I can steal a TRUCK LOAD of candy bars, and eat them all. The conviction, fines, and restitution will in no way approach 2 million dollars, unless I hurt someone in the process.
Why are a few bits and bytes in digital format more valuable than a candy bar? I could fill terrabyte after terrabyte drive with music, and not have a million dollars worth of music.
AC was modded troll. I'm not sure that the mod was fair, or unfair, but he raises a legitimate issue: Was the man looking for this confrontation when he arrived at the airport? Yeah, IMO, he was. I listened to his recording weeks ago, and I've re-read the transcript just now. Yes, he was confrontational.
The question is, HOW WAS THAT WRONG?
Unfair and unjust laws don't just get old, die, get buried, then forgotten. To have unjust laws overturned, SOMEONE HAS TO CHALLENGE THEM!!
The dweeby little dude with strange ideas carrying considerably less than $10,000 through an airport has done us all a service, by focusing public attention on zealots going beyond their jurisdictional duties, trying to get some stupid conviction.
I promise, if I have money in my person, and you want to know how I got the money, I'm gonna tell you to "Fuck off", and I'll likely enforce the order with a firearm, if I have one, or a club, or whatever other weapon is at hand.
Federal law says that I must explain cash transfers in excess of $10,000, but even that law is wrong and oppressive. While I might comply with that law, I WILL complain about it. Don't bother asking me about $9,999.99, because I will NOT cooperate with your lame ass.
It probably IS a felony in a lot more places than just Illinois. And, it will soon be a felony in yet more places. That doesn't change the fact that the law is a worthless turd floating in the toilet of oppressive laws. Law enforcement should be subject to recording, anytime, and anyplace. The public pays for law enforcement, the public is entitled to know what law enforcement is doing. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around.
Ever notice something about Microsoft sites like this? There's no "Feedback" button. No "Comment" block. Nada. They want to forcefeed their version of the facts, without any input from the users. Tarzan beats his chest, and screams to the world how great he is, but the deaf bastard doesn't want to hear Jane sniveling about his premature ejaculation problem. Visit Firefox's site, and you're INVITED to get involved and send feedback. Ditto Chrome. Not sure about Opera, but I'm sure they look for feedback. This is part of the reason IE sucked so horribly until recently. IE7 was the first version to have so much as TABS FFS. IE8 finally has some additional useful features - mostly just thrown out there in response to declinind market share going to browsers that already offered cool features.
Candidates run for office in the expectation of becoming control freaks, and making mountains of money for themselves and their friends. It is quite fair for them to expect people to put them in office, and reward their efforts put forth during the campaign.
No matter how you water it down, failing to put that candidate into office, especially when you laugh yourself silly at his feeble attempts, means you failed to reward his efforts. If you can live with that choice, fine.
But, don't go around making up reasons why you've done the world a favor by saying "Fuck you" to the candidate. You're only lying to yourself.
REMEMBER, BOYS & GIRLS: the distributors are more like politicians than they are like working men and women. Like politicians, they will sink millions of dollars into sinking ships, and refuse you and I the right to make up our own minds that it's time to abandon ship, instead demanding that WE PAY for repairs to the rusted out hulk.
Fuck 'em all. When they actually enrich my life, I'll consider enriching theirs. Boycott Hollywood, boycott the music industry, and boycott the game industry until they wise up. Just fuck 'em all.
I suggest that you be mildly abusive toward Herr Sullivan's asinity, but don't go overboard, or comments will just be edited out. Have fun, boys and girls! BTW, I'm Paul, and my comment starts with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics phrase.
Yes, Doctor, I know computers. You name it - *nix, Apple, Microsoft. Any hardware, any brand, it doesn't matter. I'm looking for a rewarding job. YIKES!!! WHAT ARE THOSE FIBERS GROWING OUT OF THOSE RATS?!?! Cultures, you say? Are they, like, CONTAGIOUS?!?!
*gulp* Yes, Doctor, I was looking for a cultured environment, but perhaps we don't speak the same brand of English. I'll get back to you, if I get terribly hungry, alright?
