Let me just plug the original of the genre; FUTURE SHOCK by Alvin Toffler. And then, after you've read the ePub for that on your smartphone, please consider picking up THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER by John Brunner, a book that was way ahead of its time, then, and is still relevant (and a great read) today.

Bill Nye is still around. He is all over the Planetary Society, for instance, and does a lot of science advocacy through them.

Carl Sagan was the fucking Man. But I for one am glad to have both Bill Nye (on DVDs) and Neil Degrasse Tyson (sp?) around.

It's treason to plot the violent overthow of your own government.

"But not if you succeed."

Listen to you. Probably lived your whole life in the United States. Never been drafted. Never gone to war. Never been oppressed in any significant way. Never really known hardship or poverty. I'm not trying to make light of your life experience, which honestly I don't have any idea about. But there's lots of people on this thread specifically who seem happy to talk fliply about treason or anarchy or revolution. You know what, everyone has a beef with the Federal government but for the vast vast majority, their life here is very fortunate indeed compared to most of the rest of the world. That so many people from so many other places have come here to make their best effort at a better life is evidence that life in America is pretty good. Talking smack about the overthrow of the government seems entirely disconnected to actual reality, and it shouldn't be tolerated.

"I'm sure you've done something that someone would disagree with. Would you like to run like a fugitive?"

You know, I've done lots of things that people disagree with, but for the real biggies, I usually wait a while and and talk it out with some reasonable people before I take the plunge. That Defense Distributed has been so entirely dogged about doing this as soon as possible, without ever really considering the consequences, with such obvious callous disregard for the outcomes for anyone other than themselves, qualifies them for our contempt.

“You can print a lethal device. It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show.”(Cody Wilson) Well, DEFCAD could have shown that WITHOUT scattering cad files all over the internet. For starters, every policeman in America now has to treat every toy gun and chunk of plastic as a possible lethal weapon, and that wasn't true a week ago. The likelihood of people getting shot by cops just increased, for no good reason. Second up, the entire gazillion dollar security theater at airports now has to be reworked. Oh, that won't be inconvenient for anyone (or costly to the whole rest of the world) that every piece of plastic carried onto a plane will have to be inspected. And someday, sooner or later, someone is going to be shot dead with a DEFCAD design that slipped through security somewhere.

Never mind the train wreck this is going to be for the actual maker community - some of the nicest and most well-meaning people I've met. Now suddenly they and their entire enterprise are suspect.

Does Mr. Cody Wilson care at all? Oh, ha ha, why would he? Information wants to be free! He's not responsible for anything. He's just raising the issue.

He should have waited then until he had a more convincingly functional weapon. The issue with the ITAR restrictions is not that it's going to prevent the distribution of this gun, as people have already said on this forum. It's that its going to prevent DEFCAD from openly refining its design and distributing designs for all the improved weapons.

You know, Cody the law student should very well have seen this coming. Duh.

I for one am gratified by the efficient workings of our Federal government in representing its citizens' interests. If Mr. Come-and-Take-It wants to pose as such a bad-ass anarchist, and talk shit on YouTube about destabilizing governments and giving everyone a machine gun, then he should get ready to run like a fugitive, and never sleep in the same room twice again. It's treason to plot the violent overthow of your own government.

Just thinking out loud here - maybe you are meaning the second amendment?

ITAR. It's called ITAR.

"If you enter somewhere you're not supposed to be, and exit with something you didn't have before, (and didn't produce somehow while you are there) that's theft. That's stealing things that don't belong to you. Why does that seem like such a radical interpretation?"

"Because according to your interpretation, reading a book and remembering its contents after closing it would be theft as well."

No, because authors intend for you to read and remember what they write - that's the point of their writing books. Again, you're smart enough to know better, but being disingenuous because, because why? Trying to rationalize your own behavior somewhere?

The intention of the owner is relevant in defining what is a giving, or sharing, or theft. If someone comes to your birthday party and gives you something wrapped in colored paper and you unwrap it and keep it, that's something clearly given to you. If someone builds a computer system with a lot of security mechanisms to keep you out, and you sureptitiously enter anyway and take something, and the owner would probably call the cops (or FBI, whatever) on you if they knew, then that is stealing.

If you find a dollar bill on the sidewalk and no one else is around, that's an ambiguous case, but that is not what we are talking about here. Lots of American companies have been intentionally and thoroughly hacked, not accidentally, but using lots of time, manpower, effort, expertise. Spearphishing.

Theft is theft. For someone who cites a biblical reference in your every post, you have a very shaky grasp of this very basic premise of morality. (Or maybe you're just trolling.) "Thou shalt not steal" is pretty prominent in the Bible and the concept is common most other religious texts as well.

Some of the things on my computer have value relative to their scarcity elsewhere. If I am the only one in the world who has some great idea (or even say, the next Justin Beiber album) then it has much more value than if that same item were emailed to everyone in the world including myself.

I think you're being disingenuous to pretend not to see the argument. If you enter somewhere you're not supposed to be, and exit with something you didn't have before, (and didn't produce somehow while you are there) that's theft. That's stealing things that don't belong to you. Why does that seem like such a radical interpretation?

Further, it's a privacy issue as well. I have a right to keep some things on my computer apart from the public view, just as, when I close the door to my house, I have a right to expect other people not to enter and look around.

That's really your argument? Let the Chinese hack us, because rice?

There must be a moral or ethical accounting for today's actions, apart from prior history, or else wars would never end (just for starters). Just as I wouldn't expect to walk into someone's house uninvited and raid their refridgerator, I don't think it's right for others to hack into my computer, uninvited, and take the stuff I have there. At root, that should be pretty easy to comprehend, and I think we can all agree to that.

And I think the issue about pirating copies of Windows etc is separate from active hacking of domestic systems in order to steal industrial and defense secrets.

"Yes, from enemies both domestic and foreign. That's why The People are supposed to represent The Militia. Every American has the responsibility of defending the nation. Your problem is that you are forgetting the need to defend from domestic enemies."

This is BS. Either you're plotting treason (which is still a capital offense in America) or you're using the second amendment to protect your hobby, and being dishonest about it. Which is it?

Don't play-act about being patriotic if you're planning out some Red Dawn scenario against the Feds.

The second amendment does not obligate everyone to own a gun. Owning a gun doesn't really protect the nation. There are more guns than people in America already. How many more guns would you need to feel protected?

Your vote, and your voice, are the primary defenses of democracy in America.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check

"Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people.
Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Gun death rates are generally lower in states with restrictions such as assault-weapons bans or safe-storage requirements."

And there's a graph. You can see it for yourself.

Knowledge and Thoroughness, yo.

What would be nice would be if the NRA came down on these people. Really, the NRA represents the gun-making and gun-selling industry. It's in their interest to prevent everybody from being able to make guns for basically free, with the ease with which they might toast a pop-tart.

Here's a valuable contribution the NRA could be making to society. They should lobby, lobby, lobby that Cody and "Defense Distributed" are violating our 2nd Amendment rights. Seriously - "keep and bear arms". Says nothing about "making arms" or "printing arms" or "creating arms".

Whoops, sorry, brain freeze. What I really meant to say was "Archon!"