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https://sites.google.com/site/rocketsandperfumes/home/glorioustrash/sonnet-x

I live in Santa Barbara, one of the single most expensive places in the United States (apparently in the top ten according to a quick Google search). The median home price here is over a million dollars.

I've gotten by quite comfortably making under $25k a year; I am "richer" than most of my peers, in terms of savings, despite having been below the federal poverty line for most of my life. And I'm not even as frugal as I could be: I eat out nearly every day, for instance, when I could be saving by cooking at home. But somehow I seem to be more frugal than everybody else who is balls-deep in debt despite making more than I do. I don't know what they spend it all on. New cars, expensive toys, alcohol? I drive used cars, run an old computer despite being a techie, and don't blow my paychecks trying to make every weekend one I'll never remember.

If I could be making a more-average income of $50k a year, I would stand a reasonable chance of paying off a low-end home, even here in one of the most expensive places in the country, by the time I retire, while continuing my current comfortable-enough lifestyle the whole while. If I had a family to support, I would also have a second income from my spouse which would offset that cost.

If I was making $100k a year, I could buy an average house -- here, in one of the most-expensive places in the country -- well before I retired. If I was making a quarter million a year, I could buy my (currently unconceived) kids their own house by the time they graduate college, and give them the kind of cushy life I never had being born to a family with nothing.

I dunno what the fuck people are spending all their money on that could possibly make comfortable living on a six-figure income a stretch for them anywhere in the world, but jesus people, learn some restraint.

I noticed you posted as AC. I do not like to like to say what I need to say in cases like this, as I do not like hurt feelings.

You are average. You are not a computer "nerd" and are uninformed on the workings of errant programmers.

Programmers with malicious intent prey on people like you.

You could have googled "drive-by download" in less time than it took to post, and got lots of answers.

You didn't.

You wanted someone else to do it for you.

Well, that makes sense in a way.

In the business world, its called "delegation", and people who are good at it make a lot more money than those who just do what they are told.

In the shyster world, they are willing to tell you anything you want to hear in order to get you to admit their shyster code into your machine. Big deal, you might say.

Remember, even the lettering on the buttons is set by the programmer, Once you understand the power of JavaScript, you realize NOTHING your screen tells you can actually be trusted.

Really, no big deal? Its just a computer? How about handing out your checkbook, legal papers, deeds to your house, along with your personal seal of authenticity - to strangers?

Anything YOU can do on your computer, a stranger can do too, in your name, and probably a whole lot more that you didn't know you could do.

Once you have admitted their "agent" into your machine, its as if you have admitted an invisible "housekeeper" into your home, which can rifle through all your personal effects retrieving and sending to its author anything on its agenda.

Many people have not learned yet to take their privacy seriously.

They are led to believe "I am not a criminal - I do not have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide, its only because I have done something wrong which I am trying to keep from you!".

This whole story is about privacy - or what happens when it is breached - in this case by a computer trojan.

This is why we have so many stories and discussion here on Slashdot about how precious our privacy is,

Even "respectable businesses" that spill private information often shy away from cleaning up the mess made in your life by shysters taking advantage of the situation at your expense.

I cringe every time I hear someone accusing me of having something to hide because I must have done something wrong. Although I am not supposed to pray for someone else's woes, I often find myself uttering a silent prayer that their pristine crystal world will be shattered by someone taking their good name for a roll in the pig sty.

If "privacy" is so wrong, then why is our government so adamant on "security clearances".?

It's in bad taste

You must be new here. This place is often less tasteful than a redneck bar in the ghetto (and BTW, I do in fact drink in a redneck bar in the ghetto).

They have: https://www.google.com/search?q=composter

So recycling is mandatory, but people in the US go without healthcare? No offense intended guys and gals in the US, but the priorities of your lawmakers seem a little skewed.

