As a web site owner who is not a developer, I second that.
Of course, widgets by themselves aren't going to make compelling content for my web site, but maybe I'll see something that brings in RSS feeds that I can manage to modify to bring in the right combination of content from elsewhere to stimulate a decent blog.
And then I'll call a developer to fix whatever it is I've broken...:)
They told the regulators how much it took to run a telephone system, and the regulators marked that figure up.
IIRC, they were regulated under a CAPM regime. Under the Capital Asset Pricing Model, regulators allow for a "fair" rate of return on invested capital. (The definition of "fair" might or might not include a reduction or negative premium to account for the near-zero risk, but that's not relevant to my point.) So, regulated monopolies such as AT&T had a very strong incentive to boost their fixed assets. Any "investment" (i.e., spending) they could capitalize would go into their rate base, which would allow them to earn more profit. (They also had an equally strong incentive to use the slowest depreciation accounting methods, thereby extending the allowed earnings on those "investments".) It doesn't completely explain their investments in R&D, but it does help explain the very posh nature of the physical plant at the old Bell Labs, for example.
But it goes to show if you're going to waste money, at least you should waste it on something useful.
Not really. The lesson was, "if you're going to waste money, at least convince the regulators that it was 'investment' and not 'spending'".
It's not a dichotomy, because there's no such thing as perfect capitalism or perfect communism. (Yes, I know that perfect communism might be an oxymoron, but that's true of perfect anything.) An alternative to flawed capitalism is trying to make capitalism work more like its idealized form. Granted, such efforts sometimes end up moving away from the ideal, but on the whole I'd say we've improved markedly on 19th century capitalism, with such "communist" ideas as workplace safety and monopoly regulation. Truth in advertising is another such improvement.
I've never had a problem with PayPal, but I admit I don't really use them as a merchant processor. I just use them for the occasional payment. However, their pricing seems pretty good, regardless of whether it's the best. In addition, I recall having one problem with a purchase several years ago (before eBay bought them), and I got a full refund. (The merchant didn't deliver.)
How is PayPal evil but not the competitor that's posing as some kind of consumer activist site?
I'm not a PayPal evangelist. I signed up years ago just to get the "free" $5 (which I think has been earning compound interest, making it by far my best retirement investment to date). But I just don't see the problem; it's pretty unremarkable, in fact.
I'm not sure if this qualifies as "proof", but if you just look at the web site, it immediately presents links to another merchant processor at 995MerchantAccounts. I tried to WHOIS both paypalsucks.com and this other site and found they both don't identify the people or organizations behind them in their register.com info. PayPalSucks uses a WhoIs Privacy Protection, Inc. registrant identity, and 995MerchantAccounts identifies their admin as Administrator.
Why are they so anxious to hide their identities? Is it more than one person or organization? I don't know, and I'm too lazy to go beyond this for proof. The links on PayPalSucks are enough to convince me that this is just an attempt to "compete" with PayPal.
IMHO, the rate structure for 995MerchantAccounts is probably not favorable to smaller merchants. They charge $10/month for a "statement fee" and $19.95/month for an "internet gateway fee". PayPal does not have fixed fees for account maintenance. 995MerchantAccounts probably has a lower transaction discount fee (2.39% vs. 2.9% for PayPal, which has a sliding scale that goes down to 1.9% but only for high-volume sellers), and has a flat transaction fee of $0.25 vs. $0.30 for PayPal. Assuming a merchant has less than $3,000/month in charge volume, it seems like PayPal would be a cheaper way to process:
Assume 60 sales transactions @ $50/transaction
PayPal Fees
60 x $0.30 = $18.00
2.9% x $3,000.00 = $87.00
Total Fees = $105.00
995MerchantAccounts Fees
60 x $0.25 = $15.00
2.39% x $3,000.00 = $71.70
Statement Fee = $10
Internet Gateway Fee = $19.95
Total Fees = $126.65
BTW, at $3,000.01/month, PayPal's transaction discount falls to 2.5%. It falls to 1.9% above $100,000/month. At higher volumes, their discount rate is clearly lower than 995MerchantAccount's, and at lower volumes, the fixed fees for 995MerchantAccounts start to outweigh the "savings" from the 2.39% discount rate.
