When you lay out the facts like that, it sounds reasonable. However, software companies like Microsoft didn't get where they are today by being reasonable. From their perspective, if you bought more licenses than you need, that's not their problem. They're not going to refund the extra copies, because you were stupid enough to purchase them. They're not going to allow you to sell your unused copies because that means there would be someone making use of that oversold software. What's the point of having salespeople if they can't con customers into buying things they can't use? =)
1. The people you pay $54.99 to aren't using that to subsidize the shows you watch. The advertising pays for the content and you are paying for delivery. It's a scam, but that's how it works.
2. If it were legal, they would. I'm sure they're working on getting the laws changed to deal with you unrepentant content stealers. I'm sure there's some way they can show a direct link between people not watching commercials and 9-11.
It'll never happen. They've already convinced the public to be double billed. Originally, advertisements paid for the content and broadcast. Cable and satellite companies convinced people to pay for delivery, but market it as providing content. Most people are paying in time and money for their TV now.
You're paying for delivery when you pay your cable bill. Some of that is to license the feed from the various channels, but none of that really goes into the production cost for the content. There's no amount you can pay for cable that would have any effect on the desire of the content provider to sell advertising time in their shows.
In their minds, you are the enemy. You are the only thing that stands between them and your wallet. They pay to run the ad (which in turn pays to broadcast the show you want to watch) which is supposed to work like this:
Them: These are the drones you're looking for. You: These are the drones I'm looking for. Them: These drones can be yours for only $99.95! (small print flashed on the screen for 2 femto-seconds, the minimum duration permitted by law: Cost is $99.95 per month for the rest of your life, secured against all property you ever own. Purchasher of drones agrees to become the sole property of DroneCo.) You: Take my money advertiser! I'm going to DIE if I don't have your drones.
If you don't purchase their product every time you see their commercial, they believe you are stealing the show that they are paying for. If you walk away from the TV when a commercial is on, you're stealing. You're free to get up during the show and do whatever you want, since that is just fluff that exists to sell ad time. Why do you think stupid reality shows are so common? No script writers or actors to pay, and people still watch it.
I had the same experience as another poster in this thread - when I was car shopping, I paid attention to car commercials. Since I'm not looking for a car now, I don't. I don't think I'm part of their target audience right now. But from their perspective, I am. They don't want me to buy a car becuse I need one or because it's better than my car, they want me to buy a car because I have money. I, as the consumer, am completely irrelevant to advertisers. My money is what they want, not me. If they could sue me to make me purchase their trash, they would. The only thing that stops them is the fact that no jury would convict someone for murdering advertisers who tried this tactic.
As a contractor, I ignore the calendar and look at hours (which is exactly the same as a cost, but without telling them the cost is fixed). If that means working 80+ hours per week for 6 months to make it happen on their timeline, that means I get to bill 2000 hours in 6 months. It's still a death march project, but when they're paying for their lack of planning, it's much more noticeable than when FTE's get stuck in a death march. Often times, the schedules are intentionally made unreasonable to keep the costs down and pressure up. While it's nice to be able to say "This will take X months", business people are more inclined to comprehend "This will cost $Y in time whether you want it done in X months or X/2 months." It's a polite way of telling them that they can have it in the unreasonable time if they really want it, but it's still going to cost them the same as if they had a reasonable timeline.
We're currently doing one of those types of projects - half the staff and half the time of the last time we did something similar. Seeing as the last time went way over budget, they're more amenable to negotiating which features will be available at which phase in the project. Of course, I think they're only flexible because they know I'm serious when I say that I'll work 80 hours a week to get everything done on time if they are willing to pay for it. =)
That's interesting to know. I never saw that kind of thing back in my day. =)
The only brute force attacks like this that I've seen are spam attempting every possible username on a host with a handful of users. Do the connections come from the same host or group of hosts? It just seems like it would be too easy to log the failed attempts and add the IP to the firewall, except in the case of a botnet.
Shadow passwords help prevent password guessing by brute force, but it hardly limits *any* kind of attack. There are too many other areas where it's possible to find vulnerabilities to say that it's a panacea. Does anyone actually try to brute force passwords from a login prompt? I've never seen it happen. That's just way too obvious when someone is doing it, is incredibly slow, and has a very low probability of success.
It's not uncommon for people to not think of their backups as a security risk. Most backups aren't encrypted, nor are they accessed often enough to notice if a tape goes missing for a week.