Actually, the People's Republic of San Francisco made health care mandatory long ago, and it was upheld on appeal:

http://www.allenmatkins.com/templates/alert_photosLeft_2010-07-08.asp?is_id=106

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=San+Francisco++mandatory+health+care&btnG=Google+Search

There appears to be more privacy issues beyond monitoring in the phone. My Smartphone (GT-I9100 v.2.3.4) won't allow access to https://www.google.com./ It also doesn't allow the addition of private certificate authorities or the removal of bad ones. To make matters worse, it won't display the fingerprint of a certificate. So the only option is to accept, on faith, the issuer name displayed. It seems obvious that the handset makers don't care about privacy or potential harm to customers.

I like the Dead Kennedies' version better.

Drinkin' beer in the hot sun
I fough the law and I won.
I fought the law and
I won.

I bought an Archimedes 305 of the first batch in 1987. It came with an ARM2 which ran 4MHz when reading ROM and 8MHz when reading/writing RAM. It had 512Kb of RAM memory, which seemed like a lot to me (my previous computer had 48Kb), but after 2 weeks I already upgraded to 1Mb because the 512Kb was unworkable. I later upgraded to 4 megs, which involved desoldering the original RAM chips. I also bought the PC/8086 emulator (PDF), which could run MS/DOS software at PC/XT speed (in the PC/AT era). I used the emulator to compile Modula2 programs and when I had to open a WordPerfect 5.1 file. In those days, ARM was running circles around Intel.

Have a look at this post and the comments if you can
https://plus.google.com/105030465637303791249/posts/LwSvCv4saQV
Taco, Jamie, Pudge and a few others about this topic and some of things they had planned for the mod system
and some more here
http://cmdrtaco.net/2011/11/google-patent-mentions-my-prior-art/

It seems more economical until taxes go up to pay for social programs, prisons, and police to deal with the consequences of a breaking income-through-jobs link. Jane Jacobs called these "transactions of decline":
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

What economists rarely are willing to talk about is the supposed "law of comparative advantage" only holds when a country has and maintains full employment.

See my website for alternative economic analysis on these sorts of things:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

But in short, automation, better design, voluntary social networks, the centralization of wealth, and the accumulation of infrastructure is a bigger factor than China in the US worker's economic problems. And to deal with a fundamental structural change that is only going to get worse for workers, we need to soften the exchange economy with a basic income, we need to increase our gift economy (like Wikipedia and Freecycle), we need to improve local subsistence (like with 3D printers, cheap solar panels, and gardening robots) and/or we need to improve our democratic participatory resource-based planning.

The only place word "sells" is mentioned in that article is that sensationalist headline. It speaks about law enforcement related requests - surely only Google complies to those. Please do try harder next time.

Google Patents says "No results found for "method for conveying textual information using electromagnetic radiation"." How about some real evidence rather than what you've made up?

You just missed that *whoosh* when packets of electromagnetic radiation emitted/reflected by your display device went over your head.

Translation: "Oh, shiat, I didn't think you'd actually check on what I pulled from my ass."

Case in point, with sufficient obfuscation and sufficiently dumb patent examiners you can patent something like this (spoiler: it's just electronic sales catalog). Best part is that to make such patent void you need to have a lot of money and free time for courts.

Not really. It already expired. And it's also not "just an electronic sales catalog", since it can do part association, which a regular sales catalog can't.

The fact that a patent owned by a company stops an infringer doesn't mean that the patented techology doesn't exist in the world. In fact, it's highly likely that the patent owner or a licensee makes it.

Err, no, you still fail basic logic. a) Producing already patented technology != advancement, b) When (claimed to be) patented technology is a part of new device, _whole_ new device gets locked away, if start-up doesn't have money and will to defend it in court, c) You might want to read on concept of patent troll.

You haven't yet even begun to support your point, and yet you're claiming I fail basic logic? You started by claiming that because a mythical patent existed (one which has been shown to not actually exist), a technology is denied to the world. Now, you acknowledge that that technology isn't actually denied to the world, because the patent owner may manufacture it. Sounds like you refuted your own point.

And if the patent owner is producing the product, they're not a patent troll, by definition. You might want to read up on the concept of patent troll.

Google Patents says "No results found for "method for conveying textual information using electromagnetic radiation"." How about some real evidence rather than what you've made up?

