I would just say 1 & 2 get rolled into Fair Tax. Remove the entire ability for bizarre tax manipulations to even exist and that will solve a whole host of problems. It also has the side effect of fixing things like immigration as well.
3. This sounds nice, but I suspect the unintended consequences of this would be a nightmare. Big companies can afford to get sued for the real damages and call it a cost of being an asshole. The punitive damages piece puts the government back in the loop in a potentially ugly place. I suspect the government/business interactions surrounding determination/collection of punitive damages would be an ugly one.
4. This is just wishful thinking. If congress critters actually funded the USPTO office to a level that would allow them to do their job effectively then they wouldn't be able to gather so much lobbyist dollars in their personal bank accounts.
Sure it would...you just go back to the Ministry... Ponies and demand that it isn't fair that you have to pay for anything connected to your free pony and it would be nice if they would pay for all of that too.
If citizenship comes from being born to a citizen how long do you think it will be before weird challenges show up in court because one parent is a citizen and one is not? Or maybe one has gained citizenship and one has not. What if the child was born and THEN the parent(s) gains citizenship. The child was not born to a citizen, the parent is now a citizen, the child is not. I could probably come up with hundreds of potential bizarre scenarios that would cause this to be very troublesome. The last thing we need is more of this nonsense tying up our court system. You fail to see where this creates a problem because you haven't bothered really thinking it through on all of the unintended consequences.
No...I don't mean retroactive law. I mean the variations that could be possible by not using "born here = citizen". When was the last time you saw any idea/law written in a simplistic layman terms kinda way? They aren't written like that anymore. It is always a bunch of nonsensical legalistic goofiness that allows bizarre tap dancing through loopholes. So...your parents are citizens...but your grandparents living here are illegals! Now that means through some weird tap dance maneuver your parent's citizenship doesn't count and you are fucked!
At the end of the day all of the efforts to keep immigrants out of a country that has a "Statue of Liberty" with a big goddamned poem on the front about how every immigrant is welcome to forsake their homelands and come here is pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. I say as long as we are going to pull some stupid bullshit about kicking immigrants out we should be honest about it. The Irish, British, Italian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc, etc, etc,... all those fuckers can get the fuck out and we can give the whole nation back to the native Americans that we fenced up. Seriously...every argument in favor of this anti-immigration shit comes down to mostly flawed assumptions about taxes (where the legitimate issues could be easily fixed if our elected leaders didn't have such a vested interest in the game being so easily manipulated) and racism. Mostly racism.
The other piece that kills me is that rather than using a bunch of rednecks and the national guard to "defend" us from immigrants we could just put IRS agents along the border. "Welcome to America, here is your SSN, enjoy your stay!". Those fuckers can track people with more efficiency than any immigration agency could ever hope to achieve. It also brings the added bonus of making it difficult for shithead employers to abuse immigrants. Win Win if you ask me.
Uhm...I imagine it is hard for the observer to be observing what people are doing with the bots if the observer is not also there to prevent this kind of scenario through observation and intervention...
Somehow I doubt they are going to be furiously scribbling in their notebook... "Subject lead the bot into traffic at which point a driver swerved and ran over a baby buggy. Then the mother of the baby pulled a gun and started shooting people at random in a fit of grief. Then the police came and were able to tazer the frantic woman to bring her down, but someone with a video camera was there to film the police interaction and accidentally tripped over the bot and it fell into a puddle of water and short circuited."
No...I'm pretty sure they would just stop it from entering traffic and allowing that horrible chain of events to unfold just so they could document it all in their notes. Of course there is also the fact that these things are about ankle high "robots" made out of cardboard and wheels with a little flag. They aren't exactly "OMG LOOKOUT!" material.
Yeah, what kind of fool assumes lawyers have any kind of allegiances... GOP, EFF, or otherwise!
Sorry...cheap lawyer jokes are just too tempting. This applies to doctors and lawyers, but why is it that their work is called a practice? You would think that given the importance of the issue you are going for you would rather be going to their expertise rather than their practice.:)
On a serious note....do you think it is a potentially good thing that some of those big name RIAA attack dogs are now going to be prevented from working these cases due to their new DoJ jobs? Do you think these guys that deep in RIAA pockets and/or ideologically friendly to the RIAA tactics/arguments or were they just doing the job they were being paid to do?
You mean like communicating with distant objects on the surface and in orbit around another planet using radio waves? Given that we built the transmitters on both ends we could arguably perform quite a few planetary motion experiments. How many planets in our solar system have man made transmitters orbiting? I imagine sorting out all of the relative movement would be a bit of a pain in the ass, but with so many out there there will only be so many motion paths that would line up with all of the measurements.
I do agree with your point though.:) Ultimately that is EXACTLY the line of thinking that the far right clings to. The same exact argument is used against almost every scientific thing they oppose. Climate - You can't test it, it isn't science! Evolution - You can't test it, it isn't science! Embryonic Stem Cells - All the tests have failed, so no test will ever succeed!
