I don't even know where to start with this one... The first amendment - like anything written in the Constitution is absolute. It has to be. If it weren't then we could all ignore any law we choose and even ignore rulings of the Supreme Court because their powers are based on the same document. So either the Constitution is absolute or it is not - but you can't have it both ways.

However, even with that I don't see how it matters... The bill of rights is supposed to keep us from the Federal Government taking too many rights and amassing too much power (and in doing so has given the federal government way too much power - just as the opponents of the bill of rights originally feared). It should have absolutely no influence in a court case between two individuals.

Peter.

We listed the government agencies that do not spy on us in illegal, unconstitutional, and downright wrong ways...

Peter.

Who cares if you have to relearn stuff? Its the fact that systemd is less than stable... In many cases, you end up with corrupt binary log file after a crash, have services that don't (run a process that does heavy syslogging to the tune of 25-30K messages per second. Yes, its bad app design but come on - this thing worked for years and now its suddenly broken???) that used to work just fine before and then top it off with really braindead configuration options (go ahead and change the pgsql listen port - and see how long it takes you...)

I'm all for systemd - once its been stable for a while, but till then it would be nice to have at least a choice...

Peter.

Yes, you're partially right on that but in my opinion there are enough other incidents that can yield data - missing one is really not that major.
Also, if you listen to the news casters and articles written, they all at least pretend its about the human factor, not about analyzing the wreckage to see what caused the issue so we can prevent it in the future...

Peter.

40K people die every day of hunger and the while the USD 60M or more that were spent so far on this stupid search couldn't have prevented that, it would have helped a lot of people have another chance.

Either you say you care about the lives of people and then you just shake your head about this pointless waste of money or you don't care and then you wouldn't care about ML370 either. But you unless you're related or friends of anyone onboard that flight, you're just a for caring about the lives lost there and not about the people that die every day of hunger, war, and such...

Peter.

Its too easy for people to trust the government. They promise to take care of you, keep you safe and fed and all the other things. Its easier to trust them than to have a mind on your own, to have to think, plan, and work. It usually all goes well for a while until corruption creeps in and politicians think they know better than you how you should live your life...

The US had an amazing run and I wish I could somehow know what future generations will define as the point in time where the US government turned sour. The current NSA affair? What about the creating of a for-profit, private bank that's put in charge of ruining the dollar value? I'm sure some racists will point to the 13th amendment but I bet 9/11 would be a much more likely choice. Maybe the Nixon years with Watergate and the removal of the gold standard? Oh so many choices... I personally pick the day the southern states seceded. While the North was right and slavery had to go, I still can't find a legal reason that prohibited the South to withdraw from the United States...

Peter.

I started reading but soon moved on to just skimming the article. It read like a very logical but basic security primer... Until I hit the sidebar. Wow, I've never seen a better laid out, yet brief, history lesson that got straight to the point. Our government needs to remember that its "For the People, by the People" not "For those people, by these people"

Peter.

a vi compatible mode?

we just need google fibre and such in major comcast markets - cut off enough of their profits that they see the impact on their bottomline...

... need google fibre. Its the opposite extreme when it comes to performance and openness...

Peter.

Not just that - back then we had skills and drive - now we have outsourcing and lawyers sueing everyone who does anything just a tiny bit non-standard...

The Supreme Court's decision in this case is irrelevant for two reasons - of course both have been invalidated many times over in the SC's typical, self-serving stance.

1) The government is limited to what is spelled out in the Constitution as the government's powers and NOT that it can do whatever as long as it doesn't infringe the amendments. This is why the bill of rights was the biggest mistake - it gives the Constitution the appearance that the government can do way more than it was ever intended to.

2) The SC has decided that what is written in the constitution is no absolute but relative. Therefore the SC's own power - which is based on the Constitution - is relative and not absolute. I can therefore elect which of its decisions apply to me and which ones don't. Sounds fair, right?

Peter.

They are a private company and can (or should be) allowed to impose whatever rules they want... Its only the federal government that is required to adhere to the bill of rights. So until the Constitution gets amended, we can argue about how illegal background checks, waiting periods, and registration by the federal government are - but there is absolutely nothing you can say about FB doing whatever they feel is right.

Peter.

What exactly is new here?

Peter.

Wow, 500 comments almost and not a single one seems to mention the natural disgust involved in this. Too bad I didn't have time to post until lunch break because of WORK... And that's really the issue. Every single developer, manager and such on this project makes a good living - and most of them by work hard. Very hard. And those are the ones that are being punished the most by Obama for their hard work. Few people like that and guess what, moral is really low... I can't count the number of times I heard "And now I have to do overtime so my taxes can go up and I can not only provide free food but also free health care for some retarded stoner who can't be bothered to go out and find a job or some trailer trash who just had her 16th child living on wellfare" ...

Yeah - its a real surprise that those people didn't work harder and do a better job...

Peter.