First, I would like to point out that while it may be hard, I would not call this, as OP does, an "emergency". The leak was already known, and there are backup systems in place. This is a precautionary measure, not an "emergency", unless by that you mean they will "emerge" from the airlock.
Second, the fact that "everything is hard in space" is precisely why we should establish a base on the moon. A gravity well makes a HUGE difference in how difficult it is to perform work. And the fact that it's a shallow gravity well is also of huge importance to future outward expansion.
"And there are many people out there who think you can't have a democratic form of government with anonymity."
There. Fixed that for you.
First, while it's important for voting, it goes far beyond just voting. And second, it is possible (and it's even done in many states!) to ensure you know who is voting, without knowing how they vote.
As for democracy, I would simply ask you to look around at those countries that allow voting but not anonymously, and tell me how many of them you would consider to actually be anywhere near "free".
"Yes, JUST LIKE CARS. Dangerous items should be registered so as to keep them out of the hands of crazies/incapable people."
(A) you just contradicted your earlier statement by admitting I was right, and (B) registration is tragically ineffective for actually accomplishing that, for firearms AND for cars.
"Washington State has registration of handguns purchased from licensed dealers (for private sales it's voluntary to register). It's also one of the most free states with respect to handguns, with unrestricted open carry and shall-issue concealed carry, and extending the right to own and carry firearms to any legal resident of the state (not just citizens)."
You don't know a lot about Washington State, do you?
I had cause to research firearms laws in the West and Midwest a while back.
Washington State does not require registration of firearms. At all. And while it is a shall-issue state, there are restrictions on concealed carry.
"Um, Hillary is actually not currently in Govt. any more; John Kerry now runs the State Department.
Reply to This Share"
Haha. Oops. Got me. I had forgotten that she resigned. But Kerry is hardly an improvement. No doubt Hillary is busy preparing for her impending failure at running for President.
Even so, it has no bearing on the central point I was making.
"No, I've never said that, nor heard anyone else say it. Nor has Google."
I suppose I should have stated up front that the context of my comment was the United States. And I have, in complete honesty, have heard statements to that exact effect on television, and read them in the newspaper.
"Registering guns does not reduce your right to bear or shoot guns. At all."
What a naive -- and history inaccurate -- point of view.
First, though, I would like to point out that I did not write "register OR restrict", I wrote "register AND restrict". The difference makes your comment rather moot.
But second, while the excuse for registration has always been to ensure proper and responsible use, in practice the actual use of registration has often -- almost invariably, in fact -- ended up being to restrict. In fact, in states and towns where gun bans have been tried, gun registrations were the main information tool used to find the owners of banned guns so they could be confiscated. (And yes, it has happened, right here in the U.S., more than once. Look it up.)
"Registration is about making you responsible for the use of your guns and ammo. If you own a lethal weapon you have a responsibility to take care of it."
If only that were true.
In practice, it (A) isn't generally used that way, and (B) is ineffective at ensuring anything of the sort, even when it is used that way.
"Merely registering guns and ammo does not, by itself, restrict the ability to use them."
Quote myself: "register and restrict".
I agree that technically, registration per se does not restrict, but on the other hand, I've never seen it done in the U.S. in a manner that was not intended to restrict. If not immediately, then later.
" I've seen a lot of dead Green 1.5TB WD drives and a few years back they had some 200GB IDE drives that ran very hot and caused a few people problems (I lost three drives in an array but slowly enough that I got everything since the last backup off in time - the failing disk cooked the two on either side)."
Well, I haven't used either of those, so that could explain our different experiences. Right now I have a Scorpio Black that has been just a great drive for several years. But I don't purchase for a company any longer.
Well, you may not care, but I can assure you that a great many people do.
But the point is: unless you are making recurring payments via your own system (itself not really best practice... you should have an outside merchant service that automatically does recurring payments), then as a programmer you are taught -- and rightly so -- that NO credit or debit card gets stored by your application. None. Sites I worked on before had it arranged that the main site app never even saw the credit card information, so it could not store that information, even if somebody wanted to.
"What's wrong with this? I know it's all George Orwell and stuff, but really. We've moved so far past having any real privacy anymore, who cares? I like the idea of people not being able to pretend to be me, not that anyone would really want to."
You should care because it's not possible to have a democratic form of government without anonymity, and you can't have anonymity without privacy.
The reasons are many, but here is the upshot: if you have no privacy, how can you speak out (or vote) against oppression without fear of reprisal? Answer: you can't. History is full of examples, you shouldn't even have to think twice to come up with one you remember.
"Executive orders have been held to have force of law in US History except under two cases:"
You are leaving a HUGE part out. It may not be intentional but it comes very close to lying by omission.
Executive Orders have the power of law... for Federal employees and the military. Those are the people over whom the President has authority. Nobody else.
