Unless my correspondents do as I do and keep most of the letters I receive.
In the days of yore when feather quills touched the surface of handmade rag paper people regularly did this. They also make copies of every letter they sent. That's why we have so many letters of people such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and his wife Abigail Adams. Even if the recipient didn't keep the letter, the copy survived.
I write a lot of snail mail. I correspond with people in jails and prisons which usually requires me to use snail mail. Furthermore, I've maintained a long correspondence with a friend. I have his e-mail address and his phone number but we choose to keep our communication limited mostly to paper letters, usually written by hand. I write mine with a fountain pen!
When I learned of the NSA's snooping I was comforted somewhat by the fact that my most private confidential communications goes through the U.S. Postal Service and is not subject to this. Well, I guess not! The supermarket (and the bank) knows what I buy when I use a credit card to pay for it. The various cities and states know where I drive because of cameras. The cops now are installing license plate recognition cameras to record license numbers. Facial recognition software makes it difficult for me to go anywhere anonymously even on foot. Verizon Wireless knows where I am because I keep my phone on most of the time. I'm waiting to have an RFID tag implanted in my forehead! Pretty soon we're going to be living in a country like the old DDR (that's East Germany to those too young to remember the Cold War) and a spying apparatus like its Stasi. Watch "Das Leben der Altern" (The Lives of Others), a German film of a few years ago to give you an idea of just how invasive this spying became. And this movie is set in 1984. It's much easier now!
Given your user ID probably old enough to be the sperm donor of your sperm donor. And it was called being "hyperactive" when I was a kid. This was 1970, folks. What it means is that I have to really like what I'm doing in order to get into the "zone" to be productive. If I don't like something it has to be imperative with dire consequences if I don't do it for me to get around to doing it. That's ADHD.
There are many things to be afraid of. I think my biggest fear is being irrelevant, something I feel greatly sometimes as the young hotshots come up from below and as more gray hairs appear. And because of my ADHD and dyslexia, I fear not being able to use my intelligence when I need to use it because my brain refuses to work.
But there are more terrible things to fear. The wrath of my evil cat when I step on her tail and what she leaves in the kitty litter that I have to clean up are two such horrible prospects. And when I was married, my wife was quite scary at times.
But really, when one looks at the big picture, the only thing to fear is fear itself (as FDR said). Accepting life on life's terms and not wasting time on trying to change things that can't be changed is what's important to me.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the desert knows two things: It's sunny most of the time and it's windy most of the time. Perhaps they're planning on covering their bases and are planning on installing some windmills to generate power when a storm rolls through and there is no sun. And on the sunny and windy days, any excess power they have can be sold to the local utility.
Prosecutors always overcharge the accused because 1) they can do it, and 2) it gives them leverage to get a plea bargain approved and avoid going to court and having to pay for an expensive trial. Because of the federal budget woes right now which has caused courts, the U.S. attorneys' offices (the prosecutors), and the federal public defenders' offices to lay off clerks and lawyers (but not judges) they undoubtedly would not want to go to trial given how hugely expensive it would be. But regardless of whether this guy is charged by the feds or the commonwealth of Massachusetts he at a minimum is going to spend his life in prison, probably a supermax. He could be the Unibomber's cellmate whenever the Supreme Court finally abolishes solitary confinement. Perhaps they could compare notes.
A favorite is an emulation of another of Seymour Cray's earlier designs, the Control Data 6000 series monsters from 1964 and its successors the Cybers, complete with screen shots of its then innovative console. I'd love to have this running on my iMac. I still have a copy of the old MIT Adventure game in FORTRAN for these beasts from my college days I wish I could play again. I'm too lazy to try to port it over to something else or get it to compile in a more modern FORTRAN compiler. However, the emulator does not include a copy of the NOS 2 dead start tape.
Sure, humans have an innate capacity for deluding themselves.
But if you look at what the field of dedicated humanities "researchers" have produced, it staggeringly dwarfs the delusion of ordinary people.
More "humanities" equals more delusion, not less.
Obviously, you do not have a clue as to what the humanities are or what they can do for a person.
For a lesson in the humanities from a scientist I direct you to the "Cosmos" miniseries aired on PBS in 1980 (it's on DVD) created by and featuring the late astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan. While that show dealt primarily with astronomy and science, it literally oozed with the humanities. I was 17 when it first aired and it had a tremendous affect upon me. This show was one of the guiding forces of my life.
If there is any truth touted by this show it's the simple fact that the humanities are absolutely necessary for a scientist or an engineer to be fully human.
I'm serious. I know a fellow who is not only 71 years old but a convicted felon who is still on federal supervised release and hasn't work in over ten years who recently got a job with the State of California doing some sort of IT work. The state hires older people. Hiring managers aren't blinded by the cost of older people's health insurance because it doesn't come out of their budget. I suspect it's the same with the Federal government.