Interesting concept...So how do you plan on reconciling all other births? So we can send the kids away without their parents because they aren't citizens by birth and their parents/grandparents/howfarbackyouwant are not citizens? Maybe we can go with citizenship by birth if your parents are citizens...that will work out pretty good until someone has an immigrant parent. So yes indeed, let us think logically for just a small moment. We are going to "solve" a complex problem by making the rule set around that problem even more complex? We have that giant donated statue with the big fucking sign that says "Immigrants welcome" and a bunch of redneck assholes run up and have sprayed "No Vacancy" on it.
You want a fix... a real fix. A fix that reduces the rule set and acknowledges that our entire fucking nation is of immigrant origin (except those native tribes that we fenced up)? Tear down our insane and easily abused tax code and use Fair Tax. Well look at that...all those dirty leech immigrants are suddenly all paying full taxes. Of course...there is also that problematic reality that most illegal immigrants DO NOT collect welfare or other government assistance to begin with. I mean...what kind of moronic logic is being used to say that most people hiding from our government are going to sign up for government assistance? Or stealing jobs...cuz I totally know Americans lining up to pick fruit and clean toilets.
In case you haven't actually been paying attention...the problem isn't baby citizens being left behind that needs to be fixed. The parents are leaving their baby citizens here because they know they will live a better life than they would if they were to go back to their country of origin. All your plan will do is raise the stakes in not getting caught.
1. Saddam was a minority leader, and a worthless prick of one at that. Yes, the US kinda threw him to the wolves, but I suppose that isn't much different than the people he threw to the lions or wood chippers or so on. I mean...at least he got a relatively clean death compared to the sick shit he did. Ultimately, I think it would have been rather difficult to find pretty much anyone other than his own party members in that area of the world that would have kept him alive. Should we ask the kurds, the shiites, the sunnies, the saudies, the israelis, the kuwaitis and the iranians what each of their propositions for that bastard were? I suspect "hang him" would be the most tame response he could get. Now, I'm not saying that any of this is all well and good, but to point the finger at the US on his hanging is a bit goofy.
2. You implied that watching those cartoons and propoganda "continued the war in their minds". I SERIOUSLY doubt that anyone watching the South Park movie is thinking about the war. The notion that the South Park guys are working pro war propoganda is laughable at best. The WWII cartoons certainly were propoganda, but I doubt there were people "continuing the war in their minds" watching cartoons after the war was over.
3. Firstly, there are a great many people in the US that do remember it and I suspect looking at the George W Bush approval rating will show how irate most people are with his performance in that arena among others. In fact, people were so pissed off with the old method of business they voted in the first black POTUS. Secondly, if you really want to drag out learn from history I suggest to be fair that we drag out all of the European countries and their policy disasters that have been repeated for longer than the US has even existed. Arguably the US should have learned from those errors as well, but to pretend that Europe gets some kinda extra gold star in that department is dumb. The European nations have been at their squabbling amongst themselves and other nations for a great deal longer than the US has even existed...to listen to Europeans wag their finger and say "The US should do a better job at getting along" is pretty funny. (Note: I agree that the US should do a better job at getting along, but this is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black).
1. He wasn't hung by the US.
2. You are making gross and insane assumptions about the connection between cartoons and the war ending. I remember watching those Looney Toons frequently on TV some 40 years after the war ended.
3. Let us talk about European revenge and hate so long as you are going to bring it up. It was the US that told Europe "Don't punish Germany for WWI, try to rebuild". What did they do...punished Germany and set the stage for WWII. European revenge helped bring the entire world into a second world war and America gets the reputation for mindless revenge?
Everyone has their problems, but this "I'm a European and America is dumb" bullshit is just as stupid, mindless, and arrogant as what gets held up as the American stereotype. Welcome to being a hypocrit.
You know...the greatest irony of this is that it was a REPUBLICAN that warned of this. Eisenhower had a great many things to say on the subject of the military industrial complex and war in general. Unfortunately everyone associates the latest string of Republican fuckups with all Republican behavior. I'm not a big fan of some of Eisenhower's religious bent, but as far as understanding the threat of the military industrial complex and his understanding of war I will forgive him. He has a really great speech warning about the threats of the military industrial complex and making war a profitable endeavor.
Some choice quotes...please take the time to compare to our latest Republican "leader"
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
In short...he is the antithesis to modern Republican behavior, an excellent leader, and a true soldier. He was also human and made mistakes...but FAR better than the "leaders" we have had over the last few decades.
That is basically my approach, there has to be a really significant benefit and I have to know what exactly they are going to be gaining by this. Some organizations just want your information so they can communicate with you, others want them so they can build massive databases and habits and sell that to other people. I have found the best indicator of this is in the costs. If they are giving you something for nothing you can bet they are getting their benefit behind the scenes. TANSTAAFL!
I also didn't mean to imply that you were specifically guilty of that hypocrisy, just that almost every time this Google stuff comes up there are hordes of people defending Google and then just a story or two later those same people are crying foul of government policies doing the same type of thing. It just strikes me as stupid beyond measure.
My main point was that these days that private entity isn't significantly separated from government for your point to really matter. Look at the RIAA and friends for example. The Rumsfeld/Reagan stuff with the FDA and Monsanto/GD Searle and Aspertame is another good one to look at. A private entity and a government entity having that information is basically one and the same anymore. I don't understand why people are so quick to cry foul when the government does it directly yet are perfectly content to actively give private entities all of that data. For example...how monumentally stupid is it to cry that the government is trying to illegally read everyone's email and then sign up for gmail? So...the same people worried that the government may be implementing very costly and complex methods to intercept and process massive amounts of email are going to sign up for a service that actively advertises the fact that it uses its huge resource pool to scan/sort/search your email for you.
