"The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statue, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows: The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed." - Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition, Section 177.
The problem is that we have a fascist minority in the populace, and a fascist majority in government, who believe that government employees, police in particular, are above the law. For a shockingly high percentage of the population, the whole concept of law and order is absent or incomprehensible, and instant subservience and obedience to the uniform is substituted instead.
This belief is, unsurprisingly, strongest amongst the police themselves. So they break the law, what are you going to do? Call the police?
You cant even get a prosecutor to file charges against them with clear proof of the crime. I remember one prosecutor that did try to discharge her duties faithfully by prosecuting a cop, and found herself unable to function in her position at all because the entire damn police force made a point to louse up her cases and refuse to work with her. Every time someone says 'it's just a few bad apples' I have to think back to her. It seems closer to the truth, today, to say as Adam Kokesh recently did "it's a few bad apples that give the other 5% of cops a bad name."
Now to be fair, police pay is relatively low, and the ability to kill and/or abuse their fellow citizens with impunity is the only clearly exceptional perk they get. Given that, it shouldnt be a surprise that the bad-apples come to outnumber the good ones over time.
I've known some very good people who were cops - note the past tense. They had a very rough time of it. I also knew a guy that told everyone he was going to join the police so he could kill someone and get away with it when he was in high school. Last I saw him he was wearing a blue uniform and a big smile.
Getting rid of bad cops is probably going to continue to be an intractable problem until and unless we as a nation realise that police should, yes, be held to very high standards - but they should also be paid commensurately for their services. No, poor pay in no way justifies lawlessness in the uniform - but if the police were actually held to the law, most of them would be in prison in short order and the people that we really want to take their place will be somewhere else, making more money and dealing with less stress.
You need to read that supremacy clause again buddy.
Only the Constitution, laws passed in accordance with it, and treaties properly ratified are supreme. A federal law or regulation which is not in accord with the Constitution (including Amendment 4) doesnt qualify.
The formulaÃc recitals about 'a device' where that device is simply a general purpose computer programmed with the maths in question are a transparent dodge. 'Obviousness' is supposed to be a criteria too, and nothing could possibly be more obvious than using a general purpose computer to actually compute something, and control peripheral devices in accordance with the computations.
Actually you make a few mistakes. Most importantly, under US law at least, mathematics IS NOT patentable.
Furthermore software patents are NOT properly analogous to 'mechanical inventions [which] could be reduced to equations' - most obviously because no mechanical invention can actually be reduced to equations. It may *involve* equations, it may be *describable* in equations, certainly, but if it is *reducible* to equations then it is pure math and not patentable.
Judges and patent examiners may be permitting patents on pure math to issue, but they are doing so in *ignorance* because they dont understand the subject matter, not because the law actually allows it.
Yes, they have been patenting pure math for a long time.
No, no court or legislature has ever contradicted the axiom that math isnt patentable. They do it instead by confusing patent examiners, judges, and juries that do not know math when they see it. An effective communications campaign from the math folks may still have a chance to do some good.
"Hypothetical causes of the war?" There is nothing hypothetical about it, it's an easily verifiable fact, ffs.
At any rate, I think everyone that has replied in this thread is quite profoundly missing the point. By the logic I keep hearing, if there is any conceivable way that a weapon might ever be vaguely useful in something that vaguely resembles defense, regardless of its cost and regardless of the alternatives that exist, the relative effectiveness of those alternatives, and their cost, then we have to have it. I just dont agree with that, at all. It's the same sort of logic that you hear from people that think they need a tactical nuke, or at the very least a large-bore self-propelled artillery piece in their backyard, to defend themselves.
Now I am all in favour of self defense, and the second amendment is dear to my heart. But it's a simple fact that my Mossberg is much less expensive, and much more useful in the context of defending myself, my home, and my family, than an M110, let alone a nuke. Is there some outlandish but vaguely possible scenario someone could dream up where I will really need that M110? I am sure there are several actually, but so what? In reality it's an absurd expenditure to be motivated by defensive concerns. I could rig electric fences, perimeter surveillance, buy more small arms and ammo than I have storage space for, and hire armed guards to monitor the surveillance systems and patrol my property with the money that thing would cost me - and have plenty left over. If I choose to spend that money on an M110 instead, I will be less safe, not more safe - AND my neighbors may (rightfully) get very very suspicious of what I plan to do with the thing as well. And that's before I start driving it over fences and blowing up other peoples stuff with it...
Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
You're calling for a Navy that just happens to stay near our shores, the coast guard is smaller and cheaper because it doesn't use the fancy expensive toys like the Navy does.
No, what I am "calling for" would be a US Military that is designed and positioned to defend the US at a reasonable price, rather than one that is designed and positioned to "project power" around the world with a correspondingly staggering cost, both monetary and otherwise.
However they have historically failed at naval defense.
Citation needed.
In fact land-based aircraft have every advantage in an engagement with a naval aggressor, assuming anything like parity in technology and funding it's not even a contest.