You just missed that *whoosh* when packets of electromagnetic radiation emitted/reflected by your display device went over your head. Case in point, with sufficient obfuscation and sufficiently dumb patent examiners you can patent something like this (spoiler: it's just electronic sales catalog). Best part is that to make such patent void you need to have a lot of money and free time for courts.

The fact that a patent owned by a company stops an infringer doesn't mean that the patented techology doesn't exist in the world. In fact, it's highly likely that the patent owner or a licensee makes it.

Err, no, you still fail basic logic. a) Producing already patented technology != advancement, b) When (claimed to be) patented technology is a part of new device, _whole_ new device gets locked away, if start-up doesn't have money and will to defend it in court, c) You might want to read on concept of patent troll.

(Now if you want companies that totally destroyed shareholder value over time, though, you should look at Proxim Wireless.)

swalve's new 7 digit registered luser account does all these posts in 2011 alone from his new account for trolling off topic here on slashdot, and yet he hypocritcally says others have too much time on their hands? http://www.google.com/search?q=swalve+site:slashdot.org&hl=en&gbv=1&prmd=imvns&ei=dgzWTqS0K6bt0gHMi6yTAg&start=470&sa=N

http://www.blueseed.co/faq.html#seasickness - our barge will be 500ft or longer, hence quite stable. We've looked at several accommodation barges that have performed very well in worse conditions.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.no%2Ftrygd_i_norge%2Farticle1837921.ece FACTS: A sick country: Unemployed: 77,100 On rehabilitation or rehabilitation: 105,000 AFP: 48,500 Disability: 341,400 Total labor force in Norway: 2.62 million Percentage of Norwegians working-age benefits: 22% (not including cash benefits, child support, etc.) Percentage of Norwegians who are disabled: 13% Percentage of Norwegians who are unemployed: 3% Total payments to disability in 2008: 56.53 billion

If that were true, then someone else's implementation of a patented device wouldn't infringe.

Bingo, it isn't meant to. As an example the wright brothers patented "A flying machine"

No, they didn't. They patented a very specific embodiment of a flying machine, specifically a biplane with wings that could be torqued to change angle of attack.

do you honestly think the idea of a flying machine was held up for 15 years to them alone? no, only the specific implementation of a flying machine they made was.

That's because they were not the first "flying machine" inventors, nor did they claim anything quite so broad as you stated.

Build a plane in the same manner as them and you got sued, whereas say a helicopter wouldn't exactly infringe on said patent if it were still valid, or any other sort of airplane that did not specifically use the same kind of design.

That's probably because I've never seen a helicopter with two parallel wings.

Use of the term "boxen" is a flag for a complete and utter tool.

Or a sign that someone is not necessarily a native English speaker.. perhaps they normally speak German?

https://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hot+printer+sale

Also, against some infectious diseases a strong immune system leads to a quicker death.

That was the case against the 2009 swine flu. The few people who died were healthy adults. The virus provoked such a strong immune reaction -- a cytokine storm -- that they drowned with fluid in their lungs. The stronger the immune system the more overreaction to this particular strain, and the higher risk of fatal pneumonia.

The immune system needs to be not too strong but not too weak to defeat a virus like this. That's why it has such a high fatality rate.

Really? 9 months after it was announced it shows up in Slashdot? http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/02/10/economia/1297339319.html

The Pu-238 in the atmosphere from weapons tests (about 3.3 x 10^14 Bq [9,000 Ci]) was increased by the 1964 reentry and burnup of a Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP)-9A RTG, which released 6.3 x 10^14 Bq (17,000 Ci)

Your claim made it seem that the RTG burnup doubled the curies of radioactive material in the atmosphere vis-a-vis atmospheric weapons testing. Rather, this doubled the amount of Pu-238 — an isotope which is considered a contaminant/impurity in a nuclear weapon and therefore be expected to be released in very small amounts via atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.

Ah, here we go:

Figures from the United Nations put the total bomb radiation from decades of atmospheric testing at almost 70 billion curies.

Yeah, this and other sources just go to show that this event was quite minor compared to all the other stuff going on at the time. About 6 orders of magnitude smaller, that is.

So, if you claim that this 17,000 Ci release might have had severe effects (per you):

At the top end we are talking 200 million human deaths from cancer due to that accident.