1) That extra step, in all likelyhood, will be handled by the private entity trying to make the sale.
2) "No, we swear, they just bought 5,000 licenses of our Foo Deluxe Government Edition" The part about unlimited access to the databases is in REALLY fine print in chapter 47 section 156 paragraph zz heading 4 of the EULA that no one ever reads anyways. If anything it makes it easier to hide the government access because all the government has to do is fill out a nice purchase order rather than futz with a bunch of manpower and equipment and the like.
3) Not at all, you just implied that the government is more of a threat with that information while implying that allowing private entities to have it is less dangerous
4) Just by implying that the government doing it directly and allowing private companies has a different outcome.
5) Honestly, that is a tough call. While I think the very existence of these databases is bad juju for everyone involved, I am a little torn about who should have them. Realistically, the government has never been known for its efficiency, quite the opposite even. With all of the red tape, interagency shenanagins, and other such nonsense I suspect that while the government certainly has a higher capability for directly doing "Bad Stuff(tm)" with the information, whether or not they could do it effectively is another issue entirely. Look at the botched mess the Do Not Fly list is. It is filled with junk data and inaccuracies and so on. A private company is going to have much more expertise and resources and incentive to be efficient. The government just throws more (of your) money at it and frequently doesn't get that great of results for their dollars. So I don't think counting on the government to screw up implementing something that was a bad idea to begin with is really a great option, but it certainly has a pretty decent track record of working out.
But could they do it again while unfucking themselves after the Vista fiasco? Where will they find the time to deal with the ARM problem while trying to manage this Windows 7 thing? The problem I see is that they are in a bit of a bind in recovering from Vista's failures. They have a great deal of wiggle room to screw up being the monopoly that they are and Linux still just coming short on that whole "year of the desktop" thing, but Linux and OS X are only gaining momentum right now and I don't think they can afford another screw up and hold on to the level of control they have enjoyed for years. Toss this all in with an economic meltdown leading to massive layoffs across the board and they are likely to have fewer staff to really manage that kind of undertaking and the consumer isn't going to have the dollars to throw down on stuff that 50+% of its cost is just the MS license.
On the enterprise side they have successfully driven up the TCO of Windows with their draconian licensing/activation nonsense as well. Coupled with the wide array of software compatibility issues that Vista has... Well...not exactly a recipe for growth in the enterprise arena. MS is pretty much moving on momentum and monopoly power at this point. If they don't pull their heads out of their asses and actually compete their strong arm model won't be able to carry them.
When NT4 was released for so many architectures they weren't facing much of a threat from anyone. Novell was starting into its downward spiral, Linux was barely even heard of outside of geek circles, OS/2 was already on its death bed, and Mac had considerably less market share than they do now. Since then Microsoft has mercilessly screwed their consumers as hard and as often as they can. Now they are finding themselves in a field where most people would like to see them taken down a notch if not fail outright and they have a few up and comers that look like they may be able to do just that in the coming years.
I work with a variety of systems and none of them get my blood boiling like the MS ones. OS X - No key, No activation, simple licensing. Linux - No key, No activation, very simple licensing. Solaris - No key, No activation, simple licensing. Windows Server - Key, No activation, God damned nightmare of draconian licensing with a variety of extra CALs and other silly shit. Windows XP Desktop - Key, draconian activation (if you are unfortunate enough to not have VLKs to reimage every OEM system that gets purchased), and more draconian licensing. Windows Vista - Key, convoluted draconian activation in multiple forms regardless of volume licensing, and more convoluted and draconian licensing. EVERY time I have dealt with our vendors on a new Windows system and asked about how we need to handle the licensing they have to go get their MS approved expert and even then I will get different f'ing answers on how it works and LITERALLY anywhere between 5 and 50 pages of PDF crap "explaining" all of the various options and methods to license and what you are allowed to do in each scenario.
That really isn't eliminating them from the pool of psychotic. All of these people envisioned a nation (or world) ruled by them. I am reasonably certain that Iran would indeed wipe Israel off the map the very moment they think they could get away with it. Much like Hitler did... Just because they are politically savvy and know what they really can't get away with doesn't make them any less psychotic.
Fox News is hardly the only one guilty of propaganda. I almost question whether or not we really have anything resembling a free press. Ultimately the vast majority of our media outlets are owned by a handful of people/organizations. So, rather than having a free press, we really just have rich people with disagreements and very loud voices.
The AC you were responding to was hidden so let me apologize for misunderstanding what you were getting at with your post. My point still stands about the nukes, but that article he linked is pretty stupid and gross oversimplification of a wide variety of subjects.
Really? I am pretty sure that whole yellow cake uranium thing was about...well...you know...nukes. Then there were all of those things about how he had the equipment to enrich uranium...which last I checked had nothing to do with biological or chemical weapons. Now, that certainly isn't to say that the bio and chem weapons weren't in the list given that the hospital in Baghdad was being used as a research center for bio weapons at one point and it isn't exactly a secret that Saddam liked using chem weapons, but to say that nukes weren't at the forefront of that little battle is pretty wrong.
