No shit! I hate it when they change the name of something public to that of some rich cocksucker. They did that to the park in my home town, now it has some rich assholes name on it. WTF? If he wants his own park, let him go build his own, that one was OURS, the people. They are trying to turn our resevour into private land and kick the public out as well. They had a perfectly fine water treatment plant, but they shut it down in preparation of privatizing that prime land for the rich.
Luckily we have some nosy citizens who show up to city counsel meetings and ask all the right questions.
I am sure they are. (listening) If they have those capabilities, why not make a hyperactive spyder to run about checking for key phrases? Catalog what it finds and produce a report to whomever or whatever is in charge. At some point, I would imagine having the A.I. take charge if it already hasn't, would help sift through this kind of horrible exposure for them.
It/they will check every post/link/comment and evaluate it for threat level, after they have establish who you are. If you are of the proper threat level then you will become a priority target for surveillance. Everything you do can be tracked already, so don't bother trying to run, unless its into the deep woods on a very stormy day/night. Leave everything behind except your clothing, but microwave the shit out of those first. Take only knives/tools/weapons made prior to 1996 that you know haven't been "reconditioned".
After that, never go outside without a mask. Infrared facial recognition software, it's how they knew were Bin Laden was since 1999, or anyone else they wanted to find for that matter. So frankly, if they want you, you are screwed. It doesn't take a bullet, shit, forget curing cancer, we are great at giving it to people. Why cure their favorite weapon? The space based inviso death-ray, sure it doesn't kill them immediately, but it's perfect, no smoking gun. (literally..lol)
Why am I so content in my intuitive genius? Why aren't they going to dial up my address and whack me out? I live a stark, soul barren existence. To take surveillance of my little universe will cause the utmost despair in whomever or whatever takes a gander at me. I am a black hole of depression. One surveillance cycle of me, and it's generated report, would be enough depression to make an entire intelligence section brew up rat poisoned cool-aid, and chug it in unison. If there is a mind behind all of this, it will know that my life is a singularity of "dull". To toy with it could cause it to cascade into reality with catastrophic effects.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa! FUCK YOU SONY! OH IN YOUR FACE!!!! *dance wildly while singing GO JAPAN GO JAPAN*
Holy fuck this has been the biggest bunch of epic bullshit to come down the pike out of a corporation in a long time. ONE MONTH of being down, Sweet Jesus, where is the lynch mob? Has anyone been following what a bunch of idiots Sony is with ALL of their security? Reuters had to call and tell them about massive screw ups they had in basic security from a causal outside probe by a security expert. Their expert used a browser and google and found big fat gaping holes in their security. The guy didn't even dig into them hard...lol...what EPIC FUCK OFFS!!!
Yes, I am one of the pissed off people who's information got ripped off thanks to their completely shitty security. Yes, I am one of the pissed off people who's new PS3 will NOT let me use NetFlix. I am one of the pissed off people who's games are FUCKING NIGH WORTHLESS because they require the PSN.
WTF do we have to do to get a positive reaction? Do we have to collectively wrap our PS3, games and accessories in burlap, soak it in gas and launch it through the window of the store we got it from? Why is it only Japan that is telling Sony to do the right thing? Where the holy fuck is our piece of shit government in all of this? We pay these worthless cocksuckers enough in taxes, they should have been on this weeks ago. Leave it to our corporate lackey government to set with their thumbs up their collective asses on this while we take a dick in the ass.
This just punctuates why we have to be politically active in addition to our other chores in life. We have people in power right now that come from a previous era, they are corrupt as fuck, and seriously haven't a damn clue about tech. We need to send these sorry old fuckers packing out to pasture and get some people in that know what they are doing. We need a new party, of new blood, new ideas and that is NOT FOR FUCKING SALE.
Lets just have sponsors for the military now. We can have our troops wear corporate emblems. It should have been the Pepsi team that got him, right? Or do you think that the Chevy team should have? (whacking bin laden)
Let me inject here, you have to go get it. Just because you have an education doesn't equate to a job. It puts you on the playing field is all. Granted, there have been times when the job market was barking at the door of universities. Those times are not now though. If you have that education, you might need more, and it's a tough thing to get sometimes.
Don't stop thinking though. Make your own opportunities. But know this, tech has classically been a cutthroat field. Look at the classic examples of Tesla and Edison, Tesla was light years beyond Edison in IMHO, but Edison beat him down with his money. Thank God Tesla bested him, hence we have the modern era that we have now, just think what our world would be like without A/C? I shutter to think, but there has always been a dickheaded Edison around and there are acres of them here today.
But color me a troll, but I think this outsourcing is criminal. I think they should line up against the wall and shoot anyone who uses outsourcing. I think it's downright treasonous to our country and our culture. I swear to God, allowing multinational corporations to operate the way they do, will be the downfall of nations, including ours. "Globalization" is a buzz word used to dupe idiot intellectuals into swallowing how multinational corporations get away with exploiting both sides of the pond.
Until we the people wake the fuck up, and burn them all to the ground, we will be taking it up the tailpipe by them, and their lackey governments.
Don't look to Americans growing any balls anytime soon and solving this problem. Instead, you must adapt to the situation, choose a hat if you will, but put on one either way. In this world, tech still rules. Use it to enhance your life or someone else's and try to make a living along the way. Or just use it to survive if you have to. You should never go hungry, one way or another. If a society has you starved out, literally, then you owe that society NOTHING. Do you understand? Rule is only at gunpoint then.
When will people understand what is the heart of our problems in America. It's all about corporate greed. Greed has ran wild here infecting everyone and everything. Our own greed lets this happen, for deep down we want it all too. And it's dangled over our heads, like the fox and the grapes, yet we haven't moved on yet. We still want the grapes. It's not enough to just make a living, some want it all. There is no good ending for this kind of situation.
Think of it as a Darwin effect, but for an entire culture. As we have been hampered with and handicapped by a self loathing called "political correctness". It's a psychological affliction, where not being able to cope with success, the person(s) try to level the playing field or lower their own esteem and station. A lot of this has been a "guilt trip" laid upon the psyche of most Americans by the minorities clamoring for a piece of the pie. This is all fair game, but it's been too effective and it has disrupted the will and moral on a deep level. Good hearted people can easily be damaged by such insinuations that their culture isn't deserving of what they have, hence they don't struggle when they get their "silverware" stolen while depressed.
We have to wake up and say fuck all the foreigners, they aren't paying my bills or feeding me and my children. And we need to say FUCK YOU, to big corporations and their crafty propaganda machines, which are mostly every fucking network on TV. They need to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us. The free ride is over for them, no more tax breaks, no more subsidies, which are just big welfare checks for them that they don't even need. We need to take all of their of shore accounts and tax the fuck out of them for trying to escape taxation.
We also need to lynch every fucking politician that allowed China to dominate us economically. We need to lynch those in that one super big corporation that I am afraid to even mention, you know, the one that is in every town, and everything in it is made in China, yet they still have the balls to stick a big yellow grinning smiley face on stuff.
Anyway, from the looks of the parent article, education isn't about education anymore I think. It's about training the lemmings to be a labor force.
Cheaters. PCs, your own servers, these are all too vulnerable to cheaters and their hacks. Punk Buster used to do a pretty fair job back in the day, but when Valve and their completely POS STEAM set up with VAC...another POS, everything went right into the toilet. When the only way to compete is to use hacks yourself, the game is destroyed.
I am wanting to find a secure system to play in. I was hoping the PS3 would be free of these cheaters, but some punks have this burned down still. One of the posters is correct, it's going to destroy the industry, people will just leave. There are other things to do in life besides play computer games that are full of cheating waste of human skin punks.
