The republicans are big believers in a centrally managed economy (socialism), so long as they are the managers.
You were closer without the parenthetic: a centrally-managed economy is just that, (also known as a planned economy.) Socialism is public or workers' ownership of the means of production. They're not mutually exclusive — for example, worker cooperatives, which are socialist businesses, can and do exist in decentralized; free market; and state capitalist economies, including the United States.
From those who kill [liberty] in the name of defending it.
Schumer has no interest in liberty; he's one of the most hardcore authoritarians in the Senate. Why these assholes don't have term limits is beyond my comprehension — Feinstein (with her spy-fetishist "oversight") is good example of how too much time in office results in power-madness and opportunities to become corrupt.
I'm not just picking on Democrats here; (I'm further left/libertarian than Jill Stein;) Ds and Rs are all right-authoritarians in my eyes. Amongst them, though, Schumer takes the cake when it comes to pissing on the Bill of Rights (and not just the Second Amendment). I remember some years back, he voted for a "Juvenile Justice" bill to prosecute more kids as adults in order to extend their sentences, yet with no provisions to grant kids greater liberty in exchange for this added responsibility.
In the same way, posting "No comment" might be generally a perfectly acceptable thing to say about NSL, but if you have announced ahead of time that "No comment" really means "Yes" then what you are actually communicating is not the superficial English meaning. You are likely to get crapped on for the actual meaning of your communication, not some overly-clever argument about dictionary definitions of words.
What if the adopter(s) of this system never discussed what it was about or what it was for? Users (and legal adversaries) would have to make their own assumptions as to the system's purpose. As the system is more widely deployed and more people become aware of the system, the more likely they are to arrive at the correct assumption. As I mentioned legal adversaries, widespread adoption may work against the system, if judges decide that their assumptions are correct.
Mass surveillance and data collection is the business model at companies like Google and Yahoo. If their frustrations are genuine it is only that they are angry that their data is being taken without being properly paid for it.
That's right; this discussion's headline probably should have read, "How Corporations Can Retain, Increase Profits Following Surveillance Revelations." Likewise, the summary's author spoke of "anger and resentment of the large tech companies" — perhaps within those companies (due to inadequate payment, as you mentioned) — the only emotional attribute of a corporation is insatiable greed, and like any other sociopathic entity, it will feign and project the illusion of whatever human attribute is determined most likely to maximize profits. Here, surveillance/advertizing corporations feign anger, empathy, and solidarity over the sanctity of peoples' private/personal information, in order to persuade people to continue to freely hand over that information, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. If an individual behaved this way, I think that person would likely be called a hypocrite or con artist.
Even while cumbersome I much prefer sitting in an airplane where people had to pass a check than one without. Honestly, what would be your preference?
Honestly, I'd prefer that to travel without being subject to a warrantless search with no probable cause. I'd rather take a statistically insignificant risk and retain my Constitutional and human rights, as opposed to existing as an insignificantly-safer coward. I can't see the bogeymen in the shadows that the ruling class want me to fear; I only fear for our liberty.
If there were an airline that allowed passengers to board after passing through an old-style, cursory weapons check — the type of security that's still used at small municipal courts — or even no security, other than a reinforced cockpit door, I would have kept flying during the past seven years. The feelings I experience when my rights are violated are such that it isn't worth it for me to fly anywhere, for any reason. Until the Fourth Amendment and all-around sanity returns to US airports, I'll have no part in that degrading and unconstitutional display of cowardice.
It's probably the big green download buttons that appear on every download page. I never got quite as far as installing toolbars, but only because the downloaded executable name didn't look like the one I was expecting (and, 10 seconds later, the real download started).
I'd guess I use the big green button about 67-75% of the time, and never got a download I didn't want. I suppose ABP, NoScript, RequestPolicy, Ghostery, PeerBlock, HOSTS, or referer/user-agent spoofing might have something to do with it.
The user above who said that Adblock is security software is right — I consider the countermeasures I listed above to be so as well.
I have I better idea. Don't partner with ad vendors/networks that try to put malware on your user's computers.
Adblock plus is security software.
I thought we had a civic duty to download and absorb corporate propaganda in order to earn a profit for individuals or organizations that want to publish information on the Internet, but don't feel that their information is important enough for them to pay the cost of publishing it themselves, like the individuals with Internet access in the early 1990s did.
