and higher order functions

Correct you are

To restore freedom the national security apparatus should be dismantled. NSA, CIA, HSA, military - shut them all down.

This would be great for the economy in the long run. In the short run religious insanes might take advantage, however local or in some cases state or national police can and should handle these incidents. Crazy people who do not fear death can cause damage, however they are inherently self-limiting. Freedom is for the brave.

The savings to govenrment would allow us to fund the entire national government without income taxes. Debt payments and payback can be funded by import duties on foreign governments controlled by religions. Such duties would cut off the religious terrorists at the root and generally improve the planet.

Obama's committee will never consider this. We need a new committee to implement this plan.

didn't anybody read Snowden's leaks?

Python already has a dictator - no role for Rupert.

Lisp is illegal in Russia.

Google uses it so it must be good.

Java is maintained by a large corporation.

Java is not a functional language.

Too many third-world software designers already - first world kids should learn to become something non-exportable like plumbers, waits, or politicians.

Smart phones!

Rupert thought it was just like Javascript, only shorter.

Teaching a language they could use would be too dangerous. Leave cracking to the Nazional Sekurit Apparatus.

Paid off.

@cold fjord:

Some politicians and CIA/NSA people use a foul mixture of fear and lies to advance a totalitarian agenda.

The wikipedia article cited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds#Subsequent_declassification_of_documents) illustrates this, in that the original claim, in modern times, of a National Security privilege was based on a lie and powered by fear.

Other examples are the sinking of the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Iraq WMDs. Hitler stirred up Germany this way, and North Korea is a fear and lies government in its purest form. Every war the US has been involved in since WW I is based on this political/military/state secret police strategy. Shamefully, some of them have been perpetrated by our government.

Fear and lies are good for other totalitarian agenda items too: war on drugs, fear of immigrants/locking down borders, and (to get back to the present topic, the PATRIOT act and PRISM.

You have been infected with a morbid fear of Al Qaeda. Personally, I'm more pissed off at them than afraid. I bought a Diesel and used biodiesel after 2001.

Have courage! We can take care of those assholes without suspending our constitution. Liberty is a risky affair. If you aren't willing to face up to those risks move to China. China is extremely safe - very low crime. Al Qaeda has no foothold there. Good luck.

Write an Edward Snowden biography.

Not only is it no mere excuse, it's often an outright lie, for example when it was argued to the US Supreme Court, and first upheld by that court, that a State Secrets Executive Privilege exists in the constitution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds#Subsequent_declassification_of_documents

Do something people! You, do something!

What happens with the settlements that Amazon and others made over this patent? Can that money be clawed back?

As an erstwhile musician, my opinion is that conductors are overrated. Once you learn the music you should be able to perform by listening to the others in the group.

I played in a professional orchestra where the conductor gave a downbeat, a rest, and the orchestra had to play the opening note in unison without any indication from the conductor. It worked fine. There a many groups playing very complicated music, with abrupt and gradual changes in tempo, without a conductor. Jazz and jam bands do this without a conductor and improvisationally, although often one of the players is a leader. If the choir is a capella, the conductor could give a couple of taps with the baton on the music stand to set the tempo at the start of a piece. Perhaps the blind singer lacks confidence: go ahead and make a few mistakes rather than be constantly behind. If there's a particularly rough bit join in afterwards. The best advice is the same as to a sighted musician: listen.

Blind people have much larger areas of their brain devoted to hearing, and some are very gifted musicians. Stevie Wonder, Doc Watson, many others. In China street musicians are almost always blind. I like this about China.

Now Bill Gates will have enough money to buy the entire Taliban and finally put an end to polio and make a dent in several other scourges.

it's necessary to root your phone in order to change the hosts file.

The industry argument I've heard is this: "Consumers" (ie, people) buy phones at a discount with multiyear contracts. This pricing scheme was developed by the industry to trick people (it's easier if you think of them as soulless "consumers") into continuing to pay the corporation despite abusive customer service, poor service, and fraud such as inaccurate coverage maps. Then the industry turns around -- pretending as if they've given a gift to the "consumers" who are living, breathing people with lives and kids and jobs and problems, sometimes involving money and cell phones -- and claim that they, the corporations, deserve to be rewarded by keeping control of the phone in violation of the common understanding of what "sell" and "own" mean.

And the Librarian of Congress somehow agrees.

Secondly, the regulated freedom from last year's Congressional Librarian decision seemed to be having an effect - why then reverse the decision?

Lastly, we should recall that corporations are _not_ free enterprise by definition - they are given special government dispensations to protect their owner(s) against liability. We (people) ultimately pay this price - a hidden tax. Corporations must be held to a particularly high level of good citizenship or their grants of liability immunity should be revoked. Else they will treat us (people) as objects that provide money to them, as a herbivore treats plants.

Maybe that's the difference between Europe & US. Europe has public transportation, US, specifically central NC, does not have reliably available PT.

This is one of the most corrupt US political areas. Commuter rail in the Raleigh area has been repeatedly sabotaged by insiders. Rail to the major airport (RDU) was squashed by airport authority, most likely to keep the parking concession. The Raleigh transportaion authority sold off the property they owned for a rail staion just before the plans that would use it were made. They claimed they needed the money. For what?

On a droid2 I use both Pageplus which resells Verizon, and also as a wifi phone using google voice + grooveIP (less complicated than sipdroid with a one time $2.49 charge.) Google voice gives good to excellent phone quality between Europe & US if you have a good wifi connection. Verizon/pageplus doesn't happen in Europe, so here it's only a wifi phone. Works OK, I make sure i have wifi where I stay. Calls to US free, calls to phones here have per minute charges, as much as 15 US cents to cell phones in Spain. For some reason, I don't feel like wifi-only would be adequate in the US, however Pageplus prepay is cheap if you don't use it a lot ($75/year).