This is not to say they don't get away with it from time to time. But as far as real legal and Constitutional authority goes, the only people he can order around are his own employees, who are: anybody who works for the Federal government, and the military. That's it.
"The Executive makes laws in the form of executive orders which have power of law because of powers granted in Constitution or by laws passed by Congress."
Uh-uh. Just no. That's not the way it works.
Executive Orders are NOT "laws". They are merely orders to Federal employees. If you're not a Federal employee, YOU don't have to obey Executive Orders.
The only way the executive "makes" law is via veto power, and indirectly via appointments. Executive Orders are just not law. Period.
Read your copy of the Constitution. (What? Don't have one?) There is nothing in there about Presidents making laws.
"People seem to forget Executive Order 9066, which led to the creation of internment camps for "Japanese-americans" (or as I call them, citizens) during WWII. There's a great many more examples of executive orders going far beyond "internal operations of the government." And yes, Obama, like every other president has penned some questionable executive orders."
Well, I would say "like many other Presidents in recent history", I'm not sure "every" applies. But still...
Even so, I think what GP is referring to is "lawful authority". The fact that many Presidents have attempted to use Executive Orders to exceed their lawful authority, does not make another President who does it "not an asshole." Any more than the fact that a store has been robbed 4 times in the past means robbing it again makes somebody an okay guy.
Concerning that lawful authority, GP has it right: Executive Orders are just orders for Federal employees, much as a CEO will write policy for his corporation. They actually have no binding authority on anybody who is not a Federal employee, just as a CEO's orders do not affect non-employees.
As such (if we're just talking about the actual law), the President may order Federal employees to lock up some Americans, but those Americans are not legally obligated to obey. I believe the internment camp order also had something to do with wartime powers that really do not apply today (as we are not lawfully at war with anybody right now... never mind that we are de facto at war in far too many places).
You can buy books published by the U.S. Government on how to make booby traps, home-made bombs and explosives, and so on. They are military books. But the government has no copyrights in most circumstances, so they are available for the public to freely copy and distribute. And our form of government can't work any other way.
More to the point: the Government also can't publish books on a subject themselves, then deny the right of others to do the same.
State Department means Hillary Clinton, who is an anti-gunner. (No doubt this administration looked high and low for some kind of excuse to restrict this.) If it's restricted by the State Department, that means it's restricted for export to other countries. They MIGHT, just barely, be able to make some kind of case of that nature.
They would not, however, be able to restrict sale or distribution of plans within the U.S.
"In the debates over abortion, one of the points supporters made was that denial of access to the means of exercising a right was indistinguishable from denying the right itself."
So true. Now tell that to the people who want to register and restrict guns, and / or restrict ammo. Especially the latter. They have said in so many words: you have the right to bear arms, but not to shoot them. Which -- as you point out -- is just as injurious to your right as taking the guns away.
"This is NOT news. Name.com has had an annual security breach for a minimum of 5 years. This is not news at all.
Reply to This Share"
Almost beside the point. Who in their right minds stores credit card information on their web servers these days? To say that's against Best Practices is a bit of an understatement.
I have to disagree with you here on a couple of points.
First, the SSD-HDD concept has proven itself, IF it's done right. When the Seagate Momentus XT was new, its write performance was better than many other SSDs it was compared to in benchmarks at the time, with read performace that comparable. (Of course, since then Seagate said they would stop making 7200 rpm drives, which means that isn't likely to happen again.)
I don't know whether the "two disks with a bridge" idea is "done right", though. I guess we'll see.
But the other thing is WD-bashing. I've had very good experience with WD. To the point that when I was managing systems, I bought only WD when I had a choice. I have NEVER had one fail on me. (Though I know of others who have.)
WD reliability and performance have been just great for me. Your mileage may vary.
I have been busy with my work, so I did not have a real opportunity to give it the attention that it deserves, but I did play his speech in the background while I was working.
I did not notice any comments at all in his speech about overall recent trends, except a couple of comments about the arctic. However, the question-answer period was not included in the recording, so all in all that the results are inconclusive.
ISPs did it all the time via their routing equipment, before public outcry made them largely cease the practice.
But even if that were not true: Klein clearly describes infrastructure used to route the signals OFFSITE. Even if you needed a splitter, you wouldn't need to send it offsite to use DPI.
As I wrote earlier: sending the signals offsite constitutes "capturing" everything. What they do with it then -- whether some or all of it is recorded, or DPI, or whatever -- is anybody's guess. We just don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
"Everything is hard in space"
Two things about that.
First, I would like to point out that while it may be hard, I would not call this, as OP does, an "emergency". The leak was already known, and there are backup systems in place. This is a precautionary measure, not an "emergency", unless by that you mean they will "emerge" from the airlock.
Second, the fact that "everything is hard in space" is precisely why we should establish a base on the moon. A gravity well makes a HUGE difference in how difficult it is to perform work. And the fact that it's a shallow gravity well is also of huge importance to future outward expansion.
