And yet if you spoil your ballot you can bring it up to the judges and get a new one to fill out. When I check in I have to sign affirming that I am actually competant enough to vote and the inability to properly fill out a ballot correctly or neatly means if I can't then for what ever thing I marked incorrectly gets either counted incorrectly or not counted. If you can't write legibly well that is your problem.
I just wish that the government would actually issue people real free IDs since you are correct that they are needed for every damn thing today do it at the federal level with with the local governmental offices all being able to issue them, and have them be valid for 5 years. If you need a replacement then have it cost like $5 or $10 of what ever the processing cost is.
Then again we in Minnesota don't have touch screen machines and instead use the bog standard scantron like sheets that get fed into a machine that counts the votes. It has a nice audit trail provided that the number of ballots matches the number of voters who checked in and since just about anyone who went to school in the last 40 years has filled out a scantron sheet and if not it is pretty simple to figure out. It isn't like those shit butterfly ballots that I can see how it would be pretty easy to fuck up. Now if only during recounts we didn't have to interpret voter intent and instead shit canned ballots that people fucked up since it is trivial to get a new ballot, I was curious last time around so I filled in some of my ballot and then went and said I messed up to see what happens. All you do is go up to the judges and say you made a mistake and they void your old ballot and give you a new one. They then have a special envelope for putting spoiled ballots in and you go and fill out your new ballot.
True but that is why I said that it would be my dream match up. Instead we will likely have moderates from both parties who will each pay lip service to the standard wedge issues and pander some to their respective bases and who ever wins will proclaim that they have a mandate to keep screwing us over just in a slightly different way than the other guy. While it would be fun to watch if Trump gets the nomination he isn't someone I would ever want to see in power and if he gets the nomination he stands a very good chance of winning with his celebrity. While I agree with some of his ideas others are downright frightening, with his plan for ISIS is the first one that jumps to mind where we go in take their oil fields and to prevent them from having a source of income and then hold them indefinitely and ship the oil to the US. This just seems like a long term plan for disaster.
Personally I think Sanders would be more electable than Hilary but than I happen to like him more as a candidate as he at least offers a real choice. Of those running my dream matchup would be Sander vs. Paul or Sanders vs. Cruze as there would be real differences and hopefully actual debate about what way to go. I want to see a Clinton nomination about as much as a Bush nomination.
If this is what he considers deep cynicism I don't want to know what he considers a lack of cynicism. How many people spout the "Think of the children" or "If you have nothing to hide" lines. I think he would prefer that we had cameras and microphones in everyone's house just to be sure. Of course he may be in the camp that believes the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms so he is just doing what he can to eliminate those freedoms.
Well to be fair knowing someone who has a B.A. in fine art it is possible to make a living at it. In a given year he probably puts in more time working than I do but then he treats painting as an actual job. Granted it sometimes carries very odd hours and the pay is sporadic but he has managed to make a reasonable living at it. Too many people doing similar careers treat it as more of a hobby than an actual career and only work when they feel like it. So it is possible to follow your muse and make a living at it. Then again he would have likely succeeded without his B.A. with his work ethic.
I always liked their archaeology articles. A few years back I bought the complete National Geographic on DVD. I like to pick an issue at random and read it from time to time. Although are they still producing new real documentaries like what use to show on PBS in the 80s or is that now left to the BBC.
Ever try paying off a loan really early, like in 8 days in on a 36 month term? That was one of the biggest pains in the ass I have had to deal with.
I got a loan for my most recent car as I found one quicker than I had imagined so the money wasn't in my account yet so since it was cheaper to get a loan until the money showed up than to pay the additional cost of gas each day for driving my Jeep I got a loan. Then once the money showed up in my account I ended up spending about 3 hours on the phone with the loan company who didn't even have a record of my loan in their system yet and then once they tracked down the paperwork they tried to convince me that I had a really good rate and that I should keep the loan. Eventually I was able to get everything straightened out. The mail on the subject for the next moth was kind of funny to watch roll in as things arrived all out of order.
From a previous job reinsurers often will insure policies of other reinsures. This has previously lead to some bad situations in the past with huge tangled webs.
Except those washing machines won't ever die. They are like the Model 500 phones or IBM Model M keyboards. Even if something does go wrong on them it is usually a simple fix. I have a Maytag washer from the early 70s the only issue I have had is that my wife is really good at overloading it so the little stupid plastic clip for the agitator ratcheting mechanism brakes and it just spins freely at that point.