When you consider that the US is the only power on Earth still floating full Carrier vessels the argument is even more absurd. The Kuznetsov and their like are not really comparable to our Aircraft Carriers, fielding smaller numbers of less capable aircraft with lighter loadouts using ski-jumps to take off.
No potential enemy has or is close to obtaining the ability to field a Navy inside the operational range of the US Air Force operating from ground-bases without losing it very quickly. The US Navy, with a much larger budget than the US Air Force, would be very hard pressed to challenge the US Air Force today, and no one else on Earth could even come close.
Regarding "immobile", aircraft need infrastructure, lots of it.
They sure do, that's the point! Stationing them in an ocean doesnt obviate the need for infrastructure in the slightest, it only makes that infrastructure vastly more expensive to provide and maintain, and vastly more vulnerable to attack.
And in a land base that infrastructure is immobile, ie a target.
And an Aircraft Carrier is NOT a target? Hello?
It's a very large, very expensive target that doesnt dare move without a full task force to screen and defend it.
A strike on an airbase that temporarily disables one runway is a strike that likely would sink a Carrier entirely. And even if the Carrier survives, it's temporarily out of action entirely (it only HAS one runway) and repairing it will take much longer and cost much more than patching up an airbase would.
Witness the plethora of decades old weapons systems that crater runways or bust bunkers protecting aircraft, munitions, fuel, etc. For thirty plus years we've have been watching gun/missile camera footage of land based aircraft being ripped apart, in part, by naval aircraft and missiles.
Sure, you are watching footage of Naval aircraft and missiles from the most technically advanced Navy on earth, maintained at a cost so astronomical it's hard to even imagine, blowing up bases in third-world countries outfitted with ancient technology which is often nonfunctional as a result of lack of funding and/or skilled personnel. Drawing the conclusion that Naval forces somehow have an advantage over land-based Air Force based on that is like watching Vladimir Klitchko beat the crap out of some random junior-flyweight with a green belt from the local Jujitsu school and concluding that Boxing is obviously vastly superior to Jujitsu.
However that surrenders the initiative to the enemy. Something that from Mahan to Clausewitz to Sun Tzu has been taught to be a losing strategy.
You need to reread your strategy if you really think any of those names serve to endorse such a simplistic reading.
Yet a seaborne force was able to land and take the capital Washington DC and burn various buildings including the White House. You consider that a successful defense? I consider that evidence of the failure of the Jeffersonian ideal of a shallow water navy.
Again, given the funding disparity between the two combatants it should surprise no one that the larger and vastly better funded party won some battles. But the British were not defending their homeland, now were they? No, they were sending vast numbers of troops and ships across the Atlantic to attack a foe that had nowhere near the economic or military resources they did, and they still lost. Our "shallow water navy" performed admirably, gaining superiority in the great lakes region which led to strategically vital parts of Canada falling to U
I responded that, as the tech will be used to defend soldiers from other soldiers, in a kill or be killed scenario, this is hardly a bad thing; the dead are not unwitting civilians who had the bad fortune to call a warzone home. This was my argument, clearly spelled out.
*Coughs*
Perhaps an example will help. If a destroyer has cruise missiles, SAMs, and this new laser, and is tasked with destroying a building, it will use cruise missiles. And perhaps innocents will die in the explosion. Tasked with shooting down a high flying aircraft it will use SAMs. And perhaps they'll mistake a jetliner for a bomber, and innocents will die. The destroyer is quite capable of collateral damage.
Indeed it is, I am glad you can admit that.
"Inherently aggressive"? What does that even mean?
That means by it's very nature it implies aggression. Sure, like most weapons, it isnt impossible to imagine it being used in defense, but it's defensive applications dont even come close to justifying its expense relative to other options, so it doesnt make sense to build and maintain such a weapon unless you intend aggression with it. Simple as that.
If we were really focused on defense, we could build, stock, and maintain a chain of airbases along every coast and border for the cost of our Carrier fleets and have plenty left over. An airbase is superior to a Carrier in every way except one - the airbase can't steam across the oceans looking for trouble, it has to sit in place and wait for someone to at least get somewhat near to us.
If you mean "armed", then I fail to see what the big deal is. They are a branch of the armed forces.
Not at all. I am all in favour of armed, I'd rather see us more armed than less. Just with weapons suited to defending ourselves, rather than weapons designed to "project power" into other peoples lands, that's the difference.
Are you alleging their only role is offence? Because I already raised the defence of Britain in WWII as a counterpoint to that - a case where the use of naval force was both necessary and defensive.
You raised it but it doesnt stand up. Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.
I take that to be a thinly veiled insult, and, frankly, rude. I have no trouble understanding you, I just don't agree with you.
Touchy much? Believe me, if I feel like insulting someone I dont use veils to do it. You may believe you are understanding me, but at points your responses are clearly inconsistent with that belief. It is not rude to point that out.
History shows otherwise, both early American (1812) and more recent (WW2). Your idea of being safe behind fixed immobile defenses has been shown to be a failed strategy for millennia.
I said nothing about being safe behind immobile defenses first off, that's sheer fabrication.
