P.S. Apologies, I forgot the quotes in my copy-pasta off Wikipedia. Much of the descriptions provided here are from the website, while the analysis is my own.
1. Nationalism (Patriotism) Exalting the nation (or race) above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. "We're number one! We're number one!" Totalitarianism 2. The State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In less academic terms, if you're not a patriot, you're the enemy. And a patriot is defined as, well, whatever the state tells you it's defined as.
3. National corporatism (and various other names) Fascism denounces capitalism not because of its competitive nature nor its support of private property that fascism supports; but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged upper-[class] decadence, and alleged indifference to the nation. Put another way: Collect all the wealth you want, and step on whomever you want, as long as you can demonstrate it's in the best interests of the country. What is the argument that every public corporation? That what it is doing is in the best interests of the consumer. But what are all of a nation's citizens? And what is a nation without citizens? See also: "Too big to fail."
2. Political violence Essentially, social darwinism. "Survival of the fittest." We have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the face of the Earth, and it's rising faster than any other country as well. If taking away your freedom and stuffing you in a cage isn't violent, I don't know what is. You can recover from being beat up. You can't recover from being stuffed in a 5x3 room for decades. 4. Age and gender roles This is more difficult to explain than it might first seem, because fascism isn't about reverting to traditional gender and age roles, but rather a radical redefinition of them by placing a premium on the ability to take action. It's like social darwinism, in that your worth is measured by how much punch you can give on behalf of the state, but it is unlike social darwinism in that you, individually, are not what's being judged here but your social class. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." 5. Palingenesis and modernism. Don't let the academic terminology fool you: Behind high-sounding words is a very populist idea. You saw it most recently in the latest Batman movie: Taking from the rich, and giving to the poor by violent means, and while appearing as the liberator. It's easy to see it on a movie screen, because it rises and falls in a matter of hours. It's not so easy to see in a new bill increasing inheritance tax. But feather by feather, the goose is plucked. Now combine that with the idea of modernizing (and controlling) everything through technology to increase national power. That's what they're talking about with modernism. The idea of building a strong military is part of it, but that's more of a byproduct of this process: The heart of it is economic revitalization. It's about process, efficiency, productivity. Of course, with economic power comes the fear of losing all that money. Hence producing drones, tanks, guns, and bombs; It's secondary, but it's first in most people's minds.
Now, when you think of fascism along those five axis, is there any aspect of societal change that hasn't been moving in this direction since 9/11? Every dictator comes with the same words to the working class: "We are your friends." And for a time, they are. They deliver exactly what they promise: Material prosperity and a sense of pride. But it's temporary and transitive, because it isn't a process that can be stopped once you reach a happy middle-ground... once you start down the path of violence, it becomes cyclical. It builds, visciously eating, biting, and snapping at everything around it, and when there is nothing left to consume... it begins eating itself. The people who built the monsterous machine, cheering it on all the way, become the fuel for its last, gasping breaths.
In other words, because 3D-printed guns aren't yet as durable as their metal counterparts
Just wait until they find out that the only reason most hobbyists are using plastic 3D printers is because that's the material their prototypes use -- something non-conductive. When they find out that it's just as easy to stick an arc-welder to the end of the arm and crap out metal instead of plastic, they're going to come into all the maker labs that have sprung up with guns blazing, mowing people down while screaming "For the children!". That really ought to be their slogan: We killed you because it was in the best interests of some child, somewhere, whom we'll plaster their face all over the news if you question why we just wontonly murdered fifty people whose only crime was that we felt like killin' bitches.
The only agency more corrupt than the ATF is the DEA when it comes to federal law enforcement agencies. A bunch of over-charged testosterone-filled dirt-bags who go to bed each night thinking they're right with God and kissing a picture of Judge Dredd that they hang above their headboard and masturbate to every morning. -_-
Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. But no, I really don't have a high regard for law enforcement in this country anymore... not when the mantra seems to be shoot first and call whatever you hit the target (and guilty). Oh, and screw asking questions, that would just slow down us chasin' down those big bad criminals that are everywhere. Of course, since we're all criminals under the law... *cough*
Well, yeah. They're naming it after him because his death dropped the pants on these asshats. So naturally, they adjusted the law to prevent further de-pantsing events rather than admit that their crappy, over-vague, law which criminalizes basically any use of a computer indirectly led to the death of a talented young man who's crime was basically annoying authorities in the 3rd degree.
And they can just as easily reply with a form letter, feeding your letter into a database to extract keywords, which is then used to build a report that the legislator may read from time to time to figure out how popular something is.
Take the time to add a note to the end of the boilerplate about how you WILL NOT vote for them if they don't act.
Form letter democracy at its finest. I'm sure it'll get plenty of attention, like all the other form letters submitted to Congress have. You wanna make a difference? Get a pen and a piece of paper. That gets noticed. E-mail? Lulz. It's spam to them.
Senators and Representatives, even somebody like me who doesn't follow all things politics-related can still see how you vote
Yeah, you either get to vote for Person A (Incumbent), who promises to keep doing all the things they're doing now, or Person B, who promises to do the same things just slightly differently, who are both funded by the same group of corporations and political interest groups, and will ultimately vote based on how those people want things done. Your vote doesn't matter when you're not the one getting to choose who's name gets on the ballot.
Just remember, we are watching.
