Sorry, the research was done. To not use it seems to be as equally as wasteful for the unwilling sacrifice made by those prisoners.
I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that if it happened to me, I'd want the information to be used. Of course, if I were dead after the torture, it wouldn't matter what I wanted because I couldn't say and that's probably what most people think of - the fact that the victims can't speak for themselves.
An interesting way to consider it might be, "what would you say if it were, for instance, your mother that had been tortured/killed for this information?" I have my own answer, as I know what my mother would say, but what do you guys think when you consider it that way?
Are they stopping a tax on internet access all over or are they merely stopping local governments from doing so in order to keep the all the action available only on the federal level?
Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about taxing internet access. Most poor people I know don't even have computers, let alone internet access. I hesitate to say it, but everyone I know that uses the internet with any regularity (not counting those who go to the public library to do so) can afford a reasonable tax. I'd like to stress reasonable... the article mentions some cities have been planning a 15%(!!) internet access tax. So, what is the thought behind not taxing it? (Other than the idea that taxes suck in general and who really wants a new one.) It's a luxury, really... most people do very well without it all the time... you pay for it, etc. So, why not? Is there some grand vision of the future where the internet is as commonplace as television? Or would internet access be comparable to something else designated as non-taxable? Or what? Anybody?
As the son of an immigrant, I know many immigrants. Often, when someone talks about injustice in the United States, immigrants (older ones, especially) will protest, saying above all that the person complaining doesn't understand how many opportunities they have here in the US that aren't available elsewhere. Most of these immigrants have come from impoverished and some times war-torn countries where they worked their butts off with little hope for anything to this country where there might just be a chance that they'll get somewhere and make things easier for their children (or have already done so). And I get that. I respect that and some times when I'm bothered by the chipping away at the ideals that launched this country, I console myself by telling myself that I'm just a little spoiled by not having lived amongst the alternative.
But that view never sat well with me and only after long thought did I realize why.
I grew up in the USA. Having done so, there were certain things instilled in me that these immigrants (bless their souls) may never understand. First of all, the US is not the country I came to seeking improvement, it's unequivocally my country. It's my home and it's where my heart is. I wouldn't do well in Canada, or Mexico, or Greece, or Japan - because I'm just too damned American. And this is not just another country... one that merely happened because a bunch of people were living on it (my apologies to the natives of the land)... it happened with forethought and with purpose. The borders be damned, I don't care about borders - America has always been the ideals that it was founded on much more than it has been a piece of land. Opportunities be damned as well. The opportunities available here that aren't available elsewhere are a mere consequence of the ideals themselves.
Most of my life I've busted my butt working blue collar jobs - picking tobacco, chucking boxes, driving trucks, sloppin' the hogs, etc. But however hard I've worked, my mind has never stopped at least touching on the ideals I learned were so important to my country. You see, when I read that Jefferson said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, it was me he was talking to. And that is what most of those immigrants will never understand. Sure, we never fully lived up to those ideals, but I felt we'd been striving towards that the whole time in one form or another ("in order to form a more perfect union"... a little at a time). Thank god the founding fathers chose those ideals as something to base a republic on. And thank god for the women activists at the turn of the century and black activists in the 1950's and 60's (and later) and all the other activists for fighting towards attaining them. Frankly, I used to assume that most other Americans felt the same way. I guess I was too engrossed in my history books to see the other students around me too busy with other things - passing notes, comparing fashions, making fun of the new guy, laughing at the teachers, sleeping, etc.
In any case, this is my drive when I speak out against any of what I believe to be the smallest threats to those ideals. And I'm beginning to think only a very few people have the same mission.
Avid listeners can sign up (for free) to listen and review potential programming.
I've seen a lot of comparisons to NPR, but from the description in the news bit (I can't load the prx.com website for some reason), it seems to run with a philosophy a bit more comparable to Pacifica - a public radio foundation that is run with active participation from listeners. With the level of listener involvement apparently available, I can't really see the NPR comparison.
For many years, OS/2 Warp was my preferred desktop. Had it not been for IBM's virtual abandonment of the product, I'd be using it today. There are many things I still miss from OS/2's gui (the Workplace Shell). One thing I remember with nostalgic fondness was the spatial interface. It really worked well on a system that views drives the same way DOS/Windows does (C:, D:, E:, etc.). This kept my directory tree much shallower. When I finally gave up on OS/2, I moved to Windows. I couldn't and can't stand the interface, but the one thing I really began to rely on was the browser-based interface. What really grabbed me at first is that I could very comfortably begin doing file manager operations entirely with the keyboard. For example, to move a file to its parent directory, you can "Ctrl-X" the file, "Alt-Left" to the previous directory and "Ctrl-V" to finish the move. Trying the same operation with the spatial interface would never have been as quick or simple. Being a keyboard-oriented user by preference to this very day, I can really appreciate this. When I finally moved to Linux, I loved the fact that my command prompt became so important again, but in the gui category, I was back to near-total mouse usage. When I found KDE (and especially when KDE introduced Konqueror - which outstrips IE in almost every way as far as I'm concerned), I was happy to get a return to the browser interface.
There are still some things I'd like to see resurrected from OS/2's WPS, but for the spatial interface, I'm okay with nostalgia.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that if it happened to me, I'd want the information to be used. Of course, if I were dead after the torture, it wouldn't matter what I wanted because I couldn't say and that's probably what most people think of - the fact that the victims can't speak for themselves.