We need draconian laws for this. Lets make one that reads if you do a million dollars of damage to a company, like hack their game, and ruin it and it adds up to that or more, you are executed. We used to hang people for stealing horses, but we can't hang someone over stealing/destroying the equivalent of hundreds of horses? This should count for virus writers/distributors as well. This Anonymous bunch...for their weeks now of interrupting so many people's enjoyment of their property, we execute their leader and 25 years no parole/hard labor for the rest.
We also need a global ID card, that is chipped with your DNA sequence, retina scan, medical records, criminal records, educational records, banking/financial records, driving/piloting records, licenses and permits included, as well as GPS tracking. Don't leave home without it, it's a crime. You will be detained until your card is reunited with you. Should you refuse a card, you shall have to be segregated from the rest of law abiding society where you will have to fend for yourself.
Sadly, this is becoming oh so true. It's come to the point that it's not just Leftwing liberal drivel, it's actually a viable statement. You will find a lot of parallels to the Nazis. I am sure the good people of Germany at the time had no idea what they were being handed until it was too late. They were indoctrinated with some very timely Nationalism, had someone to blame to galvanize them together and a unified goal with a vision. Of course it was barking mad from the top down, but nothing like a Prussian plan when it comes together.
Now here we are, the trumpets of nationalism are blowing super loud, religion is being factored in as well. Our war machine is like no other in history and we are wanting more oil, and we are at the moment seemingly poor. Hmm... Nothing like keeping those American Peasants beat down with high gas prices. They have been doing this to us for over 30 years, gouging us at the pumps and shoveling money into all the right pockets to keep it that way. We are collectively stupid enough to let them get away with it, hence they continue to.
But this "culture" has made keeping people in "order". Sweet Jesus, we bitch and moan about Chinese violations of civil rights, yet we violate our own Constitution with the Patriot Act. Our prison systems are an industry unto themselves. We have more people in prison than any other country in the world, hell, at what point do we have more people in prison than the rest of the world combined? Do you know how much money they get from us the tax payers to house these people?? This is one brilliant method of population domination.
Separation of Church and State, now that is an awesome concept, and let me explain why. It really defines the the lines of our Faith and the utility of government. Neither are suppose to toy with each other, and besides Public Service was for Public Servants, not Public Masters. The citizenry should be held in the highest of esteem, towering over, not groveling under public servants.
Government is in your Church, if you don't know this, you are ignorant. You are not held in the highest of esteem by the system, you are a lemming peasant; public servants will crush you like a bug if you look crossways at them. Don't think so? Sneer the wrong way at the wrong cop and get back to me on that. But don't worry, it's all ok. You will forget about all of this nonsense soon enough. Welcome to information bombardment with redundant contingencies for reinforcing and modifying your behavior. No, no, I don't think Fascism quiet covers it, nor do the Nazis. We are birthing an evil that is all our own, it will have our names on it and we will not share the infamy with anyone else.
What I find amazing is how all of these "right wing" people think they are "Christian". This is the irony and the tragedy of our age. I believe these are the ones warned about in the last days, that are deceived. Leave it to institutionalizing Christianity to flip it into something of the Devil. You can't become involved in politics as a church, or a faith. These are just things that shouldn't mix, ever. First of all, we don't need a middleman, and any religious organization that props one up and tells you that you do, is straight from Hell. Lets run down the highway to Hell even faster by letting these "middlemen" sell us into political prostitution.
Let's face some serious facts. If God was going to have us become political, he sure wouldn't have us associate with either of these dominate political parties. Both of these parties are teaming with heathens. If you were going to have a Party that was "for God", then you had better sure as shit make sure it's a HOLY one and without any of the typical political vermin we have lurking in Washington. Doesn't God have this particular habit of when something subpar to him is placed before him as an offering or as to "his will", that he drop kicks it in the balls? It had better be up to his standards and you had better be listening the fuck up when he talks.
The equation for this ending in disaster should have been run by the clients and the lawyers before embarking on something this stupid. This is a ludicrous move that will only come across as heavy handed at best. Manipulating the court in this mater puts the entire justice system at risk and let me explain why. The justice system doesn't work under mob rule.
If you played this scenario out seriously and expected it to play out profitably and you not deceased, you would have to carefully pick your demographics to pursue and hope you have good intelligence on your target. If not, you are going to have utter chaos on your hands. I am curious just how far removed from reality the officers of that court are?
All it takes is one. All it takes is ONE in this 23,000 to just snap and flip out over the injustice of it. Then the seriously heavy handed axe will fall on these people and any hopes they EVER had of squeezing a dime out anyone. They will be back to rousing backwoods roadhouse bars for a cut of the jukebox if they are lucky if they play this one out.
Here's one, they drop one of those on the wrong family, the kid did it. It's a teenager who doesn't get out much and is socially awkward. Hence is why the kid downloaded it and the kid is from a poor family. The father is angry at life being poor and hollers about money with his scrawny wife, driving the kid even further nuts. Well guess what? These douchebags drop this on that family, the father snaps and beats the shit out of the kid, and the wife. The kid goes out back behind the garage and blows his brains out because he's ruined everything for the family.
The cops come and arrest the Dad, the wife leaves him and his lawyer finally explains to him why these fuckers are suing him, still. The Dad, with nothing, dead kid, wife left, all becomes some cocksuckers want to get rich off of his kid downloading a cheesy as fuck movie. This is when he goes on a bloody rampage that gets splashed all over the fucking news for a week.
This is when this problem will be solved and guess what? Its not something that they can solve without taking down the Internet right now. That isn't going to happen without riots and big business ripping your balls off, so guess who loses? You know why? Because it could be anyone's kid or brother, or mother or sister that gets burned by this. This is about old school sticking their filthy dicks into the new world. We don't want them here, and they need to GTFO. We all know on some level that we have created something better in our digital age, and we all know we will have to fight to keep it the way we want it.
Frankly, I think I can speak for the majority of sane people, when I say to these scum and these lawsuits: Fuck You!
I think we need to face up to the fact that we will need to make our communications technologies public owned, like the roads. Too much innovation will be hijacked by the greed factor. The good of all the people outweighs the greed of a few corporations. Are we the public going to stand by and be raped by another corporation?
You believe? In other words, you don't really know for sure. Well, let me enlighten you my friend. It doesn't work. You can get to Netficks, but getting the movie to actually start, you will be blocked by the Sony network, because you have to be logged in to it. I tried every permutation and some repeatedly, I even facerolled the buttons, and nothing. Denied, "under maintenance".
It's not working. I shouldn't have to cock with it, this should not be an issue. They aren't fucking with Sony, they are fucking with ME. Personally, I want the BlueRay version of snuff films of all them and their families, their dog, their cat, their goldfish, and their lawn salted. I think it's time for scorched earth policies. I want Anonymous to all be a smouldering heap of ashes and ruin. I want them to be a cautionary tale told to children around the campfire to scare the shit out of them if they even consider following their footsteps. I want to dance naked with a hard-on on their graves.
Actually...I would just appreciate a suggestion from someone who knows how to get around this for now.
Constitution, that pesky thing people like to parade out when they want to be seditious, when are we going to toss that old thing out? Seriously, didn't the people who wrote that own slaves? And in fact, didn't they own slave children as well? Then if they had child slaves, then how could we still take them seriously? For the children, lets get rid of it at last.
Now, now! We can see you haven't been ingesting your rations of nationalism or racism. Where is the trust for OUR people when dealing with THEM? If you can't trust those in charge here, then who can you trust? All order will break down! We will have cats sleeping with dogs, and bad poetry being recited in supermarket lines.
I for one welcome our new overlords! You had better polish those boots and let those heals snap when you come to attention.
