First thing any trained interrogator will tell you is, everyone lies. In fact, psychologists expect a certain degree of lying during a forensic psychiatric examination. People who show up as not lying a little, don't sweat a little, are very probably sociopaths. The fact is, some amount of lying is healthy. We lie to protect our egos, our worldview, or the people we love. We lie to protect ourselves. And this isn't a bad thing. Lying, by itself, is just a social behavior. It's the motivation behind it that makes it good or bad.
We don't lie all the time. In fact, we lie very little as a society. But it is essential to our survival that we do. Sun Tzu wrote several thousand years ago that the best way to motivate your soldiers is to put them on what he termed "death ground". That is, intentionally leading them to a place where there can be no retreat from the enemy. They then fight harder and hold nothing back. Sun Tzu knew that all warfare is deception, even to one's own troops. But it saved lives; Those soldiers might have run themselves ragged retreating constantly. By forcing the conflict, choosing the time and place, at a time when the soldiers would have maximum effectiveness against the enemy, casualties on his side were minimized. But you better believe that he didn't tell the soldiers he knew he was setting them up for a situation with no escape. He lied to them. And because of that, they survived.
People lie about their age so they can join the military early. Maybe they come from a broken home, are constantly physically and sexually abused, and it's the only way out. So they lie, and it means they survive, emotionally if not physically as well. Honesty is a virtue, but like any virtue you can take it to excesss -- you can get yourself killed, or hurt, or those you love.
If there's one thing I've learned about morality, it's that it cannot be inflexible. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one ideal to protect an even bigger one. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a short term set back to achieve a long term success. Lying is directly tied to morality -- you can't talk about one and not the other. So I'm not saying don't try to be honest, but remember it's a virtue... and virtues come before doing the right thing, at the right time, with the right words.
If you lie because it protects a principle of yours, or perhaps if what you do goes beyond principles and into the realm of love, which is perhaps beyond right or wrong, then I will not judge you poorly for it. I only judge liars who are motivated wealth, power, privilege, or advantage over others... I judge them by their vices, not by their virtues. So I guess all I'm saying, if I'm saying anything at all, is not to overburden yourself with guilt if you find you have to lie to do right. But be careful; If you find yourself saying you have to lie to protect others, or are doing something for another's own good then be warned. In all my experience in life, I have yet to find someone who made such an utterance, and good came from it.
It's not as conspiracy-theory cool as magical backdoors implanted in every piece of hardware, but this is how the NSA actually breaks into systems... they do it the same way everyone else does, just on a much larger scale and with even less fear of legal repercussions that the cyber criminals.
Hey. Stop being all logical and shit. We need to be yelling at them for being net.deities who spell billion trillion dollars on backdoors in all the things... then yelling at them for spending a billion trillion dollars on superfluous things like NOCs that look like the Enterprise bridge... and now we have to yell at them for being cost-effective by using exploits published by others.
Get with the program: Everything the NSA does is bad! They can do no right. Even if they right now figured out a cure for cancer, we'd have to burn it and keep anyone from getting it, because it might have genetic backdoors into our brain meats that render the tin foil hats useless!
Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.
One of the big reasons for anonymity is protection of free speech. If you haven't noticed, anyone can be silenced with a threat of a lawsuit for slander, libel, terroristic threats, trade secrets, and the list goes on. Giving a website "proof" just makes it that much easier to silence someone regardless of whether they're operating under a pseudonym or not; The website is the first thing targeted by the anti-free speech crowd's lawyers.
The only way for free speech to survive is to rebalance the power imbalance between the people who have lots of money and can simply threaten someone and drag them into court, sucking their life savings away... and the poor people who want to express an opinion, but lack advanced technical tools to obscure their true identity. And the first step in doing that, is something like Tor where an IP address or e-mail address can't be matched to a realworld identity. mailinator and Tor are a powerful combination for normalizing those relationships to an equal footing.
That's precisely why the wealthy are trying so hard to destroy them: It allows democratic discourse, the ability for people to organize anonymously against them and their corrupted interests and greed.
If by "almost extinct" you mean "Still installed on over half the computer in Asia," then sure. Bonus: It's still installed on over a third of machines worldwide I'm sure China will appreciate yet another American trying to meddle in their developing economy by giving them an operating system that no other major country would be expected to use as a replacement desktop, simply because we were nice enough to provide it free of charge. There's no possible way this do-good attempt to "save" the good people of another country... because as we all know, Western culture never tries to force other cultures to do what they want "for their own good".
Get a little international perspective, Slashdot. It's not like Microsoft practically gave away XP to developing countries to lock them in, and then jacked the price up for the upgrade, while giggling maniacally like some evil overlord. Jeez... why does the rest of the world hate imperialism so much? It's not like it ever enviously eyed their booming economy and thought; What can we do to cash in on this without looking like total dicks? Oh! I know... how about we pull support for their dominant operating system and force them to spend hundreds of millions on upgrade fees!
Snark aside, this disproportionately targets developing economies and non-western countries. Anywhere else, this would incite comments about racism, cultural warfare, etc., but since it's just an innocent tech giant all I've heard is crickets. Put yourself in the shoes of the rest of the world though; They have aging computers that can't run Windows 7 because of the significantly higher hardware requirements, and while they produce most of that hardware, they can't buy it because their workers all make pennies on the dollar. Are these people just going to drop off the internet, crawl down a dark hole, and die as a service to the rest of us, who hate the poor in the third world? Probably not: Instead, they'll form the backbone of supermassive new botnets, without any way to secure those systems, it'll become a cesspool of all manner of digital evil.
