Fucking calm down. I'm sick of people trash talking. I'm talking about the emails between Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin where they trash Obama, and Jolie, the release of private employee health records and info, and payscales. You don't have any right to see their employees medical records and history. I'm looking at http://www.cnet.com/news/13-re... and so far I see nothing of this bribe you're talking about.

How are Sony's private memos, emails, and employee information a "matter of public importance" ??
So, when J-Law's photos are leaked, or juicy Sony private emails are leaked, those leaks are to be protected under the first amendment-?, but if the NSA does it in the context of looking for matters that actually *are* of public importance (possible criminal activity, technically), suddenly these same people scream about their privacy being violated.
This seems rather hypocritical.
1) Either nothing is private, or
2) Everything is private unless the owning party wishes it distributed or is under criminal investigation.

Personally I prefer the latter.

This. We've lost a lot of good people, they rarely get replaced, while new projects and systems keep piling on.

It's just a little, tiny bit easier to handle the robber in the store when you're in your own country//township/jurisdiction, and can call for police backup, and not have the locals shooting at you, throwing rocks, and trying to aid the target. Entirely different situation.

It's really not that difficult for the purposes of normal discussion.. No definition for terrorist is perfect but getting semantic or pedantic over it serves no useful purpose other than paralysis by analysis.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed, the colonies became a nation state. Al Queda is not a nation state, nor has it ever deemed itself one. The Taliban is/was. But we went after them due to their harboring OBL.

An innocent person is a non-soldier or non-military personnel, a civilian who has no direct ties to to weapon deployment against enemies. Our soldiers wear clearly discerning uniforms, as outlined in the Geneva convention. Terrorists dress like and hide behind civilians. It can get a little foggy, sure.. like defense contractors who build the things but don't deploy them, or CIA operatives.. but the people in the towers and on the planes were just businessmen, going about a normal day, not planning on harming others. I did say that I consider the Pentagon a valid military target, including the non-soldiers there.

Police could be combatants yes, but their role during 9-11 was to assist people, not engage anyone.. the terrorists were already dead.

Intent.. you're kidding, right? It's no different from a court of law, like the difference between murder and manslaughter. Did they intend to kill those people, or just destroy a building without hurting anyone inside, but the people got hurt "by accident"? I think we all know they wanted to cause as much death and mayhem as possible. Their intent and desire was to kill as many Westerners as possible (not just americans in those towers), and do as much property damage as possible too. Maximum destruction and death.

Mongols would probably fit the definition of terrorist. They did horrible things. Were they a "nation state", or a very large tribe? Did they have an official government, or a chieftain with some cronies? That was many, many centuries ago. The world order is a bit different today, why are discussing ancient irrelevant civilizations?.
BR Are you referring to Psyops? (Psychological Operations) How often do they target nonmilitary personnel (let's just carpet bomb a school or bank) for assassination?

That is completely irrelevant. Murder /= accidents. The deliberate murder of thousands of innocent unsuspecting people matter. But using your logic, hey, thousands of people suffer in pain everyday from workplace or car accidents too, or nearly drown at the pool. So why are we worried about100 (or so) killers that were treated badly at Gitmo? Everything's just a statistic, right?

According to this, Bush approved the general program in 2002 but wasn't briefed on the specifics of the brutal methods being used until 2006, with which he was uncomfortable:
However, a meeting with Tenet over the practices is disputed.
http://news.yahoo.com/senate-r...

Right. a non-event. I can't believe I just read that. Tell that to the terrified people aboard the planes or in the buildings, or the ones who lost loved ones because of hateful religious zealot whacktards who took offense because we maintained bases in Saudi Arabia during the 90s to maintain the Iraqi no fly zone. Or look at the headlines all over the world for that month.. seriously, a "non-event"?

Also, you can't know how many subsequent attacks have been stopped: several, such as the shoe bomber, might have worked, but other attempts may never be released to the public because their very disclosure may threaten the very intelligence gathering methods and personnel themselves via exposure. I'm not speaking here of the interrogations, but intelligence work in general. I doubt attacks have failed for lack of trying, when AQ and affiliates want blood so desperately. BTW, your count of 3 billion muslims worldwide is about double the actual number (anti-hyperbole followed by hyperbole?) but that's neither here nor there really.

It's really quite simple. Militants, unaffiliated with a true nation state, who deliberately kill innocent civilians, with the full intent of targeting and killing innocent civilians, for the purpose of sowing discord and fear for ideological or religious reasons, are terrorists. I don't call the terrorists of 9-11 terrorists because they targeted the Pentagon; that's a valid military target, actually; they're terrorists because of the innocent people aboard the planes, and hitting the twin towers in a major city, and killing fireman and police in NY as well.

Huh.. I always thought he was German.

That's a new one on me. I imagine there's a pretty good story behind that reputation, though.

Besides, how do you know I'm not a grave robber? :D

I kind of pictured them like this: Klingons, a mix of Mongolian, Viking, and ancient Japanese: Romulans are clearly based on ancient Roman civilization, they even use the same terminology. Ferengi... they're basically an ethnic slur on jews. It's interesting how Jar Jar Binks offended everyone but no batted an eye with the Ferengi. Cardassians, maybe USSR..? not sure who they remind me of.

Ferengi "obviously" American? They seemed to me to be a unabashed stereotype of the jew, as depicted in European culture like "The Merchant of Venice".

Can't say I'm surprised. I really get fed up with these kinds of memes: 'murica!, "Germans are Nazis", and, "the French are cowards" .. and so on.
Can't we all just get along?

Kind of like any country whose name begins with "Democratic Republic of .." is not remotely either democratic or a republic.