Now that the Web is commercialized, it's all "hey asshole, install this malware that's disguised as corporate propaganda, so I can make money..," or "hey dumb-ass, gimme all your private and personal information so I can sell it for shitloads of money, and you get to use this crap-SaaS with no privacy or guarantees, instead of that quality FOSS that you install locally and have control over..."
I couldn't believe it when I installed some software from Sourceforge a while back and ended up with a malware toolbar in my browser (that was a huge PITA to remove, no less). At first I thought it was a mistake, that I *must* have gotten it from somewhere else. Then when I heard similar stories from others and realized it was intentional, just a cheap money grab--I knew the Sourceforge I once knew and trusted could never be trusted by me (or supported) ever again. Sad day.
Was there a check-box to opt-out of the malware installation, or was the malware installed silently? I've installed several programs from SF recently, and I read all of the dialogs, but I haven't seen any opt-outs or malware.
That's not capitalism. You're thinking about Obamacare. It's called socialism.
No, socialist healthcare would be doctors, nurses, technicians, and custodians owning the hospitals; biologists, chemists, and chemical engineers owning the pharmaceutical companies; pharmacists owning the pharmacies; and so on. Socialism is workers' ownership of the means of production.
You might be thinking of "government owns and operates the healthcare system;" which is nationalized or national/public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are the closest things we have to national or public healthcare systems.
Corporations working together with government for mutual benefit is fascism, which is probably the most fitting label for Obamacare; otherwise crony capitalism, as others have suggested.
"He has gassed his own people." —Bush II, on Saddam Hussein
"He has gassed his own people." —Myself, on Obama, Bush II, Clinton, and others, for which I cannot remember specific incidences.
I've been considering this hypocrisy ever since al-Qaeda spilled — and/or Syrian government forces dispersed — sarin in Damascus.
Thank you, CanHasDIY — it's reassuring to know that others recognize that US government forces routinely "[gas their] own people," too, when it disagrees with an exercise of the First Amendment, or when it's fighting its civil wars on drugs and terra', etc.
Some may say "well, sarin is more lethal than CS, so there's a big difference." Well, there are lethal and non-lethal doses for both sarin and CS, and people in the US have died from exposure to lethal doses of CS deployed by US government forces. To cite one example off the top of my head, a girl in the Branch Davidian compound died from CS exposure during the ATF/FBI attack on their compound — this cause of death can be determined by cyanide present in the body; absorbed CS is converted into cyanide by the human body.
not electing judges at all would even be better - to much temptation to turn down that death row appeal for the mentally subnormal black man because it wont play well with the electors
I agree with the second part of your statement, and I'm somewhat familiar with the situation you referenced — I need to look closer, but I can only withstand learning about just so much of the horror our world has to offer before I need a break.
As for the first part, I'm not aware of any superior replacements for judge-based judicial systems, but I do think that appeals should be guaranteed*, and I think the death penalty is both shameful and barbaric, and I know that it's not a deterrent and that its irrevocable nature leads to the most abhorrent miscarriages of justice.
* When an appeal is denied, it leads me to believe that the state or state actors are trying to hide something — after all, exonerating a condemned person is an admission to having nearly killed that person, perhaps based on insufficient or suppressed evidence. Better for the system to kill the person quickly and quietly, and let the case and any new evidence die and be buried along with the person they've just killed. Why save a poor person's life, when you can save money and save face instead?
I suppose that could happen, but I find it hard to picture a government prosecutor earning more money than a defense attorney.
Is that really what we're looking for?
No — I was merely considering ways to reduce collusion between judges with cops and prosecutors against individuals who may very well be innocent of the crimes they've been accused of. It's like a predator versus prey: For the prosecutor/predator, it's just another payday, while for the defendant/prey, it's a harrowing struggle to keep their life and liberty.
You think defense attorneys are any more honest? They are equally willing to cheat and lie, they just work for a different client.
Not necessarily, but I consider their role more honorable, and their importance far greater than that of the prosecutors' (who, in my observation, behave more like persecutors than prosecutors (cf. Aaron Swartz; coercive plea bargaining; etc.)) — a viewpoint I've derived in part from Blackstone's formulation*, which you quoted below.
What this would accomplish is encouraging talented lawyers to become defense attorneys rather than prosecutors. And this would be good for society, in a "Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man is convicted" sense.
Absolutely; I agree.