There needs to be some reasonable balance between policies and real life if people are expected to respect them. For example, if I give someone our part of the organization the password to allow anonymous read-only access to our CVS repository, that's clearly different than giving some random person in the company the root password for systems with databases of customer information.
We have a group that policy violations can be reported to, but they seem to be more about touchy feely solutions than ruling with an iron fist. I doubt anyone here would get fired for anything short of selling restricted information. I suspect government agencies work in a similar manner since there are many conflicting interests at work.
The security depends on the password. Since the cipher has to be public, keeping the ciphertext private prevents dictionary attacks. If people used good passwords, dictionary attacks wouldn't work and shadow password files wouldn't offer any benefit. Shadow passwords are a compromise to deal with the real world situation where people use lame passwords. Since there's no need for people to have the ciphertext publicly available, denying the access removes this particular avenue of attack.
Since when is the FBI on the cutting edge? They only pick up techniques that have had sufficient time to be proven, which leaves them 10-20 years behind the cutting edge. Fortunately for them, criminals tend to be 50 years behind the times since they're too paranoid to hire outside consultants who are aware of the most recent technical developments.
Why should they do that? They fixed the glitch. The guy pleaded guilty, so there's no reason for any government agent who acted carelessly and facilitated the crime to be reprimanded. From a management perspective, the problem isn't the access he had, but the egg on their face resulting from the access he had. He's got fired and will likely go to jail, so from the management perspective, the problem has been solved. It may be a stupid viewpoint, but it's a very common one when the alternative is taking responsibility for ones own actions.
Good thing this guy pleaded guilty. Otherwise, someone might ask uncomfortable questions, like why FBI agents were active participants in this criminal act. The whole problem would have been averted if someone didn't give their username and password to this guy.
Of course, the whole thing could have also been averted if normal users didn't have access to the password file. The Unix world figured out that shadow password files are a good idea a long time ago. Too bad the wisdom there hasn't caught on.
One thing everyone should know when working for a large organization is that they have policies for everything because they assume everyone is dumber than paste. The up side of this as a consultant is that you can bill a week for 30 minutes of work because there's a week of paperwork needed before you can perform any task. This guy tried to get things done more efficiently by sidestepping the boundaries. Small companies can respect that kind of attitude, but not the government. That kind of behavior results in lower billings to the government, and that is unamerican.
Jumping through hoops, as silly as they may be, is an important part of any technical job within a large organization.
Technically, that's only true if you want to call the program that does nothing from your path. Otherwise, the most perfect perl implementation of no functionality is either an empty file or a null command.
Developers are generally exempt positions, so it's not uncommon to find many full time development jobs requiring 60-80 hours per week.
The trick to spending it all is compressing your expenses to respect the lack of free time. For example, why try to figure out why your car is acting weird when you can just go out and replace it for less than half a day's pay every month? =)
Maybe we could feed, house and clothe everyone in the world. But why would we want to do that? Is the goal to teach these people that we'll take care of them, so they don't have to? I just don't see the point. I doubt they'd do the same thing for me. In fact, I know they wouldn't. They're only in a position to take, not to give.
I'm sure I could support 10 families in some third world hell hole if I were willing to live in poverty. Granted, poverty in the US is much more comfortable than in the third world. However, my family would have a much lower standard of living in order to do that. I don't think there's anything altruistic about denying some people opportunities to give them to others.
It's not selfish or greedy to put yourself and your family's needs above those of others. You may want to only work 20 hours a week. Saying "we" doesn't change that it's your own selfish desire. I don't want to only work 20 hours a week. I don't mind working more to give my family an advantage over those who aren't willing to do more.
The world isn't going to become a better place if you can convince more rich people to donate to "charities" that skim heavily off the top before any of that money helps the poor. If you want to make the world a better place, DO something positive. If you want to help someone, help that person as an individual. Most "charities" work just like any other profit motivated corporation. If people really were interested in helping others, they'd do it free of charge. There aren't a lot of "charities" built on my idea of charity.
My wife has two kids from a previous marriage that I've taken in and treated as my own. We have two dogs we got from a rescue group and another that would have been put to sleep if we didn't give him a home. We drive Corollas, which have low emissions and get good gas mileage. I believe that if you want to make the world a better place, you actually have to take an active role in making it happen. Talking about it or donating to charities is only a baby step. For every dollar that goes into trying to help people in a third world country, there are probably 100 that go into exploiting the same people.