Uhm...speaking of analytical thinking... Would you care to enumerate the number of nuclear weapons that were fired by Russia or the US at each other during the Cold War? I mean...the whole point is to NOT USE THE FUCKING THINGS. That is what Mutually Assured Destruction is all about. The notion that you could "win" a nuclear war was pretty much entirely abandoned a long time ago. The only people that really have any intention of USING them are psychotic. (See Iran declaring that Israel should be wiped off the map, or Dubya asking for "tactical" nuclear weapons to be developed). The whole point behind them is to join the ranks of countries that can bring a tremendous amount of hurt, because if you can't nuke someone you don't get taken seriously.
Iran - May have nukes or very close - No invasion.
NK - May have nukes or very close - No invasion.
Iraq - Everyone pretended they could have nukes, but most people knew they didn't - Invasion!
Iraq got stuck in a pretty bad situation. Admit to the world they don't have nuclear capabilities and aren't close to having them and face the wrath of the Iranians or Saudies as the world looked the other way, or pretend they did have the capabilities and hope to God that no one would invade.
NK is going to be very interested in demonstrating that it has nuclear capabilities and the ability to deliver them (even if at a rather limited range). It sends the message "fuck with us and we will murder millions". Now, I agree that there has been a great deal of overly aggressive rhetoric, but those NK folks aren't exactly the most friendly bunch to begin with. In fact their leadership tends to show quite a bit of psychotic behavior. There have been people defecting from NK for years telling the world that ol Kimmy thinks he can fight with the big dogs and win. The really disturbing ones are the people that escape to China and are shocked by how "free" they are there.
Now...to answer why would any nation want to be that isolated...well...because it allows their psychotic dictators to rule with an iron fist. Some of these freaks are content with ruling their little corner of the earth with absolute power rather than expanding their lands and making it harder to control with absolute power. Ol Kimmy fashions himself to be a God much like the Egyptian Pharohs...that kind of nonsense doesn't really work out well unless you keep the people isolated from the rest of the world, and what better way to do that then enlist the aid of the rest of the world.
Aside from the fact that your statement is a little flawed in light of that nice prison scandal where the private owners of the prison were paying off the judges to sentence people because the state paid them based on the incarcerated population... Or really any of the similar stories involving people/companies doing the same with disabled people that the state pays for the care of... We have the fact that instead of using billions of taxpayer dollars to build and maintain a massive collection/database thing they can just let the customers do it to themselves and then spend millions to buy copies of the database. That will be sure to leave them with extra millions to build more prisons to lock you up in since their collection efforts were so cheap.
So..basically what you are saying is that you believe that it would be better for governments to hide their data mining agendas by allowing companies to gather all of that data for them and then using things like national security letters behind the scenes to demand that data? Or maybe just demand that information from the private entity using other coersive methods. I suspect that the tried and true method would work best...just wave money at the private entity.
Why the hell would you even begin to believe that a private entity holding all of that information is somehow immune to government influence?
This is a question about allowing these databases to even exist, not who gets to hold the keys. Not unlike nuclear weapons...the ultimate threat is that they exist. There is a WIDE variety of ways for people that you don't want to have them to get them despite all of the efforts to keep them away. I mean...maybe you would prefer a scenario where a large company that owns massive databases of consumer information is effectively purchased by the federal government...you know...like the bank bailouts.
Not that I think Google is doing anything illegal or "wrong", but I am curious why people are so quick to scream bloody murder when governments spy on people yet willingly give mountains of data to a publically traded company. Seeing hordes of people rush to Google's defense here and mock those "stupid" people makes me wonder how many of them cry foul when the government tries to do it. Not to mention the fact that this company wants floating datacenters.
Massive databases full of information. Potential to move datacenter to international waters. Serving the shareholders.... Yeah...TOTALLY an organization to trust with hordes of information to be mined, public or not. Anyone with a shred of credibility in the security realm can tell you about how you can put together lots of public information to put together secret information. Hell, the internet has made a damned sport out of doing this with the latest techno gadgets with people digging through every little piece of public information to come out of a company to try and determine what super secret dodad they are about to release.
Now...to invoke Godwin's Law. I suggest everyone goes and looks up that little company called IBM and their role in the Holocaust. Money is king. Is it really so hard to believe that someone might pay very large sums of money for access to those databases to do "bad stuff"? It isn't like it hasn't happened before.
Lucky for most of us that it doesn't turn out to be some international incident due to a bunch of morons equating gift giving among diplomats as important foreign relations things. The real gifts happen behind the scenes and are worth FAR more than any DVD set or fancy pen could ever hold a candle to. Oh well... I guess that is how everyone keeps winding up with shitty ass leaders world wide.
You know.... Reading that article made me sick (even beyond the normal slashdotters aren't supposed to read the articles thing). We can't have positive foreign relations with Britain because the POTUS didn't give a government visitor fancy enough gifts? That is pretty unbelievably shallow and self absorbed media coverage even by American standards.
Slashdot Mirror
I would just say 1 & 2 get rolled into Fair Tax. Remove the entire ability for bizarre tax manipulations to even exist and that will solve a whole host of problems. It also has the side effect of fixing things like immigration as well.
