As long as people like PETA think that owning a pet is evil, that issue won't go away. But at least it's nice to know that nobody at PETA will ever swat an innocent mosquito while it's sucking the blood out of their foreheads.
I don't think that any tissue science development - no matter how good a fake-steak it produces - will change the nature of political debate about domesticated animals. And it probably won't come close to the taste of a plate of fresh, grain-field-fed dove breasts sauteed in garlic butter.
We can't get rid of something that's projected onto the situation by people who are nervous/scared about what the bio-sciences say about their world view. The stem cell worriers aren't really worried about stem cells or their source, they're worried about how close we're getting to a comfortable understanding of cellular mechanics. That takes the mystery out of a lot things, and devalues mystical explanations (and those social institutions that rely upon them for clout).
Growing new body parts out of other body parts will still freak out a certain number of people, no matter what. If it's not the stem cell faux-controversy, it will be the "only rich people can afford this treatment, so it's evil" crowd or their various other counterparts.
It's nearly impossible for me to get final specifications from a user until they've actually seen something. Paper is okay in a pinch, but a semi-functioning web application is worth a thousand meetings.
What's amazing is that you can say that in two sentences, and most web developers here will completely get what you mean... and that traditional managers (of developers) will get incredible hives and seriously rethink your annual bonus for uttering such heresy.
My favorite flavor of Not Getting This are the managers or customers that want you to mock up some screen shots for discussion, and are happy to pay for you to do so in Visio, or a paint program, etc... but if you instead actually whip together some HTML-based forms (much of which can eventually go towards further prototyping or actual use), you've opened the door to arguments over charges for having "jumped the gun" on the programming cycle. Never mind that I can produce conceptual mockups that actually render on a browser faster than by most any other means. But since a cheesy little pull-down-generating server-side script is "programming," there's PHB-fodder about having already done dev work before all of the requirements are described. Oh well. I'd rather write off a chunk of the project's proceeds than try to hammer out all of the requirements on paper first. In real life, with projects that must go from "I saw this thing when I checked out at Amazon" to being functionally bolted onto an existing web presence in a matter of a dozen man-hours, that's frequently impossible.
I agree that we can and should disagree if we feel like it. The difference between us is that I consider a government that actively stops its people from expressing opinions is not as "right" as one that does not. China, for example, goes to a lot of trouble to interfere with free expression. The same with Cuba. In my example of Afghanistan under the Taliban, free expression outside of their fundamentalist views was a death sentence. How you can tolerate that, I can't understand. Right now, you and I are exchanging views without any concern that either of us will be dragged into a ditch and shot because of it. Do you really consider governments that do kill people for saying the wrong thing to be just as good as those that do not?
By the way: I don't want to interfere for the sake of doing so. Entities like the Taliban have to be confronted because they are a direct threat to democracy. The routinely, and loudly proclaimed that democracy was evil, and that voting is un-Islamic. That's fine, until they start killing people who say or do otherwise. In the US, you can (as many people do) say that you think communism, or Nazism, or anarchy, or anything else is better, and you can vote for people that agree with you. But if you're in China, and loudly say that you think a truly representative democracy and open market is a better thing, and that the government killing protesters is a bad thing and should be talked about... poof! Jail time or worse. Do you truly find both approaches to government to be equally valid? Don't you realize that your ability to freely even answer that question depends on the fact that that is not true?
Imagine you were about to answer my question, and then were arrested and killed because of your interest in doing so honestly. Would you consider a government (and culture) that killed you for your words to be equally as valid as one that has, for hundreds of years, had men volunteer to go into harm's way to defend your right to say whatever you want? We can disagree about what is, and is not self-defense under what circumstances or while facing what threat... but you can't disagree that cultures which allow you to speak are fundamentally better for your individual rights than those that punish you for it. If you can't address that basic truth, then your moral compass doesn't exist, and you have no basis for making any value statement about any action, by anyone, ever.
You may think it's just semantics, but I think it's simply a matter of making an objective, rational distinction - and not being a moral relativist. An aggressive, fascist country (say, Imperial Japan 50+ years ago) didn't get invaded and disarmed by the US just because it seemed like a good idea. It was self defense. Same for WWII Germany... they were sinking our passenger ships and freighters, killing our allies, and looking to literally take over the world.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the previous US administration wrung its hands and talked loudly about how women there were shot in the public squares for dressing incorrectly or teaching their daughters to read... but no action was taken. When the Taliban actively partnered with Al Queda and turned that country into a vacation and training spot for the people that killed hundreds while destroying embassies in Africa, attacked a US Naval vessel, and kept pumping cash into groups like Hamas and Hezbollah - we still didn't act, though we should have. When it became clear that the radicalized Islamists that later killed thousands in the US were trained and coordinated from Afghanistan, we acted to put a stop to that. Afghanis are now holding elections and starting to shake off decades of brutality. It's going to take a while, but then so does prosperity and democracy everywhere, as it's taking hold.
Do you really consider removing the Taliban from control of Afghanistan to be somehow oppressing the innocent? If you do, then we definitely won't be able to agree on what "innocent" means. Before you answer, check with a mother there who lost a husband because he played music in public, and then lost her own hands because she dared to try to take a job to feed her kids. People who drag a woman down to what used to be a soccer field in the middle of town, gather a crowd, and shoot her in the head because she was raped by a stranger are not "innocents." Telling those people that they need to leave, and go back to Iran, Syria, or Pakistan and leave Afghanistan to the Afghanis or ultimately, if they refuse, they'll be killed (and then actually doing that) is not "torturing" them. Death and maiming are a byproduct, sometimes of taking action against people who actually celebrate doing that to other people. If you have to kill a person to stop him from a lifetime of killing many other people, you're no murderer - you're the person that saved thousands of lives. If, instead, you're a person that considers all people (and their acts) to be equally valid, then why are you upset with the US about anything? You can't have it both ways. If you don't like death, then don't complain when stopping a hugely murderous regime means that some of that regime dies in the process. The circumstances are determined by the murderers, not those that ultimately must use force to stop them.
Besides it will take a hell of a lot more than a Blackberry to make the goverment to run more efficiently.
No, but efficiency across the board is made up of the some of its parts. The feds don't pay telecom taxes on their phone lines, either... not just because it would be taking it from one pocket and putting it in the other, but because it would waste that much more bureaucratic horsepower to treat federal use of commodities the same way that we treat the private sector's use. Same can be said of the loosening of rules that allows government procurement officers to use high-range credit cards to make quick purchases of needed items... it cuts down enormously on the overhead (both for the buyer and seller).