Land-based aircraft are hardly immobile. Littoral vessels are hardly immobile. Hunter-killer submarines are not immobile, and confining them to the vicinity of your coast rather than stationing them all around the world does not make them so. Land based missile launchers are not normally immobile either, and there are plenty of other options.
Drawing lessons from the War of 1812 as if the technologies involved havent radically changed the situation is laughable on its own, but you are drawing the wrong lessons from it to boot! The British had absolute superiority on the sea, the worlds premiere Navy with over 600 military vessels, something the US was not able to even begin to compete with. And yet they did not win. Their Navy alone cost them far more than we even had to spend, we could not even dream of challenging it on the high seas, and yet we defended ourselves and won. Think about it.
I responded that, as the tech will be used to defend soldiers from other soldiers, in a kill or be killed scenario, this is hardly a bad thing; the dead are not unwitting civilians who had the bad fortune to call a warzone home. This was my argument, clearly spelled out.
It is not therefor a refutation on your part to discuss the evils of military overspending or American imperialism. You're not addressing the point being raised, you're going off on your own someplace.
Actually I did address your points head on. You seem to be having trouble understanding me, so I will rephrase a bit to help you.
You allege that this weapon will only be used to kill "other soldiers" not civilians. This is naÃve at best, and to illustrate this I referred to the civilian airliner shot down a few years ago by the US Navy. The laser is no more going to magically distinguish between civilian airliners and incoming hostile attack craft than the missiles used in that incident will.
Beyond that, I also pointed out that this is a Navy project, and the Navy is an inherently aggressive structure. To the extent there is such a thing as a defensive Navy, we call it the Coast Guard, it is far less expensive, and far less likely to kill innocent civilians, by accident or otherwise.
"Isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes" I said. Not "cannot be used".
But for the price, it isnt useful for anything else either. Unless you consider enriching "defense" contractors useful of course.
And anyway, that wasn't either a deliberate act of murder, or an malfunction of the weapon system; that was a combination of bad judgment and misidentification
I didnt say it was anything but an accident. However it was the sort of accident that could only happen because we poured enormous amounts of resources into building a massive Navy which we certainly didnt need for defense, and then sent it halfway around the globe to bully other nations.
Here's the thing, if you go across town packing weapons intending, for example, to extort money from someone, and in the process you accidentally wind up killing the neighbor kid, it's still considered murder, even though you had no intention whatsoever of killing the kid and it was just a tragic accident. Because it's a tragic accident that would never have happened, if you hadnt been engaged in another felony at the time.
And a navy is absolutely useful for defence, go ask the Brits.
When have the Brits found their Navy useful for defending Britain, in proportion to its cost? The Spanish Armada, perhaps? That was another time entirely, and even then it's clear that the British Navy was primarily a tool for acquiring, controlling, and defending their vast overseas Empire, not their homeland.
The last time they were under attack, back in WWII, they held clear naval superiority over the Germans, but it helped little if any. The Battle of Britain was fought almost exclusively by land-based forces. No doubt their Navy would have been quite useful had the Germans tried to launch an amphibious invasion, and we can even speculate that the Germans might have been more likely to have tried that had the UK not had an impressive Navy, but it's still a fact that the funds that went to build that Navy could have built far more cost-effective land-based defenses instead, if defending their homeland had been the goal, rather than "force projection" which is not a defensive goal but an explicitly aggressive one.
However, a weapon useful only against military targets, for instance a laser to slag warships, missiles and aircraft, isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes, and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier.
The 299 people that were on Iran Air 655 might disagree with you on that.
Navies aren't really all that useful for defending the country. Sure, they can be parked off our coast and used for that, but the same effect can be had for a fraction of the cost with ground bases. The only time you really need a Navy is if you want, not to defend yourself, but to sail around the world attacking or threatening to attack other people in their own homes.
You seem to be under the impression there are only two political parties.
Very good, Citizen. That is the correct answer.
Oh I am very aware other parties exist. In fact I have organised for and promoted one of them heavily, over a period of decades. This is why I understand just how deeply the system marginalises them and ensures that they cannot win. All the way from ballot-access to the way the state-worshipping media cover them, at every step of the way the system is rigged to ensure that only the one-party-posing-as-two ever has a chance. I still vote, at least on elections when there is a third party choice on the ballot. But I am not foolish enough to believe that doing so is anything but a symbolic gesture.
Suppose a genuine third party was able to raise more money than the republicrats combined, and with this enormous warchest scale all the obstacles set in front of them, from ballot access to media coverage, and ultimately win a major election, such as the Presidency. Do you imagine even for a heartbeat that our candidate would be allowed to take office? Either Deibold would quietly change enough votes to steal it, or the Supreme Court would be induced to install another candidate under some silly pretense, or the dirty tricks squad would be called out to frame him for a major crime right before the vote, or he would be assassinated, or they would simply declare martial law and make him disappear... there are many possibilities, but the gang running this country giving up their stranglehold on power peacefully really isnt one of them.
