Absolutely true. However the key word is possible. Looting and plundering are still quite profitable but the majority of wealth now comes from increasing productivity. Many billionaires like Gates, Jobs, and Buffet become very wealthy working within the capitalist system.

Another way to look at it is to look at the global average income over last few hundred years. It has been increased significantly despite a growing population, showing the total amount of wealth in the world has increased. When you look at individual countries, growth was and is fastest in capitalist systems. The most obvious cases being China, Eastern Europe, and East Asia.

The whole system by which the No-Fly list operates is stupid. If the government wants to have a no fly list, then they should have to justify to a court putting someone on that list, before the name goes on it.

If you want to search someone's house you need a warrant. If you want to tap someone's phone you need a warrant. So why don't you need a warrant to stop them from flying? It just seems stupid to me. Also when does your name of this No-Fly list expire? Wire taps expire, warrants expire, so how come you can be put on a No-Fly list indefinitely?

Sounds like a good project for a Raspberry Pi.

Get a Raspberry Pi and install Fedora or Debian on it so you can have standard OSS software and drivers for USB Webcams, microphones, a USB hard drive, and you might as well through in a cheap GPS unit for good measure. Using standard linux tools/scripts have the system mount the HDD as an encrypted disk with LUKS/encfs /etc. and have the USB+Microphone+GPS stream to the disk using log rotate to ensure there is enough space on the disk every time the system boots up.

Once you have the whole thing working install it into the vehicle so that the Cams/Mic/HDD is in the dash as part of the car. Wire up the Ethernet port to the dash so you can connect to the RaspberryPi via Samba/NFS to get the files if you need them. Then wire-up the system to a little on/off switch.

This way you should be able to record what ever you want securely, and have lots of storage space in case you need to leave it on for a long while or record multiple things. If the cops find out that you are recording them they cannot just take the disk from you since it is built into the car. In order to get at it they would need to impound the car, have someone open the dash, take the drive, and then erase it. All this would be a big hassle and create a paper trail which they would have to justify in court. Since the videos are encrypted they would have to get the password from you, again creating a paper trail to prove that there is video evidence. You can't stop them from destroying the disk once they get their hands on it. But destroying the disk after having someone at the shop remove it would look awfully suspicious, especially since the boot up log on the SD card would show that it mounted correctly.

This article is absolute garbage. Almost everything in that Guardian article is misinformed and sensationalist.

"fully autonomous war machines"? Care to give an example? I've follow this stuff pretty closely in the news on top of researching AI myself. And from what I have seen no one is working on this. Hell, we've only just started to crack autonomous vehicles. They site X-37 space plane for gods' sake. Everything about that is classified so how do they know it is autonomous?

My favourite gem has to be this one: "No one on your side might get killed, but what effect will you be having on the other side, not just in lives but in attitudes and anger?". Pretty sure that keeping your side alive while attacking your opponent has been the point of every weapon that has ever been developed.

People should be able to sue the DA for frivolous charges. Between this guy and Aaron Schwartz it is pretty clear that the DA/cops have so issue with just making up bullshit charges to harass and scare people. I would even go so far as to call it extortion in some cases. There should be consequences for doing this.

I remember reading this article a while back showing how congress was forcing the military to buy equipment they didn't even want.

Lets get real here. The military could cut a ton of funds and it would have zero effect on readiness. If the military actually had control of some of these decisions instead of stupid politicians. There is a ton of equipment that the military would skip buying, or buy cheaper versions if the government would stop running the DoD as a corporate welfare program. There are lots of bases that can and should be closed and consolidated, but can't for political reasons.

The problem is not that the military is going to lose funding, it that the pork that congress pushes through the DoD in the name of national defence will go under the chopping block.

I know that I'm not going to be with the majority on this one, but I support this.

The choice here isn't between a web with DRM and a web without DRM. The choice is between a web with one good standard, or a dozen crappy proprietary solutions.

Lets be realistic here. If DRM was not supported in the W3C standards then we would just end up with a mess of proprietary standards in its place. I hate DRM as much as the next slashdotter, but I hate having to load up shitty proprietary standards to handle DRM even more. During that last Olympics I had to boot into windows to watch the online stream because the CBC used silverlight, and the linux version was not compatible. Without some kind of standard this kind of shit we have going on with flash, silverlight, etc. is never going to stop.

Pretty sure that the people in Guantanamo are prisoners.

You mean other than China of course.

I'm not American, but it seems to me that there is a growing geographical dichotomy between the left leaning states and the right leaning states. Some of the old confederate states esp. Texas seem to be moving more and more to the right as the coastal states seem to be moving more to the left.

The left states seem to be moving closer to the Europe and the rest of the world in terms of politics. That is being less religious, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-war, pro-environment, etc. While the right leaning states seem to be rallying around the Church.

While I realize it is not a possibility anytime soon, but in 100 years could we see the return of the Confederate States of America?

You are not the only one. It is an eerily similar in name and function to RSHA. The other thing that gets me is the flags. Holy hell do Americans love that flag.

Dear God yes. Please do this!

From the article that you just quoted:

So between 474/3325= 14% 881/2562 = 34% of those killed in drone strikes are civilians. That 2% statistic is (intentionally?) misleading, because it only counts "high-level" targets, without stating what counts as a high value target, or making the case that drone should only be used on high value targets.

So at worst there is 1 civilian killed for every 3 militants, so 1:3 at worst. For comparison I give you the average:

Also the drones are bombing Pakistan from a Pakistani airbase with the full support of Pakistan (via cablegate):

This idea that the drones are illegally attacking Pakistan and killing scores of civilians is total BS.

While I think that Kirk was cooler and loved the action and babe getting. He seems more like a senior sergeant than an officer, much less a captain. Although they claim he was super smart at the academy it doesn't really show.

Picard is more what I think of as an officer (or even statesman). He seemed education, thoughtful, willing to compromise and had good people skills.