They should move the US records to China to prvent the US government from accessing them...
*beep*
We are sorry, but we are not able to accept your karma-whoring troll at this time. This flamebait has already been posted by some other retard, been modded up by more retards, and hijacked the entire thread. Please try again later.
Amazing how you can just label without basis in reality. That's expert rhetoric. It has nothing to do with patriotism, AC. It has everything to do with somethings not being morally relativistic. I apoligize for believing that some acts are just fundamentally more obscene than others. I realize in your world, everything is relative and no one ever has the right to judge... however in the real world, that's not the way it is. I realize that no matter what I say, you will still dislike my country and accuse me of being "blindly arrogantly patriotic" which I realize is just your way of justifying the inferiority complex. When you get back to reality, let me know. I know to your sheltered mind, that seems like arrogance.. but it's not. I forgive you for not being able to see the forrest for the trees.
I don't need to see some complete politically motivated garbage. We get it, man. You hate the president. We don't, however, need to subject slashdot to this ridiculous hyperbole and completely unintelligent rhetoric that is entirely flamebait.
No rational comparison can be made even from Gitmo to what China does.. for instance.. to Tibet. This is total non-intelligent political flamebait.
Maybe they should be moving the US records into China, given all the crap with the DOJ recently. That would actually be a pretty good swap, moving the US records into China and the Chinese records into the US.
I can only assume this is a joke and the people who modded you "informative" hit the wrong identifier by accident. You aren't actually comparing privacy rights in the US and China and equating them... I can't be actually reading this.. and seeing other people modding it up as actually informative.
I guess this is the part where someone responds with some hyperbolic exaggerations of US indiscretions in the privacy arena, as if it makes the countries two antics even remotely comparable. In every one of those cases it is newsworthy in the United States... most of the same stuff happens just because its Tuesday in China. Oh yea, and you get executed for speech there.
This very much seems like a Republican/Democrat stand-off. Are you pro-business or pro-consumer?
Its a question of free-market versus regulation. It has nothing to do with businesses or consumers. That's simplistic.
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that in industries with sufficient competition, regulation is both "anti-business" and "anti-consumer". Regulation is needed when the free-market is insufficient... It is not entirely clear whether the free-market would be able to sufficiently punish those trying to abuse consumers. It is a difficult industry to have viable competition because of the startup costs associated with it. There is no easy answer, and trying to frame the argument as "pro-business vs pro-consumer" is completely and totally incorrect. The question is "Is this industry capable of self-correction via the free market?".
What a shame that laws need to be created to keep companies from acting like greedy assholes.
Allow me to welcome you to humanity. You must be new here.
Guess what else we have laws to prevent? Theft! Fraud! Beating! Murder! Rape! Isn't it sad that we, as a species, actually need to have laws that enforce all these things. Man, what a horrible creature we are.
Heh, "some dude" on the internet "calling bullshit" on a study from 5 seconds of thought that is clearly ignorant... is going to lecture me on "the real world". Guess what? In the real world, any electromagnetic engineer who hears you compare RADAR to cellphone radiation is going to laugh at you. How do I know? Because I was one... and because I worked on both. I've seen a cellphone actually screw up certain types of avionics equipment, in the cockpit, myself.. and not just of any jet, but a USAF fighter.
I am not some "kiddie". I am, however, informed. You are not. You are an idiot spouting and trying to karmawhore and impress by pretending to know things you don't. It has nothing to do with the university...it has to do with someone who presumably has three times the credientials that you've already proven you have (Which is to say, none). You are litterally making things up. You keep talking about the universities and the professors... except I'm not talking about them.. I'm talking about _you_. _YOU_ don't know what you are talking about. You are clueless. Do you get it yet?
I don't need to be lectured by an ignorant internet fool pretending to know things he doesn't. I promise.
