid than the subject (censorship). Even with answers, it's not beyond many of these companies to outright lie, so we should be scrutinizing their answers.
1. Money. Google/Twitter may not have pay links on the site and see no revenue from click ads. While this may not be the only cause of a block, it sure could impact how fast they respond to fixing a site blocked.
2. Group Pressure. We have seen this with numerous groups, they have a couple people flooding complaints against a site, broadcast, or print article that they don't like. We have also seen this from groups that are not Religious, so don't just blame those idiots from Westboro Baptist Church.
3. Appeasing Big Brother. The NYT, CNN, and others have had numerous whistle blowers telling you that these companies censor works that the Government does not find favorable. It would be safe to assume that they also censor on their own prior to receiving a stop order from the administration.
4. Big Brother. This comes in so many forms today with our massive and intrusive Government that it can not be discounted. Many of these people share resources, so it's not going to be hard to use this network to block content people don't want out. Yes there big ole maps that shows how all of these massive companies and governments are tied together. Since there are bunches of these covering various categories I'll let you search and look at them all.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that all 4 of these things happened here, or that even 1 of them happened. I'm claiming that to not consider it possible is rather idiotic given everything know. Anyone that blindly trusts one of these large technical companies or a Government agency today is a fool. The only way to start breaking up the corruption is to question everything, scrutinize everything, and of course report when bad things happen on every available channel in order to avoid some of the blocking.
What the government is saying is you can't tell the difference in today's world: Terrorist don't wear uniforms.
Wrong, that is not what the Government is saying. They are saying that it's perfectly legal to spy on citizens in what ever fashion they wish. Go listen to or read every speech given by the NSA, FBI, and defenders of PRISM. They all parrot the same lines, and interestingly it was released today that the NSA gave them all "talking points" referencing fear mongering tactics when defending the program. The talking points document is searchable and was found through a FOIA request.
*facepalm* The Tin Foil is strong with this one.
Really, you still resort to ad hominem to support your delusion (or perhaps the delusion you wish others to have) instead of reading facts after being warned? You do know that what I stated is not only factual, but was backed as factual by Courts on several occasions. The easiest to find would be the Michigan Lawsuit regarding the underwear bomber. I'll ask again, do you need someone to Google that for you? I can stoop to LMGTFY links if you insist.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Please tell me why if "rule of law" and "good for society" were so important, the declaration of independence didn't open with that instead? Answer: Because the purpose of a democracy (or a republic, if you want to be a pedant) is not to create a great country, but to create great people.
What does the Declaration of Independence have to do with the rule of Law? or your MLK quote, or your Lincoln quote?, or your own made up ad hominem? Setting up more straw man is all I can think of. You can't be daft enough to be trying to claim that the USA is a pure Democracy and is not a Democratic Republic. You could not believe that false information is made factual by ad hominem and straw men. Yet this is your only approach!
There are no straw men left standing!
Funny how again after your ad hominem and fallacy is removed the only thing remaining for you to defend are two false statements. If you are just going to respond with more fallacy and fantasy, please don't bother. Fact checking is really not that difficult, even if it is time consuming. Nor is it difficult to have civil dialogue which you claim we should be able to have based on our education and vision of our founding fathers.
You are not saying the same thing as the person you responded to, not even close.
You need to go look up the word misnomer.
I know what the word means, I was pointing to the difference between espionage/surveillance and spying. Spying is what a military would do, espionage and surveillance is what the NSA has been doing.
I said that was the case... FIFTY YEARS AGO.
Sorry, that is not what you stated. That may be what you meant, but that is not what you stated. You stated "but the doctrine hasn't changed in 50 years: Knowledge of the enemies communications and positions is what wins wars. It's how Germany kicked the everloving shit out of Europe when referencing "FIFTY YEARS AGO".
When giving your statement, you also refer only to the Military applications of "spying" which is what I stated is a misnomer (mislabeled, inaccurate description). What people are upset about is not "spying", they are upset about Government surveillance and espionage against non-military targets. It's been conveniently lumped into a single category, but it's not accurate in a lump category.