People are motivated by their own interests. It really is that simple. Maturity or "negative emotions" have nothing to do with it.
Everything is temporary, it's just a matter of duration. What will she do if you die? A better question is what will you do while you're both alive? Have you tried talking to them so they understand the risks? It may be good, it may be bad. It depends partially on the house, but mostly on if you choose to find the good or bad in it. Are you aware of your surroundings wherever you go? Lack of awareness is a key contributor to looking like a victim.
All of those things can affect children as well. The difference is that they don't have enough experience to know what they're expected to worry about.
If the jury is not allowed to do anything other than strictly determine if the law was violated, what's the point of a jury? A judge can determine that better than a handful of random citizens.
It depends on the type of consumer you are. If you're a net-debtor, you have to bow down before them and accept your role as a peon. However, if you live within your means, you always have the option of telling them to stuff it. You can't do anything about the companies who amass and lose your data, unless you can afford to sue all of them.
What I don't understand is why people spend unlimited time negotiating with companies they have no legitimate association with. If a company is reporting that I owe them $10k, that's an actual monetary damage that I'm sufferring, which gives me a basis for taking them to court. I'd sue the creditor at that point because they are an active participant in the fraud being perpetrated. The companies granting credit based on information that is widely disseminated know that a certain percentage of the applications are fraudulent, but it's more cost effective to put the burden back on the individual in those cases. I think the burden should be put back on the companies to make it less cost effective. Talking to customer service people about a debt that isn't yours is painful and not likely to get any assistance. They can only walk all over you with your permission. Of course, the only way to make this work is to be willing to accept black marks on your credit report until it's resolved.
a) most are bad, so how much worse can you be? b) pays decently. c) just learn to rephrase your deficiences as strengths and belittle others for not understanding.
That should work in a Dilbert strip or any Fortune 500 company.
The funny thing with large businesses is how afraid they are of taking advantage of high performing personnel. They don't want to get into the position where they benefit from someone and when that person leaves, they have to hire 5 people to replace him. I'm surprised that more large businesses don't fail from their policies requiring people to operate at 10% of capacity.
Anything made of stone has the best chance of standing the test of time. I think the pyramids demonstrate that. While the faces of the pyramids have been destroyed, there's no mistaking huge mounds of rocks that look out of place.
Knowing that there is iron in the concrete may lead to the conclusion that someone put it there, but not necessarily to why. One of the limitations of archaelogy is that the most believable story that incorporates all of the evidence wins. Knowing that something was a 3000 year old Anasazi field may be somewhat interesting, but generally isn't the level of detail people are looking for. While that may be true, it only tells us a little about how they lived. It doesn't tell us much about their culture, other than they farmed, which means they likely weren't nomads.
I remember an example used in class of how this process would work if it were applied to us. Some future archaeologist who came across the remains of our society would find most of it destroyed. Artifacts are rare, which is why they need a story to fill in the blanks. Many of the bodies found from our time would have groups of trinkets in close proximity, or in the clothes if they were still in tact. The number and types of these trinkets may be associated with someone's social status or religious beliefs. It would be curious because each group of trinkets would have similarities, but be different. In fact, no two identical sets of trinkets would be found across all of the bodies found. Someone could look at all of this and conclude that these were indications of social status and develop some intricate theory. Without someone from the present time to say "these are keys, they go in locks, we lock things because we don't trust people", the theory may sound solid.
If we all disappeared, how much of what we have done would survive the test of time? A thousand years of neglect would take its toll. Even concrete won't last forever. A few hundred years is good enough for our current purposes, but that's hardly a blip in history. If 95% of the population died off, it wouldn't be possible to maintain what we have right now. Combined with climate changes, it's easy to imagine how even our modern society could waste away. I imagine stories of Silicon Valley would sound a lot like Atlantis if the oceans rose a few hundred feet.
The idea of a nuclear war in antiquity is preposterous. They didn't have atoms back then. =)
And we can fund the war on terror with voyeurcam web sites. We could even have our taxes lowered due to the trillions of dollars in porn subscriptions the government would collect each year.
I think he was using Terra, as in Earth. It wouldn't have been as punny if he said only Earthers had to be afraid of their government snooping on them.