Most of that is scare tactics. Most cars are basically the same with varying build quality and materials. There is nothing mechanically special with a Saab when compared to any other gasoline powered FWD vechicle. Granted there may be some differences like with BMW and their current double VANOS system but even that isn't all that special just a neat way of doing variable valve timing and valve lift. Of course an unbalanced half shaft is going to cause problems and there are shops that can check and fix that that aren't Saab. Also all brake systems are high pressure and are really easy to work on. Since most vehicles don't use drum brakes anymore it is so much easier to do. The hardest set of disk brakes I have ever done were the ones on my old Bronco II and that was only because there were 2 pins that you have to pound out that held the caliper in place. The most difficult repair I ever did to a vehicle was replacing the valley pan on my previous car and I decided that since I was in there any way I would also to valve cover gaskets, and the CCV as well. It took about 8 hours but I didn't have any problems. After that the next worst repair was replacing the blower motor in that E39 BMW and that was mostly because physically getting the dash in and out of the car was a real bitch.
We really do need to take a page from Israel and the methods they use.
So dump all your carry on shit out on the table, look it over for banned items, then shove it all back in your bag, and do it to everyone.
The last I was over there they had you hold on to your checked luggage for as long as possible. Also there are various stages where various people quickly question you to see if you get nervous or have suspect answers. You only send your bag through the X-Ray machine right before you go through the metal detectors your self and if they do have a question about your bag they would make you take it over to some secondary screeners who make you open your bag dig the item out in question and then they question you about it. In my case it was my old Spotmatic F and lenses. They fired off a bunch of questions to try and trip you up like:
What is in the middle of your bag?
How long have you had the camera?
Did you get the camera from anyone in Israel?
Where did you get the camera?
Do they really take better pictures than a digital?
Also when going through Israeli security they don't have the huge lines of people that the TSA is great at generating. Also all they use are metal detectors and don't make you take your shoes off even if you are wearing safety toe footwear, but in that case they will have you go and step onto a foot X-ray machine for a quick check after the metal detector. Also the Israelis like to say the don't profile but instead reverse profile. That is if you don't fit the profile then you get extra screening.
You're making the assumption that those attacking it are using the same technology that you are aware of - which may be the case. Then again it may not.
At this point if they have something more than a dwave quantum annealer or I'll go so far as to even say a theoretical 256 bit quantum computer for technology then they likely have moved into the realm of magic pixie dust and unicorn farts. Even assuming that they have some magical theoretical device that is capable of cycling through a 256bit key space without actually destroying data, i.e. the bit flips cost zero energy, they still wouldn't have done any checks on those keys which will take energy at least comparable to the energy to do the 2^256 bit flips. Since none of the leaks from the NSA indicate that they somehow have under their control a separate universe to suck energy out of I'm not worried about that type of attack as brute force is hard.
That said yes they do have some very smart people working there but there are also a lot of very smart people outside the NSA as well doing crypto work. Given this even the best attacks on something like twofish still are at best theoretical and require vast amounts of power and resources. So if one assumes that indeed twofish is susceptible to this type of attack then the solution is to do what most tools allow which is a cascading of algorithms like TrueCrypts AES->Serpant->Twofish. Add in additional algorithms like 3DES and IDEA and you make it so even if one is compromised or "easier" to attack it doesn't mean that the entire chain is compromised.
If the government wants to decrypt your stuff the most effective type of attack is the $5 wrench or rubber host type of cryptanalysis. If they are willing to go to that level of effort for your stuff you are fucked anyways. Also if you use a one time pad and then destroy your pad once done like you should then there is no way that the data can be decrypted even with rubber host cryptanalysis, that is unless you memorized the pad which would seem to be an exercise in futility. Cryptography is not going to be the weak link in most cases unless you roll your own algorithm, allow weak ciphers, or do stuff like keep the keys around. More than likely the problem will be with the user doing dumb things like leaving the key under their keyboard, or leaving encrypted volumes open all the time even when the data should be a rest.
The key in your statement is backdoors and people suspect that some may have been put in to things like bitlocker, Android and iOS full device encrypt and other closed source products. This however doesn't prevent you from using things like TrueCrypt (included because there hasn't been shown to be any real red flags even with the limited audit), PGP/GPG, the various TrueCrypt successors, other encryption programs. Something that requires 2^256 bit flips is going to be awfully energy intensive even if it is done with the magic of quantum computers which can speed up the process but not that much (I want to say it can cut the exponent in half but I may not be remembering it correctly). So if we take an optimistic view with quantum computers that still means it takes 2^128 bit flips and good luck finding enough energy to do that. Basically proper cryptography without backdoors or flaws is something that cannot be broken even using all of the available energy in the universe. If that doesn't offer enough protection then you could always use a one time pad.
