That is an interesting line of thinking. At some point we'll likely break from the invisible hand of the greedy gene, but I'd be surprised if we're there yet.
You know that "responsible whistleblowing" has failed multiple times in the past right? Anybody who is upset with Snowden for not repeating the same pattern that failed to change anything, except the destruction of the whistleblower's life, is either unfamiliar with history or just completely illogical.
Retinal scans are out, iris scans are in. If I remember correctly, beyond the age of 5 the iris banding pattern remains the same. Retinal scans get tripped up by things like pregnancy and other health issues. I'd never use it for a password though, as there are commercial products that perform iris scans at a distance of several meters on non cooperative subjects. The first thing I thought of when I saw the product, sort of a virtual turnstile, was Snowcrash and the surreptitious collection of biometric information for eventual sale on the black market.
It only takes one exception to disprove a rule, and in the interest of not inviting debate - I'll pick an obvious example: biological imperatives have nothing to do with culture.
Everytime I hear somebody excuse silly behaviour with "culture" it reminds me of the Louis CK bit: http://youtu.be/CQSRPMFDTSs
Terrorism is pretty well defined, only recently has the the term been corrupted. If you were to do a survey of material on the subject you'd find that the vast majority of literature is related to state military action, written decades before CNN splashed the word all over the little crawler at the bottom of your television set.
As far as war: fear is nowhere near the emotional response needed to end hostilities. Everybody is afraid in war. There are only two ways to end a war (in victory): attrition or subjugation. Look at the failed wars of the last century, see what they're missing? Actually, I can't really think of a war that was won through attrition... the western front of WWII maybe. Anyway, war is politics - when one side surrenders they have given into political threats to make the danger go away.
I'm a little surprised that I have to break it down this way, but try this: you are an Iraqi in occupied Fallujah. In one scenario the Americans only intentionally kill military aged males who openly engage them in firefights. You're afraid but you know the rules to the game and your will remains unbroken. In the second scenario the Americans publicly execute every military aged male they come across and rape every woman in your family, repeatedly on a random schedule. They capture you and torture you for days, then finally release you after they cut off your right arm. Also, they threaten to bury every Muslim killed in combat inside a dead pig - preventing them from entering heaven (as the British threatened back in the day in India). Also, piles of dead children are stacked and set fire on every street corner. This goes on for months. I'd argue that in the second scenario the population would effectively be terrorized, and your will to fight would be broken.
That is the original meaning of terrorism. What is called terrorism today is pretty much criminal activity, rebranded to justify feeding the military industrial complex. War isn't complicated by the way, it is just wrong. There is no need to tie your brain in knots trying to explain how children aren't 100% innocent in war :)
Ok, so what makes a threat credible enough to instill terror? Seriously, terror. I'm not talking about a level of concern that causes people to modify their behavior around media consumption, I'm talking about the level of terror that breaks your enemy's will to fight. Again, terrorism falls within the spectrum of warfare - not criminal behavior. I'd argue that the identity and reputation of the aggressor needs to be established for a bomb threat to be considered terroristic. Even the CIA, an entity that would benefit from a loose definition of terrorist, refuses to classify a group as "terrorist" unless they have expressed intent and demonstrated capability.
It wouldn't make any sense to exempt states from the list of potential terrorist actors - because the state invented terrorism. As I said, spectrum of warfare. Now intelligent people can disagree about the ability of individuals to declare war... but then terrorism is restricted to the state. I hope you've misunderstood my WWII example, because otherwise you've just argued that civilian children, elderly and infirm were somehow not bystanders while huddled in bomb shelters. My history isn't super strong, but I don't think anybody has ever argued that the British engaged in total war - which would be necessary for children to be classified as anything but bystanders.
That is far too broad a definition - and still not completely correct. Terrorism falls within the spectrum of warfare, it isn't as simple as "Well I feel terrorized, so my tormentor must be a terrorist!" Also, the emotional state of terror - the word has been severely corrupted. The British were unquestionably terrorized by the German dive bombers, fitted with signature sirens, in WWII. That was clearly a terror campaign, because intent was expressed and capability demonstrated. This whole movie thing, not so much.
This whole thing has made for some interesting people watching opportunities. I think the only people who were completely unsurprised by all this are those who:
1) Understood the technical requirements to pull this level of surveillance off.