Wouldn't that be special? And how long will it be before a Federal court overturns that order? Oh... probably about as long as it would take you to cook an egg. (Hint: eggs cook fast.)
As far as we know, you mean. What about Michael Hastings, the journalist who blew the whistle on General McChrystal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)
Well, I won't take it back. All governments are corrupt and are equally corrupt. They only differ in the ways they are corrupt and what the corruption is called. In this country it's called campaign contributions, travel junkets, and jobs after leaving office. In places like Mexico and Russia it's called bribery. But saying "feces" instead of shit and "copraphage" instead of shit eater doesn't change the fact that it's corruption.
Well, I stand by what I wrote. The rich can afford lawyers to fight the government. The rich usually don't attract the attention of law enforcement when they do nasty things, especially those who are politically connected. The poor, because they can't afford attorneys or often get substandard representation from attorneys appointed by the court, are the ones who get the justice—whether they're guilty or not. Just how many people has the Innocence Project gotten off death rows of American prisons because they were proven to be factually innocent?
There are occasions when I feel that the only real justice comes in the form of a lead slug. Fortunately, I'm not the one who will dish it out.
The British government is just as corrupt and useless as the American government. Justice, real justice, is only for the rich... or those who know their way around the court system and the time to pursue it.
I mean I can belch out methane from my nether regions with some serious attitude. Does this mean that if I ever go to China (not very likely) and the kung pau chicken doesn't agree with me, does this mean that my life is threatened? Well, maybe. Considering how people smoke tobacco like a brush fire over there all it'll take is one smoker getting to close to me and *boom*!
This letter is a fine piece of legal writing. The only other bits of legal writing I've seen during my legal research when I went to court "in pro per" (that's Legalese for "I did it by myself") over a trifling First Amendment issue that were as funny were a couple of SCOTUS opinions written by the two acknowledged legal hacks of the court, Scalia and Thomas. The original of Scalia's was written in blood; Thomas' original was written in crayon.
I'd be surprised they will give them access to a computer. But the Swedish prison system is supposedly quite tolerable and remarkably humane compared to those in much of the rest of the world (especially the American federal and state gulags which are third-world in many aspects) so I could be wrong.
If you know anything about life in prison you would know that just having a job is a "big deal®". It makes the time fly more quickly. There are worse things than assembling IKEA furniture. For example, prison systems are like Google in this one respect, they eat their own dog food. So they make and consume their own products such as food, clothes, and soap. Can you imagine spending years working in, for example, a chicken factory?
Well, it depends upon what you want. I pay $50/month for unlimited voice/data/text with Verizon... but I don't use a smartphone. I use a plain ordinary Samsung pay-as-you-go phone at Target for $20 which included a $10 credit. It depends upon what you really need a phone for. I need a phone for voice stuff. When I want the Internet I use my MacBook. Who needs a smartphone or a pad when you have a portable REAL computer.
As a long time Verizon Wireless customer I would have to agree. However, their hiring practices are illegal based upon what a friend's experience. I would not want to work for such an unenlightened and short-sighted company.
Well, maybe not Google but the U.S. Department of Justice. They have a database of all child pornography images known to law enforcement. Whenever there is a prosecution, the images go to them to determine if there are any new ones. They also try to identify who the child actually is with some success. So, in conjunction with them, it would not be difficult to create a database of "images" that Google is proposing. The question is why it's taken them so long? This DOJ database has been around for quite a while.
This has nothing to do with paranoia. This has everything to do with the simple fact that the technology exists, the government believes it can do it legally (and even if they believe it's illegal they'll say they "believe" it's legal in order to prevent going to prison), and that there is a perceived need to do it. They are doing this, and probably more as well.
There are two great forces at work here. There is the U.S. Constitution that states that we have various civil liberties and that these liberties guarantee us from undue governmental interference in our lives. Then there is the U.S., state, and local governments, all of whom have a job to do in the name of public safety. These two forces collide all the time and we leave it to the courts to sort it all out.
In short, the NSA is doing its job. The question is are they trampling upon our right to be free from government intrusion into our business more than is necessary. The answer clearly is yes and Mr. Snowden is demonstrating and probably will continue to demonstrate that they've crossed the line.
Mr. Snowden may eventually be captured by the U.S. government and be hanged by his balls, he may be a Chinese spy as has been alleged by some in the government, but if his revelations are true he is doing you and I ordinary people a great service by airing all this, at a minimum, naughty, and, at most, highly illegal shit. If this stuff is true, I want to see some high government officials hanging by their balls (or tits for those of the female species) for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless my correspondents do as I do and keep most of the letters I receive.