My guess would be more cynical: the cheapest documentable price, which allows them to claim the lowest "price" ($9); and the five-minute fill-up for the required capacity is just a plug-in (ok, pun intended). They can ignore the feasibility of "pumping" that much electricity in such a short time because no such "filling stations" yet exist. Ain't marketing fun?
Gas usage is not a problem; it is a necessity. The problem is excessive or irresponsible gas usage.
That seems like a distinction without a difference. Besides, I don't think the government should be in the business of judging the relative merits of your marginal gallon of gasoline consumption vs. mine.
it should be a tax on gas-irresponsible vehicles
Well, I agree that a tax is better than fuel-economy standards, because it allows for technology substitution. But a tax on gasoline consumption is a tax on "irresponsible" vehicles.
earmarked to doing something productive
As my OP implied, I think that's naive. A nice sentiment, but naive.
tax something equal to its harm to society
This seems contradictory to your desire to tax certain types of gasoline consumption more than others. BTW, we should be talking about specific emissions rather than consumption, since they are not perfectly correlated. Aside from that point though, a tax on gasoline does tax in proportion to harm, since you pay in proportion to consumption.
that's why the government pays $20k+ for studies
Did I say naive? I meant clueless! The government pays more than that just to process the proposals for studies...
Again, I wasn't criticizing movietally at all, just wondering what was particularly relevant to web 2.0. I agree that the concept differs from Netflix, Amazon, etc., but I was talking about whether the functionality was substantially different and -- more importantly -- whether the functionality was somehow easier to build with 2.0 than in the "old days". (I certainly wasn't saying that this was easy.) The only reason I brought up examples was to point out that similar functionality has existed for a long time, which makes me wonder what any of this has to do with web 2.0 (and whether web 2.0 is anything significant at all).
I wasn't criticizing movietally; I was just asking what's so new/2.0 about it. I'm not sure your post answers that. Of the features you mention, which of them really required or at least significantly benefitted from 2.0? Which was truly unique or innovative?
For me, it's not primarily political satire. It's satire about the news, a lot of which is news about politics. Yes, sometimes it's about the subjects of the news, but the very best of the Daily Show for me is the stuff they do that lampoons the news biz itself, not the news, per se. Maybe this distinction is just in my brain, because none of the other posters seem to see it, either.
A previous post mentioned that Netflix did this a long time ago. Amazon did the same thing for books even before that. So how exactly does this demonstrate anything compelling about web 2.0?
I guess I'm one of the few "liberals" who believe markets usually work better than government. I'm just not an absolutist in that belief (nor in most others). I believe that regulation is sometimes necessary because there's no such thing as perfect competition or "free" markets. That's not (at least today) considered to be a point of view "from the right". I'm sure many might argue that belief in the necessity of regulation is not a market capitalist point of view, i.e. that all regulation is bad. But the main distinction I was drawing in my OP was that pricing mechanisms are more efficient than standards because they allow for technology substitution. Although there's obvious disagreement on the magnitude, the ensuing discussion about SUVs, etc., bears out my point, I think. (I like to live in fantasy land where even people who disagree with me are actually proving my arguments...)
I don't believe that government should own the means of production or centrally plan the economy. But I lean left because I also don't think it's a bad thing for government to help the poor, and I believe in progressive taxation because that's where the money is (not because I resent the wealthy; I hope to be among them someday). And I don't buy the self-serving rationale of "compassionate conservatism" that it actually is better not to give aid to the poor (it makes them dependent, etc.) That doesn't mean I didn't think the post-WWII welfare system needed fixing. As I said, I'm not an absolutist. In short, I was pointing out that not all lefties/liberals are socialists or commies. But I don't think that makes me a centrist.