If every federal facility or tool was used exactly the same way as it was for the rest of us, even less would get done.
the point you seems to not want to talk about is laws are for everyone and a select few are not above the law
Not at all. My point is that in carrying out the mission of a government agency, the circumstances simply aren't the same as in the private sector. That's why government employees can shut down a poisonous restaurant, inspect/regulate a nuclear power plant, or carry handcuffs/guns to put teeth behind things like smuggling laws. It's simply a different walk of life, but once those people punch out for the day, they're back with the rest of us, subject to exactly the same potential Blackberry limitations and the inability to shoot someone that cuts them off in the parking lot.
When a group gets a permit to use a public space to hold an event (say, the "Million Man March" or something similar), that group can express a concern to the relevent law enforcement agencies (in the case of the use of the national mall in DC, that would be the park police) that a specific group or groups is looking to disrupt the event. It's specifically because a group has gone through the permitting process that they have a right to use that space without having their parade route blocked by protestors or their message shouted down. What people like you don't seem to understand is that the right to free speech applies to everyone that secures such a permit. Political parties, larger organized protest groups, etc.
Those groups that come right out and say (on web sites, and in e-mail, etc) that they plan on disrupting an event being held by another group are the ones that are offered a place to hold their own counter-event. If that same disruptive group wants instead to hold their own event without getting shouted down by someone else, they also get the same privileges and protection. What's the difference, though, between one group and another? Some "protesters" decide that the most effective way to get press coverage is to illegally block traffic, mess with law enforcement, smash store windows, etc. Those people are not inclined to admit that they can't organize a rational gathering (and make use of a public space permit and the same protections that other groups seek and get). But you have exactly the same rights to gather and make a spectacle as anyone else does. You also have to honor an organized group's permit to use a public space without disruption, just like they have to honor yours (if you bother).
I don't want the EU or China to control the Internet, but the UN
Are you even listening to yourself? The activities of some EU members and China through the UN are exactly what free speech advocates are worried about. China has a long history of making use of their presence in the UN to try to curtail things that would give their own people greater liberties, or that would empower the people they consider their idealogical competition.
Who has a history of killing and maiming people of different opinion, or imprisoning and torturing innocents, the US or the UN?
That would be the UN (or, members thereof). The US has a history of turning aggressive fascist states into liberal democracies. The UN has a bad habit of tolerating every dictator that pays their UN dues. You might also want to read up on the UN's "peacekeping" presence right down the road from mass slaughters in Bosnia (to which they turned a blind eye), or the routine rape of local women by UN peacekeepers in Africa. It's not what the UN does as much as what they never act to prevent for fear of hurting some slimy little oppressor's feelings. The UN would rather sit by while whole villages are raped in the Sudan than come out and say that it's happening, and have to actually take a position that matters. They would rather watch Saddam kill hundreds of thousands of his own people and fill up mass graves with dead Kurds or Shiites than actually call his regime what it was. So would you, apparently.
The UN's security council can be muscled around by regimes like China and Russia, and the UN's programs are routinely corrupted beyond recognition. In the wake of proof that the Oil For Food program was giant money laundering scheme for individuals profiting from a relationship with Saddam's regime in Iraq (who puchased support for his regime in France, Britain, Russia and elsewhere with stolen UN-supervised oil dollars) exactly one UN employee involved in that program lost his job. And just yesterday, that person was re-hired by the UN because that was considered to harsh of an action. Sorry - the UN is a morally bankrupt organization b
That being said, there is a substantial corporate involvement in the control of the internet. That's because there is such substantial corporate involvement in providing the infrastructure. I'll definitely take that deal, though, since the alternative would be having the government actually providing and managing the network, backbone, etc... not an appealing thought. At least when someone like AT&T screws up or becomes intolerable in some way, there's Level3 or someone else to turn to.
Oh, and I know what you mean about early morning posts to slashdot. I seem to get my foot into my mouth much more easily when not yet properly caffeinated.
Ahead of the summit, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.
Assuming this is even true, how is it you're making the connection between what some activists are claiming and some sort of US culpability? Freedom of speech has no better home than in the US, and that's exactly why it's so important to keep root DNS where it is. Left up to Europe, or to China, etc., we'd see the more of the same harsher speech-limiting behavior that we already see in those places. Do you really think that reporters in Tunisia have more to worry about from the US than they do from their own government? The whole idea here is that by keeping the root DNS where it is, the government of Tunisia won't have as easy a shot (via the UN) at limiting where people can go online to read news and opinions from everyone about Tunisia.
So in a sense, the US and the rest of the world have continued to allow the existing private corporations to keep control of the Internet
In what sense? Your comment is fine, other than in the sense of "not factually correct." ICANN may be many things, but it's not a corporation in the Here At Slashdot, All Corporations Are Evil sense.
Come on, now. I'm talking about "walking away" from the artist in the sense of not pursuing their music through pirated downloads as an alternative to paying more than you want to for their recordings by purchasing a CD, using iTunes, etc.
This whole thread is about people who think that artists (and/or their distributors) charge too much. The (rather lame) frequently used argument is that people rip off the work to teach "the industry" some sort of lesson. I say, if you have any integrity, you simply don't do any business with someone you think is over-charging. But if you're ethical, you'll also admit that you don't respect that over-charging artist enough to want to listen to their music anyway, and skip the whole take-it-for-free part, too.
Sorry if the context of the remarks weren't clear.
Against all odds, you've actually stumbled across a reasonable analogy.
Egads!
Where is the ethical problem with, say, downloading a song that's also been played on free to air radio ?
The artist has made a deal (though somewhat indirectly, by using a middleman to handle the mind-numbing paperwork) with that radio station. The radio station derives revenue from having an audience, and the artists gets a piece of that through royalties. The listeners are passive participants in that process, but what the radio stations learn (through polling, etc) about listener habits helps them sell time to advertisers, which helps them make the payments to artists. For some artists, such royalties are a significant part of their income. The artist would no doubt much rather that you actually purchased a copy of their recording to play whenever you feel like it. But a bit-wise copy of it, spread around online without either revenue angle working for the artist means that the value of their work has been dilluted with only one party having a say in that structure.
that costs practically nothing to reproduce in effort on their part
But much of what they invest (in time and cash) in producing the work in the first place is risked expressly because of an expectation (or hope) of a certain number of people purchasing the work. Someone who only expects to earn money playing bars or such larger concerts as they can arrange to finance produces a completely different type of work. The studio artist that, say, collaborates with other well known artists over the course of a couple of years as they put together a really interesting collection for people that like that sort of thing cannot expect to gather all of those people and put that show on the road to pay their rent. That creative work cannot exist outside of a recording studio, much like films can't be performed live.
So for, say, Rosa Parks to have had "intellectual integrity", she shouldn't have gotten onto the bus at all?
