"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

-- Ghandi

So what your saying is that if we took all the illegal -- uh "undocumented" immigrants from third-world countries that Obama lets in and dump them into the socialist paradise of Cuba that America's healthcare statistics will look massively better than Cuba's.

No, America would probably still rank lower than most third world countries on that front.

In the U.S. they bend over backwards to save babies but since they aren't always successful, the statistics get skewed.

Yes, they bend over backwards to ensure they don't get aborted, and then they decide that the raising of them is someone else's problem. As soon as it's born, doing anything to take care of it would be socialism.

'Cuz that works well in the long run. Mostly it lets the church ladies moralize, and then they can move on to ignoring poverty and crime and focusing on prisons for all the poor people.

What do you mean? The country was then conquered within months by us. Saddam Hussein himself was then captured, tried publicly, and executed deservingly.

My god, are you that delusional?

You toppled a government, but you sure as hell didn't "conquer" them.

You barely got out of there with your asses intact, and every single justification for going in there in the first place was provably false before anybody got sent in. Oh, and your inept fumbling about led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians -- far far more than were killed in 9/11.

The entire reason for being in Iraq the second time was a colossal lie perpetuated by a chimpanzee of a president trying to finish what daddy started.

You were in the wrong fucking country, because Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11. And now you've left a giant power vacuum which has destabilized the entire region.

Being in Iraq was such an epic failure that only people who can call it a success were the private companies who made huge profits, and the lying bastards who got you in there in the first place.

If you think that's a template for how to fix the worlds problems ... the world doesn't want any more of your "help".

Why the heck not, exactly? The evil needs to be destroyed â" both to end it, and to discourage future evil.

I'm sorry, but increasingly it's hard not to see the US as evil.

Because they've decided it's their right to spy on everyone else on the planet, bomb civilians as collateral damage, and engage in some pretty nasty crap. America has become the enemy of the freedom and rights of everyone else on the planet, but you keep acting like you're the fucking saviors of man kind, and the Champions of Liberty and Justice. That's completely delusional.

This moronic "Yarg, teh communists are teh evil and god said we must kill them" is getting tired.

Are you seriously saying "hey, let's destroy the lives of all Cubans so we can get regime change"? because if that's the case, suddenly I think America needs a regime change

The hysteria of the 60s is 5 decades behind you. Why don't you learn a little about the facts instead of just spouting gibberish?

No, it's the Platt Amendment (the one which allows Guantanamo) and the American embargo which has made Cuba a failed state.

You seem to know nothing at all about Cuba.

America has been fucking with Cuba for over 100 years, and seldom to the benefit of the Cubans.

Cuban cigars are desired because they're good.

I used to smoke cigars, and I live in a country where you can readily buy Cuban ones. They're not illegal for me, but they were damned fine cigars ... much much better than some of the other countries.

And, real Cuban rum ... also tasty stuff, and something they're quite good at making. In Cuba, it's affectionately called "Vitamin R".

Maybe to Americans they're better because they're illegal. But to the rest of the world they're better because they're better.

Cuba has pretty much an awesome climate for growing both tobacco and sugar cane.

Nah, focus groups will say that the logo for the surveillance state should look all happy and stuff. They want the public to see it as a benevolent force, become accustomed to it, and feel scared when they can't see it because the bad men could get them.

The eye of Sauron would work against that.

I'm beginning to think Reg the Blank from Max Headroom was a very prophetic character.

I hope someone figures out how to take one of these down.

What has to be remembered here is whatever they publicly tell us it does, secretly it does a shit load more, and will be used in ways they claim it won't be.

Mark my words, before long it will come out that they can track your car from the moment you leave your house. And it will be able to simultaneously do it with a lot of cars. And this information will abused by spy agencies. And some government lawyer in front of a secret court will argue that they need this and that it needs to remain a secret.

What they'll be able to tell about you incidentally and with just "the metadata" will scare the shit out of you. What they can do when they're specifically looking for you will make Enemy of the State look like amateur hour.

There is simply no way they wouldn't at this point, because this stuff has developed its own intertia.

Now, where the hell did I put my Guy Fawkes mask?

Soon Big Brother will have these everywhere.

