I think you mean what Assange is accused of having done by people who have changed their story at least once.

I would argue this statement is false. When the 2nd amendment was drafted the hunting rifle in the hands of the average citizen was not especially inferior to that of the one in the hands of the local serif or for that matter the regular army soldier. Moreover the local serif and the soldier were no more able to defend themselves against said rifle than your average citizen was.

As far as larger weapons like artillery was concerned at prior to the civil war my admittedly hasty study of the subject indicates there was not much in the way of law that prevented a citizen (other than cost) from purchasing a napoleon; which would have been a state of the art field piece. Certainly there were lots of wealthy planters and the like who could afford them.

"If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. " at least that is what our officials here in the States are always telling us. Governments all of the world want to backdoor our encryption and slap data retention and business records retention requirements on just about everything.

When given the opportunity to lead by example we get Downing Street deleting everything they can before it becomes subject to discovery, and here in the states we get White House E-mail systems so comically badly administrated and lacking in backups, it strains credibility to think its anything but a deliberate plot to make it possible to destroy public records with (im)plausible deniablity. A Secretary of State that uses her personal E-mail for official business and redacts documents before turning them over to the government. An FBI that simply ignores the law and stonewalls when it gets FOIA requests because their are really no consequences for doing so. This list could go on.

Two possible conclusions (not mutually exclusive):

1) The government is so corrupt and our leaders are knowingly and willful acting as criminals. By their own reasoning these records management failures are proof of guilt, at least of obstructing justice.

2) Broadly speaking records retention requirements and laws restricting ones ability to securely store records (weakened encryption standards etc) are a significant infringement of privacy rights and the right to be secure in ones documents. After all what document is more secure than one you shredded and than burned?

Exactly this. The only just war is one your fight to win. A war of half measures and changing objectives isn't a war its as arbitrary and capricious as any murder.

A cause is either worth fighting for, ie you are willing to kill, maim and destroy property as required to see your objective met; or you have no business killing maiming and destroying things.

Its like the ISIS conflict. I really sincerely believe we should stop fighting them as long as they stay in the what our maps call the middle east. They won't be stopped unless we are willing to march a few hundred thousand troops in there, sweep every building and cave, shoot anyone who looks like a combatant; and accept all the collateral damage that entails.

We are not willing to do that; not politically and not morally. The fact is what we are doing is just as bad. Its a never ending meat grinder. We knock a few heads from the hydra new ones grow up. There is no drone striking our way to victory. The guilty and innocent will continue to die for nothing alike, the conflict locked in perpetual stalemate (hint it basically has been for 30 years now). We will only be continuing to invest countless billions of our treasure to keep the horror show going.

War should be a question of "Go big" or "Go home", no justice lay in the middle.

Root cause or not tests are what let you 'fix' the vulnerabilities, re-factor to correct design issues, etc.

I have to agree with the parent. Having good test coverage is the difference

between: We are going to be exposed for weeks while I'll 'try' to understand all the impacts of this change and hope QA spotts any potentially disastrous bugs before we go to production.

and:
Cool fix is in, tests are passing. Lets yet QA run the build for a day or so and we can get this out the door before it hits Slashdot.

For reasons of free expression to basic practicality we can't stop this stuff. As you say people can take your picture and people can produce what amounts to a hash of your facial features.

None of this stuff is a problem. It only becomes a problem when its stored and datamined. What we really need to do is actually regulate big data.

Start regulating what information about people may be stored in machine searchable formats and you can start to solve this problem. Regulate under what circumstances PII may be transferred between parties in machine readable formats and when lookup functions may be exposed to third parties.

Sounds totally practical I am its not as if the operators of these systems can just put a filter in front the camera or anything...

Umm, no that isn't how it works at least not on an issue like this. First the vast majority of those comments will pay no attention whosoever to how you voted. Of the tiny fraction that do pay attention they have other issues that the vote on. They likely will have only one other real choice, and the candidate who 'might' side with them on net neutrality but has never been in a position to really vote on it more than like has some other deal breaker for them. So they will stick with candidate A regardless of their disagreement about this issue.