Someone has to author a whistle blower's complaint. If the act of authoring nullifies any expectation of anonymity, well, goodbye whistleblowing.
The newspaper guilty of outing an anonymous blogger is morally bankrupt. They should have been publishing the facts that the blogger was blogging about, not going after the blogger.
Suggesting that violence caused Hitler, one has to look around, and wonder what causes other monstrous human beings. Is there some clear correlation between violence in youth, and violent adults? No, there is not. The socioligists would like us to think so.
There was much, much more at work to form Hitler and his party, than the violence of WW1. The Great Depression, more than anything else, created the atmosphere in which such a man would be able to build his empire. People who are desperately hungry are much more willing to follow someone who tells them pleasing lies, than are people with full bellies and secure homes, and the leisure to consider those charismatic speeches.
If our current economic crisis isn't cured soon, we might expect echoes of Hitler to surface around the world in the next few years.
"I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war."
A lot of uneducated, unsophisticated, even ignorant remarks in this thread. But, I pick this one. A nation doesn't descend into civil war. Things are already bad, and people have already hit rock bottom, long before they determine that they have to find the balls to pick up a weapon and use it. Civil war is the first step on the ladder back up out of the hole.
I know - every bleeding heart on the freaking planet has tried to brainwash us that "violence never solves anything!" Bullshit. Violence solved Adolph Hitler, among other things. Pacifists just fed Hitler whatever he wanted.
War isn't the worst thing that can happen to a nation, nor is death the worst thing that can happen to a man. Those who believe so clearly have no imagination, and have failed to study history.
My thoughts, almost exactly. Pandemic "x" sweeps the globe, infecting 95% of the population, and killing 85% of those infected. BUT those people who were thought susceptible to disease "D" are left untouched.
Unfortunately, because we have been screening out the genes that make disease "D" likely, there are only 50,000 such people worldwide......
Life on earth has been a stage for germ warfare since the beginning. When we start trying to second guess which adaptations are desirable, and why, we open a whole new can of worms. It's possible that we extinct ourselves by putting aside some form of resistance to germ warfare that we don't even recognize as such.
While I find this to be quite interesting - I'll point out that my previous post was addressing a small business owned by someone like a wedding cake baker.
But, since you've gone to the effort of explaining how secure a data center is, and why - I MUST point out that exploits are found on almost a monthly basis that yields tons of valuable information for criminals. Some of those exploits are fixed almost immediately, while others run in the wild for years, with efficient botnets harvesting data steadily.
While the data centers may be secure, in and of themselves, the transmission of data to and from the data centers is by no means "secure". That perceived security is only a relative thing. In the original article, data was compromised at the vendor's physical location.
If I were to successfully incorporate WalMart retail stores into a botnet, what percentage of the US population's financial data could I access?
Or, if I penetrated the computers of local insurance agents for a company like Nationwide.
The possibilities are endless. And, IMHO, one is a fool to use electronic banking, trusting that every mom and pop store has really secure methods of transferring data via the web, as well as local storage.
When we see a year or two pass, with no compromise of massive amounts of financial data by criminals, THEN I might consider our business dealings to be secured. Google yields dozens of hits on "ATM exploit" for instance.
Perhaps. But, the pizza place that demands my information before ringing up a pizza simply doesn't make a sale to me. I informed the lady who demanded my phone number etc that none of my personal information was any of her busines, and I turned around and walked out. I've not returned to that pizza joint since, nor do I intend to. There are plenty of other pizza places around, two of them closer, and none of them demand personal information for a cash sale.
I actually gave that aspect a little bit of thought while at work today. Yeah - some records have to be retained, for reasons such as you point out.
But, if the business MUST retain such information for essential legal reasons, that data should be stored on a server that is OFFLINE. No access via a workstation connected to the internet, no automatic updates from Microsoft, nada. It is a secure server, dedicated to storage of essential customer data. And, that server should also be purged periodically. The burglar who steals the server and/or the backups for the server shouldn't get the credit card numbers for every customer you have served since Noah's ark ran aground.
