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Re "So stop being paranoid. The FBI isn't going to after every donor to a project like this."
Recall "The NSA Is Targeting Users of Privacy Services, Leaked Code Shows" (07.03.14)
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/n...
"The rules indicate that the NSA tracks any IP address that connects to the Tor web site or any IP address that contacts a server that is used for an anonymous email service..."
"The NSA is also tracking anyone who visits the popular online Linux publication, ....., which the NSA refers to as an “extremist forum” in the source code."

This is why there are millions of independent pizzerias, and only a small handful of cable/cell/broadband/media companies (in the US)

There are still more than one of those usually. And the reason we have so few is the earlier government regulation which established the monopoly, and the remaining local regulations, which continue to favor the incumbents even after the federal laws have been amended/abolished.

But even those sucky big-cable monsters, are still better, than what government would've provided — if USPS, Amtrak, and NYC's traffic are any indication...

Sure it's been used for stuff, but it hasn't helped us crack nuclear fusion for instance, one of its often hyped goals.

Speak for yourself, bucko. ;)

If he had claimed the training was for some other purpose and always told people to never employ these techniques during a real government polygraph and to always tell government investigators the truth he would not be in trouble.

It always amuses me how simplistic the arguments can become. If you just tell how to beat an abstract polygraph without mentioning the government you'd be fine! Nonsense. If the government doesn't like what you do, there will be a way to lock you in for a long time. Even if you do everything legal.

Here's a good example. A guy in California was installing hidden compartments in cars (traps). Those were very slick and he was careful -- it was impossible to detect that something was altered. There were no switches, opening such traps would require following some elaborate sequence, like opening specific doors, rolling down the window five times, starting the car seven times, whatever. Nothing illegal here. One may think that some uses for traps would be to store drugs but there could be many legitimate reasons (like storing cash or whatever personal items). So the installer asked if the traps are going to be used for anything illegal and refused to do the job if the answer was positive. Nothing illegal. Well, some lied and stored drugs and the DEA's job became more complicated and they staged the whole kangaroo court where the trap installer guy was convicted for 22 years! 22 years for not doing anything illegal, but the thinking was that he could have imagined that some traps could be used by drug dealers and therefore he facilitated drug dealings.

More details on the story: http://www.wired.com/2013/03/a...

I've seen studies that have shown that they interfere with learning, but none (that weren't sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff) that showed they improved learning.

I'll help you since your workplace must be blocking Google. From what I was able to briefly find, the meta-analysis of current research shows three things:

1) Blended use of technology and traditional learning probably produces the best results.
2) We are still figuring out how to best use technology in the classroom, but we are improving.
3) There has not been nearly enough large scale research to "prove" any assertions about the effectiveness of individual techniques in bringing technology to the classroom.

Does the Use of Technology Improve Learning?
The Answer Lies in Design
Effective Use of Technology as a Learning Tool
Learning with Technology. Evidence that technology can, and does, support learning.
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning. A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
Using Technology in Education: Does It Improve Anything?

And depending on your definition of "sponsored by someone trying to sell stuff", you are probably unlikely to find many studies at all like that (a fact brought up by a couple of the above studies). Since most school districts cannot afford to spend money on unproven technologies, a large percentage of these studies have their devices donated or heavily subsidized by the device manufacturer. Here are some iPad specific ones, but even though some of them may have had iPads donated they still back up their research with actual test scores.

Five Studies to Prove the iPad’s Educational Worth
iPad improves Kindergartners literacy scores
Study Finds Benefits in Use of iPad as an Educational Tool
iPads Improve Classroom Learning, Study Finds
iPad a Solid Education Tool, Study Reports

proper Stirling engines or steam turbines are not popular in space for some reason

R&D on a nuclear-powered stirling engine for space is ongoing. It's not they they aren't popular, per se, its just that they are a very difficult engineering problem. How many devices with continuously moving parts do you know that operate maintenance-free for years or decades? It's not impossible, but is really hard.