Wait. In today's environment, maybe that does make me a centrist. No wonder I'm off-balance.
I lean left, too, but as a market capitalist, not as a socialist.
The real solution from an automotive perspective is to federally mandate gas milage standards
That's less effective than increasing the cost of gasoline, which is more market-based as a solution. Yes, I know that artificially increasing the cost of gasoline might have secondary economic and political effects, such as giving politicians more pork. But it definitely
provide[s] incentives for more fuel efficient and lower polluting automobiles
However, I, too, feel the pinch between the ascendant right wing and the lunatic left wing. There's not much room for "real" liberals, is there?
I'm sure you're right. Plus, if it ends up in a trial, we'll see lots of buck-passing, since it appears we have lots of guilty parties with no particular loyalty to each other and reasonably "plausible deniability". On the other hand, I'm sure we also have one or two ambitious public prosecutors who would love to make their claim to fame on this one.
According to TFA: "People briefed on HP's review of its internal investigation say that it was authorized by Dunn, the chairwoman, and put under the supervision of Kevin Hunsaker, a senior counsel who is the company's director of ethics."
Before this "even worse news" about the extent of the spying, HP's board should have forced Dunn to resign immediately from the board. Instead, they allowed her to continue as chairwoman until January and to continue as a director after that. I predict that the board will now force her immediate resignation, but will they also strip her of her directorship? What about severance? They should take it all, retroactively. IANAL, but I'll bet that's legal, somehow.
Although I'm inclined to be more sympathetic about the "stolen election" hypothesis than you are, I fully support your plea for a real alternative. It seems to me that both party platforms have essentially devolved into "We're not as bad as those assholes." I'm waiting to see that on a bumper sticker.
I'll confess ignorance on the matter of whose numbers we were "tapping". I think your analogy is on point, in either case, but it raises what might become an important question: does it matter where we put the "tap"? (I know that in some cases we're not actually tapping but just looking for patterns in call records.) In terms of your analogy, would it be ok to "tap" the Don's calls by somehow tracing to the other end of the call and then tapping it there? I think it would be legitimate if you could show somehow that you weren't somehow tapping other calls from the "other end" (unless you first got a warrant for the party on that other end). I know it sounds only hypothetical, but it might matter someday, especially when considering email, IM, etc.
Personally, I think it would be not only ok but also no trouble (again the laziness criterion) to go ahead and get warrants to tap anyone receiving or sending communications to/from anyone already under warrant. Association with murderers seems like sufficient probable cause, even if many of those caught in such a net might be innocent. Innocent doesn't mean you never get investigated. But that's why I care about due process, even for scumbags.
Well, I agree that it's a load of crap, even though I'm a liberal.
In short, I haven't seen a credible liberal post-9/11 position. However, I don't think I've seen a credible conservative one, either. I'm probably 95% sympathetic to your point of view; however, I'll address some of your specific points:
Once again, most people agree on the problem
Well, most people support, in some sense, the "war on terror". I seem to be in a majority of one in thinking that this is a huge source of our current problems. We need to declare war on specific enemies. I realize that we live in a world very different from WWII, where it was relatively easy to identify our enemies. Just because it's harder doesn't mean it isn't important. We (you and I, and I'm sure the majority of conservatives and liberals) could pretty easily agree on a formal declaration of war against Al Qaeda, don't you think? And we could probably almost as easily agree with formal declarations against the Taliban and other states that have supported groups that have committed acts of war against us. (OK, I'm playing fast and loose with words like "us", but let me slide for a bit, ok?) We might still be left with different ways to approach the war, but I think it would be easier to resolve some of our "tactical" differences.
Can you tell me what essential liberties YOU have lost since 9/11?