Maybe presenting proof of identification in person. I would suggest a government issued identification card like a divers license, or passport. Additionally that information should be verifiable against a database. So you hand over a your drivers license to a bank they look at the picture and verify that your picture matches that face that is looking at them then they enter the license number and state into the DB and up pops the picture on record as well as the other information on the license and they verify that it matches the picture on the license that they just verified matches your face. For their own records the lending institution should have to keep a picture of the identifying document you presented as well as the picture of you on the day you arrived so that if there is a question about the authenticity of the loan they can present this information.
Another idea would be for some sort of government managed PKI system for the general population where the individual never shares the private key with the government. I can sign and/or encrypt e-mails at work using a PKI system, and in Europe* their credit cards make use of a PKI system so why can't the same be done in the US at a national level.
*Yes I know there is something similar here in the us that is being rolled out but chip and pin is better than the stupid chip and sign.
Hell I make it a point to take my vacation and when I am on vacation I have made it very clear that I will be unreachable for most manages definition of reachable. I had one dickhead manager who wanted to know if I could get a hold of me when I was on vacation once. The fact that I would be out of cell range was lost on him. Finally when he insisted that he have a way to contact me in case of emergencies I told him where I planned on leaving my car and walking into the north woods of Minnesota. Then I told him to start there then hire a trained tracker and a team of dogs.
HR rarely knows what your job actually is now days. Personally I hate their mandatory training, especially the company wide diversity training. For my job it could be summed up in one line:
Don't be a dick
but instead it ends up being something that takes a couple of hours to complete because for some reason I need to know all of the laws about discrimination and how to effectively hire and fire people in a race/gender/religion neutral way. Then there is the ethics training, which again is just as bad and for people in my position could be summed up as:
The simple answer is people are stupid. Just like people who think that a higher megapixel count on a phone some how means that it will take better pictures, even though we are long past the diffraction limited point. Yes the screen is 4k but don't expect to render a AAA game at 4k on that hardware, 4k angry birds sure.
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And yet if you spoil your ballot you can bring it up to the judges and get a new one to fill out. When I check in I have to sign affirming that I am actually competant enough to vote and the inability to properly fill out a ballot correctly or neatly means if I can't then for what ever thing I marked incorrectly gets either counted incorrectly or not counted. If you can't write legibly well that is your problem.
Fuck OCR. A simple scantron ballot like this example one from the Minnesota 2012 election is good enough. Why over complicate things
I just wish that the government would actually issue people real free IDs since you are correct that they are needed for every damn thing today do it at the federal level with with the local governmental offices all being able to issue them, and have them be valid for 5 years. If you need a replacement then have it cost like $5 or $10 of what ever the processing cost is.
Then again we in Minnesota don't have touch screen machines and instead use the bog standard scantron like sheets that get fed into a machine that counts the votes. It has a nice audit trail provided that the number of ballots matches the number of voters who checked in and since just about anyone who went to school in the last 40 years has filled out a scantron sheet and if not it is pretty simple to figure out. It isn't like those shit butterfly ballots that I can see how it would be pretty easy to fuck up. Now if only during recounts we didn't have to interpret voter intent and instead shit canned ballots that people fucked up since it is trivial to get a new ballot, I was curious last time around so I filled in some of my ballot and then went and said I messed up to see what happens. All you do is go up to the judges and say you made a mistake and they void your old ballot and give you a new one. They then have a special envelope for putting spoiled ballots in and you go and fill out your new ballot.
True but that is why I said that it would be my dream match up. Instead we will likely have moderates from both parties who will each pay lip service to the standard wedge issues and pander some to their respective bases and who ever wins will proclaim that they have a mandate to keep screwing us over just in a slightly different way than the other guy. While it would be fun to watch if Trump gets the nomination he isn't someone I would ever want to see in power and if he gets the nomination he stands a very good chance of winning with his celebrity. While I agree with some of his ideas others are downright frightening, with his plan for ISIS is the first one that jumps to mind where we go in take their oil fields and to prevent them from having a source of income and then hold them indefinitely and ship the oil to the US. This just seems like a long term plan for disaster.
Sounds like they weren't following the guidelines that they recommend for the energy industry.
Personally I think Sanders would be more electable than Hilary but than I happen to like him more as a candidate as he at least offers a real choice. Of those running my dream matchup would be Sander vs. Paul or Sanders vs. Cruze as there would be real differences and hopefully actual debate about what way to go. I want to see a Clinton nomination about as much as a Bush nomination.