I heard an interesting debate about PP abortion percentages recently, between two apparently well-informed people, one pro-PP and one very anti. I cant say for sure that the numbers I remember from there are completely accurate since I havent done the research myself, but it made good sense and explained both sets of numbers - the anti-PP guest insisted that it was 10% while the pro insisted it was under 3%, and the resolution of the positions was that they were referring to different things. Less than 3% of PP funding went to abortions (which are relatively expensive procedures compared to most of what PP offers,) however around 10% of women who received services from PP did receive an abortion through them at one point in time or another.
I dont see any Constitutional power for Congress to be involved in health care, period, so I am against federal funding for PP, but I also think it needs to be viewed in context. Planned parenthood receives approximately $300 million per year IIRC and uses that money to provide health care, while it would be better to leave that money in private hands and have a real market for health care, it at least contributes somewhat to the general welfare. On the other hand we are spending around $684 BILLION on our overseas empire, an exercise which is quite contrary to the promotion of the general welfare even before looking at the cost, and which is no less inconsistent with our Constitution to boot.
So, yes, the federal government should quit handing out cash to PP and lots and lots of other groups all around the world. But to the Republicans on the hill who are desperately trying to co-opt and distract the tea-party movement with theatrical stunts like this, some ancient words of wisdom are apropos: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Don't resort to the tired old argument "They are all the same ". "They" are not.
Au contraire, they really are the same in almost every meaningful way. We in the United States have a one-party-posing-as-two system, with the Demonicans and RepublicRats agreeing on the vast majority of important issues (uniformly taking positions against our law and against our general welfare) while making a big show of their differences in style and presentation, and on a tiny set of approved issues where there disagreement will serve only to distract the public, but not to threaten any entrenched interests.
Consider Barak Obama. After winning the election by portraying himself as the anti-Bush and criticising many of Bush's worst policies, he did an about-face on taking office and, far from being an anti-Bush, has been a hyper-Bush. He hasn't closed Guantanamo, he hasn't stopped the torture, he hasn't stopped the war - in every case he has in fact dug us in even deeper, and his attorneys have been busy defending and expanding the very unconstitutional doctrines that he criticised Bush for!
It's an old saying, but a very true one - if voting could change the system it would be illegal.
First, minor nitpick, it's Satan, not Shatan. And actually, in Job it's always Ha-Satan, so Satan is a normal noun, not a name (the prefix ha means "the"). It's usually translated as "the adversary" or "the accuser".
You are correct in terms of modern hebrew pronunciation, but the mistake is an understandable one. The word is spelled shin-tet-nun. Today the shin often gets a special dot to indicate it is pronounced more like 's' (like the letter samekh, not like the letter shin is usually pronounced) however this is a relatively recent innovation and even today not always used. Sounds within a language do shift over time, and the older pronunciation would not have been an 's' but something closer to the 'sh' - actually it may have even been a welsh 'll' sound in ancient hebrew. In modern Arabic, a very closely related language, it does use the 'sh' sound as well.
Second, I've always heard of Satan being considered an angel or some other sort of divine being, but not a "real" god. Looking at the Hebrew, though, it says Satan is one of b'nei ha-elohim, which is either "sons of the gods" or "sons of God". Someone much more knowledgeable than I would have to comment on that one.
The Torah is the result of a burst of work after monotheistic judaÃsm rose to prominence in Jerusalem, which occured after IsraÃl was conquered. Monotheist scribes compiled and heavily editted documents from pre-monotheistic times in addition to adding new material. References to elohim ("the gods") are relics of the pre-monotheist judaÃsm. Both Jews and IsraÃlis in older days had basically the same mythology and beliefs as their semitic neighbors throughout the region. El 'god' was a common title, applied to numerous gods both large and small all around the region, and elohim originally meant something very much like 'pantheon' - the gods as a collective group. El still occurs in a few places in the tanakh with the older meaning intact, e.g. Malachi 2:11 ("Judah has married the daughter of a strange El.)
Once you understand this, the 'strange' handling of other gods in the Torah isn't so strange. It's the result of a shift in belief over a long period of time. Originally all the gods (elohim) were real and respected. But one of those gods was identified as paramount, the king of the gods, and which god that was could vary depending on where you were. For the Jews of Jerusalem, of course, it was YHVH, or El Shaddai (the meaning of Shaddai is subject to debate and probably the interpretation changed several times, it is conventionally translated 'God Almighty.') In other nearby areas another El might be supreme, but regardless of which one it was, that El was empowered to speak for and as 'elohim' - the gods or pantheon as a corporate entity, just as human kings would speak for and as their entire tribe.
After their powerful northern cousins, the kingdom of IsraÃl, were conquered by the Assyrians, the sages of the southern kingdom explained the misfortune based on the pluralism of the northern religion, and they focused more and more on insisting that ONLY 'our god' should be honoured and worshipped. Even minor shrines and offerings to the numerous other gods became more and more interpreted as disrespect to 'our god' and his 'jealous' nature was emphasised more and more. It probably only took a few generations for this impulse to harden to the point that it becomes recognisably monotheistic - the other gods finally denied as gods entirely, demoted to demons and idols, and prohibited lest the fate of IsraÃl befall Judah as well. Which happened anyway, of course, but that is another story.