Well, I hope you don't mean that I should complain only if I personally have lost essential liberties. By that logic, it was ok for Germans not to complain in the early thirties when only Jews and other specific groups lost some essential liberties. I think that warrantless eavesdropping is a violation of liberty. Note that I emphasize warrantless. In truth, I think this issue is mostly about laziness, since we already have the infrastructure in place (FISA and secret warrants) to do what the Bush administration has said is so essential. It's laziness because they didn't even try to get FISA warrants. Saying that it's too time-consuming would be a legitimate argument if they could show that they tried to get warrants and lost track of a suspect because of the delay. Absent that specific evidence, I'll stick with the laziness critique. Even with that critique, I'm willing to consider the need to update FISA, simply because it was developed in pre-9/11 times. But, so was the Constitution, and you don't seem like the kind of guy who wants to throw that out...
The "real pussies" are those who want to roll over and pretend nothing happened
Agreed; except that I think there are plenty of "real pussies" on both sides (assuming there are only two) of the political divide.
pretend it's a law enforcement problem
I might agree if you added the word "only". I don't think Schneier is pretending that it's just a law enforcement problem. But I think he makes a reasonable argument that law enforcement tactics are one of our best tools in this "war". Why can't we agree that this is a very, very different kind of war than anything we've fought previously, and jointly try to find the best ways to win it. I do agree that traditional law enforcement alone isn't enough. But neither is traditional military action. There's nothing traditional about this.
complain that people fighting for our enemies are not getting the rights guaranteed by the constitution for U.S. citizens
I think I understand your point about non-citizens, but again we're into very new territory with regards to rights, etc. I agree that the U.S. Constitution doesn't grant rights to non-citizens. But, surely you don't propose that non-citizens should have no rights, do you? I'm not arguing that non-citizens should have the same rights as citizens; and I admit that I just haven't come up with a good position on what rights they should have. However, I do think that things like t
Slashdot Mirror
As a web site owner who is not a developer, I second that.
... :)
Of course, widgets by themselves aren't going to make compelling content for my web site, but maybe I'll see something that brings in RSS feeds that I can manage to modify to bring in the right combination of content from elsewhere to stimulate a decent blog.
And then I'll call a developer to fix whatever it is I've broken
I think the probability that that will happen is astronomically high.
Really? I think it's less than (but not by much!) or equal to one.
---
Tag this "too easy to ignore".
They told the regulators how much it took to run a telephone system, and the regulators marked that figure up.
IIRC, they were regulated under a CAPM regime. Under the Capital Asset Pricing Model, regulators allow for a "fair" rate of return on invested capital. (The definition of "fair" might or might not include a reduction or negative premium to account for the near-zero risk, but that's not relevant to my point.) So, regulated monopolies such as AT&T had a very strong incentive to boost their fixed assets. Any "investment" (i.e., spending) they could capitalize would go into their rate base, which would allow them to earn more profit. (They also had an equally strong incentive to use the slowest depreciation accounting methods, thereby extending the allowed earnings on those "investments".) It doesn't completely explain their investments in R&D, but it does help explain the very posh nature of the physical plant at the old Bell Labs, for example.
But it goes to show if you're going to waste money, at least you should waste it on something useful.
Not really. The lesson was, "if you're going to waste money, at least convince the regulators that it was 'investment' and not 'spending'".
It's not a dichotomy, because there's no such thing as perfect capitalism or perfect communism. (Yes, I know that perfect communism might be an oxymoron, but that's true of perfect anything.) An alternative to flawed capitalism is trying to make capitalism work more like its idealized form. Granted, such efforts sometimes end up moving away from the ideal, but on the whole I'd say we've improved markedly on 19th century capitalism, with such "communist" ideas as workplace safety and monopoly regulation. Truth in advertising is another such improvement.
So what's so evil?
I've never had a problem with PayPal, but I admit I don't really use them as a merchant processor. I just use them for the occasional payment. However, their pricing seems pretty good, regardless of whether it's the best. In addition, I recall having one problem with a purchase several years ago (before eBay bought them), and I got a full refund. (The merchant didn't deliver.)
How is PayPal evil but not the competitor that's posing as some kind of consumer activist site?