I dont think you are properly evaluating the effects of a very large asteroid.

A nuke does not burrow all the way into the upper mantle, and spew ejecta back into space on ballistic trajectories.

You know, like some of the earth crossing asteroids would cause if they actually, you know-- collided with our planet instead of just missing by skipping between the earth and the moon.

Here's something to help better educate you.
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/g...

It does not need to be the size of a planet. The 30 mile wide object referenced above would be sufficient to wipe out 90% of human populations, and seriously imperil the other 10%. Most modern humans are simply incapable of survival long-term without modern technology, and the 100ft tsunamis generated globally ALONE would have destroyed the vast majority of human life if it happened in recent times.

Comparing a large asteroid to conventional nukes is absurd. Even the crazy powerful ones made by the soviets as terror weapons pale in comparison.

Telco companies are not to blame in the current cable monopoles, local government is. Educate yourself. http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w...

I didn't see any of that in the Wired story. It essentially stated: "plug it in, it infects your PC, Antivirus software is useless, and future USB devices plugged into your system can be infected". When Bruce wrote about it along with quite a few others, the evidence seems to point to a rather bad security flaw.

Well, as USB itself does not provide DMA (again, this is requested and handled at the driver level), a USB device can do absolutely nothing until the system recognizes it and starts talking to it (e.g. via a driver). You clearly didn't follow what you've read, or you'd understand that the nature of this vulnerability is that many devices don't have firmware programming disabled and can be reprogrammed to behave as other devices (in fact, you do seem to understand this, as you said "The problem lies in that USB trusts the device to be what it says it is, even if that is more than one thing", which is correct; it's equally correct that a USB device can be more than one thing, e.g. an audio device and a video device, so that's not a flaw, the flaw is in the devices being reprogrammable in the first place). Which, of course, means the devices have to be identified by the system and a driver has to exist for whatever they identify as.

Further proof that it is a device issue here, and evidence that USB devices must be "accepted" by the host before they can to anything at all, here. Not that this should be necessary, given a basic understanding of what you're talking about and a bit of logic.

Meanwhile, devices utilizing any of the DMA-enabled buses*[1] can just power up and happily start reading and writing your RAM, with the system being unable to stop them. If a cheap Firewire device was shipped with its firmware still writable, well, just imagine the possibilities. In fact, it's been done and the sky hasn't fallen yet, so I think we're okay.

The short answer to this one is I only usually have 1 set of devices that are relatively permanent for those other buses. It's not a thumbdrive that gets passed around.

That's you; Firewire is still fairly widely used in media production, and the devices using it include cameras, control boards, and DAT decks, which do get passed around. And without USB, where do you think you'd plug that thumb drive?

Drop 2 sets of file transfers through the disks on that one hub, and see what happens.

Okay, so you're doing two copy operations and are surprised when seek times slow them by more than 50%? You don't copy files on spinning disks much, do you? I do it all the time, albeit with SSDs, and have not once seen the slowdown you are talking about, so either you're full of shit, your equipment is full of shit, or you don't really know where the slowdown is coming from, but none of that is the fault of USB.

I have about 10 disks hooked up and was copying files between 3 sets (3 full speed copy operations, including 2 SSDs) with each disk capable of +100MB/s on large file sequential read/write speeds.

Which is it, 10 or 2? One, two, or three transfers? All this goalpost moging makes me think you're just full of shit.

You state that your drives can handle 100MB/s; USB3 is 5gbps (that's 640MBps), while SATA is 1.5, 3., or 6gbps (187.5, 375, or 750MB/s) depending on whether you've got SATA I, II, or III ports. On a high-end mobo like you claim to own, it's probably SATA-III, so 6gbps. That includes a fair bit of overhead, so the best you can e

Firewire is a bigger security threat than USB in many ways, namely that it is a bus with direct memory access, meaning it can read and write anything in RAM at any time.

