Yes I'm sure encrypting all your messages in such a way as they can now be proven mathematically to come from the same set of encryption keys (which is what OpenPGP does) will guarantee your anonymity.

Only if you encrypt and sign, which is a distinct command from encrypting only. If you merely encrypt a message to a recepient without signing, the ciphertext has no relationship to your own private key.

I was about to post the same thing. The scene in Niven's The Ringworld Engineers where Louis Wu is shown to have become a "wirehead", someone who becomes addicted to directly stimulating the pleasure centre of the brain and losing interest in all else in life, was one of the creepiest things I've ever read.

Thankfully, in 20 years we'll have rich trust-fund hipster-kids developing on film "before it was cool."

Already happening. My local bookstore, unable to make much of a profit on books alone and therefore offering all kinds of hipster items, does a brisk trade in the retro film cameras from Lomography. Lord knows where they develop the film, though. (Unless setting up your own darkroom is a hipster fad I've overlooked.)

The minimum wage laws and the socialist State agenda already made it impossible for people to take very low paid position only to be apprentices, so apprenticeship is dead in America because of the minimum wage.

Funny how high minimum wages and "socialism" to a degree much greater than in the US hasn't eradicated Germany's very popular system of apprenticeship.

And first-world countries that do not have minimum wage set by law tend to have minimum wage worked out in collective bargaining between a union and management (which then applies to all employees, union or non-union). Do you think that that would lower wages?

Czechoslovakia broke-up and a few thousands were killed.

Could you cite this please? This political event is typically referred to as the Velvet Divorce and I'm surprised by claims of "thousands" of deaths.

He says, "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent." Maybe I'm just eating the bullshit media too much... but China doesn't seem like the best place for free speech and overall freedom really

When the UK handed Hong Kong back the China, they bound China to allow Hong Kong autonomy for fifty years. In Hong Kong, there is free speech, freedom of assembly and unfiltered internet. It's common to see Falun Gong protestors at spots where commuters pass by daily, for example, while in Mainland China they would immediately be arrested. Now, the Chinese government has been tightening its grip on Hong Kong and arguably violating the spirit of its agreement with the UK, but Hong Kong is still nothing like what you think of when you hear the word "China".

If the government, in all its organs, branches, and bodies, conspires to violate that Constitution then the American people have the right and duty to take up arms to defend it.

Right? Possibly. Duty? Hell, no. I and most of the population are not going to start shooting people and risking our own deaths just because someone with a stricter interpretation of the American political process got his panties in a bunch. Violation of perceived rights would have to much, much deeper before inaction is no longer a moral choice.

I forgot to mention that screening on flights to Israel has also succeeded in preventing the boarding of actists who, though they would not attack the plane, would cause damage once they've landed in Israel. That is, the screening is also designed to stop activists who, though they themselves refrain from engaging in violence, want to go to the West Bank to agitate for violent Palestinian resistance.

There have bene high-profile busts like the Hindawi affair, and after that, the rigorous screening in place does a pretty good job of discouraging anyone from attacking flights to/from Israel.

What you are describing is (with the exception of generous holidays) a feature of Western Europe. Come to the EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe and it's not so rosy. I'm in Romania, and I can assure you that business owners are out to screw you any way they can.

Why should anyone care? Do you care about us? What does the union do for anyone besides the union?

In many businesses, unions insist that the same treatment be provided to non-union employees. If you don't join the union and pay your dues, you don't get to participate in collective bargaining sessions, but you still benefit from whatever was achieved by the union in collective bargaining.

In some countries (that can boast a high standard of living), this is how minimum wage is set. The government doesn't get involved in legislating wages, it simply leaves everything to be worked out voluntarily among employers and employees. Isn't capitalism a good thing?

What you are describing is exactly what you get when you fly out of Ben Gurion. However, in spite of the success of the Israeli approach to airport security, it may not scale to the huge flight volumes of, say, Atlanta or LAX, and regrettably the TSA wants the same approach at all airports.

This reminds me. To all you haters saying that the US does nothing but import and it's a suicidal economic structure, read that last line. We import cheap plastic crap and clothes and toys from China and export a gigantic supply of food around the world.

Farming employs a dwindling and already miniscule amount of people in the US. While the US may continue to export things, it does not employ a large amount of people, which is the real concern of those noting the move of manufacturing from the US to other counties.

Stallman has already announced that he is content with Linux as the GNU kernel and that he has lost interest in the Hurd project. Hurd is kept alive now by hobbyists interested in alternative kernel designs, not Free Software demagogues.

In China it's common for people to buy their own phones instead of getting them subsidized from the carrier with a contract. And once they buy those phones, they own them for real: there are no carrier-imposed limits on what apps they can install (or remove), and they are free to jump to another network if they desire. That is what the OP is talking about, I believe.