No, it's about credibility. "Some dude on the internet" doesn't beat one of the most prestigious universities in the world. It's not about hero worship.. it's about ignorant people pretending to know things they don't. I've attended many conferences and seen many bad papers... however 99.9% are still far more reliable then "some dude on the internet"... so excuse me if I don't take your relatively meaningless and ignorant opinion with a grain of salt.
No, the U.S. is not fighting any war against terrorists. It invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, which are countries, and thus waged war on those countries, and continues to occupy them. People who fight against that are called patriots, not terrorists. Arguably, since the U.S. has global hegemony for the moment, any combat operations conducted by the U.S. are actually suppressions of popular insurrections against their empire. ----- Perhaps *all* real conservatives.
The Trotskyite red-diapers who are currently using our armed forces as a cheap toy and conducting the most immense transfer of wealth in history, from the US to Europe, are disqualified from that category.
Those are your "empircal facts" that you've used in this thread. You are either a troll or paranoid and delusional.
I go on a road trip with three phones around me (not all mine) and a Garmin GPS and it works just fine.
Heh. Nothing like outright dismissal of a scientific study from one of the most reputable universities on the planet based on intuition, anecdotal evidence and a summary from a news organization. Tell me, what does your gut feel about having evolved from apes? For or against? Gonna call bullshit?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US.
Of course you can't. No better way to get karma.
ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
Except when Google does cater to the wishes of China... guess whose fault it is? Unless you aren't one of the reflexive 'blame America/blame corporations', and feel that Google did a good thing by "doing a little to cater to the wishes of China"? I mean, either China should be able to control the internet, or it shouldn't... I can't handle the double standard.
It does not mean attempting to pre-empt factual, reasoned, discussion by name-calling and sneering mockery, for example.
Sorry. I dismissed the stupid "equality of all theories" idea when the ID'ers tried it. Therefore, if you want to make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary proof. Otherwise, take your conspiracy theory back to hole you crawled out of with it.
You might want to try reading the person I replied to, and understsanding the context of my statement before replying.
Nobody doubts the need for classified documents at times
In fact, that's exactly what the original poster was doubting. I understand completely how some people might be upset at the CIAs reclassification. However, to take this perceived abuse and use it to call for the dismantling of the CIA and all forms of classification is just asinine. That's what was said, and whom I was replying too.
There's simply no way the "American public" could remove the CIA inside a couple of elections. The public doesn't set policy all they do is elect politicians whose propaganda appeals to them most.
I think you are making a false assumption. Most Americans want the CIA. The reason the CIA exists and continues to exist is because Americans see a need for that agency. If most Americans wanted the CIA to be axed, it would be.. because politicians "pandering" for votes would be lobbying for it. Your post seems to imply that most Americans don't want the CIA, but don't have a choice in the matter. That is just false.
There are things worth keeping secret, and the American public knows it. Someone has to be in charge of keeping those secrets. If you think there is nothing that should be kept secret, you are delusional. Americans want to know that Bin Ladin's cellphone is tapped, and Americans realize that publishing that on the front page of the NYT isn't the best idea. That is the purpose of the CIA. Just because you can point to abuses doesn't make the CIA's core mission wrong -- that's a logical fallacy.
The issue of oversight is more alot more controversial. Some people believe there needs to be more oversight, and some don't. That's a valid conversation worth having. However, the slashbots who can't think 2 steps beyond their reflexive spinal response to $emotion-mongering, are the ones who jump up and say "GOVERNMENT BAD, SECRETS BAD, WE ARE ALL SLAVES". I'm just standing up and telling the tinfoil weirdos to get back in their (faraday) cages and let the rational people have a rational debate that will actually enhance people's understanding of the situation.
America: your country has been usurped by your CIA and its masters. The American Public no longer control that agency.
