Dear idiot, he was "recording" from the beginning, so as to speak. If McDonald has a policy against it, they could only enforce it *before* they took his money. So you are a jerk, who is fine with the "recording" till the point you take my money, and *then* you kick me out without even allowing me to finish eating? It makes you sound like nothing more than a thief and a first class jerk! And irrespective of what your "policy" may be, as a public business place you are only allowed to call the police. You cannot physically assault customers.
Or perhaps people just did not like your juvenile defense of illegal physical assault? What is wrong with just politely asking the guy to leave, instead of tearing off his documents and trying to grab his glasses forcibly?
They have the right to ask the person to leave the premises.
They do not have the right to physically assault him(forcibly trying to take off his glasses) or to damage his personal property(tearing off documentation). If you have problems grasping that, it seems to me that you are the jerk here.
Are you kidding? This is hilarious!! It puts Apple in the classic catch-22 position. Either they now seriously argue that Android tablets are "every bit as cool" as its IPAD devices... or they agree with the Judge and abandon their law suit. That just might be one shrewd Judge! Either way, Apple's options suck right now!
Indian government might be corrupt, but hardly any more abusive than USA. It is pretty much a democracy like USA, if you were not aware.
The censorship push from India is coming from the muslim section there, who would like to permanently ban a mohammed-cartoon saga repeat. But feel free to create stereotypes that hardly fit.
I was talking about the parent post, which *was* made by an American, based on his comment history. And for some reason, you seem to think someone is advocating to replace USA with country X, wherein the argument being made is, that "any one country should NOT be allowed to control internet, and every single country in the world, connected to internet, should have some say and control over how it is run". Any the nonsense about USA being "better than rest of the world" is pure nonsense. Modern Japan is a pretty decent country. Switzerland and Greenland have not been invading any country lately. So USA is only somewhere in middle rungs on that ladder. .
What is dangerous about USA is that it already exploits its military(and earlier economic) dominance in so many ways. It wants to keep the biggest nuke pile on earth, while for some reason, it is evil for other countries to possess nuclear technology. It was shoving globalization down the throat of India and other nations, when they had a closed-loop economy in the 80s but now suddenly globalization is an evil thing.
USA is dangerous because it PRETENDS to be one of the good guys. Because it does lip service to concept of democracy, while openly and blatantly allowing lobbying and campaigning by the rich, and permitting its politicians to be openly bought off by campaign donations. Heck it openly supported and financed dictators in Pakistan and middle east nations. It acts like a MPD inflicted nation, playing BOTH good and bad cop at once.
The so-called free speech? Nonsense. Such rights in USA are a mere mockery and feel good illusion, frequently being contested, eroded and challenged. They are allowed to exist only in inconsequential manner, merely to continue the pretension of "we have more rights and are holier than thou".
Powerful monopolistic companies get anti-trust laws to keep them in check. Why on earth, should USA not get the same? It may have invented the internet, but then again UK invented the railways and yet, USA uses and maintains control of its own railways network. Want a more interconnected example? Heck, if inventing something gave your country some moral/ethical rights to control it, USA should give the claims to computers in the first place, since it did NOT invent those.
You mentioned child-pornography, for example. But the problem is that US definition is not necessarily everyone else's definition, on who is a child. Australia wants to count young looking or flat-chested women in 40s as children. California decides that anyone under 18 is a child today. Japan constitutional/federal age of consent is only 13. But tomorrow it may wage propoganda war against rest of the states to raise that limit to say, 25 and make the mere subject of gays illegal, and suddenly you will have website being banned just because they mention homosexuals or have whoever put age as 24 year and declaring themselves to be pregnant or even married, being declared as sex-offenders.
Sounds un-real? But we are talking about a country where a mere court-clerk subverted the entire constitutional process, by faking a nation(or world rather)-impacting judicial decision, and it was subsequently accepted without questions.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad). And that gets worse considering that official US stance is that ends justify the means, even if it means committing a crime itself to punish another crime(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez-Machain). Add to that, the concept of vague rational for planet-wide jurisdiction, it thinks it has(i.e. US laws apply to everyone in the world, unless enforcement is impractical : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Tort_Statute).