No problem with paying in advance. I wouldn't mind at all. But, putting my financial data into a computer which can't reasonably be secured is out of the question. Any information put into the data base that isn't essential for planning purposes is out of the question. That data should include my name, where the cake is going, and the date, along with price, and whether it is paid for or not. There shouldn't even be a need to save my credit card number with that data - if I charge it, it is charged, and paid for.
You don't even need to save the bride and groom's names, phone numbers, and addresses, assuming that I (Dad) have paid for the cake. It is all impertinent data, that you are probably unwilling to go to the "expense" of safeguarding. It creates a burden on you, and it opens me to some as-of-yet unheard of exploit.
I see rationalization for government and business intrusion into private lives. 90% of the information requested and/or demanded by any given government agency or business is totally unnecessary. It is none of my phone company's business how many people live in the house, or might use the phone. It is none of my ISP's business how many computers I own, or how many of them might connect through the gateway, or even HOW they might connect. The government's preoccupation with the precise identification leads to requirements for fingerprints, DNA samples, and more. I once ordered a pizza, in person, with cash in hand, and the cashier insisted that she needed my phone number and address!! The stupid broad doesn't even need to know my NAME to trade a pizza for a twenty dollar bill!
In the article, a baker was entrusted with financial information of her clients. HOW FREAKING BOGUS!! To bake a wedding cake does NOT require storing my credit card information, or any other personal details.
Totally unnecessary information is harvested for the most trivial dealings. And, it's WRONG.
No government agency, and no business should request information that is not absolutely essential to perform the business at hand. Nor should they request any more information than they are willing and capable of storing in a SECURE manner. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to safeguard that information, it isn't some "expense", or an "option", it shouldn't be considered a "burden". If and when safeguarding information becomes an "expense", then it should be obvious that they are collecting unnecessary and trivial information.
TFA is bogus rationalization, and an attempt to get people to sympathize with some perceived need to dump privacy laws. Forbes and Lee Gomes should be slapped silly for even writing and printing the article.
"As for nuclear war, I wouldn't worry too much about that."
Two points.
Prior to 9/11/01 no one would have thought that some religious zealots could have brought down the WTC. After all, they had already tried, and failed miserably, once already. Maybe Iran can deliver a warhead, maybe they can't, but it isn't really safe to assume that they can not.
Also.
Consider collusion between Kim Jong Il's government and Iran's government. N. Korea exports a lot of technology to the mideast. The same technology he imports from China. Some of which was sold to China by treasonous bastards like Bill Clinton.
While Bush was mostly full of crap with his "axis of evil" rants, there are some threads of truth to what he said.
Bottom line, IMHO, it's dangerous to dismiss the possibility of nuclear (or at least atomic) weapons out of hand.
Actually, there are several shades of redneck. Even different types of redneck. The true, deepsouth, backwoods, "nigger don't let the sun set with you in this town" type of redneck is what the above poster was referring to.
A community that is backwoodsy and exclusively white doesn't necessarily qualify as "redneck". Never in Wisconsin have I encountered the real redneck mentality and emotional baggage of the real ignorant redneck.
Demographics fail to convey the real meaning of the word - it is something that has to be experienced.
Errr, yes, very insightful, and your post deserves the modding it has received.
But, you don't address the factor of time when considering the effects of outside influences. In Europe, the outside influences were extremely distasteful to an overwhelming majority of the population. Hence, revolutions happened almost overnight.
In Iran, outside influence was overthrown decades ago when the shah was ousted. A reactionary deist government was installed, pretty much according to the will of the people. Today, that reactionary deist government is becoming more and more intolerable to the people, and pressure is being put on that government.
But, the government still enjoys the support of the older generation, as well as the impoverished people who have benefited from the government.
Yes, Iran's government is going out - perhaps this month, if enough people feel strongly enough, perhaps in the next election, if today's protests fail. But, it takes time.