* Considering the barbarity of our penal system in the US — complete with federal and (some) states' government's latitude to kill its own citizens — I would adjust Blackstone's formulation closer to 1,000:1. Blackstone's 10:1 is more appropriate for more advanced, effective, humane, and civilized penal systems, such as those found in Scandinavia. I believe that no irrevocable harm should be dispensed from a system that is so imperfect as ours for determining a person's guilt. Can you imagine the horror of a cop "finding" a brick of cocaine or heroin (from a previous, under-documented bust) that he just slipped onto the back seat of your car?
You're making a fundamental error: you're assuming that the US Political Spectrum is the same as the rest of the planet.
That is far from the reality: the US spectrum is decidedly to the right of most other nations. What is considered Conservative in most countries is center-left at best in the US. ..
Think of it as the Fahrenheit scale of Politics. ..
I disagree. Just because the dominant parties are both right-wing doesn't mean the people are. I'm further left/libertarian than Jill Stein, yet I've still voted for Democrats in the past (something that I've stopped doing,) when all of the other candidates were even further right.
Look at the candidates from the 2012 Presidential election; there were two left-of-center candidates, but many US liberals (and right-of-center "liberals") are led to believe that voting for a candidate that closely supports their views is "wasting their votes." Also note that Obama's 2008 campaign presented him as a left-libertarian, but he rules as a right-authoritarian.
If our legal system was primarily driven by law then yes, but there is way too much politics involved here. Judges, the humans who get to decide such things, have a significant conflict of interests but will not recuse themselves, and it is unlikely they will rule against their own community's systematic behavior.
I think judges should elected from pools of defense attorneys — no former prosecutors. Defense attorneys are used to defending people's Constitutional rights, while prosecutors are used to suppressing evidence and skirting Constitutional limits in order to put away "bad guys" even when the defendant is actually a "good guy." Defense attorneys give the people the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to the (police) state.
You think it's "rather funny" that they might think you have an interest in beating polygraph examinations if you bought a book on beating polygraph examinations?
I do. I've downloaded textbooks on explosives and fractional distillation, and DSM IV TR, to name a few (out of thousands) — they don't mean I'm going into the demolition business, building a petroleum refinery, or practicing psychiatry. I'm also interested in beating polygraph tests, but that doesn't mean I'd ever consensually submit to taking one.
I think "curiosity = suspicious" will lead us on dark path to an ignorant and paranoid society, if we're not there already.
Next up: A watch-list of people who have failed to purchase dream-catchers, healing crystals, Ouija boards, homeopathic "medicine," magic 8-balls, or religious paraphernalia in the past ten years.
That'd work, excepting one small detail: Unlike Faust's trading of his soul in order to gain knowledge, Faustbook accepts souls* in order for Fuckerberg to gain complete knowledge over about his victims. Worse than a Faustian bargain, it is — just as I opined above — a straight-up sucker deal.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." —Cardinal Richelieu
* My secular interpretation of "souls" in this context: Anything given up that can bite one in the ass minutes or decades later — (e.g., compromising pics (e.g., close proximity to a possible water-pipe (used to smoke drugs!) or large container of part-ethanol), criminal admissions, evidence of personal backstabbing or betrayal, conduct unbecoming a wage slave (a vulnerability especially to those in Right-to-be-canned—just-because states and those deprived of adequate trade union protection), letting it slip that oneself is an Arab/Muslim in the US with an interest in science/engineering/photography/aircraft, disclosing a health problem, making a joke involving guns, bombs, and/or airports, expressing an interest in gunpowder/backpacking/pressure-cooking, discussing an interest or activity that's "innocent" today but targeted by over-funded TLAs looking for "terrorists" (or whoever's on the "threat" menu) another day, when they come looking... etc.).
I haven't heard that one... Farcebook, Facecrook... Fuck(erberg's)book, obfuscated with self-censorship?
Mark Fuckerberg's scheme is to collect billions of dollars worth of marks' PII, then pimp it all out to his customers (NSA, FBI, FSB, corporate propagandists, your worst enemy, etc.). The mark's cut of the money made from selling his or her PII amounts to some zero dollars and cents per year, plus inundation with targeted corporate propaganda meant to manipulate the mark's decisions/habits/behaviors, and the creation of opportunities for security/privacy/identity exploitations. Maybe I'm just totally bananas, but this arrangement strikes me as a sucker deal. Hence, I consider "Facecrook" to be the scheme's most fitting name.
