As a thought experiment, imagine that the couple had been Muslim, but otherwise exactly the same people. Does anyone honestly still think the visit by police would have been so courteous and polite?
Yes. Oh sorry, was that not the answer you were looking for? In Canada, police are equipping minature cameras on their uniform to have a bird's eye view of everything the officer sees. They aren't doing this as part of some cover up conspiracy. It's happening here in 'Murica too, though slower. Police want clear and unequivocable proof that they acted with integrity and professionalism; They're the ones demanding these cameras. And there's a whole lot of other 'under the hood' things on the surveillance front too: ANPR (Automated Plate Recognition) systems are being built into squad cars. It's hard to claim bias on a traffic violation when the computer is sitting over their shoulder recording every traffic stop; Confirmation, or refutation, is just a few mouse clicks away.
When it's that ridiculously easy, an officer who can't keep his personal views separate from his professional conduct is destined for a short career. And if you feel this isn't happening, why are you sitting here reading this comment instead of beating down the door of your congress-critters and demanding it? What you, yourself, personally pay in taxes each year is probably enough to equip the officers of any medium-sized police department with cameras like that, which is to say amounts to exactly dick as far as the government's budget is concerned, what argument against this can't you easily defeat?
That said, yeah, people are racist, biased, sexist assholes by and far. I well imagine that police officers are no different in this regard; But if I can be professional towards someone cussing and spitting in my face while working the retail counter, smile, and tell them they still only get store credit... I'm pretty sure a couple of FBI dudes can handle a conversation with a suspect without going ape-shit. Not to say things don't occasionally go pear-shaped, but by and far nothing interesting happens when the police show up at a house to ask a few questions. I love the visual of jack-booted 7 foot tall police officers in riot gear marching down my street chanting "Death to freedom!", but only because of my desire to one day become an evil overlord and not because my worldview has gotten so out of whack I think the police here have an attitude and intelligence rarely seen outside of comic books and radical political literature.
She works with cops. All of her otherwise spot-on insight goes completely out the window when the discussion shifts to law enforcement. It's the cognitive dissonance one must have to work with monsters and still maintain that you are not a monster.
Or perhaps I am simply doing something that seems to come with great difficulty to most people: Putting myself in another's shoes. I don't think most people get into law enforcement to abuse others, anymore than firefighters do. I bet if you go to a police training academy and ask around, you'll find most of these people are just like you and me; They want to make a difference. They feel they can make a contribution. And for some, answering that call means going into law enforcement.
Yes, I have worked with the police. I've also been interrogated by them, and mistreated by them. But I don't judge police as a whole badly because of what a few have done, anymore than I think all muslims are evil because a handful of them decided to have their crazy time clutching a Koran at the nose-end of a commercial jet, anymore than I think all christians are evil because of the crazy shit talk show hosts say.
What I'm doing is maintaining an impartial view here; Considering all positions and then reasoning out where I think a fair balancing point is. I don't think most police are monsters, anymore than I do the criminals they catch. These are systemic social problems caused by poverty, a lack of education, mental illness, or religious and political bias. And as a society, we need to take personal responsibility for asking these questions, and then judging them fairly and impartially.
The police get a lot of things wrong. The newspapers are full of examples. But they also get a lot more things right, which the newspapers don't report on, anymore than they report "Man goes to work, does job, nothing bad happens. Film at 11." If we're going to pick an example of poor police conduct, I can think of many more relevant examples than this.
As far as I can tell, everyone else seems to be using this non-case where nothing happened as a springboard to discuss their own fears and uncertainties about the world we live in. And that's fine. But I draw the line at bogus rationalizations and exaggeration as a means of protecting our own individual world views. The police here did everything right; That should be a cause for celebration, not condemnation. Believe me... another news article will be along shortly where they get it wrong. You won't have to wait long.
You should try living next door to my old neighbour. The problem here is the assumption that people who report things are reasonable and sane people.
Umm, there's no assumption being made by any experienced law enforcement officer. They're trained investigators -- they don't just take people at their word. If they did, the prisons would be empty. The police are well aware of the problem children in the community -- the people who call their neigbor for every little thing. They see it all the time.
But yes, of course they still come out and investigate the report: It's good customer service. Your neighbor might be a paranoid jerkwad, but he's still a tax payer, and like every tax payer, has the expectation that when you call the police about a problem, the police investigate said problem. I lived next to a neighbor that liked to complain. I was once sitting on the back step of our apartment complex having a smoke with a friend, and a police cruiser snuck out of the shadows with the lights off. As he pulled into view, the headlights came on and the window was down. He shouts from across the alleyway, "Got a noise complaint here. Let me guess, no noise?" And me and my friend just nodded and thumbed in the direction of Sir Nosey, our upstairs neighbor. He nodded solemly, rolled up the window, and drove off. I didn't exactly feel like my rights were being trampled on... it's his job to investigate all complaints, even ones that are most likely bogus and stupid. They can't cherry pick their calls anymore than I can just hangup on stupid people who call me for tech support.
In the end, its such a needle in a haystack sort of problem that its entirely unreasonable to think they can ever be prevented, therefore any acceptance of that reasoning that starts with they should be able to catch it, inevitably leads to excessive measures...
And so we should take the nilhist view that it's an impossible problem to fix and therefore make no attempt at all, because any attempt would be an excessive attempt?! This is learned helplessness, not insightful social commentary. I don't go fishing expecting to catch all the fish in the lake, but that doesn't mean I starve to death instead.
You're marrying two separate concepts: The political reality that when there's a perceived or actual harm inflicted, there's a strong emotional reaction. It's called vengance, and while it's not politically popular to admit, it's one of the foundations of the modern justice system. Something must be done! The perpetrators must be punished! But these emotions are transitory; and the only problem is in giving into populist demands for action. Law enforcement practices should change gradually, after much deliberation, and without consideration of the current political climate. If it isn't, it's partly your responsibility to become politically active and have your elected officials redress that greviance. But you'll have to wait in line behind the hundred other people that don't think the same way.
If you feel this is inconvenient, I agree. It may even be unfair. But blaming the government for doing what the people are demanding it do is silly: A government that doesn't listen to its citizens is a tyranny. A government that does... well, at least it is representing the will of the people. Such is life that you can lead with the best intentions and wind up in the worst places.
Of course in this particular case the victim was complicit in the violation of their own rights. So I have little sympathy for them.
You aren't required to excercise your rights. Nobody puts a gun to your head to demand you vote, for example. It wouldn't be a right if it didn't confer a choice of some kind. Your lack of sympathy here is distressing; What the police did here was not substantially different from a door to door salesman. They showed up, rang the bell, had a conversation, and left. There was no excercise of police authority other than showing credentials, nothing that any other citizen couldn't have done.