Actually, boycotting the buses (not getting on them at all) is exactly what did what was needed (or played a major role). But the ananlogy is still dreadfully wrong. There's no government discrimination keeping you from buying a favorite artist's work. Everyone - everyone - can pay the same amount, or listen to the radio, or wander off to iTunes, or not obtain a copy if they don't like the artist's offered deal.
I think college professors are overcompensated, so I'm going to take a seat in some of their classes without contributing a dime towards their income. I also think that concerts cost too much, so I'm going to climb fences or break in through windows so I can get free entertainment. I mean, I just love some professors and some musicians - but as long as I don't have to look them directly in the eye, I can keep saying I like what they produce and still pretend like I'm teaching someone a lesson as I rip them off.
One might argue that the "attitudes" are that the "creators" have been getting overcompensated
Argue all you want. But your only ethical recourse is to stop doing business with those artists and the businesses they've chosen to represent them. Don't pretend that you respect an artist enough to want them to entertain you, but then stop short of the one thing that artist is asking of you as you acquire your copies of what they work to produce. If you think the creators want to much for their time and creativity, walk away. But have the intellectual integrity to also walk away from their entertainment. If you want to ignore their wishes, you must ignore your urge to run around with a copy of their work, too.
I suspect that the previous commenter didn't articulate a common thought on this. People who need an SUV for what an SUV can actually do often have no choice but to drive that vehicle for more mundane activities as well. Purchasing (assuming the cash is handy) another vehicle isn't all there is to it, ecology-wise. The costs (to the world, in terms of resources used, energy spent, etc) of another vehicle being born to serve for a few years along side a somewhat less efficient vehicle could easily eclipse the difference between the two vehicles in the fuel used during occasional, close-in errand running.
I'm intrigued by the hybrid SUVs, but the ones you mention aren't even close to being big enough. The "seats 7" spec on most of thise mid-sized SUVs usually means two seats up front, a middle bench that can squeeze in three adults or sit two comfortably, and a very small rear bench best suited to a couple of children. When that rear seat bench is up, the payload space in the vehicle is essentially gone. You can help with rooftop carriers, a tow-hitch platform, or a trailer - but those all introduce their own sorts of problems. In my case, it's the 4 to 5 adults and the two or three dog crates plus gear that are the problem - need that extended payload space to be there no matter what, or it's a two-vehicle trip (which I really try to avoid).
If I did much of the same driving with only a couple of people and a more modest payload, the models you've mentioned would be seriously worth considering. Most of them, though, aren't "trucky" enough, in terms of suspension and transmission ruggedness, at least not yet. I'm sure we'll get there - but it would be a pretty small market, at least for a while.
Yup, and it's also worth mentioning that some of us can't even make use of hybrid technology (regardless of the initial and ongoing costs) until the vehicles can actually do what other vehicles can do. Yes, one of my family vehicles is a full-sized SUV with a big engine. On a drive this weekend, I hauled about 900 pounds worth of people, 275 pounds worth of dogs, and about 350 pounds worth of gear, and drove about 450 miles (several of which were over some poor rocky, muddy roads, and part of which was in some slick mud). Yes, that trip cost about 60 bucks in gas... but back when I had a smaller SUV (as my other passengers currently own), we'd have required at least two vehicles in a caravan to do the same trip. An while I get around 17-18mpg because of the big V8, two (or more) smaller vehicles making the same trip would have used much more fuel per person.
So, I'm unusual, perhaps, in that I actually use an SUV for what it's intended to do. Most of the rest of the time, I'm working from home, and don't drive anywhere. A five-day-a-week communte in that vehicle would, of course, be crazy (unless I had a big carpool going - which is totally unworkable for most techie-types that I know, given the odd hours).
My point is not that some federal nerd-employee gets to have his Blackberry and you don't... my point is that even if it takes a while for everyone else using them to get things straightened out, you (as a taxpayer) should at least be glad that something helping government to run more efficiently can still be used. You're paying those people to work for you. If they can get more done in less time, or with fewer resources, that's a good thing. They're not competing with you, they're just using technology (in your service) under different legal circumstances.
is not chiming into this lawsuit because of the effect it may have on its CITIZENs, but rather the effect it may have on its EMPLOYEEs.
How many government employees do you personally know? How many of them are not citizens? They also pay federal taxes, and are essentially their own employees. I just don't understand why people consider federal employees to be "thems," as if didn't suffer long commutes, bitch about their taxes, and dislike government waste just like the rest of us. There are definitely some sub-standard federal workers, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to fire them, and thus make their more effective co-workers more interested in sticking around.
They is us. Something that disrupts government operations, or drives up its costs, is impacting every citizen and taxpayer. To the extent that Blackberries have been improving internal communications or making it easier for federal employees to get certain tasks accomplishsed, that's a good thing. I sincerely doubt, though, that many (any?) mission-critical activities now rely on Blackberry service access. Suddenly being without would feel like a big pain in the ass to underpaid people already working within a clumsy-by-design system, but it probably doesn't rise to the level of a security risk. How about just using T-Mobile sidekicks? They're groovier anyway, right?
This is what's modded as "interesting?" First, the Army (if you RTFA) is expressing an interest in this - it's being worked on by a researcher outside the DOD. Second, countless products like this end up in similar form, used in the private sector. Defense-funded/initiated R&D produces all sorts of technologies and techniques that impact the wider economy. I'm sure plenty of long-haul truckers, pilots, backpackers and other folks will find something like this useful.
You ask "how about investing the money... into other areas?"
There are undreds of thousands of people on active duty in our military. Their health is hard to maintain in the field, and anything that assists in that, even if it costs a few million bucks, is well spent. Better body armor, better vehicles, and yes, better overall health from reducing gum disease as a vector for infection (especially overseas). Get a grip.
I like what John Lennon said about all this: "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."
Well, then, he sure was quick to make millions and millions of dollars off of "everybody's" possesion. That luxury apartment in New York wasn't free, and Yoko Ono is pretty high-maintenance.
For a guy that sang "imagine no possessions," it's hard not to notice that he retained his IP rights and the cash.
If they have evidence, why don't they charge you? The whole uproar is that you can be held without charge.
The primary concern is that most of these clowns don't work in a vacuum. When they pick up one of these guys, there's a priceless window of time when what they can find out about his associates and activities can lead to arrests of more of them, and to disruption (rather than time/place displacement) of their pending attacks. If you press charges, you're usually making a public record of that activity, and any chance you have of tracking (based on the stuff you've just pumped out of his laptop, etc) and watching/arresting his bomb-making buddies is lost.
Numerous arrests of active Al Queda goons in Pakistan have come from information seized from captured/help associates who simply disappeared off of the radar screen.