3. This sounds nice, but I suspect the unintended consequences of this would be a nightmare. Big companies can afford to get sued for the real damages and call it a cost of being an asshole. The punitive damages piece puts the government back in the loop in a potentially ugly place. I suspect the government/business interactions surrounding determination/collection of punitive damages would be an ugly one.
4. This is just wishful thinking. If congress critters actually funded the USPTO office to a level that would allow them to do their job effectively then they wouldn't be able to gather so much lobbyist dollars in their personal bank accounts.
Sure it would...you just go back to the Ministry ... Ponies and demand that it isn't fair that you have to pay for anything connected to your free pony and it would be nice if they would pay for all of that too.
Now I want to go read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress again. Throwing ponies would have made that book way better.
Uhm...do you have the contact information for the Ministry of Fairness, Niceness, and Free Ponies at Taxpayer Expense? I would like a free pony.
If citizenship comes from being born to a citizen how long do you think it will be before weird challenges show up in court because one parent is a citizen and one is not? Or maybe one has gained citizenship and one has not. What if the child was born and THEN the parent(s) gains citizenship. The child was not born to a citizen, the parent is now a citizen, the child is not. I could probably come up with hundreds of potential bizarre scenarios that would cause this to be very troublesome. The last thing we need is more of this nonsense tying up our court system. You fail to see where this creates a problem because you haven't bothered really thinking it through on all of the unintended consequences.
No...I don't mean retroactive law. I mean the variations that could be possible by not using "born here = citizen". When was the last time you saw any idea/law written in a simplistic layman terms kinda way? They aren't written like that anymore. It is always a bunch of nonsensical legalistic goofiness that allows bizarre tap dancing through loopholes. So...your parents are citizens...but your grandparents living here are illegals! Now that means through some weird tap dance maneuver your parent's citizenship doesn't count and you are fucked!
At the end of the day all of the efforts to keep immigrants out of a country that has a "Statue of Liberty" with a big goddamned poem on the front about how every immigrant is welcome to forsake their homelands and come here is pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. I say as long as we are going to pull some stupid bullshit about kicking immigrants out we should be honest about it. The Irish, British, Italian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc, etc, etc,... all those fuckers can get the fuck out and we can give the whole nation back to the native Americans that we fenced up. Seriously...every argument in favor of this anti-immigration shit comes down to mostly flawed assumptions about taxes (where the legitimate issues could be easily fixed if our elected leaders didn't have such a vested interest in the game being so easily manipulated) and racism. Mostly racism.
The other piece that kills me is that rather than using a bunch of rednecks and the national guard to "defend" us from immigrants we could just put IRS agents along the border. "Welcome to America, here is your SSN, enjoy your stay!". Those fuckers can track people with more efficiency than any immigration agency could ever hope to achieve. It also brings the added bonus of making it difficult for shithead employers to abuse immigrants. Win Win if you ask me.
Uhm...I imagine it is hard for the observer to be observing what people are doing with the bots if the observer is not also there to prevent this kind of scenario through observation and intervention...
Somehow I doubt they are going to be furiously scribbling in their notebook... "Subject lead the bot into traffic at which point a driver swerved and ran over a baby buggy. Then the mother of the baby pulled a gun and started shooting people at random in a fit of grief. Then the police came and were able to tazer the frantic woman to bring her down, but someone with a video camera was there to film the police interaction and accidentally tripped over the bot and it fell into a puddle of water and short circuited."
No...I'm pretty sure they would just stop it from entering traffic and allowing that horrible chain of events to unfold just so they could document it all in their notes. Of course there is also the fact that these things are about ankle high "robots" made out of cardboard and wheels with a little flag. They aren't exactly "OMG LOOKOUT!" material.
Yeah, what kind of fool assumes lawyers have any kind of allegiances... GOP, EFF, or otherwise!
:)
Sorry...cheap lawyer jokes are just too tempting. This applies to doctors and lawyers, but why is it that their work is called a practice? You would think that given the importance of the issue you are going for you would rather be going to their expertise rather than their practice.
On a serious note....do you think it is a potentially good thing that some of those big name RIAA attack dogs are now going to be prevented from working these cases due to their new DoJ jobs? Do you think these guys that deep in RIAA pockets and/or ideologically friendly to the RIAA tactics/arguments or were they just doing the job they were being paid to do?
You mean like communicating with distant objects on the surface and in orbit around another planet using radio waves? Given that we built the transmitters on both ends we could arguably perform quite a few planetary motion experiments. How many planets in our solar system have man made transmitters orbiting? I imagine sorting out all of the relative movement would be a bit of a pain in the ass, but with so many out there there will only be so many motion paths that would line up with all of the measurements.
:) Ultimately that is EXACTLY the line of thinking that the far right clings to. The same exact argument is used against almost every scientific thing they oppose. Climate - You can't test it, it isn't science! Evolution - You can't test it, it isn't science! Embryonic Stem Cells - All the tests have failed, so no test will ever succeed!
I do agree with your point though.