There is a DMA component, a quick search reveals they haven't fixed that either yet. Bah.

The USB attack vector has nothing to do with USB itself; it's a flaw in a poor quality devices that allow their firmwares to be reprogrammed, enabling them to act as a different class of device.

This is both wrong and technically right. It has everything to do with the design of USB, and nothing to do with any "flaws" in "poor quality devices". The problem lies in that USB trusts the device to be what it says it is, even if that is more than one thing.

There is no reason Firewire would not be vulnerable in the same way, were a Firewire device's firmware made writable in the same way as the vulnerable subset of USB devices; only the exposure would be worse, given Firewire's DMA. Likewise with Thunderbolt, as it also has DMA.

Might as well add expressCard, PCI, PCIExpress, and anything else with DMA capabilities.

I love the fact that you can take over a computer by plugging in a storage device

Citation? Maybe there's something I missed, but I think you're thinking of this, in which case: Nope. Well, no more than a device with direct memory access. In fact, a little less.

I was referring to WIred's story

Also, maybe try getting a USB3 hub that isn't a piece of shit. I don't have the speed problems you describe at all.

I wasn't running on a USB3 hub, but directly off the motherboard (which AFAIK share multiple ports per controller and this is a high end Gigabyte motherboard, so not a POS either). The slow down is a direct result of the design of USB serial communications. If you have multiple controllers, you can avoid this issue by running drives on 1 port per controller. I have successfully done this as well, when doing some mass backups among multiple drives. It's how I confirmed the problem in the first place. You will need drives that are capable of relatively high transfer rates to see this problem, but it is still there in USB3.

One added point, just throwing it out there: probably the most infamous troll who harassed a woman online he didn't know with threats of death and violence, and then got caught, is weev. His trolling would have started in his late teens/early twenties. So we have no reason to presume the age of those attacking Wu, Sarkeesian, and Quinn are under 20.

When renovating our rental properties, we paid for an Ethernet-jack in every room. The runs were terminating in a single closet allowing tenants to hook up to the DSL- or cable "modem" of their choice. Don't know, how much the feature helped us raise in rent, but pretty sure, it helped some.

The "coordinating with raw internet providers" part, however, is made difficult — even for buildings large enough — by the regulatory burden imposed by the local governments, who use their (unjust) power to grant permits to extort perks like free service for themselves or their pet causes.

Why, just the other day we were discussing a wonderfully feel-good plan to give residents of New York City public housing "free" broadband service. An incumbent like Comcast might be able to absorb the costs (spreading them among the rest of us, rather). But a smaller would-be competitor might not...

And NYC will not be the first to do such a thing — Los Angeles is already working on it.

The BIGGEST issue in this country with internet is, it should be regulated like phone,gas,sewer,water.

It is regulated by local governments — like those "utilities" — and that's why it sucks like them too.

It should be open to competition — along with electricity and sewers. Unfortunately, too many still believe the "natural monopoly" myth, that the governments love to perpetuate...

This seems fair to me...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/n...

what's good for the goose is good for the gander

Good story on Wired that doesn't go quite as far as I think it should, but spells out some of the more important points for ignorant folks who are trying to mod this post -1 troll because they don't know any better and get shiny eyes when they hear "commercial space exploration".

So if you feel like modding parent down, read the below story first. You just may get an understanding of the angle being pursued and change your mind.
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/v...

I'd be interested in knowing what you think about this article on pilot waves:

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/t...

Thanks!

http://www.wired.com/2010/05/l...

The theory doesn't always match the reality. Regardless of where you are.

Elon Musk called it two years ago in this interview.

Musk: The results are pretty crazy. One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.

For movies other than cult classics and children's animated movies, I imagine that most people prefer to watch a movie only once, not multiple times for the indefinite future. People don't want to buy stuff anymore. So just to make sure I don't misunderstand your post, let me restate it in my own words: In the interest of eliminating digital restrictions management, you expect people to pay full price to buy a durable copy even if they want to watch it only once. Do I understand you correctly?