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When you lay out the facts like that, it sounds reasonable. However, software companies like Microsoft didn't get where they are today by being reasonable. From their perspective, if you bought more licenses than you need, that's not their problem. They're not going to refund the extra copies, because you were stupid enough to purchase them. They're not going to allow you to sell your unused copies because that means there would be someone making use of that oversold software. What's the point of having salespeople if they can't con customers into buying things they can't use? =)
1. The people you pay $54.99 to aren't using that to subsidize the shows you watch. The advertising pays for the content and you are paying for delivery. It's a scam, but that's how it works.
2. If it were legal, they would. I'm sure they're working on getting the laws changed to deal with you unrepentant content stealers. I'm sure there's some way they can show a direct link between people not watching commercials and 9-11.
It'll never happen. They've already convinced the public to be double billed. Originally, advertisements paid for the content and broadcast. Cable and satellite companies convinced people to pay for delivery, but market it as providing content. Most people are paying in time and money for their TV now.
You're paying for delivery when you pay your cable bill. Some of that is to license the feed from the various channels, but none of that really goes into the production cost for the content. There's no amount you can pay for cable that would have any effect on the desire of the content provider to sell advertising time in their shows.
In their minds, you are the enemy. You are the only thing that stands between them and your wallet. They pay to run the ad (which in turn pays to broadcast the show you want to watch) which is supposed to work like this:
Them: These are the drones you're looking for.
You: These are the drones I'm looking for.
Them: These drones can be yours for only $99.95! (small print flashed on the screen for 2 femto-seconds, the minimum duration permitted by law: Cost is $99.95 per month for the rest of your life, secured against all property you ever own. Purchasher of drones agrees to become the sole property of DroneCo.)
You: Take my money advertiser! I'm going to DIE if I don't have your drones.
If you don't purchase their product every time you see their commercial, they believe you are stealing the show that they are paying for. If you walk away from the TV when a commercial is on, you're stealing. You're free to get up during the show and do whatever you want, since that is just fluff that exists to sell ad time. Why do you think stupid reality shows are so common? No script writers or actors to pay, and people still watch it.
I had the same experience as another poster in this thread - when I was car shopping, I paid attention to car commercials. Since I'm not looking for a car now, I don't. I don't think I'm part of their target audience right now. But from their perspective, I am. They don't want me to buy a car becuse I need one or because it's better than my car, they want me to buy a car because I have money. I, as the consumer, am completely irrelevant to advertisers. My money is what they want, not me. If they could sue me to make me purchase their trash, they would. The only thing that stops them is the fact that no jury would convict someone for murdering advertisers who tried this tactic.
As a contractor, I ignore the calendar and look at hours (which is exactly the same as a cost, but without telling them the cost is fixed). If that means working 80+ hours per week for 6 months to make it happen on their timeline, that means I get to bill 2000 hours in 6 months. It's still a death march project, but when they're paying for their lack of planning, it's much more noticeable than when FTE's get stuck in a death march. Often times, the schedules are intentionally made unreasonable to keep the costs down and pressure up. While it's nice to be able to say "This will take X months", business people are more inclined to comprehend "This will cost $Y in time whether you want it done in X months or X/2 months." It's a polite way of telling them that they can have it in the unreasonable time if they really want it, but it's still going to cost them the same as if they had a reasonable timeline.
We're currently doing one of those types of projects - half the staff and half the time of the last time we did something similar. Seeing as the last time went way over budget, they're more amenable to negotiating which features will be available at which phase in the project. Of course, I think they're only flexible because they know I'm serious when I say that I'll work 80 hours a week to get everything done on time if they are willing to pay for it. =)
That's interesting to know. I never saw that kind of thing back in my day. =)
The only brute force attacks like this that I've seen are spam attempting every possible username on a host with a handful of users. Do the connections come from the same host or group of hosts? It just seems like it would be too easy to log the failed attempts and add the IP to the firewall, except in the case of a botnet.
Shadow passwords help prevent password guessing by brute force, but it hardly limits *any* kind of attack. There are too many other areas where it's possible to find vulnerabilities to say that it's a panacea. Does anyone actually try to brute force passwords from a login prompt? I've never seen it happen. That's just way too obvious when someone is doing it, is incredibly slow, and has a very low probability of success.
It's not uncommon for people to not think of their backups as a security risk. Most backups aren't encrypted, nor are they accessed often enough to notice if a tape goes missing for a week.