But in a case where a search warrant is granted when it should not have been because...
Because what? A search warrant wasn't granted in this case. There wasn't any evidence other than the heresay of an overzealous manager, but the police being responsible about an allegation of terrorism, took the reasonable step of discussing the matter with the accused -- confidentially -- and then left.
I think the victims should be compensated for the mistake.
I see no victim here. No gun holes in the property, no kicked in doors, no being put in handcuffs. Polite, but serious, words were exchanged. How is this victimization? This is how the police should behave. If we're going to accuse anyone of a crime, it should be the manager who went through somebody's personal effects. This wasn't the NSA and FBI rifling through their computer; It was a manager. A citizen. A Joe Average. With no police authority whatsoever. He's the one that screwed up, if we're going to assign any blame.
A google search should never, ever, ever be probable cause for a search of
That's nice. That didn't happen here. The police didn't search without a warrant... they didn't conduct a search under any authority except that granted to them by "the victim" (as you've taken to calling him). If and when this does happen to someone, and that's the only evidence the police used to justify a forced search, then I'll be hollering and kicking up a storm. But I'm not going to condemn these officers for doing a good job because they could have done a bad job, anymore than I'm going to tell you that you can't own a gun just because you might go out and murder someone with it.
The lack of permission in the constitution itself, as well as the first and fourth amendments should be protecting us...
Again, any evidence these amendments were slacking on the job? Was this person somehow denied the right to choose between talking (1st amendment) and not talking (5th amendment), and then as a direct consequence of that choice, a violation of their right not be subjected to an unreasonable search (4th amendment) occurred? As you already admitted; This didn't happen. You disagree with "the victim", but "the victim" was perfectly within his rights at all times, and by all accounts, those boundaries were respected in this case. So the police did their job exactly how we all want them to: With professionalism and respect. And you're upset with them because of an imagined scenario that might have happened, but didn't. This makes sense, how exactly?
An important part of the freedom of speech is...
Well thank you for that Civics 101 lesson. Where is this going again?
The NSA could easily set up a system to send FBI agents...
Again, more of this "what if" logic from you. Is there actual evidence you would like to present that such a system is (a) in use right now and was (b) used in the case currently under discussion? Short answer: No, you don't.
...to the home of everyone who searched google for something like, "how to build a nuclear weapon".
I did no such thing. The people who reported him did that.
You attributed the failure to law enforcement, not the person who reported it.
Again, just stop being an idiot and this sort of thing wouldn't even happen; it's just a waste of tax dollars. This sort of 'investigation' isn't even necessary and shouldn't even happen because it's nothing more than rampant, idiotic paranoia.
...Or good customer service.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Just because X is worse than Y doesn't mean that Y isn't bad. Incidentally, I think all of these things need to be fixed.
Yes, all the problems the government has could be solved if they'd just read your slashdot posts. Incidentally, according to anonymous internet pundit, the NSA already has. They must be really disappointed too...
I think currently, the difference in performance between Java and C++ is so close that...
Okay, clearly the new batch of slashdot editors have absolutely no programming ability whatsoever. They also must have missed that slashdot story about how Facebook undertook a massive campaign to translate their PHP code into C/C++ executable to speed up performance. Java is a lightweight language. It cannot, and will not ever be as fast as C/C++ because it is an run time interpreted language that additionally runs in a virtual machine.
I am forced to conclude that the slashdot editors are trolling us by approving such a patently absurd and idiotic article.
There is zero reason to trust the government (or corporations, for that matter).
I guess I'd better give up that whole civilization thing too. It was a pretty silly idea. We should just go back to roaming bands of vigilantes and forget the whole "rule of law" business. It's clearly a failed experiment. Thank you, anonymous internet pundit, for helping me see the error of my ways.
You must have very little real world experience... and few interesting friends.
Perhaps my experience lies in actually working with police, instead of reading about it on CNN. But I can empathize with Plato, stuck in his cave... such is the nature of the internet: Upon being enlightened, you return to it to find yourself thought stupider than before by the fellow inmates.
Your cute and idealistic assessment is at odds with (at least) the fact that the gathered NSA data was dumped into a huge database where a low-level outside contractor could access all of it. I'd feel better if the data went to a team of professional analysts and not into an easily abusable database which may or may not be studied by analysts.
Sure, a "low-level outside contractor" has been given access to a database which is of critical importance to national security. As well, this fictional contractor also has the keys to Fort Knox and sleeps in the President's bed at the White House. Or, perhaps, since there's no evidence any of this has actually happened, and plenty of common sense to suggest it would be highly undesireable to the aforementioned-agency, you are just making shit up.
It is more likely to be nothing 1,000,000 out of 1,000,000 times.
If it was100%, then pray tell how have we managed to catch any terrorists? Did they just show up at the police station and surrender, and we didn't question them or anything? I'm all ears.
A "terrorist" that relies on google and pressure cookers to plan their act is a pathetic basement dweller that lacks the resources to actually do anything.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine why a potential terrorist might google for how to build a bomb while using google for everything from grocery shopping to hair styling tips. It's equally hard to see how using commonly-available household chemicals and products along with a pressure cooker and a box of nails, could be built by a "pathetic basement dweller" to construct a terrorist bomb for only a few dollars.
I'd be interested in hearing about that 1 out of 1,000,000 where they caught someone credible, who could have succeeded.
Yeah... that big story this past April in Boston... something about a bomb... asleep the whole month?
And (in TFA case) that same person would have to lack the capacity to not answer the door and move to another city after a visit from government agents.
Well, I can't speak to the boston bomber's inability to answer the door, but I can speak to the guy who owned the house he was hiding behind, who did.
However, they were neither able to prevent the act, nor have they used the years and years of indiscriminately stored data.
Tell me, when you go fishing in a lake, do you catch all the fish?
For one thing, I wouldn't inform the police of such a ridiculous thing to begin with. Have we become nothing more than paranoid cowards who watch everyone else's moves just because there is a 0.000000000000001% chance that they could be terrorists? Really?
It's been amply established that people are really, really bad at estimating risk. They also terribly over-estimate risk when it is something they're unfamiliar with. Just like you are now.:/
Stop wasting my fucking tax dollars.
Well, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. On the other hand, I'm quite happy to spend money on local law enforcement conducting investigations like this; And I hope that the number of terrorist they find continues to go down, and most of what they find amounts to nothing. It means my community is safer, and abundant resources then exist to investigate serious crime. It's certainly a better way to spend my money than corporate welfare, subsidies, and bloated military projects. If we took all the money that we spent on the F-35 program and had simply used it to build houses, we'd all be living in $100,000 homes, paid for. No mortgage. Don't whine about the government spending peanuts on local law enforcement when stuff like that is going on.