This will get abused. This will get expanded in scope. This will be used by the spy agencies to do massive, warrantless surveillance. The government will claim they're allowed to monitor everything because terrorists, kiddie fiddlers, and copyright. Despite what they say, I assume this has as much capability as they can cram into it.

This is just more crap in the ever growing ubiquitous surveillance state, and yet more ways they'll find to make sure Big Brother has his boot firmly on our necks.

*sigh* There isn't enough tinfoil in the world for this to be spun in a way that isn't terrifying.

Of course, you would be perfectly insane to try to play chicken with it, no matter what you are piloting.

Unless of course it's a lighthouse. ;-)

I remember punching the side of 360K floppies to get another 360K on the other side.

Now you can buy a couple of gigs of USB drive next to the gum in the express lane at Wal Mart.

This stuff is awesome and all, but sometimes it's hard to really wrap my head around that pretty much everything about computers (except for physical size) is a billion times bigger than when I started using computers.

It really is hard to explain to people that at one point your entire digital life was about 20 floppy disks in a plastic case, and that what was once a completely hypothetical amount of storage is commonplace.

Well, it's kind of like Snowden. Everybody knew they were doing something wrong. The sheer magnitude of it is slowly coming to light. Nobody started off with the illusion they were innocent before this.

I'm torn, I really am. On the one hand, yes, hacking and extortion bad.

On the other hand, I find multinational corporations like Sony to be complete douchebags, who will do anything to advance their own goals, at the expense of everyone else on the planet, and with the assistance of governments who have been willing to stick it to their citizens to protect corporate interests, largely because the politicians are on the fucking payroll.

And then I want to go all Tyler Durden on them because I'm getting tired of the oligarchy and the asshole politicians enabling it.

You don't keep a free society by making it beholden to corporations who tell us what we can and can't do.

There should be plenty of ways to deal with hosted content on someone's server without resorting to breaking core functionality of Internet services like DNS!

Unfortunately, to the asshole lawyers these companies employ ... the core functionality of the internet be damned.

They simply don't care about anything but their own profits. They just want to be in charge of how all technology is used.

"A takedown notice program, therefore, could threaten ISPs with potential secondary liability in the event that they do not cease connecting users to known infringing material through their own DNS servers,"

What they want is pretty much the nuclear option. Because they say so, something needs to be removed from the internet, and anybody who doesn't gets squashed like a bug.

Who gives a crap about analogies? The MPAA have one goal here: to make every piece of digital technology on the planet be only usable in ways defined and approved by them.

Fuck that. Having media companies in charge of this crap is a terrible idea.

This is why ISPs need to be classed as a common carrier .. what happens on their network is none of their business, and they don't have liability for it. This takes away the bullshit ability of corporations like Sony from being able to dictate how technology is used.

This whole notion of secondary liability is crap.

But for any Anonymous hackers out there, maybe all executives at the MPAA or any of their law firms ... they now have secondary liability for being douchebags and assholes, and have forfeited their right to privacy.

This is just corporate control of way too many aspects of the internet. So fuck Sony and the other guys in the MPAA. I sincerely hope they all get this treatment.

The idiotic DMCA was a terribly written piece of legislation which put far too much power in the hands of multinational corporations. And idiot governments around the world have been entrenching it in law.

At this point, I think Sony has more rights than I do.

So to hell with them. I say start punishing them, and cause as much economic damage to them as can be done.

The goals of the MPAA et al do not coincide with the goals of the rest of society. And they shouldn't be having their business model entrenched in law. They're just a bunch of parasites who feel entitled to revenue.

The MPAA et al feel they have the right to undermine every bit of technology to server their purposes. They want veto over all new technology to ensure that it aligns with their goals, and makes sure their rent seeking is entrenched in law.

Sony was more than willing to spread malware, and as a cartel these clowns have way too much sway over governments, and seem to think they can act with impunity.

Want the sure file way to the shitty oligarchy of the future? Keep letting these bastards call the shots.

I don't know who actually is behind this attack, but I'm starting to applaud them.

Sony and the other members of the MPAA are out of control, and pretty much deserve to be burned to the ground for the crap they do.