Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 	Could you elaborate? 

Each community selects a provider for cable and for local phone service. 
Just like you don't really get a choice of provider for water or 
electricity, if you don't like your cable TV provider, you're pretty 
well screwed in most areas.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> limited because the companies sued whenever the government tried
> providing free Internet...

Oh, and yes, the government isn't supposed to do that sort of thing. :-) 
I can understand why the private companies sued.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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>  And we are not talking about lying and deceiving. We are talking about
> *expressing your opinion*, which is a rather different thing.

Like I said, fine so long as you don't cause any trouble with it (ie 
blocking a road with a protest while you express your opinon loudly, or 
persuading others to do some terrorist act, or damaging the image of some 
other person or company for no reason, there are lots of reasons).

>  A Finnish person posted an article in his blog citing, among other 
> things,
> official crime statistics performed by certain groups of people and using
> words which some people consider derogatory

Publishing derogatory comments, especially when generalising about a certain 
group of people is a very dangerous thing to do, and certainly not what most 
people would call "without causing trouble".

If that's the worst (or best?) you can come up with, I think we're safe with 
being free to express our opinions :-)

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>> Not in the US. If your protests indeed disrupt the government, or
>> traffic, or so many other things, you get in trouble.
>
> The protests are supposed to disrupt the government. It's *supposed* to be 
> OK, as long as it's peaceful.
>
> Disrupting traffic gets you in trouble for disrupting traffic, not for 
> protesting.
>
> Unfortunately, I think a great number of on-the-street level cops are 
> taking their clues from the high administrations and simply ignoring the 
> law and misusing their privileges.

I saw a thing here a while back where a group of people were protesting 
about something.  There were literally twice as many police with shields and 
guns compared to the protesters (who were armed with nothing).  The police 
were just waiting at a safe distance when suddenly the protesters started 
destroying peoples gardens and ripping out fences and trees to throw at the 
police.  The police did nothing, they just stood there.  Afterwards they 
showed the state of these peoples gardens and interviewed them, basically 
they couldn't believe it that the police did absolutely nothing to protect 
their property.

If that is "free speech" and "freedom to express your opinion", then I want 
it banned!

Mind you, the German police seem to take a very strong stance against anyone 
who tries to protest violently against those nuclear waste trains.  Someone 
has chained or cemented themselves to the train tracks, no problem, where's 
the angle grinder? ;-)

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> Well, exactly how can they "disrupt the government" while being 
> "peaceful"?

Vote for someone else.  Lobby your local politicians.  Make a petition.  Try 
to gather support in the community.  Hold a peaceful protest at a key 
location.  There are many non-violent ways to disrupt the government. 
Physically disrupting it by force is not one of them.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> That's like sayin DARPA was commissioned to design a system for mass
>> porn dissemination! o_O
>>
> 
> Excuse me?
> 
> "The Internet is for Porn" remember?

Sure, it is *today*. But when it was invented, high-resolution graphics 
didn't even *exist*. :-P

I think it would be rather a stretch to claim that this was the design 
goal. More like, any technology which can be used for porn will 
inevitably be used for porn...

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Darren New wrote:

> I wasn't saying whether it was legal *or* good, but only why "guns were 
> made".  Most cops go their entire careers without having to shoot 
> anyone, let alone kill them.

Where I'm from, "most cops" don't even *have* guns...

They do, however, have these wicked batton things that look pretty mean.

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> Where I'm from, "most cops" don't even *have* guns...

Hehe yeh, which is probably why I'm always a little disconcerted when I'm at 
the airport and every cop has some automatic rifle about 50cm long held in 
such a way that it looks like they're about to start shooting everyone.  If 
you look carefully above you will probably find another couple aiming down 
at the crowds of passengers.

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scott wrote:
>> Where I'm from, "most cops" don't even *have* guns...
> 
> Hehe yeh, which is probably why I'm always a little disconcerted when 
> I'm at the airport and every cop has some automatic rifle about 50cm 
> long held in such a way that it looks like they're about to start 
> shooting everyone.  If you look carefully above you will probably find 
> another couple aiming down at the crowds of passengers.

o_O

That can't be good...

(Personally I've never seen *anybody* IRL with an actual firearm. Well, 
unless you count an air rifle.)

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Invisible wrote:

> I think it would be rather a stretch to claim that this was the design 
> goal. More like, any technology which can be used for porn will 
> inevitably be used for porn...

It was the reason VHS won out over Beta. So, its entirely possible, 
stories you hear otherwise are just invented to cover up that fact. We 
know what they were /really/ thinking ...
-- 
~Mike

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