Douchebaggery. Yesterday, Mother's Day, I had company and we all wanted to watch a certain movie on Netflick. But my PS3 will still not let it run it due to this problem. I didn't elect these punk hackers to "look into my interests" as a consumer. From my perspective, they are taking a big shit on MY PS3, and now, I take this personal. Its convinced me that the real problem we have and has been for a while is the anonymity. These little douchebags have shown us the way of the future not only in their actions but in their name.
See, now it's MY turn to be a douchebag, way to aggro the evil guy, retards.
You see, Sony's little network may not be the titanic income generator, but Netflicks is huge. Netflicks has shown us we don't need video rental places or even network TV. We can watch WTF we want, when we want it. We have seen the promised land and we aren't turning back. Now enter these little pricks who have demonstrated that our Internet can be tampered with to the degree where we can't use it for days, weeks, months? WTF? Why can't we use this? Oh, it's hackers. Well, we shouldn't be paying Netflick for a service that we can't use.
Hello Netflicks? I am cancelling my service until my PS3 can play your service again. Perhaps you and Sony can get your shit together? If not, it was nice knowing you.
Netflicks: Sony, WTF? Sony: It's these prick hackers. Netflicks: O'rly? Hey Congress, WTF? Don't we pay you fuckers enough to handle this kind of shit? Congress: Oh shit, I love your money. Let me get this for you. Congress: Hey US Intelligence Community, WTF are we paying you retards for? Handle this shit now or we find someone who can to give money to. US Intelligence Community: Huh? Me: Dear Dipshits in Congress, if you haven't noticed we are in the Wild West days of the Internet. Entire nations are in revolt thanks to "social networking". This is all fine and dandy when it happens to "them", but imagine if you may, it happening to us. We have been demonstrated recently that the Federal Government of the USA, is absolutely powerless to stop these insidious "hackers". These are your modern terrorists. What can't they do to us with our society so dependent upon our technology. Are they not a threat to our freedoms as they deny us our liberties? Are they not right now, trying to beat a household name, Sony, into submission?
IF we let them get away with this, will they not become drunk with pride and power? What will they do next to us in their arrogance? Will they start crashing aircraft when crashing networks becomes too boring? Where will this stop? How long will you, the authorities stand around turning a blind eye to this? You have let the music and movie industry suffer untold losses. The music industry will never be the same, you have let the music industry out in the dark to deal with these hackers for years. The gaming industry has lost untold fortunes and you have done NOTHING. Now, industry giants such as Sony, are being attacked and could be destroyed in part, yet you do NOTHING.
I do not blame these hacker vermin. They are what they are, but their persistent presence is a clear indicator of something wrong with those in authority. Condensing these reasons why are only three possibilities: a; you are incompetent and have no clue how to handle this. b: you are unwilling to handle this, for whatever reasoning, it doesn't matter. c: a combination of a or b.
Congress: Chill the fuck out, we are on this. Hey you fucking Intel Guys, our balls are being busted and now we are starting to wonder WTF?
US Intelligence Community: Huh? Are you fucking kidding us? Seriously STFU, we have important shit to do. Give it to DHS, those cocksuckers need something to do.
Congress: -.- Fine. DHS, this is your BS deal, handle it.
DHS: Release the Kraken!
American Public: WTF, a national ID card with all my credit cards, my medical information and my Internet access passport? OMFG, it's the Mark of the beast!
Now I asked the judge about this SPECIFICALLY. I asked isn't this debt past the statute of limitations? I was ignored.
What really burned me was my local bank never told me that the hammer was dropped on my account. I could have been burned badly by service charges with no recourse at all if I hadn't by accident checked my account and found it frozen. I spoke to the sheriffs office prior to this happening because they are so prompt at filing these for collection agencies. I told them that my account they would find was my SSI account and it was suppose to be protected by federal law. They said, too bad, they just did whatever the judge told them.
Against the law? To me, the law is a fucking joke, complete hypocrisy. Those in power HERE decide if it's "against the law". Sure, if someone of money or importance comes along it might work for them, but for those on the bottom, we are fucked, we just take it here. Send troops over seas to free people? How about you send some HERE! It figures, our county was listed as the worse county is the whole state as far as "healthy living". No shit! It's a ghetto decimated by corruption.
You see, if you aren't a lawyer here, you are an idiot and they basically ignore you in court. It's the acme of a good old boy system that perpetuates the lawyer fees. Poor people don't have a prayer. You see, I am being burned for about $1500. Lawyers here want that to even talk to you. Now 1500 is a joke to most Americans, but when you live on 674 dollars a month, you don't have a lot to work with, so I will be paying on that FOREVER and the damn interest will probably double it before it's over.
If you think that's bad, how about the State and their zeal to get their tax dollars? My xwife burned me on taxes she didn't pay when she took her 401k money out and went partying on it when she decided to start doing meth. She picked up her meth habit at the factory she worked at trying to stay awake to do the overtime hours to pay our CountryWide loan. Well, that didn't work out so well and we divorced, she took the money and ran. I ended up as a casualty, crippled up, and abandoned out in the country with no transportation. With the help of good christian people, I ended up in the housing project instead of dead in a ditch. I got my disability, which the medical coverage saved my life. I am fighting the long fight back from absolutely nothing.
Anyway, the State wants their tax money on the money she made off with. Guess what? I was married to her, so that makes me responsible for her debts at the time. So the State, if you owe them money, will not let you have you car license plates unless you work out a deal with them. It's been State policy though to leave people on SSI alone, we have enough misery without taking what little money we have. But this year, I had a zealot who wanted to go over my budget to find money I could send the State. I asked her if there was a change in policy and she said no, then I asked her then to release my car plates, my budget was stretched enough and I needed my car to get to school, because if I had to walk it, they would find me dead about a quarter of the way there.
She didn't want to comply with policy or good sense. I had to climb over her head to the highest levels to get her off my back. WTF? If I was a little dumber or just a bit more depressed I would have just rolled over and let her have her way. In my condition, it was a major fight, and stressed my addled brain to no end. But this is the kind of crap that goes on in my area. We are poor and mostly dumb and they know it. Some people just don't have the mental capacity to deal with this kind of onslaught from the system and they just knuckle under.
I know if it happens to me wholesale, then I know plenty of others are having problems too. I hear too many stories, I have long since ignored them, not out of disbelief, but out of survival. Technology? It offers us alternatives to the shitty small town operations that discriminate against you if you are poor. Please bring more of it.
You should live in a small town where they run their mouths about your business. I hate small town banks for that and other reasons. In my little town, if you go to court for a credit card or any debt, you are automatically guilty unless you can prove in spades and beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't owe it. I swear to God it's crooked as hell here. What sucks is they take their judgment they bought from the judge and send the sheriff around to all the banks, find your account and lock you out of it. They did it to my mother over some damn bogus bill she had years old, they took every dime she had out of her account and it was her Social Security.
She managed to have a legal aid lawyer get it back for her, they aren't suppose to be able to take your disability money or your SS money, but these filthy fuckers will and you have to fight them to get it back. That really sucks for poor people who have no money left over from bills and they need their medicine NOW, not weeks from now when they finally get their money.
The evil cocksuckers did it to me too recently. I had a nine year old Credit card bill surface and they took me to court because I told the fuckers I had paid it off years ago and to fuck themselves. Legal aid? Ha! Lawyers are for the rich here, legal aid is over 60 miles away and they act as surly with you on the phone as you can imagine. So there I am, having all kinds of difficulties finding the paperwork on this, after it's been 9 years, a divorce and 3 moves. I get to court, ask for an extension so I can present a proper defense, explaining the difficulties I was having with an idiot xwife in regards to WTF she did with any of our paperwork, being she was the business college grad and insisted on doing the bills. AND I was having problems scraping together a lawyer, please FFS, it's been 9 years, they can wait a few more weeks while I surmount my defense, because I KNOW I paid it and I will be damned if I will pay it again.