An interesting way to consider it might be, "what would you say if it were, for instance, your mother that had been tortured/killed for this information?" I have my own answer, as I know what my mother would say, but what do you guys think when you consider it that way?
Or, for those with no money to spend on a work that's in public domain, anyway...
Metamorphosis
I don't know if that's a good example or not, though - a giant cockroach with a human brain? Forget Kafka, these guys would be our masters.
Are they stopping a tax on internet access all over or are they merely stopping local governments from doing so in order to keep the all the action available only on the federal level?
Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about taxing internet access. Most poor people I know don't even have computers, let alone internet access. I hesitate to say it, but everyone I know that uses the internet with any regularity (not counting those who go to the public library to do so) can afford a reasonable tax. I'd like to stress reasonable... the article mentions some cities have been planning a 15%(!!) internet access tax. So, what is the thought behind not taxing it? (Other than the idea that taxes suck in general and who really wants a new one.) It's a luxury, really... most people do very well without it all the time... you pay for it, etc. So, why not? Is there some grand vision of the future where the internet is as commonplace as television? Or would internet access be comparable to something else designated as non-taxable? Or what? Anybody?
Hey, I'm worried about my copyrighted materials, too, ya know... so, um... hook me up?
This has struck a nerve with me.
As the son of an immigrant, I know many immigrants. Often, when someone talks about injustice in the United States, immigrants (older ones, especially) will protest, saying above all that the person complaining doesn't understand how many opportunities they have here in the US that aren't available elsewhere. Most of these immigrants have come from impoverished and some times war-torn countries where they worked their butts off with little hope for anything to this country where there might just be a chance that they'll get somewhere and make things easier for their children (or have already done so). And I get that. I respect that and some times when I'm bothered by the chipping away at the ideals that launched this country, I console myself by telling myself that I'm just a little spoiled by not having lived amongst the alternative.
But that view never sat well with me and only after long thought did I realize why.
I grew up in the USA. Having done so, there were certain things instilled in me that these immigrants (bless their souls) may never understand. First of all, the US is not the country I came to seeking improvement, it's unequivocally my country. It's my home and it's where my heart is. I wouldn't do well in Canada, or Mexico, or Greece, or Japan - because I'm just too damned American. And this is not just another country... one that merely happened because a bunch of people were living on it (my apologies to the natives of the land)... it happened with forethought and with purpose. The borders be damned, I don't care about borders - America has always been the ideals that it was founded on much more than it has been a piece of land. Opportunities be damned as well. The opportunities available here that aren't available elsewhere are a mere consequence of the ideals themselves.
Most of my life I've busted my butt working blue collar jobs - picking tobacco, chucking boxes, driving trucks, sloppin' the hogs, etc. But however hard I've worked, my mind has never stopped at least touching on the ideals I learned were so important to my country. You see, when I read that Jefferson said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, it was me he was talking to. And that is what most of those immigrants will never understand. Sure, we never fully lived up to those ideals, but I felt we'd been striving towards that the whole time in one form or another ("in order to form a more perfect union"... a little at a time). Thank god the founding fathers chose those ideals as something to base a republic on. And thank god for the women activists at the turn of the century and black activists in the 1950's and 60's (and later) and all the other activists for fighting towards attaining them. Frankly, I used to assume that most other Americans felt the same way. I guess I was too engrossed in my history books to see the other students around me too busy with other things - passing notes, comparing fashions, making fun of the new guy, laughing at the teachers, sleeping, etc.
In any case, this is my drive when I speak out against any of what I believe to be the smallest threats to those ideals. And I'm beginning to think only a very few people have the same mission.
Avid listeners can sign up (for free) to listen and review potential programming.
I've seen a lot of comparisons to NPR, but from the description in the news bit (I can't load the prx.com website for some reason), it seems to run with a philosophy a bit more comparable to Pacifica - a public radio foundation that is run with active participation from listeners. With the level of listener involvement apparently available, I can't really see the NPR comparison.
For many years, OS/2 Warp was my preferred desktop. Had it not been for IBM's virtual abandonment of the product, I'd be using it today. There are many things I still miss from OS/2's gui (the Workplace Shell). One thing I remember with nostalgic fondness was the spatial interface. It really worked well on a system that views drives the same way DOS/Windows does (C:, D:, E:, etc.). This kept my directory tree much shallower. When I finally gave up on OS/2, I moved to Windows. I couldn't and can't stand the interface, but the one thing I really began to rely on was the browser-based interface. What really grabbed me at first is that I could very comfortably begin doing file manager operations entirely with the keyboard. For example, to move a file to its parent directory, you can "Ctrl-X" the file, "Alt-Left" to the previous directory and "Ctrl-V" to finish the move. Trying the same operation with the spatial interface would never have been as quick or simple. Being a keyboard-oriented user by preference to this very day, I can really appreciate this. When I finally moved to Linux, I loved the fact that my command prompt became so important again, but in the gui category, I was back to near-total mouse usage. When I found KDE (and especially when KDE introduced Konqueror - which outstrips IE in almost every way as far as I'm concerned), I was happy to get a return to the browser interface.
There are still some things I'd like to see resurrected from OS/2's WPS, but for the spatial interface, I'm okay with nostalgia.