Obviously, in a more traditional battlefield situation, foot soldiers or officers caught (whether in uniform running around with a rifle, or out of uniform spooking about) were immediately detained, questioned, and squirreled away without any urge on the captor's part to make a public case of each detention. When the opposing forces don't know which of their people have been captured (or are aware of any at all), they are faced with an important disadvantage. Most would-be suicide bombers fancy themselves as jihaddi foot soldiers, uniforms or not. They're not running around a normal battlefield in a tank or with a rifle... their "battlefield" is a restaurant or a train station, and their weapon is indiscriminate death by backpack bomb (or much, much worse). But to the extent that they are conducting their plans as emenmy combatants, we have to be able to remove them from their chosen activities without necessarily tipping off the people they work for and with.
There's no question that independent judicial and legislative review of cases is an important counterweight to excesses or just plain bad apples working within the much larger system attempting to preempt the sorts of attacks that just happened in Jordan and which were prevented in Australia this week. But we can't pretend that taking a guy out of action and pawing through his chemical stockpile (as in Australia) and communications before tipping off his sponsors and co-conspirators isn't necessary. In fact, making his cronies wonder - for months - "whatever happened to Abu?" and not know which earlier communication threads have or have not fueled other investigations - that's vital. Please keep your eye on the ball, here.
Now, all that being said, I'd hate to think that one of the dozens of servers I run might get sucked into some investigation (and me along with it) without any recourse. That's why it's up to me to be persuasive about my activities and motivations if that ever comes up in error. Yes, that could be ruinous. But so could any protracted, misplaced criminal investigation, and we're dealing here with not just organized crime, but internationally funded mass murderers leveraging the openness of the west to attempt to damage it. It is simply impossible to deal with people like that while playing nicey-nice. And if we simply treat all such work as after-the-fact criminal justice, knowing that they're planning as many more casualties as they can possibly inflict, we'd be completely deserving the results. When it's strategically useful to charge one of these guys, we do. That's what the military courts (in the case of foreign hostiles operating elsewhere) are set up to do, and the tradition goes back many long years - certainly before the current run of attacks. Or, we hand them over to the German courts, or the Spanish courts, or the Jordanian courts... you do see coverage of those trials, right?
What hell business do they have arresting people to begin with if they don't have evidence?
Who said they don't have any evidence. We could have all the evidence in the world that you've got an apartment full of bomb-making supplies and blueprints of a local nursery school, and arrest you for that... but wouldn't it be nice to know where the supplies came from, with whom you've been swapping mail and which web sites you've been visiting for stegnographic explodo-messages?
Nonsense. The European colonists in America weren't upset about the lack of free stuff, or the unfainess of the distribution of government-provided services and jobs. There wasn't any such thing as public education to be doled out in some class-baiting way, or expensive public healthcare to be examined as a barometer of "social justice."
The people living in Parisian suburbs are not there because of the ample entrepenuerial opportunities - there aren't even enough companies willing to hire the existing French population, let along any more immigrants. Yet the very worst-off, least-employed, least-educated, sectors of the country continue to fill up with more people from other countries and more babies born to those people... and the cradle-to-grave Nanny State that is France is (of course) unable to sustain that without taxing their workforce (they of the 35-hour week and the month-at-a-time paid vacations) even more than they do now.
People born into those French suburbs have the vote (if they choose to use it), and have the amazing ability to not bring in any more relatives (or reproduce any more) if they don't think they have any more room in their free apartments. In the colonial Americas, colonists brought over relatives as quickly as they could afford to, since they needed everyone they could find to work (of course, a high mortality rate was more of an issue at that time). They also got all the criminals that Europe wanted to exile, but it was a big continent at the time.
The fundamental difference between those colonists and the French suburbs is that the former wanted to do things despite the government, and the latter wants to the government to do more things for them. The colonists were punished for seeking representation, and the French immigrants are punishing themselves for not bothering to use the representation they already have.
Sure, many of the colonists were born in America, but many of these rioters were born in France. Hence, your injunctions against immigrants to France (i.e. don't bitch about the situation since you chose to go there) apply just as much to the American colonists
The people moving to the uncolonized Americas sure as hell weren't moving in knowing they'd get government subsidized housing, healthcare, and even food shipments into their neighborhoods. The political and military situation on the ground in the colonies changed dramtically over the course of some years, with the British crown and parliment playing an increasingly capricious game over who owned what land, what activities (such as mining or tobacco growing, etc) were legal or taxed, and whether or not you (in your modest colonial house) had to house and feed British troops. More importantly, the residents of those colonies didn't have any voice in the parliment that was taxing them, and which came to start confiscating shipments of goods that might compete with things made in England. They wanted the colonists to produce raw materials, pay taxes as they shipped them to England, and then pay again (with taxes!) as finished goods made from those materials were imported back into the colonies. Anyone wanting to do certain sorts of work locally was subject to an increasingly burdensome, corrupt tarrif system - and no representative voice through which to change it. Refusing to comply with the crown's demands meant jail or worse.
Now, contrast that with a couple from Morocco who has moved to France with no prospect of jobs, little cash, etc. They find housing, food, and medical care in the government subsidized framework, and then have children. Those children are now French citizens, but are stuck in that ethnic ghetto (like in ghettos everywhere) without much hope for escape unless they personally have above average drive and skills to find another way (which usually includes overcoming the social pressure of turning their backs on their immigrant parents' lifestyle), or unless their parents are unusually (by the current standard) motivated to get that kid up to speed on the qualities that allow anyone to get a decent job in France.
your injunctions against immigrants to France (i.e. don't bitch about the situation since you chose to go there) apply just as much to the American colonists
No. They are wildly different circumstances. France hasn't changed meaningfully in the last 20-30 years (other than to become more permissive to immigration, and to have its population shift ever more towards those of African and Arab descent). The laws, economy, and culture are what they are. No one who has moved into a government-provided apartment outside Paris has suddenly found themselves facing a platoon of French soldiers insisting that they be put up (and fed) at the expense of that family in their house. The rate at which the goods someone back in Morocco has sent to their relatives in Paris are being taxed hasn't changed from None to Draconian (let alone "Confiscatory"). The individual European colonists in America were there almost entirely as parts of business ventures, and to a certain degree, in pursuit of religious/political liberty. They didn't show up expecting to be fed and housed, with no personal ability to make their way in the local economy... and I highly doubt that if someone who got crabby because they didn't think things were going their way started burning random stables and killing horses as a form of protest that their neighbors would have done anything but stop them in their tracks. Those British military and colonial government assets that eventually fell to the colonists did so after delegations from the colonies were roundly rebuked by the crown.
I thought that most of these people were 2nd/3rd generation immigrants who speak French as a first language.
Right next door to me is a French-speaking African family that spent their college careers in Paris. I'm
Slashdot Mirror
Get rid of the animal rights issues that way.