No country that is already so powerful, and so irresponsible, should be allowed to monopolize a global resource. That much is common sense. A global resource should not be controlled just by one, or even ten countries, but all countries connected to it should have control of it via a vote.
Well maybe you should have stopped USA government from abusing its monopoly of the internet by passing laws that can ban any domain name. And you should have stopped US judges from thinking that US laws apply to the entire world(except where it is impractical i.e. if other country cannot be controlled). It gave these other countries an excuse("Why should only USA be allowed to police the internet as per its own laws, when internet is now a global resource? Why can we not then, apply our own laws and censorship rules as well?") AND it gave them an incentive to de-centralize the internet control, since USA showed that it has to power to disrupt the internet for any country not toeing the line, *and* is willing to abuse that power. They do not want that. .
USA has only succeeded in fragmenting the internet. For all its talk about wanting to help activists across the world, and instill democracy in non-democratic countries, it has succeeded in taking away the biggest weapon that the activists in such regimes had, by choosing to abuse its monopoly on behalf of greedy MPAA/RIAA. And you allowed this to happen, by not stopping your senators from voting such corporate-paid laws into effect. So yeah, you *totally* did want this to happen apparently.
You have to only fill in the missing qualifier to understand what this is about. .
'They could allow (other) "governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows," added Ambassador Philip Verveer, a deputy assistant secretary of state'
Wrong. Ideas in general are non-patentable. What GP correctly stated was that business rules can occasionally be patented(with the caveat that usually these should not be simple ideas but should involve a tangible part, possibly in form of a machine component). Which is pretty vague and murky in itself, of course. Awarding a patent gives you monopoly on a particular specific method of doing a thing. The idea of making a new car engine or car driven by electricity in itself cannot be patented. But the specific way your particular engine works to implement this, can be patented.
Dear clueless, I am referring to 1998 sanctions themselves, which you seem to shrug off pretty casually for some reason. if I keep you starving a decade and then suddenly permitted you to have food yesterday, would still mean that you will end up being mal-nutritioned.
Nonsense. Perhaps you should actually go and check the rates of Airtel broadband, Tata or even BSNL broadband services, instead of making things up. Here is news, most of them do not even offer speed above 4MB to home users. As for movies, you are seriously telling me that a guy in Banaras or say Damanjodi even, pays 500 INR to watch a movie? Perhaps you should come out of your fantasy world and start using the actual forex-exchange ratio that the rest of us use.
Or maybe, they are managing the best they can, despite the nuclear technology related sanctions enforced on them by USA? I mean face it, a heavily industrialized and populated country like India needs nuclear power plants. If they could be allowed to have the technology and components, hybrid electrical cars might actually become feasible there. They can simply rely on relatively-clean energy rather than depending on using firewood and oil. But USA apparently wants to make sure it is the big-daddy by ensuring no one else gets to have nuclear kow-pow, while maintaining the biggest stockpile on the planet. .
India should be applauded for keeping the emissions per capita so low compared to USA, even while struggling under all the sanctions enforced on it by US for decades.
Perhaps you could get USA to play nice and allow India to have nuclear power plants without putting in unreasonable conditions/sanctions? You might find that it may actually reduce the emissions drastically from India at least. Stop trying to crib about a situation that you, yourself have created and are responsible for,
Perhaps you should stop being a twat and read about, you know, those nuclear sanctions that USA had been so fond of putting on India in order to appease Pakistan. India wants to have clean nuclear power plants. Having cheap power would be the end of pollution in India, what with electrical hybrid cars becoming popular and affordable. But apparently the country with the biggest nuclear pile on the planet wants to ensure no-one else gets to have them, while actually giving billion dollars in aid to the known nuclear-proliferator Pakistan and calls it an "important ally", while putting all sorts of unreasonable conditions and demands for letting India have the technology and components required for its civil use nuclear power plant(just because they *might* be used for developing military nuclear capability, which ironically India already has, leave alone the fact that it is a stable democracy). .