I'm not a PayPal evangelist. I signed up years ago just to get the "free" $5 (which I think has been earning compound interest, making it by far my best retirement investment to date). But I just don't see the problem; it's pretty unremarkable, in fact.
I'm not sure if this qualifies as "proof", but if you just look at the web site, it immediately presents links to another merchant processor at 995MerchantAccounts. I tried to WHOIS both paypalsucks.com and this other site and found they both don't identify the people or organizations behind them in their register.com info. PayPalSucks uses a WhoIs Privacy Protection, Inc. registrant identity, and 995MerchantAccounts identifies their admin as Administrator.
Why are they so anxious to hide their identities? Is it more than one person or organization? I don't know, and I'm too lazy to go beyond this for proof. The links on PayPalSucks are enough to convince me that this is just an attempt to "compete" with PayPal.
IMHO, the rate structure for 995MerchantAccounts is probably not favorable to smaller merchants. They charge $10/month for a "statement fee" and $19.95/month for an "internet gateway fee". PayPal does not have fixed fees for account maintenance. 995MerchantAccounts probably has a lower transaction discount fee (2.39% vs. 2.9% for PayPal, which has a sliding scale that goes down to 1.9% but only for high-volume sellers), and has a flat transaction fee of $0.25 vs. $0.30 for PayPal. Assuming a merchant has less than $3,000/month in charge volume, it seems like PayPal would be a cheaper way to process:
Assume 60 sales transactions @ $50/transaction
PayPal Fees
60 x $0.30 = $18.00
2.9% x $3,000.00 = $87.00
Total Fees = $105.00
995MerchantAccounts Fees
60 x $0.25 = $15.00
2.39% x $3,000.00 = $71.70
Statement Fee = $10
Internet Gateway Fee = $19.95
Total Fees = $126.65
BTW, at $3,000.01/month, PayPal's transaction discount falls to 2.5%. It falls to 1.9% above $100,000/month. At higher volumes, their discount rate is clearly lower than 995MerchantAccount's, and at lower volumes, the fixed fees for 995MerchantAccounts start to outweigh the "savings" from the 2.39% discount rate.
wish i had mod points for parent: funny
My guess would be more cynical: the cheapest documentable price, which allows them to claim the lowest "price" ($9); and the five-minute fill-up for the required capacity is just a plug-in (ok, pun intended). They can ignore the feasibility of "pumping" that much electricity in such a short time because no such "filling stations" yet exist. Ain't marketing fun?
Gas usage is not a problem; it is a necessity. The problem is excessive or irresponsible gas usage.
...
That seems like a distinction without a difference. Besides, I don't think the government should be in the business of judging the relative merits of your marginal gallon of gasoline consumption vs. mine.
it should be a tax on gas-irresponsible vehicles
Well, I agree that a tax is better than fuel-economy standards, because it allows for technology substitution. But a tax on gasoline consumption is a tax on "irresponsible" vehicles.
earmarked to doing something productive
As my OP implied, I think that's naive. A nice sentiment, but naive.
tax something equal to its harm to society
This seems contradictory to your desire to tax certain types of gasoline consumption more than others. BTW, we should be talking about specific emissions rather than consumption, since they are not perfectly correlated. Aside from that point though, a tax on gasoline does tax in proportion to harm, since you pay in proportion to consumption.
that's why the government pays $20k+ for studies
Did I say naive? I meant clueless! The government pays more than that just to process the proposals for studies
Again, I wasn't criticizing movietally at all, just wondering what was particularly relevant to web 2.0. I agree that the concept differs from Netflix, Amazon, etc., but I was talking about whether the functionality was substantially different and -- more importantly -- whether the functionality was somehow easier to build with 2.0 than in the "old days". (I certainly wasn't saying that this was easy.) The only reason I brought up examples was to point out that similar functionality has existed for a long time, which makes me wonder what any of this has to do with web 2.0 (and whether web 2.0 is anything significant at all).