P.S. Slashdot mangles text abominably, and I cant be arsed to work around it.
I was actually interested in the article, but when I tried to read it, I got the most godawful pile of junk I have seen posing as a web page for many days. Completely unreadable without allowing scripting, and allowing their scripts doesnt improve things. Presumably it would become readable if I were to whitelist the very long list of sites it is drawing scripts from, but this is ridiculous. Screw Gizmodo.
He actively bent over backwards to release those cables indiscriminately.
This allegation was one of the original administration talking points, and still gets repeated over and over throughout the mainstream media, but it's simply, demonstrably, false.
Wikileaks has (at least) around a quarter of a million documents, of which only a handful, a few thousand, have been released by them. After careful vetting and redaction by people like the Washington Post and New York Times.
If they deserve criticism at all, it's for keeping the vast majority of the material they have unreleased, not for this mythical 'indiscriminate release' that did not, in fact, happen.
The reporter did commit a crime he knowingly disseminated classified information, for whatever reason the DOJ has had a long standing tradition of not going after newspapers for committing this crime.
Do some research. The reason they *never* file charges on this is because if they did it would be thrown out of court. We have something called the first amendment that trumps statute whenever the two conflict. You should also look up a guy named Daniel Ellsberg.
You can modify a binary file with a freaking hex editor and run it again.
No matter how many times I re-read that it still doesnt make any sense. I mean, what, you just discovered this? Why do you think we have hex-editors in the first place? How else would you expect to be able to modify a binary file? And, assuming the person that is doing the editting understands what they are doing, why wouldnt it run?
Slashdot Mirror
"The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statue, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows: The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed." - Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition, Section 177.
It's not legal.
The problem is that we have a fascist minority in the populace, and a fascist majority in government, who believe that government employees, police in particular, are above the law. For a shockingly high percentage of the population, the whole concept of law and order is absent or incomprehensible, and instant subservience and obedience to the uniform is substituted instead.
This belief is, unsurprisingly, strongest amongst the police themselves. So they break the law, what are you going to do? Call the police?
You cant even get a prosecutor to file charges against them with clear proof of the crime. I remember one prosecutor that did try to discharge her duties faithfully by prosecuting a cop, and found herself unable to function in her position at all because the entire damn police force made a point to louse up her cases and refuse to work with her. Every time someone says 'it's just a few bad apples' I have to think back to her. It seems closer to the truth, today, to say as Adam Kokesh recently did "it's a few bad apples that give the other 5% of cops a bad name."
Now to be fair, police pay is relatively low, and the ability to kill and/or abuse their fellow citizens with impunity is the only clearly exceptional perk they get. Given that, it shouldnt be a surprise that the bad-apples come to outnumber the good ones over time.
I've known some very good people who were cops - note the past tense. They had a very rough time of it. I also knew a guy that told everyone he was going to join the police so he could kill someone and get away with it when he was in high school. Last I saw him he was wearing a blue uniform and a big smile.
Getting rid of bad cops is probably going to continue to be an intractable problem until and unless we as a nation realise that police should, yes, be held to very high standards - but they should also be paid commensurately for their services. No, poor pay in no way justifies lawlessness in the uniform - but if the police were actually held to the law, most of them would be in prison in short order and the people that we really want to take their place will be somewhere else, making more money and dealing with less stress.
You need to read that supremacy clause again buddy.
Only the Constitution, laws passed in accordance with it, and treaties properly ratified are supreme. A federal law or regulation which is not in accord with the Constitution (including Amendment 4) doesnt qualify.
The formulaÃc recitals about 'a device' where that device is simply a general purpose computer programmed with the maths in question are a transparent dodge. 'Obviousness' is supposed to be a criteria too, and nothing could possibly be more obvious than using a general purpose computer to actually compute something, and control peripheral devices in accordance with the computations.
Actually you make a few mistakes. Most importantly, under US law at least, mathematics IS NOT patentable.
Furthermore software patents are NOT properly analogous to 'mechanical inventions [which] could be reduced to equations' - most obviously because no mechanical invention can actually be reduced to equations. It may *involve* equations, it may be *describable* in equations, certainly, but if it is *reducible* to equations then it is pure math and not patentable.
Judges and patent examiners may be permitting patents on pure math to issue, but they are doing so in *ignorance* because they dont understand the subject matter, not because the law actually allows it.
Yes, they have been patenting pure math for a long time.
No, no court or legislature has ever contradicted the axiom that math isnt patentable. They do it instead by confusing patent examiners, judges, and juries that do not know math when they see it. An effective communications campaign from the math folks may still have a chance to do some good.
"Hypothetical causes of the war?" There is nothing hypothetical about it, it's an easily verifiable fact, ffs.