There needs to be some reasonable balance between policies and real life if people are expected to respect them. For example, if I give someone our part of the organization the password to allow anonymous read-only access to our CVS repository, that's clearly different than giving some random person in the company the root password for systems with databases of customer information.
We have a group that policy violations can be reported to, but they seem to be more about touchy feely solutions than ruling with an iron fist. I doubt anyone here would get fired for anything short of selling restricted information. I suspect government agencies work in a similar manner since there are many conflicting interests at work.
The security depends on the password. Since the cipher has to be public, keeping the ciphertext private prevents dictionary attacks. If people used good passwords, dictionary attacks wouldn't work and shadow password files wouldn't offer any benefit. Shadow passwords are a compromise to deal with the real world situation where people use lame passwords. Since there's no need for people to have the ciphertext publicly available, denying the access removes this particular avenue of attack.
Since when is the FBI on the cutting edge? They only pick up techniques that have had sufficient time to be proven, which leaves them 10-20 years behind the cutting edge. Fortunately for them, criminals tend to be 50 years behind the times since they're too paranoid to hire outside consultants who are aware of the most recent technical developments.
Why should they do that? They fixed the glitch. The guy pleaded guilty, so there's no reason for any government agent who acted carelessly and facilitated the crime to be reprimanded. From a management perspective, the problem isn't the access he had, but the egg on their face resulting from the access he had. He's got fired and will likely go to jail, so from the management perspective, the problem has been solved. It may be a stupid viewpoint, but it's a very common one when the alternative is taking responsibility for ones own actions.
Good thing this guy pleaded guilty. Otherwise, someone might ask uncomfortable questions, like why FBI agents were active participants in this criminal act. The whole problem would have been averted if someone didn't give their username and password to this guy.
Of course, the whole thing could have also been averted if normal users didn't have access to the password file. The Unix world figured out that shadow password files are a good idea a long time ago. Too bad the wisdom there hasn't caught on.
One thing everyone should know when working for a large organization is that they have policies for everything because they assume everyone is dumber than paste. The up side of this as a consultant is that you can bill a week for 30 minutes of work because there's a week of paperwork needed before you can perform any task. This guy tried to get things done more efficiently by sidestepping the boundaries. Small companies can respect that kind of attitude, but not the government. That kind of behavior results in lower billings to the government, and that is unamerican.
Jumping through hoops, as silly as they may be, is an important part of any technical job within a large organization.
Technically, that's only true if you want to call the program that does nothing from your path. Otherwise, the most perfect perl implementation of no functionality is either an empty file or a null command.
% touch foo
% perl foo
Alternatively:
% perl -e ''
At 40 hours, you are a part time developer. =)
Developers are generally exempt positions, so it's not uncommon to find many full time development jobs requiring 60-80 hours per week.
The trick to spending it all is compressing your expenses to respect the lack of free time. For example, why try to figure out why your car is acting weird when you can just go out and replace it for less than half a day's pay every month? =)
Maybe we could feed, house and clothe everyone in the world. But why would we want to do that? Is the goal to teach these people that we'll take care of them, so they don't have to? I just don't see the point. I doubt they'd do the same thing for me. In fact, I know they wouldn't. They're only in a position to take, not to give.
I'm sure I could support 10 families in some third world hell hole if I were willing to live in poverty. Granted, poverty in the US is much more comfortable than in the third world. However, my family would have a much lower standard of living in order to do that. I don't think there's anything altruistic about denying some people opportunities to give them to others.
It's not selfish or greedy to put yourself and your family's needs above those of others. You may want to only work 20 hours a week. Saying "we" doesn't change that it's your own selfish desire. I don't want to only work 20 hours a week. I don't mind working more to give my family an advantage over those who aren't willing to do more.
The world isn't going to become a better place if you can convince more rich people to donate to "charities" that skim heavily off the top before any of that money helps the poor. If you want to make the world a better place, DO something positive. If you want to help someone, help that person as an individual. Most "charities" work just like any other profit motivated corporation. If people really were interested in helping others, they'd do it free of charge. There aren't a lot of "charities" built on my idea of charity.
My wife has two kids from a previous marriage that I've taken in and treated as my own. We have two dogs we got from a rescue group and another that would have been put to sleep if we didn't give him a home. We drive Corollas, which have low emissions and get good gas mileage. I believe that if you want to make the world a better place, you actually have to take an active role in making it happen. Talking about it or donating to charities is only a baby step. For every dollar that goes into trying to help people in a third world country, there are probably 100 that go into exploiting the same people.