As long as people like PETA think that owning a pet is evil, that issue won't go away. But at least it's nice to know that nobody at PETA will ever swat an innocent mosquito while it's sucking the blood out of their foreheads.
I don't think that any tissue science development - no matter how good a fake-steak it produces - will change the nature of political debate about domesticated animals. And it probably won't come close to the taste of a plate of fresh, grain-field-fed dove breasts sauteed in garlic butter.
[homer]Mmmmmmm... doves.[/homer]
We can't get rid of something that's projected onto the situation by people who are nervous/scared about what the bio-sciences say about their world view. The stem cell worriers aren't really worried about stem cells or their source, they're worried about how close we're getting to a comfortable understanding of cellular mechanics. That takes the mystery out of a lot things, and devalues mystical explanations (and those social institutions that rely upon them for clout).
Growing new body parts out of other body parts will still freak out a certain number of people, no matter what. If it's not the stem cell faux-controversy, it will be the "only rich people can afford this treatment, so it's evil" crowd or their various other counterparts.
It's nearly impossible for me to get final specifications from a user until they've actually seen something. Paper is okay in a pinch, but a semi-functioning web application is worth a thousand meetings.
What's amazing is that you can say that in two sentences, and most web developers here will completely get what you mean... and that traditional managers (of developers) will get incredible hives and seriously rethink your annual bonus for uttering such heresy.
My favorite flavor of Not Getting This are the managers or customers that want you to mock up some screen shots for discussion, and are happy to pay for you to do so in Visio, or a paint program, etc... but if you instead actually whip together some HTML-based forms (much of which can eventually go towards further prototyping or actual use), you've opened the door to arguments over charges for having "jumped the gun" on the programming cycle. Never mind that I can produce conceptual mockups that actually render on a browser faster than by most any other means. But since a cheesy little pull-down-generating server-side script is "programming," there's PHB-fodder about having already done dev work before all of the requirements are described. Oh well. I'd rather write off a chunk of the project's proceeds than try to hammer out all of the requirements on paper first. In real life, with projects that must go from "I saw this thing when I checked out at Amazon" to being functionally bolted onto an existing web presence in a matter of a dozen man-hours, that's frequently impossible.
I agree that we can and should disagree if we feel like it. The difference between us is that I consider a government that actively stops its people from expressing opinions is not as "right" as one that does not. China, for example, goes to a lot of trouble to interfere with free expression. The same with Cuba. In my example of Afghanistan under the Taliban, free expression outside of their fundamentalist views was a death sentence. How you can tolerate that, I can't understand. Right now, you and I are exchanging views without any concern that either of us will be dragged into a ditch and shot because of it. Do you really consider governments that do kill people for saying the wrong thing to be just as good as those that do not?
By the way: I don't want to interfere for the sake of doing so. Entities like the Taliban have to be confronted because they are a direct threat to democracy. The routinely, and loudly proclaimed that democracy was evil, and that voting is un-Islamic. That's fine, until they start killing people who say or do otherwise. In the US, you can (as many people do) say that you think communism, or Nazism, or anarchy, or anything else is better, and you can vote for people that agree with you. But if you're in China, and loudly say that you think a truly representative democracy and open market is a better thing, and that the government killing protesters is a bad thing and should be talked about... poof! Jail time or worse. Do you truly find both approaches to government to be equally valid? Don't you realize that your ability to freely even answer that question depends on the fact that that is not true?
Imagine you were about to answer my question, and then were arrested and killed because of your interest in doing so honestly. Would you consider a government (and culture) that killed you for your words to be equally as valid as one that has, for hundreds of years, had men volunteer to go into harm's way to defend your right to say whatever you want? We can disagree about what is, and is not self-defense under what circumstances or while facing what threat... but you can't disagree that cultures which allow you to speak are fundamentally better for your individual rights than those that punish you for it. If you can't address that basic truth, then your moral compass doesn't exist, and you have no basis for making any value statement about any action, by anyone, ever.
You may think it's just semantics, but I think it's simply a matter of making an objective, rational distinction - and not being a moral relativist. An aggressive, fascist country (say, Imperial Japan 50+ years ago) didn't get invaded and disarmed by the US just because it seemed like a good idea. It was self defense. Same for WWII Germany... they were sinking our passenger ships and freighters, killing our allies, and looking to literally take over the world.
... but no action was taken. When the Taliban actively partnered with Al Queda and turned that country into a vacation and training spot for the people that killed hundreds while destroying embassies in Africa, attacked a US Naval vessel, and kept pumping cash into groups like Hamas and Hezbollah - we still didn't act, though we should have. When it became clear that the radicalized Islamists that later killed thousands in the US were trained and coordinated from Afghanistan, we acted to put a stop to that. Afghanis are now holding elections and starting to shake off decades of brutality. It's going to take a while, but then so does prosperity and democracy everywhere, as it's taking hold.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the previous US administration wrung its hands and talked loudly about how women there were shot in the public squares for dressing incorrectly or teaching their daughters to read
Do you really consider removing the Taliban from control of Afghanistan to be somehow oppressing the innocent? If you do, then we definitely won't be able to agree on what "innocent" means. Before you answer, check with a mother there who lost a husband because he played music in public, and then lost her own hands because she dared to try to take a job to feed her kids. People who drag a woman down to what used to be a soccer field in the middle of town, gather a crowd, and shoot her in the head because she was raped by a stranger are not "innocents." Telling those people that they need to leave, and go back to Iran, Syria, or Pakistan and leave Afghanistan to the Afghanis or ultimately, if they refuse, they'll be killed (and then actually doing that) is not "torturing" them. Death and maiming are a byproduct, sometimes of taking action against people who actually celebrate doing that to other people. If you have to kill a person to stop him from a lifetime of killing many other people, you're no murderer - you're the person that saved thousands of lives. If, instead, you're a person that considers all people (and their acts) to be equally valid, then why are you upset with the US about anything? You can't have it both ways. If you don't like death, then don't complain when stopping a hugely murderous regime means that some of that regime dies in the process. The circumstances are determined by the murderers, not those that ultimately must use force to stop them.
Besides it will take a hell of a lot more than a Blackberry to make the goverment to run more efficiently.
No, but efficiency across the board is made up of the some of its parts. The feds don't pay telecom taxes on their phone lines, either... not just because it would be taking it from one pocket and putting it in the other, but because it would waste that much more bureaucratic horsepower to treat federal use of commodities the same way that we treat the private sector's use. Same can be said of the loosening of rules that allows government procurement officers to use high-range credit cards to make quick purchases of needed items... it cuts down enormously on the overhead (both for the buyer and seller).