At any rate, I think everyone that has replied in this thread is quite profoundly missing the point. By the logic I keep hearing, if there is any conceivable way that a weapon might ever be vaguely useful in something that vaguely resembles defense, regardless of its cost and regardless of the alternatives that exist, the relative effectiveness of those alternatives, and their cost, then we have to have it. I just dont agree with that, at all. It's the same sort of logic that you hear from people that think they need a tactical nuke, or at the very least a large-bore self-propelled artillery piece in their backyard, to defend themselves.
Now I am all in favour of self defense, and the second amendment is dear to my heart. But it's a simple fact that my Mossberg is much less expensive, and much more useful in the context of defending myself, my home, and my family, than an M110, let alone a nuke. Is there some outlandish but vaguely possible scenario someone could dream up where I will really need that M110? I am sure there are several actually, but so what? In reality it's an absurd expenditure to be motivated by defensive concerns. I could rig electric fences, perimeter surveillance, buy more small arms and ammo than I have storage space for, and hire armed guards to monitor the surveillance systems and patrol my property with the money that thing would cost me - and have plenty left over. If I choose to spend that money on an M110 instead, I will be less safe, not more safe - AND my neighbors may (rightfully) get very very suspicious of what I plan to do with the thing as well. And that's before I start driving it over fences and blowing up other peoples stuff with it...
Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
No, what I am "calling for" would be a US Military that is designed and positioned to defend the US at a reasonable price, rather than one that is designed and positioned to "project power" around the world with a correspondingly staggering cost, both monetary and otherwise.
Citation needed.
In fact land-based aircraft have every advantage in an engagement with a naval aggressor, assuming anything like parity in technology and funding it's not even a contest.
When you consider that the US is the only power on Earth still floating full Carrier vessels the argument is even more absurd. The Kuznetsov and their like are not really comparable to our Aircraft Carriers, fielding smaller numbers of less capable aircraft with lighter loadouts using ski-jumps to take off.
No potential enemy has or is close to obtaining the ability to field a Navy inside the operational range of the US Air Force operating from ground-bases without losing it very quickly. The US Navy, with a much larger budget than the US Air Force, would be very hard pressed to challenge the US Air Force today, and no one else on Earth could even come close.
They sure do, that's the point! Stationing them in an ocean doesnt obviate the need for infrastructure in the slightest, it only makes that infrastructure vastly more expensive to provide and maintain, and vastly more vulnerable to attack.
And an Aircraft Carrier is NOT a target? Hello?
It's a very large, very expensive target that doesnt dare move without a full task force to screen and defend it.
A strike on an airbase that temporarily disables one runway is a strike that likely would sink a Carrier entirely. And even if the Carrier survives, it's temporarily out of action entirely (it only HAS one runway) and repairing it will take much longer and cost much more than patching up an airbase would.
Sure, you are watching footage of Naval aircraft and missiles from the most technically advanced Navy on earth, maintained at a cost so astronomical it's hard to even imagine, blowing up bases in third-world countries outfitted with ancient technology which is often nonfunctional as a result of lack of funding and/or skilled personnel. Drawing the conclusion that Naval forces somehow have an advantage over land-based Air Force based on that is like watching Vladimir Klitchko beat the crap out of some random junior-flyweight with a green belt from the local Jujitsu school and concluding that Boxing is obviously vastly superior to Jujitsu.
You need to reread your strategy if you really think any of those names serve to endorse such a simplistic reading.
Again, given the funding disparity between the two combatants it should surprise no one that the larger and vastly better funded party won some battles. But the British were not defending their homeland, now were they? No, they were sending vast numbers of troops and ships across the Atlantic to attack a foe that had nowhere near the economic or military resources they did, and they still lost. Our "shallow water navy" performed admirably, gaining superiority in the great lakes region which led to strategically vital parts of Canada falling to U
In fact very recently you wrote:
*Coughs*
Indeed it is, I am glad you can admit that.
That means by it's very nature it implies aggression. Sure, like most weapons, it isnt impossible to imagine it being used in defense, but it's defensive applications dont even come close to justifying its expense relative to other options, so it doesnt make sense to build and maintain such a weapon unless you intend aggression with it. Simple as that.
If we were really focused on defense, we could build, stock, and maintain a chain of airbases along every coast and border for the cost of our Carrier fleets and have plenty left over. An airbase is superior to a Carrier in every way except one - the airbase can't steam across the oceans looking for trouble, it has to sit in place and wait for someone to at least get somewhat near to us.
Not at all. I am all in favour of armed, I'd rather see us more armed than less. Just with weapons suited to defending ourselves, rather than weapons designed to "project power" into other peoples lands, that's the difference.
You raised it but it doesnt stand up. Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.
Touchy much? Believe me, if I feel like insulting someone I dont use veils to do it. You may believe you are understanding me, but at points your responses are clearly inconsistent with that belief. It is not rude to point that out.
I said nothing about being safe behind immobile defenses first off, that's sheer fabrication.
Land-based aircraft are hardly immobile. Littoral vessels are hardly immobile. Hunter-killer submarines are not immobile, and confining them to the vicinity of your coast rather than stationing them all around the world does not make them so. Land based missile launchers are not normally immobile either, and there are plenty of other options.
