J-William

It's fairly easy to forget about in China... So I totally forgot about it except to glance down at the date and go "oh yeah..."

If you want to talk about the practical realities of the state (instead of the morality of theft, coercion, and murder) then you will almost always be wasting your time. Because the biggest practical negatives of the state are the unseen costs and the unknowable lost opportunity. If the murder, theft and coercion of the state are not enough to convince someone that the state is dangerous... well maybe it's time to move on, time is short and there are lots of other people you could be talking to.

Heya! that sounds great! I've been working on learning Python myself. I'd say you've taken a good step in reaching out to other people for help and support. Maybe we could keep in touch and check on eachother's progress for actual advice... well I've been finding lots of free books/ online tutorials and picking out the best of those. I've also been keeping a notebook with my progress to help me manage the "project" of learning to program. I think you'd do well to work on a project that solves some problem you want solved. It doesn't even have to be a problem that hasn't been solved, it could just be one that you want solved in your own way. For example I'm starting on a project to process text files and add spaces between Chinese "words"... which is hard because Chinese words aren't well defined like English words. There are programs that do this, but they are hard to use and don't work in exactly the way I want them to so I've made it a project to make a program that does this in a user-friendly (or at least me-friendly) way.

Yeah it's a real dodgy self-agrandizing book. I still haven't made it through the rest of the book and don't think I will. The childhood stuff was interesting and tragic, and her covering up for her parents was completely predictable. I agree, she is the very model of statist conformity. She does everything she can to fit in with the crazy people around her.

Yeah, I mean cuz no one dies from the flu...

And they're going to need to talk to this AlGore fellow about the internet he made divulging all these state secrets. Next they're going to order god to cease and desisit with the earthquakes and the wild fires... Oh and they're definitely going to get on the case of Einstein and Newton about this gravity thing... it sure crashes lotsa planes!

Well, since this Dershowitz guy is saying this on CNN, it's certainly a trial balloon for launching prosecution of Greenwald. I'm pretty certain that Glenn will be better off to be based in Brazil for at least the time being... Not that I embrace anything at all about the state as it relates to Mr. Greenwald.

hahah hahaha... hahaha http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/snowden-government-force-for-good-big-brother this is the real danger of people equating big business with government... they want us to forget which one has guns, which one has prisons, which one propagandizes children for thousands of hours. The nerve of that "Basic economics"! can you believe it? Basic physics also has the nerve to teach that things fall due to gravity! Gahh! [6]

Absolutely! When you look at the capacity they have and the capacity they are building; it is more than enough to record every single phone, Skype, im, Facebook, or twitter conversation. I was looking into it a few weeks ago when I saw a comment about the feasibility of recording every phone conversation. The short answer is that it is possible, The long answer: If they were to record at a normal bit-rate for voice say 32 or 64kbits/sec then it would take an absolutely insane amount of storage and would not be possible. But there are very low bit-rate codecs along the order of 600 to 800bit/sec. At that bit rate it would be a fairly trivial matter to store all of the voice communications for the US for a long time. Do we know that's what the Utah data-center is for? Nope, we don't know anything, but with the size of that Utah data-center they could probably record everything and keep it around for long-term storage, since tapes can currently store at least 250TB per square foot we're looking at maximum roughly 375 exabytes at the Utah data center... Whic doesn't square with the claimed Yottabyte, but whatever... An hour long conversation recorded at 600bits/sec is 270kB... so doing some very rough math, you have 1,500,000,000,000,000 hours of conversations recorded at the NSA's new faciltiy. Divide 1,500,000,000,000,000 by 300,000,000 and you get 500 million hours of recording time for every man woman and child in the United states. So that's clearly ridiculous because most people don't live more than about 700,000 hours

So, Mr Edward Snowden is big news, and I was reading through his wikipedia page and get this... Yeah... he was working at the NSA, donated to Ron Paul and had internet freedom stickers all over his laptop. Who exactly looked at this guy and thought "our secret evil schemes will never get out with this guy around!" isn't it supposed to be a big terrifying surveillance state, yet they can't even look at their own employees and figure out who might blow their plans? The only thing more obvious would be if he showed up at work wearing a Freedomain radio T-shirt. Posted this to my blog, thought it was worth posting here so maybe someone would read it http://sticktowriting.com/wp/snowden-maybe-they-should-have-known/

Just think, with Steam you get it for half price. Terraria was a great deal, and I'm not finished with it yet. 80 hours in Terraria: $1.25 (1.5 cents per hour of amusement)

"Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight" is interesting, and I think it's worthwhile to read at least the first part where she talks about her childhood. It's almost funny how predictable the author's claim that she had a "normal" childhood, to then turn around moments later and describe her extremely abusive father, and suicidal/passive aggressive mother. First: the author seems oddly insightful, and completely devoid of self-knowledge. At the same time that she's relating truly horrifying episodes of parental abuse and neglect from her socially adept parents, she takes complete blame for her muted emotional responses and her tendency to use people as an adult. Second: For all the "OMG crazy sociopath" it's really a rather boring and self-indulgent tome. I guess it's a memoir and the author is not a terribly interesting or accomplished person who claims to be a sociopath... and so one might expect it, but the author sure goes on about herself.

With all due respect DaProle, 99% of libertarians I know or heard about, got into libertarianism thru Ayn Rand... I personally know zero people who came in through Ron Paul.

But Adam is working for the Jewish conspiracy. It's true, I read it on facebook!

HAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA!

I'm really starting to wonder if it is good or bad to expose myself to this kind of news... Certainly it's a good way to stoke my daily moral outrage against the state, but it's hardly empowering. I mean what can I do about the actions of people with guns and prisons? There is no way that knowing about the despicable actions of prison guards will help me stop them. On the other hand I think it is very important that people know about these things and not be so complacent and compliant with the growth of the police state... [:@] Ambivalence is the name of the game!

Can't help but agree with that taunting fools with guns would not be a great way to protect the hard work you've put into your business.. I can't agree that they are not fools... they are certainly very savvy and morally bankrupt and have therefore amassed large fortunes, but that doesn't mean they aren't fucking idiots!

Wow Dave, that's quite a quote... Thanks, it really gives me something to reflect on for mother's day. To be more honest, it taps into a deep well of emptiness and pain

The only problem with collectivism is when it's forced on people. Nothing wrong with people voluntarily coming together to show support for a cause. Right. It's the "collective" action of the market which makes the free market work so many apparent miracles.

I love it! I love Adam and I support what he's doing completely! If I were going I would be very much concerned that the government will start shooting or employ agents provocateurs to start the shooting so they can be justified in putting down an armed group of crazy gun-nut terrorists... However, I don't feel like that is very likely. The establisment has much better ways of either ignoring the movement, or marginalizing it by making fun of the crazy gun-nuts. So I think that it is going to be very safe to go, and the real battlefield will be online and in the mainstream media... and hopefully that's where you'll have some effect.

Lemme guess, she was black right? The cops can get away with anything... I mean she's suing them, they are not being brought up on criminal charges. The cops will get out of this without paying her one thin dime. What judge is going to believe her word over that of a policeman? This sort of stuff is just awful, I feel terrififed to think about what it must have been like before people had ubiquitous and cheap recording devices...

wow, they sound like the red guard in China... except I guess these "Green Bombers" haven't killed quite as many people.

Except they are doing the "marching and the uniforms and propaganda posters" in schools with the full support of almost every Democrat or Republican.

[ROFL]

Yep! it was the best event of the year! [hexplode]