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/s... But seriously, give Walmart et al direct access to my bank account using 40 year old ACH technology? And trust them to have no security holes, fraud protection that credit cards provide on individual transactions, etc. etc. etc. I think not.

In a mind boggling twist, years later we find out the Soviets did have a doomsday device, and they did keep it secret. Apparently it was created to prevent paranoid generals from launching a "preemptive retaliation" by making retaliation inevitable. But they thought the US might find a way to disable it if they knew about it, so they kept it secret, completely defeating the original purpose of a doomsday device. Supposedly, the device might even still be active.

Lest we forget: http://www.wired.com/2010/08/a...

The self-driving cars have a long way to go (no pun intended) before they should become ubiquitous.

I miss the days when Slashdot tagged microsoft stories with the gates of borg graphic

So do I. The picture of Gates was like he was in his 30's and I once suggested that they update it with him looking older with greying hair, as the company was likewise no longer the bright young thing that many people supposed it to be.

With Gates virtually gone, what icon should there be instead of the bland MS trademark (for which I am suprised MS do not sue /. like : these takedowns) ? I suggest the Titanic, or King Kong (nothing to do with Balmer of course).

Sorry but this article has different information.

The key advantage is that the car isn’t just seeing and figuring out the world as it drives along. It’s basing its actions on vast amounts of data the Google Self-Driving Car Project has already compiled about every road it travels. Before the car drives itself into new territory, the project team collects detailed information on permanent features: lane markers, the precise location of the curbs, the height of traffic lights, local speed limits, and so forth.

“We require digital maps in order for our cars to be able to drive,” Andrew Chatham, who leads mapping on the project, said at a press event Tuesday. That data “makes the job of building the self-driving car software much simpler.”

The car has a good idea of what to expect from any stretch of road, freeing up the software to deal with cars, pedestrians, cyclists, construction, and any other new obstacles in real time.

That’s the “magic of maps,” Software Lead Dmitri Dolgov said. But that “magic” inherently limits the range of the self-driving car to areas Google has the data for. As Chatham pointed out, “If we have not already built our own maps in an area, the car cannot drive there.” He noted that as the car’s sensors get better, they will rely less on perfect accuracy, but Chris Urmson, the project director, emphasized the key role these maps play.

Regular Google maps do not have enough accuracy.

This was asked back on Slashdot 14 years ago in 2000. As you can see, most of the websites mentioned that archived "ummaintained" software have since evaporated and are unmaintained themselves!

Then it was talked about briefly on stackoverflow in 2009.

Submitter, what I suggest you do is include a text file that describes the history of the project (If it was me - I think it would be nice to thank those by name who made significant contributions), known issues, ideas for direction of the project (if any), and then post it to Github and Sourceforge as an 'ummaintained' software. With as permissive as a license as you can give it, which will encourage it's use down the road. Also, I would post links, notices, and intentions to any associated forums. And give the community as much time to as possible before closing the website down. Maybe someone or some company will have the where with all to continue the project. If it is reasonable to do so and they seem to be reputable and serious, you might let them. Otherwise, when finished, make sure that archive.org has browsed the website for their archives. Also, post a copy the final software there. If it has a domain name, if you can, I'd give it a ten year renewal date and give it a notice of closure and a link to the project on Github.

But the larger issue for me, is that you, your colleagues, and friends spent time and effort on this project. That should be recognized. At least by acknowledging that support is ceasing for this project, it can hopefully move on to other hands in the future. It does happen.

I wish more more programmers were as thoughtful as you. And I wish there were better ways (i.e. more permanent and standardized) of dealing with orphanware.

