You made some good points.

Of those hundreds of years there has only been thirty where large numbers of people can communucate and plan operations without ever meeting. The criminals are allowed to use modern technology by the police are not?

The police can use the same technology - they can cooperate with their counterparts the world over, they can communicate with their agents in the field, they can send video and images around the world in seconds. Being able to use modern technology and being able to subvert its use are completely different things. Bank robbers used dynamite to blow open banks and their safes - by your logic you have no problem with police using dynamite to blow up your house looking for robbers.

Surveillance does not make people less free. Does an audience at a theater make an actor less free? If repressive things happen with the gathered data then that would be a problem but not the surveillance itself.

So you'd have no problem with government-sanctioned cameras in your bathroom filming everything. Good to know. After all, if nothing bad will come from the recording of your personal activities, nothing bad happened.

Physically intrusive searches are very different than electronic surveillance.

Electronic surveillance is intrusive none the less. You can play games of semantics if you wish, but when the state rifles through your private property, you not only risk them finding things you've done which they might not like (either now or in the future), but you give them the opportunity to put things there for them to find. Once that barrier is down you can no longer be sure of what is what, and what was once your property becomes property of dubious origin.

It's called "intelligence work", and it requires well-trained people gathering intelligence on these targets. They can infiltrate the groups, befriend suspected terrorists, etc, and gather information. This is how it was done for decades, and no-one had to have their entire lives rummaged through by default until they were shown to not be a "bad guy".

It's not a Catch-22 - it's abject laziness on the part of the security services. Plugging in servers is easy. Asking for money to protect people from "scary people who want to kill you!!!111" is easy. Strong-arming ISPs to allow data gathering is easy. That's why they do it - because they can. If they had to return to the old ways of human intelligence gathering, it would be harder work, but we'd not be fucked over constantly.

Your attitude is just as dangerous as the NSA hoovering up every bit that crosses their path. I hope for your sake it was born from a lack of information and not some irrational zeal or compulsion, and that it can be changed through learning.

If "They" are actually "Us", the only thing that changes is that instead of "them" needing to do more to redress the balance of wealth, "we" need to do more. I don't care if it hurts me financially or not - if it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do. Selfish attitudes such as your "Fuck you I got mine" are what cause this situation in the first place. Trying to surprise people into realising they're in the top X% is a pathetic tactic which will help absolutely no-one.

The pick a European country and a US state of equivalent size & population. I'll wait. The end result is precisely the same.

Why is it so difficult to admit that internet access in the US is a first world joke? Does it hurt your feelings? There's no rational excuse to have this opinion.

You seem to be forgetting WWII, the repercussions of which are still - to this day - haunting many countries, especially in Europe. The US sauntered through WWII with barely a scratch, owing to its geographical location, a history quite unlike most other developed countries at the time.

Ignoring that little fact kind of puts the rest of your post in doubt... Your anecdotal data set of 1 also doesn't exactly portray you in the most rational of lights...

OK, then compare Sweden to California, as has been done above. If what you say is true, California's internet should be far better than Sweden's, as California is roughly the same size, with a far larger population (and therefore more money to be gained from customers). California's climate is also far more suited to building out utilities, as Sweden's climate is closer to Alaska's.

Wait, what? Internet access in California sucks? No waaaay! It's almost as if you had a knee-jerk reaction to someone criticizing the US and had to put a stop to it, regardless of whether the criticism was accurate or not! USA #1! USA #1! USA #1!

"I'm New Around Here" doesn't understand Europe or the EU, apparently. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

Sweden: 450,295 sq mi / 9,716,962 people (55.6 per sq mi)

California: 423,970 sq mi / 38,802,500 people (246 per sq mi)

So Sweden is slightly larger, with far fewer people, and yet trounces California with regard to internet access. I have no idea how you can argue that somehow it's an unfair comparison - if anything, Sweden should be lagging far behind California simply due to the relative size of their internet markets, and the fact it has a climate more like Alaska's. As it is, Sweden is making the US look a right muppet in this regard.

But I'm sure you can find some excuse as to why the Sweden example doesn't count, and that the US is #1 in internets.

So much opinion masquerading as fact. Incredible. You should probably stay out of these threads, as all you seem to do is harp on about OSX like your life depends on it, which seems a bit desperate. I feel bad for you if you have to hang out in Windows threads to make yourself feel better by pointing out to everyone why they're retarded and you (and your OS of choice) is awesome.

Just accept that you are you, and others are others. What you like might not be what they like, and vice versa. Getting all upset because not everyone agrees with you is only serving to make you look like a jealous school kid, regardless of whether that is true or not, or maybe some sort of egocentric lunatic who simply can not fathom why others might disagree with them.

That has to be some sort of perverse joke, right? Did you use Linux 10 years ago? It sure doesn't sound like it!

"Insanely clumsy" is clicking a button? How do you use a computer without choking to death on the mouse? You sound like you shouldn't be left unsupervised around technology.

I don't get why they'd think New Zealand would be safe from protests. If they really want to be safe they should be thinking places like, say, Heard Island, like a true billionaire supervillain would.

Um, you do realize that Canada is a commonwealth state and the queen is the head of state, right?

When I was a kid, and mum and dad weren't at home, my brother and I would eat raw egg yolk mixed with sugar. In one way or another we're all alive due to luck, I prefer not to push mine too much.

One of the largest internal migrations in US history was in the early 70's when 20 something hippies started leaving cities in droves and building mud brick utopias. Only a handful of the communes survived more then 2ys. The common cause of downfall was human nature - a bully would arise in the commune and take ownership of the land by pushing people out one by one.