If every federal facility or tool was used exactly the same way as it was for the rest of us, even less would get done.
the point you seems to not want to talk about is laws are for everyone and a select few are not above the law
Not at all. My point is that in carrying out the mission of a government agency, the circumstances simply aren't the same as in the private sector. That's why government employees can shut down a poisonous restaurant, inspect/regulate a nuclear power plant, or carry handcuffs/guns to put teeth behind things like smuggling laws. It's simply a different walk of life, but once those people punch out for the day, they're back with the rest of us, subject to exactly the same potential Blackberry limitations and the inability to shoot someone that cuts them off in the parking lot.
that is why the US has "free speech zones"...
That's it, keep drinking that Kool-Aid!
When a group gets a permit to use a public space to hold an event (say, the "Million Man March" or something similar), that group can express a concern to the relevent law enforcement agencies (in the case of the use of the national mall in DC, that would be the park police) that a specific group or groups is looking to disrupt the event. It's specifically because a group has gone through the permitting process that they have a right to use that space without having their parade route blocked by protestors or their message shouted down. What people like you don't seem to understand is that the right to free speech applies to everyone that secures such a permit. Political parties, larger organized protest groups, etc.
Those groups that come right out and say (on web sites, and in e-mail, etc) that they plan on disrupting an event being held by another group are the ones that are offered a place to hold their own counter-event. If that same disruptive group wants instead to hold their own event without getting shouted down by someone else, they also get the same privileges and protection. What's the difference, though, between one group and another? Some "protesters" decide that the most effective way to get press coverage is to illegally block traffic, mess with law enforcement, smash store windows, etc. Those people are not inclined to admit that they can't organize a rational gathering (and make use of a public space permit and the same protections that other groups seek and get). But you have exactly the same rights to gather and make a spectacle as anyone else does. You also have to honor an organized group's permit to use a public space without disruption, just like they have to honor yours (if you bother).
I don't want the EU or China to control the Internet, but the UN
Are you even listening to yourself? The activities of some EU members and China through the UN are exactly what free speech advocates are worried about. China has a long history of making use of their presence in the UN to try to curtail things that would give their own people greater liberties, or that would empower the people they consider their idealogical competition.
Who has a history of killing and maiming people of different opinion, or imprisoning and torturing innocents, the US or the UN?
That would be the UN (or, members thereof). The US has a history of turning aggressive fascist states into liberal democracies. The UN has a bad habit of tolerating every dictator that pays their UN dues. You might also want to read up on the UN's "peacekeping" presence right down the road from mass slaughters in Bosnia (to which they turned a blind eye), or the routine rape of local women by UN peacekeepers in Africa. It's not what the UN does as much as what they never act to prevent for fear of hurting some slimy little oppressor's feelings. The UN would rather sit by while whole villages are raped in the Sudan than come out and say that it's happening, and have to actually take a position that matters. They would rather watch Saddam kill hundreds of thousands of his own people and fill up mass graves with dead Kurds or Shiites than actually call his regime what it was. So would you, apparently.
The UN's security council can be muscled around by regimes like China and Russia, and the UN's programs are routinely corrupted beyond recognition. In the wake of proof that the Oil For Food program was giant money laundering scheme for individuals profiting from a relationship with Saddam's regime in Iraq (who puchased support for his regime in France, Britain, Russia and elsewhere with stolen UN-supervised oil dollars) exactly one UN employee involved in that program lost his job. And just yesterday, that person was re-hired by the UN because that was considered to harsh of an action. Sorry - the UN is a morally bankrupt organization b
That being said, there is a substantial corporate involvement in the control of the internet. That's because there is such substantial corporate involvement in providing the infrastructure. I'll definitely take that deal, though, since the alternative would be having the government actually providing and managing the network, backbone, etc... not an appealing thought. At least when someone like AT&T screws up or becomes intolerable in some way, there's Level3 or someone else to turn to.
Oh, and I know what you mean about early morning posts to slashdot. I seem to get my foot into my mouth much more easily when not yet properly caffeinated.
Ahead of the summit, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.
Assuming this is even true, how is it you're making the connection between what some activists are claiming and some sort of US culpability? Freedom of speech has no better home than in the US, and that's exactly why it's so important to keep root DNS where it is. Left up to Europe, or to China, etc., we'd see the more of the same harsher speech-limiting behavior that we already see in those places. Do you really think that reporters in Tunisia have more to worry about from the US than they do from their own government? The whole idea here is that by keeping the root DNS where it is, the government of Tunisia won't have as easy a shot (via the UN) at limiting where people can go online to read news and opinions from everyone about Tunisia.
So in a sense, the US and the rest of the world have continued to allow the existing private corporations to keep control of the Internet
In what sense? Your comment is fine, other than in the sense of "not factually correct." ICANN may be many things, but it's not a corporation in the Here At Slashdot, All Corporations Are Evil sense.
Come on, now. I'm talking about "walking away" from the artist in the sense of not pursuing their music through pirated downloads as an alternative to paying more than you want to for their recordings by purchasing a CD, using iTunes, etc.
This whole thread is about people who think that artists (and/or their distributors) charge too much. The (rather lame) frequently used argument is that people rip off the work to teach "the industry" some sort of lesson. I say, if you have any integrity, you simply don't do any business with someone you think is over-charging. But if you're ethical, you'll also admit that you don't respect that over-charging artist enough to want to listen to their music anyway, and skip the whole take-it-for-free part, too.
Sorry if the context of the remarks weren't clear.
Against all odds, you've actually stumbled across a reasonable analogy.
Egads!
Where is the ethical problem with, say, downloading a song that's also been played on free to air radio ?
The artist has made a deal (though somewhat indirectly, by using a middleman to handle the mind-numbing paperwork) with that radio station. The radio station derives revenue from having an audience, and the artists gets a piece of that through royalties. The listeners are passive participants in that process, but what the radio stations learn (through polling, etc) about listener habits helps them sell time to advertisers, which helps them make the payments to artists. For some artists, such royalties are a significant part of their income. The artist would no doubt much rather that you actually purchased a copy of their recording to play whenever you feel like it. But a bit-wise copy of it, spread around online without either revenue angle working for the artist means that the value of their work has been dilluted with only one party having a say in that structure.
that costs practically nothing to reproduce in effort on their part
But much of what they invest (in time and cash) in producing the work in the first place is risked expressly because of an expectation (or hope) of a certain number of people purchasing the work. Someone who only expects to earn money playing bars or such larger concerts as they can arrange to finance produces a completely different type of work. The studio artist that, say, collaborates with other well known artists over the course of a couple of years as they put together a really interesting collection for people that like that sort of thing cannot expect to gather all of those people and put that show on the road to pay their rent. That creative work cannot exist outside of a recording studio, much like films can't be performed live.
So for, say, Rosa Parks to have had "intellectual integrity", she shouldn't have gotten onto the bus at all?