Seriously, with those kind of demands and conditions, USA is pretty much creating the conditions for the situation being discussed. US itself, with its nuclear power plants gets its power dirt cheap, while it wants India to match up, even while having all the restrictions put on it by USA. Which is a blast, considering that India has less pollution produced per-capita as compared to USA, even while USA companies treat India as a dumping ground for all their toxic wastes.
Think about it. If the country where internet originated from, and which pretty much controls the internet, wants to monitor and control it, why wouldn't other countries want to follow suit?
In fact the very excused used by Indian government and the courts in most of above cases was "Well, these companies are doing the surveillance and censoring for USA, so how dare they deny us, when they do business on our soil?".
And considering that even Indians politicians are poor compared to their US counterparts, while being almost equally corrupt, media companies find it much easier and cheaper to bribe them to get the kind of laws they want. Bollywood media companies couldn't care less about internet piracy, since internet speed being what it is in India, it takes days to download movies and people find it cheaper to go watch a movie for just 1USD equivalent. The media companies in question here, are again the US ones.
So it seems like if you must blame anyone at all, it would be USA for starting this shit, and exporting it to other countries as well, thanks to its utterly corrupt for-corporates-and-rich-people government.
On top of that, the ruling congress party tried to play communal politics by trying to appease the muslim population which votes en masse. Muslims have always wanted to control the internet after the mohammed cartoons saga(something again started by the west... go ahead, poke a few more sleeping bears please). So there is that missing part of the equation as well.
I went back and checked your post. You said "Muslims weren't always extremists". The word ALL does not seems to be present. .
I would readily except that muslims were not ALL extremists. Although history shows us that muslims in general(i.e. majority of them) *were* indeed extremists originally, due to their very origins starting in warfare waged by their prophet. I mean religion like Christianity which essentially consisted of love and acceptance was subverted by the Jewish Torah(Old testament), so imagine the impact of a religion like Islam that actually advocated war and slaughtering of non-believers and downright deceitful concepts like Taqiyya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya (which is by and large interpreted as a license to act servile and even cooperative when muslims are in minority but to revert back to the default non-tolerance when they are in a position of power). In light of latter especially, any actual display of adjustment or tolerance has to be taken with a grain of salt.
If you actually bothered to check HOW the "preserving" of ancient greek and roman texts happened(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Classics), you will find that this was entirely a result of acts of individuals defying the Islamists, rather than something done by muslims in general. At every step, these individuals had to fight the actual muslims who wanted to destroy any and all infidel/pagan philosophy and beliefs. The mere scraps preserved are no consolation for what was actually destroyed wilfully. The most tragic thing about the destruction of Nalanda university was not the slaughter of thousands of pacifist budhhist monks. It was the destruction of the vast repository of Indian knowledge, that set back the scientific knowledge of Indian sub-continent by literally thousand of years. This included thousands of treatises on astronomy, mathematics and medicine. To give you a grasp on this, quite a few of modern medicine patents are simply lifted from thousands of year old Ayurveda texts or end up just re-affirming its traditional knowledge. No I am not making this up.
All I can say is... please add the total sum of deaths for suicide/terrorist attacks and hijackings etc in the entire history of mankind.... and then please take the deaths from traffic accidents in just last 1 year alone. Which number do you honestly think is bigger?
If the latter results in more deaths, why is putting this much extra effort into preventing deaths from just flight attacks(intentional or not) so important to you? Is a simple cost-benefit ratio so difficult for you to comprehend? Dude... I am a non-american and I am suggesting that in light of 911 it is perfectly sane and rational for you guys to monitor me, whenever I am in your country. Doubly so, if I am from anywhere close to the region any of the 911 terrorists had frequented. It makes PERFECT sense to me. But instead, you are pretty sure that homegrown terrorism is a bigger threat if not an equal one. Nice going.
Nice tactic. do *you* have a link that says it is 27-30 Ghz(a link that is not by the self-interest-invested manufacturer but an actual certifying authority). What? They will not share the specs with anyone but TSA? And TSA won't share them with anyone? These L3 communication scanner machines are NOT FCC/FDA certified? Too bad!... no interesting links from you, I guess.
Are you sure, you yourself are not suffering from diabetes induded blindness? Article clearly states that she WAS requesting for a pat-down. She went to agent and showed him documents which said that the equipment should not go via the scanner. She said she usually always went for the pat-down.
