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Comment Not a problem... (Score 5, Interesting) 326

Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:

  • American Midwest
  • Most of Canada
  • Australia's Outback
  • Siberia
  • Sahara and other hot deserts
  • Antarctica — a whopping continent

Sure, some of the above would require some work to make comfortable, but it can be done even with today's technology — by 2100 even an individual (or a family) would convert surroundings to their tastes. And it would certainly be easier, than moving an appreciable quantity of people off-Earth...

Comment Re:Sanity... (Score 1) 504

dignity has nothing to do with this.

Dignity is the only thing, that suffers, when a cop violates an innocent man's privacy. If dignity has nothing to do with it, than "innocent man going to prison" does not either — yet you brought up the latter yourself earlier...

this contract cannot be violated

The contract was in no more danger before the change in Apple's attitude, really, than it is now — a court order was still required for Apple to act.

The legal theories have not changed — only the practical hurdles the law enforcement has to deal with (having to compel the individual phone-owner, rather than Apple).

Comment Read Heinlein (Score 1) 234

Many of Robert Heinlein works were truly Science Fiction. His characters' travels around the Solar System, for example, are described enumerating the challenges and details such travel are likely to have in real life. He also has several descriptions of human life outside of Earth — on Ganymede, on Mars, and on the Moon. None of the descriptions were patently unscientific, when they were written (knowing what we do now, he would not have described life on Venus as he did, of course).

He wrote many of such books for children (and published in children publications) or about children — so you can read them with/to your kids. The bonus is, such reading would not even seem like work — you are likely to truly enjoy it...

Comment Re:Sanity... (Score 1) 504

it's better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent man to go to prison

I said nothing about "going to prison" — an overzealous pig would find nothing incriminating on my phone. It is not that "I have nothing to hide" — I do. But I have no evidence of crimes on my phone either. My dignity will suffer, sure, but I will not be imprisoned.

When the proverbial relation you quoted changes to "10 guilty men to go free than 1000 innocent men's dignity to be violated", the answer becomes less obvious...

Comment Re:Sanity... (Score 2) 504

the police have more than enough tools for catching criminals without needing to violate the constitution.

With this turn by Apple, the police have one less tool.

It sure is comforting to know, a pig would not be able to access the data on my phone until a judge agrees with him and orders me to divulge the PIN. Is such reassurance of dignity for millions of honest folks worth the increased chances for hundreds of criminals of getting away? Probably...

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

I work longer and harder than I want to

Could it be because you (or someone you love) want more and more things? A new iPhone, a better car, a nicer TV? But a single person does not statistics make...

allowing for extreme stratification of wealth

Allowing, huh? Is there something you'd like to disallow? Spell it out... And then explain, why it would be ethical for you to compel — with threat of arms — the more successful to share their wealth with you to let you work less.

For a long time, the Robin Hood of folklore was considered a hero for violating the private property of the wealthy for the benefit of those less fortunate

Sure. The beneficiaries of any action are always likely to consider the action "ethical". If you arguments are as tainted by an obvious conflict of interest as this one, you may want to reconsider your overall debating strategy.

I suppose, based on your ethical system, that you'd consider him a villain?

Like most other Illiberals, you got your Robin Hood analogy all wrong. He was not robbing "the rich" to give gifts to the poor. He was robbing the tax-collectors to return to the taxed. Sheriff of Nottingham was — Robin's main enemy — was not his target for his wealth, but rather because he was an agent of the oppressive government (of King John). He was no Che Guevara — if a Robin Hood-like figure were to appear today, you'd dismiss him with the derision you and yours have shown to the Tea Party.

Comment What's your suggestion for intelligence work? (Score 1) 504

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

And yet here we are, with you explaining to me that we need as large a percentage of our population to be working today as we did hundreds of years ago.

Nobody has to work longer — nor harder — than they want to. Everybody is welcome to work exactly as much, as they need to in order to be able to afford, whatever they want.

entertain a conversation about trillions of dollars given to the poor

Irrelevant. No one — not even a billionaire — can be ethically forced to give a crumb of bread to a starving infant. Convinced — yes. Compelled — no...

Comment Re:Duh Snowden was a stalking horse. (Score 2) 183

Irrelevant to what? His stated purpose was to make the public aware of what the NSA was doing

Irrelevant to the real — rather than potential — abuses of power by the government. For all the talk about NSA, none of the information they collected has been abused — not yet. The worst we've seen so far was the other law-enforcement agencies prosecuting people based on NSA-provided tips (and using "parallel reconstruction" to hide the tips), but none of those thus prosecuted has actually been innocent. The danger of real abuse is there, but it remains potential for the time being.

The actual abuse of the government power has taken place in a different Federal bureaucracy — one much dearer to Statists' hearts. For some reason, none of the people fighting that have made it onto cool T-shirts yet...

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 3, Informative) 353

You people and your protestant work ethic. I just don't get it.

Neah, I'm a USSR-raised atheist, thank you very much.

Clearly the hundreds of billionaires we have in this country couldn't possibly afford to fund this kind of utopia

The cost of the "War on Poverty", since Lyndon Johnson first waged it 50 years ago, is 22 trillion of 2012-vintage dollars. That's more than all of the Republic's actual (as in military) wars cost combined. I don't think, the hundreds of billionaires could shoulder that kind of expense. They'd need help from thousands of millionaires — and millions of the rest of us. And even that would be insufficient — you'd need to borrow money from abroad...

But whoever wants to help others work less than their spending requires, is welcome to do it. My objection is to spending tax-monies (you know, the funds collected at gunpoint) on it. For it is not only stupid, it is also un-Constitutional — according to an educated opinion of one of the document's very authors:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

—James Madison

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 5, Insightful) 353

people that otherwise couldn't afford it

Because for a person born and raised in America to be unable to afford Internet service (as well as a phone, vehicle, decent shelter, and food) is a shame. Millions of immigrants here — legal and even illegal ones — manage to not only do well for themselves, they are also able to support extended families back home. That's despite the culture shock, not knowing the predominant language very well, and — in many cases — dubious legal status.

But if you feel like continuing the failed "War on Poverty" for another fifty years — go ahead. Just don't force me at gunpoint (via the IRS, that is) to join you.

Submission + - Mozilla Labs Closed And Nobody Noticed (i-programmer.info)

mikejuk writes: When Google Labs closed there was an outcry. How could an organization just pull the rug from under so many projects?
At least Google announced what it was doing. Mozilla, it seems since there is no official record, just quietly tiptoes away — leaving the lights on since the Mozilla Labs Website is still accessible. It is accessible but when you start to explore the website you notice it is moribund with the last blog post being December 2013 with the penultimate one being September 2013.
The fact that it is gone is confirmed by recent blog posts and by the redeployment of the people who used to run it. The projects that survived have been moved to their own websites. It isn't clear what has happened to the Hatchery -the incubator that invited new ideas from all and sundry.
One of the big advantages of open source is the ease with which a project can be started. One of the big disadvantages of open source is the ease with which projects can be allowed to die — often without any clear cut time of death. It seems Mozilla applies this to groups and initiatives as much as projects. This isn't good.

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