People are motivated by their own interests. It really is that simple. Maturity or "negative emotions" have nothing to do with it.
As an adult, you choose to worry.
Everything is temporary, it's just a matter of duration.
What will she do if you die? A better question is what will you do while you're both alive?
Have you tried talking to them so they understand the risks?
It may be good, it may be bad. It depends partially on the house, but mostly on if you choose to find the good or bad in it.
Are you aware of your surroundings wherever you go? Lack of awareness is a key contributor to looking like a victim.
All of those things can affect children as well. The difference is that they don't have enough experience to know what they're expected to worry about.
If the jury is not allowed to do anything other than strictly determine if the law was violated, what's the point of a jury? A judge can determine that better than a handful of random citizens.
It depends on the type of consumer you are. If you're a net-debtor, you have to bow down before them and accept your role as a peon. However, if you live within your means, you always have the option of telling them to stuff it. You can't do anything about the companies who amass and lose your data, unless you can afford to sue all of them.
What I don't understand is why people spend unlimited time negotiating with companies they have no legitimate association with. If a company is reporting that I owe them $10k, that's an actual monetary damage that I'm sufferring, which gives me a basis for taking them to court. I'd sue the creditor at that point because they are an active participant in the fraud being perpetrated. The companies granting credit based on information that is widely disseminated know that a certain percentage of the applications are fraudulent, but it's more cost effective to put the burden back on the individual in those cases. I think the burden should be put back on the companies to make it less cost effective. Talking to customer service people about a debt that isn't yours is painful and not likely to get any assistance. They can only walk all over you with your permission. Of course, the only way to make this work is to be willing to accept black marks on your credit report until it's resolved.
Try management.
a) most are bad, so how much worse can you be?
b) pays decently.
c) just learn to rephrase your deficiences as strengths and belittle others for not understanding.
That should work in a Dilbert strip or any Fortune 500 company.
The funny thing with large businesses is how afraid they are of taking advantage of high performing personnel. They don't want to get into the position where they benefit from someone and when that person leaves, they have to hire 5 people to replace him. I'm surprised that more large businesses don't fail from their policies requiring people to operate at 10% of capacity.
Anything made of stone has the best chance of standing the test of time. I think the pyramids demonstrate that. While the faces of the pyramids have been destroyed, there's no mistaking huge mounds of rocks that look out of place.
Knowing that there is iron in the concrete may lead to the conclusion that someone put it there, but not necessarily to why. One of the limitations of archaelogy is that the most believable story that incorporates all of the evidence wins. Knowing that something was a 3000 year old Anasazi field may be somewhat interesting, but generally isn't the level of detail people are looking for. While that may be true, it only tells us a little about how they lived. It doesn't tell us much about their culture, other than they farmed, which means they likely weren't nomads.
I remember an example used in class of how this process would work if it were applied to us. Some future archaeologist who came across the remains of our society would find most of it destroyed. Artifacts are rare, which is why they need a story to fill in the blanks. Many of the bodies found from our time would have groups of trinkets in close proximity, or in the clothes if they were still in tact. The number and types of these trinkets may be associated with someone's social status or religious beliefs. It would be curious because each group of trinkets would have similarities, but be different. In fact, no two identical sets of trinkets would be found across all of the bodies found. Someone could look at all of this and conclude that these were indications of social status and develop some intricate theory. Without someone from the present time to say "these are keys, they go in locks, we lock things because we don't trust people", the theory may sound solid.
If we all disappeared, how much of what we have done would survive the test of time? A thousand years of neglect would take its toll. Even concrete won't last forever. A few hundred years is good enough for our current purposes, but that's hardly a blip in history. If 95% of the population died off, it wouldn't be possible to maintain what we have right now. Combined with climate changes, it's easy to imagine how even our modern society could waste away. I imagine stories of Silicon Valley would sound a lot like Atlantis if the oceans rose a few hundred feet.
The idea of a nuclear war in antiquity is preposterous. They didn't have atoms back then. =)
And we can fund the war on terror with voyeurcam web sites. We could even have our taxes lowered due to the trillions of dollars in porn subscriptions the government would collect each year.
I think he was using Terra, as in Earth. It wouldn't have been as punny if he said only Earthers had to be afraid of their government snooping on them.