"And there are many people out there who think you can't have a democratic form of government with anonymity."
There. Fixed that for you.
First, while it's important for voting, it goes far beyond just voting. And second, it is possible (and it's even done in many states!) to ensure you know who is voting, without knowing how they vote.
As for democracy, I would simply ask you to look around at those countries that allow voting but not anonymously, and tell me how many of them you would consider to actually be anywhere near "free".
"Yes, JUST LIKE CARS. Dangerous items should be registered so as to keep them out of the hands of crazies/incapable people."
(A) you just contradicted your earlier statement by admitting I was right, and (B) registration is tragically ineffective for actually accomplishing that, for firearms AND for cars.
"Washington State has registration of handguns purchased from licensed dealers (for private sales it's voluntary to register). It's also one of the most free states with respect to handguns, with unrestricted open carry and shall-issue concealed carry, and extending the right to own and carry firearms to any legal resident of the state (not just citizens)."
You don't know a lot about Washington State, do you?
I had cause to research firearms laws in the West and Midwest a while back.
Washington State does not require registration of firearms. At all. And while it is a shall-issue state, there are restrictions on concealed carry.
"Don't go confusing the rightwingers with facts. If they actually had any facts, they'd be insufferable."
And don't go confusing Left-wingers with people who have a fucking clue.
I'm no more "right-wing" than you are, numbnuts.
"Um, Hillary is actually not currently in Govt. any more; John Kerry now runs the State Department. Reply to This Share"
Haha. Oops. Got me. I had forgotten that she resigned. But Kerry is hardly an improvement. No doubt Hillary is busy preparing for her impending failure at running for President.
Even so, it has no bearing on the central point I was making.
"No, I've never said that, nor heard anyone else say it. Nor has Google."
I suppose I should have stated up front that the context of my comment was the United States. And I have, in complete honesty, have heard statements to that exact effect on television, and read them in the newspaper.
"Registering guns does not reduce your right to bear or shoot guns. At all."
What a naive -- and history inaccurate -- point of view.
First, though, I would like to point out that I did not write "register OR restrict", I wrote "register AND restrict". The difference makes your comment rather moot.
But second, while the excuse for registration has always been to ensure proper and responsible use, in practice the actual use of registration has often -- almost invariably, in fact -- ended up being to restrict. In fact, in states and towns where gun bans have been tried, gun registrations were the main information tool used to find the owners of banned guns so they could be confiscated. (And yes, it has happened, right here in the U.S., more than once. Look it up.)
"Registration is about making you responsible for the use of your guns and ammo. If you own a lethal weapon you have a responsibility to take care of it."
If only that were true.
In practice, it (A) isn't generally used that way, and (B) is ineffective at ensuring anything of the sort, even when it is used that way.
"Merely registering guns and ammo does not, by itself, restrict the ability to use them."
Quote myself: "register and restrict".
I agree that technically, registration per se does not restrict, but on the other hand, I've never seen it done in the U.S. in a manner that was not intended to restrict. If not immediately, then later.
" I've seen a lot of dead Green 1.5TB WD drives and a few years back they had some 200GB IDE drives that ran very hot and caused a few people problems (I lost three drives in an array but slowly enough that I got everything since the last backup off in time - the failing disk cooked the two on either side)."
Well, I haven't used either of those, so that could explain our different experiences. Right now I have a Scorpio Black that has been just a great drive for several years. But I don't purchase for a company any longer.
"I don't see why not."
Well, you may not care, but I can assure you that a great many people do.
But the point is: unless you are making recurring payments via your own system (itself not really best practice... you should have an outside merchant service that automatically does recurring payments), then as a programmer you are taught -- and rightly so -- that NO credit or debit card gets stored by your application. None. Sites I worked on before had it arranged that the main site app never even saw the credit card information, so it could not store that information, even if somebody wanted to.
"What's wrong with this? I know it's all George Orwell and stuff, but really. We've moved so far past having any real privacy anymore, who cares? I like the idea of people not being able to pretend to be me, not that anyone would really want to."
You should care because it's not possible to have a democratic form of government without anonymity, and you can't have anonymity without privacy.
The reasons are many, but here is the upshot: if you have no privacy, how can you speak out (or vote) against oppression without fear of reprisal? Answer: you can't. History is full of examples, you shouldn't even have to think twice to come up with one you remember.
"Executive orders have been held to have force of law in US History except under two cases:"
You are leaving a HUGE part out. It may not be intentional but it comes very close to lying by omission.
Executive Orders have the power of law... for Federal employees and the military. Those are the people over whom the President has authority. Nobody else.
This is not to say they don't get away with it from time to time. But as far as real legal and Constitutional authority goes, the only people he can order around are his own employees, who are: anybody who works for the Federal government, and the military. That's it.