I'm sure MegaCorp is happy to let you watch while they buy the next election too.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Laws too dense for average citizens to understand, too vague to prevent massive abuse! Please. You're all felons. You haven't been prosecuted because you haven't pissed anyone off enough to become one, but all I need to do is record you going about your daily business for a week, and I'll find enough dirt to keep you locked up for a long time. Every. Last. One of you. Except perhaps the person who can't read this, because they're in a coma, in a hospital bed. And that poor, poor bastard is only avoiding his fate for as long as his bank account continues to pay off his mortgages and student loans. Once the money runs out, yeah... he's gonna be a felon too.
The law has ceased to have any relevance of any kind whatsoever for principled and ethical people. You cannot follow all the laws, you don't even know all of them, and you're not supposed to, and even if you did manage this collossal feat that even our own government can't accomplish with all of its resources... interpreting the law is also a crime. Ha ha. And telling someone else what you've learned? Practicing law without a license... another crime.
Mining and refining rare earths is exceptionally toxic and polluting process.
Based on the way they do it now, yes. But it doesn't have to be. we've proven that you can mine an area for valuables, then restore the environment to its previous ecological state after. No toxic sludge. No buried waste. After you've taken what you want out, you put the leftovers and some filler back in. The reason it's toxic and polluting is because it's more profitable to be toxic and polluting, not because it's not feasible.
Solid, lots of add-on modules, vibrant hacker community. And it has its own programmable processor so if your application permits you don't even have to have it attached to your PC to collect and process data.
Limited memory, slow I/O, slow processor, can emulate a USB device but can't function at anything resembling modern USB speed... This guy doesn't want another bag on the side, he wants something that gives him a spread of I/O pins and sampling options. And Arduino ain't that -- and he's right, there's nothing on the market that will give him a programmable DAC/ADC paired with a USB controller that can operate at the speeds of the current USB standard (v3).
It's not hard for an electronics engineer to slap some glue logic and a few chips on a homebrew board and do it, but for a hobbyist who just wants to play? Forget it.
I've always wished for a standard protocol for social media.
And the social media website purveyors want anything but. People have been trying to hack together a way to show Facebook feed information minus all the advertising crap, the applications, the random way that it sometimes sorts by most recent and then spontaniously doesn't... the idea of "promoted" posts... it's all bullshit. The RSS feeds they had used to show your friends "feeds" as well, but then they crapped all over that, and they change their HTML and CSS code every few weeks in an aggressive attempt to prevent YOU from exporting your own data in a convenient, real-time fashion, while giving THEM (that is, their advertisers, app purveyors, etc.) full access to everything... as long as they don't publish it in a nice, convenient, standardized fashion for third parties to use. Right there in the EULA even.
I admire Digg's attempt to do this... but if they succeed, it will be at some terrible (privacy) price, if Mark F*ckerberg doesn't screw the pooch first.
"We are certain there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Thousands of deaths later... evidence emerges this was a complete fabrication.
"A broader definition of imminent","No specific threat","Without trial or due process."
Quoting recent media regarding the Obama Administration's use of drones against Americans domestically.
Now, these are just the military examples. How many people have been given the death penalty after exhausting all of their appeals, due process, etc., only to later have it emerge that authorities lied, omitted key evidence, or coerced confessions? More than you're probably comfortable admitting.
And now, we're going to entrust the government with making the correct and accurate assessment of who the hacker is, and then use lethal force on them? We can't even properly trace a 911 call before sending the SWAT team to a guy's house in an attempt to get him killed even after the guy warned them this would happen ahead of time! What the sam hell makes any of you think they're going to do better on a network with far less security and safeguards than our public telecommunications network?
It's possible this stage is from another launch with a similar ground track and they can't confirm it until they find an intact serial number, but it's likely these are Apollo 11.
You can't make that assessment. There were 10 test launches, each of which would have left some debris in the ocean. There were an additional 6 unmanned launches, and 12 manned missions. There were an additional 5 launches using the same launch technology. That's a total of 33 flights which had the same hardware as the materials they've recovered. Only one of those 33 was Apollo 11. You can't say it's likely -- the odds are against it. At best, it's an educated guess.
This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes.
HAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa ha. Funny. This is the same administration that was mercilessly mocked by Jon Stewart for it's total and abject lack of transparency, to the point of trying to use a "jedi mind meld trick" on the assembled reporters regarding the mere existance of the requirements... which were basically "We'll do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, to whomever we want."
Just require all state-sponsored malware to be signed and verified by the a third party. I can see no reason why such a system would fail.
"Unable to launch nuclear missiles; The application was unable to contact the licensing server. If the problem persists, please contact your network administrator. The launch bay doors will now close."
what makes anyone think an attacker will stop at a hospital's firewall?
"Excellent question, Internet! To answer that, I'm going to turn the mic over to Government Man, a man from the government. Take it away, Government Man!"
Well, fellow Netizen, it's basically like this. We're the government. The government controls everything, starting with you. Now we know you get these things called liberties and freedoms and stuff, and we let you hold on to the notion that you have them, because they keep you in line. But make no mistake, we're in charge, not you. And we're not gonna have it be any different on this newfangled interwebtubes thing. So we're going to create a bunch of treaties and laws made using really big letters, and possibly with a bunch of all caps "PROHIBITED ACTIONS, DEFINED." sections as well. And that should scare most of you off doing anything we don't approve of, leaving just a very small number of agitators that we'll ask your neighbors and friends to turn on for a healthy profit. It's worked everywhere else, and I don't see how it could fail here either. But if it does, we'll just have to start detaining, disappearing, and murdering our way through the general population until an appropriate level of fear is instilled in them -- enough to flush out the people we don't like. It's worked well enough for us since about 8000 BC, and we're pretty sure it'll work just fine here as well. Back to you, forum poster!