I wasn't criticizing movietally; I was just asking what's so new/2.0 about it. I'm not sure your post answers that. Of the features you mention, which of them really required or at least significantly benefitted from 2.0? Which was truly unique or innovative?
For me, it's not primarily political satire. It's satire about the news, a lot of which is news about politics. Yes, sometimes it's about the subjects of the news, but the very best of the Daily Show for me is the stuff they do that lampoons the news biz itself, not the news, per se. Maybe this distinction is just in my brain, because none of the other posters seem to see it, either.
--
Senior Slashdot Zeitgeist Correspondent
a corrupt minority cannot rule over and angry majority
...
Well, maybe not with free elections, but tell that to the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq
A previous post mentioned that Netflix did this a long time ago. Amazon did the same thing for books even before that. So how exactly does this demonstrate anything compelling about web 2.0?
Good question.
...)
Maybe that's why I always feel off-balance.
I guess I'm one of the few "liberals" who believe markets usually work better than government. I'm just not an absolutist in that belief (nor in most others). I believe that regulation is sometimes necessary because there's no such thing as perfect competition or "free" markets. That's not (at least today) considered to be a point of view "from the right". I'm sure many might argue that belief in the necessity of regulation is not a market capitalist point of view, i.e. that all regulation is bad. But the main distinction I was drawing in my OP was that pricing mechanisms are more efficient than standards because they allow for technology substitution. Although there's obvious disagreement on the magnitude, the ensuing discussion about SUVs, etc., bears out my point, I think. (I like to live in fantasy land where even people who disagree with me are actually proving my arguments
I don't believe that government should own the means of production or centrally plan the economy. But I lean left because I also don't think it's a bad thing for government to help the poor, and I believe in progressive taxation because that's where the money is (not because I resent the wealthy; I hope to be among them someday). And I don't buy the self-serving rationale of "compassionate conservatism" that it actually is better not to give aid to the poor (it makes them dependent, etc.) That doesn't mean I didn't think the post-WWII welfare system needed fixing. As I said, I'm not an absolutist. In short, I was pointing out that not all lefties/liberals are socialists or commies. But I don't think that makes me a centrist.
Wait. In today's environment, maybe that does make me a centrist. No wonder I'm off-balance.
I lean left, too, but as a market capitalist, not as a socialist.
The real solution from an automotive perspective is to federally mandate gas milage standards
That's less effective than increasing the cost of gasoline, which is more market-based as a solution. Yes, I know that artificially increasing the cost of gasoline might have secondary economic and political effects, such as giving politicians more pork. But it definitely
provide[s] incentives for more fuel efficient and lower polluting automobiles
However, I, too, feel the pinch between the ascendant right wing and the lunatic left wing. There's not much room for "real" liberals, is there?
Mod Parent Up
I'm sure you're right. Plus, if it ends up in a trial, we'll see lots of buck-passing, since it appears we have lots of guilty parties with no particular loyalty to each other and reasonably "plausible deniability". On the other hand, I'm sure we also have one or two ambitious public prosecutors who would love to make their claim to fame on this one.
Who needs "reality tv"?
Well, this new story has a hidden gem.
According to TFA: "People briefed on HP's review of its internal investigation say that it was authorized by Dunn, the chairwoman, and put under the supervision of Kevin Hunsaker, a senior counsel who is the company's director of ethics."
How could it be otherwise?
Before this "even worse news" about the extent of the spying, HP's board should have forced Dunn to resign immediately from the board. Instead, they allowed her to continue as chairwoman until January and to continue as a director after that. I predict that the board will now force her immediate resignation, but will they also strip her of her directorship? What about severance? They should take it all, retroactively. IANAL, but I'll bet that's legal, somehow.
Although I'm inclined to be more sympathetic about the "stolen election" hypothesis than you are, I fully support your plea for a real alternative. It seems to me that both party platforms have essentially devolved into "We're not as bad as those assholes." I'm waiting to see that on a bumper sticker.
98%?