The main issue you seem to be whining about is that a 16 year old kid did not communicate more assertively and clearly. And apparently you have no knowledge of milgram experiments either. How DARE a 16 year old not act in a mature and adult manner and request for a pat-down in a VERY clear and specific manner, instead of just telling the goon-in-uniform "I usually do a pat down - what would you recommend?" .
So what are you doing to keep the 16 year old and younger kids informed to visit the tsa.gov website? Are you visiting the schools personally, or is this some genetically encoded knowledge that they are supposed to be born with?
And since you are so particular about reading every single thing posted everywhere(what with all the tons of signs, brandsigns, advts littered around and such "white noise" that daily train you NOT to read stuff unless you are actually looking for some info), can you tell me what does point #3 on the logfiles section on privacy page of slashdot, says *without* going and looking at it, right now? I mean you must have looked at it at some point when you came to use this site and must be be keeping in mind all the time?
Here come the apologists. This is exactly what I am talking about. Golodh, Not only do you fail to see any issues with your elected representatives classifying you as potential terrorists, but you actually go and defend their trampling of your rights in name of security theater. .
One question lays to rest all this apologist nonsense. Was TSA formed in response to 1995 bombing? or 2009 plot? If you were concerned so much about "homegrown terrorism", why were all these measures taken in response to 911, an event that was NOT homegrown terrorism? That fact alone signifies that so-called homegrown terrorism was not really much of an issue.
As far as so-called homegrown terrorism is concerned, none the specific cases you cite, involve any flights apparently. I find that significant and interesting.
I mean the bombing of buildings... the shootings... it is pretty easy to get a gun(and by that extension explosives) in USA isn't it? What measures are there today to stop someone get a gun legally, and start shooting up people in crowded market street or in some mall?... or in a bus? How exactly are your protected from occurances of such bombings or attacks at traffic stops, just by having scanners and pat-downs at some airport which is say, 40 kilometers away from the said spot? McVeigh carried out the attacks without any need of any conspiracy being discussed on internet or phone with anyone. So what exactly can all the internet/phone surveillance can do against such nutcases acting alone?
But I guess folks like you would rather not think logically and rationally and just drink the cool-aid, so that someone can take away your rights and tax money to give you a false sense of security.
There was a recent article on slashdot, where FBI itself cooked up a terrorist plot, went out of its way to motivate some criminal types by offering cash to plant bombs, and then arrested him and declared it to be a terrorist plot foiled by its diligence. And occasional murders by fringe lunatics/murderers happen in every nation, and have happened for centuries in fact. But it had to be you who had to come up and declared these murderers to be "terrorists" instead.
Key question : How do these security measures help, considering that a) a terrorist can easily plant a bomb just before the security check point and still blow up hundreds of folks in the waiting area. b) These machines are pretty much useless and have been repeatedly demonstrated to be so, with severe known flaws in them. c) Terrorists do NOT need to rely on a single method of attack. They can just plant a bomb at some political rally next time.
And to repeat, what are you hoping to achieve with all this futile circus? Save lives? Far, far more people die on road accidents. Where are the billions being poured into preventing that? Or is it that most of the 5000 at WTC were rich folks, whose lives are worth more than just random road-kills? You decide. It is all about proportions.
Only thing the government needed to do was put all foreigners entering the country under full surveillance. It should be easier than monitoring every single communication happening across the globe. But instead, they decide to declare war on its own citizens and you think this is fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear idiot, he was "recording" from the beginning, so as to speak. If McDonald has a policy against it, they could only enforce it *before* they took his money. So you are a jerk, who is fine with the "recording" till the point you take my money, and *then* you kick me out without even allowing me to finish eating? It makes you sound like nothing more than a thief and a first class jerk! And irrespective of what your "policy" may be, as a public business place you are only allowed to call the police. You cannot physically assault customers.
Or perhaps people just did not like your juvenile defense of illegal physical assault? What is wrong with just politely asking the guy to leave, instead of tearing off his documents and trying to grab his glasses forcibly?
