I believe you're right - I'm a bit fuzzy on the details myself, but AFAIK, it was something he was forced into..

But that again, that was my point - it's easy to distort things when you pick one item from your arse and use that as the basis for comparison or equivalency.

No, I'm a bog-standard Canuck - Newfoundlander, actually. But I've been using the name Gorshkov ever since I first got on the internet (DARPANET, actually) back in 1982. I took it from Admiral Sergei Gorshkov - I'm a great admirer of his writings regarding Naval strategy.

I mentioned in another post that I was in intelligence during the cold war, and have a degree in Soviet & East European Studies (basically, combination of history, political science, culture, and language)

It would be like trying to explain the differences between a car and a banana. There are so many differences, and they have so little in common, it's hard to know where to start.

I'm not trying to be flip here - I'm being perfectly honest. You're talking to somebody here who used to be in the intelligence services, and has an honours degree in Soviet & East European Studies. If you seriously want an explanation, send me an email, and I'll write something up for you - but it would be way too long to post here, unless you can be a bit more specific about what you're asking, and can narrow it down for me?

Germany also introduced the world's first universal health care system. Does that make them communist? Oh no, wait - that can't be right. They're fascists.

Hey - Obama introduced universal health care, too. Does that make him a fascist? Oh no, wait - that can't be right. He's a communist.

See how easy it is to distort things, by creating false equivalences?

Actually, they wern't honest about it at all. They claimed to be the most free, democratic country in the world.

And in the Soviet Union, you'd have just won a free life-time vacation at a beautiful resort in Irkutsk just for expressing that sentiment. Bit of a difference, don't you think?

I'm pretty sure I'm aware that Africa isn't a country - my apologies for not naming them all individually. Most of them are dictatorships - which are invariably police states. It's how dictators hold power.

key word - consequences. You are assuming there will be none.

Acceptable, according to *who*? Look at the outrage accompanying this story, just in THIS thread - doesn't look to be particularly acceptable to me. I think you're dreaming. Let's look at the differences between what happened here, and what would have happened in a REAL police state.

- the kid is free. In a police state, he'd be in jail (assuming he was still alive)
- the kid still has his camera. In a police state, it would be either confiscated, or laying in smashed, ittty bitty bits on the floor of the mall.
- the kid was able to tell his story to reporters. In a police state, no reporter would have touched this, even if he *had* heard of the event
- the story was published. In a police state, that wouldn't happen unless the reporter wanted to have the kid for a roomie, where they could break bread and water together.
Now maybe I'm being a bit picky - but to me, there's a lot of differences there.

There's a bit of a difference between ordering the death of an enemy combatant - regardless of nationality - and ordering the death of the guy down the street because his dog annoys you when it barks at 3am. That being said, I'm pretty sure that what powers the president has in the US, doesn't really have much meaning when it comes to events in Canada

Not being an American, I don't know all the details of this - but I'm pretty sure that even though it's sealed, it still had to pass muster in front of a judge, or panel of judges.

citation?

Newsflash - that also happened during the cold war. And WWII. And WWI. Political & social paranoia isn't the same thing as a police state, not by a long shot.

Sorry - but that's kind of like saying that anybody who professes interest in the Koran is a terrorist. It's not the interest that gets you considered to be a possible terrorist - it's how you bend and twist it to fit your agenda.

I call total, utter, unadulterated bullcrap. The *closest* think I can think of that you might possibly be referring to are the various provincial rights tribunals that interpret the laws regarding hate speech. Even so, your characterization is at best grossly misleading, and at worst, intentionally distorted and inflammatory. Yes, some people *have* tried to use them the last few years to "punish" those they don't agree with ..... so what's happened? In those jurisdictions where those attempts have been made (Alberta, BC and (I think) Ontario), those sections are in the process of being repealed (I believe this is already the case in Alberta). So I guess that argument doesn't work for you, either.

Anywhere NEAR a police state, we wouldn't be having this argument - because your arse would be in jail by now. So would most of the others who've replied to me below in this thread. Quite possibly their families, as well.

Newsflash, folks - we don't live in a perfect society. Not by a long shot. But to call the societies we live in police states is just plain silly, and shows an absolute lack of knowledge of just how bad things CAN be.

Try living in an *actual* police state sometime - the old Soviet Union, Communist Romania, today's China, Cuba, or most middle-eastern/third world countries, most of Africa or Asia, and get back to me, k? Not trying to belittle what happened to the kid - it was wrong by any measure. But I really wish the hell people realized just how much difference there is between a western democracy and a REAL police state ........

This isn't really news - Steve Jobs is on record talking about being a shameless thief when it comes to designs he admires - and let's all be honest, that's how almost all design is done - you see something you like, you think "Hey, that's cool - I like that!" and the next widget you build had elements of what you saw. It's been like ever since we figured out how to shape rock. The real news, as far as I'm concerned, is how out to lunch the jury foreman was while giving his views on patents, prior art, etc to his "uninformed" jurors - he was, after all, a patent holder himself. It's just painfully obvious from his comments just how little he *does* know. If it wasn't for his interference, Samsung would have been acquitted - even the foreman himself said that everybody was leaning that way before he started giving them the benefit of his wisdom.

And even so, every piece of hardware I've ever worked on had "backdoors" built into them. They were called TEST SITES. They just didn't do you (or anybody else) any good unless you took the thing apart, put it on a bench, and hooked it up to your equipment. Not the sort of thing you can do to a ballistic missle, or a tank, when they're being operated in the field.

Which is why it's called a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, and not a DIRECT democracy.

That's almost like saying being a hooker is good training for being a mom.

No, what it proves is that I have no desire to waste my time reading an article written by somebody who considers somebody like Greenfield an expert. If it was the alternative - that they were looking at Greenfield's claims and then debunking them - well, there's still no need to waste my time, because I already know she's full of it.

I was going to read TFA - believe it or not, I usually do. But after seeing Susan Greenfield's name in the summary, I decided to skip it. Anybody here who's familiar with Ben Goldachre's site, badscience.net, is certainly familiar enough with her antics that they'd know anything that comes out of her mouth is, at best, fiction.