It blows my mind this paranoid ramblings gets modded up. The CIA's "masters" are our elected government. Just because you call them "masters" in a cleverly worded attempt to infuse an element of the sinister doesn't make anything you say even remotely true. The CIA is allowed to keep secrets because the government lets them. The government lets them because we elect people who agree with that. The "American Public" could remove the CIA from existence in the next pair of elections if it wanted. The bottomline here is that there are certain things worth keeping secret. Just because you and some historian somewhere thinks the agency is going overboard doesn't mean the entire mission is a farce. That's a grade A fallacy.
I'm thinking you need to put on your tinfoil hat, get in your faraday cage, and pop your meds.
* Lines are 2-D thingies, but conductors are 3-D. Your etching technology has to get X times better to keep up with the line-drawing technology.
* Same thing with the active components. If you try making the transistor half the old linear dimensions, you have 1/8th the volume of active silicon. This leads to all kinds of problems with leakage and power handling capability.
* A line that's half as wide and half as thick has four times the resistance per unit length, and 1/4 the current-carrying capacity. You can try using a better conductor, but once you get to using copper, you're done.
Why do I get the feeling that you actually have no idea what you are talking about, and neither do the people who modded you up. Etching, depositing, and lithography all go hand in hand when talking about an Xnm "process", therefore your comment about "thinner lines", in fact, makes no tangible sense. Lithography is the most difficult to shrink, not etching, so I'm really failing to see your point. It has been the main technical hurdle for the past 10 years.
Furthermore, the "conductors" in a processor aren't nearly as dependant on size as the silicon-feature construction. You can have an extremely layered chip with larger conductors if need be (and modern chips are), so both comment #1 and #3 are reasonably meaningless.
As for comment #2, yes, you are right: the "smaller transistor" problem is very well understood and it's the reason it takes so long to construct smaller and smaller processes, because the physics and effects must be taken into account. Not all transistors on a chip are the same size, nor can all transistors be shrunk. There is a reason that Intel doesn't slap it's PentiumIV plans into the new 30nm machine, and out comes a new chip. They have to go through and make sure that all the transistors that can be shrunk are, and none of those that cannot, are not. This is a reasonably non-trivial task, but it is not impossible, nor a "large can of whup-ass".
(PS: Thanks for the math lesson about 2d vs 3d in part 1. You might want to recheck part 3, with that in mind.)
Well, if the gate layer is the smallest thing in the transistor and it is 11 atoms wide and 1 atom is the smallest measure, then smallest transistor theortically possible is 65nm/11 = 6nm
You are confusing dimensions. When intel refers to 65nm processes, they are talking about length and width ability to carve out features. Oxide layers "thickness" operates in the third dimension ("height"?) to provide resitant layers. It is much smaller then 65nm. Actual atoms are about 200 picometers in "width".
I am too lazy to learn these things from scratch but would anyone cared to tell us what's the theoretical minimum width we can go before eletrons starts jumping wires? I hope it's not 5nm.
The theoretical minimum width for the current type of transistors is in the.2nm range, the width of a single atom. Tunneling and other quantum effects will very likely prevent us from ever getting that low, however.
You start off by stating that you hate the self-righteousness of the government of this country, and saying that they shouldn't expect companies to act morally or by american values, and then you end saying that congress should take a stand.
You should try reading what I said. I never said Congress should take a stand. I said Congress should do as they say, and if they won't, stop preaching. I don't which side Congress comes down, as long as it's consistent. Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining. That's all.
Actually, the whole point of corporations originally was to create a taskforce that served SOCIETY. If anything, we've gotten very far from that original meaning. Corporations are now above the law, and a threat to the right thing. The only motivation or consideration they have is profit. I'd actually like to see them expected to uphold some values, just for the novelty value.