But at least Microsoft's profit margins will be up, so there is that.
Now I understand why you libertarians are all up in arms
Now I know why you arrogant armchair internet pundits are all up in arms... but think how MUCH worse it would be if FEMA wasn't an organization with black helicopters and vast, unregulated, authority to do whatever they want... suddenly people would require a license or some other horrible restrictions to their civil liberties.
All you knee jerking fox news watchers blow right past the safety issues that you assume won't happen. What's more important, knowing which ass to kiss, or locating people with accurate, realtime reconissance of an area? At first glance I was annoyed some anonymous fox news watcher was putting in seemingly retarded commentary, but after the first mention of the non-existant SAR helicopters I understood perfectly the rationale. You can't reasonably control the independent shadow government operators, so you can't be sure there won't be drones engaged in life-saving efforts by providing realtime intelligence with high resolution video photography. Yeah, I'll ground the drones.
Now, civilian cooperation and outreach created terrorists and made the government look incompetent and therefore can safely be blamed for the government's desire to send people from far away, piss in the cheerios of those who have lived their all their life and have a desire to do good, and possibly arrest them... it's the next logical step. Don't weasel word into uselessness, use that brain to find a way:)
Not an AC because I'm not a lazy bastard who wants to risk mod-bombing for my idiotic comments.
It's pretty standard when they expect a lot of SAR helicopter operations.
Problem: Okay... well, it's now day four. Everyone who needed rescuing is now dead, or nearly so. Sooo... I can assume then the entire area is now swarming with helicopters? Oh wait... didn't the article say they didn't have any helicopters, only fixed wing aircraft... and they couldn't effectively map the area out as a result?
Well... I'm sure they must be the new invisible stealth helicopters the government has.
You mean, after the epic clusterfuck that was the boston bomber coverage on Reddit destroying the lives of a handful of people, yes... then they did the right thing. Of course, those people still hiding under the covers in their house with PTSD and social anxiety from being unable to walk in public without being accused of being "the bomber that got away" are still waiting for their apologies... so you know, "right thing" is a bit subjective.
It says "Altitude: From the surface up to and including 11500 feet MSL"
Sounds like one hell of a dick move. Why would they need pretty much everything from ground to flight ceiling unless they were trying to block the drone operators? And is there any actual evidence that they're using search and rescue aircraft in the area -- I mean, from what I've read, the aircraft they're using can't do accurate mapping, and I haven't seen any press releases indicating there's any helicopters or airplanes operating in the area as part of active search and rescue. In fact... because of the terrain, they can't do it with fixed-wing aircraft anyway... and that's all they brought to the party.
So declaring it's for search and rescue is either boilerplate; just part of what FEMA does whenever it decides it wants to own part of the country, or it's bullshit. But either which way, this is a case of the government unnecessarily making the situation worse while screaming "Respect mah authoritah!"
At least I bother... most people on slashdot these days are all like "Let's pull some numbers out of my ass and make wild assumptions, then argue with anyone who disagrees!"... Like, wait, what happened to the scientists, engineers, and geeks here that were more concerned with the truth than their own self-importance? I think they evaporated into the ethers when Dice bought Slashdot out... and now the hipster scum have moved in and taken up residence. They care not for facts, this is a WAR goddamnit.. a WAR to determine which random hipster idea is right, and everything else is wrong. Facts? They just slow down our pursuit of THE TRUTH!!!!11!!! wharrrgrrrble.
"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM (except as described)."
(scrolls down) From September 16, 2013 at 0339 UTC Sooo... they issued this NOTAM retroactively. In other words, at the time they asked them to cease operations... the NOTAM was not yet provided. They then promptly went ahead and published one, you know, as a fuck you... four days after the disaster started, to give them retroactive authority. If "Larimer county flooding sar" was so important... then what, exactly, were they doing for the past three days?
And as a bonus... most NOTAMs in these situations are for aircraft flying at 3,000 to 5,000 feet. Now, I can't confirm if that's the case for this one, but low-flying aircraft, such as drones, RC airplanes, etc., can fly in so-called 'restricted airspace' -- and the FAA doesn't require permission to fly anything under 100 yards from the ground... well, not exactly. I mean, everything that flies is under FAA authority, but you don't need a special license, pilot's license, filing of a flight plan, etc., for these sorts of things.
So FEMA officials have likely misinterpreted the FAA rules; But since they can basically become a government unto themselves and declare martial law, imprison people, or do whatever they want once a federal disaster area is declared, it's probably a moot point. My advice is, if you live in an area and it's declared a federal disaster area, grab your valuables, any spare food and gas, and drive as fast as you can until you're out of it... because people who are accountable to nobody and have a god complex are going to be descending upon your already fucked up part of the neighborhood like a plague of locusts.
FEMA is a disaster unto itself... they've botched more disaster relief efforts, in some cases making the situation worse than if no help at all had arrived.
Since the population was somewhat under 2 billion, that gives a total worldwide death rate of *drum roll* 2.5-5%. Which is exactly the original claim.
Actually, it was 3-6%, and my numbers from the CDC were somewhat lower; 2.5-5%. The anonymous coward claimed 10-20%. That man, is a moron. And I'm not digging myself in deeper by calling a moron, a moron. If it had killed 10-20%... it would have been the second worst pandemic in recorded history -- eclipsed only by the black plague which had a 75-80% fatality rate.