They do not have the right to physically assault him(forcibly trying to take off his glasses) or to damage his personal property(tearing off documentation). If you have problems grasping that, it seems to me that you are the jerk here.
Are you kidding? This is hilarious!! It puts Apple in the classic catch-22 position. Either they now seriously argue that Android tablets are "every bit as cool" as its IPAD devices... or they agree with the Judge and abandon their law suit. That just might be one shrewd Judge! Either way, Apple's options suck right now!
Indian government might be corrupt, but hardly any more abusive than USA. It is pretty much a democracy like USA, if you were not aware. The censorship push from India is coming from the muslim section there, who would like to permanently ban a mohammed-cartoon saga repeat. But feel free to create stereotypes that hardly fit.
.
What is dangerous about USA is that it already exploits its military(and earlier economic) dominance in so many ways. It wants to keep the biggest nuke pile on earth, while for some reason, it is evil for other countries to possess nuclear technology. It was shoving globalization down the throat of India and other nations, when they had a closed-loop economy in the 80s but now suddenly globalization is an evil thing.
USA is dangerous because it PRETENDS to be one of the good guys. Because it does lip service to concept of democracy, while openly and blatantly allowing lobbying and campaigning by the rich, and permitting its politicians to be openly bought off by campaign donations. Heck it openly supported and financed dictators in Pakistan and middle east nations. It acts like a MPD inflicted nation, playing BOTH good and bad cop at once.
The so-called free speech? Nonsense. Such rights in USA are a mere mockery and feel good illusion, frequently being contested, eroded and challenged. They are allowed to exist only in inconsequential manner, merely to continue the pretension of "we have more rights and are holier than thou".
Powerful monopolistic companies get anti-trust laws to keep them in check. Why on earth, should USA not get the same? It may have invented the internet, but then again UK invented the railways and yet, USA uses and maintains control of its own railways network. Want a more interconnected example? Heck, if inventing something gave your country some moral/ethical rights to control it, USA should give the claims to computers in the first place, since it did NOT invent those.
You mentioned child-pornography, for example. But the problem is that US definition is not necessarily everyone else's definition, on who is a child. Australia wants to count young looking or flat-chested women in 40s as children. California decides that anyone under 18 is a child today. Japan constitutional/federal age of consent is only 13. But tomorrow it may wage propoganda war against rest of the states to raise that limit to say, 25 and make the mere subject of gays illegal, and suddenly you will have website being banned just because they mention homosexuals or have whoever put age as 24 year and declaring themselves to be pregnant or even married, being declared as sex-offenders.
Sounds un-real? But we are talking about a country where a mere court-clerk subverted the entire constitutional process, by faking a nation(or world rather)-impacting judicial decision, and it was subsequently accepted without questions.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad). And that gets worse considering that official US stance is that ends justify the means, even if it means committing a crime itself to punish another crime(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez-Machain). Add to that, the concept of vague rational for planet-wide jurisdiction, it thinks it has(i.e. US laws apply to everyone in the world, unless enforcement is impractical : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Tort_Statute).
No country that is already so powerful, and so irresponsible, should be allowed to monopolize a global resource. That much is common sense. A global resource should not be controlled just by one, or even ten countries, but all countries connected to it should have control of it via a vote.
.
USA has only succeeded in fragmenting the internet. For all its talk about wanting to help activists across the world, and instill democracy in non-democratic countries, it has succeeded in taking away the biggest weapon that the activists in such regimes had, by choosing to abuse its monopoly on behalf of greedy MPAA/RIAA. And you allowed this to happen, by not stopping your senators from voting such corporate-paid laws into effect. So yeah, you *totally* did want this to happen apparently.
.
'They could allow (other) "governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows," added Ambassador Philip Verveer, a deputy assistant secretary of state'
Wrong. Ideas in general are non-patentable. What GP correctly stated was that business rules can occasionally be patented(with the caveat that usually these should not be simple ideas but should involve a tangible part, possibly in form of a machine component). Which is pretty vague and murky in itself, of course. Awarding a patent gives you monopoly on a particular specific method of doing a thing. The idea of making a new car engine or car driven by electricity in itself cannot be patented. But the specific way your particular engine works to implement this, can be patented.