In the days of yore when feather quills touched the surface of handmade rag paper people regularly did this. They also make copies of every letter they sent. That's why we have so many letters of people such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and his wife Abigail Adams. Even if the recipient didn't keep the letter, the copy survived.
I write a lot of snail mail. I correspond with people in jails and prisons which usually requires me to use snail mail. Furthermore, I've maintained a long correspondence with a friend. I have his e-mail address and his phone number but we choose to keep our communication limited mostly to paper letters, usually written by hand. I write mine with a fountain pen!
When I learned of the NSA's snooping I was comforted somewhat by the fact that my most private confidential communications goes through the U.S. Postal Service and is not subject to this. Well, I guess not! The supermarket (and the bank) knows what I buy when I use a credit card to pay for it. The various cities and states know where I drive because of cameras. The cops now are installing license plate recognition cameras to record license numbers. Facial recognition software makes it difficult for me to go anywhere anonymously even on foot. Verizon Wireless knows where I am because I keep my phone on most of the time. I'm waiting to have an RFID tag implanted in my forehead!
Pretty soon we're going to be living in a country like the old DDR (that's East Germany to those too young to remember the Cold War) and a spying apparatus like its Stasi. Watch "Das Leben der Altern" (The Lives of Others), a German film of a few years ago to give you an idea of just how invasive this spying became. And this movie is set in 1984. It's much easier now!
Given your user ID probably old enough to be the sperm donor of your sperm donor. And it was called being "hyperactive" when I was a kid. This was 1970, folks. What it means is that I have to really like what I'm doing in order to get into the "zone" to be productive. If I don't like something it has to be imperative with dire consequences if I don't do it for me to get around to doing it. That's ADHD.
There are many things to be afraid of. I think my biggest fear is being irrelevant, something I feel greatly sometimes as the young hotshots come up from below and as more gray hairs appear. And because of my ADHD and dyslexia, I fear not being able to use my intelligence when I need to use it because my brain refuses to work.
But there are more terrible things to fear. The wrath of my evil cat when I step on her tail and what she leaves in the kitty litter that I have to clean up are two such horrible prospects. And when I was married, my wife was quite scary at times.
But really, when one looks at the big picture, the only thing to fear is fear itself (as FDR said). Accepting life on life's terms and not wasting time on trying to change things that can't be changed is what's important to me.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the desert knows two things: It's sunny most of the time and it's windy most of the time. Perhaps they're planning on covering their bases and are planning on installing some windmills to generate power when a storm rolls through and there is no sun. And on the sunny and windy days, any excess power they have can be sold to the local utility.
Prosecutors always overcharge the accused because 1) they can do it, and 2) it gives them leverage to get a plea bargain approved and avoid going to court and having to pay for an expensive trial. Because of the federal budget woes right now which has caused courts, the U.S. attorneys' offices (the prosecutors), and the federal public defenders' offices to lay off clerks and lawyers (but not judges) they undoubtedly would not want to go to trial given how hugely expensive it would be. But regardless of whether this guy is charged by the feds or the commonwealth of Massachusetts he at a minimum is going to spend his life in prison, probably a supermax. He could be the Unibomber's cellmate whenever the Supreme Court finally abolishes solitary confinement. Perhaps they could compare notes.
A favorite is an emulation of another of Seymour Cray's earlier designs, the Control Data 6000 series monsters from 1964 and its successors the Cybers, complete with screen shots of its then innovative console. I'd love to have this running on my iMac. I still have a copy of the old MIT Adventure game in FORTRAN for these beasts from my college days I wish I could play again. I'm too lazy to try to port it over to something else or get it to compile in a more modern FORTRAN compiler. However, the emulator does not include a copy of the NOS 2 dead start tape.
Sure, humans have an innate capacity for deluding themselves.
But if you look at what the field of dedicated humanities "researchers" have produced, it staggeringly dwarfs the delusion of ordinary people.
More "humanities" equals more delusion, not less.
Obviously, you do not have a clue as to what the humanities are or what they can do for a person.
For a lesson in the humanities from a scientist I direct you to the "Cosmos" miniseries aired on PBS in 1980 (it's on DVD) created by and featuring the late astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan. While that show dealt primarily with astronomy and science, it literally oozed with the humanities. I was 17 when it first aired and it had a tremendous affect upon me. This show was one of the guiding forces of my life.
If there is any truth touted by this show it's the simple fact that the humanities are absolutely necessary for a scientist or an engineer to be fully human.
I'm serious. I know a fellow who is not only 71 years old but a convicted felon who is still on federal supervised release and hasn't work in over ten years who recently got a job with the State of California doing some sort of IT work. The state hires older people. Hiring managers aren't blinded by the cost of older people's health insurance because it doesn't come out of their budget. I suspect it's the same with the Federal government.