Actually, it is the art of deducing how a computer system *actually* works as opposed to how it is intended to work.
Yes, but authorities view anyone who makes the computer work in a way they didn't expect it to work as a terrorist, criminal, or dirt bag. They view your intellectual achievement with suspicion; You have managed to do something they didn't expect or anticipate. That must mean you're up to no good. You must have been smart enough to know they didn't expect it, therefore you were intentionally subverting their authority, therefore you're a threat, therefore they are authorized to call you whatever they need to, plant evidence, or do whatever is necessary to remove said threat.
Intelligence... is dangerous. So dangerous that it must be controlled. But since we're in a democracy, we can't just lock people up for being smart. Not directly anyway. We can, however just put them under surveillance until they do something, anything... and then ta-da... it's goodbye smart person, hello prison sentence. Public safety is assured. Job well done. -1 Terrorist. So what's for dinner, honey?
It's like you think we're too damn stupid to see when content is replaced with ads. Can't you stop insulting our intelligence enough to mark sponsored content? Please?
But we have to monetize the web 2.0 synergy between IT professionals and the data matrix, in order to actualize the potential of emergent market forces! Telling them would ruin our market capitalization! MOAR ADVERTIZINZZ!!!
You've watched too many zombie movies. You don't just napalm sick people. End of story.
Really, the movie Outbreak didn't have any zombies. If you have a rioting population that is actively resisting quarantine, you don't move your troops in close-range because they can damage the protective suits. Also, the United States is special in that a significant fraction of the population has guns. Are you really going to put your troops in the line of fire trying to save people by separating and isolating them for blood samples, etc., when they're shooting at you?
Nope. Napalm, move on. If we're talking about a highly contagious disease, this is exactly what has to happen -- you can't save everyone. This is just military reality... sometimes you have to sacrifice a few people to save a lot more. And zombies has nothing to do with it, though if you'd like, the CDC did outline their response to a zombie outbreak. As they note, "if you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack."
So laugh all you want; Though zombies are fictional, the response wouldn't be different from an actual public health crisis, as the CDC pointed out when they created some preparedness posters with zombies on them.
So, you think that 50-100 million people dying out of ~500 million cases is 2.5%? Are you unable to do basic arithmetic, or did you not bother reading even the first paragraph of your own link?
You're really bad at this.I mean, laughably bad. Let me clear a few things up; Multiple data points and sources. The '500 million cases' are those who were infected and had clinically apparent symptoms. As with flu anywhere else, many can mistake it for a cold, or be asymptomatic. It is a rough estimate extrapolated from medical files available in... 1918. It's not robust; It's the result of a data model.
Case-fatality rates are calculated based on those who were treated by a physician and they could track the infection rate versus the death rate for confirmed cases. 2.5% is the death rate if you are infected, regardless of sample size. It is estimated to be somewhat higher because records from that era are spotty, and doctors were overwhelmed, meaning they were more concerned with keeping patients alive than documenting how they died (or didn't). This is called the systemic error rate. The systemic error rate is typically around 3-5% if you're taking a poll today... if you're going after written records from a hundred years ago, it's higher. That's why they can only estimate it as being between 2.5 and 5%.
50-100 million people eventually died worldwide. the 500 million cases were those for which we have medical records; It is not the number of people who were infected and simply died without medical treatment.
The 2.5-5% figure is of the world's total population. The post you are quoting, which you apparently did not bother to read in full, stated that it killed 10-20% of the people infected and that 25% of the world's population was infected. 10-20% of 25% is... *drum roll* 2.5-5% of the world's total population.
From my link: "Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to 0.1% in other influenza pandemics." That means that for every person that got sick (case), somewhere over 2.5% died. That means, *drumm roll* 2.5-5% of the infected died.
Yeah, I'll bet it's "Put dissidents in FEMA internment camps." Just like in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Why does everyone assume the most dystopic video-game fueled paranoid delusion is the most likely outcome? Prison is about the worst place to be during an outbreak... they're already breeding grounds for bacteria, worse than hospitals even. If the government had any sense at all, they would not be arresting and imprisoning people during an outbreak... they'd be gassing them. You don't fuck with getting close enough to people who may be infected when they're violent... you either knock them out and then separate them or kill them and move on, depending on the risk level and manpower available for containment. But whatever you do, you do it from a distance. Since this scenario predicts only a 2% fatality rate, I suspect normal crowd control methods would be used... water cannons, rubber bullets, gas... whatever it takes to get people separated and away from each other. That's always Priority One in this situation. If people are dumb enough to go violent once martial law is declared... arresting them is not on the menu. It's either neutralize them with less than lethal, or just kill them, burn the body, and move on.
While you're probably correct, classifying things for political reasons is almost always a bad thing.
Everything is political in some way. And why is it a bad thing? We have plans on how to assassinate, say, the leader of Britain. Or the leader of every other country. These are just there, on file, routinely updated, just in case the decision is made that assassination is necessary. Most of what the pentagon does is draft up action plans for every possibility, from pandemics to civil unrest, from nuclear, biological, or chemical attack, to responding to a broken dam or flood conditions. All of these are classified and compartmentalized because if there's one thing about the media... it's that conspiracy theorists can thrive in a purely anarobic environment... god help us if they actually get ahold of an actual fact or two while they're busy spinning one delusion after another. Remember -- almost 8% of Americans either aren't sure, or believe, that lizard people have infiltrated our government and are impersonating key officials. How many people believe in aliens again?
