6 ton car bomb detonated by suspected rebels:

Syrian Rebels Unleash Unprecedented 6-Ton Car Bomb, Killing 60

anyone who has at least 3 remaining grey cells to crash together would oppose such an action.

how many of our recent interventions have turned out anything other than an absolute shitstorm which we reap a little further down the line?

right, none of them.

this is SOP for the thugs in blue, who have been emboldened by receiving even more military equipment following 9/11.

the psychological profile of your average copper is, more likely than not, very similar to that of a street-thug; the only difference is that the former desires to kick ass "legally".

fyi, where != were

hope your latin is better than your english, given the endeavor of reading the magna [...] carta.

I put "hostile Indians" in quotation marks for a reason.

Can you figure out why?

"weapons where[sic] needed to hunt and defend against hostile Indians"

gee, who would've expected they'd be hostile to invading settlers from another continent?

anyway, what's done is done, so arm yourself with everything you can afford. who cares?

there are a lot of great principles which originated from the western tradition of thought, but the idea that these ideas are necessarily universal is not one of them.

holey(sic) rollers claiming tax-exempt status (because of gawud) may be among the only legitimate targets of spying...along with proven terrorists, of course.

"Firearms and jewelry are good investments if you know what you're doing"

as are bunkers, chemical weapons, and belts of high-caliber ammunition.

zombies incoming@!1!!1!

it's not the revolutionary war, and you quaint, putative "survivalist" types are too flabby to be even minutemen.

sorry to interrupt your fantasy world with reality.

how, precisely, could one's personal arsenal protect against the highly-trained, armed-to-the-teeth US military, were it to decide to conduct domestic warfare?

that is the adult-child fantasy -- shootout with the gub'mint, bangbang! -- isn't it?

"Smith & Wesson Gun Sales Up 43%"

the rubes are being gamed in spectacular fashion.

"Has Microsoft's pro-spy-crap infected Mac?"

If apple is complying with NSA as readily as has Microsoft, then there's reason to suspect they may doing something similar.

If you have an iphone then forget it -- they've got all your records archived for sure.

Do you use skype? that's a microsoft property as of late 2011, and another participant in this data-surrender/mining operation.

"Lord forbid we have background checks to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill."

perhaps the bigger underlying problem is the lack of parity between physical and "mental" health:

it's easy to use an x-ray to determine if a patient has a broken bone, for example.

the very definitions of various psychological disorders are in question, even amongst clinicians -- hence the debate surrounding the DSM-V.

the inter-rater reliability of diagnoses is problematic, but moreso is our lack of understanding of the causes of various disorders. nobody's quite sure of the etiology of many disorders, regardless of your diagnostic criteria.

this is understandable, especially given that ramon y cajal's "neuron doctrine" is barely 100 years old, and that the human brain is the most sophisticated known product of evolution: there's plenty we know we don't know, and even more that we don't know we don't know.

that said, not sure how political posturing, and the accompanying paperwork, helps things at all.

guys like J_Galt ought to be rocketed off to the moon, where they will be able to truly and authentically re-invent the wheel.

"The NSA leaker is talking to the Chinese press, and he wants China to know that the U.S. hacks its servers, too"

what a revelation! I'm sure they never saw that coming.

one indication that this is a propaganda hit-piece is the fact that the motivation behind the action, as described by Snowden himself, is abruptly shoved aside more quickly than it was introduced, in favor of some conspiracy theory:

[Snowden] wants to expose "the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries." Snowden continues: "The reality is that I have acted at great personal risk to help the public of the world, regardless of whether that public is American, European, or Asian."

The Washington Post's Jia Lynn Yang has another theory. Noting that China has been accusing the U.S. of cyber attacks....

most of the rest of the article is based on a combination of hearsay, innuendo, and speculation.

the O'bomber administration -- harsher in its punishment of whistle-blowers than all previous admins, combined.

you suckers who fell for the "transparency" bit ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

All OS are vulnerable to "hackers" you just think you are safer. You are not.

#4 | Posted by donnerboy at 2013-06-15 11:17 AMFlag:

of course, but when one considers the distribution of OSes used worldwide, and that Microsoft, author and "supporter" of the majority OS (for desktop/notebook computers) is notorious for its vulnerability, then, in all likelihood, merely running a Windows OS predisposes one to a much greater risk of exposure to hacking or malware.

Yes because some user with the DR handle J_Galt is the arbiter of all facts.

LOL!!!

Hey, interneting is easy!

" Physicality = intrinsic value
Non-physicality = no intrinsic value"

here we go again with the "non-physicality" non-sequitur. This has been already addressed, but knock yourself out with the following link:

Just what the knock-off handle, the knock-off knowledge, and way too much free time would predict -- an adult child who espouses preposterous policy predilections which would turn inside-out many more sectors of the economy than intended overnight.

get a new schtick, mr galt.

No, just no.

Granted, the overhead involved in copying a file from point A to B on your drive is negligible, as is also the cost of several hours' of downloading the latest movie or game (I was previously an avid user of P2P before I got, you know, a job).

The fact that there is an active torrenting community, or whatever, does nothing to change that your premise of physical existence is an absurd one.

You've probably produced nothing that's worth stealing to anyone, hence the casual attitude.

This is just another example of wannabe authoritarians bending over backwards to make excuses for the odious behaviors of their superiors.

I hear tell that the series of tubes is now a much bigger deal than it was in 2000 (lol).

there's also cost inherent in copying all those 1s and 0s, be it for electricity to operate a computer, or the physical cost to the drive itself, as the drive will inevitably fail given enough usage and time...

...not unlike the obnoxious memes of someone with too much time on his (?) hands, an Ayn Rand book, and internet connection.

Digital copies of those items are made at zero cost, ergo they have no value

Now the physical items ( records, books, the actual art on canvas and frame, the box of software with DVD and manuals, concerts and performances, etc ...) .. they have value since they exist physically

#9 | Posted by J_Galt at 2013-06-15 01:35 PM | Reply | Flag:

what an absurd premise.

information on a harddrive does, indeed, "exist physically", in binary, at the most basic level -- otherwise, what are computers, magic?