If this is what he considers deep cynicism I don't want to know what he considers a lack of cynicism. How many people spout the "Think of the children" or "If you have nothing to hide" lines. I think he would prefer that we had cameras and microphones in everyone's house just to be sure. Of course he may be in the camp that believes the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms so he is just doing what he can to eliminate those freedoms.
That too. Insurance companies are among the most scummy in existence.
Well to be fair knowing someone who has a B.A. in fine art it is possible to make a living at it. In a given year he probably puts in more time working than I do but then he treats painting as an actual job. Granted it sometimes carries very odd hours and the pay is sporadic but he has managed to make a reasonable living at it. Too many people doing similar careers treat it as more of a hobby than an actual career and only work when they feel like it. So it is possible to follow your muse and make a living at it. Then again he would have likely succeeded without his B.A. with his work ethic.
"Gazelles, harbingers of homosexual war on christmas"
I'd be more worried about the dik-diks doing that.
I always liked their archaeology articles. A few years back I bought the complete National Geographic on DVD. I like to pick an issue at random and read it from time to time. Although are they still producing new real documentaries like what use to show on PBS in the 80s or is that now left to the BBC.
Ever try paying off a loan really early, like in 8 days in on a 36 month term? That was one of the biggest pains in the ass I have had to deal with.
I got a loan for my most recent car as I found one quicker than I had imagined so the money wasn't in my account yet so since it was cheaper to get a loan until the money showed up than to pay the additional cost of gas each day for driving my Jeep I got a loan. Then once the money showed up in my account I ended up spending about 3 hours on the phone with the loan company who didn't even have a record of my loan in their system yet and then once they tracked down the paperwork they tried to convince me that I had a really good rate and that I should keep the loan. Eventually I was able to get everything straightened out. The mail on the subject for the next moth was kind of funny to watch roll in as things arrived all out of order.
From a previous job reinsurers often will insure policies of other reinsures. This has previously lead to some bad situations in the past with huge tangled webs.
Except those washing machines won't ever die. They are like the Model 500 phones or IBM Model M keyboards. Even if something does go wrong on them it is usually a simple fix. I have a Maytag washer from the early 70s the only issue I have had is that my wife is really good at overloading it so the little stupid plastic clip for the agitator ratcheting mechanism brakes and it just spins freely at that point.
Most of that is scare tactics. Most cars are basically the same with varying build quality and materials. There is nothing mechanically special with a Saab when compared to any other gasoline powered FWD vechicle. Granted there may be some differences like with BMW and their current double VANOS system but even that isn't all that special just a neat way of doing variable valve timing and valve lift. Of course an unbalanced half shaft is going to cause problems and there are shops that can check and fix that that aren't Saab. Also all brake systems are high pressure and are really easy to work on. Since most vehicles don't use drum brakes anymore it is so much easier to do. The hardest set of disk brakes I have ever done were the ones on my old Bronco II and that was only because there were 2 pins that you have to pound out that held the caliper in place. The most difficult repair I ever did to a vehicle was replacing the valley pan on my previous car and I decided that since I was in there any way I would also to valve cover gaskets, and the CCV as well. It took about 8 hours but I didn't have any problems. After that the next worst repair was replacing the blower motor in that E39 BMW and that was mostly because physically getting the dash in and out of the car was a real bitch.
We really do need to take a page from Israel and the methods they use.
So dump all your carry on shit out on the table, look it over for banned items, then shove it all back in your bag, and do it to everyone.
The last I was over there they had you hold on to your checked luggage for as long as possible. Also there are various stages where various people quickly question you to see if you get nervous or have suspect answers. You only send your bag through the X-Ray machine right before you go through the metal detectors your self and if they do have a question about your bag they would make you take it over to some secondary screeners who make you open your bag dig the item out in question and then they question you about it. In my case it was my old Spotmatic F and lenses. They fired off a bunch of questions to try and trip you up like:
What is in the middle of your bag?
How long have you had the camera?
Did you get the camera from anyone in Israel?
Where did you get the camera?
Do they really take better pictures than a digital?
Also when going through Israeli security they don't have the huge lines of people that the TSA is great at generating. Also all they use are metal detectors and don't make you take your shoes off even if you are wearing safety toe footwear, but in that case they will have you go and step onto a foot X-ray machine for a quick check after the metal detector. Also the Israelis like to say the don't profile but instead reverse profile. That is if you don't fit the profile then you get extra screening.