Dear clueless, I am referring to 1998 sanctions themselves, which you seem to shrug off pretty casually for some reason. if I keep you starving a decade and then suddenly permitted you to have food yesterday, would still mean that you will end up being mal-nutritioned.
Nonsense. Perhaps you should actually go and check the rates of Airtel broadband, Tata or even BSNL broadband services, instead of making things up. Here is news, most of them do not even offer speed above 4MB to home users. As for movies, you are seriously telling me that a guy in Banaras or say Damanjodi even, pays 500 INR to watch a movie? Perhaps you should come out of your fantasy world and start using the actual forex-exchange ratio that the rest of us use.
.
India should be applauded for keeping the emissions per capita so low compared to USA, even while struggling under all the sanctions enforced on it by US for decades.
Perhaps you could get USA to play nice and allow India to have nuclear power plants without putting in unreasonable conditions/sanctions? You might find that it may actually reduce the emissions drastically from India at least. Stop trying to crib about a situation that you, yourself have created and are responsible for,
Toxic wastes are pretty much history(unless you count the toxic wastes produced by USA's nuclear power plants). CO2 pollution is what matters today.
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Seriously, with those kind of demands and conditions, USA is pretty much creating the conditions for the situation being discussed. US itself, with its nuclear power plants gets its power dirt cheap, while it wants India to match up, even while having all the restrictions put on it by USA. Which is a blast, considering that India has less pollution produced per-capita as compared to USA, even while USA companies treat India as a dumping ground for all their toxic wastes.
.
Oh wait...
.
Think about it. If the country where internet originated from, and which pretty much controls the internet, wants to monitor and control it, why wouldn't other countries want to follow suit?
In fact the very excused used by Indian government and the courts in most of above cases was "Well, these companies are doing the surveillance and censoring for USA, so how dare they deny us, when they do business on our soil?".
And considering that even Indians politicians are poor compared to their US counterparts, while being almost equally corrupt, media companies find it much easier and cheaper to bribe them to get the kind of laws they want. Bollywood media companies couldn't care less about internet piracy, since internet speed being what it is in India, it takes days to download movies and people find it cheaper to go watch a movie for just 1USD equivalent. The media companies in question here, are again the US ones.
So it seems like if you must blame anyone at all, it would be USA for starting this shit, and exporting it to other countries as well, thanks to its utterly corrupt for-corporates-and-rich-people government.
On top of that, the ruling congress party tried to play communal politics by trying to appease the muslim population which votes en masse. Muslims have always wanted to control the internet after the mohammed cartoons saga(something again started by the west... go ahead, poke a few more sleeping bears please). So there is that missing part of the equation as well.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_III_of_Sweden's_coffee_experiment
.
I would readily except that muslims were not ALL extremists. Although history shows us that muslims in general(i.e. majority of them) *were* indeed extremists originally, due to their very origins starting in warfare waged by their prophet. I mean religion like Christianity which essentially consisted of love and acceptance was subverted by the Jewish Torah(Old testament), so imagine the impact of a religion like Islam that actually advocated war and slaughtering of non-believers and downright deceitful concepts like Taqiyya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya (which is by and large interpreted as a license to act servile and even cooperative when muslims are in minority but to revert back to the default non-tolerance when they are in a position of power). In light of latter especially, any actual display of adjustment or tolerance has to be taken with a grain of salt.
If you actually bothered to check HOW the "preserving" of ancient greek and roman texts happened(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Classics), you will find that this was entirely a result of acts of individuals defying the Islamists, rather than something done by muslims in general. At every step, these individuals had to fight the actual muslims who wanted to destroy any and all infidel/pagan philosophy and beliefs. The mere scraps preserved are no consolation for what was actually destroyed wilfully. The most tragic thing about the destruction of Nalanda university was not the slaughter of thousands of pacifist budhhist monks. It was the destruction of the vast repository of Indian knowledge, that set back the scientific knowledge of Indian sub-continent by literally thousand of years. This included thousands of treatises on astronomy, mathematics and medicine. To give you a grasp on this, quite a few of modern medicine patents are simply lifted from thousands of year old Ayurveda texts or end up just re-affirming its traditional knowledge. No I am not making this up.