Your next statements again deal with Military, not domestic spying. Yes we should know if Russia is massing troops in front of Sara Palin's house because she is not always on the porch looking. Yes we should know where China's nukes are and how many they have. Yes we should have a way to gauge someone's military capacity, I never discounted that. No point in trying to argue points I agree with.
Then however, you go to the fear mongering. Take away the far mongering appeals to emotion and what do you have? The argument that the US Government needs to spy on every US citizen to ensure us that someone from Yemen does not drive a car bomb into a building. You are confusing border security with domestic espionage and surveillance, they are two vastly separate areas for concern. Mentioning that both parties wanting the surveillance is a straw man. It does not change whether it should be done or not, nor does it change the fact that it has been happening.
"Nothing good can come from this level of spying and information gathering. Nothing! "
We caught the boston bomber in a matter of days... using surveillance information from civilian resources. Shop cameras. Cell phones. Television footage. You can't say that "nothing" good comes from it. You might be able to say "not much" good comes of it... small comfort I suppose to the victims, but go ahead and say it. But surveillance has caught many criminals so far. You can argue that's not enough to justify what's going on, but you're being either incredibly naive, or so biased as to be effectively blind, if you say there has been no benefit.
None of that had anything to do with the NSA or PRISM. Nothing! The programs didn't prevent the event, and they had nothing to do with capturing the alleged criminals.
I'll go one up on you. Every plot foiled that the Government is crediting to the surveillance state has been a setup by the FBI. Everything from the underwear bomber to the present that the FBI has raided, has been facilitated and "handled" by the FBI. They have taken people and given them money and plans, and even the non-functional bombs that they tried to detonate when they were "miraculously captured". The joke is on you, do you get it?
Your entire post is nothing but conjecture, doomsday prophecy, and knee-jerk reactionism. It doesn't even attempt to ask the most fundamental question here: Why did they do it? You offer absolutely nothing for motive. You put nothing on the table to bargain with. You give neither me, nor your representatives, nor anyone who has read any of your comments in this thread, any reason to act. It is simply a propaganda piece without any real substance or analysis.
Conjecture and doomsday? Go back and read it again. There is no doomsday anything, but I do claim that nothing good can happen with that much information in the Gover
I have seen many interesting posts from the same person, which opens the possibility that it's not point whoring but rather trying to instigate further debate. I often attempt to initiate debate myself, so am guilty of not "whoring" in my opinion but rather arguing an alternative view. Many of the more interesting people and posts on this site may not be precise with certain information, use incorrect generalizations, etc.. but that does not imply they are simply whoring or shilling. There are those too, but, I don' think so with this person.
Nobody here understands the capabilities of tens of thousands of people that understand basic SQL and Perl/Python? Don't answer that, I'm showing how idiotic your claim is. They don't need to read all of your email, they only need to have something pop up in a generic query running against a set of data.
By ignoring reality "your opinions are flawed and worthless.". I would warn you against self incriminating fallacy, but your statements in this thread are full of fallacy.
Seriously, your government probably isn't reading your email. Think about the number of emails sent each day, excluding spam. But, assuming you live in the USA, your government is storing your emails, and if you ever become interesting to them they can read your emails (including where they were sent from, who to/from, etc), listen to most of the phone calls you made (it's digital, and not much data), txts you sent/received, see where your phone went and who was nearby, etc.
This is a speculation, and worth just as much as the person claiming that they are individually being watched. Neither of you know because the program is secret, and all of the activities and actions associated with the program are secret. You _assume_ no nefarious intent, someone else _assumes_ that there is nefarious intent, and neither of you can prove your case and both of you are making an assumption. This is why JFK stated "The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings [...] " (and you should take note of the complete and full speech).