I never feel better around police. They're the predominant remaining natural predator of humans.
Well, if that's how you feel, consider this: Who's better qualified to hunt down other predators than a predator? -_- Not that I agree with your assertion, but logically, your statements aren't consistent.
And, they've never caught a single terrorist. Pretty impressive results.
Yup. They're going to track you down personally and inform you of the results of any investigation that results in finding a terrorist straight away! The fact that they didn't is proof that no terrorists have ever been found.
What makes you think that law enforcement would advertise every capture of a terrorist, thus turning him/her into a martyr for his/her cause? If it were me, I wouldn't be making a press release on every terrorist I caught... I'd quietly take them into custody and interrogate the shit out of them to find their friends, and then rinse, wash, repeat. I'd be more interested in actual national security than consoling some armchair internet pundit's hurt feelings that he wasn't given access to high-level intelligence assets.
1/ this statistic is a bullshit overstatement, talking up a minimal danger 2/ they are arresting terrorist bombers at a rate of 1 a week 3/ they are prosecuting 1 person a week on an unrelated matter, after gaining access to their house on the pretext of "war against terrorism".
4/ The guy being interviewed was trying to illustrate in layman's terms how un-newsworthy a police investigation like this really is, and how most of his job consists of investigations just like this.
Why do you expect this to be some kind of scientifically rigorous statement, is the better question. It clearly isn't. But in spite of the obviousness of this, you go on to weave a tapestry of half-truths and assumptions and then act like these are the only possible conclusions. False dichotomy, anyone?
As far as what "we" think it is... not a very interesting question. About 7% of the population believes the government is being run by lizard people, or aren't sure. "we" are very stupid people. However, I think that this is a case of a detective trying to tell the press there's nothing interesting to report, and the press ignoring that statement and trying to make a story out of it anyway, because fears about government surveillance are selling papers like hotcakes right now. And as far as arresting terrorist bombers "at a rate of 1 a week"... yeah. There's only one police department in the whole country doing this, the Suffolk Police Department. If your statistic had merit, most of America would be arrested for being terrorist bombers at that rate within a short time.
There was no prosecution. There was no arrest. There was no terrorism. There were some friendly guys who showed up at someone's house, asked a few questions, took the usual precautions for a report of this type, and after confirming what they already likely suspected, left and closed the file.
Which is exactly how it's supposed to go, and thankfully their deductive reasoning and investigative skill vastly outstripped Sir Armchair Internet Pundit here, who apparently is hiding under his bed right now thinking any minute now men in black are going to come busting down his door to take him away to Guantanamo.
Put down the tin foil hats, have a wake up call and realize that your employers are the ones performing the real world surveillance on the contents of your browsing, email and other habits.
If this is anything to go by, I can rest easy knowing that middle management is exactly as incompetent as Dilbert portrays them to be. I'd rather have the NSA going through my browsing history than these marginally competent people who aren't exactly known for their critical thinking and investigative talents. Plus, over-zealous middle managers have ruined my life plenty of times. To date, no men in black appearing out of cadillacs to "ask me a few questions" have exacted that level of devastation on my life.
The NSA at least has rules for their surveillance, and can be sued or called into a congressional hearing if they screw up... corporate management though, lulz. They'll get a promotion for a "job well done" for fucking up.
I take away a different lesson from this: maybe it's a good idea to wait until you have more facts before starting to run around screaming "The sky is falling!!!!111".
Clearly, this middle manager only watches CNN and FoxNews. And let's be honest: It's the only thing playing in most break rooms, and middle managers aren't known for their critical thinking and investigative talents.
The fact that some real shady things in terms of corporate and governmental surveillance do go on is no reason to just give up being rational.
Neither is it a reason to ignore the fact that the police showed up, were polite and courteous, asked a few questions, and left satisfied. Now look, I'm no more happy having the police show up at my door than anyone else -- but by and far, the experiences have been professional, as this person learned. I've had people call in all kinds of things to the police about me; I know because they keep records of that kind of thing and I know the right people to ask to get them.
Every one of you past the age of 30 has something in their police file from a "concerned citizen." All of you. Yes, even you, Mr. Above Average Driver who pays all his bills on time and even helps his land lady carry out the garbage. But most of you don't know about it because the police conducted their search discreetly, found nothing, and moved on. Which is exactly how surveillance should work. And most of the time, that is how it works; you guys only hear about the 1 in 10,000 case where they screw it up, not the other 9,999 where nothing newsworthy happened because they did it right.
This wouldn't be news if it wasn't for the news agencies creating a story where there really isn't one to sell more advertising. "Over-zealous middle manager of questionable technical ability reports ex-employee after searching internet history and finding a few keywords and deciding it's a matter of national security..." is not exactly interesting to me, and it wouldn't be if not for the drum beat of "NSA... NSA... NSA..." all over the news right now. Please. Former employers are like ex-boyfriends -- take everything they say with a biiiig grain of salt.
Snarking is my job on slashdot. If you called up the police and reported suspicious activity, wouldn't you feel better if they showed up and looked around? Of course you would -- that's a stupid question. Emblazoned on the side of almost every police car is the words "protect and serve". A lot of times, that means going out on a wild goose chase, or knocking on the door of a neighbor who doesn't realize his TV's turned up too loud, or even conducting a health and welfare check because some over-protective mother didn't get a call back from her daughter right away and insists "it's not normal". Most of the time, it's nothing -- but that is not time and resources wasted.
It's the job of the police to investigate, and I'm pretty sure you and most everyone else would be blowing fuses left, right, and forward, if you rang up 911 and they said "Yeah, we could come out and have a look around, but you know how expensive gas is right now, so we're gonna pass." Well, I don't know about you, but if the police show up, act in a courteous and polite fashion, ask a few questions, and then leave satisfied nothing bad is going on, I consider that a job well done. They're out in the community, flying the flag, and helping people feel safe.
That's equally important to stopping actual crime; A reputation of a helpless and inadequate police force costs a lot more than a few gallons of gas and some time spent filing a report that says nothing of interest was found. If only every police investigation could be like that...
Perhaps the lesson is to be a bit more careful about your privacy, so that what you do on the internet remains between you and the professionals at the NSA.