Are you kidding me? Chicks have been targeted with computers since the 60's

http://www.wired.com/2012/11/kitchen-computer/

Did anyone else think that, when they saw the second photo on the Wired.com article that some awkward conversation took place prior to the photo that went something like this:

Photographer: "Tell your worker there to look busy. I need photos for the article."
Manager: "What do you want him to do?"
Photographer: "I don't know! What does that machine do over there?"
Manager: "That's our automated steel blaster."
Photographer: "That sounds important. Have your guy go over there and operate it."
Manager: "But it's fully automated. Everything's set the way it needs to be."
Photographer: "But I need -something-! Just have him stand next to it and look like he's reconfiguring it."
          Manager to Technician: "Technician, go over to the panel and look busy."
          Technician: "Sir, I don't work on this machine. And there are signs all over it saying 'Do Not Touch!'"
          Manager: "I don't care! This American fool needs a photo!"
          Technician: "How foolish! The entire system is automated! Did you tell him this?"
          Manager: "Of course I did! He didn't listen."
          Technician: "What am I supposed to do then?"
          Manager: "I don't know! Just go over there and look like you're pushing a button."
          Technician: "But I don't want to break the machine! It is a masterpiece!"
          Manager: "Fine, fine, just, um, just point at the button with your finger. And touch the button. Yes, yes, that looks convincing."
          Technician: "Does it really look like I'm pressing it?"
          Manager: "No, you look stupid. But just stay there, like that, alright?"
          Technician: "Stupid Americans. No wonder their economy sucks."

Did anyone else think that, when they saw the second photo on the Wired.com article that some awkward conversation took place prior to the photo that went something like this:

Photographer: "Tell your worker there to look busy. I need photos for the article."
Manager: "What do you want him to do?"
Photographer: "I don't know! What does that machine do over there?"
Manager: "That's our automated steel blaster."
Photographer: "That sounds important. Have your guy go over there and operate it."
Manager: "But it's fully automated. Everything's set the way it needs to be."
Photographer: "But I need -something-! Just have him stand next to it and look like he's reconfiguring it."
          Manager to Technician: "Technician, go over to the panel and look busy."
          Technician: "Sir, I don't work on this machine. And there are signs all over it saying 'Do Not Touch!'"
          Manager: "I don't care! This American fool needs a photo!"
          Technician: "How foolish! The entire system is automated! Did you tell him this?"
          Manager: "Of course I did! He didn't listen."
          Technician: "What am I supposed to do then?"
          Manager: "I don't know! Just go over there and look like you're pushing a button."
          Technician: "But I don't want to break the machine! It is a masterpiece!"
          Manager: "Fine, fine, just, um, just point at the button with your finger. And touch the button. Yes, yes, that looks convincing."
          Technician: "Does it really look like I'm pressing it?"
          Manager: "No, you look stupid. But just stay there, like that, alright?"
          Technician: "Stupid Americans. No wonder their economy sucks."

In a followup phone call with Germar, he clarified that the router was created from a stock board sourced from the Chinese supplier Gainstrong. But he says that the project’s developers requested Gainstrong add flash memory to the board to better accommodate Tor’s storage demands. Germar also says now that the case was supplied by Gainstrong and was not custom-designed by the Anonabox developers.

The larger amount of memory just means they switched from one existing design with smaller memory to another existing design with more memory. Gainstrong didn't have to even put in a custom order - just changed the part number.

Maybe slashdot can invite these guys to do an Ask Slashdot - like Florian Mueller :-)

Update 9:15am 10/15/2014: As the Anonabox Kickstarter campaign has exploded to half a million dollars in just over two days (despite its initial goal of only $7,500) some critics on Reddit have called attention to Germar’s misrepresentation of the “custom” hardware board and plastic case used for the device. They point to stock devices available on Alibaba from Chinese suppliers that appear to be nearly identical. This piece has been corrected from an earlier version that included his claims that both the board and case were custom-built for the project.

In a followup phone call with Germar, he clarified that the router was created from a stock board sourced from the Chinese supplier Gainstrong. But he says that the project’s developers requested Gainstrong add flash memory to the board to better accommodate Tor’s storage demands. Germar also says now that the case was supplied by Gainstrong and was not custom-designed by the Anonabox developers, a partial reversal of how he initially described it to WIRED.