...then I suppose that all that atmospheric testing might therefore cause, "at the top end", 824 trillion human deaths from cancer!

Oh no! I just looked inside Schrodinger's box and found out that the entire human race has all been killed 120,000 times over by the scary atmospheric weapons testing fallout back in the 1960's! The quantum wave function just hadn't collapsed until I ran the calculations that determined we're all supposed to be dead!

...or maybe the SNAP-9a release really was a minor incident after all. You might want to consider that. Occam's Razor and all.

You think that's bad? You haven't clicked on the thetechnologyreview.net link yet, have you?

This bold Earth scraper idea as of BNKR Aquitectura seek to deal with many issues face via Mexico town a rising populace the shortage of latest plot for building the requirement to preserve momentous buildings and tallness limitations at latest structure.

The momentous center of Mexico town is into anxious would like for a practical create more say BNKR.

As they say on the internets, "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"

Only because I've driven over it about 50 times:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=chicago&hl=en&ll=41.578422,-87.616525&spn=0.014366,0.033023&hnear=Chicago,+Cook,+Illinois&gl=us&sqi=2&t=h&z=16&vpsrc=6

Here, now STFU please.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.misc/msg/171a245c20a0d658

One of the neater things I've read about is how Lockheed Martin went back to Tesla's technology to make a communication system for miners:

A magnetic-wave generator developed by Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago as a wireless communication device has been updated by engineers at Lockheed Martin to save lives after mining disasters.

Magnetic waves -- unlike radio waves -- can penetrate hundreds of metres of solid rock. MagneLink, the fridge-sized device developed by Lockheed Martin, allows for phone calls and text messaging. It was tested this year at a mine in Virginia, and production is expected before 2011.

-Nikola Tesla’s patent redux (very short)

Heres another link: Tapping Tesla to Save Trapped Miners

If Tesla was 100 years ahead of everyone else, that means we should be plugging our devices into the Aether ("The wheelwork of nature") soon.

look under shopping

https://www.google.com/search?q=cd+jukebox#q=cd+rom+jukebox&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=2MLSTsW1Lc24twey3emuDQ&ved=0CI8BEK0E&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=eebd006aafa6d1c&biw=1280&bih=830

Seriously...I sometimes think the average IQ is dropping on a daily basis (and, yes, I get the irony)...Both with what I read, and my own experiences working in IT, I become more and more convinced that society will eventually collapse under the weight of bad advice from consultants (and, no, I don't own a fallout shelter)...and I spend more and more time thinking about ways that I can profit off of the stupidity of leadership.

Read it and grab your tin foil and duct tape. You're gonna need lots.

Entrapment in the US law sense happens when someone persuades you to commit a crime that otherwise you wouldn't have committed. US authorities are not allowed to do that...

Wait, what?

https://encrypted.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=fbi+entrapment+cases

If you're wondering how many different images exist for all the seizures, the answer is 9. You can see them all here. In my gathering, I found 338 seized domains pointing to 74.208.15.160 and 74.81.170.110

Fourth would perhaps be cutting funding for, as the op mentions, 'unproductive majors'.

Back in the 80s when I went to college, we were all gung ho about careers - everyone wanted to go to medical school, engineering school*, law school and B-school - in that order. Science degrees were just a stepping stone to med school - except for math. You see back then, Math degrees were pretty much for teaching or if you were really sharp - actuarial. And when folks asked about one's major and they said "Math" the very next question was "Actuarial" while wrinkling their nose.

Flash forward 20 years later with Google and what not and having a Math degree (other than actuarial) is actually worth something. My have times changed. Just imagine what would have happened if all those kids didn't get that worthless degree.

Russian Lit? Pictures of a Russian Literature major who did alright.

Then there are folks who actually study something to get a job - like nursing - only to graduate and find that there still aren't any jobs (According to the American Journal of Nursing, this is the worst job market for newly graduated nurses ever.). You never know what is going to happen or how things will change.

And then again, There are folks doing quite well with Philosophy degrees and Art History Many get into big company training programs (they still exist), fast track management programs or in marketing and sales - places where creative flexible thinking is involved. Thinking that the Humanities and Arts are only capable in teaching. St. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that Engineers are too linear in their thinking.