I know you're being snarky, Slashdot, but I'd trust the professionals at the NSA over middle management any day of the week. The NSA doesn't ruin your life if it goes through your google history and finds a few keywords. It doesn't assume the worst. The NSA gathers up the data, forwards it to a team of analysts, and, seeing this kind of thing every day, make an informed and reasoned decision to either forward it up the chain, or bin it. And as your own article says: 99 times out of 100, it's nothing. That's probably a conservative estimate; There have only been a few dozen acts of bona fide terrorism in the past year or so, and if the tin foil hat crowd is right, the NSA is monitoring everyone pervasively, so it's more like 999,999 times out of a 1,000,000.
The moral of the story here is that people who aren't law enforcement are really, really, epic bad at being judges of character. Especially when you're dealing with someone whose job is often earned on something other than critical thinking skills, investigative talent, and attention to detail... three things I think most will agree you don't find in most mid-level managers. It's like how during the midst of the Boston bombing, the internet armchair sleuth crowd wrongly identified many innocent people and forced the police to divert valuable resources to take those people into protective custody while the real bomber was left unidentified. The professionals, meanwhile, correctly identified them hours later, and then took them down without any innocent people getting caught in the cross fire.
I know it's politically popular right now to say law enforcement is a bunch of clueless, authoritarian, surveillance-happy asshats, but that's a slanted view. On the whole, they know what they're doing, and most of the time they get it right. You only hear about the times when they screw up. Now, considering how low of esteem they're held in for that track record, ask yourselves about the track record of middle managers, internet armchair pundits, and vigilantes have had doing the same things... and I'm betting their reputation with you is a lot better.
Resources need deals signed with local leaders. Smart local experts will chatter about the quality of the deal, some been more into nationalism and patriotism than any bribe can alter.
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From TFA: The company says it's bridging the digital divide, but others suspect it's wiring the continent for surveillance.
What's amazing here is that all of Slashdot missed this false dichotomy, despite the sheer number of recent and timely articles underscoring that these two things aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, it seems they go hand in hand. Every government. Every government, has a vested in interest in keeping watch on its citizens. We have bitched and moaned about the NSA, but only because they had the indecency to get caught out by some punk kid. Not because it was surprising, shocking, or in any way even terribly interesting. "Authority does authoritarian things. Film at 11." Naturally, some people have a problem with this.
Digital electronics, when attached to a microprocessor, manage to do a few things very well: They store, process, and transmit information. It's the most basic of computational function. Surveillance, to a computer, is just another store and forward operation.
It does the same thing, for years on end, without having to take vacation days. The funny thing is that you do actually get used to it; I was a night owl, but not anymore. Now, if I do sleep in, I actually wake up with a headache.
Of course, this doesn't work for everyone. Like any definition of "normal" it fails to notice that variation in the population may be an evolutionary strategy with benefits to the whole, while perhaps sub-optimal for the individual. Or that there's simply not sufficient selection pressure for homogenization. Or even that certain 'mutations' confer an evolutionary advantage (though most result in death or disability, true enough!).
In this case, having the occasional night owl might be useful to a tribe to keep watch for predators, who often hunt at night. Having them nodding off because they're not really night owls while everyone else sleeps wouldn't just affect the individual's reproductive success... but the entire tribe's.
In other news, being a night owl is a bona fide medical condition with a genetic basis and high comorbidity with certain other disorders. And as we gain better understanding, we're finding a significant fraction of the population isn't just a "lifestyle change" away from a cure. The only reason it's classified as a disorder is because of society's narrow views on what is normal and useful; Not because it's unnatural or needs to be "fixed". For some things, it's society that needs to adapt, not the individual.
In other, unrelated news, Facebook stock prices briefly nearly reached it's initial sale price the other day, which the media has portrayed as a good thing. Unless of course you were one of the initial investors, in which case it's been two years and counting and still no return on your initial investment. The only other major social media website being publicly traded is MySpace (owned by Murdock, ticker: NWS). I probably don't need to remind you what happened to them.
But surely a website named after a verb that means "to taunt, tease, ridicule, etc., with reference to anything embarrassing" will be a wise investment where these other two social media sites have failed... I mean, it's a foregone conclusion in marketing that social media is where it's at... despite these collossal failures. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta get back to denying climate change, the holocaust, and the notion that married people have sex...
this time in an open letter from 17 scientists and policy researchers [...] to explore ways to improve climate science communication....
Yeah, because improved communication is the problem, not people shoving their fingers in their ear and going "glory glory halleluja!" If only there was some scientific explanation for behavior like this. Anyway, the solution is simple: Better education, not better 'communication'. A better educated population is more likely to use science, reason, and excercise critical thinking in response to new information, than an uneducated one. Ah, what's the going rate of a college education these days?
The real truth of the matter is that you can't fit a terabyte onto something the size of a fingernail. Even if you could, you would never be able to afford it.
Let's hop a time machine back to 2009. Oh look: Terabytes of storage on something smaller than a fingernail being prototyped. In other news, the microSD working group updated their specifications to include 2 TB storage in that form-factor. That same year, someone got the idea to stitch a bunch of microSD cards together to create a 1 TB drive that would fit on a finger. And earlier this year, Kingston released a 1 TB thumb drive, which is, as you might expect, the side of your thumb.
So the 'real truth' of the matter is that this technology is only a few years away. And by the looks of things, it won't just be affordable: It'll be competitively priced with current solutions.
So I will ask the question again: Why are we continuing to invest in a technology that's many times that size and many fractions of that in terms of storage capacity by volume, dimensions, mass, or any other unit of measurement you care to throw out there? The answer is obvious: DRM. Optical media has been the medium of choice for DRM schemes since the first CD was released. That's its only relevance in the marketplace today.
The technology we have today greatly exceeds optical media storage, and there's been no breakthroughs in optics that suggest it can ever match solid state media for information density. It's dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. So what if I can't fit a terabyte on my fingernail right now, that it has to be the size of my thumb instead? That's still a helluva better than this latest optical media format! And it's available now.
He's wrong anyway. The U.S. began as a constitutional republic, but is now much closer to a democracy.
The worst part is in the middle of his self-righteous academic rant, is did get it wrong: We are technically classified as a federal republic, and we started as a confederation. Not that this is relevant to the current topic at hand... it's just a source of internal amusement to me that someone who tries to grammar nazi the conversation and then interject his own off-topic slant on things nobody brought up and strawman and ad hominid prop his own position manages to fail on all counts, while undoubtedly feeling pretty smug doing it. (-_-)
Slashdot Mirror
As a thought experiment, imagine that the couple had been Muslim, but otherwise exactly the same people. Does anyone honestly still think the visit by police would have been so courteous and polite?