BZZZZZZT. Fuck you, no extension, you are wrong, you are a piece of shit, pay the bill and they gave them the judgment. Next comes the local bank problem of them being right there for our Sheriff, who we pay taxes to protect us to act as a goon for these damn crooks. He goes in and serves my bank, they cough up my information and these fuckers get to seal my account and drain it. Here's where its a serious problem. It's an SSI account. I am disabled. This doesn't matter, I have to go to the same fucking judge who gave them the judgment to get them out of my SSI account. It doesn't matter that federal law protects it. The sheriff is suppose to blindly do as the judge says even if the judge is a fucking crook.
I pay each month to this fucking collections company who purchased this old debt of mine, 9 years old, and it was already paid the hell off years ago. I pay them each month or they will lock down my bank account and I will NOT be able to get my medicine, buy food or pay my rent. Its extortion and I put that on each check I send them in the note area. Note: Extortion. They still cash it.
Another problem with local banks, service charges. My mother's best friend was in the hospital, a 70+ year old woman who was changing banks. Her SS check was suppose to be coming to a certain bank, she was told it was going to be in the bank on such and such date. She while in the hospital, pays her bills only to find out the check went to the wrong damn bank and now all of her checks bounce. She is then charged HUNDREDS of dollars in service charges. This is money she doesn't have. Her money is so tight she goes without each month. Yet she had to go begging relatives to pay this or END UP IN JAIL. And she did talk to the bank explaining it, she went with hat in hand and was crying. They didn't give a fuck, give us your money you old bitch or go to jail. They didn't say it in those words of course, but that is the attitude you come away with from them.
Let me tell you, there is nothing righteous or just about this system. If you are poor, very old or weak,
It doesn't need to come out in trial. It would be the dumbest thing in the universe to use any of the intelligence gained in a trial. Just for the reason of tipping off the entire planet and sending everyone one scurrying. You use the intelligence to figure out how to be "in the right place at the right time" to exploit a weakness. It will then look like dumb luck or just intuitive investigating. Why spook the herd when you can quietly pick off what you want one at a time?
Dismay is all I feel after reading that article from C-NET. These problems are like cockroaches, by the time you see ONE, you already have an infestation. I think our goose is cooked. I have to wonder how automated the process is by now. If it's an app, it doesn't need a human to implement it then. In fact, I can imagine the whole process is done automagical with some monster computer array and storage sifting the data constantly. It puts me to mind of the last Batman movie, but I seriously doubt the man in charge is going to blow it up when he walks away from catching one badguy.
What kills me is the complacency of many to just think that is O.K. These kind of tools don't ever go away. Human nature doesn't change. Even if those in charge had the noblest of reasons for creating this and would be perfect in their use of it, that doesn't mean those who follow them will be as trustworthy. A tool used for good can be used for destruction. These are tools that should NEVER fall into the hands of evil. But they probably already are, and in fact, it was probably evil that made them.
It does spark the imagination as to what might be lurking inside these phones. Could they be chipped to spy on us without anyone knowing it? Do you know what each component is in that little phone? Does anyone? And even if you did know what components they are, who's to say "they" didn't slip in a chip disguised as something else. You would have to monitor the phone's output to see if it's broadcasting anything beside what it normally should. Then you have to consider, that it's function might be "on demand" and you may never catch it spying on you because "they" haven't chose to activate it, so you set there for God knows how long monitoring this suspicious phone.
Or you could assume that if they really are wanting to use the phones to spy on us, then would they put something in the client side of the hardware? It would require the cooperation of the manufactures, their engineers and risk exposure. The human element is going to fail always in such an operation as this. They would surely not risk exposure and do their spying from inside the network its self where they could passively monitor traffic, and user locations.
Now what I could fathom them taking the risk of exposure for is the camera. Imagine being able to access any cell phone with a camera, browse its contents, or even activate it secretly. Now that is something I wouldn't be able to resist if I was administrating a nation wide intelligence operation. Just think of the possibilities of such, you could take dumps from every phone in the country, sift it continuously with shape recognition software. Bad guy takes a picture of his buddies posing with their illegal weapons thinking they are all cool, but somewhere a computer recognized the weapons, logs the recognition, the time, the date, the location and has cataloged everyone in the picture. This information is dispensed out in the field to agents for them to react to immediately.
This sounds fine and dandy from an intelligence operation point of view, but it's a nightmare for civil liberties. That is the problem with making an effective intelligence tool, the party that makes it might have the best of intentions for its use, but that doesn't mean it will experience mission creep or just fall into the wrong hands, or just morph with bad times into a tool used for evil.
But here is the rub, if you put something like that in a phone, it will be found. And when it is, its going to piss off everyone, including officials who don't want blackmailed sometime in the future with this. Needless to say, if the information about you chipping the nation's phones gets out, you are finished politically, your next intelligence operation will be listening in on the chief of the village you are hiding out in.
Frankly, if I was going to risk such a gambit, I would put the chips in disposable phones, the prepaid ones that are the prime choice of people who don't want tracked but need a phone. Its win/win if they find the chip in those or not. If they don't, you have intelligence perhaps to be farmed. If they do, you will have planted a seed of doubt at least concerning their phones and you might shoo them into getting sloppy in their search for secure communication. I think the risk factor of exposure of the chips to prying noses would be less with the demographics that use those kinds of phones.
Anyway, I doubt that "they" are operating on that kind of level. It is the government after all, which is a political body. These tend to get mired down to a glacial pace with not only the machinations of the bureaucratic beast, but annoying amounts of accountability. It would take a mandate by them to get something like this done, because it would be like herding cats to get the manufacturers on board. You just know some idiot would flip out and run screaming to the press about "they" are trying to put a "backdoor" into everyone's phones.
I am not saying it couldn't be done. I think it could be pulled off, but it would need super deep pockets and oodles of background information on the engine
We have epic greed here, is our major retardation. It's not enough to make money, you have to get filthy rich off of every poor slob you can. They will be down to charging us by the bit if we let them, and it looks like we will let them. They have all the guns, lawyers, judges and politicians. The USA is a new kind of political animal, it's pure corporate mercenary-ism. Freedom and liberty are a punch line in a joke here now. Only the truly naive still believe in the old nationalism fairy tales of "home of the free". Don't laugh, our brand of bullshit is coming your way soon too.
But if there was, I would speculate that they indeed have ways into your Windows 7 or any other OS. If they didn't, they sure would be a disappointment. With that said, I am sure there is a genuine reason for them to suggest Windows 7. I am surprised that they didn't say "secure your wireless, please". Open WiFi routers are all over the place, have you ever done a casual wardrive and looked at the data? About half of my town's wifi is wide open. I would post this information and recommendations on how to secure them, ( PUT A PASSWORD ON IT, DUH) but am afraid of the paranoid backlash.
I wonder if that might be why the NSA is so vague. They probably know the vicious little details of why you should upgrade, but don't want to say so, because we will say, "OH YEAH?? HOW DO YOU KNOW? YOU BEEN IN MY COMPUTER??" People are paranoid about things they are ignorant about. I know I am resisting urges to wad me up a tinfoil hat right now, they are probably watching me through my web cam. O_o
Slashdot Mirror
No shit! I hate it when they change the name of something public to that of some rich cocksucker. They did that to the park in my home town, now it has some rich assholes name on it. WTF? If he wants his own park, let him go build his own, that one was OURS, the people. They are trying to turn our resevour into private land and kick the public out as well. They had a perfectly fine water treatment plant, but they shut it down in preparation of privatizing that prime land for the rich.