No. Classifying things is in the public interest, because the public... is really. Really. fucking stupid. Normal people can't handle the truth because normal people aren't educated on how to analyze the truth. They'll believe what they're told by whoever wants to make a political power play. Take Fox News -- it's been proven most of what they pass off as news is shit, but so many people believe it because it's formatted with flashy effects, theme music, and angry dudes in suits wagging their ties around talking about how the government is screwing you over. All of this is political. Even non-political things can be co-opted into politics. Global warming -- not political, it's scientific fact. But find me a congress critter who hasn't made a political statement about it. Hell, look at the theory of evolution! It's as established as gravity, but yet political miscreants are constantly stirring up trouble.
No sir, I am sorry, but normal people can't handle the truth, because normal people are fucking stupid. Really fucking stupid.
Government accountability can only happen with transparency.
No, it happens with checks and balances. That's what our founding fathers realized when they created the three major branches of government, and tried to keep the two-party system out of it. They created a counter-balance between the federal government and the state as well. They tried to spread power out as much as they could. That's how they opted to achieve accountability... not with buzzwords like "transparency" but by pitting people's self-interest against each other at various levels of the government. And it's worked far better than anyone on the internet blubbering on about "government transparency".
Yeah, major drug cartels and especially Iceland have massive data centers that rival what the US has. Right. That must be why so many of the job postings for those with related skills are in Columbia and Iceland.
The mexican drug cartel has a massive national wireless network. They're hiring too, but you have to apply in person; They don't take online resumes.
Look, we know that the NSA hires shills to mock all of us who are concerned with this stuff. You're probably not one of them. You probably just do it for free.
Well, you got one thing right: I do this for free. I suppose 1 out of 6 is better than your usual average though.
...discovered evidence that the NSA has been listening in (Dutch) on the Belgacom network since 2011.
Meanwhile, the French, British, Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, several major drug cartels, Iceland, New Zealand, Germans, Australians... their taps on the same wires were left alone and unnoticed. Because everyone on the internet knows that only the NSA and those pesky American's ever spy on anyone else, because they're all signals intelligence virgins who just don't see the point in espionage when we're all just one big happy carebear family.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to start treatment immediately... because writing that much snark just gave me cancer.
Is your assumption that nobody has more than a month's worth of supplies?
You're really bad at contextual reading, aren't you? The timetable was on the ability of the government to produce vaccines. It's not an assumption; A new strain of the flu at day zero means there is nobody on the planet with any supply of vaccine.
There are millions of people who will stay home for six months; some you'll see two years later.
That's nice. There are hundreds of millions who don't live in in Middle Earth, aka Utah. 78% of the population lives in a city.
Umm, no. The 1918 pandemic killed 10-20% of the people infected.
The CDC just called, something about you being wrong. 2.5-5% is not "10-20%". But if you can find a better authority than the Center for Disease Control, I'm sure everyone here would love to hear it. Or is it only true if it's in Wikipedia?
For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of world population. It presumably would have been worse in more densly populated areas.
You know there's wrong, then there's Wikipedia wrong. First, let's get a real authority in the mix. 2.5--5% is the number you're looking for; 3% is probably closest to accurate. And no, it wasn't worse in "more [densely] populated areas". It was better. People in urban areas are regularly exposed to more pathogens, which means their immune system is better equipped to handle a new strain or mutation of something previously exposed to than an isolated person would be. The average cold today would kill someone from the 1950s like it was the black death. Isolation does not work in your favor prior to a pandemic; it just makes you more vulnerable.
However, I don't think you could seriously argue that 2% is too high for a worst-case scenario. It might be too low.
2%, the number quoted by the DoD, is actually quite high. The average flu outbreak claims less than a 0.1% fatality rate. It's a good number to target, and if you read carefully, you'll note the plan has some flexibility to account for a higher rate than this. The first stages of the plan, mobilization, assumes a far worse potential than this, and so there's a lot of "standby" resource activation, because the logistics of calling up so many people incurs considerable delay (from a miltary standpoint).. so it's better to activate resources you later don't need than come up short. While that's happening, scientists are focusing on pinning down pathology, so when it comes time to deploy into the field, they know how bad it's going to be. It is likely these numbers wouldn't be immediately available to the public... or would be understated.
Complaining people are hacking the rules of a hackathon is a supreme irony. You're taking people who thrive on the idea of bending and breaking rules and trying to shove them in boxes and demand they follow your rules. That's rich. You clearly haven't met many hackers.
Rather than bitching about "cheating", why not just issue the challenge and leave it at that. First one in wins, the end. No rules, no restrictions... and may the best person win. Or group. Or sentient AI. This is how hacking truly works -- it's all about finding novel solutions. It's about seeing how fast you can do it, how much skill you can bring to the table, how elegant the solution is... but at the end of the day, the only real judge is whether you passed the goal post. Few people anymore care about why or how... that's something to talk about after, as you bask in the glory of having done the impossible.
Or, do you instead realize the answers to all your "Why" questions above?
I have only realized that there are now two groups of pompous and arrogant assholes with a distorted view of the world: The NSA, and the NSA's detractors.