Yes. Oh sorry, was that not the answer you were looking for? In Canada, police are equipping minature cameras on their uniform to have a bird's eye view of everything the officer sees. They aren't doing this as part of some cover up conspiracy. It's happening here in 'Murica too, though slower. Police want clear and unequivocable proof that they acted with integrity and professionalism; They're the ones demanding these cameras. And there's a whole lot of other 'under the hood' things on the surveillance front too: ANPR (Automated Plate Recognition) systems are being built into squad cars. It's hard to claim bias on a traffic violation when the computer is sitting over their shoulder recording every traffic stop; Confirmation, or refutation, is just a few mouse clicks away.
When it's that ridiculously easy, an officer who can't keep his personal views separate from his professional conduct is destined for a short career. And if you feel this isn't happening, why are you sitting here reading this comment instead of beating down the door of your congress-critters and demanding it? What you, yourself, personally pay in taxes each year is probably enough to equip the officers of any medium-sized police department with cameras like that, which is to say amounts to exactly dick as far as the government's budget is concerned, what argument against this can't you easily defeat?
That said, yeah, people are racist, biased, sexist assholes by and far. I well imagine that police officers are no different in this regard; But if I can be professional towards someone cussing and spitting in my face while working the retail counter, smile, and tell them they still only get store credit... I'm pretty sure a couple of FBI dudes can handle a conversation with a suspect without going ape-shit. Not to say things don't occasionally go pear-shaped, but by and far nothing interesting happens when the police show up at a house to ask a few questions. I love the visual of jack-booted 7 foot tall police officers in riot gear marching down my street chanting "Death to freedom!", but only because of my desire to one day become an evil overlord and not because my worldview has gotten so out of whack I think the police here have an attitude and intelligence rarely seen outside of comic books and radical political literature.
She works with cops. All of her otherwise spot-on insight goes completely out the window when the discussion shifts to law enforcement. It's the cognitive dissonance one must have to work with monsters and still maintain that you are not a monster.
Or perhaps I am simply doing something that seems to come with great difficulty to most people: Putting myself in another's shoes. I don't think most people get into law enforcement to abuse others, anymore than firefighters do. I bet if you go to a police training academy and ask around, you'll find most of these people are just like you and me; They want to make a difference. They feel they can make a contribution. And for some, answering that call means going into law enforcement.
Yes, I have worked with the police. I've also been interrogated by them, and mistreated by them. But I don't judge police as a whole badly because of what a few have done, anymore than I think all muslims are evil because a handful of them decided to have their crazy time clutching a Koran at the nose-end of a commercial jet, anymore than I think all christians are evil because of the crazy shit talk show hosts say.
What I'm doing is maintaining an impartial view here; Considering all positions and then reasoning out where I think a fair balancing point is. I don't think most police are monsters, anymore than I do the criminals they catch. These are systemic social problems caused by poverty, a lack of education, mental illness, or religious and political bias. And as a society, we need to take personal responsibility for asking these questions, and then judging them fairly and impartially.
The police get a lot of things wrong. The newspapers are full of examples. But they also get a lot more things right, which the newspapers don't report on, anymore than they report "Man goes to work, does job, nothing bad happens. Film at 11." If we're going to pick an example of poor police conduct, I can think of many more relevant examples than this.
As far as I can tell, everyone else seems to be using this non-case where nothing happened as a springboard to discuss their own fears and uncertainties about the world we live in. And that's fine. But I draw the line at bogus rationalizations and exaggeration as a means of protecting our own individual world views. The police here did everything right; That should be a cause for celebration, not condemnation. Believe me... another news article will be along shortly where they get it wrong. You won't have to wait long.
You should try living next door to my old neighbour. The problem here is the assumption that people who report things are reasonable and sane people.
Umm, there's no assumption being made by any experienced law enforcement officer. They're trained investigators -- they don't just take people at their word. If they did, the prisons would be empty. The police are well aware of the problem children in the community -- the people who call their neigbor for every little thing. They see it all the time.
But yes, of course they still come out and investigate the report: It's good customer service. Your neighbor might be a paranoid jerkwad, but he's still a tax payer, and like every tax payer, has the expectation that when you call the police about a problem, the police investigate said problem. I lived next to a neighbor that liked to complain. I was once sitting on the back step of our apartment complex having a smoke with a friend, and a police cruiser snuck out of the shadows with the lights off. As he pulled into view, the headlights came on and the window was down. He shouts from across the alleyway, "Got a noise complaint here. Let me guess, no noise?" And me and my friend just nodded and thumbed in the direction of Sir Nosey, our upstairs neighbor. He nodded solemly, rolled up the window, and drove off. I didn't exactly feel like my rights were being trampled on... it's his job to investigate all complaints, even ones that are most likely bogus and stupid. They can't cherry pick their calls anymore than I can just hangup on stupid people who call me for tech support.
In the end, its such a needle in a haystack sort of problem that its entirely unreasonable to think they can ever be prevented, therefore any acceptance of that reasoning that starts with they should be able to catch it, inevitably leads to excessive measures...
And so we should take the nilhist view that it's an impossible problem to fix and therefore make no attempt at all, because any attempt would be an excessive attempt?! This is learned helplessness, not insightful social commentary. I don't go fishing expecting to catch all the fish in the lake, but that doesn't mean I starve to death instead.
You're marrying two separate concepts: The political reality that when there's a perceived or actual harm inflicted, there's a strong emotional reaction. It's called vengance, and while it's not politically popular to admit, it's one of the foundations of the modern justice system. Something must be done! The perpetrators must be punished! But these emotions are transitory; and the only problem is in giving into populist demands for action. Law enforcement practices should change gradually, after much deliberation, and without consideration of the current political climate. If it isn't, it's partly your responsibility to become politically active and have your elected officials redress that greviance. But you'll have to wait in line behind the hundred other people that don't think the same way.
If you feel this is inconvenient, I agree. It may even be unfair. But blaming the government for doing what the people are demanding it do is silly: A government that doesn't listen to its citizens is a tyranny. A government that does... well, at least it is representing the will of the people. Such is life that you can lead with the best intentions and wind up in the worst places.
Of course in this particular case the victim was complicit in the violation of their own rights. So I have little sympathy for them.
You aren't required to excercise your rights. Nobody puts a gun to your head to demand you vote, for example. It wouldn't be a right if it didn't confer a choice of some kind. Your lack of sympathy here is distressing; What the police did here was not substantially different from a door to door salesman. They showed up, rang the bell, had a conversation, and left. There was no excercise of police authority other than showing credentials, nothing that any other citizen couldn't have done.
But in a case where a search warrant is granted when it should not have been because...