Luckily we have some nosy citizens who show up to city counsel meetings and ask all the right questions.
I am sure they are. (listening) If they have those capabilities, why not make a hyperactive spyder to run about checking for key phrases? Catalog what it finds and produce a report to whomever or whatever is in charge. At some point, I would imagine having the A.I. take charge if it already hasn't, would help sift through this kind of horrible exposure for them.
It/they will check every post/link/comment and evaluate it for threat level, after they have establish who you are. If you are of the proper threat level then you will become a priority target for surveillance. Everything you do can be tracked already, so don't bother trying to run, unless its into the deep woods on a very stormy day/night. Leave everything behind except your clothing, but microwave the shit out of those first. Take only knives/tools/weapons made prior to 1996 that you know haven't been "reconditioned".
After that, never go outside without a mask. Infrared facial recognition software, it's how they knew were Bin Laden was since 1999, or anyone else they wanted to find for that matter. So frankly, if they want you, you are screwed. It doesn't take a bullet, shit, forget curing cancer, we are great at giving it to people. Why cure their favorite weapon? The space based inviso death-ray, sure it doesn't kill them immediately, but it's perfect, no smoking gun. (literally..lol)
Why am I so content in my intuitive genius? Why aren't they going to dial up my address and whack me out? I live a stark, soul barren existence. To take surveillance of my little universe will cause the utmost despair in whomever or whatever takes a gander at me. I am a black hole of depression. One surveillance cycle of me, and it's generated report, would be enough depression to make an entire intelligence section brew up rat poisoned cool-aid, and chug it in unison. If there is a mind behind all of this, it will know that my life is a singularity of "dull". To toy with it could cause it to cascade into reality with catastrophic effects.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa! FUCK YOU SONY! OH IN YOUR FACE!!!! *dance wildly while singing GO JAPAN GO JAPAN*
Holy fuck this has been the biggest bunch of epic bullshit to come down the pike out of a corporation in a long time. ONE MONTH of being down, Sweet Jesus, where is the lynch mob? Has anyone been following what a bunch of idiots Sony is with ALL of their security? Reuters had to call and tell them about massive screw ups they had in basic security from a causal outside probe by a security expert. Their expert used a browser and google and found big fat gaping holes in their security. The guy didn't even dig into them hard...lol...what EPIC FUCK OFFS!!!
Yes, I am one of the pissed off people who's information got ripped off thanks to their completely shitty security. Yes, I am one of the pissed off people who's new PS3 will NOT let me use NetFlix. I am one of the pissed off people who's games are FUCKING NIGH WORTHLESS because they require the PSN.
WTF do we have to do to get a positive reaction? Do we have to collectively wrap our PS3, games and accessories in burlap, soak it in gas and launch it through the window of the store we got it from? Why is it only Japan that is telling Sony to do the right thing? Where the holy fuck is our piece of shit government in all of this? We pay these worthless cocksuckers enough in taxes, they should have been on this weeks ago. Leave it to our corporate lackey government to set with their thumbs up their collective asses on this while we take a dick in the ass.
This just punctuates why we have to be politically active in addition to our other chores in life. We have people in power right now that come from a previous era, they are corrupt as fuck, and seriously haven't a damn clue about tech. We need to send these sorry old fuckers packing out to pasture and get some people in that know what they are doing. We need a new party, of new blood, new ideas and that is NOT FOR FUCKING SALE.
Indeed, you don't miss it until you don't have it. That reminds me, I need to polish up my Mortal Combat moves .
Lets just have sponsors for the military now. We can have our troops wear corporate emblems. It should have been the Pepsi team that got him, right? Or do you think that the Chevy team should have? (whacking bin laden)
Let me inject here, you have to go get it. Just because you have an education doesn't equate to a job. It puts you on the playing field is all. Granted, there have been times when the job market was barking at the door of universities. Those times are not now though. If you have that education, you might need more, and it's a tough thing to get sometimes.
Don't stop thinking though. Make your own opportunities. But know this, tech has classically been a cutthroat field. Look at the classic examples of Tesla and Edison, Tesla was light years beyond Edison in IMHO, but Edison beat him down with his money. Thank God Tesla bested him, hence we have the modern era that we have now, just think what our world would be like without A/C? I shutter to think, but there has always been a dickheaded Edison around and there are acres of them here today.
But color me a troll, but I think this outsourcing is criminal. I think they should line up against the wall and shoot anyone who uses outsourcing. I think it's downright treasonous to our country and our culture. I swear to God, allowing multinational corporations to operate the way they do, will be the downfall of nations, including ours. "Globalization" is a buzz word used to dupe idiot intellectuals into swallowing how multinational corporations get away with exploiting both sides of the pond.
Until we the people wake the fuck up, and burn them all to the ground, we will be taking it up the tailpipe by them, and their lackey governments.
Don't look to Americans growing any balls anytime soon and solving this problem. Instead, you must adapt to the situation, choose a hat if you will, but put on one either way. In this world, tech still rules. Use it to enhance your life or someone else's and try to make a living along the way. Or just use it to survive if you have to. You should never go hungry, one way or another. If a society has you starved out, literally, then you owe that society NOTHING. Do you understand? Rule is only at gunpoint then.
When will people understand what is the heart of our problems in America. It's all about corporate greed. Greed has ran wild here infecting everyone and everything. Our own greed lets this happen, for deep down we want it all too. And it's dangled over our heads, like the fox and the grapes, yet we haven't moved on yet. We still want the grapes. It's not enough to just make a living, some want it all. There is no good ending for this kind of situation.
Think of it as a Darwin effect, but for an entire culture. As we have been hampered with and handicapped by a self loathing called "political correctness". It's a psychological affliction, where not being able to cope with success, the person(s) try to level the playing field or lower their own esteem and station. A lot of this has been a "guilt trip" laid upon the psyche of most Americans by the minorities clamoring for a piece of the pie. This is all fair game, but it's been too effective and it has disrupted the will and moral on a deep level. Good hearted people can easily be damaged by such insinuations that their culture isn't deserving of what they have, hence they don't struggle when they get their "silverware" stolen while depressed.
We have to wake up and say fuck all the foreigners, they aren't paying my bills or feeding me and my children. And we need to say FUCK YOU, to big corporations and their crafty propaganda machines, which are mostly every fucking network on TV. They need to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us. The free ride is over for them, no more tax breaks, no more subsidies, which are just big welfare checks for them that they don't even need. We need to take all of their of shore accounts and tax the fuck out of them for trying to escape taxation.
We also need to lynch every fucking politician that allowed China to dominate us economically. We need to lynch those in that one super big corporation that I am afraid to even mention, you know, the one that is in every town, and everything in it is made in China, yet they still have the balls to stick a big yellow grinning smiley face on stuff.
Anyway, from the looks of the parent article, education isn't about education anymore I think. It's about training the lemmings to be a labor force.
Cheaters. PCs, your own servers, these are all too vulnerable to cheaters and their hacks. Punk Buster used to do a pretty fair job back in the day, but when Valve and their completely POS STEAM set up with VAC...another POS, everything went right into the toilet. When the only way to compete is to use hacks yourself, the game is destroyed.
I am wanting to find a secure system to play in. I was hoping the PS3 would be free of these cheaters, but some punks have this burned down still. One of the posters is correct, it's going to destroy the industry, people will just leave. There are other things to do in life besides play computer games that are full of cheating waste of human skin punks.
We need draconian laws for this. Lets make one that reads if you do a million dollars of damage to a company, like hack their game, and ruin it and it adds up to that or more, you are executed. We used to hang people for stealing horses, but we can't hang someone over stealing/destroying the equivalent of hundreds of horses? This should count for virus writers/distributors as well. This Anonymous bunch...for their weeks now of interrupting so many people's enjoyment of their property, we execute their leader and 25 years no parole/hard labor for the rest.