Since when are you allowed to literally make things up because it fits your politics? The purpose of a corporation has, and always will be, profit and limited liability. It's a tool for economic growth. It allows people, and/or groups of people, to take large chances at businesses with high entrance costs, borrow money, and be able to fail without having the lenders own you for life. You've invented this myth that corporations job was originally to "serve" society. Unless, of course, you mean serve society in terms of making profit, increasing wealth and production, and paying more taxes. This whole "corporations make money, therefore they are evil" is just such a complete pile of rubbish. It's incredibly short-sighted and based entirely on poorly-thought-out emotional-driven bullshit rhetoric. No, the system isn't perfect, and yes it can be abused, but calling one of the most important economic tools of the last 200 years "evil" because you can cherry pick examples is just pure nonsense. I wish you slashbots would put more than 5 minutes of rational thought into the dumb things that you say.
we've gotten very far from that original meaning
As an aside, let's not use the ridiculously fallacious "appeal to history" as evidence you are correct. Guess what, the original constitution originally said that black people were 3/5th of a normal person. Look how far we've gone from that definition. Just because someone is old (or new) doesn't make it right.
In other words, they know that they have completely sold out their basic values. The rest is just pages of rationalization.
I really dislike Google's stance, but I really hate the self-righteousness of the government (and by proxy, the people, of this country). We have decided that corporations need to stand on their principles and "take one for the team", in order to further American values. The people/government expect companies to "do the right thing" and protect our Bill of Rights abroad on philosophical grounds. Except it's not the private industries job to do that, that's the governments job, and the government has done nothing, ever, to discourage China from being the way they are. They are most-favored-nation, etc. They get a few strong words every year, and otherwise get yielded too constantly.
In other words, to Congress I say, put your god damm money where your mouth is. Take a stand yourself before you start demanding that others do it for you. This is just complete and total scapegoating. Why is this country looking to Google to lead the way on spreading free speech? When did we decide that the spread of the basic freedoms should be privitized?
Slashdot Mirror
That the information is incredibly easy to find? Do I need to teach you how to use google next? Or do you deny it's existence?
I followed all of those links... You know, you actually have to read the articles if you want to learn anything.
Did you follow and read the 972 pages of hits on scholar.google.com, also? Or did you just entirely miss the point?
They should move the US records to China to prvent the US government from accessing them...
*beep* We are sorry, but we are not able to accept your karma-whoring troll at this time. This flamebait has already been posted by some other retard, been modded up by more retards, and hijacked the entire thread. Please try again later.
You're a real patriotic wanker.
Amazing how you can just label without basis in reality. That's expert rhetoric. It has nothing to do with patriotism, AC. It has everything to do with somethings not being morally relativistic. I apoligize for believing that some acts are just fundamentally more obscene than others. I realize in your world, everything is relative and no one ever has the right to judge... however in the real world, that's not the way it is. I realize that no matter what I say, you will still dislike my country and accuse me of being "blindly arrogantly patriotic" which I realize is just your way of justifying the inferiority complex. When you get back to reality, let me know. I know to your sheltered mind, that seems like arrogance.. but it's not. I forgive you for not being able to see the forrest for the trees.
I don't need to see some complete politically motivated garbage. We get it, man. You hate the president. We don't, however, need to subject slashdot to this ridiculous hyperbole and completely unintelligent rhetoric that is entirely flamebait.
No rational comparison can be made even from Gitmo to what China does.. for instance.. to Tibet. This is total non-intelligent political flamebait.
Maybe they should be moving the US records into China, given all the crap with the DOJ recently. That would actually be a pretty good swap, moving the US records into China and the Chinese records into the US.
I can only assume this is a joke and the people who modded you "informative" hit the wrong identifier by accident. You aren't actually comparing privacy rights in the US and China and equating them... I can't be actually reading this.. and seeing other people modding it up as actually informative.
I guess this is the part where someone responds with some hyperbolic exaggerations of US indiscretions in the privacy arena, as if it makes the countries two antics even remotely comparable. In every one of those cases it is newsworthy in the United States... most of the same stuff happens just because its Tuesday in China. Oh yea, and you get executed for speech there.
This very much seems like a Republican/Democrat stand-off. Are you pro-business or pro-consumer?