*The exception is aerospace engineering. For the exception of the exceptionally bright guys with contacts, job prospects have always sucked. I think AE was the second most popular degree that programmers and admins I worked with had after CS.

What clearly designed graphical interface is TFA talking about in Mission Impossible? Shouldn't the reference be to Minority Report instead? :S

Even Gary Johnson?

https://www.google.com/search?q=tar+and+feathering+American+revolution&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=seamonkey-a

Close.. You're only off by 10%...1 USD in CAD. But the US dollar ahead of the Canadian dollar at the moment.

Oh, sure, because Mercola is such a reliable source. Oh wait ...

4.5tn barrels of oil at a 1.8% growth rate works out to 73 years of oil left. If we harvest every last drop.

Polar bears normally range far out onto the pack ice. Sightings are up because there's less pack ice. This is alluded to in your linked article, which falls far short of being evidence for anything.

Glacial retreat is anything but anecdotal. It is an easily verified fact. You can argue the reasons for the retreat. You'd be an idiot, but you could argue that greenhouse gases don't have certain physical properties, or that human emissions get cleaned up by a magic sky dragon. When you're willing to disregard the factual, anything is possible!

While that might be relevant when comparing hybrids to EVs to assess the current state of battery technology, it is not relevent to the point at hand.

Oh, and since the above link only addresses that silly hummer FUD, while it is not by an independent research firm, what Toyota has to say on the matter is still interesting (PDF),

Yeah, but Iceland is smaller than a medium size city and pretty much irrelevant to anything.

Oh, not really

FAIL.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is NOT a nuclear power advocacy group. It was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists as an anti-nuclear weapon advocacy group in 1945 in order to bring public attention to the dangers of nuclear arms.

They are probably most famous for the Doomsday Clock.

More recently the BAS has increasingly focused on explaining the dangers associated with nuclear power.

Here is a link to one of their publications:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ngYAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true

Don't forget Meteor Crater in AZ! For an added bonus, the Petrified Forest National Park is roughly 80 miles by road to the east.

Don't forget Meteor Crater in AZ! For an added bonus, the Petrified Forest National Park is roughly 80 miles by road to the east.

Now, without getting into how much i dislike Pulseaudio (maybe because i'm an old UNIX fart, thank you very much), I think there are really serious issues with "The Journal", which I can summarize as such:

1. the problem it's trying to fix is already fixed 2. the problem isn't fixed by the solution 2. it makes everything more opaque 3. it makes the problem worse

The first issue is that it is trying to fix a problem that is already easily solved with existing tools: just send your darn logs to an external machine already. Syslog has supported networked logging forever.

Second, if you log on a machine and that machine gets compromised, I don't see how having checksums and a chained log will keep anyone from just running trashing the whole 'journal'. rm -rf /var/log What am i missing here?

Third, this implements yet another obscure and opaque system that keeps the users away from how their system works, making everything available only through a special tool (the journal), which depends on another special tool (systemd), both of which are already controversial. I like grepping my logs. I understand http://logcheck.org and similar tools are not working very well, but that's because there isn't a common format for logging, which makes parsing hard and application dependent. From what I understand, this is not something The Journal is trying to address either. To take an example from their document: MESSAGE=User harald logged in MESSAGE_ID=422bc3d271414bc8bc9570f222f24a9 _EXE=/lib/systemd/systemd-logind [... 14 lines of more stuff snipped] (Nevermind for a second the fact that to carry the same amount of information, syslog only needs one line (not 14), which makes things actually readable by humans.)

The actual important bit here is "User harald logged in". But the thing we want to know is: is that a good thing or a bad thing? If it was "User harald login failed", would it be flagged as such? It's not in the current objectives, it seems, to improve the system in that direction. I would rather see a common agreement on syntax and keywords to use, and respect for the syslog levels (e.g. EMERG, ALERT, ..., INFO, DEBUG), than reinventing the wheel like this.