Interesting concept...So how do you plan on reconciling all other births? So we can send the kids away without their parents because they aren't citizens by birth and their parents/grandparents/howfarbackyouwant are not citizens? Maybe we can go with citizenship by birth if your parents are citizens...that will work out pretty good until someone has an immigrant parent. So yes indeed, let us think logically for just a small moment. We are going to "solve" a complex problem by making the rule set around that problem even more complex? We have that giant donated statue with the big fucking sign that says "Immigrants welcome" and a bunch of redneck assholes run up and have sprayed "No Vacancy" on it.
You want a fix... a real fix. A fix that reduces the rule set and acknowledges that our entire fucking nation is of immigrant origin (except those native tribes that we fenced up)? Tear down our insane and easily abused tax code and use Fair Tax. Well look at that...all those dirty leech immigrants are suddenly all paying full taxes. Of course...there is also that problematic reality that most illegal immigrants DO NOT collect welfare or other government assistance to begin with. I mean...what kind of moronic logic is being used to say that most people hiding from our government are going to sign up for government assistance? Or stealing jobs...cuz I totally know Americans lining up to pick fruit and clean toilets.
In case you haven't actually been paying attention...the problem isn't baby citizens being left behind that needs to be fixed. The parents are leaving their baby citizens here because they know they will live a better life than they would if they were to go back to their country of origin. All your plan will do is raise the stakes in not getting caught.
1. Saddam was a minority leader, and a worthless prick of one at that. Yes, the US kinda threw him to the wolves, but I suppose that isn't much different than the people he threw to the lions or wood chippers or so on. I mean...at least he got a relatively clean death compared to the sick shit he did. Ultimately, I think it would have been rather difficult to find pretty much anyone other than his own party members in that area of the world that would have kept him alive. Should we ask the kurds, the shiites, the sunnies, the saudies, the israelis, the kuwaitis and the iranians what each of their propositions for that bastard were? I suspect "hang him" would be the most tame response he could get. Now, I'm not saying that any of this is all well and good, but to point the finger at the US on his hanging is a bit goofy.
2. You implied that watching those cartoons and propoganda "continued the war in their minds". I SERIOUSLY doubt that anyone watching the South Park movie is thinking about the war. The notion that the South Park guys are working pro war propoganda is laughable at best. The WWII cartoons certainly were propoganda, but I doubt there were people "continuing the war in their minds" watching cartoons after the war was over.
3. Firstly, there are a great many people in the US that do remember it and I suspect looking at the George W Bush approval rating will show how irate most people are with his performance in that arena among others. In fact, people were so pissed off with the old method of business they voted in the first black POTUS. Secondly, if you really want to drag out learn from history I suggest to be fair that we drag out all of the European countries and their policy disasters that have been repeated for longer than the US has even existed. Arguably the US should have learned from those errors as well, but to pretend that Europe gets some kinda extra gold star in that department is dumb. The European nations have been at their squabbling amongst themselves and other nations for a great deal longer than the US has even existed...to listen to Europeans wag their finger and say "The US should do a better job at getting along" is pretty funny. (Note: I agree that the US should do a better job at getting along, but this is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black).
1. He wasn't hung by the US.
2. You are making gross and insane assumptions about the connection between cartoons and the war ending. I remember watching those Looney Toons frequently on TV some 40 years after the war ended.
3. Let us talk about European revenge and hate so long as you are going to bring it up. It was the US that told Europe "Don't punish Germany for WWI, try to rebuild". What did they do...punished Germany and set the stage for WWII. European revenge helped bring the entire world into a second world war and America gets the reputation for mindless revenge?
Everyone has their problems, but this "I'm a European and America is dumb" bullshit is just as stupid, mindless, and arrogant as what gets held up as the American stereotype. Welcome to being a hypocrit.
You know...the greatest irony of this is that it was a REPUBLICAN that warned of this. Eisenhower had a great many things to say on the subject of the military industrial complex and war in general. Unfortunately everyone associates the latest string of Republican fuckups with all Republican behavior. I'm not a big fan of some of Eisenhower's religious bent, but as far as understanding the threat of the military industrial complex and his understanding of war I will forgive him. He has a really great speech warning about the threats of the military industrial complex and making war a profitable endeavor.
Some choice quotes...please take the time to compare to our latest Republican "leader"
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
In short...he is the antithesis to modern Republican behavior, an excellent leader, and a true soldier. He was also human and made mistakes...but FAR better than the "leaders" we have had over the last few decades.
That is basically my approach, there has to be a really significant benefit and I have to know what exactly they are going to be gaining by this. Some organizations just want your information so they can communicate with you, others want them so they can build massive databases and habits and sell that to other people. I have found the best indicator of this is in the costs. If they are giving you something for nothing you can bet they are getting their benefit behind the scenes. TANSTAAFL!
I also didn't mean to imply that you were specifically guilty of that hypocrisy, just that almost every time this Google stuff comes up there are hordes of people defending Google and then just a story or two later those same people are crying foul of government policies doing the same type of thing. It just strikes me as stupid beyond measure.