I don't need any reason not to be a mark for Fuckerberg and his Facecrook — I can't conceive a reason to become one in the first place. The only I can think up for this scheme is to sign up one's enemies.
I saw a really weird shooting star once while traveling. It was shooting upwards, was a really bright green, and flashed as it went.
It sounds like you might have witnessed upper-atmospheric lightning. If you're unfamiliar with these phenomena, please see some of the rare* videos that have been captured. Although it might** have been MIR's jettisoned computer, (which might explain the green color (i.e., burning copper wire)), UAL would account for both the color and the upward trajectory.
* Although witnessed for decades by pilots, their stories had been dismissed. UAL has only recently been recognized as being "real," and research is in its infancy. As such, the number of pictures and video clips that have been collected so far are few in number.
** I say "might" because I'm not familiar with the appearance of artificial satellite re-entries.
Better than referring to it as "making love" as the media seem to like doing at the moment. I think it's so they don't have to use the word sex - probably thinking of the children. The Daily Fail is particularly keen on referring to lions and tigers making love.
I also view the euphemism "pr0n" as another manifestation of puritanism. I'll see an entire paragraph written using proper spelling, with this sole word written in "1337 5p34k." Being too prudish to spell "porn" properly doesn't strike me as being particularly 'leet.
But today you are actually rewarded for being a socialist.
Do you mean, for example, the workers that own and operate Moosewood Restaurant in Ithica, NY, or Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville, NC? They're rewarded with customer patronage, but also (generally) low maximum/minimum wage ratios, decent job security (e.g., no fear of being fired in order to increase stock price), the satisfaction in working for themselves, and the democratic participation in decisions that affect themselves and their business — as opposed to being compelled by external and/or superfluous influences (e.g., shareholders, and often unaccountable, outsider CEOs) — liberties that are, sadly, unavailable to wage-slaves.
Slashdot Mirror
The republicans are big believers in a centrally managed economy (socialism), so long as they are the managers.
You were closer without the parenthetic: a centrally-managed economy is just that, (also known as a planned economy.) Socialism is public or workers' ownership of the means of production. They're not mutually exclusive — for example, worker cooperatives, which are socialist businesses, can and do exist in decentralized; free market; and state capitalist economies, including the United States.
From those who kill [liberty] in the name of defending it.
Schumer has no interest in liberty; he's one of the most hardcore authoritarians in the Senate. Why these assholes don't have term limits is beyond my comprehension — Feinstein (with her spy-fetishist "oversight") is good example of how too much time in office results in power-madness and opportunities to become corrupt.
I'm not just picking on Democrats here; (I'm further left/libertarian than Jill Stein;) Ds and Rs are all right-authoritarians in my eyes. Amongst them, though, Schumer takes the cake when it comes to pissing on the Bill of Rights (and not just the Second Amendment). I remember some years back, he voted for a "Juvenile Justice" bill to prosecute more kids as adults in order to extend their sentences, yet with no provisions to grant kids greater liberty in exchange for this added responsibility.
In the same way, posting "No comment" might be generally a perfectly acceptable thing to say about NSL, but if you have announced ahead of time that "No comment" really means "Yes" then what you are actually communicating is not the superficial English meaning. You are likely to get crapped on for the actual meaning of your communication, not some overly-clever argument about dictionary definitions of words.
What if the adopter(s) of this system never discussed what it was about or what it was for? Users (and legal adversaries) would have to make their own assumptions as to the system's purpose. As the system is more widely deployed and more people become aware of the system, the more likely they are to arrive at the correct assumption. As I mentioned legal adversaries, widespread adoption may work against the system, if judges decide that their assumptions are correct.
Mass surveillance and data collection is the business model at companies like Google and Yahoo. If their frustrations are genuine it is only that they are angry that their data is being taken without being properly paid for it.
That's right; this discussion's headline probably should have read, "How Corporations Can Retain, Increase Profits Following Surveillance Revelations." Likewise, the summary's author spoke of "anger and resentment of the large tech companies" — perhaps within those companies (due to inadequate payment, as you mentioned) — the only emotional attribute of a corporation is insatiable greed, and like any other sociopathic entity, it will feign and project the illusion of whatever human attribute is determined most likely to maximize profits. Here, surveillance/advertizing corporations feign anger, empathy, and solidarity over the sanctity of peoples' private/personal information, in order to persuade people to continue to freely hand over that information, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. If an individual behaved this way, I think that person would likely be called a hypocrite or con artist.