Slashdot Mirror
First thing any trained interrogator will tell you is, everyone lies. In fact, psychologists expect a certain degree of lying during a forensic psychiatric examination. People who show up as not lying a little, don't sweat a little, are very probably sociopaths. The fact is, some amount of lying is healthy. We lie to protect our egos, our worldview, or the people we love. We lie to protect ourselves. And this isn't a bad thing. Lying, by itself, is just a social behavior. It's the motivation behind it that makes it good or bad.
We don't lie all the time. In fact, we lie very little as a society. But it is essential to our survival that we do. Sun Tzu wrote several thousand years ago that the best way to motivate your soldiers is to put them on what he termed "death ground". That is, intentionally leading them to a place where there can be no retreat from the enemy. They then fight harder and hold nothing back. Sun Tzu knew that all warfare is deception, even to one's own troops. But it saved lives; Those soldiers might have run themselves ragged retreating constantly. By forcing the conflict, choosing the time and place, at a time when the soldiers would have maximum effectiveness against the enemy, casualties on his side were minimized. But you better believe that he didn't tell the soldiers he knew he was setting them up for a situation with no escape. He lied to them. And because of that, they survived.
People lie about their age so they can join the military early. Maybe they come from a broken home, are constantly physically and sexually abused, and it's the only way out. So they lie, and it means they survive, emotionally if not physically as well. Honesty is a virtue, but like any virtue you can take it to excesss -- you can get yourself killed, or hurt, or those you love.
If there's one thing I've learned about morality, it's that it cannot be inflexible. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one ideal to protect an even bigger one. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a short term set back to achieve a long term success. Lying is directly tied to morality -- you can't talk about one and not the other. So I'm not saying don't try to be honest, but remember it's a virtue... and virtues come before doing the right thing, at the right time, with the right words.
If you lie because it protects a principle of yours, or perhaps if what you do goes beyond principles and into the realm of love, which is perhaps beyond right or wrong, then I will not judge you poorly for it. I only judge liars who are motivated wealth, power, privilege, or advantage over others... I judge them by their vices, not by their virtues. So I guess all I'm saying, if I'm saying anything at all, is not to overburden yourself with guilt if you find you have to lie to do right. But be careful; If you find yourself saying you have to lie to protect others, or are doing something for another's own good then be warned. In all my experience in life, I have yet to find someone who made such an utterance, and good came from it.
I just upgraded to 24, and I see the same cookie controls it always had.
I just upgraded to... using a plugin instead, since the dev team can't seem to get it right after 23 previous attempts, so I'm not optimistic.
It's not as conspiracy-theory cool as magical backdoors implanted in every piece of hardware, but this is how the NSA actually breaks into systems... they do it the same way everyone else does, just on a much larger scale and with even less fear of legal repercussions that the cyber criminals.
Hey. Stop being all logical and shit. We need to be yelling at them for being net.deities who spell billion trillion dollars on backdoors in all the things... then yelling at them for spending a billion trillion dollars on superfluous things like NOCs that look like the Enterprise bridge... and now we have to yell at them for being cost-effective by using exploits published by others.
Get with the program: Everything the NSA does is bad! They can do no right. Even if they right now figured out a cure for cancer, we'd have to burn it and keep anyone from getting it, because it might have genetic backdoors into our brain meats that render the tin foil hats useless!
Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.
One of the big reasons for anonymity is protection of free speech. If you haven't noticed, anyone can be silenced with a threat of a lawsuit for slander, libel, terroristic threats, trade secrets, and the list goes on. Giving a website "proof" just makes it that much easier to silence someone regardless of whether they're operating under a pseudonym or not; The website is the first thing targeted by the anti-free speech crowd's lawyers.
The only way for free speech to survive is to rebalance the power imbalance between the people who have lots of money and can simply threaten someone and drag them into court, sucking their life savings away... and the poor people who want to express an opinion, but lack advanced technical tools to obscure their true identity. And the first step in doing that, is something like Tor where an IP address or e-mail address can't be matched to a realworld identity. mailinator and Tor are a powerful combination for normalizing those relationships to an equal footing.
That's precisely why the wealthy are trying so hard to destroy them: It allows democratic discourse, the ability for people to organize anonymously against them and their corrupted interests and greed.
to users of the almost extinct XP.
If by "almost extinct" you mean "Still installed on over half the computer in Asia," then sure. Bonus: It's still installed on over a third of machines worldwide I'm sure China will appreciate yet another American trying to meddle in their developing economy by giving them an operating system that no other major country would be expected to use as a replacement desktop, simply because we were nice enough to provide it free of charge. There's no possible way this do-good attempt to "save" the good people of another country... because as we all know, Western culture never tries to force other cultures to do what they want "for their own good".
Get a little international perspective, Slashdot. It's not like Microsoft practically gave away XP to developing countries to lock them in, and then jacked the price up for the upgrade, while giggling maniacally like some evil overlord. Jeez... why does the rest of the world hate imperialism so much? It's not like it ever enviously eyed their booming economy and thought; What can we do to cash in on this without looking like total dicks? Oh! I know... how about we pull support for their dominant operating system and force them to spend hundreds of millions on upgrade fees!
Snark aside, this disproportionately targets developing economies and non-western countries. Anywhere else, this would incite comments about racism, cultural warfare, etc., but since it's just an innocent tech giant all I've heard is crickets. Put yourself in the shoes of the rest of the world though; They have aging computers that can't run Windows 7 because of the significantly higher hardware requirements, and while they produce most of that hardware, they can't buy it because their workers all make pennies on the dollar. Are these people just going to drop off the internet, crawl down a dark hole, and die as a service to the rest of us, who hate the poor in the third world? Probably not: Instead, they'll form the backbone of supermassive new botnets, without any way to secure those systems, it'll become a cesspool of all manner of digital evil.