Ultimately, Iran is most likely to return to a true democratically elected government similar to what they enjoyed BEFORE the US and UK installed their puppet shah. Always remember, the US and UK were the outside influence that interfered in Iranian politics, to the detriment of most Iranian people. While average Iranians don't "hate" us, they certainly have no reason to trust us. At least not those Iranians who study history. They know that western capitalists will sell their own mothers into slavery if there's a profit.
Doubt me? Look to Wall Street. How's our economy doing these days?
Send Firefox developers a polite nasty-gram, telling them that you want the ability to open a second, third, or even fourth instance of FF in seperate memory space.
The problem with surveillance is, it WILL be abused. Just think of the political uses. You happen to be mayor, governor, or senator, incumbent in a pretty close race. Oh, wait, sweet. We can just put a surveillance team on the challenger, and wait for SOMETHING to happen. If the candidate doesn't do something illegal, immoral, or unethical, one of his aides or advisors will. Sweet. Just think of the possibilities!!
I could give you hundreds of other potential abuses without trying very hard. Just use your imagination - if you can't come up with a lot of scary scenarios for yourself, you are challenged in some way.
This article should be covered up, cast out, smothered, and wiped off the face of the intartubes. Somewhere in the Book of Gates, it must surely be written that Open Source is the work of the Devils, and that all who are contaminated by such heresy shall surely be cast into the lake of BSOD.
All who seek after the ways of wisdom are surely aware that both science and programming are best accomplished in secretive enclaves, and pursued by the holy clerics of Corporate America. Surely, in the pursuit of wisdom, lesser beings shall be confused and damned by their communistic, socialistic methods. No good can come of the curiosity of the little man.
Keep the science in the cathedrals, and keep the coding in Microsoft labs.
Slashdot Mirror
I can steal a TRUCK LOAD of candy bars, and eat them all. The conviction, fines, and restitution will in no way approach 2 million dollars, unless I hurt someone in the process.
Why are a few bits and bytes in digital format more valuable than a candy bar? I could fill terrabyte after terrabyte drive with music, and not have a million dollars worth of music.
Insanity.
The legal system needs to be shaken up.
AC was modded troll. I'm not sure that the mod was fair, or unfair, but he raises a legitimate issue: Was the man looking for this confrontation when he arrived at the airport? Yeah, IMO, he was. I listened to his recording weeks ago, and I've re-read the transcript just now. Yes, he was confrontational.
The question is, HOW WAS THAT WRONG?
Unfair and unjust laws don't just get old, die, get buried, then forgotten. To have unjust laws overturned, SOMEONE HAS TO CHALLENGE THEM!!
The dweeby little dude with strange ideas carrying considerably less than $10,000 through an airport has done us all a service, by focusing public attention on zealots going beyond their jurisdictional duties, trying to get some stupid conviction.
I promise, if I have money in my person, and you want to know how I got the money, I'm gonna tell you to "Fuck off", and I'll likely enforce the order with a firearm, if I have one, or a club, or whatever other weapon is at hand.
Federal law says that I must explain cash transfers in excess of $10,000, but even that law is wrong and oppressive. While I might comply with that law, I WILL complain about it. Don't bother asking me about $9,999.99, because I will NOT cooperate with your lame ass.
It probably IS a felony in a lot more places than just Illinois. And, it will soon be a felony in yet more places. That doesn't change the fact that the law is a worthless turd floating in the toilet of oppressive laws. Law enforcement should be subject to recording, anytime, and anyplace. The public pays for law enforcement, the public is entitled to know what law enforcement is doing. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around.
Ever notice something about Microsoft sites like this? There's no "Feedback" button. No "Comment" block. Nada. They want to forcefeed their version of the facts, without any input from the users. Tarzan beats his chest, and screams to the world how great he is, but the deaf bastard doesn't want to hear Jane sniveling about his premature ejaculation problem. Visit Firefox's site, and you're INVITED to get involved and send feedback. Ditto Chrome. Not sure about Opera, but I'm sure they look for feedback. This is part of the reason IE sucked so horribly until recently. IE7 was the first version to have so much as TABS FFS. IE8 finally has some additional useful features - mostly just thrown out there in response to declinind market share going to browsers that already offered cool features.