"Umm, thank you for that enlightening post, Government Man. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be deleting my browser history and then cowering under my desk."
are you intentionally being obtuse or is this really how short sighted you are? Did you even read the summary at all?
+3, Insulting. Nice one, mods. Meanwhile, back in reality... no, I was commenting on the fact that keeping things in sync between many devices could be done with a floppy disk as early as 1982, and that this new "service" is just another attempt at mining your personal data to be resold. My privacy is worth rather more than the convenience of "keeping notes automatically in sync between many devices." And even if I did fall on my head repeatedly and become stupid enough that I'd happily sell my soul for slightly more convenience, I would hope I would retain at least enough intelligence to use encryption.
These people still do not understand the basics of networked systems. Adherence to this proposed list requires several things which are absent on the global telecommunications networks. First, determining who's attacking. In conventional warfare, attributation is easy: They're wearing distinctive uniforms. Computer viruses and malware doesn't have an embedded flag in it to tell you which government sent it, and even if it did, it couldn't be trusted. Second, attacks that are meant to go after one thing can inadvertently hit something else (collateral damage). This is usually geographically-based in the real world... if a hospital happens to be next to a military munitions depot, umm, oops? But online, the hospital could be in another country and yet still be hit by the attack, because its digital signature is similar to the actual target. Either it's on the same network, or has a similar network address, or even a simple one character typo, is all it takes to send a "cyber bomb" (gags) veering off target. And last, but not least... you can have all the countries on Earth sign this and it still leaves out the guns for hire, the mercenaries. The A-Teams of the digital world: Freelancers. They don't have to go by your rules, and if a hospital happens to have a juicy source of personal information that could be turned into cash through extortion, blackmail, or reselling, they may just decide to go for it.
This document underscores just how little our military and political leaders understand about this new theatre of war. They're drafting up treaties without even knowing where the borders are yet.
I don't just use one device, so I want easy, transparent access to my data no matter what I'm using. And some of my devices are quite tiny; I don't want to lose my data when I lose my device, so I'd at least want some kind of automatic remote backup...
If that's all that "the cloud" offers, an encrypted solution so that only you have access to the data would be more user-friendly. But like I said... data mining.
Why is there this rush to put everything in the cloud? Are you telling me that my device can't store a few bytes to kilobytes of textual data on it... that I need to download an online-only app to perform this most basic function? I mean, the IBM 8088AT class computers with giant 5.25 floppy drives had the ability to save text documents... and it didn't have a network connection.
Oh right, I forgot: Data mining. All those juicy keywords. Mmm, delicious monitization of your private data... mmmyes, myes. I think I just had an evilgasm. Okay, nevermind... sorry, was trying to be logical here. Didn't see there was money to be had. Ignore my previous! Carry on!
Oh, but in the grand 'logic' of 'girlintraining', quality content will magically appear on TPB merely because it is popular.
My logic was purely regarding the topic of discussion, which was assessing the actual popularity of a show. I have at no point, anywhere, in any post, entertained the idea of where quality content comes from. If magical space unicorns shit rainbow content out and that's how it appears, well, great. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is ranking of content that is already available in an accurate and unbiased fashion.
Good point. I guess one could connect to the tracker and announce that they are seeding/leeching and simply drop all incoming connections. This is highly probable, though the multitude of leechers coming from the same IP / IP range is sure to tip of the tracker maintainers and BitTorrent community quite promptly. The community will likely respond with a patch to count only 1 connection per IP and to disregard counts for inactive downloads/uploads.
Actually, just such a patch has been built into all mainstream bittorrent clients for years. Clients will only accept 1 connection at a time from a given IP address. And if the data provided is incorrect, after a certain number of bad chunks (defined in the client options, but typically around 3-5), it will be banned.
That said, some trolls did try to interfere with the downloading DVD screener copies this past year right around the time the Emmy's were being voted on by registering thousands of fake peers with the trackers, in a sort of DDoS. The reasoning is believed to be that if they could lower the effective download rate or otherwise make it take a long time to download the torrent, people would give up. Unfortunately for them, their cunning plan failed to consider that computers do not "give up"; After a few hours, all of their fake peers had been attempted (and banned by each other participating client), so while the length of time did increase for the torrent, it was not by an appreciable amount -- it doesn't take long to send 68 byte packets to a few thousand, or even ten thousand, unique IP addresses, and you don't need to get more than a handful of non-fakes to get your download up to full speed.
The other, more successful, method was to seed fake torrents with similar names and filesizes to the legitimate ones, thus forcing people to waste large amounts of bandwidth to get rick-rolled (proverbially speaking). The files would be corrupt, have severely distorted video and/or audio, or simply be a "Shame on you" advert repeated over and over. Very shortly after this, all the major torrent sites introduced the notion of "verified" torrents, and allowed anyone to rank a torrent, or otherwise flag it as crap. The practice has since stopped for the same reason spam e-mail usually doesn't make it through: A web of trust is a simple, yet powerful way, to sort the chaffe from the wheat.
So while there are ways to attack the bittorrent protocol, they are expensive and only result in a small loss of time and effort. For this reason, these attacks aren't common anymore, though less-technically minded groups (I'm looking at you, form-letter enforcement companies) perenially make the attempt thinking nobody's ever done it before.:)
There... "popularity" of Jersey Shore on TPB explained.
Last airing of Jersey Shore: December 7, 2012 Last airing of Big Bang: Today.