Actually, boycotting the buses (not getting on them at all) is exactly what did what was needed (or played a major role). But the ananlogy is still dreadfully wrong. There's no government discrimination keeping you from buying a favorite artist's work. Everyone - everyone - can pay the same amount, or listen to the radio, or wander off to iTunes, or not obtain a copy if they don't like the artist's offered deal.
I think college professors are overcompensated, so I'm going to take a seat in some of their classes without contributing a dime towards their income. I also think that concerts cost too much, so I'm going to climb fences or break in through windows so I can get free entertainment. I mean, I just love some professors and some musicians - but as long as I don't have to look them directly in the eye, I can keep saying I like what they produce and still pretend like I'm teaching someone a lesson as I rip them off.
One might argue that the "attitudes" are that the "creators" have been getting overcompensated
Argue all you want. But your only ethical recourse is to stop doing business with those artists and the businesses they've chosen to represent them. Don't pretend that you respect an artist enough to want them to entertain you, but then stop short of the one thing that artist is asking of you as you acquire your copies of what they work to produce. If you think the creators want to much for their time and creativity, walk away. But have the intellectual integrity to also walk away from their entertainment. If you want to ignore their wishes, you must ignore your urge to run around with a copy of their work, too.
I suspect that the previous commenter didn't articulate a common thought on this. People who need an SUV for what an SUV can actually do often have no choice but to drive that vehicle for more mundane activities as well. Purchasing (assuming the cash is handy) another vehicle isn't all there is to it, ecology-wise. The costs (to the world, in terms of resources used, energy spent, etc) of another vehicle being born to serve for a few years along side a somewhat less efficient vehicle could easily eclipse the difference between the two vehicles in the fuel used during occasional, close-in errand running.
I'm intrigued by the hybrid SUVs, but the ones you mention aren't even close to being big enough. The "seats 7" spec on most of thise mid-sized SUVs usually means two seats up front, a middle bench that can squeeze in three adults or sit two comfortably, and a very small rear bench best suited to a couple of children. When that rear seat bench is up, the payload space in the vehicle is essentially gone. You can help with rooftop carriers, a tow-hitch platform, or a trailer - but those all introduce their own sorts of problems. In my case, it's the 4 to 5 adults and the two or three dog crates plus gear that are the problem - need that extended payload space to be there no matter what, or it's a two-vehicle trip (which I really try to avoid).
If I did much of the same driving with only a couple of people and a more modest payload, the models you've mentioned would be seriously worth considering. Most of them, though, aren't "trucky" enough, in terms of suspension and transmission ruggedness, at least not yet. I'm sure we'll get there - but it would be a pretty small market, at least for a while.
Yup, and it's also worth mentioning that some of us can't even make use of hybrid technology (regardless of the initial and ongoing costs) until the vehicles can actually do what other vehicles can do. Yes, one of my family vehicles is a full-sized SUV with a big engine. On a drive this weekend, I hauled about 900 pounds worth of people, 275 pounds worth of dogs, and about 350 pounds worth of gear, and drove about 450 miles (several of which were over some poor rocky, muddy roads, and part of which was in some slick mud). Yes, that trip cost about 60 bucks in gas... but back when I had a smaller SUV (as my other passengers currently own), we'd have required at least two vehicles in a caravan to do the same trip. An while I get around 17-18mpg because of the big V8, two (or more) smaller vehicles making the same trip would have used much more fuel per person.
So, I'm unusual, perhaps, in that I actually use an SUV for what it's intended to do. Most of the rest of the time, I'm working from home, and don't drive anywhere. A five-day-a-week communte in that vehicle would, of course, be crazy (unless I had a big carpool going - which is totally unworkable for most techie-types that I know, given the odd hours).
My point is not that some federal nerd-employee gets to have his Blackberry and you don't... my point is that even if it takes a while for everyone else using them to get things straightened out, you (as a taxpayer) should at least be glad that something helping government to run more efficiently can still be used. You're paying those people to work for you. If they can get more done in less time, or with fewer resources, that's a good thing. They're not competing with you, they're just using technology (in your service) under different legal circumstances.
is not chiming into this lawsuit because of the effect it may have on its CITIZENs, but rather the effect it may have on its EMPLOYEEs.
How many government employees do you personally know? How many of them are not citizens? They also pay federal taxes, and are essentially their own employees. I just don't understand why people consider federal employees to be "thems," as if didn't suffer long commutes, bitch about their taxes, and dislike government waste just like the rest of us. There are definitely some sub-standard federal workers, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to fire them, and thus make their more effective co-workers more interested in sticking around.
They is us. Something that disrupts government operations, or drives up its costs, is impacting every citizen and taxpayer. To the extent that Blackberries have been improving internal communications or making it easier for federal employees to get certain tasks accomplishsed, that's a good thing. I sincerely doubt, though, that many (any?) mission-critical activities now rely on Blackberry service access. Suddenly being without would feel like a big pain in the ass to underpaid people already working within a clumsy-by-design system, but it probably doesn't rise to the level of a security risk. How about just using T-Mobile sidekicks? They're groovier anyway, right?
This is what's modded as "interesting?" First, the Army (if you RTFA) is expressing an interest in this - it's being worked on by a researcher outside the DOD. Second, countless products like this end up in similar form, used in the private sector. Defense-funded/initiated R&D produces all sorts of technologies and techniques that impact the wider economy. I'm sure plenty of long-haul truckers, pilots, backpackers and other folks will find something like this useful.
... into other areas?"
You ask "how about investing the money
There are undreds of thousands of people on active duty in our military. Their health is hard to maintain in the field, and anything that assists in that, even if it costs a few million bucks, is well spent. Better body armor, better vehicles, and yes, better overall health from reducing gum disease as a vector for infection (especially overseas). Get a grip.
I like what John Lennon said about all this: "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."
Well, then, he sure was quick to make millions and millions of dollars off of "everybody's" possesion. That luxury apartment in New York wasn't free, and Yoko Ono is pretty high-maintenance.
For a guy that sang "imagine no possessions," it's hard not to notice that he retained his IP rights and the cash.
If they have evidence, why don't they charge you? The whole uproar is that you can be held without charge.
... you do see coverage of those trials, right?
The primary concern is that most of these clowns don't work in a vacuum. When they pick up one of these guys, there's a priceless window of time when what they can find out about his associates and activities can lead to arrests of more of them, and to disruption (rather than time/place displacement) of their pending attacks. If you press charges, you're usually making a public record of that activity, and any chance you have of tracking (based on the stuff you've just pumped out of his laptop, etc) and watching/arresting his bomb-making buddies is lost.
Numerous arrests of active Al Queda goons in Pakistan have come from information seized from captured/help associates who simply disappeared off of the radar screen.
