Slashdot Mirror

The UK and US may just like to watch any forming "dissent" and hope online communities will show trends before they shape into visable anti war/human rights/environmental/finance reform protests.
Web 2.0 and online gaming communities seem to offer what "peace groups", 'bars', 'clubs', "unions' and 'universities" did in the past to the intelligence services.
Then certain well funded NSA/CIA/GCHQ "front" groups can be pushed as been wonderful and protesters will be attracted to 'their' unique community forming.
Expect to see a lot of traction surround big 'name' brand protest groups and charming individuals ready to guide people into fake or totally infiltrated movements.
http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_02/FBI-was-interested-in-selling-the-material-to-WikiLeaks-in-order-for-them-to-be-charged-with-espionage-Crabtree-3397/
What did the past look like?
"'Undercover police cleared 'to have sex with activists'"
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/22/undercover-police-cleared-sex-activists
Another aspect is just for slang and keeping up with the ability to 'blend' in.

Now contrast this statement from the recent "STFU" response to AT&T's shareholders. And the complete silence from Verizon, whose name was on the first round of the salvo.

At least these eight are making noise, rather than just hoping the issue fades from the public's consciousness. Here's wishing there was a telecom provider that wasn't so obviously in bed with the spooks...

Just a few stores below in my feed, I see this

Physicist Peter Higgs: "I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system"

I'm not against screwing around with the lab computer on off hours and make it model "Middle Earth"...that's a fun idea...no, I'm mortified that this became an official research project and was published.

It proves what Peter Higgs was saying in the most weirdly fun yet depressing way....

"Peter Higgs, the physicist who laid the groundwork for the discovery of the Higgs boson and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics"

Actually he shared the price with François Englert who (at least) equally worked on the boson.

Because the rebels themselves are saying so, FSA included?

A recent example. An earlier one.

Or are you saying that al-Nusra is not radical Islamist?

Mandela paved the way for future greats like Julius Malema (may Allah exalt him beyond the status of a syphilitic camel someday) and the advancement of SA into the paradise it was always meant to be. Modern tribalism brings the community of South Africa together - in celebration of casting off the shadow of apartheid, and in non-consensual sexual activity all across the nation.
 
  Proof is abundant that black leaders can turn a formerly thriving but unfair country into a far more equitable ghetto.

Thatcher never called Mandela a terrorist, you'll comb records in vain for any first-hand report of that remark because it never happened.

Mandela himself stated that he considered Thatcher to be a strong enemy of apartheid, and it's even been argued that she played a pivotal role in ending it.

so they encrypt it, giving people a false sense of security, while they have already given the decryption key to the NSA...

Fixed. It's a pretty meaningless promise considering what they already do.

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

Bow to Israel, or we will know that you did not. Our eyes see everywhere.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

You could infer

11 - The NSA didn't have to collect the data at all because Telecom companies gave them the data "freely".

the musician presented real world figures over the pitiful amounts of money he made off of his more popular songs on Spotify as opposed to CD

Would you pay $20,000 to rent a car for one trip to the store?

No? Then why would you think that people should pay as much to listen to a song one time as they would to buy it on CD? Yet that seems to be the argument the musician was making.

Living up to our /. handle this morning are we? Nobody is saying that people should pay $0.99 or whatever the going rate is for a music track on iTunes these days for a single streaming, that is a pretty ridiculous interpretation of what this poster was saying. However, it is reasonable to expect that over a given amount of time, say a year, the revenues a musician makes from a single song available on various streaming services would at least be able to hold a candle to the revenue you get from selling it outright on CD or on iTunes even though the charge per streaming of that song would __obviously__ be a fraction of what you would pay-to-own for that track on iTunes or from a CD store. One example of why __some__ musicians think Spotify sucks ass is a band called Daft Punk who had a hit song called Get Lucky which became quite popular. It was streamed over 100 million times on Spotify (WOW!) and yet the band members netted $13.000 each (LESS WOW!). On iTunes and on CD that song would have netted the band a whole lot more money. That being said Spotify is actually pretty generous, iTunes Match apparently pays even less per stream. Every single person that I have seen talking about this issue seems to end up telling you how Spotify and other streaming services suck at making you money all by themselves but they do help you make money by selling albums which I find to be pretty ironic since many pirates I have met have tend to love streaming services and hate CD/Download sales that make the 'Big Labels' richer (which ignores the fact that Spotify is part owned by the evil 'Big Labels'). If you see things that way (and some musicians do) Spotify and other streaming services make sense. If, however, streaming services eventually succeed in killing off direct music sales as some people are predicting then musicians really would be up shit creek without a paddle.

Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".

I looked at the first question there:

Question 1. Mount Fuji is only open to the public for climbing from 1 July to 27 August each year. About 200,000 people climb Mount Fuji during this time. On average, about how many people climb Mount Fuji each day?"

On most days, its not open for public climbing. Assuming no one climbs when its closed (bad assumption, but not enough data), the median and mode are both 0 climbers per day (its open less than half the year). Thats not a choice!

Lets try the mean: 200000/365.25 = 547.57. Thats not a choice either!

Perhaps they want the mean number of people who climb on a day that its open, assuming all the climbers climb when its open? Well, that involves subtracting dates, which is stupid, and I'm not going to bother computing that.

For a question that says "about" and offers a number with 1 significant figure, having all the answers have 2 significant figures is kinda odd too.

Most test questions are pretty flawed. The challenge for me is often figuring out which interpretation of the question is desired, which is usally harder than solving the question.

I'm going to quote the reply from ShanghaiBill to a similar comment in the thread above this one:

Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/03/are-you-smarter-than-a-15-year-old-oecd-pisa-questions [the guardian]. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".

Unless you think solving logical puzzles and doing calculations is just "rote memorization". Because that would mean that all of science is based on that, which would also indicate that they're on to something there if they go for that as well.

As an aside: rote memorization is an important part of learning anyway, since if you don't *know* when stuff happened, or what the base formulas are for something that took us 2000 years to develop, you're not going to just deduce them from the basics when you need them. You're not even going to know what you don't know. So the basis of learning is knowing what there is - then applying that with skill, intelligence and creativity.

My in-laws are Chinese. And while their educational system is still geared towards suppressing deviating opinions, right up into university, their students are quite able to keep up with Western students when they come over here to study (we met quite a few over the last years). Here, they find the hard part is not the knowledge - they can learn - but the "intelligent application of learned skills". Once they learn that as well (it's a thing you can learn), they still have the advantage of a huge pool of knowledge they can draw from, as well as the creative bits. And since these students are slowly replacing the teachers in China as well, you can bet the Chinese system will change as well. The Dragon is still just gearing up...

The study is flawed because it takes into account the same crappy tests that utterly fail to test for any sort of understanding of the material. This is not "education," unless you consider pure rote memorization to be education.

Baloney. Have you even looked at the test? Here are some example questions. The questions involve a lot more than "rote memorization".

Watch out. The US is losing ground in areas like scientific papers.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/28/china-us-publisher-scientific-papers

In fact China may surpass the US this year.

You can find articles going back to 2004 with a similer idea. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/jul/12/sciencenews.crime

Here's a quick start.

Amazon is a terrible place to work, at least in the UK. They treat their staff appallingly. The BBC did a report as well.

Victorian working conditions are returning.

Must be slow time for 'news'

2004 Reference: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/17/usa.oliverburkeman1

And for those interested in the general subject of PALS two blog posts

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3066/biscuits-cookies-and-nuclear-bombs
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2088/blair-on-the-ever-ready-misileer

AdBlock didn't catch anything

No ads are being loaded, just trackers. Abine's DoNotTrackPlus caught CrazyEgg, Google Analytics, Doubleclick, and ChartBeat, but not Google Tag Manager itself.

If a site signs up for Google Tag Manager, it gets DoubleClick tracking whether the site owner wants it or not. Here's what DoubleClick knows about you.

The Tag Manager system has a whole API for snooping on what the user is doing and sending the data back to Google or another server. "For example, you may want to fire a conversion tracking tag when a user clicks the Submit button". The tracker can also grab information from a form being submitted and send it to Google's tag manager server.

Pay less? I doubt it, especially over the long term. It doesn't matter if we overpay the insurance companies or the state..both are experts at wasting other people's money.

The USA Spends more per capita (by far) than any other nation on earth. Yet our actual life expectancy is just 33rd.

Doubt all you want. I prefer to get some facts and base my opinions on them rather than "gut feelings".

Most countries are very homogeneous in their populations, which greatly eases the whole situation on the life expectancy thing. It does not help that some countries will...adjust how they do their demographics in order to make themselves look good on things like life expectancy. I prefer to know what my statistics actually are measuring and if they are actually comparable.

In fact, it's Britney Spears who is used in this capacity: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/29/britney-spears-navy-scare-somali-pirates

Pay less? I doubt it, especially over the long term. It doesn't matter if we overpay the insurance companies or the state..both are experts at wasting other people's money.