I think I see a flaw in your cunning assessment. If you look for a single episode of Big Bang uploaded on or before the same date, you get about the same count: 128 seeds, 2 leeches, respectively. When Jersey Shore isn't on its off-season, those numbers will be a lot higher. But I can't fault you for not knowing that torrents of TV shows tend to be most popular when first released, and then quickly drop in both seed and leech count... I mean, it's not something the average person would know.
please note you just freely criticized the us govt, from within the usa, and no one stopped you, no one watch listed you, no one knocked on your door, no one cares understand the difference?
Well first, I'm behind 14 proxies. Good luck, assholes. Second, how do you know I didn't get watch listed? It's not like they're published. And I have gotten knocks on my door for criticizing my government... usually for campaign contributions. I know, ha ha, but more seriously, yes I've been visited by the police for criticism of the government. Oh I'm sorry, did that not fit with your worldview?
in your whiny clueless post you have exercised a luxury many people in this world wish they had. and you don't even fucking notice. what does that say about your level of awareness and knowledge about the world?
I think it says that I'm not above suspecting my own government of engaging in the same activities that every other government does, simply because the popular media tells me it doesn't happen here.
i am certain there are whiny clueless characters like you in china, iran, cuba, etc too
According to you, they don't exist, you know, since they're all in jail.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
I seem to recall a major student uprising in Iran... something about the Spring... oh gee, if I wasn't so clueless and whiny, I might remember the name. Oh gosh darn it.
don't be ignorant and count your blessings
Yes. I'll count my blessings... let's see... gay rights? Don't got those. Non-discrimination in choice of housing? Don't got that either. Free healthcare? Yeah no, that's not on the list either. The right to be free of unreasonable searches? Nope... that one's dead. Uhh... the right not to have the President excercise unilateral authority to bomb me using a drone while I'm in my own house because of an unreleased and unknown secret memo that he drafted giving himself the power? Wait... checking... nope, that one's not there either! Well, damn. Do I at least have the right criticize my government? Actually, no. Something about the ability of the government to secretly declare certain areas "national interest zones" and then arrest anyone who protests there, with no prior notification to the public...
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded.
Then explain to me the popularity of Jersey Shore on the Pirate Bay.
Contrary to the prevailing slashdot wisdom, this site is not 'the general public'.
I'm sorry, you make me choke on my mountain dew. Slashdot? Wisdom? I think you have this site confused for another. And besides, we weren't talking about slashdot, we were talking about The Pirate Bay, which is the 73rd most visited site on the internet according to Alexia. But please, continue...
The problem with pirate sites is monetization.
Okay, just so we're clear: You're saying a website whose primary purpose is to allow the free distribution of copyrighted materials has a problem with monetization?
Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO?
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about accurately assessing the popularity of a show, which is what Nielsen ratings are supposed to do. I wasn't aware that this had anything to do with the price of tea in China... or the price of an HBO subscription for that matter.
Someone has to pay actors, writers, directors, etc.
Again, and that has what to do with the price of tea in China? We're looking at methods of assessing the popularity of a show, and the pros and cons of each method. Who writes the paycheck out to those people has exactly dick to do with that.
Until there is a better method of determining paying customers/viewers, there is still some relevance to traditional ratings.
Ah. So you're moving the goal posts. Well, allow me to move them back. Let's say you're in the market for a new car. New car by definition means you're going to be buying from a dealer, or from the manufacturer. So the market for used cars is therefore totally irrelevant, right? Wrong. Even though you're going to a different seller, the laws of supply and demand apply equally to both, and the reasons people buy a used car are similar to the reasons they buy a new car. So if a car has a strong value on the used car market, it's going to have an impact on the price, and popularity, of the new car market as well. Whether the customers are paying or not may matter to the producers of the show, but it has little or no impact on whether or not the viewing public wants to watch the show. And I'm willing to bet that if 10% of Game of Thrones is pirated, then about 10% of NCIS is going to be pirated too, even though they're different shows. And if NCIS is more popular than Game of Thrones amongst the non-paying customers, it's probably going to be more popular amongst the paying customers as well because they're the same demographic.
So yes, the viewership through pirate sites is interesting for help in determining popularity, but not necessarily in determining what gets made.
Whoa there cowboy. Again: China. Tea. Price of. We aren't discussing the criterion for how TV shows get selected for production, we're discussing the pros and cons of a ratings system for shows that are already in production.
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV. That's a truer reflection of what the general public wants to watch, because the seed and leech count isn't some complex proprietary formula. While fakes do pop up, with companies trying to poison the peer population to discourage downloading, the protocol is self-correcting and it is really just further evidence of its popularity. It represents an intentional and willful effort to watch these shows, not just a casual interest because it feels less lonely than leaving the TV on to blare commercials while you do something else. If you want to know which shows are popular, not just locally, but internationally then torrent sites are really the best measure of a show's actual popularity. And it's not limited to TV either; A movie's true popularity is also reflected in the download count, moreso than an imdb rating.
You can't trust for-profit organizations to give fair an unbiased numbers -- for enough money, they're only too happy to rig the system. There's companies whose sole reason for existance is to push books onto the New York Times' best seller lists. Because sales data and other information is all kept hidden behind a wall of corporate proprietary data, it's possible to rig the system.
The pirates... you can't rig the system. Either it's popular, or it isn't. No games, no bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S. Apologies, I forgot the quotes in my copy-pasta off Wikipedia. Much of the descriptions provided here are from the website, while the analysis is my own.
One step closer to fascism.
Closer? What are the five tenets of fascism:
1. Nationalism (Patriotism)
Exalting the nation (or race) above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. "We're number one! We're number one!"