Obviously, in a more traditional battlefield situation, foot soldiers or officers caught (whether in uniform running around with a rifle, or out of uniform spooking about) were immediately detained, questioned, and squirreled away without any urge on the captor's part to make a public case of each detention. When the opposing forces don't know which of their people have been captured (or are aware of any at all), they are faced with an important disadvantage. Most would-be suicide bombers fancy themselves as jihaddi foot soldiers, uniforms or not. They're not running around a normal battlefield in a tank or with a rifle... their "battlefield" is a restaurant or a train station, and their weapon is indiscriminate death by backpack bomb (or much, much worse). But to the extent that they are conducting their plans as emenmy combatants, we have to be able to remove them from their chosen activities without necessarily tipping off the people they work for and with.
There's no question that independent judicial and legislative review of cases is an important counterweight to excesses or just plain bad apples working within the much larger system attempting to preempt the sorts of attacks that just happened in Jordan and which were prevented in Australia this week. But we can't pretend that taking a guy out of action and pawing through his chemical stockpile (as in Australia) and communications before tipping off his sponsors and co-conspirators isn't necessary. In fact, making his cronies wonder - for months - "whatever happened to Abu?" and not know which earlier communication threads have or have not fueled other investigations - that's vital. Please keep your eye on the ball, here.
Now, all that being said, I'd hate to think that one of the dozens of servers I run might get sucked into some investigation (and me along with it) without any recourse. That's why it's up to me to be persuasive about my activities and motivations if that ever comes up in error. Yes, that could be ruinous. But so could any protracted, misplaced criminal investigation, and we're dealing here with not just organized crime, but internationally funded mass murderers leveraging the openness of the west to attempt to damage it. It is simply impossible to deal with people like that while playing nicey-nice. And if we simply treat all such work as after-the-fact criminal justice, knowing that they're planning as many more casualties as they can possibly inflict, we'd be completely deserving the results. When it's strategically useful to charge one of these guys, we do. That's what the military courts (in the case of foreign hostiles operating elsewhere) are set up to do, and the tradition goes back many long years - certainly before the current run of attacks. Or, we hand them over to the German courts, or the Spanish courts, or the Jordanian courts
What hell business do they have arresting people to begin with if they don't have evidence?
Who said they don't have any evidence. We could have all the evidence in the world that you've got an apartment full of bomb-making supplies and blueprints of a local nursery school, and arrest you for that... but wouldn't it be nice to know where the supplies came from, with whom you've been swapping mail and which web sites you've been visiting for stegnographic explodo-messages?
Nonsense. The European colonists in America weren't upset about the lack of free stuff, or the unfainess of the distribution of government-provided services and jobs. There wasn't any such thing as public education to be doled out in some class-baiting way, or expensive public healthcare to be examined as a barometer of "social justice."
... and the cradle-to-grave Nanny State that is France is (of course) unable to sustain that without taxing their workforce (they of the 35-hour week and the month-at-a-time paid vacations) even more than they do now.
The people living in Parisian suburbs are not there because of the ample entrepenuerial opportunities - there aren't even enough companies willing to hire the existing French population, let along any more immigrants. Yet the very worst-off, least-employed, least-educated, sectors of the country continue to fill up with more people from other countries and more babies born to those people
People born into those French suburbs have the vote (if they choose to use it), and have the amazing ability to not bring in any more relatives (or reproduce any more) if they don't think they have any more room in their free apartments. In the colonial Americas, colonists brought over relatives as quickly as they could afford to, since they needed everyone they could find to work (of course, a high mortality rate was more of an issue at that time). They also got all the criminals that Europe wanted to exile, but it was a big continent at the time.
The fundamental difference between those colonists and the French suburbs is that the former wanted to do things despite the government, and the latter wants to the government to do more things for them. The colonists were punished for seeking representation, and the French immigrants are punishing themselves for not bothering to use the representation they already have.
Sure, many of the colonists were born in America, but many of these rioters were born in France. Hence, your injunctions against immigrants to France (i.e. don't bitch about the situation since you chose to go there) apply just as much to the American colonists
The people moving to the uncolonized Americas sure as hell weren't moving in knowing they'd get government subsidized housing, healthcare, and even food shipments into their neighborhoods. The political and military situation on the ground in the colonies changed dramtically over the course of some years, with the British crown and parliment playing an increasingly capricious game over who owned what land, what activities (such as mining or tobacco growing, etc) were legal or taxed, and whether or not you (in your modest colonial house) had to house and feed British troops. More importantly, the residents of those colonies didn't have any voice in the parliment that was taxing them, and which came to start confiscating shipments of goods that might compete with things made in England. They wanted the colonists to produce raw materials, pay taxes as they shipped them to England, and then pay again (with taxes!) as finished goods made from those materials were imported back into the colonies. Anyone wanting to do certain sorts of work locally was subject to an increasingly burdensome, corrupt tarrif system - and no representative voice through which to change it. Refusing to comply with the crown's demands meant jail or worse.
Now, contrast that with a couple from Morocco who has moved to France with no prospect of jobs, little cash, etc. They find housing, food, and medical care in the government subsidized framework, and then have children. Those children are now French citizens, but are stuck in that ethnic ghetto (like in ghettos everywhere) without much hope for escape unless they personally have above average drive and skills to find another way (which usually includes overcoming the social pressure of turning their backs on their immigrant parents' lifestyle), or unless their parents are unusually (by the current standard) motivated to get that kid up to speed on the qualities that allow anyone to get a decent job in France.
your injunctions against immigrants to France (i.e. don't bitch about the situation since you chose to go there) apply just as much to the American colonists
No. They are wildly different circumstances. France hasn't changed meaningfully in the last 20-30 years (other than to become more permissive to immigration, and to have its population shift ever more towards those of African and Arab descent). The laws, economy, and culture are what they are. No one who has moved into a government-provided apartment outside Paris has suddenly found themselves facing a platoon of French soldiers insisting that they be put up (and fed) at the expense of that family in their house. The rate at which the goods someone back in Morocco has sent to their relatives in Paris are being taxed hasn't changed from None to Draconian (let alone "Confiscatory"). The individual European colonists in America were there almost entirely as parts of business ventures, and to a certain degree, in pursuit of religious/political liberty. They didn't show up expecting to be fed and housed, with no personal ability to make their way in the local economy... and I highly doubt that if someone who got crabby because they didn't think things were going their way started burning random stables and killing horses as a form of protest that their neighbors would have done anything but stop them in their tracks. Those British military and colonial government assets that eventually fell to the colonists did so after delegations from the colonies were roundly rebuked by the crown.
I thought that most of these people were 2nd/3rd generation immigrants who speak French as a first language.
Right next door to me is a French-speaking African family that spent their college careers in Paris. I'm