Even while cumbersome I much prefer sitting in an airplane where people had to pass a check than one without. Honestly, what would be your preference?
Honestly, I'd prefer that to travel without being subject to a warrantless search with no probable cause. I'd rather take a statistically insignificant risk and retain my Constitutional and human rights, as opposed to existing as an insignificantly-safer coward. I can't see the bogeymen in the shadows that the ruling class want me to fear; I only fear for our liberty.
If there were an airline that allowed passengers to board after passing through an old-style, cursory weapons check — the type of security that's still used at small municipal courts — or even no security, other than a reinforced cockpit door, I would have kept flying during the past seven years. The feelings I experience when my rights are violated are such that it isn't worth it for me to fly anywhere, for any reason. Until the Fourth Amendment and all-around sanity returns to US airports, I'll have no part in that degrading and unconstitutional display of cowardice.
It's probably the big green download buttons that appear on every download page.
I never got quite as far as installing toolbars, but only because the downloaded executable name didn't look like the one I was expecting (and, 10 seconds later, the real download started).
I'd guess I use the big green button about 67-75% of the time, and never got a download I didn't want. I suppose ABP, NoScript, RequestPolicy, Ghostery, PeerBlock, HOSTS, or referer/user-agent spoofing might have something to do with it.
The user above who said that Adblock is security software is right — I consider the countermeasures I listed above to be so as well.
I have I better idea. Don't partner with ad vendors/networks that try to put malware on your user's computers.
Adblock plus is security software.
I thought we had a civic duty to download and absorb corporate propaganda in order to earn a profit for individuals or organizations that want to publish information on the Internet, but don't feel that their information is important enough for them to pay the cost of publishing it themselves, like the individuals with Internet access in the early 1990s did.
Now that the Web is commercialized, it's all "hey asshole, install this malware that's disguised as corporate propaganda, so I can make money..," or "hey dumb-ass, gimme all your private and personal information so I can sell it for shitloads of money, and you get to use this crap-SaaS with no privacy or guarantees, instead of that quality FOSS that you install locally and have control over..."
I couldn't believe it when I installed some software from Sourceforge a while back and ended up with a malware toolbar in my browser (that was a huge PITA to remove, no less). At first I thought it was a mistake, that I *must* have gotten it from somewhere else. Then when I heard similar stories from others and realized it was intentional, just a cheap money grab--I knew the Sourceforge I once knew and trusted could never be trusted by me (or supported) ever again. Sad day.
Was there a check-box to opt-out of the malware installation, or was the malware installed silently? I've installed several programs from SF recently, and I read all of the dialogs, but I haven't seen any opt-outs or malware.
That's not capitalism. You're thinking about Obamacare. It's called socialism.
No, socialist healthcare would be doctors, nurses, technicians, and custodians owning the hospitals; biologists, chemists, and chemical engineers owning the pharmaceutical companies; pharmacists owning the pharmacies; and so on. Socialism is workers' ownership of the means of production.
You might be thinking of "government owns and operates the healthcare system;" which is nationalized or national/public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are the closest things we have to national or public healthcare systems.
Corporations working together with government for mutual benefit is fascism, which is probably the most fitting label for Obamacare; otherwise crony capitalism, as others have suggested.
"He has gassed his own people." —Bush II, on Saddam Hussein
"He has gassed his own people." —Myself, on Obama, Bush II, Clinton, and others, for which I cannot remember specific incidences.
I've been considering this hypocrisy ever since al-Qaeda spilled — and/or Syrian government forces dispersed — sarin in Damascus.
Thank you, CanHasDIY — it's reassuring to know that others recognize that US government forces routinely "[gas their] own people," too, when it disagrees with an exercise of the First Amendment, or when it's fighting its civil wars on drugs and terra', etc.
Some may say "well, sarin is more lethal than CS, so there's a big difference." Well, there are lethal and non-lethal doses for both sarin and CS, and people in the US have died from exposure to lethal doses of CS deployed by US government forces. To cite one example off the top of my head, a girl in the Branch Davidian compound died from CS exposure during the ATF/FBI attack on their compound — this cause of death can be determined by cyanide present in the body; absorbed CS is converted into cyanide by the human body.
not electing judges at all would even be better - to much temptation to turn down that death row appeal for the mentally subnormal black man because it wont play well with the electors
I agree with the second part of your statement, and I'm somewhat familiar with the situation you referenced — I need to look closer, but I can only withstand learning about just so much of the horror our world has to offer before I need a break.