Totalitarianism
2. The State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In less academic terms, if you're not a patriot, you're the enemy. And a patriot is defined as, well, whatever the state tells you it's defined as.
3. National corporatism (and various other names)
Fascism denounces capitalism not because of its competitive nature nor its support of private property that fascism supports; but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged upper-[class] decadence, and alleged indifference to the nation. Put another way: Collect all the wealth you want, and step on whomever you want, as long as you can demonstrate it's in the best interests of the country. What is the argument that every public corporation? That what it is doing is in the best interests of the consumer. But what are all of a nation's citizens? And what is a nation without citizens? See also: "Too big to fail."
2. Political violence
Essentially, social darwinism. "Survival of the fittest." We have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the face of the Earth, and it's rising faster than any other country as well. If taking away your freedom and stuffing you in a cage isn't violent, I don't know what is. You can recover from being beat up. You can't recover from being stuffed in a 5x3 room for decades.
4. Age and gender roles
This is more difficult to explain than it might first seem, because fascism isn't about reverting to traditional gender and age roles, but rather a radical redefinition of them by placing a premium on the ability to take action. It's like social darwinism, in that your worth is measured by how much punch you can give on behalf of the state, but it is unlike social darwinism in that you, individually, are not what's being judged here but your social class. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."
5. Palingenesis and modernism.
Don't let the academic terminology fool you: Behind high-sounding words is a very populist idea. You saw it most recently in the latest Batman movie: Taking from the rich, and giving to the poor by violent means, and while appearing as the liberator. It's easy to see it on a movie screen, because it rises and falls in a matter of hours. It's not so easy to see in a new bill increasing inheritance tax. But feather by feather, the goose is plucked. Now combine that with the idea of modernizing (and controlling) everything through technology to increase national power. That's what they're talking about with modernism. The idea of building a strong military is part of it, but that's more of a byproduct of this process: The heart of it is economic revitalization. It's about process, efficiency, productivity. Of course, with economic power comes the fear of losing all that money. Hence producing drones, tanks, guns, and bombs; It's secondary, but it's first in most people's minds.
Now, when you think of fascism along those five axis, is there any aspect of societal change that hasn't been moving in this direction since 9/11? Every dictator comes with the same words to the working class: "We are your friends." And for a time, they are. They deliver exactly what they promise: Material prosperity and a sense of pride. But it's temporary and transitive, because it isn't a process that can be stopped once you reach a happy middle-ground... once you start down the path of violence, it becomes cyclical. It builds, visciously eating, biting, and snapping at everything around it, and when there is nothing left to consume... it begins eating itself. The people who built the monsterous machine, cheering it on all the way, become the fuel for its last, gasping breaths.
That is the lesson history t
In other words, because 3D-printed guns aren't yet as durable as their metal counterparts
Just wait until they find out that the only reason most hobbyists are using plastic 3D printers is because that's the material their prototypes use -- something non-conductive. When they find out that it's just as easy to stick an arc-welder to the end of the arm and crap out metal instead of plastic, they're going to come into all the maker labs that have sprung up with guns blazing, mowing people down while screaming "For the children!". That really ought to be their slogan: We killed you because it was in the best interests of some child, somewhere, whom we'll plaster their face all over the news if you question why we just wontonly murdered fifty people whose only crime was that we felt like killin' bitches.
The only agency more corrupt than the ATF is the DEA when it comes to federal law enforcement agencies. A bunch of over-charged testosterone-filled dirt-bags who go to bed each night thinking they're right with God and kissing a picture of Judge Dredd that they hang above their headboard and masturbate to every morning. -_-
Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. But no, I really don't have a high regard for law enforcement in this country anymore... not when the mantra seems to be shoot first and call whatever you hit the target (and guilty). Oh, and screw asking questions, that would just slow down us chasin' down those big bad criminals that are everywhere. Of course, since we're all criminals under the law... *cough*
Well, yeah. They're naming it after him because his death dropped the pants on these asshats. So naturally, they adjusted the law to prevent further de-pantsing events rather than admit that their crappy, over-vague, law which criminalizes basically any use of a computer indirectly led to the death of a talented young man who's crime was basically annoying authorities in the 3rd degree.
You can write to them easily here:
And they can just as easily reply with a form letter, feeding your letter into a database to extract keywords, which is then used to build a report that the legislator may read from time to time to figure out how popular something is.
Take the time to add a note to the end of the boilerplate about how you WILL NOT vote for them if they don't act.
Form letter democracy at its finest. I'm sure it'll get plenty of attention, like all the other form letters submitted to Congress have. You wanna make a difference? Get a pen and a piece of paper. That gets noticed. E-mail? Lulz. It's spam to them.
Senators and Representatives, even somebody like me who doesn't follow all things politics-related can still see how you vote
Yeah, you either get to vote for Person A (Incumbent), who promises to keep doing all the things they're doing now, or Person B, who promises to do the same things just slightly differently, who are both funded by the same group of corporations and political interest groups, and will ultimately vote based on how those people want things done. Your vote doesn't matter when you're not the one getting to choose who's name gets on the ballot.
Just remember, we are watching.
I'm sure MegaCorp is happy to let you watch while they buy the next election too.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Laws too dense for average citizens to understand, too vague to prevent massive abuse! Please. You're all felons. You haven't been prosecuted because you haven't pissed anyone off enough to become one, but all I need to do is record you going about your daily business for a week, and I'll find enough dirt to keep you locked up for a long time. Every. Last. One of you. Except perhaps the person who can't read this, because they're in a coma, in a hospital bed. And that poor, poor bastard is only avoiding his fate for as long as his bank account continues to pay off his mortgages and student loans. Once the money runs out, yeah... he's gonna be a felon too.