Candidates run for office in the expectation of becoming control freaks, and making mountains of money for themselves and their friends. It is quite fair for them to expect people to put them in office, and reward their efforts put forth during the campaign.
No matter how you water it down, failing to put that candidate into office, especially when you laugh yourself silly at his feeble attempts, means you failed to reward his efforts. If you can live with that choice, fine.
But, don't go around making up reasons why you've done the world a favor by saying "Fuck you" to the candidate. You're only lying to yourself.
REMEMBER, BOYS & GIRLS: the distributors are more like politicians than they are like working men and women. Like politicians, they will sink millions of dollars into sinking ships, and refuse you and I the right to make up our own minds that it's time to abandon ship, instead demanding that WE PAY for repairs to the rusted out hulk.
Fuck 'em all. When they actually enrich my life, I'll consider enriching theirs. Boycott Hollywood, boycott the music industry, and boycott the game industry until they wise up. Just fuck 'em all.
Can you make a video of that? With DRM? I would be proud if I could be the first to pirate it!!
How many slashdotters bothered to register, so that they could leave comments? Read my comment, just completed minutes ago: http://montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=10551414
I suggest that you be mildly abusive toward Herr Sullivan's asinity, but don't go overboard, or comments will just be edited out. Have fun, boys and girls! BTW, I'm Paul, and my comment starts with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics phrase.
"a rewarding culture"
Yes, Doctor, I know computers. You name it - *nix, Apple, Microsoft. Any hardware, any brand, it doesn't matter. I'm looking for a rewarding job. YIKES!!! WHAT ARE THOSE FIBERS GROWING OUT OF THOSE RATS?!?! Cultures, you say? Are they, like, CONTAGIOUS?!?!
*gulp* Yes, Doctor, I was looking for a cultured environment, but perhaps we don't speak the same brand of English. I'll get back to you, if I get terribly hungry, alright?
Someone has to author a whistle blower's complaint. If the act of authoring nullifies any expectation of anonymity, well, goodbye whistleblowing.
The newspaper guilty of outing an anonymous blogger is morally bankrupt. They should have been publishing the facts that the blogger was blogging about, not going after the blogger.
Suggesting that violence caused Hitler, one has to look around, and wonder what causes other monstrous human beings. Is there some clear correlation between violence in youth, and violent adults? No, there is not. The socioligists would like us to think so.
There was much, much more at work to form Hitler and his party, than the violence of WW1. The Great Depression, more than anything else, created the atmosphere in which such a man would be able to build his empire. People who are desperately hungry are much more willing to follow someone who tells them pleasing lies, than are people with full bellies and secure homes, and the leisure to consider those charismatic speeches.
If our current economic crisis isn't cured soon, we might expect echoes of Hitler to surface around the world in the next few years.
Stop being an ass and swinging around catchy phrases. Go back and read what I typed, not what you thought I meant.
"I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war."
A lot of uneducated, unsophisticated, even ignorant remarks in this thread. But, I pick this one. A nation doesn't descend into civil war. Things are already bad, and people have already hit rock bottom, long before they determine that they have to find the balls to pick up a weapon and use it. Civil war is the first step on the ladder back up out of the hole.
I know - every bleeding heart on the freaking planet has tried to brainwash us that "violence never solves anything!" Bullshit. Violence solved Adolph Hitler, among other things. Pacifists just fed Hitler whatever he wanted.
War isn't the worst thing that can happen to a nation, nor is death the worst thing that can happen to a man. Those who believe so clearly have no imagination, and have failed to study history.
My thoughts, almost exactly. Pandemic "x" sweeps the globe, infecting 95% of the population, and killing 85% of those infected. BUT those people who were thought susceptible to disease "D" are left untouched.
Unfortunately, because we have been screening out the genes that make disease "D" likely, there are only 50,000 such people worldwide......