The USA Spends more per capita (by far) than any other nation on earth. Yet our actual life expectancy is just 33rd.

Doubt all you want. I prefer to get some facts and base my opinions on them rather than "gut feelings".

Snowden leaked NSA opinion on TOR here:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document

Slashdot reporting here:
http://slashdot.org/story/13/10/04/162254/how-the-nsa-targets-tor

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/26/microsoft-kill-windows-rt-larson-green

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/10477811/Microsoft-appears-set-to-abandon-Windows-RT.html

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-is-hammering-the-final-nails-into-windows-rts-coffin-7000023641/

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2013/11/28/microsoft-windows-rt-faces-the-chop

http://blogs.computerworld.com/windows/23194/microsoft-confirms-windows-rt-will-die

Of course there are surveillance plans running in EU also, but not necessarily anything as massive and intrusive that NSA is conducting.

Who knows? At least CGHQ has been doing some pretty heavy surveillance and spying on an international level too in recent years. Never underestimate the capacity of a government hellbent on eavesdropping everything that is being sent down the wire.

Some do, mostly "low cost" stores

And if you look at the places that have introduced the charge, such as M&S, many have adopted a "small bag is free, full size bags are charged" policy as well, presumably in response to negative feedback from customers.

Some other curious data points on this issue, which isn't nearly as black-and-white as it might seem:

For one thing, it turns out that lots of people do "recycle" those "disposable" plastic bags. When Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags, bin liner purchases increased by 400%.

For another thing, while plastic bags are more environmentally unfriendly than paper bags when discarded, they are more efficient to transport in large numbers, and in practice that inefficiency translates rather directly into increased pollution, greater consumption of non-renewable fuel types for vehicles, and so on. The facts about resources used and pollution generated in manufacture aren't entirely one-sided either.

If the government really wanted to help the environment, they could politely encourage supermarkets to start selling the actually good reusable plastic bags that at least Sainsbury's and Tesco had a few years ago, which were much larger and tougher than the jokes they sell as reusable today (OK, you can reuse them, maybe two or three times before they fall apart). These actually seemed to be quite popular at the time, and we still use some of ours many years later, but the supermarkets that had them all switched to a different and much inferior type after a relatively short time; I don't know why.

In addition, far more environmental good would be done if the government slapped a significant tax on all packaging materials at the source, so that using excessive or unnecessary packaging carried a direct financial penalty. This step alone would almost certainly cut the volume of environmentally unfriendly waste -- meaning waste that can't be recycled or otherwise dealt with other than sending it to landfill -- more than even making all single-use bags of any type completely illegal.

So whenever you see a government official of whatever political affiliation making some claim about helping the environmental by taxing the supply of plastic bags, you should immediately ask what their real agenda is. If they're not also advocating more general restrictions on packaging, and they're not also advocating restricting other environmentally unfriendly practices such as supplying one-time paper bags when reusable bags could be used, then they're probably hiding some ulterior motive and/or capitalizing on some political talking point of the day.

At least the chinese, in a token attempt to appease the populace, recently started to pluck their human sacrifices from the top of the pile instead of the bottom of the pile.

http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2012/06/08/chinese-official-sentenced-to-death-taking-bribes-from-cjia-contractor/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/08/liu-zhijun-sentenced-death-corruption

Of course the death sentence is ususally commuted to life in prison for the a-listers. But it is at least a start. In the US you never see that happen.

The Arctic (and icebergs) are melting

Yeah, if you believe United Nations' reports on the matter. I don't — because United Nations has a conflict of interest — as do many of the politicians and the scientists funded by them. Sure, if you try hard enough — measuring what supports your agenda, while ignoring, what does not, you can "prove" a lot of things. Heck, those very icebergs were reportedly melting dangerously in 1922!

sea levels rise

Yeah, right. Wake me up, when Al Gore sells his — recently purchased — ocean front villa and moves to the hills.

Truth is, even where predictions are, sort of, materializing, it mostly happens at drastically lower rates than predicted.

Things like corn ethanol aren't about helping global warming

Bzzz! Wrong... Revising history again.

When members of our society think that their savings on lightbulbs are worth destroying the world over

Oh, another wonderful quote... The world-destroying lightbulbs — Edison (and Tesla) laughing sadly.

sometimes we have to coerce them to do the right thing.

Thanks for confirming the maxim: "Scratch a Global Warming alarmist, and you'll find a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath."

It's obvious you would never do anything to prevent global warming.