Its a question of free-market versus regulation. It has nothing to do with businesses or consumers. That's simplistic.
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that in industries with sufficient competition, regulation is both "anti-business" and "anti-consumer". Regulation is needed when the free-market is insufficient... It is not entirely clear whether the free-market would be able to sufficiently punish those trying to abuse consumers. It is a difficult industry to have viable competition because of the startup costs associated with it. There is no easy answer, and trying to frame the argument as "pro-business vs pro-consumer" is completely and totally incorrect. The question is "Is this industry capable of self-correction via the free market?".
What a shame that laws need to be created to keep companies from acting like greedy assholes.
Allow me to welcome you to humanity. You must be new here.
Guess what else we have laws to prevent? Theft! Fraud! Beating! Murder! Rape! Isn't it sad that we, as a species, actually need to have laws that enforce all these things. Man, what a horrible creature we are.
Where? Where is that evidence? I've seen no such thing.
... and maybe even.... wait for it..... oh my god.. here it comes... where?
HERE!
here and here and right here and somewhere near here and also over here and probably just passed here
Heh... Google scholar wins.
Heh, "some dude" on the internet "calling bullshit" on a study from 5 seconds of thought that is clearly ignorant... is going to lecture me on "the real world". Guess what? In the real world, any electromagnetic engineer who hears you compare RADAR to cellphone radiation is going to laugh at you. How do I know? Because I was one... and because I worked on both. I've seen a cellphone actually screw up certain types of avionics equipment, in the cockpit, myself.. and not just of any jet, but a USAF fighter.
.it has to do with someone who presumably has three times the credientials that you've already proven you have (Which is to say, none). You are litterally making things up. You keep talking about the universities and the professors... except I'm not talking about them.. I'm talking about _you_. _YOU_ don't know what you are talking about. You are clueless. Do you get it yet?
I am not some "kiddie". I am, however, informed. You are not. You are an idiot spouting and trying to karmawhore and impress by pretending to know things you don't. It has nothing to do with the university..
I don't need to be lectured by an ignorant internet fool pretending to know things he doesn't. I promise.
No, it's about credibility. "Some dude on the internet" doesn't beat one of the most prestigious universities in the world. It's not about hero worship.. it's about ignorant people pretending to know things they don't. I've attended many conferences and seen many bad papers... however 99.9% are still far more reliable then "some dude on the internet"... so excuse me if I don't take your relatively meaningless and ignorant opinion with a grain of salt.
No, the U.S. is not fighting any war against terrorists. It invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, which are countries, and thus waged war on those countries, and continues to occupy them. People who fight against that are called patriots, not terrorists. Arguably, since the U.S. has global hegemony for the moment, any combat operations conducted by the U.S. are actually suppressions of popular insurrections against their empire.
-----
Perhaps *all* real conservatives. The Trotskyite red-diapers who are currently using our armed forces as a cheap toy and conducting the most immense transfer of wealth in history, from the US to Europe, are disqualified from that category.
Those are your "empircal facts" that you've used in this thread. You are either a troll or paranoid and delusional.
No way.
I go on a road trip with three phones around me (not all mine) and a Garmin GPS and it works just fine.
Heh. Nothing like outright dismissal of a scientific study from one of the most reputable universities on the planet based on intuition, anecdotal evidence and a summary from a news organization. Tell me, what does your gut feel about having evolved from apes? For or against? Gonna call bullshit?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US.
Of course you can't. No better way to get karma.
ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
Except when Google does cater to the wishes of China... guess whose fault it is? Unless you aren't one of the reflexive 'blame America/blame corporations', and feel that Google did a good thing by "doing a little to cater to the wishes of China"? I mean, either China should be able to control the internet, or it shouldn't... I can't handle the double standard.
It does not mean attempting to pre-empt factual, reasoned, discussion by name-calling and sneering mockery, for example.