2) Understood that the government does not love them.
You combine the two to arrive at the conclusion that if something is within the government's ability, and it furthers its own interests, it will do it. The reaction from the folks in group 1 have been the most entertaining, as it is apparently easier for people in group 2 to adapt to changes in technology.
> I suppose most of the NSA's work is the result of our own base, human natures...
It is in the best interest of the state to cripple the internet as much as possible. This isn't to protect you, it is to control you - ranchers don't build fencing to protect cattle. Why would any state want you to be able to freely communicate with the "violent, hating, warlike, unequal" others? Aside from generating tax revenue through commerce, there is no reason.
I used IMDB several years ago, but now see that their usage policy is restricted to "personal" use. Who is going to download 1.11 GB of compressed text for personal use?
A couple of years ago, I was an operations analyst - my employer used USPS to deliver millions of DVDs... USPS completely depends on bulk shipping and they'll happily provide product packaging at all scales - down to the carrier route level. Urban areas get hit pretty bad, due to population density - bulk shippers get more bang for the buck. Ideally, from the postal customer's perspective, shipping costs would rise for shippers who can only address shipments to "Current resident of:" or "Our friend at:". Proof of work, like hashcash. But of course the incentive system is the direct opposite, the recipients are not the customer.
> all of them are mutually incompatible in most situations.
I haven't compiled against every implementation, but I did just recently rerun a report I create 4 years ago under a different engine. I spent about 20 minutes addressing the new complaints, when I finished that the generated pdf looked exactly the same as the old one - but with up to date data. Try that with html :) Heck, I've had the exact same experience switching C compilers. I do agree with you about the crappy error reporting. There is a reason why the Library of Congress is bundling data with binaries now, this is a very common problem - but in my experience Latex has fared much better than most formats.
Folks are going to have to suck it up and accept the fact that the human experience is always changing. Cursive writing and the Dewey Decimal system were once important, and we may be getting to the point now where rote memorization is universally a waste of time.
The flip side of that is, you can't refuse the USPS. Everything I care about comes to me electronically or through a parcel service, I only need USPS a couple of times a year (USG stuff like DL renewal). Even so, I need to collect my junk mail at least twice a week - because if I don't the box will fill up, they'll leave a threatening note about returning future mail to sender, and I'll have to pick up the stack at the local post office. I've done that a few times now. Its always funny how when I get there to pickup the volume of mail that was too large to fit in the mailbox - there are only a couple of official looking envelopes that turn out to be junk mail. The workers obviously recognize the fact that I don't want three copies of "The Penny Saver", and they don't want to waste space in the PO warehousing it.
The incentives are way off in this system. They get paid to move junk mail and I am forced to accept it.
tldr; I hate junk mail and will scream into the void about it.
The last bit concerning the flexibility of foreign word adoption is key, I think. I heard a radio story a long time ago on the topic of word mutation in the English language (I think it was a story on ebonics). The theory was put forward that you could estimate the rate of foreign adoption based on the rate of mutation in the language. The thought being that foreigners to the language weren't simply bringing with them fragments of their mother tongue, they were dropping rules of the language that didn't make sense to them (or were too difficult for them to remember). For example, English nouns once had gender - but that was dropped a long time ago. The plural form of words were much stranger back in the day as well, compared to today where in most cases you can postfix an "s". As far as the OP, I don't know enough about German to compare mutation rates - I'd be interested to hear from somebody who does know enough to make the comparison.
What you are describing might be true of other countries, but that isn't the way it works in the US. You aren't too far off on the military training issue, immediate obedience to orders is incredibly important - at the lowest ranks. The US military has an extremely long institutional memory, and over a couple hundred years they've figured out a way of doing this that works pretty well. The conditioning for immediate obedience to orders and illusion of immortality wears off after a couple of years, right around the time that personnel start picking up rank and assuming positions of responsibility over others. So by that time they won't be charging any machinegun nests, they'll be in a position to order others to do so - at this point it should be clear to you why filtering out intelligent people is a bad idea :) The conditioning wears off, but you can't fix stupid.
That isn't even close to being true. SNCOs and WOs need to be pretty clever, and they start off as E-1s. It works for the military, but then they aren't taking the short sighted position of filtering out folks who are "too smart" to be an E-1.