This is only after their ridiculous claim that the chinese seemed to have copied "their" design was shown to be false.

Deceptive marketing? Definitely. Open-source hardware? Definitely not. Liars? Heck, yes. Scam? You betcha!

The rest of us believe that telecom is, was, and (for the foreseeable future) always will be a *natural* monopoly

Natural monopoly is a myth. A myth very convenient for and thus perpetuated by the government officials of various levels as it gives them undue power, but a myth nonetheless.

You can't have meaningful competition for building roads and sewers and power grids

Yes, you can. Tokyo has competing subway lines — why can't New York City? Your GPS is likely to show you several options for any route of appreciable lengths — why can't those different roads be privately-owned and compete?

For example, to leave New York you have many options (most of them requiring payment on top of the taxes) — why can't those bridges and tunnels be privately owned and compete with each other? Maybe, their new owners will consider high traffic a profit opportunity, rather than a burdensome nuisance — and seek to attract more drivers by innovation of both toll-collection and road-maintenance... I dunno, it works for supermarkets... Heck, some private (and disgustingly profit-driven) concern may even undertake building a new tunnel (or a bridge)...

it will always be vastly more efficient for a single entity to install and manage that physical data network, at least at the local level

Really? Why not? In the 20ie we had competing telephone companies — each running its own wires to buildings. Today Google is laying down its own fiber — to much rejoicing on this very site — and AT&T is planning its own alternative, despite your claims of it being "inefficient". Various markets have competing coax-cable providers already. The actual cable-laying is just a (small) part of providing Internet service... Though in theory a monopoly ought to be easier — and thus cheaper — to operate (in any market), in practice any benefit is quickly consumed by the inevitable arrogance of such providers and the concomitant drop of quality and rising end-user prices (any wins in the monopoly provider's costs are compensated for by their fattening up the profit-margins).

We should have made this transition decades ago, but for a variety of reasons didn't

Oh, it is not a "variety" of reasons — but a single one: our government followed that myth of "natural monopolies" and granted cable-TV providers monopoly rights in their respective markets. That law was rescinded in the mid-1990ies, but the damage was done...

And yet this exact 'verification' was a way to steal control of accounts a while back.

Basically, apple asked for the first four digits of your CC for secure verification, Amazon asked for the last four. Each were happy to give the four digits at the opposite end of your account and, worse, Amazon would let you add a new CC to your account, verify yourself with that credit card, then provide the other four digits of your other card. This was used, successfully, to attack a person's Icloud account. I am not sure about now, but I really hope both companies have changed their policies, particularly in regards to phone support and scripted replied to requests for control of accounts.

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/a...

Apple was doing something pretty stupid; the first six digits of a credit card number are assigned to the issuing bank so it would be pretty easy to guess ANYONEs first 4 digits if you have on hand a few big bank CC prefixes.

In addition to isight's blog
there's an article in Wired

And yet this exact 'verification' was a way to steal control of accounts a while back.

Basically, apple asked for the first four digits of your CC for secure verification, Amazon asked for the last four. Each were happy to give the four digits at the opposite end of your account and, worse, Amazon would let you add a new CC to your account, verify yourself with that credit card, then provide the other four digits of your other card. This was used, successfully, to attack a person's Icloud account. I am not sure about now, but I really hope both companies have changed their policies, particularly in regards to phone support and scripted replied to requests for control of accounts.

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/a...

Musk invented nothing.

And your slight and anger just shows that there is a cult around Musk - irrational emotonal outbursts are a sure sign of a cultist.

"Oh my god! Someone criticized my HERO! Time for a flaming!"

Here is what _I_ consider to be an innovator.

Musk is just a salesmen.