This is not about me — you'd do better next time, if you refrain from outright ad-hominems...

Yet Another Information Security Professional, working in a sensitive information startup.

Of course, a lot of these have been in use long before the NSA revelations...

A few of my personal tools and our corporate-used tools:

All OSX shop configured with strict firewall, fileVault, and openVPN,

Browser plugins to block ads (adBlock Plus), scripts/flash (NoScript), popups (Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon), trackers (Ghostery), and enforce HTTPS (HTTPS-Everywhere).

GPG Tools for encrypting individual files / emails - https://gpgtools.org/

OTR for secure messaging (use Adium which has OTR support off the shelf) https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/

Silent Circle for encrypted voice and text - https://silentcircle.com/

Personal VPN for traffic encryption for browsing outside of corporate purposes, e.g. one of these:
https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/4809/best-vpn-service-top-10/
note that several offer payment methods that are anonymous, e.g. gift cards purchased with cash, i.e. http://www.paygarden.com/

Obligitory Schneier:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

that makes me ponder, were these cuts accidental or red herrings?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4267160
http://tribune.com.pk/story/527148/undersea-internet-cable-cut-effects-50-of-pakistans-traffic/
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/28/damaged-undersea-cable-internet-disruption

i'm aware you can tap fiber without disrupting it but it's underwater which seems difficult to start with and it doesn't mean all the cuts were by the NSA. (since apparently everyone is spy happy)

everything is suspicious now :((((

that makes me ponder, were these cuts accidental or red herrings?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4267160
http://tribune.com.pk/story/527148/undersea-internet-cable-cut-effects-50-of-pakistans-traffic/
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/28/damaged-undersea-cable-internet-disruption

i'm aware you can tap fiber without disrupting it but it's underwater which seems difficult to start with and it doesn't mean all the cuts were by the NSA. (since apparently everyone is spy happy)

everything is suspicious now :((((

To help clear up your ignorance, BitZtream (this just came through today, so I thought you might like to catch up):
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/mega-kim-dotcom-copyright-baboom?CMP=twt_gu

Read some of the related articles to clear up your ignorance 'about how police operate'

And yeah, no, you clearly don't know what the NSA's job is. Yes, it has 'gone that far' and it's not 'ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.'

Your comment here is so many levels of wrong (FBI prosecuting Dotcom, the NSA only tangentially involved - and completely beyond their scope, etc, etc) I don't know why I'm bothering. Perhaps I just want some more of your comedy gold, you're pretty amusing. Sad, pathetic even, but amusing.

The web is broken anyway. CAs can't be trusted. Client-Server architecture funnels all data into what amounts to massive NSA honeypots. And look, we're right back to where we were with Windows/IE, except now it's Android/Blink with Google propping up Mozilla to pretend they are competitors.

On the developer end of things, HTML5 sucks. We still can't even rename buttons on a javascript confirm dialog. You need something like SASS just to make CSS usable, and God help you if you have a client that wants tables that work like native ones in OS X.

Oh, and the shepherd of this monstrosity? The guy who preached openness and collaboration? Hollywood asked him for DRM and he's all like, "Sound legit."

The web is doomed. Not because native apps are going to take it out. It's because it is broken and the leadership has all wandered off in their own self interested directions. Something better is going to come along and the web will be remembered fondly, just like newsgroups.

I would suggest that such aliens have something better than radio to use.

Like the Internet. Or call centers. Possibly call centers which are connected to the Internet for cost-efficiency. Next time you're talking to "Bob" while trying to troubleshoot your cable modem, ask him if he's an alien, and tell him you'll keep his secret in exchange for some small compensation, such as a couple of Higgs bosons (one to lose and the other to not show to Stephen Hawking)... or the secret to consistent and reliable cold fusion.

Indonesian hackers deface Australian websites over spying
Hacking group claims to have infiltrated Australian websites

SHOW ME THE PROOF

Ok...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-gilmore-how-nsa-sabotaged-key-security-standard.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?hp&_r=0

I think you're just failing to understand the scope of what they've done. The NSA planted people in standards bodies to deliberately weaken those standards. Not only do we have eye whiteness's from those standards committees that have complained about this for years, but we've got leaked documents from the NSA bragging about doing it. One of their primary goals seems to have been to dissuade broadening the use of encryption in general. By making the standards complicated, hard to understand, a lot of people just gave up and didn't implement them. In other cases they tried to block standards from using encryption by default. All of this leads to a less secure network. Without a doubt those actions of made crime and identity theft much easier. Can we find some guy and say that his identity was stolen because of the NSA? No... but what we can say is that without the NSA's interference, there would be more, and better encryption... and more and better encryption would have definitely reduced the numbers of identity thefts in the world.