But at least Microsoft's profit margins will be up, so there is that.
Now I understand why you libertarians are all up in arms
Now I know why you arrogant armchair internet pundits are all up in arms... but think how MUCH worse it would be if FEMA wasn't an organization with black helicopters and vast, unregulated, authority to do whatever they want... suddenly people would require a license or some other horrible restrictions to their civil liberties.
All you knee jerking fox news watchers blow right past the safety issues that you assume won't happen. What's more important, knowing which ass to kiss, or locating people with accurate, realtime reconissance of an area? At first glance I was annoyed some anonymous fox news watcher was putting in seemingly retarded commentary, but after the first mention of the non-existant SAR helicopters I understood perfectly the rationale. You can't reasonably control the independent shadow government operators, so you can't be sure there won't be drones engaged in life-saving efforts by providing realtime intelligence with high resolution video photography. Yeah, I'll ground the drones.
Now, civilian cooperation and outreach created terrorists and made the government look incompetent and therefore can safely be blamed for the government's desire to send people from far away, piss in the cheerios of those who have lived their all their life and have a desire to do good, and possibly arrest them... it's the next logical step. Don't weasel word into uselessness, use that brain to find a way :)
Not an AC because I'm not a lazy bastard who wants to risk mod-bombing for my idiotic comments.
It's pretty standard when they expect a lot of SAR helicopter operations.
Problem: Okay... well, it's now day four. Everyone who needed rescuing is now dead, or nearly so. Sooo... I can assume then the entire area is now swarming with helicopters? Oh wait... didn't the article say they didn't have any helicopters, only fixed wing aircraft... and they couldn't effectively map the area out as a result?
Well... I'm sure they must be the new invisible stealth helicopters the government has.
Reddit did the right thing by shutting it down.
You mean, after the epic clusterfuck that was the boston bomber coverage on Reddit destroying the lives of a handful of people, yes... then they did the right thing. Of course, those people still hiding under the covers in their house with PTSD and social anxiety from being unable to walk in public without being accused of being "the bomber that got away" are still waiting for their apologies... so you know, "right thing" is a bit subjective.
It says "Altitude: From the surface up to and including 11500 feet MSL"
Sounds like one hell of a dick move. Why would they need pretty much everything from ground to flight ceiling unless they were trying to block the drone operators? And is there any actual evidence that they're using search and rescue aircraft in the area -- I mean, from what I've read, the aircraft they're using can't do accurate mapping, and I haven't seen any press releases indicating there's any helicopters or airplanes operating in the area as part of active search and rescue. In fact... because of the terrain, they can't do it with fixed-wing aircraft anyway... and that's all they brought to the party.
So declaring it's for search and rescue is either boilerplate; just part of what FEMA does whenever it decides it wants to own part of the country, or it's bullshit. But either which way, this is a case of the government unnecessarily making the situation worse while screaming "Respect mah authoritah!"
You are quite the google expert.
At least I bother... most people on slashdot these days are all like "Let's pull some numbers out of my ass and make wild assumptions, then argue with anyone who disagrees!" ... Like, wait, what happened to the scientists, engineers, and geeks here that were more concerned with the truth than their own self-importance? I think they evaporated into the ethers when Dice bought Slashdot out... and now the hipster scum have moved in and taken up residence. They care not for facts, this is a WAR goddamnit.. a WAR to determine which random hipster idea is right, and everything else is wrong. Facts? They just slow down our pursuit of THE TRUTH!!!!11!!! wharrrgrrrble.
"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM (except as described)."
(scrolls down) From September 16, 2013 at 0339 UTC Sooo... they issued this NOTAM retroactively. In other words, at the time they asked them to cease operations... the NOTAM was not yet provided. They then promptly went ahead and published one, you know, as a fuck you... four days after the disaster started, to give them retroactive authority. If "Larimer county flooding sar" was so important... then what, exactly, were they doing for the past three days?
And as a bonus... most NOTAMs in these situations are for aircraft flying at 3,000 to 5,000 feet. Now, I can't confirm if that's the case for this one, but low-flying aircraft, such as drones, RC airplanes, etc., can fly in so-called 'restricted airspace' -- and the FAA doesn't require permission to fly anything under 100 yards from the ground... well, not exactly. I mean, everything that flies is under FAA authority, but you don't need a special license, pilot's license, filing of a flight plan, etc., for these sorts of things.
So FEMA officials have likely misinterpreted the FAA rules; But since they can basically become a government unto themselves and declare martial law, imprison people, or do whatever they want once a federal disaster area is declared, it's probably a moot point. My advice is, if you live in an area and it's declared a federal disaster area, grab your valuables, any spare food and gas, and drive as fast as you can until you're out of it... because people who are accountable to nobody and have a god complex are going to be descending upon your already fucked up part of the neighborhood like a plague of locusts.
FEMA is a disaster unto itself... they've botched more disaster relief efforts, in some cases making the situation worse than if no help at all had arrived.
Since the population was somewhat under 2 billion, that gives a total worldwide death rate of *drum roll* 2.5-5%. Which is exactly the original claim.