Oh, but it was! In fact, Darwin 7.0 (OSX 10.3) brought Darwin's BSD layer back in sync with FreeBSD 5. There was, indeed, a lot of reimplementation at the kernel level, and most of the userland tools had many parts rewritten as well, but your own source confirms what I have said. It confirmed it before I posted it originally, as well. In case that's not enough, here's another, and another, and, for good measure, one more, though that last one only mentions the use of BSD's userland components.

None of those sources say that Darwin was forked off of FreeBSD kernel. You must realize that a fork implies a shared root source tree, copying subsystems does not qualify as a fork. They do qualify as forks of the specific subsystems, but not the kernel.

That said, I've never been bothered to look at either FreeBSD or Darwin kernel sources, so for all I know FreeBSD might be based on AmigaOS.

Yahoo's systems were _not_ compromised via the bash bug

This is what was being reported before I entered into two weeks of product launches that have kept me from following up. I'd thank you for the correction but you're a bit late with it, another poster already corrected me, and with much less snark.

FreeBSD does not use bash for /bin/sh

But that doesn't stop a sysadmin from changing that behavior, just as Unbuntu defaulting to Bash didn't stop me from swapping it our in favor of Dash. Just a matter of deleting the old binary and symlinking to the new one.

Apple's Darwin kernel was not forked from FreeBSD.

Oh, but it was! In fact, Darwin 7.0 (OSX 10.3) brought Darwin's BSD layer back in sync with FreeBSD 5. There was, indeed, a lot of reimplementation at the kernel level, and most of the userland tools had many parts rewritten as well, but your own source confirms what I have said. It confirmed it before I posted it originally, as well. In case that's not enough, here's another, and another, and, for good measure, one more, though that last one only mentions the use of BSD's userland components.

It also is not cool the way the government went after him. I mean he recently outted himself as a racist asshole, but we do need to remember the big picture here which IMO is more important than the fact that he is an asshole. Check out this article from wired I found today - http://www.wired.com/2014/10/u...

Miranda, the guy who gave us the Supreme Court decision that you have the right to an employer when the cops interrogate you, was a confessed rapist. A lot of cases that establish our rights were defending not-very-nice guys.

No, children, the trolls were not here first. Some of us remember that human beings inhabited the Internet before the Eternal September.

Yes we were. Some of us remember that cats like Sootikin and Choad inhabited rec.pets.cats before the Eternal September.

The difference is that back then, trolling meant nothing more than trying to get a rise out of people online, no doxxing intended (or needed, as back then a lot of USENET posters used real names, because they were dependent on an institution for access). Back then, just like today, users could block each other (and try to evade those blocks), and service providers banned disruptive users. But just like today, the people who started a newsgroup invasion with the intent of getting some laughs out of it, tended to lose control of it, and for every lulzy participant, there were thousands of lurkers, and of those lurkers, some of them crossed the line into personal (albeit electronic) harassment, bogus death threats, etc.

It's been 20 years since alt.tasteless invaded rec.pets.cats, and the more things have changed, the more they've stayed the same.

Let me stop and mention here that last week weev caused a storm when he wrote a racist screed for a white supremacist website. As usual I found out about it when my twitter timeline lit up with exhortations to do something about my client, the unpopular defendant. To me his bigoted viewpoint is just noise; the crucial issue here is not weev or his ideas but the future of criminal computer law in the U.S. You may think weev is an asshole. But being an asshole is not a crime, and neither is obtaining unsecured information from publicly facing servers.

...and pods are already coming to Milton Keynes: http://www.wired.com/2013/11/m...

Now we only need the pod bays (with doors, of course).

You might want to consider another career change in the medium term future:

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/m...

Pioneers and visionaries... ...can be stupid too

I'm actually extremely well-informed on this topic. You really should look into it, however, since I think you're not understanding the situation. The regulations that have "prevented" Google from building out are regulations that other providers (i.e. cable and Telco) have long had to abide by. So, Google is saying they'll only build out if they get special treatment that wasn't available to the incumbents.