Life on earth has been a stage for germ warfare since the beginning. When we start trying to second guess which adaptations are desirable, and why, we open a whole new can of worms. It's possible that we extinct ourselves by putting aside some form of resistance to germ warfare that we don't even recognize as such.
While I find this to be quite interesting - I'll point out that my previous post was addressing a small business owned by someone like a wedding cake baker.
But, since you've gone to the effort of explaining how secure a data center is, and why - I MUST point out that exploits are found on almost a monthly basis that yields tons of valuable information for criminals. Some of those exploits are fixed almost immediately, while others run in the wild for years, with efficient botnets harvesting data steadily.
While the data centers may be secure, in and of themselves, the transmission of data to and from the data centers is by no means "secure". That perceived security is only a relative thing. In the original article, data was compromised at the vendor's physical location.
If I were to successfully incorporate WalMart retail stores into a botnet, what percentage of the US population's financial data could I access?
Or, if I penetrated the computers of local insurance agents for a company like Nationwide.
The possibilities are endless. And, IMHO, one is a fool to use electronic banking, trusting that every mom and pop store has really secure methods of transferring data via the web, as well as local storage.
When we see a year or two pass, with no compromise of massive amounts of financial data by criminals, THEN I might consider our business dealings to be secured. Google yields dozens of hits on "ATM exploit" for instance.
Perhaps. But, the pizza place that demands my information before ringing up a pizza simply doesn't make a sale to me. I informed the lady who demanded my phone number etc that none of my personal information was any of her busines, and I turned around and walked out. I've not returned to that pizza joint since, nor do I intend to. There are plenty of other pizza places around, two of them closer, and none of them demand personal information for a cash sale.
I actually gave that aspect a little bit of thought while at work today. Yeah - some records have to be retained, for reasons such as you point out.
But, if the business MUST retain such information for essential legal reasons, that data should be stored on a server that is OFFLINE. No access via a workstation connected to the internet, no automatic updates from Microsoft, nada. It is a secure server, dedicated to storage of essential customer data. And, that server should also be purged periodically. The burglar who steals the server and/or the backups for the server shouldn't get the credit card numbers for every customer you have served since Noah's ark ran aground.
No problem with paying in advance. I wouldn't mind at all. But, putting my financial data into a computer which can't reasonably be secured is out of the question. Any information put into the data base that isn't essential for planning purposes is out of the question. That data should include my name, where the cake is going, and the date, along with price, and whether it is paid for or not. There shouldn't even be a need to save my credit card number with that data - if I charge it, it is charged, and paid for.
You don't even need to save the bride and groom's names, phone numbers, and addresses, assuming that I (Dad) have paid for the cake. It is all impertinent data, that you are probably unwilling to go to the "expense" of safeguarding. It creates a burden on you, and it opens me to some as-of-yet unheard of exploit.
I see rationalization for government and business intrusion into private lives. 90% of the information requested and/or demanded by any given government agency or business is totally unnecessary. It is none of my phone company's business how many people live in the house, or might use the phone. It is none of my ISP's business how many computers I own, or how many of them might connect through the gateway, or even HOW they might connect. The government's preoccupation with the precise identification leads to requirements for fingerprints, DNA samples, and more. I once ordered a pizza, in person, with cash in hand, and the cashier insisted that she needed my phone number and address!! The stupid broad doesn't even need to know my NAME to trade a pizza for a twenty dollar bill!
In the article, a baker was entrusted with financial information of her clients. HOW FREAKING BOGUS!! To bake a wedding cake does NOT require storing my credit card information, or any other personal details.
Totally unnecessary information is harvested for the most trivial dealings. And, it's WRONG.
No government agency, and no business should request information that is not absolutely essential to perform the business at hand. Nor should they request any more information than they are willing and capable of storing in a SECURE manner. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to safeguard that information, it isn't some "expense", or an "option", it shouldn't be considered a "burden". If and when safeguarding information becomes an "expense", then it should be obvious that they are collecting unnecessary and trivial information.