Wouldn't that be special? And how long will it be before a Federal court overturns that order? Oh... probably about as long as it would take you to cook an egg. (Hint: eggs cook fast.)
As far as we know, you mean. What about Michael Hastings, the journalist who blew the whistle on General McChrystal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)
Well, I won't take it back. All governments are corrupt and are equally corrupt. They only differ in the ways they are corrupt and what the corruption is called. In this country it's called campaign contributions, travel junkets, and jobs after leaving office. In places like Mexico and Russia it's called bribery. But saying "feces" instead of shit and "copraphage" instead of shit eater doesn't change the fact that it's corruption.
Well, I stand by what I wrote. The rich can afford lawyers to fight the government. The rich usually don't attract the attention of law enforcement when they do nasty things, especially those who are politically connected. The poor, because they can't afford attorneys or often get substandard representation from attorneys appointed by the court, are the ones who get the justice—whether they're guilty or not. Just how many people has the Innocence Project gotten off death rows of American prisons because they were proven to be factually innocent?
There are occasions when I feel that the only real justice comes in the form of a lead slug. Fortunately, I'm not the one who will dish it out.
The British government is just as corrupt and useless as the American government. Justice, real justice, is only for the rich... or those who know their way around the court system and the time to pursue it.
I mean I can belch out methane from my nether regions with some serious attitude. Does this mean that if I ever go to China (not very likely) and the kung pau chicken doesn't agree with me, does this mean that my life is threatened? Well, maybe. Considering how people smoke tobacco like a brush fire over there all it'll take is one smoker getting to close to me and *boom*!
This letter is a fine piece of legal writing. The only other bits of legal writing I've seen during my legal research when I went to court "in pro per" (that's Legalese for "I did it by myself") over a trifling First Amendment issue that were as funny were a couple of SCOTUS opinions written by the two acknowledged legal hacks of the court, Scalia and Thomas. The original of Scalia's was written in blood; Thomas' original was written in crayon.
I'd be surprised they will give them access to a computer. But the Swedish prison system is supposedly quite tolerable and remarkably humane compared to those in much of the rest of the world (especially the American federal and state gulags which are third-world in many aspects) so I could be wrong.
If you know anything about life in prison you would know that just having a job is a "big deal®". It makes the time fly more quickly. There are worse things than assembling IKEA furniture. For example, prison systems are like Google in this one respect, they eat their own dog food. So they make and consume their own products such as food, clothes, and soap. Can you imagine spending years working in, for example, a chicken factory?
Well, it depends upon what you want. I pay $50/month for unlimited voice/data/text with Verizon... but I don't use a smartphone. I use a plain ordinary Samsung pay-as-you-go phone at Target for $20 which included a $10 credit. It depends upon what you really need a phone for. I need a phone for voice stuff. When I want the Internet I use my MacBook. Who needs a smartphone or a pad when you have a portable REAL computer.
As a long time Verizon Wireless customer I would have to agree. However, their hiring practices are illegal based upon what a friend's experience. I would not want to work for such an unenlightened and short-sighted company.
Well, maybe not Google but the U.S. Department of Justice. They have a database of all child pornography images known to law enforcement. Whenever there is a prosecution, the images go to them to determine if there are any new ones. They also try to identify who the child actually is with some success. So, in conjunction with them, it would not be difficult to create a database of "images" that Google is proposing. The question is why it's taken them so long? This DOJ database has been around for quite a while.
This has nothing to do with paranoia. This has everything to do with the simple fact that the technology exists, the government believes it can do it legally (and even if they believe it's illegal they'll say they "believe" it's legal in order to prevent going to prison), and that there is a perceived need to do it. They are doing this, and probably more as well.
There are two great forces at work here. There is the U.S. Constitution that states that we have various civil liberties and that these liberties guarantee us from undue governmental interference in our lives. Then there is the U.S., state, and local governments, all of whom have a job to do in the name of public safety. These two forces collide all the time and we leave it to the courts to sort it all out.
In short, the NSA is doing its job. The question is are they trampling upon our right to be free from government intrusion into our business more than is necessary. The answer clearly is yes and Mr. Snowden is demonstrating and probably will continue to demonstrate that they've crossed the line.
If only I were.
Mr. Snowden may eventually be captured by the U.S. government and be hanged by his balls, he may be a Chinese spy as has been alleged by some in the government, but if his revelations are true he is doing you and I ordinary people a great service by airing all this, at a minimum, naughty, and, at most, highly illegal shit. If this stuff is true, I want to see some high government officials hanging by their balls (or tits for those of the female species) for their actions.
"Bloody Brits." Hmmm.... maybe, we Yanks certainly bloodied them pretty good in the 18th century and again in 1815. :-P