Sorry. I dismissed the stupid "equality of all theories" idea when the ID'ers tried it. Therefore, if you want to make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary proof. Otherwise, take your conspiracy theory back to hole you crawled out of with it.
You might want to try reading the person I replied to, and understsanding the context of my statement before replying.
Nobody doubts the need for classified documents at times
In fact, that's exactly what the original poster was doubting. I understand completely how some people might be upset at the CIAs reclassification. However, to take this perceived abuse and use it to call for the dismantling of the CIA and all forms of classification is just asinine. That's what was said, and whom I was replying too.
There's simply no way the "American public" could remove the CIA inside a couple of elections. The public doesn't set policy all they do is elect politicians whose propaganda appeals to them most.
I think you are making a false assumption. Most Americans want the CIA. The reason the CIA exists and continues to exist is because Americans see a need for that agency. If most Americans wanted the CIA to be axed, it would be.. because politicians "pandering" for votes would be lobbying for it. Your post seems to imply that most Americans don't want the CIA, but don't have a choice in the matter. That is just false.
There are things worth keeping secret, and the American public knows it. Someone has to be in charge of keeping those secrets. If you think there is nothing that should be kept secret, you are delusional. Americans want to know that Bin Ladin's cellphone is tapped, and Americans realize that publishing that on the front page of the NYT isn't the best idea. That is the purpose of the CIA. Just because you can point to abuses doesn't make the CIA's core mission wrong -- that's a logical fallacy.
The issue of oversight is more alot more controversial. Some people believe there needs to be more oversight, and some don't. That's a valid conversation worth having. However, the slashbots who can't think 2 steps beyond their reflexive spinal response to $emotion-mongering, are the ones who jump up and say "GOVERNMENT BAD, SECRETS BAD, WE ARE ALL SLAVES". I'm just standing up and telling the tinfoil weirdos to get back in their (faraday) cages and let the rational people have a rational debate that will actually enhance people's understanding of the situation.
America: your country has been usurped by your CIA and its masters. The American Public no longer control that agency.
It blows my mind this paranoid ramblings gets modded up. The CIA's "masters" are our elected government. Just because you call them "masters" in a cleverly worded attempt to infuse an element of the sinister doesn't make anything you say even remotely true. The CIA is allowed to keep secrets because the government lets them. The government lets them because we elect people who agree with that. The "American Public" could remove the CIA from existence in the next pair of elections if it wanted. The bottomline here is that there are certain things worth keeping secret. Just because you and some historian somewhere thinks the agency is going overboard doesn't mean the entire mission is a farce. That's a grade A fallacy.
I'm thinking you need to put on your tinfoil hat, get in your faraday cage, and pop your meds.
* Lines are 2-D thingies, but conductors are 3-D. Your etching technology has to get X times better to keep up with the line-drawing technology.
* Same thing with the active components. If you try making the transistor half the old linear dimensions, you have 1/8th the volume of active silicon. This leads to all kinds of problems with leakage and power handling capability.
* A line that's half as wide and half as thick has four times the resistance per unit length, and 1/4 the current-carrying capacity. You can try using a better conductor, but once you get to using copper, you're done.
Why do I get the feeling that you actually have no idea what you are talking about, and neither do the people who modded you up. Etching, depositing, and lithography all go hand in hand when talking about an Xnm "process", therefore your comment about "thinner lines", in fact, makes no tangible sense. Lithography is the most difficult to shrink, not etching, so I'm really failing to see your point. It has been the main technical hurdle for the past 10 years.
Furthermore, the "conductors" in a processor aren't nearly as dependant on size as the silicon-feature construction. You can have an extremely layered chip with larger conductors if need be (and modern chips are), so both comment #1 and #3 are reasonably meaningless.