The law has ceased to have any relevance of any kind whatsoever for principled and ethical people. You cannot follow all the laws, you don't even know all of them, and you're not supposed to, and even if you did manage this collossal feat that even our own government can't accomplish with all of its resources... interpreting the law is also a crime. Ha ha. And telling someone else what you've learned? Practicing law without a license... another crime.
We're all criminals. We just haven't been caught.
Mining and refining rare earths is exceptionally toxic and polluting process.
Based on the way they do it now, yes. But it doesn't have to be. we've proven that you can mine an area for valuables, then restore the environment to its previous ecological state after. No toxic sludge. No buried waste. After you've taken what you want out, you put the leftovers and some filler back in. The reason it's toxic and polluting is because it's more profitable to be toxic and polluting, not because it's not feasible.
Solid, lots of add-on modules, vibrant hacker community. And it has its own programmable processor so if your application permits you don't even have to have it attached to your PC to collect and process data.
Limited memory, slow I/O, slow processor, can emulate a USB device but can't function at anything resembling modern USB speed... This guy doesn't want another bag on the side, he wants something that gives him a spread of I/O pins and sampling options. And Arduino ain't that -- and he's right, there's nothing on the market that will give him a programmable DAC/ADC paired with a USB controller that can operate at the speeds of the current USB standard (v3).
It's not hard for an electronics engineer to slap some glue logic and a few chips on a homebrew board and do it, but for a hobbyist who just wants to play? Forget it.
I've always wished for a standard protocol for social media.
And the social media website purveyors want anything but. People have been trying to hack together a way to show Facebook feed information minus all the advertising crap, the applications, the random way that it sometimes sorts by most recent and then spontaniously doesn't... the idea of "promoted" posts... it's all bullshit. The RSS feeds they had used to show your friends "feeds" as well, but then they crapped all over that, and they change their HTML and CSS code every few weeks in an aggressive attempt to prevent YOU from exporting your own data in a convenient, real-time fashion, while giving THEM (that is, their advertisers, app purveyors, etc.) full access to everything... as long as they don't publish it in a nice, convenient, standardized fashion for third parties to use. Right there in the EULA even.
I admire Digg's attempt to do this... but if they succeed, it will be at some terrible (privacy) price, if Mark F*ckerberg doesn't screw the pooch first.
"We are certain there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Thousands of deaths later... evidence emerges this was a complete fabrication.
"A broader definition of imminent","No specific threat","Without trial or due process."
Quoting recent media regarding the Obama Administration's use of drones against Americans domestically.
Now, these are just the military examples. How many people have been given the death penalty after exhausting all of their appeals, due process, etc., only to later have it emerge that authorities lied, omitted key evidence, or coerced confessions? More than you're probably comfortable admitting.
And now, we're going to entrust the government with making the correct and accurate assessment of who the hacker is, and then use lethal force on them? We can't even properly trace a 911 call before sending the SWAT team to a guy's house in an attempt to get him killed even after the guy warned them this would happen ahead of time! What the sam hell makes any of you think they're going to do better on a network with far less security and safeguards than our public telecommunications network?
It's possible this stage is from another launch with a similar ground track and they can't confirm it until they find an intact serial number, but it's likely these are Apollo 11.
You can't make that assessment. There were 10 test launches, each of which would have left some debris in the ocean. There were an additional 6 unmanned launches, and 12 manned missions. There were an additional 5 launches using the same launch technology. That's a total of 33 flights which had the same hardware as the materials they've recovered. Only one of those 33 was Apollo 11. You can't say it's likely -- the odds are against it. At best, it's an educated guess.
False flag operations are extremely risky, and don't happen as often as you would think.
... and don't happen as often as you would think.
This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes.
HAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa ha. Funny. This is the same administration that was mercilessly mocked by Jon Stewart for it's total and abject lack of transparency, to the point of trying to use a "jedi mind meld trick" on the assembled reporters regarding the mere existance of the requirements... which were basically "We'll do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, to whomever we want."
Just require all state-sponsored malware to be signed and verified by the a third party. I can see no reason why such a system would fail.
"Unable to launch nuclear missiles; The application was unable to contact the licensing server. If the problem persists, please contact your network administrator. The launch bay doors will now close."
what makes anyone think an attacker will stop at a hospital's firewall?
"Excellent question, Internet! To answer that, I'm going to turn the mic over to Government Man, a man from the government. Take it away, Government Man!"
Well, fellow Netizen, it's basically like this. We're the government. The government controls everything, starting with you. Now we know you get these things called liberties and freedoms and stuff, and we let you hold on to the notion that you have them, because they keep you in line. But make no mistake, we're in charge, not you. And we're not gonna have it be any different on this newfangled interwebtubes thing. So we're going to create a bunch of treaties and laws made using really big letters, and possibly with a bunch of all caps "PROHIBITED ACTIONS, DEFINED." sections as well. And that should scare most of you off doing anything we don't approve of, leaving just a very small number of agitators that we'll ask your neighbors and friends to turn on for a healthy profit. It's worked everywhere else, and I don't see how it could fail here either. But if it does, we'll just have to start detaining, disappearing, and murdering our way through the general population until an appropriate level of fear is instilled in them -- enough to flush out the people we don't like. It's worked well enough for us since about 8000 BC, and we're pretty sure it'll work just fine here as well. Back to you, forum poster!
