Slave trade exists only where people are considered property. We (the western world) are existing in a "slave" market, where the owners take from the sweat of supposedly "free" people (in the form of "Feudal taxes") not by consent, but by threat of government guns. We've only traded one type of owner for another. The only difference is we supposedly elect our kings and queens, rather than have them born into royalty.

We aren't free.

Ahhh, the good old Strawman from leftwingnut crowd.

An oversimplification. The US, UK, and allies variously broke many cipher systems throughout WWII. Still the US benefitted from this.

What if the Germans were using, say, Windows, Android phones, SSL, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype, instead of Enigma machines?

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

And this is "intuitive"? I have used iOS for a couple years (iPAD) and never seen that used by anyone.

1495 Quarantining of Mercenaries in Switzerland.

While not 100% effective immediately, it did drastically reduced the infection rate. WHICH is really the goal.

Now, if your one of those "100% or don't bother trying" people, you're part of the problem.

But then again, allowing infected people to migrate all around the world seems so much better option. I mean, how else are we going to reduce population by 7 billion people to "sustainable" levels like the Georgia Guidestones suggest?

It is grim because we don't want to "offend" anyone with the proper response (quarantine the zone) . Political Correctness run amok is going to kill people.

How many dead or sick people before we stop worrying about feelings and sensibilities?

GAHHHH I did! damn you fingers!

Tapping a keyboard three times to type special character. No Swype. Caps always showing, regardless of actual capitalization. All but Unusable with one hand (one handed typing jokes aside). Auto Correct that guesses wrong more often than it should. The interface is not as intuitive as Apple or iOS users claim it is, IMHO.

Then convert the wind power into hydrogen, for longer term storage, when wind is not available. Yeah, it isn't very efficient, but it is better than wasting it on feeding the grid that doesn't need it.

Because artificial manipulations of free markets always works out as intended!

The crappy keyboard is one of the biggest reasons I hate my iPad. It is almost unusable for me. There is a reason why all the autocorrect humor is screenshots of iOS.

You underestimate the power of radical ideologies. While what they appear to be doing is self defeating, it really isn't. It draws in those people who need an identity. People said similar things about Nazi's (yeah I just Godwined the conversation). The one thing Nazi's had, that ISIS doesn't is government. But in today's age, being nebulous, decentralized is an asset, like Hydra (cut off one head two more takes its place). We killed off OBL, but he wasn't really running things when we did, and Taliban and Al Qaeda still remain. And even if they didn't, the people in those organizations just change their name, and regroup. This is the same tactic used by most counter culture politics.

The only effective tactic we have at this time is to target and kill the leadership, until the organization crumbles from lack of leaders. We don't need a standing army to do this, just Letters of Marque.

Practical is how we work. Monolithic or Micro based are independent of whether or not something is practical. What is practical in one situation (small robust control system with high availability) may not be practical (complex system of varying hardware) elsewhere.It is a matter of how close to sigma six you need to be, because each degree closer, is a magnitude more difficult to reach.

The fact is, you can talk all you want about what is "practical" in a specific case, and I may be arguing that your "practical" isn't practical for me and my specific case. We'd both be right, but not for each other. This is pragmatism at its core. One size doesn't fit all. Never has, never will.But you can build things so that One Size Fits Most, that works in 95% of the cases.

Systems that are outliers shouldn't be where we decide things for the 95%.