As for the first part, I'm not aware of any superior replacements for judge-based judicial systems, but I do think that appeals should be guaranteed*, and I think the death penalty is both shameful and barbaric, and I know that it's not a deterrent and that its irrevocable nature leads to the most abhorrent miscarriages of justice.
* When an appeal is denied, it leads me to believe that the state or state actors are trying to hide something — after all, exonerating a condemned person is an admission to having nearly killed that person, perhaps based on insufficient or suppressed evidence. Better for the system to kill the person quickly and quietly, and let the case and any new evidence die and be buried along with the person they've just killed. Why save a poor person's life, when you can save money and save face instead?
It just means they go wherever the money is.
I suppose that could happen, but I find it hard to picture a government prosecutor earning more money than a defense attorney.
Is that really what we're looking for?
No — I was merely considering ways to reduce collusion between judges with cops and prosecutors against individuals who may very well be innocent of the crimes they've been accused of. It's like a predator versus prey: For the prosecutor/predator, it's just another payday, while for the defendant/prey, it's a harrowing struggle to keep their life and liberty.
You think defense attorneys are any more honest? They are equally willing to cheat and lie, they just work for a different client.
Not necessarily, but I consider their role more honorable, and their importance far greater than that of the prosecutors' (who, in my observation, behave more like persecutors than prosecutors (cf. Aaron Swartz; coercive plea bargaining; etc.)) — a viewpoint I've derived in part from Blackstone's formulation*, which you quoted below.
What this would accomplish is encouraging talented lawyers to become defense attorneys rather than prosecutors. And this would be good for society, in a "Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man is convicted" sense.
Absolutely; I agree.
* Considering the barbarity of our penal system in the US — complete with federal and (some) states' government's latitude to kill its own citizens — I would adjust Blackstone's formulation closer to 1,000:1. Blackstone's 10:1 is more appropriate for more advanced, effective, humane, and civilized penal systems, such as those found in Scandinavia. I believe that no irrevocable harm should be dispensed from a system that is so imperfect as ours for determining a person's guilt. Can you imagine the horror of a cop "finding" a brick of cocaine or heroin (from a previous, under-documented bust) that he just slipped onto the back seat of your car?
You would be surprised by the number of attorneys who swap between prosecution and defense throughout their careers. Sometimes more than once.
That had not occurred to me, but perhaps they'd make the best judges of all, in terms of minimizing bias.
A more interesting requirement would be to elect judges who have experience on both sides of criminal cases.
That is interesting — I would get on board with that.
You're making a fundamental error: you're assuming that the US Political Spectrum is the same as the rest of the planet.
That is far from the reality: the US spectrum is decidedly to the right of most other nations. What is considered Conservative in most countries is center-left at best in the US. . .
Think of it as the Fahrenheit scale of Politics. . .
I disagree. Just because the dominant parties are both right-wing doesn't mean the people are. I'm further left/libertarian than Jill Stein, yet I've still voted for Democrats in the past (something that I've stopped doing,) when all of the other candidates were even further right.
Look at the candidates from the 2012 Presidential election; there were two left-of-center candidates, but many US liberals (and right-of-center "liberals") are led to believe that voting for a candidate that closely supports their views is "wasting their votes." Also note that Obama's 2008 campaign presented him as a left-libertarian, but he rules as a right-authoritarian.
If our legal system was primarily driven by law then yes, but there is way too much politics involved here. Judges, the humans who get to decide such things, have a significant conflict of interests but will not recuse themselves, and it is unlikely they will rule against their own community's systematic behavior.
I think judges should elected from pools of defense attorneys — no former prosecutors. Defense attorneys are used to defending people's Constitutional rights, while prosecutors are used to suppressing evidence and skirting Constitutional limits in order to put away "bad guys" even when the defendant is actually a "good guy." Defense attorneys give the people the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to the (police) state.
You think it's "rather funny" that they might think you have an interest in beating polygraph examinations if you bought a book on beating polygraph examinations?