TFA is bogus rationalization, and an attempt to get people to sympathize with some perceived need to dump privacy laws. Forbes and Lee Gomes should be slapped silly for even writing and printing the article.
"As for nuclear war, I wouldn't worry too much about that."
Two points.
Prior to 9/11/01 no one would have thought that some religious zealots could have brought down the WTC. After all, they had already tried, and failed miserably, once already. Maybe Iran can deliver a warhead, maybe they can't, but it isn't really safe to assume that they can not.
Also.
Consider collusion between Kim Jong Il's government and Iran's government. N. Korea exports a lot of technology to the mideast. The same technology he imports from China. Some of which was sold to China by treasonous bastards like Bill Clinton.
While Bush was mostly full of crap with his "axis of evil" rants, there are some threads of truth to what he said.
Bottom line, IMHO, it's dangerous to dismiss the possibility of nuclear (or at least atomic) weapons out of hand.
Actually, there are several shades of redneck. Even different types of redneck. The true, deepsouth, backwoods, "nigger don't let the sun set with you in this town" type of redneck is what the above poster was referring to.
A community that is backwoodsy and exclusively white doesn't necessarily qualify as "redneck". Never in Wisconsin have I encountered the real redneck mentality and emotional baggage of the real ignorant redneck.
Demographics fail to convey the real meaning of the word - it is something that has to be experienced.
Errr, yes, very insightful, and your post deserves the modding it has received.
But, you don't address the factor of time when considering the effects of outside influences. In Europe, the outside influences were extremely distasteful to an overwhelming majority of the population. Hence, revolutions happened almost overnight.
In Iran, outside influence was overthrown decades ago when the shah was ousted. A reactionary deist government was installed, pretty much according to the will of the people. Today, that reactionary deist government is becoming more and more intolerable to the people, and pressure is being put on that government.
But, the government still enjoys the support of the older generation, as well as the impoverished people who have benefited from the government.
Yes, Iran's government is going out - perhaps this month, if enough people feel strongly enough, perhaps in the next election, if today's protests fail. But, it takes time.
Ultimately, Iran is most likely to return to a true democratically elected government similar to what they enjoyed BEFORE the US and UK installed their puppet shah. Always remember, the US and UK were the outside influence that interfered in Iranian politics, to the detriment of most Iranian people. While average Iranians don't "hate" us, they certainly have no reason to trust us. At least not those Iranians who study history. They know that western capitalists will sell their own mothers into slavery if there's a profit.
Doubt me? Look to Wall Street. How's our economy doing these days?
Mod parent up, people.
To be perfectly honest, I think I've read that article before - or one very much like it. Because I didn't see a need for it, I just forgot it.
Thank you, Z80xxc!
Some browsers DO allow running a second instance.
Send Firefox developers a polite nasty-gram, telling them that you want the ability to open a second, third, or even fourth instance of FF in seperate memory space.
The problem with surveillance is, it WILL be abused. Just think of the political uses. You happen to be mayor, governor, or senator, incumbent in a pretty close race. Oh, wait, sweet. We can just put a surveillance team on the challenger, and wait for SOMETHING to happen. If the candidate doesn't do something illegal, immoral, or unethical, one of his aides or advisors will. Sweet. Just think of the possibilities!!
I could give you hundreds of other potential abuses without trying very hard. Just use your imagination - if you can't come up with a lot of scary scenarios for yourself, you are challenged in some way.
This article should be covered up, cast out, smothered, and wiped off the face of the intartubes. Somewhere in the Book of Gates, it must surely be written that Open Source is the work of the Devils, and that all who are contaminated by such heresy shall surely be cast into the lake of BSOD.
All who seek after the ways of wisdom are surely aware that both science and programming are best accomplished in secretive enclaves, and pursued by the holy clerics of Corporate America. Surely, in the pursuit of wisdom, lesser beings shall be confused and damned by their communistic, socialistic methods. No good can come of the curiosity of the little man.
Keep the science in the cathedrals, and keep the coding in Microsoft labs.
Thus speaketh the Gates.
All hail the great EULA!!