"Umm, thank you for that enlightening post, Government Man. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be deleting my browser history and then cowering under my desk."
are you intentionally being obtuse or is this really how short sighted you are? Did you even read the summary at all?
+3, Insulting. Nice one, mods. Meanwhile, back in reality... no, I was commenting on the fact that keeping things in sync between many devices could be done with a floppy disk as early as 1982, and that this new "service" is just another attempt at mining your personal data to be resold. My privacy is worth rather more than the convenience of "keeping notes automatically in sync between many devices." And even if I did fall on my head repeatedly and become stupid enough that I'd happily sell my soul for slightly more convenience, I would hope I would retain at least enough intelligence to use encryption.
These people still do not understand the basics of networked systems. Adherence to this proposed list requires several things which are absent on the global telecommunications networks. First, determining who's attacking. In conventional warfare, attributation is easy: They're wearing distinctive uniforms. Computer viruses and malware doesn't have an embedded flag in it to tell you which government sent it, and even if it did, it couldn't be trusted. Second, attacks that are meant to go after one thing can inadvertently hit something else (collateral damage). This is usually geographically-based in the real world... if a hospital happens to be next to a military munitions depot, umm, oops? But online, the hospital could be in another country and yet still be hit by the attack, because its digital signature is similar to the actual target. Either it's on the same network, or has a similar network address, or even a simple one character typo, is all it takes to send a "cyber bomb" (gags) veering off target. And last, but not least... you can have all the countries on Earth sign this and it still leaves out the guns for hire, the mercenaries. The A-Teams of the digital world: Freelancers. They don't have to go by your rules, and if a hospital happens to have a juicy source of personal information that could be turned into cash through extortion, blackmail, or reselling, they may just decide to go for it.
This document underscores just how little our military and political leaders understand about this new theatre of war. They're drafting up treaties without even knowing where the borders are yet.
I don't just use one device, so I want easy, transparent access to my data no matter what I'm using. And some of my devices are quite tiny; I don't want to lose my data when I lose my device, so I'd at least want some kind of automatic remote backup...
If that's all that "the cloud" offers, an encrypted solution so that only you have access to the data would be more user-friendly. But like I said... data mining.
Why is there this rush to put everything in the cloud? Are you telling me that my device can't store a few bytes to kilobytes of textual data on it... that I need to download an online-only app to perform this most basic function? I mean, the IBM 8088AT class computers with giant 5.25 floppy drives had the ability to save text documents... and it didn't have a network connection.
Oh right, I forgot: Data mining. All those juicy keywords. Mmm, delicious monitization of your private data... mmmyes, myes. I think I just had an evilgasm. Okay, nevermind... sorry, was trying to be logical here. Didn't see there was money to be had. Ignore my previous! Carry on!
Oh, but in the grand 'logic' of 'girlintraining', quality content will magically appear on TPB merely because it is popular.
My logic was purely regarding the topic of discussion, which was assessing the actual popularity of a show. I have at no point, anywhere, in any post, entertained the idea of where quality content comes from. If magical space unicorns shit rainbow content out and that's how it appears, well, great. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is ranking of content that is already available in an accurate and unbiased fashion.
Your logic, on the other hand... TROLL.
Good point. I guess one could connect to the tracker and announce that they are seeding/leeching and simply drop all incoming connections. This is highly probable, though the multitude of leechers coming from the same IP / IP range is sure to tip of the tracker maintainers and BitTorrent community quite promptly. The community will likely respond with a patch to count only 1 connection per IP and to disregard counts for inactive downloads/uploads.
Actually, just such a patch has been built into all mainstream bittorrent clients for years. Clients will only accept 1 connection at a time from a given IP address. And if the data provided is incorrect, after a certain number of bad chunks (defined in the client options, but typically around 3-5), it will be banned.
That said, some trolls did try to interfere with the downloading DVD screener copies this past year right around the time the Emmy's were being voted on by registering thousands of fake peers with the trackers, in a sort of DDoS. The reasoning is believed to be that if they could lower the effective download rate or otherwise make it take a long time to download the torrent, people would give up. Unfortunately for them, their cunning plan failed to consider that computers do not "give up"; After a few hours, all of their fake peers had been attempted (and banned by each other participating client), so while the length of time did increase for the torrent, it was not by an appreciable amount -- it doesn't take long to send 68 byte packets to a few thousand, or even ten thousand, unique IP addresses, and you don't need to get more than a handful of non-fakes to get your download up to full speed.
The other, more successful, method was to seed fake torrents with similar names and filesizes to the legitimate ones, thus forcing people to waste large amounts of bandwidth to get rick-rolled (proverbially speaking). The files would be corrupt, have severely distorted video and/or audio, or simply be a "Shame on you" advert repeated over and over. Very shortly after this, all the major torrent sites introduced the notion of "verified" torrents, and allowed anyone to rank a torrent, or otherwise flag it as crap. The practice has since stopped for the same reason spam e-mail usually doesn't make it through: A web of trust is a simple, yet powerful way, to sort the chaffe from the wheat.
So while there are ways to attack the bittorrent protocol, they are expensive and only result in a small loss of time and effort. For this reason, these attacks aren't common anymore, though less-technically minded groups (I'm looking at you, form-letter enforcement companies) perenially make the attempt thinking nobody's ever done it before. :)
There... "popularity" of Jersey Shore on TPB explained.
Last airing of Jersey Shore: December 7, 2012
Last airing of Big Bang: Today.