We also need a global ID card, that is chipped with your DNA sequence, retina scan, medical records, criminal records, educational records, banking/financial records, driving/piloting records, licenses and permits included, as well as GPS tracking. Don't leave home without it, it's a crime. You will be detained until your card is reunited with you. Should you refuse a card, you shall have to be segregated from the rest of law abiding society where you will have to fend for yourself.
Sadly, this is becoming oh so true. It's come to the point that it's not just Leftwing liberal drivel, it's actually a viable statement. You will find a lot of parallels to the Nazis. I am sure the good people of Germany at the time had no idea what they were being handed until it was too late. They were indoctrinated with some very timely Nationalism, had someone to blame to galvanize them together and a unified goal with a vision. Of course it was barking mad from the top down, but nothing like a Prussian plan when it comes together.
Now here we are, the trumpets of nationalism are blowing super loud, religion is being factored in as well. Our war machine is like no other in history and we are wanting more oil, and we are at the moment seemingly poor. Hmm... Nothing like keeping those American Peasants beat down with high gas prices. They have been doing this to us for over 30 years, gouging us at the pumps and shoveling money into all the right pockets to keep it that way. We are collectively stupid enough to let them get away with it, hence they continue to.
But this "culture" has made keeping people in "order". Sweet Jesus, we bitch and moan about Chinese violations of civil rights, yet we violate our own Constitution with the Patriot Act. Our prison systems are an industry unto themselves. We have more people in prison than any other country in the world, hell, at what point do we have more people in prison than the rest of the world combined? Do you know how much money they get from us the tax payers to house these people?? This is one brilliant method of population domination.
Separation of Church and State, now that is an awesome concept, and let me explain why. It really defines the the lines of our Faith and the utility of government. Neither are suppose to toy with each other, and besides Public Service was for Public Servants, not Public Masters. The citizenry should be held in the highest of esteem, towering over, not groveling under public servants.
Government is in your Church, if you don't know this, you are ignorant. You are not held in the highest of esteem by the system, you are a lemming peasant; public servants will crush you like a bug if you look crossways at them. Don't think so? Sneer the wrong way at the wrong cop and get back to me on that. But don't worry, it's all ok. You will forget about all of this nonsense soon enough. Welcome to information bombardment with redundant contingencies for reinforcing and modifying your behavior. No, no, I don't think Fascism quiet covers it, nor do the Nazis. We are birthing an evil that is all our own, it will have our names on it and we will not share the infamy with anyone else.
What I find amazing is how all of these "right wing" people think they are "Christian". This is the irony and the tragedy of our age. I believe these are the ones warned about in the last days, that are deceived. Leave it to institutionalizing Christianity to flip it into something of the Devil. You can't become involved in politics as a church, or a faith. These are just things that shouldn't mix, ever. First of all, we don't need a middleman, and any religious organization that props one up and tells you that you do, is straight from Hell. Lets run down the highway to Hell even faster by letting these "middlemen" sell us into political prostitution.
Let's face some serious facts. If God was going to have us become political, he sure wouldn't have us associate with either of these dominate political parties. Both of these parties are teaming with heathens. If you were going to have a Party that was "for God", then you had better sure as shit make sure it's a HOLY one and without any of the typical political vermin we have lurking in Washington. Doesn't God have this particular habit of when something subpar to him is placed before him as an offering or as to "his will", that he drop kicks it in the balls? It had better be up to his standards and you had better be listening the fuck up when he talks.
Now is there anyone around that is
The equation for this ending in disaster should have been run by the clients and the lawyers before embarking on something this stupid. This is a ludicrous move that will only come across as heavy handed at best. Manipulating the court in this mater puts the entire justice system at risk and let me explain why. The justice system doesn't work under mob rule.
If you played this scenario out seriously and expected it to play out profitably and you not deceased, you would have to carefully pick your demographics to pursue and hope you have good intelligence on your target. If not, you are going to have utter chaos on your hands. I am curious just how far removed from reality the officers of that court are?
All it takes is one. All it takes is ONE in this 23,000 to just snap and flip out over the injustice of it. Then the seriously heavy handed axe will fall on these people and any hopes they EVER had of squeezing a dime out anyone. They will be back to rousing backwoods roadhouse bars for a cut of the jukebox if they are lucky if they play this one out.
Here's one, they drop one of those on the wrong family, the kid did it. It's a teenager who doesn't get out much and is socially awkward. Hence is why the kid downloaded it and the kid is from a poor family. The father is angry at life being poor and hollers about money with his scrawny wife, driving the kid even further nuts. Well guess what? These douchebags drop this on that family, the father snaps and beats the shit out of the kid, and the wife. The kid goes out back behind the garage and blows his brains out because he's ruined everything for the family.
The cops come and arrest the Dad, the wife leaves him and his lawyer finally explains to him why these fuckers are suing him, still. The Dad, with nothing, dead kid, wife left, all becomes some cocksuckers want to get rich off of his kid downloading a cheesy as fuck movie. This is when he goes on a bloody rampage that gets splashed all over the fucking news for a week.
This is when this problem will be solved and guess what? Its not something that they can solve without taking down the Internet right now. That isn't going to happen without riots and big business ripping your balls off, so guess who loses? You know why? Because it could be anyone's kid or brother, or mother or sister that gets burned by this. This is about old school sticking their filthy dicks into the new world. We don't want them here, and they need to GTFO. We all know on some level that we have created something better in our digital age, and we all know we will have to fight to keep it the way we want it.
Frankly, I think I can speak for the majority of sane people, when I say to these scum and these lawsuits: Fuck You!
Brilliant! Thanks for the idea. mwahaahahah
Yeah. That worked out great for the commies.
Tell that to our Chinese Overlords to whom we are in debt to.
I am not wise to the girth of my PS3, but I got it recently at Wal-Mart. (I know, I will burn in hell for shopping Wal-Mart)
Amen.
I think we need to face up to the fact that we will need to make our communications technologies public owned, like the roads. Too much innovation will be hijacked by the greed factor. The good of all the people outweighs the greed of a few corporations. Are we the public going to stand by and be raped by another corporation?
You believe? In other words, you don't really know for sure. Well, let me enlighten you my friend. It doesn't work. You can get to Netficks, but getting the movie to actually start, you will be blocked by the Sony network, because you have to be logged in to it. I tried every permutation and some repeatedly, I even facerolled the buttons, and nothing. Denied, "under maintenance".
It's not working. I shouldn't have to cock with it, this should not be an issue. They aren't fucking with Sony, they are fucking with ME. Personally, I want the BlueRay version of snuff films of all them and their families, their dog, their cat, their goldfish, and their lawn salted. I think it's time for scorched earth policies. I want Anonymous to all be a smouldering heap of ashes and ruin. I want them to be a cautionary tale told to children around the campfire to scare the shit out of them if they even consider following their footsteps. I want to dance naked with a hard-on on their graves.
Actually...I would just appreciate a suggestion from someone who knows how to get around this for now.
Constitution, that pesky thing people like to parade out when they want to be seditious, when are we going to toss that old thing out? Seriously, didn't the people who wrote that own slaves? And in fact, didn't they own slave children as well? Then if they had child slaves, then how could we still take them seriously? For the children, lets get rid of it at last.
Now, now! We can see you haven't been ingesting your rations of nationalism or racism. Where is the trust for OUR people when dealing with THEM? If you can't trust those in charge here, then who can you trust? All order will break down! We will have cats sleeping with dogs, and bad poetry being recited in supermarket lines.
I for one welcome our new overlords! You had better polish those boots and let those heals snap when you come to attention.