Because what? A search warrant wasn't granted in this case. There wasn't any evidence other than the heresay of an overzealous manager, but the police being responsible about an allegation of terrorism, took the reasonable step of discussing the matter with the accused -- confidentially -- and then left.
I think the victims should be compensated for the mistake.
I see no victim here. No gun holes in the property, no kicked in doors, no being put in handcuffs. Polite, but serious, words were exchanged. How is this victimization? This is how the police should behave. If we're going to accuse anyone of a crime, it should be the manager who went through somebody's personal effects. This wasn't the NSA and FBI rifling through their computer; It was a manager. A citizen. A Joe Average. With no police authority whatsoever. He's the one that screwed up, if we're going to assign any blame.
A google search should never, ever, ever be probable cause for a search of
That's nice. That didn't happen here. The police didn't search without a warrant... they didn't conduct a search under any authority except that granted to them by "the victim" (as you've taken to calling him). If and when this does happen to someone, and that's the only evidence the police used to justify a forced search, then I'll be hollering and kicking up a storm. But I'm not going to condemn these officers for doing a good job because they could have done a bad job, anymore than I'm going to tell you that you can't own a gun just because you might go out and murder someone with it.
The lack of permission in the constitution itself, as well as the first and fourth amendments should be protecting us...
Again, any evidence these amendments were slacking on the job? Was this person somehow denied the right to choose between talking (1st amendment) and not talking (5th amendment), and then as a direct consequence of that choice, a violation of their right not be subjected to an unreasonable search (4th amendment) occurred? As you already admitted; This didn't happen. You disagree with "the victim", but "the victim" was perfectly within his rights at all times, and by all accounts, those boundaries were respected in this case. So the police did their job exactly how we all want them to: With professionalism and respect. And you're upset with them because of an imagined scenario that might have happened, but didn't. This makes sense, how exactly?
An important part of the freedom of speech is...
Well thank you for that Civics 101 lesson. Where is this going again?
The NSA could easily set up a system to send FBI agents...
Again, more of this "what if" logic from you. Is there actual evidence you would like to present that such a system is (a) in use right now and was (b) used in the case currently under discussion? Short answer: No, you don't.
...to the home of everyone who searched google for something like, "how to build a nuclear weapon".
The first result is
I did no such thing. The people who reported him did that.
You attributed the failure to law enforcement, not the person who reported it.
Again, just stop being an idiot and this sort of thing wouldn't even happen; it's just a waste of tax dollars. This sort of 'investigation' isn't even necessary and shouldn't even happen because it's nothing more than rampant, idiotic paranoia.
...Or good customer service.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Just because X is worse than Y doesn't mean that Y isn't bad. Incidentally, I think all of these things need to be fixed.
Yes, all the problems the government has could be solved if they'd just read your slashdot posts. Incidentally, according to anonymous internet pundit, the NSA already has. They must be really disappointed too...
I think currently, the difference in performance between Java and C++ is so close that...
Okay, clearly the new batch of slashdot editors have absolutely no programming ability whatsoever. They also must have missed that slashdot story about how Facebook undertook a massive campaign to translate their PHP code into C/C++ executable to speed up performance. Java is a lightweight language. It cannot, and will not ever be as fast as C/C++ because it is an run time interpreted language that additionally runs in a virtual machine.
I am forced to conclude that the slashdot editors are trolling us by approving such a patently absurd and idiotic article.
There is zero reason to trust the government (or corporations, for that matter).
I guess I'd better give up that whole civilization thing too. It was a pretty silly idea. We should just go back to roaming bands of vigilantes and forget the whole "rule of law" business. It's clearly a failed experiment. Thank you, anonymous internet pundit, for helping me see the error of my ways.
You must have very little real world experience... and few interesting friends.
Perhaps my experience lies in actually working with police, instead of reading about it on CNN. But I can empathize with Plato, stuck in his cave... such is the nature of the internet: Upon being enlightened, you return to it to find yourself thought stupider than before by the fellow inmates.
Your cute and idealistic assessment is at odds with (at least) the fact that the gathered NSA data was dumped into a huge database where a low-level outside contractor could access all of it. I'd feel better if the data went to a team of professional analysts and not into an easily abusable database which may or may not be studied by analysts.
Sure, a "low-level outside contractor" has been given access to a database which is of critical importance to national security. As well, this fictional contractor also has the keys to Fort Knox and sleeps in the President's bed at the White House. Or, perhaps, since there's no evidence any of this has actually happened, and plenty of common sense to suggest it would be highly undesireable to the aforementioned-agency, you are just making shit up.
It is more likely to be nothing 1,000,000 out of 1,000,000 times.
If it was100%, then pray tell how have we managed to catch any terrorists? Did they just show up at the police station and surrender, and we didn't question them or anything? I'm all ears.
A "terrorist" that relies on google and pressure cookers to plan their act is a pathetic basement dweller that lacks the resources to actually do anything.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine why a potential terrorist might google for how to build a bomb while using google for everything from grocery shopping to hair styling tips. It's equally hard to see how using commonly-available household chemicals and products along with a pressure cooker and a box of nails, could be built by a "pathetic basement dweller" to construct a terrorist bomb for only a few dollars.
I'd be interested in hearing about that 1 out of 1,000,000 where they caught someone credible, who could have succeeded.
Yeah... that big story this past April in Boston... something about a bomb... asleep the whole month?
And (in TFA case) that same person would have to lack the capacity to not answer the door and move to another city after a visit from government agents.
Well, I can't speak to the boston bomber's inability to answer the door, but I can speak to the guy who owned the house he was hiding behind, who did.
However, they were neither able to prevent the act, nor have they used the years and years of indiscriminately stored data.
Tell me, when you go fishing in a lake, do you catch all the fish?
Anyway, the solution is simple: Better education, not better 'communication'.
Not really. The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate
Sounds like an argument for more science curriculum to me.
For one thing, I wouldn't inform the police of such a ridiculous thing to begin with. Have we become nothing more than paranoid cowards who watch everyone else's moves just because there is a 0.000000000000001% chance that they could be terrorists? Really?
It's been amply established that people are really, really bad at estimating risk. They also terribly over-estimate risk when it is something they're unfamiliar with. Just like you are now. :/
Stop wasting my fucking tax dollars.
Well, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. On the other hand, I'm quite happy to spend money on local law enforcement conducting investigations like this; And I hope that the number of terrorist they find continues to go down, and most of what they find amounts to nothing. It means my community is safer, and abundant resources then exist to investigate serious crime. It's certainly a better way to spend my money than corporate welfare, subsidies, and bloated military projects. If we took all the money that we spent on the F-35 program and had simply used it to build houses, we'd all be living in $100,000 homes, paid for. No mortgage. Don't whine about the government spending peanuts on local law enforcement when stuff like that is going on.