I'll confess ignorance on the matter of whose numbers we were "tapping". I think your analogy is on point, in either case, but it raises what might become an important question: does it matter where we put the "tap"? (I know that in some cases we're not actually tapping but just looking for patterns in call records.) In terms of your analogy, would it be ok to "tap" the Don's calls by somehow tracing to the other end of the call and then tapping it there? I think it would be legitimate if you could show somehow that you weren't somehow tapping other calls from the "other end" (unless you first got a warrant for the party on that other end). I know it sounds only hypothetical, but it might matter someday, especially when considering email, IM, etc.
Personally, I think it would be not only ok but also no trouble (again the laziness criterion) to go ahead and get warrants to tap anyone receiving or sending communications to/from anyone already under warrant. Association with murderers seems like sufficient probable cause, even if many of those caught in such a net might be innocent. Innocent doesn't mean you never get investigated. But that's why I care about due process, even for scumbags.
I'm using Firefox on Linux (MEPIS 2.something, IIRC).
Maybe it's all in the wrist?
Well, I agree that it's a load of crap, even though I'm a liberal.
...
In short, I haven't seen a credible liberal post-9/11 position. However, I don't think I've seen a credible conservative one, either. I'm probably 95% sympathetic to your point of view; however, I'll address some of your specific points:
Once again, most people agree on the problem
Well, most people support, in some sense, the "war on terror". I seem to be in a majority of one in thinking that this is a huge source of our current problems. We need to declare war on specific enemies. I realize that we live in a world very different from WWII, where it was relatively easy to identify our enemies. Just because it's harder doesn't mean it isn't important. We (you and I, and I'm sure the majority of conservatives and liberals) could pretty easily agree on a formal declaration of war against Al Qaeda, don't you think? And we could probably almost as easily agree with formal declarations against the Taliban and other states that have supported groups that have committed acts of war against us. (OK, I'm playing fast and loose with words like "us", but let me slide for a bit, ok?) We might still be left with different ways to approach the war, but I think it would be easier to resolve some of our "tactical" differences.
Can you tell me what essential liberties YOU have lost since 9/11?
Well, I hope you don't mean that I should complain only if I personally have lost essential liberties. By that logic, it was ok for Germans not to complain in the early thirties when only Jews and other specific groups lost some essential liberties. I think that warrantless eavesdropping is a violation of liberty. Note that I emphasize warrantless. In truth, I think this issue is mostly about laziness, since we already have the infrastructure in place (FISA and secret warrants) to do what the Bush administration has said is so essential. It's laziness because they didn't even try to get FISA warrants. Saying that it's too time-consuming would be a legitimate argument if they could show that they tried to get warrants and lost track of a suspect because of the delay. Absent that specific evidence, I'll stick with the laziness critique. Even with that critique, I'm willing to consider the need to update FISA, simply because it was developed in pre-9/11 times. But, so was the Constitution, and you don't seem like the kind of guy who wants to throw that out
The "real pussies" are those who want to roll over and pretend nothing happened
Agreed; except that I think there are plenty of "real pussies" on both sides (assuming there are only two) of the political divide.
pretend it's a law enforcement problem
I might agree if you added the word "only". I don't think Schneier is pretending that it's just a law enforcement problem. But I think he makes a reasonable argument that law enforcement tactics are one of our best tools in this "war". Why can't we agree that this is a very, very different kind of war than anything we've fought previously, and jointly try to find the best ways to win it. I do agree that traditional law enforcement alone isn't enough. But neither is traditional military action. There's nothing traditional about this.
complain that people fighting for our enemies are not getting the rights guaranteed by the constitution for U.S. citizens
I think I understand your point about non-citizens, but again we're into very new territory with regards to rights, etc. I agree that the U.S. Constitution doesn't grant rights to non-citizens. But, surely you don't propose that non-citizens should have no rights, do you? I'm not arguing that non-citizens should have the same rights as citizens; and I admit that I just haven't come up with a good position on what rights they should have. However, I do think that things like t
... and how are European political weasels distinct from North American, African, Asian and other political weasels?