As for comment #2, yes, you are right: the "smaller transistor" problem is very well understood and it's the reason it takes so long to construct smaller and smaller processes, because the physics and effects must be taken into account. Not all transistors on a chip are the same size, nor can all transistors be shrunk. There is a reason that Intel doesn't slap it's PentiumIV plans into the new 30nm machine, and out comes a new chip. They have to go through and make sure that all the transistors that can be shrunk are, and none of those that cannot, are not. This is a reasonably non-trivial task, but it is not impossible, nor a "large can of whup-ass".
(PS: Thanks for the math lesson about 2d vs 3d in part 1. You might want to recheck part 3, with that in mind.)
Well, if the gate layer is the smallest thing in the transistor and it is 11 atoms wide and 1 atom is the smallest measure, then smallest transistor theortically possible is 65nm/11 = 6nm
You are confusing dimensions. When intel refers to 65nm processes, they are talking about length and width ability to carve out features. Oxide layers "thickness" operates in the third dimension ("height"?) to provide resitant layers. It is much smaller then 65nm. Actual atoms are about 200 picometers in "width".
I am too lazy to learn these things from scratch but would anyone cared to tell us what's the theoretical minimum width we can go before eletrons starts jumping wires? I hope it's not 5nm.
.2nm range, the width of a single atom. Tunneling and other quantum effects will very likely prevent us from ever getting that low, however.
The theoretical minimum width for the current type of transistors is in the
You start off by stating that you hate the self-righteousness of the government of this country, and saying that they shouldn't expect companies to act morally or by american values, and then you end saying that congress should take a stand.
You should try reading what I said. I never said Congress should take a stand. I said Congress should do as they say, and if they won't, stop preaching. I don't which side Congress comes down, as long as it's consistent. Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining. That's all.
Actually, the whole point of corporations originally was to create a taskforce that served SOCIETY. If anything, we've gotten very far from that original meaning. Corporations are now above the law, and a threat to the right thing. The only motivation or consideration they have is profit. I'd actually like to see them expected to uphold some values, just for the novelty value.
Since when are you allowed to literally make things up because it fits your politics? The purpose of a corporation has, and always will be, profit and limited liability. It's a tool for economic growth. It allows people, and/or groups of people, to take large chances at businesses with high entrance costs, borrow money, and be able to fail without having the lenders own you for life. You've invented this myth that corporations job was originally to "serve" society. Unless, of course, you mean serve society in terms of making profit, increasing wealth and production, and paying more taxes. This whole "corporations make money, therefore they are evil" is just such a complete pile of rubbish. It's incredibly short-sighted and based entirely on poorly-thought-out emotional-driven bullshit rhetoric. No, the system isn't perfect, and yes it can be abused, but calling one of the most important economic tools of the last 200 years "evil" because you can cherry pick examples is just pure nonsense. I wish you slashbots would put more than 5 minutes of rational thought into the dumb things that you say.
we've gotten very far from that original meaning
As an aside, let's not use the ridiculously fallacious "appeal to history" as evidence you are correct. Guess what, the original constitution originally said that black people were 3/5th of a normal person. Look how far we've gone from that definition. Just because someone is old (or new) doesn't make it right.
In other words, they know that they have completely sold out their basic values. The rest is just pages of rationalization.
I really dislike Google's stance, but I really hate the self-righteousness of the government (and by proxy, the people, of this country). We have decided that corporations need to stand on their principles and "take one for the team", in order to further American values. The people/government expect companies to "do the right thing" and protect our Bill of Rights abroad on philosophical grounds. Except it's not the private industries job to do that, that's the governments job, and the government has done nothing, ever, to discourage China from being the way they are. They are most-favored-nation, etc. They get a few strong words every year, and otherwise get yielded too constantly.
In other words, to Congress I say, put your god damm money where your mouth is. Take a stand yourself before you start demanding that others do it for you. This is just complete and total scapegoating. Why is this country looking to Google to lead the way on spreading free speech? When did we decide that the spread of the basic freedoms should be privitized?
Price?
The lasers run about 10k$, but the sharks are alot more expensive