Fourth, what happens when our happy cracker destroys those tools? This is a big problem for what they are actually trying to solve, especially since they do not intend to make the format standard, according to the design document (published on you-know-who, unfortunately). So you could end up in a situation where you can't parse those logs because the machine that generated them is gone, and you would need to track down exactly which version of the software generated it. Good luck with that.

I'll pass. Again.

Hear, hear. The biggest problem anyway is that people don't read their log-files. This Journal thing just seems to make them harder to parse.

The code has a default Lat/Lon. I wonder if it's the guys house?

// default location, for testing.
  curLat = 42.46;
  curLon = -71.25;

Google Map of Location

1. Download a VM like Virtalbox.
2. Download Puppy Linux .iso
3. Install Puppy Linux in Virtalbox. 4 gig dynamic drive with 128 megs of RAM will suffice.
4. Inside puppy download and install the pet package Hiawatha
5. Setup FTP inside your home directory (I think it's called setup file sharing)
6. Set your network in Puppy to a static IP and set Virtualbox to use a bridged adapter for the puppy install.
7. Use Notepad++, Filezilla in windows to FTP into your virtual box to update files.

That's close to a LAMP server. I don't think technically using Puppy/Hiawatha would be LAMP. But I believe Hiawatha serves the same function as Apache and I think would suit your purpose. if you're just interested in the PHP part you can also just install XAMPP.

The thing I like about the Virtualbox (or any VM) is you can wipe it out easily. You can move it to different computers. It's easy to play around with FTP and SSH settings.
There are tons of ways to do this without getting a host if you're just looking to learn. If you really want a host most have LAMP options. For many it is even the default. For tutorials I think W3 Schools is good starting point and has examples.

*All suggestions are debatable. When making these suggestions I considered using low resources and ease of use. Given more resources to give to the Virtual box you have tons and tons of choices.

Now, without getting into how much i dislike Pulseaudio (maybe because i'm an old UNIX fart, thank you very much), I think there are really serious issues with "The Journal", which I can summarize as such:

1. the problem it's trying to fix is already fixed
2. the problem isn't fixed by the solution
2. it makes everything more opaque
3. it makes the problem worse

The first issue is that it is trying to fix a problem that is already easily solved with existing tools: just send your darn logs to an external machine already. Syslog has supported networked logging forever.

Second, if you log on a machine and that machine gets compromised, I don't see how having checksums and a chained log will keep anyone from just running trashing the whole 'journal'.

rm -rf /var/log

What am i missing here?

Third, this implements yet another obscure and opaque system that keeps the users away from how their system works, making everything available only through a special tool (the journal), which depends on another special tool (systemd), both of which are already controversial. I like grepping my logs. I understand http://logcheck.org and similar tools are not working very well, but that's because there isn't a common format for logging, which makes parsing hard and application dependent. From what I understand, this is not something The Journal is trying to address either. To take an example from their document:

MESSAGE=User harald logged in
MESSAGE_ID=422bc3d271414bc8bc9570f222f24a9
_EXE=/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
[... 14 lines of more stuff snipped]

(Nevermind for a second the fact that to carry the same amount of information, syslog only needs one line (not 14), which makes things actually readable by humans.)

The actual important bit here is "User harald logged in". But the thing we want to know is: is that a good thing or a bad thing? If it was "User harald login failed", would it be flagged as such? It's not in the current objectives, it seems, to improve the system in that direction. I would rather see a common agreement on syntax and keywords to use, and respect for the syslog levels (e.g. EMERG, ALERT, ..., INFO, DEBUG), than reinventing the wheel like this.

Fourth, what happens when our happy cracker destroys those tools? This is a big problem for what they are actually trying to solve, especially since they do not intend to make the format standard, according to the design document (published on you-know-who, unfortunately). So you could end up in a situation where you can't parse those logs because the machine that generated them is gone, and you would need to track down exactly which version of the software generated it. Good luck with that.

I'll pass. Again.

I don't necessarily know that there isn't basis. Certainly, a basic search turns up plenty of video.

Whenever the police are trying to hide information from the public, the first question you should ask is what they're likely to hide, not what they SAY they are wanting to prevent from being released. Pretexting is very common among governmental agencies trying to grab more power.