Man, I wish I could mod you up. This entire argument is proto-fascist in its logic: criminals are bad people, therefore should have fewer protections than us good citizens. No, dumbass: it's precisely criminals -- even guilty ones -- who should have the most protection from prosecutorial abuse. Why? Because that's how you guard against a police state in which *everyone* is guilty, and only the whim of the state decides who among them is to be compelled into prison. It's how you ensure that the system is one that delivers *justice*, instead of inflicting revenge. Without the assurance that the one prosecuted is the guilty party -- and this can only be the case if self-incrimination is prohibited, since it can so easily be coerced -- the whole system collapses into illegitimacy and tyranny.

If you really don't understand just how easy it is to compel innocent people to incriminate themselves with the right kinds of pressure -- physical, emotional, psychological -- then you really don't know anything about how the justice system can be abused, and definitely have no business writing opinion pieces whining about how unfair it is that good people aren't coddled like all those undeserving criminals.

Namely, from the follow-up article:
"Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden."

In the helpful clarification from Wonkette, "he was actively participating in transporting secret documents that were stolen, and which it is illegal for him to possess." On a trip paid for by The Guardian.

So, maybe not quite as innocent a bystander as he initally makes it seem. But that was probably the point, and now British politicians are getting hammered for the abuse of power he baited them into. Well played!

For all of its flaws, that odd artifact of Richard Gere's film career, The Mothman Prophecies had a couple insightful things to say about how a truly alien species would react to us. Both of them were in the form of a dialogue with the author of the book on which the film was based. They went:

Richard Gere: But they're more advanced than we are: why don't they just explain themselves?
Author: You're more advanced than a cockroach; you ever try to explain yourself to one of them?

Richard Gere: but what do they want?
Author: [something something] and their motives are not human.

I think that's going to be the truest indicator of alien intelligences: we won't even understand them on a basic psychological level, let alone be able to have debates and conversations and cheesy expositional dialogue with them.

I call dibs on the weird artifact that grants wishes. You get +1 for super-obscure soviet sci-fi literary references.

So, does this one, like the previous, require an always-on Internet connection to Blizzard's authentication servers, the ones that are tied to all their games? Because I really don't like the idea of not being able to play a single-player game just because some recent update to WoW is overloading their servers.

Well, I'll concede confusing "trademark" and "copyright," but it's not as easy as you imply: businesses may not refer to the game unless they have rights to do so (so, for example, a bar cannot say "come watch the [big game] on our flatscreens!" even though doing so in no way implies endorsement. So, the US military saying "we're broadcasting the [big game] down to our submarines, so our submariners can watch it" might indeed cause problems.

I'll also concede: I mostly just want to see the NFL file a lawsuit against the US military for trademark infringement.

FTFY. The combination of the words "The," "Super," and "Bowl" is copyrighted by the NFL: anyone not paying royalties is commiting copyright violation by using it (which is why everybody refers ambiguously to "the big game").

/OT-rant

They're going to increase the profitability of manufacturing in the US by eliminating most of the costs of labor, thereby allowing more of the means of production to remain under the control -- and work to the benefit -- of capital.

I really can't imagine a move like this being unpopular and/or economically suicidal in any way whatsoever. Nope.

Every computing/programming abstraction is improved by reference to a bunny metaphor. This is true facts.

Well, in the sense that the Republican party - or, more to the point, the supply-siders and teabaggers - have the dismantling or the New Deal, and the managed decline of the federal government as an explicit platform of their domestic policy. Since, in their argument, goverment is inherently dysfunctional and harmful, it really doesn't matter *how* they burn it down, so long as the objective is achieved.

However, I'd agree with you to the extent that the only substantial discussion going on right now in Washington is how fast and drastically social spending is to be slashed, since the Democrats have completely abandoned their core principles (namely, that government plays a positive role in the well-being of a society) in favor of the Republican position.

The problem with the sequestration deal is that it was essentially a suicide pact: if Congress can't agree to a more-balanced budget, then savage austerity measures take effect, crippling government functioning across the board.

That's great as a motivator, except that one party is motivated by an ideology that actually wants that kind of austerity. In short: it's not a very good suicide pact if one side already has a death wish.

Also, don't worry about it being a mutual self-immolation: the Republicans will demand that only social spending (and not military) gets cut, and the Democrats will cave at the last minute in the name of compromise.

whoops. I got Dotcom mixed up with, uh, Julian Assange (who I believe is an AU citizen, yes?). I'll just go back to nursing this booze now.

That's where the FBI's case is going to go. Everything I've read tells me that the FBI, their Australian exponents, and the other parties involved broke too many regs to be able to bring a real case against Megaupload. This is just one more nail in the coffin.

... is dog-whistle for "I really wish I could get away with being open about my racism/sexism/homophobia/whatever." You should really avoid hiring those people, if that's what you really mean. If you just mean "Yo, we shouldn't knock qualified applicants off the list for a pot bust ten years ago," then maybe you're on to something.