Actually, it was 3-6%, and my numbers from the CDC were somewhat lower; 2.5-5%. The anonymous coward claimed 10-20%. That man, is a moron. And I'm not digging myself in deeper by calling a moron, a moron. If it had killed 10-20%... it would have been the second worst pandemic in recorded history -- eclipsed only by the black plague which had a 75-80% fatality rate.
Actually, it is the art of deducing how a computer system *actually* works as opposed to how it is intended to work.
Yes, but authorities view anyone who makes the computer work in a way they didn't expect it to work as a terrorist, criminal, or dirt bag. They view your intellectual achievement with suspicion; You have managed to do something they didn't expect or anticipate. That must mean you're up to no good. You must have been smart enough to know they didn't expect it, therefore you were intentionally subverting their authority, therefore you're a threat, therefore they are authorized to call you whatever they need to, plant evidence, or do whatever is necessary to remove said threat.
Intelligence... is dangerous. So dangerous that it must be controlled. But since we're in a democracy, we can't just lock people up for being smart. Not directly anyway. We can, however just put them under surveillance until they do something, anything... and then ta-da... it's goodbye smart person, hello prison sentence. Public safety is assured. Job well done. -1 Terrorist. So what's for dinner, honey?
It's like you think we're too damn stupid to see when content is replaced with ads. Can't you stop insulting our intelligence enough to mark sponsored content? Please?
But we have to monetize the web 2.0 synergy between IT professionals and the data matrix, in order to actualize the potential of emergent market forces! Telling them would ruin our market capitalization! MOAR ADVERTIZINZZ!!!
You've watched too many zombie movies. You don't just napalm sick people. End of story.
Really, the movie Outbreak didn't have any zombies. If you have a rioting population that is actively resisting quarantine, you don't move your troops in close-range because they can damage the protective suits. Also, the United States is special in that a significant fraction of the population has guns. Are you really going to put your troops in the line of fire trying to save people by separating and isolating them for blood samples, etc., when they're shooting at you?
Nope. Napalm, move on. If we're talking about a highly contagious disease, this is exactly what has to happen -- you can't save everyone. This is just military reality... sometimes you have to sacrifice a few people to save a lot more. And zombies has nothing to do with it, though if you'd like, the CDC did outline their response to a zombie outbreak. As they note, "if you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack."
So laugh all you want; Though zombies are fictional, the response wouldn't be different from an actual public health crisis, as the CDC pointed out when they created some preparedness posters with zombies on them.
So, you think that 50-100 million people dying out of ~500 million cases is 2.5%? Are you unable to do basic arithmetic, or did you not bother reading even the first paragraph of your own link?
You're really bad at this.I mean, laughably bad. Let me clear a few things up; Multiple data points and sources. The '500 million cases' are those who were infected and had clinically apparent symptoms. As with flu anywhere else, many can mistake it for a cold, or be asymptomatic. It is a rough estimate extrapolated from medical files available in... 1918. It's not robust; It's the result of a data model.
Case-fatality rates are calculated based on those who were treated by a physician and they could track the infection rate versus the death rate for confirmed cases. 2.5% is the death rate if you are infected, regardless of sample size. It is estimated to be somewhat higher because records from that era are spotty, and doctors were overwhelmed, meaning they were more concerned with keeping patients alive than documenting how they died (or didn't). This is called the systemic error rate. The systemic error rate is typically around 3-5% if you're taking a poll today... if you're going after written records from a hundred years ago, it's higher. That's why they can only estimate it as being between 2.5 and 5%.
50-100 million people eventually died worldwide. the 500 million cases were those for which we have medical records; It is not the number of people who were infected and simply died without medical treatment.
The 2.5-5% figure is of the world's total population. The post you are quoting, which you apparently did not bother to read in full, stated that it killed 10-20% of the people infected and that 25% of the world's population was infected. 10-20% of 25% is... *drum roll* 2.5-5% of the world's total population.
From my link: "Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to 0.1% in other influenza pandemics." That means that for every person that got sick (case), somewhere over 2.5% died. That means, *drumm roll* 2.5-5% of the infected died.
Yeah, I'll bet it's "Put dissidents in FEMA internment camps." Just like in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Why does everyone assume the most dystopic video-game fueled paranoid delusion is the most likely outcome? Prison is about the worst place to be during an outbreak... they're already breeding grounds for bacteria, worse than hospitals even. If the government had any sense at all, they would not be arresting and imprisoning people during an outbreak... they'd be gassing them. You don't fuck with getting close enough to people who may be infected when they're violent... you either knock them out and then separate them or kill them and move on, depending on the risk level and manpower available for containment. But whatever you do, you do it from a distance. Since this scenario predicts only a 2% fatality rate, I suspect normal crowd control methods would be used... water cannons, rubber bullets, gas... whatever it takes to get people separated and away from each other. That's always Priority One in this situation. If people are dumb enough to go violent once martial law is declared... arresting them is not on the menu. It's either neutralize them with less than lethal, or just kill them, burn the body, and move on.
While you're probably correct, classifying things for political reasons is almost always a bad thing.
Everything is political in some way. And why is it a bad thing? We have plans on how to assassinate, say, the leader of Britain. Or the leader of every other country. These are just there, on file, routinely updated, just in case the decision is made that assassination is necessary. Most of what the pentagon does is draft up action plans for every possibility, from pandemics to civil unrest, from nuclear, biological, or chemical attack, to responding to a broken dam or flood conditions. All of these are classified and compartmentalized because if there's one thing about the media... it's that conspiracy theorists can thrive in a purely anarobic environment... god help us if they actually get ahold of an actual fact or two while they're busy spinning one delusion after another. Remember -- almost 8% of Americans either aren't sure, or believe, that lizard people have infiltrated our government and are impersonating key officials. How many people believe in aliens again?