"The Executive makes laws in the form of executive orders which have power of law because of powers granted in Constitution or by laws passed by Congress."
Uh-uh. Just no. That's not the way it works.
Executive Orders are NOT "laws". They are merely orders to Federal employees. If you're not a Federal employee, YOU don't have to obey Executive Orders.
The only way the executive "makes" law is via veto power, and indirectly via appointments. Executive Orders are just not law. Period.
Read your copy of the Constitution. (What? Don't have one?) There is nothing in there about Presidents making laws.
"People seem to forget Executive Order 9066, which led to the creation of internment camps for "Japanese-americans" (or as I call them, citizens) during WWII. There's a great many more examples of executive orders going far beyond "internal operations of the government." And yes, Obama, like every other president has penned some questionable executive orders."
Well, I would say "like many other Presidents in recent history", I'm not sure "every" applies. But still...
Even so, I think what GP is referring to is "lawful authority". The fact that many Presidents have attempted to use Executive Orders to exceed their lawful authority, does not make another President who does it "not an asshole." Any more than the fact that a store has been robbed 4 times in the past means robbing it again makes somebody an okay guy.
Concerning that lawful authority, GP has it right: Executive Orders are just orders for Federal employees, much as a CEO will write policy for his corporation. They actually have no binding authority on anybody who is not a Federal employee, just as a CEO's orders do not affect non-employees.
As such (if we're just talking about the actual law), the President may order Federal employees to lock up some Americans, but those Americans are not legally obligated to obey. I believe the internment camp order also had something to do with wartime powers that really do not apply today (as we are not lawfully at war with anybody right now... never mind that we are de facto at war in far too many places).
"... so where do we draw the line here?"
This does not come anywhere near the line.
You can buy books published by the U.S. Government on how to make booby traps, home-made bombs and explosives, and so on. They are military books. But the government has no copyrights in most circumstances, so they are available for the public to freely copy and distribute. And our form of government can't work any other way.
More to the point: the Government also can't publish books on a subject themselves, then deny the right of others to do the same.
State Department means Hillary Clinton, who is an anti-gunner. (No doubt this administration looked high and low for some kind of excuse to restrict this.) If it's restricted by the State Department, that means it's restricted for export to other countries. They MIGHT, just barely, be able to make some kind of case of that nature.
They would not, however, be able to restrict sale or distribution of plans within the U.S.
"In the debates over abortion, one of the points supporters made was that denial of access to the means of exercising a right was indistinguishable from denying the right itself."
So true. Now tell that to the people who want to register and restrict guns, and / or restrict ammo. Especially the latter. They have said in so many words: you have the right to bear arms, but not to shoot them. Which -- as you point out -- is just as injurious to your right as taking the guns away.
"This is NOT news. Name.com has had an annual security breach for a minimum of 5 years. This is not news at all. Reply to This Share"
Almost beside the point. Who in their right minds stores credit card information on their web servers these days? To say that's against Best Practices is a bit of an understatement.
I have to disagree with you here on a couple of points.
First, the SSD-HDD concept has proven itself, IF it's done right. When the Seagate Momentus XT was new, its write performance was better than many other SSDs it was compared to in benchmarks at the time, with read performace that comparable. (Of course, since then Seagate said they would stop making 7200 rpm drives, which means that isn't likely to happen again.)
I don't know whether the "two disks with a bridge" idea is "done right", though. I guess we'll see.
But the other thing is WD-bashing. I've had very good experience with WD. To the point that when I was managing systems, I bought only WD when I had a choice. I have NEVER had one fail on me. (Though I know of others who have.)
WD reliability and performance have been just great for me. Your mileage may vary.
"Hmm I'm just wondering. Programmer turned Tester is that like Gamekeeper turned Poacher :)"
Or maybe like Senator turned Lobbyist?
"Why install a router? That's a HELL of a lot more expensive than a splitter. It's not the right piece of equipment for this job."
Hell if I know. Read Klein's statements, at the link that was given above. I'm just reporting what he stated.
I have been busy with my work, so I did not have a real opportunity to give it the attention that it deserves, but I did play his speech in the background while I was working.
I did not notice any comments at all in his speech about overall recent trends, except a couple of comments about the arctic. However, the question-answer period was not included in the recording, so all in all that the results are inconclusive.
My comment wasn't about the people whose data is being captured. It was about the people doing the capturing.
ISPs did it all the time via their routing equipment, before public outcry made them largely cease the practice.
But even if that were not true: Klein clearly describes infrastructure used to route the signals OFFSITE. Even if you needed a splitter, you wouldn't need to send it offsite to use DPI.
As I wrote earlier: sending the signals offsite constitutes "capturing" everything. What they do with it then -- whether some or all of it is recorded, or DPI, or whatever -- is anybody's guess. We just don't know.