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Spoken truly like someone who is blissfully ignorant of Indian history, and even Islamic history at that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Decline_and_end is just one of the innumerable massacres carried out by "pacifist" muslims, long long before Ottoman empire.
Nice try anyways!
If the latter results in more deaths, why is putting this much extra effort into preventing deaths from just flight attacks(intentional or not) so important to you? Is a simple cost-benefit ratio so difficult for you to comprehend? Dude... I am a non-american and I am suggesting that in light of 911 it is perfectly sane and rational for you guys to monitor me, whenever I am in your country. Doubly so, if I am from anywhere close to the region any of the 911 terrorists had frequented. It makes PERFECT sense to me. But instead, you are pretty sure that homegrown terrorism is a bigger threat if not an equal one. Nice going.
Better question : Why is TSA allowed to operate machines giving off so much radiation, that fries up *even* FDA certified devices?
Nice tactic. do *you* have a link that says it is 27-30 Ghz(a link that is not by the self-interest-invested manufacturer but an actual certifying authority). What? They will not share the specs with anyone but TSA? And TSA won't share them with anyone? These L3 communication scanner machines are NOT FCC/FDA certified? Too bad!... no interesting links from you, I guess.
.
So what are you doing to keep the 16 year old and younger kids informed to visit the tsa.gov website? Are you visiting the schools personally, or is this some genetically encoded knowledge that they are supposed to be born with?
And since you are so particular about reading every single thing posted everywhere(what with all the tons of signs, brandsigns, advts littered around and such "white noise" that daily train you NOT to read stuff unless you are actually looking for some info), can you tell me what does point #3 on the logfiles section on privacy page of slashdot, says *without* going and looking at it, right now? I mean you must have looked at it at some point when you came to use this site and must be be keeping in mind all the time?
.
One question lays to rest all this apologist nonsense. Was TSA formed in response to 1995 bombing? or 2009 plot? If you were concerned so much about "homegrown terrorism", why were all these measures taken in response to 911, an event that was NOT homegrown terrorism? That fact alone signifies that so-called homegrown terrorism was not really much of an issue.
As far as so-called homegrown terrorism is concerned, none the specific cases you cite, involve any flights apparently. I find that significant and interesting.
I mean the bombing of buildings... the shootings... it is pretty easy to get a gun(and by that extension explosives) in USA isn't it? What measures are there today to stop someone get a gun legally, and start shooting up people in crowded market street or in some mall? ... or in a bus? How exactly are your protected from occurances of such bombings or attacks at traffic stops, just by having scanners and pat-downs at some airport which is say, 40 kilometers away from the said spot? McVeigh carried out the attacks without any need of any conspiracy being discussed on internet or phone with anyone. So what exactly can all the internet/phone surveillance can do against such nutcases acting alone?
But I guess folks like you would rather not think logically and rationally and just drink the cool-aid, so that someone can take away your rights and tax money to give you a false sense of security.
There was a recent article on slashdot, where FBI itself cooked up a terrorist plot, went out of its way to motivate some criminal types by offering cash to plant bombs, and then arrested him and declared it to be a terrorist plot foiled by its diligence. And occasional murders by fringe lunatics/murderers happen in every nation, and have happened for centuries in fact. But it had to be you who had to come up and declared these murderers to be "terrorists" instead.
Key question : How do these security measures help, considering that a) a terrorist can easily plant a bomb just before the security check point and still blow up hundreds of folks in the waiting area. b) These machines are pretty much useless and have been repeatedly demonstrated to be so, with severe known flaws in them. c) Terrorists do NOT need to rely on a single method of attack. They can just plant a bomb at some political rally next time.
And to repeat, what are you hoping to achieve with all this futile circus? Save lives? Far, far more people die on road accidents. Where are the billions being poured into preventing that? Or is it that most of the 5000 at WTC were rich folks, whose lives are worth more than just random road-kills? You decide. It is all about proportions.
Only thing the government needed to do was put all foreigners entering the country under full surveillance. It should be easier than monitoring every single communication happening across the globe. But instead, they decide to declare war on its own citizens and you think this is fine.