No. Classifying things is in the public interest, because the public... is really. Really. fucking stupid. Normal people can't handle the truth because normal people aren't educated on how to analyze the truth. They'll believe what they're told by whoever wants to make a political power play. Take Fox News -- it's been proven most of what they pass off as news is shit, but so many people believe it because it's formatted with flashy effects, theme music, and angry dudes in suits wagging their ties around talking about how the government is screwing you over. All of this is political. Even non-political things can be co-opted into politics. Global warming -- not political, it's scientific fact. But find me a congress critter who hasn't made a political statement about it. Hell, look at the theory of evolution! It's as established as gravity, but yet political miscreants are constantly stirring up trouble.
No sir, I am sorry, but normal people can't handle the truth, because normal people are fucking stupid. Really fucking stupid.
Government accountability can only happen with transparency.
No, it happens with checks and balances. That's what our founding fathers realized when they created the three major branches of government, and tried to keep the two-party system out of it. They created a counter-balance between the federal government and the state as well. They tried to spread power out as much as they could. That's how they opted to achieve accountability... not with buzzwords like "transparency" but by pitting people's self-interest against each other at various levels of the government. And it's worked far better than anyone on the internet blubbering on about "government transparency".
Yeah, major drug cartels and especially Iceland have massive data centers that rival what the US has. Right. That must be why so many of the job postings for those with related skills are in Columbia and Iceland.
Iceland is building a 50 to 70 acre data center. And they're hiring tons.
The mexican drug cartel has a massive national wireless network. They're hiring too, but you have to apply in person; They don't take online resumes.
Look, we know that the NSA hires shills to mock all of us who are concerned with this stuff. You're probably not one of them. You probably just do it for free.
Well, you got one thing right: I do this for free. I suppose 1 out of 6 is better than your usual average though.
...discovered evidence that the NSA has been listening in (Dutch) on the Belgacom network since 2011.
Meanwhile, the French, British, Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, several major drug cartels, Iceland, New Zealand, Germans, Australians... their taps on the same wires were left alone and unnoticed. Because everyone on the internet knows that only the NSA and those pesky American's ever spy on anyone else, because they're all signals intelligence virgins who just don't see the point in espionage when we're all just one big happy carebear family.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to start treatment immediately... because writing that much snark just gave me cancer.
Is your assumption that nobody has more than a month's worth of supplies?
You're really bad at contextual reading, aren't you? The timetable was on the ability of the government to produce vaccines. It's not an assumption; A new strain of the flu at day zero means there is nobody on the planet with any supply of vaccine.
There are millions of people who will stay home for six months; some you'll see two years later.
That's nice. There are hundreds of millions who don't live in in Middle Earth, aka Utah. 78% of the population lives in a city.
Umm, no. The 1918 pandemic killed 10-20% of the people infected.
The CDC just called, something about you being wrong. 2.5-5% is not "10-20%". But if you can find a better authority than the Center for Disease Control, I'm sure everyone here would love to hear it. Or is it only true if it's in Wikipedia?
For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of world population. It presumably would have been worse in more densly populated areas.
You know there's wrong, then there's Wikipedia wrong. First, let's get a real authority in the mix. 2.5--5% is the number you're looking for; 3% is probably closest to accurate. And no, it wasn't worse in "more [densely] populated areas". It was better. People in urban areas are regularly exposed to more pathogens, which means their immune system is better equipped to handle a new strain or mutation of something previously exposed to than an isolated person would be. The average cold today would kill someone from the 1950s like it was the black death. Isolation does not work in your favor prior to a pandemic; it just makes you more vulnerable.
However, I don't think you could seriously argue that 2% is too high for a worst-case scenario. It might be too low.
2%, the number quoted by the DoD, is actually quite high. The average flu outbreak claims less than a 0.1% fatality rate. It's a good number to target, and if you read carefully, you'll note the plan has some flexibility to account for a higher rate than this. The first stages of the plan, mobilization, assumes a far worse potential than this, and so there's a lot of "standby" resource activation, because the logistics of calling up so many people incurs considerable delay (from a miltary standpoint) .. so it's better to activate resources you later don't need than come up short. While that's happening, scientists are focusing on pinning down pathology, so when it comes time to deploy into the field, they know how bad it's going to be. It is likely these numbers wouldn't be immediately available to the public... or would be understated.
Complaining people are hacking the rules of a hackathon is a supreme irony. You're taking people who thrive on the idea of bending and breaking rules and trying to shove them in boxes and demand they follow your rules. That's rich. You clearly haven't met many hackers.
Rather than bitching about "cheating", why not just issue the challenge and leave it at that. First one in wins, the end. No rules, no restrictions... and may the best person win. Or group. Or sentient AI. This is how hacking truly works -- it's all about finding novel solutions. It's about seeing how fast you can do it, how much skill you can bring to the table, how elegant the solution is... but at the end of the day, the only real judge is whether you passed the goal post. Few people anymore care about why or how... that's something to talk about after, as you bask in the glory of having done the impossible.
Or, do you instead realize the answers to all your "Why" questions above?
I have only realized that there are now two groups of pompous and arrogant assholes with a distorted view of the world: The NSA, and the NSA's detractors.