Um, I have lived in Germany for 9 years, and in -real- rural Germany, nowhere near the American bases or big cities where people bother being politically correct, and I haven't the faintest idea of what 'safeguards' you claim are being removed in the name of 'national pride'.
Germany's national pride has not even begun to recover from WWII. Heck, civilians never even fly German flags!
I'm an freshman at MIT, taking a physics course (8.01 classical mechanics) that is supposed to use technology to the fullest:
radio frequency response cards, computer for every third person, full integration with experiments, video feeds from the professor's desk to screens all around the room, online extra homework assignments, etc, but undergrads pretty much all agree that IT SUCKS. Interaction is far lower, the professors are tempted to stuff absurd numbers of meaningless assignments into the syllabus since they no longer need to grade them by hand, and the end result is that learning physics has become a lot harder than it needs to be.
A lot of my friends have moved up to 8.012, not because it is a harder class, but because they have -normal- lecture and recitation sessions, which makes all the difference.
We may like flashy technology a lot, but right now it isn't an improvement over what we have. The 'blackboard' style of teaching goes back 2000+ years for a reason.
People want protection on airplanes, if i'm put on a list but at the same time there is guy with a gun that could potentially disarm a terrorist on a plane,i'm all for it if i can land safely and enjoy life.
Having air marshals put people on "watch lists" has no effect whatsoever on the phenomenon of guys with guns disarming terrorists.
An air marshal devotes a chunk of his life to ensuring that the plane is not forcibly hijacked, hence he carries a gun. Apart from actual hijackings, there is very little terrorist-indicative activity that can go on at all (taking pictures? spending too much time in the lavatory?:S ). In fact, terrorists not currently commiting a terrorist act would be very careful NOT to act suspicious anywhere near planes or airports. (Its called "Operational Security") If the terrorists were currently commiting a terrorist act, then the watch list would be irrelevant anyway, for obvious reasons. Thus planes are not the place to search for future terrorists. If the police department has a watch list, thats very different, and far more permissible.
Wanting security is no reason to blindly trust people with bad track records.
Terrorists attack America because they hate our freedoms. Rather than removing the terrorists, which any sensible person knows cannot be done, we remove the motivation, in this case, our freedoms.
1.) We deliberately leak information to the media that portrays us in a negative light, e.g. publicly firing CIA bloggers who dont like torture, or the whole rendition campaign. We advertise how much we muzzle dissent. We make ourselves appear incompetent and weak. 2.) We make ourselves out to be like any other old totalitarian state: we leak evidence of torture, make it sound widespread, argue that torturing is OK, and so on. Not only are we incompetent, we are also dangerous. Unknown unknowns are very frightening. 3.) We follow Kim Il Jongs tactics and appear to be completely irresponsible with our use of military force- the crazier we act, the less likely the terrorists will want to blow us up for fear that we will destroy their whole homeland... we add a bit of religious zealotry to make it sound authentic. 4.) Not only do we save America from terrorists, but we save America from Americans as well! We disillusion the terrorists by convincing them that the freedom they want to destroy doesnt actually exist... then putting those insinuations into policy. Conspiracy theorists can take over from here.
All in all, this policy sounds like it might work better than what we currently think our strategy is!
If the EU were to suspend all Microsoft copyrights like you are insinuating, it would be utterly brilliant. However, you (plural) seem to be focusing more on the "can this be done?" as opposed to "is it right to do this?"
In our seething hatred for Microsoft we fail to notice what a disturbing precedent this would set for all of softwaredom. More or less, creating this precedent would essentially allow any powerful government to destroy any software maker at the whim of a vote. We have more than enough current events generating fear for the destruction of the Internet through government intervention- the impact of this would be staggering.
Microsoft has to be destroyed or forced to evolve into a 'good' company, but this shouldn't be done by a government. Rather than contemplating exciting ways of destroying Microsoft at the expense of jeopardizing all of softwaredom, we should be contemplating exciting ways to improve Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the Weltmeisterschaft was the only time that I actually saw Germans fly their own flag, which is entirely why I noticed it in the first place...
;)
Catch me on an overgeneralization, you did. Commendations on being very sharp.