I never feel better around police. They're the predominant remaining natural predator of humans.
Well, if that's how you feel, consider this: Who's better qualified to hunt down other predators than a predator? -_- Not that I agree with your assertion, but logically, your statements aren't consistent.
And, they've never caught a single terrorist. Pretty impressive results.
Yup. They're going to track you down personally and inform you of the results of any investigation that results in finding a terrorist straight away! The fact that they didn't is proof that no terrorists have ever been found.
What makes you think that law enforcement would advertise every capture of a terrorist, thus turning him/her into a martyr for his/her cause? If it were me, I wouldn't be making a press release on every terrorist I caught... I'd quietly take them into custody and interrogate the shit out of them to find their friends, and then rinse, wash, repeat. I'd be more interested in actual national security than consoling some armchair internet pundit's hurt feelings that he wasn't given access to high-level intelligence assets.
So we have three possibilities;
1/ this statistic is a bullshit overstatement, talking up a minimal danger
2/ they are arresting terrorist bombers at a rate of 1 a week
3/ they are prosecuting 1 person a week on an unrelated matter, after gaining access to their house on the pretext of "war against terrorism".
4/ The guy being interviewed was trying to illustrate in layman's terms how un-newsworthy a police investigation like this really is, and how most of his job consists of investigations just like this.
Why do you expect this to be some kind of scientifically rigorous statement, is the better question. It clearly isn't. But in spite of the obviousness of this, you go on to weave a tapestry of half-truths and assumptions and then act like these are the only possible conclusions. False dichotomy, anyone?
As far as what "we" think it is... not a very interesting question. About 7% of the population believes the government is being run by lizard people, or aren't sure. "we" are very stupid people. However, I think that this is a case of a detective trying to tell the press there's nothing interesting to report, and the press ignoring that statement and trying to make a story out of it anyway, because fears about government surveillance are selling papers like hotcakes right now. And as far as arresting terrorist bombers "at a rate of 1 a week"... yeah. There's only one police department in the whole country doing this, the Suffolk Police Department. If your statistic had merit, most of America would be arrested for being terrorist bombers at that rate within a short time.
There was no prosecution. There was no arrest. There was no terrorism. There were some friendly guys who showed up at someone's house, asked a few questions, took the usual precautions for a report of this type, and after confirming what they already likely suspected, left and closed the file.
Which is exactly how it's supposed to go, and thankfully their deductive reasoning and investigative skill vastly outstripped Sir Armchair Internet Pundit here, who apparently is hiding under his bed right now thinking any minute now men in black are going to come busting down his door to take him away to Guantanamo.
It doesn't ruin your life. It ends it, making you the 55th thwarted terrorist plot.
Only when the budget is up for review by Congress...
Put down the tin foil hats, have a wake up call and realize that your employers are the ones performing the real world surveillance on the contents of your browsing, email and other habits.
If this is anything to go by, I can rest easy knowing that middle management is exactly as incompetent as Dilbert portrays them to be. I'd rather have the NSA going through my browsing history than these marginally competent people who aren't exactly known for their critical thinking and investigative talents. Plus, over-zealous middle managers have ruined my life plenty of times. To date, no men in black appearing out of cadillacs to "ask me a few questions" have exacted that level of devastation on my life.
The NSA at least has rules for their surveillance, and can be sued or called into a congressional hearing if they screw up... corporate management though, lulz. They'll get a promotion for a "job well done" for fucking up.
I take away a different lesson from this: maybe it's a good idea to wait until you have more facts before starting to run around screaming "The sky is falling!!!!111".
Clearly, this middle manager only watches CNN and FoxNews. And let's be honest: It's the only thing playing in most break rooms, and middle managers aren't known for their critical thinking and investigative talents.
The fact that some real shady things in terms of corporate and governmental surveillance do go on is no reason to just give up being rational.
Neither is it a reason to ignore the fact that the police showed up, were polite and courteous, asked a few questions, and left satisfied. Now look, I'm no more happy having the police show up at my door than anyone else -- but by and far, the experiences have been professional, as this person learned. I've had people call in all kinds of things to the police about me; I know because they keep records of that kind of thing and I know the right people to ask to get them.
Every one of you past the age of 30 has something in their police file from a "concerned citizen." All of you. Yes, even you, Mr. Above Average Driver who pays all his bills on time and even helps his land lady carry out the garbage. But most of you don't know about it because the police conducted their search discreetly, found nothing, and moved on. Which is exactly how surveillance should work. And most of the time, that is how it works; you guys only hear about the 1 in 10,000 case where they screw it up, not the other 9,999 where nothing newsworthy happened because they did it right.
This wouldn't be news if it wasn't for the news agencies creating a story where there really isn't one to sell more advertising. "Over-zealous middle manager of questionable technical ability reports ex-employee after searching internet history and finding a few keywords and deciding it's a matter of national security..." is not exactly interesting to me, and it wouldn't be if not for the drum beat of "NSA... NSA... NSA..." all over the news right now. Please. Former employers are like ex-boyfriends -- take everything they say with a biiiig grain of salt.
I'm glad that's all cleared up then.
Snarking is my job on slashdot. If you called up the police and reported suspicious activity, wouldn't you feel better if they showed up and looked around? Of course you would -- that's a stupid question. Emblazoned on the side of almost every police car is the words "protect and serve". A lot of times, that means going out on a wild goose chase, or knocking on the door of a neighbor who doesn't realize his TV's turned up too loud, or even conducting a health and welfare check because some over-protective mother didn't get a call back from her daughter right away and insists "it's not normal". Most of the time, it's nothing -- but that is not time and resources wasted.
It's the job of the police to investigate, and I'm pretty sure you and most everyone else would be blowing fuses left, right, and forward, if you rang up 911 and they said "Yeah, we could come out and have a look around, but you know how expensive gas is right now, so we're gonna pass." Well, I don't know about you, but if the police show up, act in a courteous and polite fashion, ask a few questions, and then leave satisfied nothing bad is going on, I consider that a job well done. They're out in the community, flying the flag, and helping people feel safe.
That's equally important to stopping actual crime; A reputation of a helpless and inadequate police force costs a lot more than a few gallons of gas and some time spent filing a report that says nothing of interest was found. If only every police investigation could be like that...
Perhaps the lesson is to be a bit more careful about your privacy, so that what you do on the internet remains between you and the professionals at the NSA.