Google has explicitly said that they will only build out in areas that are willing to work with them, and that means (thus far) offer them concessions (right of way, street cabinet placement, waiver of requirement that they build the entire municipality) which haven't been available to the incumbents. For example, the second article below talks about the deal Google got in Kansas City, which includes the opportunity to place their street cabinets on public land at no cost (something AT&T & TWC can't do), and the ability to put fiber on city-owned poles for about half what TWC is paying, and no requirement for a citywide buildout.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w...

> implying drones don't communicate by unencrypted TCP/IP

http://www.wired.com/2012/10/hack-proof-drone/

pfffttt!!!

While you can always reach for a pithy quote to support an attitude of mistrust of government by misportraying Adam Smith as calling for the state to stay completely hands off, actually reading the man's work reveals that he too saw a need for some degree of state regulation to avoid problems like monopolies

The quote I offered does not contradict the problems of monopolies. As soon as the mentioned butcher, brewer, or baker become the sole supplier you can pick, the quality goes down and the prices go up.

The man saw the benefits in a more laissez faire system, but he also foresaw pitfalls that have come to plague us today.

Absolutely. The government's goal ought to be to make it possible for the service-providers to compete. Unfortunately, the US government has made a number of errors in this regard, that we are still paying for. By making AT&T the sole telephone-service provider, we shot ourselves in the foot. Then we did it again by creating cable-TV monopolies — though that law is no longer in effect, the incumbents are entrenched enough to block most newcomers. When it came to cellular phones, we got "smarter" and allowed not one, but two companies (initially) to compete in each market — an improvement of sorts, but far from what Adam Smith would've recommended.

We still have monopolies providing public transportation, roads, fresh water and sewer-treatment, electricity and gas to most of the nation — justified by the myth of "natural monopoly". And all of these tend to suck even worse, than the Internet service.

Untrue.
http://news.nationalgeographic...

There is nothing preventing photons of different wavelengths from being entangled, allowing one wavelength to expose an image, while another scans the subject-- As demonstrated by the above article. This is vastly different from normal photography.

Similarly, there shouldnt be any real reason why different polarizations couldnt be entangled.

A very sophisticated compositing scanner could be constructed that uses entanglement + interaction with a subject with simultaneous measurement to break the entanglement at the sensor. There is a great deal of benefit to having the exact same light hit many sensors.

Even in regular photography, you can get HDR this way.
http://www.wired.com/2010/09/c...

Slight tangent, but I'm going to go there anyway ;)

The Apple celebs drama wasn't caused by the NSA breaking disk encryption, it was a bunch of pimply 4-channers phishing or guessing account recovery details on the cloud service. Whilst Apple has historically been ahead of Android in on-device security, they have been behind Google on cloud account security and this is in many ways equally as important.

Don't forget that the tools they were using were law enforcement tools designed for this purpose. Anything that can be done to prevent backdoors / third parties holding on to master keys is a good thing in my opinion as encryption should be viewed as protecting one's privacy and not a criminal act.

As a kid, I saw this summarized in the World Book Encyclopedia, but this is a much more grown-up explanation for it. By all accounts, Nixon was flabbergasted by the cost, and that's what really killed it. The shuttle was part of the plan, and it's all that got built, which explains why it seemed to have no purpose. http://www.wired.com/2012/06/t...

The Shuttle also a was too ambitious for when it was built and it served too many masters (NASA and the Air Force). This increased the complexity of the missions and craft, while Congress kept cutting funding and forcing design decisions (like segmented solid boosters so they could be produced in Utah.) It was an amazing but ultimately a fragile and ill conceived machine. Shortcuts forced on it by those constraints prevented building a truly reusable spacecraft and left us with an awesome "refurbishable" spacecraft that was expensive to build and damn expensive to fly. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching Shuttle launches and without it we could not have repaired the Hubble and building the ISS would have been much more difficult. But it was a bungled beast.