I do. I've downloaded textbooks on explosives and fractional distillation, and DSM IV TR, to name a few (out of thousands) — they don't mean I'm going into the demolition business, building a petroleum refinery, or practicing psychiatry. I'm also interested in beating polygraph tests, but that doesn't mean I'd ever consensually submit to taking one.
I think "curiosity = suspicious" will lead us on dark path to an ignorant and paranoid society, if we're not there already.
BitTorrent?
I found only one torrent, and it looks dead and possibly fake: https://torrentz.eu/any?f=how+to+sting+the+polygraph
Next up: A watch-list of people who have failed to purchase dream-catchers, healing crystals, Ouija boards, homeopathic "medicine," magic 8-balls, or religious paraphernalia in the past ten years.
Faustbook!
That'd work, excepting one small detail: Unlike Faust's trading of his soul in order to gain knowledge, Faustbook accepts souls* in order for Fuckerberg to gain complete knowledge over about his victims. Worse than a Faustian bargain, it is — just as I opined above — a straight-up sucker deal.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." —Cardinal Richelieu
* My secular interpretation of "souls" in this context: Anything given up that can bite one in the ass minutes or decades later — (e.g., compromising pics (e.g., close proximity to a possible water-pipe (used to smoke drugs!) or large container of part-ethanol), criminal admissions, evidence of personal backstabbing or betrayal, conduct unbecoming a wage slave (a vulnerability especially to those in Right-to-be-canned—just-because states and those deprived of adequate trade union protection), letting it slip that oneself is an Arab/Muslim in the US with an interest in science/engineering/photography/aircraft, disclosing a health problem, making a joke involving guns, bombs, and/or airports, expressing an interest in gunpowder/backpacking/pressure-cooking, discussing an interest or activity that's "innocent" today but targeted by over-funded TLAs looking for "terrorists" (or whoever's on the "threat" menu) another day, when they come looking... etc.).
to avoid F***book.
I haven't heard that one... Farcebook, Facecrook... Fuck(erberg's)book, obfuscated with self-censorship?
Mark Fuckerberg's scheme is to collect billions of dollars worth of marks' PII, then pimp it all out to his customers (NSA, FBI, FSB, corporate propagandists, your worst enemy, etc.). The mark's cut of the money made from selling his or her PII amounts to some zero dollars and cents per year, plus inundation with targeted corporate propaganda meant to manipulate the mark's decisions/habits/behaviors, and the creation of opportunities for security/privacy/identity exploitations. Maybe I'm just totally bananas, but this arrangement strikes me as a sucker deal. Hence, I consider "Facecrook" to be the scheme's most fitting name.
I don't need any reason not to be a mark for Fuckerberg and his Facecrook — I can't conceive a reason to become one in the first place. The only I can think up for this scheme is to sign up one's enemies.
I saw a really weird shooting star once while traveling. It was shooting upwards, was a really bright green, and flashed as it went.
It sounds like you might have witnessed upper-atmospheric lightning. If you're unfamiliar with these phenomena, please see some of the rare* videos that have been captured. Although it might** have been MIR's jettisoned computer, (which might explain the green color (i.e., burning copper wire)), UAL would account for both the color and the upward trajectory.
* Although witnessed for decades by pilots, their stories had been dismissed. UAL has only recently been recognized as being "real," and research is in its infancy. As such, the number of pictures and video clips that have been collected so far are few in number.
** I say "might" because I'm not familiar with the appearance of artificial satellite re-entries.
Better than referring to it as "making love" as the media seem to like doing at the moment. I think it's so they don't have to use the word sex - probably thinking of the children. The Daily Fail is particularly keen on referring to lions and tigers making love.
I also view the euphemism "pr0n" as another manifestation of puritanism. I'll see an entire paragraph written using proper spelling, with this sole word written in "1337 5p34k." Being too prudish to spell "porn" properly doesn't strike me as being particularly 'leet.
But today you are actually rewarded for being a socialist.
Do you mean, for example, the workers that own and operate Moosewood Restaurant in Ithica, NY, or Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville, NC? They're rewarded with customer patronage, but also (generally) low maximum/minimum wage ratios, decent job security (e.g., no fear of being fired in order to increase stock price), the satisfaction in working for themselves, and the democratic participation in decisions that affect themselves and their business — as opposed to being compelled by external and/or superfluous influences (e.g., shareholders, and often unaccountable, outsider CEOs) — liberties that are, sadly, unavailable to wage-slaves.