Have you seen Kile? He's about this tall?
Douchebaggery. Yesterday, Mother's Day, I had company and we all wanted to watch a certain movie on Netflick. But my PS3 will still not let it run it due to this problem. I didn't elect these punk hackers to "look into my interests" as a consumer. From my perspective, they are taking a big shit on MY PS3, and now, I take this personal. Its convinced me that the real problem we have and has been for a while is the anonymity. These little douchebags have shown us the way of the future not only in their actions but in their name.
See, now it's MY turn to be a douchebag, way to aggro the evil guy, retards.
You see, Sony's little network may not be the titanic income generator, but Netflicks is huge. Netflicks has shown us we don't need video rental places or even network TV. We can watch WTF we want, when we want it. We have seen the promised land and we aren't turning back. Now enter these little pricks who have demonstrated that our Internet can be tampered with to the degree where we can't use it for days, weeks, months? WTF? Why can't we use this? Oh, it's hackers. Well, we shouldn't be paying Netflick for a service that we can't use.
Hello Netflicks? I am cancelling my service until my PS3 can play your service again. Perhaps you and Sony can get your shit together? If not, it was nice knowing you.
Netflicks: Sony, WTF?
Sony: It's these prick hackers.
Netflicks: O'rly? Hey Congress, WTF? Don't we pay you fuckers enough to handle this kind of shit?
Congress: Oh shit, I love your money. Let me get this for you.
Congress: Hey US Intelligence Community, WTF are we paying you retards for? Handle this shit now or we find someone who can to give money to.
US Intelligence Community: Huh?
Me: Dear Dipshits in Congress, if you haven't noticed we are in the Wild West days of the Internet. Entire nations are in revolt thanks to "social networking". This is all fine and dandy when it happens to "them", but imagine if you may, it happening to us. We have been demonstrated recently that the Federal Government of the USA, is absolutely powerless to stop these insidious "hackers". These are your modern terrorists. What can't they do to us with our society so dependent upon our technology. Are they not a threat to our freedoms as they deny us our liberties? Are they not right now, trying to beat a household name, Sony, into submission?
IF we let them get away with this, will they not become drunk with pride and power? What will they do next to us in their arrogance? Will they start crashing aircraft when crashing networks becomes too boring? Where will this stop? How long will you, the authorities stand around turning a blind eye to this? You have let the music and movie industry suffer untold losses. The music industry will never be the same, you have let the music industry out in the dark to deal with these hackers for years. The gaming industry has lost untold fortunes and you have done NOTHING. Now, industry giants such as Sony, are being attacked and could be destroyed in part, yet you do NOTHING.
I do not blame these hacker vermin. They are what they are, but their persistent presence is a clear indicator of something wrong with those in authority. Condensing these reasons why are only three possibilities: a; you are incompetent and have no clue how to handle this. b: you are unwilling to handle this, for whatever reasoning, it doesn't matter. c: a combination of a or b.
Congress: Chill the fuck out, we are on this. Hey you fucking Intel Guys, our balls are being busted and now we are starting to wonder WTF?
US Intelligence Community: Huh? Are you fucking kidding us? Seriously STFU, we have important shit to do. Give it to DHS, those cocksuckers need something to do.
Congress: -.- Fine. DHS, this is your BS deal, handle it.
DHS: Release the Kraken!
American Public: WTF, a national ID card with all my credit cards, my medical information and my Internet access passport? OMFG, it's the Mark of the beast!
DHS: STFU, it's for the children, thi
Now I asked the judge about this SPECIFICALLY. I asked isn't this debt past the statute of limitations? I was ignored.
What really burned me was my local bank never told me that the hammer was dropped on my account. I could have been burned badly by service charges with no recourse at all if I hadn't by accident checked my account and found it frozen. I spoke to the sheriffs office prior to this happening because they are so prompt at filing these for collection agencies. I told them that my account they would find was my SSI account and it was suppose to be protected by federal law. They said, too bad, they just did whatever the judge told them.
Against the law? To me, the law is a fucking joke, complete hypocrisy. Those in power HERE decide if it's "against the law". Sure, if someone of money or importance comes along it might work for them, but for those on the bottom, we are fucked, we just take it here. Send troops over seas to free people? How about you send some HERE! It figures, our county was listed as the worse county is the whole state as far as "healthy living". No shit! It's a ghetto decimated by corruption.
You see, if you aren't a lawyer here, you are an idiot and they basically ignore you in court. It's the acme of a good old boy system that perpetuates the lawyer fees. Poor people don't have a prayer. You see, I am being burned for about $1500. Lawyers here want that to even talk to you. Now 1500 is a joke to most Americans, but when you live on 674 dollars a month, you don't have a lot to work with, so I will be paying on that FOREVER and the damn interest will probably double it before it's over.
If you think that's bad, how about the State and their zeal to get their tax dollars? My xwife burned me on taxes she didn't pay when she took her 401k money out and went partying on it when she decided to start doing meth. She picked up her meth habit at the factory she worked at trying to stay awake to do the overtime hours to pay our CountryWide loan. Well, that didn't work out so well and we divorced, she took the money and ran. I ended up as a casualty, crippled up, and abandoned out in the country with no transportation. With the help of good christian people, I ended up in the housing project instead of dead in a ditch. I got my disability, which the medical coverage saved my life. I am fighting the long fight back from absolutely nothing.
Anyway, the State wants their tax money on the money she made off with. Guess what? I was married to her, so that makes me responsible for her debts at the time. So the State, if you owe them money, will not let you have you car license plates unless you work out a deal with them. It's been State policy though to leave people on SSI alone, we have enough misery without taking what little money we have. But this year, I had a zealot who wanted to go over my budget to find money I could send the State. I asked her if there was a change in policy and she said no, then I asked her then to release my car plates, my budget was stretched enough and I needed my car to get to school, because if I had to walk it, they would find me dead about a quarter of the way there.
She didn't want to comply with policy or good sense. I had to climb over her head to the highest levels to get her off my back. WTF? If I was a little dumber or just a bit more depressed I would have just rolled over and let her have her way. In my condition, it was a major fight, and stressed my addled brain to no end. But this is the kind of crap that goes on in my area. We are poor and mostly dumb and they know it. Some people just don't have the mental capacity to deal with this kind of onslaught from the system and they just knuckle under.
I know if it happens to me wholesale, then I know plenty of others are having problems too. I hear too many stories, I have long since ignored them, not out of disbelief, but out of survival. Technology? It offers us alternatives to the shitty small town operations that discriminate against you if you are poor. Please bring more of it.
You should live in a small town where they run their mouths about your business. I hate small town banks for that and other reasons. In my little town, if you go to court for a credit card or any debt, you are automatically guilty unless you can prove in spades and beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't owe it. I swear to God it's crooked as hell here. What sucks is they take their judgment they bought from the judge and send the sheriff around to all the banks, find your account and lock you out of it. They did it to my mother over some damn bogus bill she had years old, they took every dime she had out of her account and it was her Social Security.
She managed to have a legal aid lawyer get it back for her, they aren't suppose to be able to take your disability money or your SS money, but these filthy fuckers will and you have to fight them to get it back. That really sucks for poor people who have no money left over from bills and they need their medicine NOW, not weeks from now when they finally get their money.
The evil cocksuckers did it to me too recently. I had a nine year old Credit card bill surface and they took me to court because I told the fuckers I had paid it off years ago and to fuck themselves. Legal aid? Ha! Lawyers are for the rich here, legal aid is over 60 miles away and they act as surly with you on the phone as you can imagine. So there I am, having all kinds of difficulties finding the paperwork on this, after it's been 9 years, a divorce and 3 moves. I get to court, ask for an extension so I can present a proper defense, explaining the difficulties I was having with an idiot xwife in regards to WTF she did with any of our paperwork, being she was the business college grad and insisted on doing the bills. AND I was having problems scraping together a lawyer, please FFS, it's been 9 years, they can wait a few more weeks while I surmount my defense, because I KNOW I paid it and I will be damned if I will pay it again.
