Bomb an ATM in America? One way ticket to Gitmo.

If you bomb an ATM, you go to prison, not Gitmo. Gitmo is for getting around that pesky Sixth Amendment thing, not for actual criminals.

But it's all up to you guys. What I am telling you is what I, and many millions of older generation of Chinese had gone through --- we do not trust the authority, we do not trust anyone but ourselves

And neither did the people who did the killing in China. The idea, inherited from Lenin, was to have a small vanguard of professional revolutionaries guarding the masses - in your terminology, "sheeples" - under absolute authority of the Party. Mao and Stalin then took this idea to its logical conclusion.

What I'm saying is that calling people "sheeples" is inherently anti-democratic. You can't trust sheeples, after all. Also, no society can survive unless the majority of its members stay put most of the time, which seems to be the going definition of "sheeple". And so you can at most let them play at ruling themselves when nothing's at stake - but as soon as there's trouble on the horizon, it's time for the shepherds to take control. Which they did in China, and are trying to do in the US. The results speak for themselves.

It's a fine example of how cultural memes perpetuate themselves, even when it'd be better they didn't. Much as you might hate the Chinese government, you still carry its - for a lack of better word - spirit with you. And there's no easy way to get rid of it.

Facebook is entitled to do whatever they want. I understand that. There is an issue of State here, the Turkish State, requiring Facebook to filter and or creating at least the implied thread they will be blocked if they do not filter.

I think FB ought to stand up for our idea of civil society where the state is not allowed to censor. If Facebook though it was best for the business to censor images of the profit, they would do it everywhere, because doing so offends Muslims everywhere; and I'd be fine with it.

As a fellow citizen I'd rather see FB say hey fuck you Turkey, we are US based website your rules don't apply to us; either block us or don't.

Nicely done. That kind of self-loathing crap is always irritating to come across.

I never once said anything about myself. You may wish to examine your biases, the errors in interpretation they cause and whether these errors make you significantly less effective at achieving whatever goals you have.

Facebook could do something pincipled though. They could setup all kinds of proxies make encryption easy. Provide tools for evading filters etc. All things that would be perfectly legal here. They could flaunt the law in Turkey and just keep their people out of Turkey. Mark could consider his name on their most wanted heretics list or whatever to be a badge of honer.

Naturally if FB was effective and underground scene in some of these freedom hating nations they would not be able to make much add revenue from business there though.

It really is a pretty black and white issue, you think censorship is okay or your think its never okay. Only the ideas some would seek to censor are the ones that ever needed protection in the first place.

I don't understand how the censors don't seem to get that. Freedom of speech was established specifically so the mechanisms of state could not be used to suppress dissent and ideas. Nobody has ever need a protected right to express opinions (or facts) which are popular, non controversial, and inoffensive. When was the last time these people heard of someone being tortured to death for the principled commit to the idea "Water is wet."? Never.

Free speech is all about the right to offend and dissent. If some topics are taboo than you haven't got any freedom at all. Because for the most part anything worth saying is going to offend someone somewhere somehow. Its really an all or nothing deal.

All the issues of free expression and if Facebook is or is not advancing the human condition by enabling Turks to communicate, vs likely being banned by refusing to filter on principle of free expression; does this even help.

I am not an expert on Islamic culture but I thought the prohibition was of depicting the "profit". Wont FB basically have to just ban the name Mohammad, which would offend lots of people. Otherwise what stops someone from posting a steaming cow pie, and tagging it "Mohammad the profit"? Is that not depicting the "profit" as a heap of shit? Is it an less offensive anyway?

First, us humans prefer killing each other to science. This is a proven fact.

Really? How did the arrangements for that experience go? Subject gets to choose between a test tube or a bound assistant and a (hopefully fake) knife?

Second, humanity did not go from Horses to Nukes, a very very small percent of the population did it, those geniuses have everyone else standing on their coat-tails.

A small part of the population did experiments on uranium, while the rest mined that uranium, enriched it, built the roads that carried it from the mine to the lab, etc. Accusing a tailor of riding on the coattails he made is rather absurd.

The next leap will be by a very small group that is significantly more enlightened than the rest of the 99.95% of the population. If those people are benevolent, then everyone enjoys the fruits. If they are not....... Well, things can go very differently.

The invention to trigger the next leap will be by some group that is supported by others, allowing them to focus on something besides where their next meal will come from. After it has been made, it will be turned into something actually usable by other people, manufactured by yet others, distributed by yet other people along communication and transfer infrastructure built by, you guessed it, other people...

Heroic fantasies are just that: fantasies.

WE do not glorify learning, but instead glorify morons that can carry a ball, or can sing a tune. And we Vilify in society those that do love learning and are very smart.

People respect people who can provide something useful, be it entertainment, a focus for a cultural bonding event, or a cure for cancer. If you aren't respected as much as you think you deserve, it's usually because you aren't doing anything to earn it. Merely being smart and learned is no more worthy of respect than being richr; it's what you're doing with it that earns - or doesn't - the respect.

Honestly Humanity is a joke, almost a cancer. And if an advanced civilization stumbled across us, they would probably wipe us out to make the rest of the universe safer. We as a species love to hate others, we love murder, war, and control. WE thrive on hating those that are different or think or worship different.

Humans, in general, love thinking they're better than someone else, since that's easier than self-improvement. Sometimes that manifests as merely dismissing the entire species as "riding on the coattails" of a special few ubermenschen, and sometimes the delusion reaches the point of wanting to get rid of some specific group of perceived parasites. Either way, it's bullshit.

Technically that is correct, which was the point of this whole topic. But that is the basic intent and they are about as close as it comes.

Just two comments here, though there are many I could make.

First, income inequality is NOT the real issue. Why should you care who is or is not rich? The PROBLEM is poverty.

Second, my whole point was that it is very easy to show that income inequality has become WORSE, the more statist the U.S has become. I'm not saying that correlation proves causation, but the existence of a correlation is indisputable.

Waze wasn't bad about collecting information until it was acquired by Google.

This is a patently ridiculous assertion. A copyright holder can voluntarily place a work in the public domain (that's what GPL and Creative Commons are all about, for example). In fact that's what this whole discussion is ABOUT. Have you read any of it?

Another patently ridiculous assertion. There doesn't have to be a law "allowing" it. That's not how the law works. It would not be possible only if there were a law against it.

The FACT is, not many years ago Congress passed a law that put millions of works that were formerly in the public domain back under copyright. That is the incident that caused EFF to start pushing for a law that would make that no longer possible.

So you are WAY out in left field.

Don't be a jerk. The question is whether all drones should be restricted just because the President is a candy-ass.

A Federal court has already ruled that the FAA does not have authority to regulate drones, except those that enter "navigable airways". REGARDLESS of whether their use is commercial. Their regulatory authority is limited to interstate commerce, which is the basis for the definition of navigable airways.

The solution to the Whitehouse problem is simply to make it illegal to fly drones THERE. Not to regulate them everywhere else.

The FAA has appealed the court's ruling, but based on evidence and precedent it is pretty clear the FAA will lose that appeal.

Unless they intend to get forgiveness... or default. I am not sure that Greece is "too big to fail" where they can do that.

It is. EU is not a nation, it's a collection of nations, and "European identity" is weak at best. Anti-EU movements are already growing, and won't have any trouble taking power if it starts to look like EU is a threat to the nations people actually identity with.