Congress can fuck this up and if the big ISPs and wireless carries donate enough to their campaigns they will. Don't kid yourself no matter how much support might exist for this it won't be the issue that costs any politician their seat. Unless you can get a Google or somebody like that to help you make noise like SOPA and PIPPA. Don't count on that though. Those actions provoked enough outrage and thinly veiled threats from the political class that Google et al. are not likely to try such shenanigans again. They'd be out trying to stop TPP fast track if they were not running scared.

In what possible situation would PHP be the best tool for new development?

I can't think of ANY.

I'll admin my initial post was does somewhat to act as a provocateur (though not a troll because I am genuinely interested in discussing the subject).

Its my personal view that government should get out of the marriage business. We should simply pass a low recognizing all existing marriage licenses as "Civil union licenses" and convert all marriage rights next of kin, child custody, 5th amendment testimony protections etc, to civil partner rights. Than any two people regardless of sex or gender can enter a civil union. If they are married or not is between them, their clergy, god(s), friends, and the guy who operates their car wash etc.

I find it interesting that various arguements about how having two parent house holds is good for children but the gender of parents does not have so much impact are used to justify arguments in favor of allowing homosexuals to marry. Making marriage a right implies that adultery and act that frequently makes impossible for the partner to remain in the marriage; implies that partners rights are being infringed.

Additionally the state does have pretty clear interest in promoting monogamous sexual relationships issues of morality and gender again set aside there is a clear advantage in the prevention of the spread of disease. Again since we are all "responsible" for each others healthcare costs now it seems perfectly reasonable (within that context) the state should favor policy that prefers monogamy, independent of what you call it; marriage, union, cohabitation contract.... The state has a pretty clear reason to want to encourage the formation of partnerships for raising children.

  As other have pointed out we don't allow people to enter into contract of indentured servitude etc. Again I would come down on an the side of an individuals absolute right to make a contract but society has broadly chosen otherwise. A societal harm is the final underlying justification for most criminal law. Adultery is clearly harmful in the majority of cases. Its hard to escape the conclusion that if marriage is sacred enough to be considered a right that an act which harms its integrity should not be considered a crime.

I don't think your assertion that re-criminalizing adultery would negate the value proposition of marriage, union. There are lots of advantages to having a state recognized relationship (of some name). Child custody, the right to inherit property, tax filing advantages, social security, just to name a few.

Why should adultery not be a crime. We place such a high importance on marriage rights apparently that being free to enter that institution with anyone you wish is now being considered a basic human right. If that contract is so sacred that nobody should be denied it, than are not those who violate the integrity of harming society?

When prosecuting murders killing the person who was cheating with your spouse generally makes it a crime of passion and frequently is used to justify reducing the charges to second degree murder or even down to manslaughter. So obviously adultery poses a significant danger of triggering of provoking other serious crimes like battery and murder.

Its the frequent cause of dissolution of homes which negatively effects the development of children.

The list could go on. I think there is clear pattern of harm to society at large resulting from adultery. It SHOULD be a crime. If you are concerned about being and adulterer don't marry.

Translation: Silence citizen we are above the law and not subject to the oversight of peasants like yourself.

Doubtful.

While its true the ISIS leadership cut their teeth in Iraq, they are essentially an AL-queda offshoot. It isn't as if that group did not exist before the Iraq war. In any case OBL would still have been mostly driven underground. He still would have lost control of at least parts of the organization not being to lead effectively. More than likely the Arab spring would still have happened. Most like the Syrian collapse and subsequent power vacuum would have lead to similar results.

ISIS would still exist it would only be using a different name or be the more radical wing of some other group.

Now had Bush stayed out of Afghanistan it might be a different story.

Lets be totally frank about something else. We only really care about ISIS because their taking of the Iraq we built and trained is embarrassing. Nobody talks about the Syrian cities under ISIS control, at least not on the news. We hear little about what they are doing in Libya and Yemen.

ISIS could be the best thing that ever happened to us in the Middle East if we just left them the hell alone. They might just succeed in reducing the number of independant lunatics and strongmen over there so we would have fewer seperate enemies to deal with. They likely would solve problems like Iran either by being such a distraction it keeps them bottled up or by over running them too. The Russians and the Chinese can deal with preventing further expansion (again probably a positive for us). The smartest thing Obama could do is "Nothing"

So the short version is climate models are worse than useless as a policy and planing tool, because we don't understand how the highest order component behaves.