I agree with the rest of your statements, regarding them wanting more data. I'm more concerned with this modern mentality that a new nasty tyranny or dictatorship can't happen "here", where "here" is what ever Government you currently live under. It _can_ happen "here", and in fact it has been moving in this direction in dozens of countries that consider themselves above the influence of human nature.
Since when has free speech been squashed in the US?
Is this a serious question? Did you bother to stop and read any history at all, look at any recent laws at all, or read what I wrote above?
You do realize that we have "Free Speech Zones" in the US as of very recent laws, and those zones still require permits in most cases. Go find 100 other people to gather with you in protest and see what happens (No, I won't bail you out). You do know that at least 2 teenagers went to jail for posting on Facebook with the exact same terminology that young men have used as intimidating rhetoric for centuries. You do realize that there are countless News outlets that do not release any "Press" that the Government does not approve first (New York Post has had several whistle blowers which should be a quick Google start).
To claim that we are not as bad as another country does not change facts, it makes you look like an idiot. It's like a Chinese person arguing that China is better than North Korea because in China they only go to jail for life for protesting, they don't get killed for it. They are also squelching free speech, only the methods and punishments are different.
This pretty much describes anyone who is hyperventilating about this whole spying non-sense.
Then you go from a failure to think critically directly to an ad hominem and appeal to emotion. So far, I don't think very highly of your comments. You can't discount anything I claimed, you simply ignore it and slander anyone that does not agree.
The general public does a much better job than any government could ever do in this regard.
Idiocy! If the public is uninformed or intentionally mislead, that is not the public's fault. This is not an uncommon issue, and has happened time and time again through history when power gets entrenched in the same hands for too long.
And for the record the US constitution only applies to US citizens but everyone else is fair game.
That statement is a lie. Go read the US Constitution. You don't even have to study it, just read it.
Anyone wishing to have a meaningful discussion about the NSA also needs to factor in all the other countries who do the exact same thing
On that statement I will tell you that you are either a sock puppet or lack any critical thinking abilities. Don't bother to reply, either shill somewhere else or try and heal your broken head.
Are you trying to claim that the NSA was only spying on military targets for military purposes? No, don't answer that because that's what you are trying to claim. Please go back to the pr0n site and let the grown ups talk.
While you make a nice speech you have a huge misnomer in your statements. We are not seeing a "spying on enemies and troops"! If it was only spying on the military of foreign agencies, people would not have an issue with it. It is spying and tracking individuals who are NOT military. It is spying on allies with the same fervor you would an enemy. It is spying on businesses who are not working for a foreign military.
This spying has resulted in squashing free speech in the US, Germany, the UK, Italy, etc.. These are not military actions by foreign enemies, these are people that are not content with what their selected leaders are doing. Police show up before rallies in both countries (I have friends and relatives in Germany and live in the US) and start arresting people. They insert agent provocateurs in some of these events to disrupt movements (Canada, the US and Germany are all proven to have done this).
This spying has resulted in massive misinformation campaigns against real world problems. They can see where people are getting data and disrupt communications. They see hot debate topics and flood the media outlets with disinformation and ad homimen when they can't disrupt the data.
If it was _only_ military spying like you hint at we would probably be happy about it, but even this has become either a honey pot or distortion. Look at the whole of the Middle East as well as North Korea for examples.
The fear people have is that this data is being gathered for the same reason the SS cataloged and monitored every German. Do something someone does not like and you are a "sympathizer" and killed or jailed. We already see buds of this happening.
Nothing good can come from this level of spying and information gathering. Nothing! To claim that we all claim "Oh noes" without considering all of the facts and consequences based on historical evidence is not only unfair, but absolutely wrong. Perhaps _you_ have not paid attention or not weighed much, but many of us have!
I'll go a bit further and say the obvious implication which you hint at. It's not a "listening post for the US", it's a "partnership in a massive world wide spying program". Germany, Spain, Italy, UK, Australia, Canada, they are all in on it.
Funny that all of these people are bitching about the US doing it when they are not complaining about their own countries collusion and benefits from this spy ring.