And, you know, preventing financial support for organized crime.

Unless you're a large bank, then they just want their cut, which you then just take back from your customers in "service fees."

Thank you. I was hoping to be as obvious as possible without actually stating it, leaving the kids to fling shit until they worked out their mistake, but you said what needed to be said.

Google has already been the subject of investigations and multiple accusations in Italy, and even TFA points out that new legislation to counteract fiscal dumping has been dubbed "the Google tax".

So, to reiterate: they're all the same.

As go the teenagers, so goes the industry.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

With all this social networking shit, perception is key: once FB is no longer consider cool or the "in-thing", it's fucked. Like Myspace fucked.

Teenagers don't matter, since they don't have money to spend on ads. There are tons of non-teenagers on the site who are locked in now.

You get back to me if FB stock ever makes a new 52 week low. Probably be waiting a long time for that.

I considered that, good observation.

But, we can guess many data points (which could be manipulated, but I'm not sure for what purpose - I believe the research is a 6 Degrees From Bacon exercise, and not a bad thing to pursue).

For cell phones: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/interactive/2013/jun/12/what-is-metadata-nsa-surveillance#meta=0100000 (requires JS)
* phone number of every caller
* unique serial numbers of phones involved
* time of call
* duration of call
* location of each participant (maybe, my comment)
* telephone calling card numbers

For Facebook or other social media, I'm assuming the extent of data access is deep. Find related Facebook/cell phone numbers (which may be able to be linked through social sites) and deep information is easy.

But I question why one would want to influence most of these to try and skew things. I could contact, while being monitored, Person-X 1,000 times, but unless a bunch of other people are doing so they would probably assume I'm talking to my spouse/partner/coworker (say in a start-up).

Lately research has pretty much shot down the idea of a really significant role for cosmic rays impacting climate. This Guardian article contains links to several recent papers on the subject.

Sigh.. 'Wrong in what way?

This was the archive of speeches, not just the parliamentary ones; but all the ones at election rallies and conferences too.

For instance; ToryBoy recently sat in a big gold chair and ate a 4 course meal along with all his rich chums in the Guildhall, London. He then stood in front of an gilded podium and made a speech in which he told all the little people that they had not worked hard enough and that austerity is now here to stay.

This speech is exactly the sort of one that will never appear on Hansard, and in a few years may well be the sort of thing Tory spinsters will hope to make 'disappear'.

As go the teenagers, so goes the industry.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

With all this social networking shit, perception is key: once FB is no longer consider cool or the "in-thing", it's fucked. Like Myspace fucked.

Unless the "old" people (30-50) really don't care about what those kids do, as long as they have a means of keeping in touch with the rest of the family. And if they do, the kids will complain, but will stay as well, although not as active.

I synthesized it from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/06/prism-tempora-cabinet-surveillance-state

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/venezuela-not-greece-latin-america-oil-poverty

Interesting theory, but it looks like they have 35 Billion in the bank.

As go the teenagers, so goes the industry.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

With all this social networking shit, perception is key: once FB is no longer consider cool or the "in-thing", it's fucked. Like Myspace fucked.

Maduro said a group of embassy officials that his government had been following for months was "dedicated to meeting with the Venezuelan extreme right, to financing it and feeding its actions to sabotage the electrical system and the Venezuela economy." ... The last time Venezuela expelled US diplomats was on 5 March, when it ejected two military attaches for allegedly trying to destabilise the nation. That move came several hours before Maduro announced that Chavez had died of cancer.

Obviously our embassy rejected the accusations as unfounded, but considering our government's long track record in the region, their word isn't exactly worth much.

Yessir it is:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/venezuela-troops-patrol-stores-control-inflation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ALD4stv2eA

And by that I mean non-SF fiction (what's called in the article I'll link to "literary fiction"). Research has suggested that reading this sort of thing, as opposed to man pages, SF, or journals, improves empathy and communication skills: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/08/literary-fiction-improves-empathy-study

Also, learn about different types of intelligence. Daniel Goleman's books are a good place to start.

Basically, don't neglect non-STEM topics in your, your friends', or your children's education. You may think that you'll never need to learn how to diagram a sentence, or the history of philosophy, or art theory, for work, and so you ignore them because programming shows your big brain to its advantage, but: you have to work with people, share ideas, listen to other ideas, if you really want to do something great. Or, you know, be a human.