I know you're being snarky, Slashdot, but I'd trust the professionals at the NSA over middle management any day of the week. The NSA doesn't ruin your life if it goes through your google history and finds a few keywords. It doesn't assume the worst. The NSA gathers up the data, forwards it to a team of analysts, and, seeing this kind of thing every day, make an informed and reasoned decision to either forward it up the chain, or bin it. And as your own article says: 99 times out of 100, it's nothing. That's probably a conservative estimate; There have only been a few dozen acts of bona fide terrorism in the past year or so, and if the tin foil hat crowd is right, the NSA is monitoring everyone pervasively, so it's more like 999,999 times out of a 1,000,000.
The moral of the story here is that people who aren't law enforcement are really, really, epic bad at being judges of character. Especially when you're dealing with someone whose job is often earned on something other than critical thinking skills, investigative talent, and attention to detail... three things I think most will agree you don't find in most mid-level managers. It's like how during the midst of the Boston bombing, the internet armchair sleuth crowd wrongly identified many innocent people and forced the police to divert valuable resources to take those people into protective custody while the real bomber was left unidentified. The professionals, meanwhile, correctly identified them hours later, and then took them down without any innocent people getting caught in the cross fire.
I know it's politically popular right now to say law enforcement is a bunch of clueless, authoritarian, surveillance-happy asshats, but that's a slanted view. On the whole, they know what they're doing, and most of the time they get it right. You only hear about the times when they screw up. Now, considering how low of esteem they're held in for that track record, ask yourselves about the track record of middle managers, internet armchair pundits, and vigilantes have had doing the same things... and I'm betting their reputation with you is a lot better.
Chew on that for a bit.
Resources need deals signed with local leaders. Smart local experts will chatter about the quality of the deal, some been more into nationalism and patriotism than any bribe can alter.
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From TFA: The company says it's bridging the digital divide, but others suspect it's wiring the continent for surveillance.
What's amazing here is that all of Slashdot missed this false dichotomy, despite the sheer number of recent and timely articles underscoring that these two things aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, it seems they go hand in hand. Every government. Every government, has a vested in interest in keeping watch on its citizens. We have bitched and moaned about the NSA, but only because they had the indecency to get caught out by some punk kid. Not because it was surprising, shocking, or in any way even terribly interesting. "Authority does authoritarian things. Film at 11." Naturally, some people have a problem with this.
Digital electronics, when attached to a microprocessor, manage to do a few things very well: They store, process, and transmit information. It's the most basic of computational function. Surveillance, to a computer, is just another store and forward operation.
It does the same thing, for years on end, without having to take vacation days. The funny thing is that you do actually get used to it; I was a night owl, but not anymore. Now, if I do sleep in, I actually wake up with a headache.
Of course, this doesn't work for everyone. Like any definition of "normal" it fails to notice that variation in the population may be an evolutionary strategy with benefits to the whole, while perhaps sub-optimal for the individual. Or that there's simply not sufficient selection pressure for homogenization. Or even that certain 'mutations' confer an evolutionary advantage (though most result in death or disability, true enough!).
In this case, having the occasional night owl might be useful to a tribe to keep watch for predators, who often hunt at night. Having them nodding off because they're not really night owls while everyone else sleeps wouldn't just affect the individual's reproductive success... but the entire tribe's.
In other news, being a night owl is a bona fide medical condition with a genetic basis and high comorbidity with certain other disorders. And as we gain better understanding, we're finding a significant fraction of the population isn't just a "lifestyle change" away from a cure. The only reason it's classified as a disorder is because of society's narrow views on what is normal and useful; Not because it's unnatural or needs to be "fixed". For some things, it's society that needs to adapt, not the individual.
In other, unrelated news, Facebook stock prices briefly nearly reached it's initial sale price the other day, which the media has portrayed as a good thing. Unless of course you were one of the initial investors, in which case it's been two years and counting and still no return on your initial investment. The only other major social media website being publicly traded is MySpace (owned by Murdock, ticker: NWS). I probably don't need to remind you what happened to them.
But surely a website named after a verb that means "to taunt, tease, ridicule, etc., with reference to anything embarrassing" will be a wise investment where these other two social media sites have failed... I mean, it's a foregone conclusion in marketing that social media is where it's at... despite these collossal failures. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta get back to denying climate change, the holocaust, and the notion that married people have sex...
GirlInTraining
Senior Marketing Consultant
this time in an open letter from 17 scientists and policy researchers [...] to explore ways to improve climate science communication....
Yeah, because improved communication is the problem, not people shoving their fingers in their ear and going "glory glory halleluja!" If only there was some scientific explanation for behavior like this. Anyway, the solution is simple: Better education, not better 'communication'. A better educated population is more likely to use science, reason, and excercise critical thinking in response to new information, than an uneducated one. Ah, what's the going rate of a college education these days?
Oh. Right.
The real truth of the matter is that you can't fit a terabyte onto something the size of a fingernail. Even if you could, you would never be able to afford it.
Let's hop a time machine back to 2009. Oh look: Terabytes of storage on something smaller than a fingernail being prototyped. In other news, the microSD working group updated their specifications to include 2 TB storage in that form-factor. That same year, someone got the idea to stitch a bunch of microSD cards together to create a 1 TB drive that would fit on a finger. And earlier this year, Kingston released a 1 TB thumb drive, which is, as you might expect, the side of your thumb.
So the 'real truth' of the matter is that this technology is only a few years away. And by the looks of things, it won't just be affordable: It'll be competitively priced with current solutions.
So I will ask the question again: Why are we continuing to invest in a technology that's many times that size and many fractions of that in terms of storage capacity by volume, dimensions, mass, or any other unit of measurement you care to throw out there? The answer is obvious: DRM. Optical media has been the medium of choice for DRM schemes since the first CD was released. That's its only relevance in the marketplace today.
The technology we have today greatly exceeds optical media storage, and there's been no breakthroughs in optics that suggest it can ever match solid state media for information density. It's dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. So what if I can't fit a terabyte on my fingernail right now, that it has to be the size of my thumb instead? That's still a helluva better than this latest optical media format! And it's available now.
He's wrong anyway. The U.S. began as a constitutional republic, but is now much closer to a democracy.
The worst part is in the middle of his self-righteous academic rant, is did get it wrong: We are technically classified as a federal republic, and we started as a confederation. Not that this is relevant to the current topic at hand... it's just a source of internal amusement to me that someone who tries to grammar nazi the conversation and then interject his own off-topic slant on things nobody brought up and strawman and ad hominid prop his own position manages to fail on all counts, while undoubtedly feeling pretty smug doing it. (-_-)