Drawing lessons from the War of 1812 as if the technologies involved havent radically changed the situation is laughable on its own, but you are drawing the wrong lessons from it to boot! The British had absolute superiority on the sea, the worlds premiere Navy with over 600 military vessels, something the US was not able to even begin to compete with. And yet they did not win. Their Navy alone cost them far more than we even had to spend, we could not even dream of challenging it on the high seas, and yet we defended ourselves and won. Think about it.
Actually I did address your points head on. You seem to be having trouble understanding me, so I will rephrase a bit to help you.
You allege that this weapon will only be used to kill "other soldiers" not civilians. This is naÃve at best, and to illustrate this I referred to the civilian airliner shot down a few years ago by the US Navy. The laser is no more going to magically distinguish between civilian airliners and incoming hostile attack craft than the missiles used in that incident will.
Beyond that, I also pointed out that this is a Navy project, and the Navy is an inherently aggressive structure. To the extent there is such a thing as a defensive Navy, we call it the Coast Guard, it is far less expensive, and far less likely to kill innocent civilians, by accident or otherwise.
But for the price, it isnt useful for anything else either. Unless you consider enriching "defense" contractors useful of course.
I didnt say it was anything but an accident. However it was the sort of accident that could only happen because we poured enormous amounts of resources into building a massive Navy which we certainly didnt need for defense, and then sent it halfway around the globe to bully other nations.
Here's the thing, if you go across town packing weapons intending, for example, to extort money from someone, and in the process you accidentally wind up killing the neighbor kid, it's still considered murder, even though you had no intention whatsoever of killing the kid and it was just a tragic accident. Because it's a tragic accident that would never have happened, if you hadnt been engaged in another felony at the time.
When have the Brits found their Navy useful for defending Britain, in proportion to its cost? The Spanish Armada, perhaps? That was another time entirely, and even then it's clear that the British Navy was primarily a tool for acquiring, controlling, and defending their vast overseas Empire, not their homeland.
The last time they were under attack, back in WWII, they held clear naval superiority over the Germans, but it helped little if any. The Battle of Britain was fought almost exclusively by land-based forces. No doubt their Navy would have been quite useful had the Germans tried to launch an amphibious invasion, and we can even speculate that the Germans might have been more likely to have tried that had the UK not had an impressive Navy, but it's still a fact that the funds that went to build that Navy could have built far more cost-effective land-based defenses instead, if defending their homeland had been the goal, rather than "force projection" which is not a defensive goal but an explicitly aggressive one.
The 299 people that were on Iran Air 655 might disagree with you on that.
Navies aren't really all that useful for defending the country. Sure, they can be parked off our coast and used for that, but the same effect can be had for a fraction of the cost with ground bases. The only time you really need a Navy is if you want, not to defend yourself, but to sail around the world attacking or threatening to attack other people in their own homes.
Oh I am very aware other parties exist. In fact I have organised for and promoted one of them heavily, over a period of decades. This is why I understand just how deeply the system marginalises them and ensures that they cannot win. All the way from ballot-access to the way the state-worshipping media cover them, at every step of the way the system is rigged to ensure that only the one-party-posing-as-two ever has a chance. I still vote, at least on elections when there is a third party choice on the ballot. But I am not foolish enough to believe that doing so is anything but a symbolic gesture.
Suppose a genuine third party was able to raise more money than the republicrats combined, and with this enormous warchest scale all the obstacles set in front of them, from ballot access to media coverage, and ultimately win a major election, such as the Presidency. Do you imagine even for a heartbeat that our candidate would be allowed to take office? Either Deibold would quietly change enough votes to steal it, or the Supreme Court would be induced to install another candidate under some silly pretense, or the dirty tricks squad would be called out to frame him for a major crime right before the vote, or he would be assassinated, or they would simply declare martial law and make him disappear... there are many possibilities, but the gang running this country giving up their stranglehold on power peacefully really isnt one of them.
I heard an interesting debate about PP abortion percentages recently, between two apparently well-informed people, one pro-PP and one very anti. I cant say for sure that the numbers I remember from there are completely accurate since I havent done the research myself, but it made good sense and explained both sets of numbers - the anti-PP guest insisted that it was 10% while the pro insisted it was under 3%, and the resolution of the positions was that they were referring to different things. Less than 3% of PP funding went to abortions (which are relatively expensive procedures compared to most of what PP offers,) however around 10% of women who received services from PP did receive an abortion through them at one point in time or another.
I dont see any Constitutional power for Congress to be involved in health care, period, so I am against federal funding for PP, but I also think it needs to be viewed in context. Planned parenthood receives approximately $300 million per year IIRC and uses that money to provide health care, while it would be better to leave that money in private hands and have a real market for health care, it at least contributes somewhat to the general welfare. On the other hand we are spending around $684 BILLION on our overseas empire, an exercise which is quite contrary to the promotion of the general welfare even before looking at the cost, and which is no less inconsistent with our Constitution to boot.