My main point was that these days that private entity isn't significantly separated from government for your point to really matter. Look at the RIAA and friends for example. The Rumsfeld/Reagan stuff with the FDA and Monsanto/GD Searle and Aspertame is another good one to look at. A private entity and a government entity having that information is basically one and the same anymore. I don't understand why people are so quick to cry foul when the government does it directly yet are perfectly content to actively give private entities all of that data. For example...how monumentally stupid is it to cry that the government is trying to illegally read everyone's email and then sign up for gmail? So...the same people worried that the government may be implementing very costly and complex methods to intercept and process massive amounts of email are going to sign up for a service that actively advertises the fact that it uses its huge resource pool to scan/sort/search your email for you.
1) That extra step, in all likelyhood, will be handled by the private entity trying to make the sale.
2) "No, we swear, they just bought 5,000 licenses of our Foo Deluxe Government Edition" The part about unlimited access to the databases is in REALLY fine print in chapter 47 section 156 paragraph zz heading 4 of the EULA that no one ever reads anyways. If anything it makes it easier to hide the government access because all the government has to do is fill out a nice purchase order rather than futz with a bunch of manpower and equipment and the like.
3) Not at all, you just implied that the government is more of a threat with that information while implying that allowing private entities to have it is less dangerous
4) Just by implying that the government doing it directly and allowing private companies has a different outcome.
5) Honestly, that is a tough call. While I think the very existence of these databases is bad juju for everyone involved, I am a little torn about who should have them. Realistically, the government has never been known for its efficiency, quite the opposite even. With all of the red tape, interagency shenanagins, and other such nonsense I suspect that while the government certainly has a higher capability for directly doing "Bad Stuff(tm)" with the information, whether or not they could do it effectively is another issue entirely. Look at the botched mess the Do Not Fly list is. It is filled with junk data and inaccuracies and so on. A private company is going to have much more expertise and resources and incentive to be efficient. The government just throws more (of your) money at it and frequently doesn't get that great of results for their dollars. So I don't think counting on the government to screw up implementing something that was a bad idea to begin with is really a great option, but it certainly has a pretty decent track record of working out.
But could they do it again while unfucking themselves after the Vista fiasco? Where will they find the time to deal with the ARM problem while trying to manage this Windows 7 thing? The problem I see is that they are in a bit of a bind in recovering from Vista's failures. They have a great deal of wiggle room to screw up being the monopoly that they are and Linux still just coming short on that whole "year of the desktop" thing, but Linux and OS X are only gaining momentum right now and I don't think they can afford another screw up and hold on to the level of control they have enjoyed for years. Toss this all in with an economic meltdown leading to massive layoffs across the board and they are likely to have fewer staff to really manage that kind of undertaking and the consumer isn't going to have the dollars to throw down on stuff that 50+% of its cost is just the MS license.
On the enterprise side they have successfully driven up the TCO of Windows with their draconian licensing/activation nonsense as well. Coupled with the wide array of software compatibility issues that Vista has... Well...not exactly a recipe for growth in the enterprise arena. MS is pretty much moving on momentum and monopoly power at this point. If they don't pull their heads out of their asses and actually compete their strong arm model won't be able to carry them.
When NT4 was released for so many architectures they weren't facing much of a threat from anyone. Novell was starting into its downward spiral, Linux was barely even heard of outside of geek circles, OS/2 was already on its death bed, and Mac had considerably less market share than they do now. Since then Microsoft has mercilessly screwed their consumers as hard and as often as they can. Now they are finding themselves in a field where most people would like to see them taken down a notch if not fail outright and they have a few up and comers that look like they may be able to do just that in the coming years.
I work with a variety of systems and none of them get my blood boiling like the MS ones. OS X - No key, No activation, simple licensing. Linux - No key, No activation, very simple licensing. Solaris - No key, No activation, simple licensing. Windows Server - Key, No activation, God damned nightmare of draconian licensing with a variety of extra CALs and other silly shit. Windows XP Desktop - Key, draconian activation (if you are unfortunate enough to not have VLKs to reimage every OEM system that gets purchased), and more draconian licensing. Windows Vista - Key, convoluted draconian activation in multiple forms regardless of volume licensing, and more convoluted and draconian licensing. EVERY time I have dealt with our vendors on a new Windows system and asked about how we need to handle the licensing they have to go get their MS approved expert and even then I will get different f'ing answers on how it works and LITERALLY anywhere between 5 and 50 pages of PDF crap "explaining" all of the various options and methods to license and what you are allowed to do in each scenario.
That really isn't eliminating them from the pool of psychotic. All of these people envisioned a nation (or world) ruled by them. I am reasonably certain that Iran would indeed wipe Israel off the map the very moment they think they could get away with it. Much like Hitler did... Just because they are politically savvy and know what they really can't get away with doesn't make them any less psychotic. Fox News is hardly the only one guilty of propaganda. I almost question whether or not we really have anything resembling a free press. Ultimately the vast majority of our media outlets are owned by a handful of people/organizations. So, rather than having a free press, we really just have rich people with disagreements and very loud voices.
The AC you were responding to was hidden so let me apologize for misunderstanding what you were getting at with your post. My point still stands about the nukes, but that article he linked is pretty stupid and gross oversimplification of a wide variety of subjects.
Really? I am pretty sure that whole yellow cake uranium thing was about...well...you know...nukes. Then there were all of those things about how he had the equipment to enrich uranium...which last I checked had nothing to do with biological or chemical weapons. Now, that certainly isn't to say that the bio and chem weapons weren't in the list given that the hospital in Baghdad was being used as a research center for bio weapons at one point and it isn't exactly a secret that Saddam liked using chem weapons, but to say that nukes weren't at the forefront of that little battle is pretty wrong.