However, this still kind of reaffirms my point
Um, I have lived in Germany for 9 years, and in -real- rural Germany, nowhere near the American bases or big cities where people bother being politically correct, and I haven't the faintest idea of what 'safeguards' you claim are being removed in the name of 'national pride'. Germany's national pride has not even begun to recover from WWII. Heck, civilians never even fly German flags!
I'm an freshman at MIT, taking a physics course (8.01 classical mechanics) that is supposed to use technology to the fullest: radio frequency response cards, computer for every third person, full integration with experiments, video feeds from the professor's desk to screens all around the room, online extra homework assignments, etc, but undergrads pretty much all agree that IT SUCKS. Interaction is far lower, the professors are tempted to stuff absurd numbers of meaningless assignments into the syllabus since they no longer need to grade them by hand, and the end result is that learning physics has become a lot harder than it needs to be. A lot of my friends have moved up to 8.012, not because it is a harder class, but because they have -normal- lecture and recitation sessions, which makes all the difference. We may like flashy technology a lot, but right now it isn't an improvement over what we have. The 'blackboard' style of teaching goes back 2000+ years for a reason.
True, but the Soviet Union
(a) existed
(b) was defeatible
Terrorism
(a) is neither
People want protection on airplanes, if i'm put on a list but at the same time there is guy with a gun that could potentially disarm a terrorist on a plane,i'm all for it if i can land safely and enjoy life.
:S ). In fact, terrorists not currently commiting a terrorist act would be very careful NOT to act suspicious anywhere near planes or airports. (Its called "Operational Security") If the terrorists were currently commiting a terrorist act, then the watch list would be irrelevant anyway, for obvious reasons. Thus planes are not the place to search for future terrorists. If the police department has a watch list, thats very different, and far more permissible.
Having air marshals put people on "watch lists" has no effect whatsoever on the phenomenon of guys with guns disarming terrorists.
An air marshal devotes a chunk of his life to ensuring that the plane is not forcibly hijacked, hence he carries a gun. Apart from actual hijackings, there is very little terrorist-indicative activity that can go on at all (taking pictures? spending too much time in the lavatory?
Wanting security is no reason to blindly trust people with bad track records.
Consider this for our national strategy:
Terrorists attack America because they hate our freedoms. Rather than removing the terrorists, which any sensible person knows cannot be done, we remove the motivation, in this case, our freedoms.
1.) We deliberately leak information to the media that portrays us in a negative light, e.g. publicly firing CIA bloggers who dont like torture, or the whole rendition campaign. We advertise how much we muzzle dissent. We make ourselves appear incompetent and weak.
2.) We make ourselves out to be like any other old totalitarian state: we leak evidence of torture, make it sound widespread, argue that torturing is OK, and so on. Not only are we incompetent, we are also dangerous. Unknown unknowns are very frightening.
3.) We follow Kim Il Jongs tactics and appear to be completely irresponsible with our use of military force- the crazier we act, the less likely the terrorists will want to blow us up for fear that we will destroy their whole homeland... we add a bit of religious zealotry to make it sound authentic.
4.) Not only do we save America from terrorists, but we save America from Americans as well!
We disillusion the terrorists by convincing them that the freedom they want to destroy doesnt actually exist... then putting those insinuations into policy.
Conspiracy theorists can take over from here.
All in all, this policy sounds like it might work better than what we currently think our strategy is!
If the EU were to suspend all Microsoft copyrights like you are insinuating, it would be utterly brilliant. However, you (plural) seem to be focusing more on the "can this be done?" as opposed to "is it right to do this?"
In our seething hatred for Microsoft we fail to notice what a disturbing precedent this would set for all of softwaredom. More or less, creating this precedent would essentially allow any powerful government to destroy any software maker at the whim of a vote. We have more than enough current events generating fear for the destruction of the Internet through government intervention- the impact of this would be staggering.
Microsoft has to be destroyed or forced to evolve into a 'good' company, but this shouldn't be done by a government. Rather than contemplating exciting ways of destroying Microsoft at the expense of jeopardizing all of softwaredom, we should be contemplating exciting ways to improve Linux.