I think I see a flaw in your cunning assessment. If you look for a single episode of Big Bang uploaded on or before the same date, you get about the same count: 128 seeds, 2 leeches, respectively. When Jersey Shore isn't on its off-season, those numbers will be a lot higher. But I can't fault you for not knowing that torrents of TV shows tend to be most popular when first released, and then quickly drop in both seed and leech count... I mean, it's not something the average person would know.
please note you just freely criticized the us govt, from within the usa, and no one stopped you, no one watch listed you, no one knocked on your door, no one cares understand the difference?
Well first, I'm behind 14 proxies. Good luck, assholes. Second, how do you know I didn't get watch listed? It's not like they're published. And I have gotten knocks on my door for criticizing my government... usually for campaign contributions. I know, ha ha, but more seriously, yes I've been visited by the police for criticism of the government. Oh I'm sorry, did that not fit with your worldview?
in your whiny clueless post you have exercised a luxury many people in this world wish they had. and you don't even fucking notice. what does that say about your level of awareness and knowledge about the world?
I think it says that I'm not above suspecting my own government of engaging in the same activities that every other government does, simply because the popular media tells me it doesn't happen here.
i am certain there are whiny clueless characters like you in china, iran, cuba, etc too
According to you, they don't exist, you know, since they're all in jail.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
I seem to recall a major student uprising in Iran... something about the Spring... oh gee, if I wasn't so clueless and whiny, I might remember the name. Oh gosh darn it.
don't be ignorant and count your blessings
Yes. I'll count my blessings... let's see... gay rights? Don't got those. Non-discrimination in choice of housing? Don't got that either. Free healthcare? Yeah no, that's not on the list either. The right to be free of unreasonable searches? Nope... that one's dead. Uhh... the right not to have the President excercise unilateral authority to bomb me using a drone while I'm in my own house because of an unreleased and unknown secret memo that he drafted giving himself the power? Wait... checking... nope, that one's not there either! Well, damn. Do I at least have the right criticize my government? Actually, no. Something about the ability of the government to secretly declare certain areas "national interest zones" and then arrest anyone who protests there, with no prior notification to the public...
But please, you were saying?
The demographic that gets/views torrents is skewed towards the technologically minded.
Then explain to me the popularity of Jersey Shore on the Pirate Bay.
Contrary to the prevailing slashdot wisdom, this site is not 'the general public'.
I'm sorry, you make me choke on my mountain dew. Slashdot? Wisdom? I think you have this site confused for another. And besides, we weren't talking about slashdot, we were talking about The Pirate Bay, which is the 73rd most visited site on the internet according to Alexia. But please, continue...
The problem with pirate sites is monetization.
Okay, just so we're clear: You're saying a website whose primary purpose is to allow the free distribution of copyrighted materials has a problem with monetization?
Let's suppose that the number of downloads of Game of Thrones from The Pirate Bay is the most accurate assessment of its popularity. Further, let's posit that 90% of the views come from that. Why does it matter to HBO?
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about accurately assessing the popularity of a show, which is what Nielsen ratings are supposed to do. I wasn't aware that this had anything to do with the price of tea in China... or the price of an HBO subscription for that matter.
Someone has to pay actors, writers, directors, etc.
Again, and that has what to do with the price of tea in China? We're looking at methods of assessing the popularity of a show, and the pros and cons of each method. Who writes the paycheck out to those people has exactly dick to do with that.
Until there is a better method of determining paying customers/viewers, there is still some relevance to traditional ratings.
Ah. So you're moving the goal posts. Well, allow me to move them back. Let's say you're in the market for a new car. New car by definition means you're going to be buying from a dealer, or from the manufacturer. So the market for used cars is therefore totally irrelevant, right? Wrong. Even though you're going to a different seller, the laws of supply and demand apply equally to both, and the reasons people buy a used car are similar to the reasons they buy a new car. So if a car has a strong value on the used car market, it's going to have an impact on the price, and popularity, of the new car market as well. Whether the customers are paying or not may matter to the producers of the show, but it has little or no impact on whether or not the viewing public wants to watch the show. And I'm willing to bet that if 10% of Game of Thrones is pirated, then about 10% of NCIS is going to be pirated too, even though they're different shows. And if NCIS is more popular than Game of Thrones amongst the non-paying customers, it's probably going to be more popular amongst the paying customers as well because they're the same demographic.
So yes, the viewership through pirate sites is interesting for help in determining popularity, but not necessarily in determining what gets made.
Whoa there cowboy. Again: China. Tea. Price of. We aren't discussing the criterion for how TV shows get selected for production, we're discussing the pros and cons of a ratings system for shows that are already in production.
I look at the pirate sites to see what's popular on TV. That's a truer reflection of what the general public wants to watch, because the seed and leech count isn't some complex proprietary formula. While fakes do pop up, with companies trying to poison the peer population to discourage downloading, the protocol is self-correcting and it is really just further evidence of its popularity. It represents an intentional and willful effort to watch these shows, not just a casual interest because it feels less lonely than leaving the TV on to blare commercials while you do something else. If you want to know which shows are popular, not just locally, but internationally then torrent sites are really the best measure of a show's actual popularity. And it's not limited to TV either; A movie's true popularity is also reflected in the download count, moreso than an imdb rating.
You can't trust for-profit organizations to give fair an unbiased numbers -- for enough money, they're only too happy to rig the system. There's companies whose sole reason for existance is to push books onto the New York Times' best seller lists. Because sales data and other information is all kept hidden behind a wall of corporate proprietary data, it's possible to rig the system.
The pirates... you can't rig the system. Either it's popular, or it isn't. No games, no bullshit.