So, yes, the federal government should quit handing out cash to PP and lots and lots of other groups all around the world. But to the Republicans on the hill who are desperately trying to co-opt and distract the tea-party movement with theatrical stunts like this, some ancient words of wisdom are apropos: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Au contraire, they really are the same in almost every meaningful way. We in the United States have a one-party-posing-as-two system, with the Demonicans and RepublicRats agreeing on the vast majority of important issues (uniformly taking positions against our law and against our general welfare) while making a big show of their differences in style and presentation, and on a tiny set of approved issues where there disagreement will serve only to distract the public, but not to threaten any entrenched interests.
Consider Barak Obama. After winning the election by portraying himself as the anti-Bush and criticising many of Bush's worst policies, he did an about-face on taking office and, far from being an anti-Bush, has been a hyper-Bush. He hasn't closed Guantanamo, he hasn't stopped the torture, he hasn't stopped the war - in every case he has in fact dug us in even deeper, and his attorneys have been busy defending and expanding the very unconstitutional doctrines that he criticised Bush for!
It's an old saying, but a very true one - if voting could change the system it would be illegal.
Best I can tell it means that standing by that crack for an hour would be sufficient to make you very sick, and possibly fatal.
You are correct in terms of modern hebrew pronunciation, but the mistake is an understandable one. The word is spelled shin-tet-nun. Today the shin often gets a special dot to indicate it is pronounced more like 's' (like the letter samekh, not like the letter shin is usually pronounced) however this is a relatively recent innovation and even today not always used. Sounds within a language do shift over time, and the older pronunciation would not have been an 's' but something closer to the 'sh' - actually it may have even been a welsh 'll' sound in ancient hebrew. In modern Arabic, a very closely related language, it does use the 'sh' sound as well.
The Torah is the result of a burst of work after monotheistic judaÃsm rose to prominence in Jerusalem, which occured after IsraÃl was conquered. Monotheist scribes compiled and heavily editted documents from pre-monotheistic times in addition to adding new material. References to elohim ("the gods") are relics of the pre-monotheist judaÃsm. Both Jews and IsraÃlis in older days had basically the same mythology and beliefs as their semitic neighbors throughout the region. El 'god' was a common title, applied to numerous gods both large and small all around the region, and elohim originally meant something very much like 'pantheon' - the gods as a collective group. El still occurs in a few places in the tanakh with the older meaning intact, e.g. Malachi 2:11 ("Judah has married the daughter of a strange El.)
Once you understand this, the 'strange' handling of other gods in the Torah isn't so strange. It's the result of a shift in belief over a long period of time. Originally all the gods (elohim) were real and respected. But one of those gods was identified as paramount, the king of the gods, and which god that was could vary depending on where you were. For the Jews of Jerusalem, of course, it was YHVH, or El Shaddai (the meaning of Shaddai is subject to debate and probably the interpretation changed several times, it is conventionally translated 'God Almighty.') In other nearby areas another El might be supreme, but regardless of which one it was, that El was empowered to speak for and as 'elohim' - the gods or pantheon as a corporate entity, just as human kings would speak for and as their entire tribe.
After their powerful northern cousins, the kingdom of IsraÃl, were conquered by the Assyrians, the sages of the southern kingdom explained the misfortune based on the pluralism of the northern religion, and they focused more and more on insisting that ONLY 'our god' should be honoured and worshipped. Even minor shrines and offerings to the numerous other gods became more and more interpreted as disrespect to 'our god' and his 'jealous' nature was emphasised more and more. It probably only took a few generations for this impulse to harden to the point that it becomes recognisably monotheistic - the other gods finally denied as gods entirely, demoted to demons and idols, and prohibited lest the fate of IsraÃl befall Judah as well. Which happened anyway, of course, but that is another story.
P.S. Slashdot mangles text abominably, and I cant be arsed to work around it.
I was actually interested in the article, but when I tried to read it, I got the most godawful pile of junk I have seen posing as a web page for many days. Completely unreadable without allowing scripting, and allowing their scripts doesnt improve things. Presumably it would become readable if I were to whitelist the very long list of sites it is drawing scripts from, but this is ridiculous. Screw Gizmodo.
This allegation was one of the original administration talking points, and still gets repeated over and over throughout the mainstream media, but it's simply, demonstrably, false.
Wikileaks has (at least) around a quarter of a million documents, of which only a handful, a few thousand, have been released by them. After careful vetting and redaction by people like the Washington Post and New York Times.
If they deserve criticism at all, it's for keeping the vast majority of the material they have unreleased, not for this mythical 'indiscriminate release' that did not, in fact, happen.
Do some research. The reason they *never* file charges on this is because if they did it would be thrown out of court. We have something called the first amendment that trumps statute whenever the two conflict. You should also look up a guy named Daniel Ellsberg.
Slackware.
No matter how many times I re-read that it still doesnt make any sense. I mean, what, you just discovered this? Why do you think we have hex-editors in the first place? How else would you expect to be able to modify a binary file? And, assuming the person that is doing the editting understands what they are doing, why wouldnt it run?