I consider this publication beneficial. If the data was restricted to government employees only, then only a small portion of the population would be in danger and the monitoring continues unchallenged. When everyone has to share the same danger, monitoring people becomes an issue.

I hate when people are so naive as to believe that collecting data on people is fine as long as only the government has access to that data. If it is not acceptable to make the data available to everyone, then it is not acceptable to make the data available to anyone.

Did you ever try to do something significant? Run a company, run a political party, publish a popular newspaper, build a marvel of engineering? To call a legal system unobtrusive, it requires more than insignificant people not being bothered by legalities. A legal system should also not hinder those make progress for humanity. If the defense against a legal system is to be a serf, then to hell with it.

Japan should never be used a comparison for any statistic. Japan is a country that existed for thousands of years in isolation, only opening up to foreign trade for the last couple hundred years. They have around 98% ethnic purity. Their language is unique, their beliefs are unique, there is no other place in the world with similar social expectations. They have 2 dominant religions that have (and with 1 exception due to an emperor, always have) existed in complete peace with each other. Japan is so unique that any correlation between them and the rest of the world is actually intriguing. To try to find significance to a single statistical difference is practically impossible.

In a free economy, yes.

When companies exist only by monopolistic decree of congress (utilities, ISPs, overbroad patents and IP, quotas preventing competition), then that company should at least be held to the same restrictions as congress.

If McDonalds wants to regulate speech in their restaurants, that is fine. If Comcast wants to, that is not fine, Comcast is effectively a creation of the government. I imagine a search engine is closer to free than privileged, so in this case the courts are probably ruling towards the intent of the First Amendment, but that isn't necessarily always the case with every company.

I wouldn't mind getting some new infrastructure. Burn it all down.

He has a problem with not enough black people being hired? Well he's black. Lock him in a room with a semiconductor design textbook, and don't let him out until he is qualified to be hired. Let's see how much he cares then.

I'll jump into the middle of this AC argument!

Godel's incompleteness theorems don't mean that you can't make fully verified software. It means that you can make software which can't be verified. Big deal. Verification is coming; in some areas, like medical/aero software and processor design it's already here.

Entire processors have been verified mathematically to perform as designed. That's some serious complexity right there. Much medical and aeronautical software is verified.

... all create consumer products for casual users. Casual users don't demand perfect software, so of course they don't get it. Some companies do have that expertise though, and it isn't cheap.

Having money isn't corrupt. It is the means by which the money is acquired that may be corrupt.

Granted, as US law is setup now, it's nearly impossible to become rich without your hands in the US treasury, or special legal status not afforded to the general public. But it's not the "being rich" itself that is the problem.

The Suni / Shiite fighting are constantly fighting each other in Iraq, even leading to a named Iraq civil war...as I said. The US has completely avoided going to war with any country that is actually willing to fighting back. The question isn't whether the US would win in Panama, it's whether or not Panama would be willing to fight back. The only thing a country really has to be able to do to defend itself against the US is to make it known that they will attack the mainland US in retaliation.

Yeah, the US would kick their ass faster than we won in Vietnam. I mean against North Korea. I mean the last country we fought that wasn't dragging it's bleeding body out of a civil war. When was that, 1940?

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

--Thomas Jefferson

A single point is certainly a triangle, all side lengths are zero. It would be very irregular not to include a single point in the definition of triangles.

Using human neurons as a model for the future of computing might not be the utopia that we are all dreaming of....

There hasn't been any power in 70 years that has attempted or been remotely capable of overthrowing the sovereignty of US citizens over their own government.

So yes, your assumption is a safe one, the military the largest welfare organization in the US, and everyone knows it.