Uhm...speaking of analytical thinking... Would you care to enumerate the number of nuclear weapons that were fired by Russia or the US at each other during the Cold War? I mean...the whole point is to NOT USE THE FUCKING THINGS. That is what Mutually Assured Destruction is all about. The notion that you could "win" a nuclear war was pretty much entirely abandoned a long time ago. The only people that really have any intention of USING them are psychotic. (See Iran declaring that Israel should be wiped off the map, or Dubya asking for "tactical" nuclear weapons to be developed). The whole point behind them is to join the ranks of countries that can bring a tremendous amount of hurt, because if you can't nuke someone you don't get taken seriously.
Iran - May have nukes or very close - No invasion.
NK - May have nukes or very close - No invasion.
Iraq - Everyone pretended they could have nukes, but most people knew they didn't - Invasion!
Iraq got stuck in a pretty bad situation. Admit to the world they don't have nuclear capabilities and aren't close to having them and face the wrath of the Iranians or Saudies as the world looked the other way, or pretend they did have the capabilities and hope to God that no one would invade.
NK is going to be very interested in demonstrating that it has nuclear capabilities and the ability to deliver them (even if at a rather limited range). It sends the message "fuck with us and we will murder millions". Now, I agree that there has been a great deal of overly aggressive rhetoric, but those NK folks aren't exactly the most friendly bunch to begin with. In fact their leadership tends to show quite a bit of psychotic behavior. There have been people defecting from NK for years telling the world that ol Kimmy thinks he can fight with the big dogs and win. The really disturbing ones are the people that escape to China and are shocked by how "free" they are there.
Now...to answer why would any nation want to be that isolated...well...because it allows their psychotic dictators to rule with an iron fist. Some of these freaks are content with ruling their little corner of the earth with absolute power rather than expanding their lands and making it harder to control with absolute power. Ol Kimmy fashions himself to be a God much like the Egyptian Pharohs...that kind of nonsense doesn't really work out well unless you keep the people isolated from the rest of the world, and what better way to do that then enlist the aid of the rest of the world.
Buy an abacus and don't worry about it.
Aside from the fact that your statement is a little flawed in light of that nice prison scandal where the private owners of the prison were paying off the judges to sentence people because the state paid them based on the incarcerated population... Or really any of the similar stories involving people/companies doing the same with disabled people that the state pays for the care of... We have the fact that instead of using billions of taxpayer dollars to build and maintain a massive collection/database thing they can just let the customers do it to themselves and then spend millions to buy copies of the database. That will be sure to leave them with extra millions to build more prisons to lock you up in since their collection efforts were so cheap.
So..basically what you are saying is that you believe that it would be better for governments to hide their data mining agendas by allowing companies to gather all of that data for them and then using things like national security letters behind the scenes to demand that data? Or maybe just demand that information from the private entity using other coersive methods. I suspect that the tried and true method would work best...just wave money at the private entity.
Why the hell would you even begin to believe that a private entity holding all of that information is somehow immune to government influence?
This is a question about allowing these databases to even exist, not who gets to hold the keys. Not unlike nuclear weapons...the ultimate threat is that they exist. There is a WIDE variety of ways for people that you don't want to have them to get them despite all of the efforts to keep them away. I mean...maybe you would prefer a scenario where a large company that owns massive databases of consumer information is effectively purchased by the federal government...you know...like the bank bailouts.
Not that I think Google is doing anything illegal or "wrong", but I am curious why people are so quick to scream bloody murder when governments spy on people yet willingly give mountains of data to a publically traded company. Seeing hordes of people rush to Google's defense here and mock those "stupid" people makes me wonder how many of them cry foul when the government tries to do it. Not to mention the fact that this company wants floating datacenters.
Massive databases full of information. Potential to move datacenter to international waters. Serving the shareholders.... Yeah...TOTALLY an organization to trust with hordes of information to be mined, public or not. Anyone with a shred of credibility in the security realm can tell you about how you can put together lots of public information to put together secret information. Hell, the internet has made a damned sport out of doing this with the latest techno gadgets with people digging through every little piece of public information to come out of a company to try and determine what super secret dodad they are about to release.
Now...to invoke Godwin's Law. I suggest everyone goes and looks up that little company called IBM and their role in the Holocaust. Money is king. Is it really so hard to believe that someone might pay very large sums of money for access to those databases to do "bad stuff"? It isn't like it hasn't happened before.
Lucky for most of us that it doesn't turn out to be some international incident due to a bunch of morons equating gift giving among diplomats as important foreign relations things. The real gifts happen behind the scenes and are worth FAR more than any DVD set or fancy pen could ever hold a candle to. Oh well... I guess that is how everyone keeps winding up with shitty ass leaders world wide.
You know.... Reading that article made me sick (even beyond the normal slashdotters aren't supposed to read the articles thing). We can't have positive foreign relations with Britain because the POTUS didn't give a government visitor fancy enough gifts? That is pretty unbelievably shallow and self absorbed media coverage even by American standards.