BZZZZZZT. Fuck you, no extension, you are wrong, you are a piece of shit, pay the bill and they gave them the judgment. Next comes the local bank problem of them being right there for our Sheriff, who we pay taxes to protect us to act as a goon for these damn crooks. He goes in and serves my bank, they cough up my information and these fuckers get to seal my account and drain it. Here's where its a serious problem. It's an SSI account. I am disabled. This doesn't matter, I have to go to the same fucking judge who gave them the judgment to get them out of my SSI account. It doesn't matter that federal law protects it. The sheriff is suppose to blindly do as the judge says even if the judge is a fucking crook.
I pay each month to this fucking collections company who purchased this old debt of mine, 9 years old, and it was already paid the hell off years ago. I pay them each month or they will lock down my bank account and I will NOT be able to get my medicine, buy food or pay my rent. Its extortion and I put that on each check I send them in the note area. Note: Extortion. They still cash it.
Another problem with local banks, service charges. My mother's best friend was in the hospital, a 70+ year old woman who was changing banks. Her SS check was suppose to be coming to a certain bank, she was told it was going to be in the bank on such and such date. She while in the hospital, pays her bills only to find out the check went to the wrong damn bank and now all of her checks bounce. She is then charged HUNDREDS of dollars in service charges. This is money she doesn't have. Her money is so tight she goes without each month. Yet she had to go begging relatives to pay this or END UP IN JAIL. And she did talk to the bank explaining it, she went with hat in hand and was crying. They didn't give a fuck, give us your money you old bitch or go to jail. They didn't say it in those words of course, but that is the attitude you come away with from them.
Let me tell you, there is nothing righteous or just about this system. If you are poor, very old or weak,
It doesn't need to come out in trial. It would be the dumbest thing in the universe to use any of the intelligence gained in a trial. Just for the reason of tipping off the entire planet and sending everyone one scurrying. You use the intelligence to figure out how to be "in the right place at the right time" to exploit a weakness. It will then look like dumb luck or just intuitive investigating. Why spook the herd when you can quietly pick off what you want one at a time?
Dismay is all I feel after reading that article from C-NET. These problems are like cockroaches, by the time you see ONE, you already have an infestation. I think our goose is cooked. I have to wonder how automated the process is by now. If it's an app, it doesn't need a human to implement it then. In fact, I can imagine the whole process is done automagical with some monster computer array and storage sifting the data constantly. It puts me to mind of the last Batman movie, but I seriously doubt the man in charge is going to blow it up when he walks away from catching one badguy.
What kills me is the complacency of many to just think that is O.K. These kind of tools don't ever go away. Human nature doesn't change. Even if those in charge had the noblest of reasons for creating this and would be perfect in their use of it, that doesn't mean those who follow them will be as trustworthy. A tool used for good can be used for destruction. These are tools that should NEVER fall into the hands of evil. But they probably already are, and in fact, it was probably evil that made them.
Welcome to our evil future.
It does spark the imagination as to what might be lurking inside these phones. Could they be chipped to spy on us without anyone knowing it? Do you know what each component is in that little phone? Does anyone? And even if you did know what components they are, who's to say "they" didn't slip in a chip disguised as something else. You would have to monitor the phone's output to see if it's broadcasting anything beside what it normally should. Then you have to consider, that it's function might be "on demand" and you may never catch it spying on you because "they" haven't chose to activate it, so you set there for God knows how long monitoring this suspicious phone.
Or you could assume that if they really are wanting to use the phones to spy on us, then would they put something in the client side of the hardware? It would require the cooperation of the manufactures, their engineers and risk exposure. The human element is going to fail always in such an operation as this. They would surely not risk exposure and do their spying from inside the network its self where they could passively monitor traffic, and user locations.
Now what I could fathom them taking the risk of exposure for is the camera. Imagine being able to access any cell phone with a camera, browse its contents, or even activate it secretly. Now that is something I wouldn't be able to resist if I was administrating a nation wide intelligence operation. Just think of the possibilities of such, you could take dumps from every phone in the country, sift it continuously with shape recognition software. Bad guy takes a picture of his buddies posing with their illegal weapons thinking they are all cool, but somewhere a computer recognized the weapons, logs the recognition, the time, the date, the location and has cataloged everyone in the picture. This information is dispensed out in the field to agents for them to react to immediately.
This sounds fine and dandy from an intelligence operation point of view, but it's a nightmare for civil liberties. That is the problem with making an effective intelligence tool, the party that makes it might have the best of intentions for its use, but that doesn't mean it will experience mission creep or just fall into the wrong hands, or just morph with bad times into a tool used for evil.
But here is the rub, if you put something like that in a phone, it will be found. And when it is, its going to piss off everyone, including officials who don't want blackmailed sometime in the future with this. Needless to say, if the information about you chipping the nation's phones gets out, you are finished politically, your next intelligence operation will be listening in on the chief of the village you are hiding out in.
Frankly, if I was going to risk such a gambit, I would put the chips in disposable phones, the prepaid ones that are the prime choice of people who don't want tracked but need a phone. Its win/win if they find the chip in those or not. If they don't, you have intelligence perhaps to be farmed. If they do, you will have planted a seed of doubt at least concerning their phones and you might shoo them into getting sloppy in their search for secure communication. I think the risk factor of exposure of the chips to prying noses would be less with the demographics that use those kinds of phones.
Anyway, I doubt that "they" are operating on that kind of level. It is the government after all, which is a political body. These tend to get mired down to a glacial pace with not only the machinations of the bureaucratic beast, but annoying amounts of accountability. It would take a mandate by them to get something like this done, because it would be like herding cats to get the manufacturers on board. You just know some idiot would flip out and run screaming to the press about "they" are trying to put a "backdoor" into everyone's phones.
I am not saying it couldn't be done. I think it could be pulled off, but it would need super deep pockets and oodles of background information on the engine
We have epic greed here, is our major retardation. It's not enough to make money, you have to get filthy rich off of every poor slob you can. They will be down to charging us by the bit if we let them, and it looks like we will let them. They have all the guns, lawyers, judges and politicians. The USA is a new kind of political animal, it's pure corporate mercenary-ism. Freedom and liberty are a punch line in a joke here now. Only the truly naive still believe in the old nationalism fairy tales of "home of the free". Don't laugh, our brand of bullshit is coming your way soon too.
Oh cue the images in my head when I read this one.
Pig riding assault raptors firing burning Korans, a politically incorrect version of the shark riding raptor with RPGs.
There is no such agency.
But if there was, I would speculate that they indeed have ways into your Windows 7 or any other OS. If they didn't, they sure would be a disappointment. With that said, I am sure there is a genuine reason for them to suggest Windows 7. I am surprised that they didn't say "secure your wireless, please". Open WiFi routers are all over the place, have you ever done a casual wardrive and looked at the data? About half of my town's wifi is wide open. I would post this information and recommendations on how to secure them, ( PUT A PASSWORD ON IT, DUH) but am afraid of the paranoid backlash.
I wonder if that might be why the NSA is so vague. They probably know the vicious little details of why you should upgrade, but don't want to say so, because we will say, "OH YEAH?? HOW DO YOU KNOW? YOU BEEN IN MY COMPUTER??" People are paranoid about things they are ignorant about. I know I am resisting urges to wad me up a tinfoil hat right now, they are probably watching me through my web cam. O_o