You're making the assumption that those attacking it are using the same technology that you are aware of - which may be the case. Then again it may not.
At this point if they have something more than a dwave quantum annealer or I'll go so far as to even say a theoretical 256 bit quantum computer for technology then they likely have moved into the realm of magic pixie dust and unicorn farts. Even assuming that they have some magical theoretical device that is capable of cycling through a 256bit key space without actually destroying data, i.e. the bit flips cost zero energy, they still wouldn't have done any checks on those keys which will take energy at least comparable to the energy to do the 2^256 bit flips. Since none of the leaks from the NSA indicate that they somehow have under their control a separate universe to suck energy out of I'm not worried about that type of attack as brute force is hard.
That said yes they do have some very smart people working there but there are also a lot of very smart people outside the NSA as well doing crypto work. Given this even the best attacks on something like twofish still are at best theoretical and require vast amounts of power and resources. So if one assumes that indeed twofish is susceptible to this type of attack then the solution is to do what most tools allow which is a cascading of algorithms like TrueCrypts AES->Serpant->Twofish. Add in additional algorithms like 3DES and IDEA and you make it so even if one is compromised or "easier" to attack it doesn't mean that the entire chain is compromised.
If the government wants to decrypt your stuff the most effective type of attack is the $5 wrench or rubber host type of cryptanalysis. If they are willing to go to that level of effort for your stuff you are fucked anyways. Also if you use a one time pad and then destroy your pad once done like you should then there is no way that the data can be decrypted even with rubber host cryptanalysis, that is unless you memorized the pad which would seem to be an exercise in futility. Cryptography is not going to be the weak link in most cases unless you roll your own algorithm, allow weak ciphers, or do stuff like keep the keys around. More than likely the problem will be with the user doing dumb things like leaving the key under their keyboard, or leaving encrypted volumes open all the time even when the data should be a rest.
The key in your statement is backdoors and people suspect that some may have been put in to things like bitlocker, Android and iOS full device encrypt and other closed source products. This however doesn't prevent you from using things like TrueCrypt (included because there hasn't been shown to be any real red flags even with the limited audit), PGP/GPG, the various TrueCrypt successors, other encryption programs. Something that requires 2^256 bit flips is going to be awfully energy intensive even if it is done with the magic of quantum computers which can speed up the process but not that much (I want to say it can cut the exponent in half but I may not be remembering it correctly). So if we take an optimistic view with quantum computers that still means it takes 2^128 bit flips and good luck finding enough energy to do that. Basically proper cryptography without backdoors or flaws is something that cannot be broken even using all of the available energy in the universe. If that doesn't offer enough protection then you could always use a one time pad.
I prefer non petroleum based lubes.
Might I suggest bio incinerators.
Maybe presenting proof of identification in person. I would suggest a government issued identification card like a divers license, or passport. Additionally that information should be verifiable against a database. So you hand over a your drivers license to a bank they look at the picture and verify that your picture matches that face that is looking at them then they enter the license number and state into the DB and up pops the picture on record as well as the other information on the license and they verify that it matches the picture on the license that they just verified matches your face. For their own records the lending institution should have to keep a picture of the identifying document you presented as well as the picture of you on the day you arrived so that if there is a question about the authenticity of the loan they can present this information.
Another idea would be for some sort of government managed PKI system for the general population where the individual never shares the private key with the government. I can sign and/or encrypt e-mails at work using a PKI system, and in Europe* their credit cards make use of a PKI system so why can't the same be done in the US at a national level.
*Yes I know there is something similar here in the us that is being rolled out but chip and pin is better than the stupid chip and sign.
Hell I make it a point to take my vacation and when I am on vacation I have made it very clear that I will be unreachable for most manages definition of reachable. I had one dickhead manager who wanted to know if I could get a hold of me when I was on vacation once. The fact that I would be out of cell range was lost on him. Finally when he insisted that he have a way to contact me in case of emergencies I told him where I planned on leaving my car and walking into the north woods of Minnesota. Then I told him to start there then hire a trained tracker and a team of dogs.
Don't be a dick
but instead it ends up being something that takes a couple of hours to complete because for some reason I need to know all of the laws about discrimination and how to effectively hire and fire people in a race/gender/religion neutral way. Then there is the ethics training, which again is just as bad and for people in my position could be summed up as:
Don't steal shit
.
The simple answer is people are stupid. Just like people who think that a higher megapixel count on a phone some how means that it will take better pictures, even though we are long past the diffraction limited point. Yes the screen is 4k but don't expect to render a AAA game at 4k on that hardware, 4k angry birds sure.