Most Americans follow a live-and-let-live philosophy. We do have a few very vocal minority groups who wish to impose their codes of morality on the rest of us, however. But I wouldn't suggest that the majority of our 350M+ population are attempting that unless you are prepared to bring citations.

Most Americans surveyed DO in fact believe that our system is better than many others. They also believe that is is far from perfect, though we disagree on where the areas are that need improvement---and what those improvements should be.

It is true that America's consumer-driven economy benefits us, and large segments of the rest of the world.

As far as the size of our national debt, remember that we are a nation of 350+M people and the most productive economy in human history in both total and per-capita terms. As a percentage of our GDP, our national debt is much smaller than a typical American household's. And smaller than many other first-world households, too. It isn't unusual for an American to borrow 300% of their annual income in the form of a mortgage, for example; the USA's debt is roughly one tenth of that, at interest rates that make the money nearly free.

Granted, "a few trillions of dollars" is an astoundingly-large number. But without context, the number is meaningless. You have a few trillion cells in your body, for example, and several trillion sub-atomic particles pass through your person every second (coming from the Sun and elsewhere, but I digress). So what?

Actually, ordinary Americans seem interested to hear when our government does wrong. But they don't want to hear hyperbole: Faux News has pretty much saturated our ability to listen to that crap. But bring a well-researched, reasoned, and relevant example, and we're more likely than not to listen.

Oh, but she HAS agreed to it: by retaining her USA citizenship.

The victim is of course free to renounce her citizenship, at which point she is bound by USA laws only so long as she remains on USA soil. If she chooses to relocate, she is well-advised to pick a country where the prevailing definition of "morality" (a) is not the law of the land, and/or (b) allows women to have any rights whatsoever.

The above illustrates is why "morality" is a bullshit metric. In a Taliban-run society, it would be the victim's "right" to be raped, and then executed in a honor-killing. Because in their interpretation, that's moral behavior.

You don't like the law at issue in this thread. Fine. But your sense of morality is irrelevant here. I also think that you misunderstand both the law itself, as well as the context in which it was created and is applied, possibly because you have no firsthand experience in either. And your understanding of the "right to free speech" needs some work, too.

Waitaminit, her attackers were found GUILTY and CONVICTED of the crime. So the victim clearly availed herself of her rights under the law, and was clearly granted them.

Oh, you are referring to that "morality" thing again. Which I have already rejected as being inconsistent with my definition of morality. Sufficiently negated, all that is left is ... legality. You know, the stuff that societies pre-agree to so that subjective, malleable metrics like "morality" don't have a play when emotions start to show up.

Per your definition of "morality". Which I reject. Problem solved, no?

Correct, and correct. Hint: the Apple phone is both UI-crippled and not IP67.

WTF are you talking about? To suggest that a gag order uniformly constitues "abuse" reveals that you have an anti-understanding of due process and the USA legal system. You are speaking nonsense.

As for your "egregious" cite, let me assure you that my work with more than one ACTUAL judge at the federal and state levels shows that they are so far above influence by the press, to suggest otherwise will get even the press laughing at you. In the case you mention, the girl clearly violated a Court Order and also well-established law. The judge showed the girl mercy by not charging her with contempt, likely because he didn't want to make her life any more miserable than it already was.

Not just a "high quality compiler", but in many cases GNAT is the PREFERRED compiler for Ada. It's the dominant implementation of the language, to say the least.

All of which are pretty out-of-date versions of the ARM instruction set architecture. Obsolete, even.

GCC, on the other hand, supports all the modern ARM instruction set versions. Optimizes specifically for them upon request, even.

Actually, gcc is every bit as good for ARM and MIPS as it is for x86.

Two words: Hollywood Accounting.

Hold down the Home key, and Android will present you with a list of running applications to choose from.

First sentence is true, second one isn't. To wit, Android Activity classes run under Dalvik, which itself runs as an ordinary Linux process. Moreover, Android makes extensive use of the Linux process model as part of its security system.

You don't escape the Linux process model simply by wrapping a large application framework like Android around your code. The only way to escape the Linux process model is to not run as a Linux process e.g. run in kernel space.

But those things would definitely add to his appeal with the current generation. :)

The problem, as I see it, is that without access to their network, the population they are sworn to protect cannot verify for themselves the legitimacy of the need to secure the system on an ongoing basis.

The US Constitution grants US citizens certain rights for observing the behaviors of the State, and the monitoring of police scanners is an important, unbiased tool for that observation.

A better solution would be for the police to adopt the digital radios, but then rebroadcast their transmissions on the existing frequencies after, say, a five-minute delay. That would give the police the immediate protection they are seeking, without completely removing the citizen's right to the same protection.

... which makes the fact that the Judge ruled from the bench even more telling. It means that the Judge thought the evidence presented was so obvious, so unmistakable, and so overwhelmingly in favor of one side that further, reasoned review was unnecessary.

Judges rarely reach those conclusions.