Every year Android has existed: 99% of viruses on Android
Don't move the goalposts, are you talking about root exploits or viruses? I'm not talking about viruses, and you weren't either. Apparently, now you are.
Reality totally contradicts the picture you are trying to point. Android far more secure
That's not my point. YOUR point was that "exploits exist pretty much only for Android", and I was refuting that my pointing out exploits for iOS. I said nothing about Android's security. I know about Android's security, I'm not trying to hold it up as a bastion of security like you're doing for iOS, I'm trying to contradict your demonstrably false statements about iOS. Again, stop moving the damn goalposts.
Apple disliking jailbreaking: odd then that jailbreaks come out with great regularity after every new OS or device release
Yeah, it's pretty odd that there are root exploits in every iOS release, all right. I agree with you there. Apple obviously doesn't want that. Again, if you disagree with that, the way to prove me wrong is to point to a published statement from Apple stating the contrary. You can't do that though, because that statement doesn't exist, because Apple does not approve of jailbreaking nor do they insert exploits specifically to support it.
Apple hires jailbreak developers to work on core systems sometimes
"Sometimes"? Enough with the weasel words. Put up or shut up, I want proof not your opinion. A talented developer is a talented developer, if someone working on jailbreaks is talented then I'm sure Apple and several other companies would want to hire them. You seem to be implying that Apple is hiring them to add exploits to iOS, which is just a ridiculously stupid claim. Again, if you disagree, show me proof.
Your hatred is blinding you to reality.
That's rich coming from you, it really is. I don't hate Apple, I hate shills like you.
There have always been local flaws because Apple leaves some local exploits to keep jailbreaking viable.
No, they don't. They patch the exploits that jailbreaks use as soon as they can. If Apple wanted "jailbreaking" to be "viable" then it would be a built-in feature, not a root hack. Of course, a published statement from Apple stating the contrary would go far to further your claim.
Of course, even with said flaws actual exploits exist pretty much only for Android.
Even though I realize that "SuperKendall" is synonymous with "unapologetic Apple fanboy", for some reason I still feel compelled to respond. I guess I'm bored.
Pwn2Own 2010: iPhone 3GS compromised via bypassing code signing; Nexus One not compromised. Pwn2Own 2011: iPhone 4 compromised via malicious web page; Nexus S not compromised.
"pretty much". "pretty much" only for Android. Is it only for Android, or is it "pretty much" only for Android? Because those two aren't the same thing. Care to throw out any more weasel words to make yourself feel secure in your purchase? You obviously don't, or you wouldn't have posted that.
The last time we had a boot-level one was when the iPhone 4 was out.
I don't know what you mean by a "boot-level" exploit, but evasi0n was out in February, several months after the iPhone 5 launched. That particular exploit does modify boot files and gain access to the kernel, if that's what you mean by "boot-level".
At best there is a 1-2 week window when a JB comes out and when Apple does an update, slamming it shut.
The patch that fixed the exploits used by evasi0n was released more than a month after evasi0n went public.
If you're going to shill for Apple, it's probably good to at least stick to facts. But then it wouldn't really be shilling, would it?
Apple was selling 3GSs with iOS 6 less than a year ago, and as far as I know, those little guys won't run 7.
And you're thinking that's a reason why Apple would support the people who aren't paying them money anymore instead of trying to push them to buy the new version?
"Notwithstanding any other provision of this title or section 705 or 706 of the Communications Act of 1934, it shall not be unlawful for an officer, employee, or agent of the United States in the normal course of his official duty to conduct electronic surveillance, as defined in section 101 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as authorized by that Act."
For some reason I'm having a hard time finding the text of section 101 of FISA. Even so, don't you think it's a little bit suspicious for the government to cite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to support the collection of records of Americans not suspected of a crime? A foreign national doesn't enjoy fourth amendment protections, but I'm pretty sure Americans do. Or should, anyway. I don't think you can find anything in FISA which authorizes the NSA to collect and store electronic communications of any American for no reason other than that they are communicating.
Still, I keep seeing people writing comments as if there is a lengthy file on them, or there could be at a moment's notice. I call bullshit on that for most people. Yes, they could look at Facebook and get information on you. So can I.
Can you get my Facebook chat logs, private messages, all of my HTTP traffic, web searches, files I upload or email, VPN traffic, VOIP traffic, Google Earth traffic, my usernames, buddy lists, etc? Because the NSA can, and does. Their training materials show how to query that data. Can you find an encrypted VPN, decrypt the traffic, and determine who is using the VPN? The NSA can. Can you get a list of all IP addresses that visit a website? The NSA can.
I think it is fair to ask, "are they actually using it in the way that we fear", as opposed to simply assuming the worst.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It doesn't matter how they are using it, it matters what they are collecting. It is a violation of my rights, plain and simple, for the government to intercept and store all of my electronic communications when I am not even suspected of committing a crime. That is a violation, how they use that data is not relevant to the question of whether or not it is a violation. You might be willing to hand over your rights whenever the government scares you, but I'm not. You can probably use a little wisdom from Benjamin Franklin also, see my signature line.
If you read the article it states that General Alexander addressed the legal basis.
I did read the article, thanks.
Some people don't want intelligence surveillance to be legal at all, so they ignore the legal basis for doing it and chant about violations of the 4th amendment.
Maybe that's true, for some people. For me, I don't ignore the legal basis. I question it. I question the rubber-stamp court which claims that these are legal, and I question the decisions that court makes and the fact that their decisions, the legal basis for these programs, are classified. I hear the claims that there is a legal basis for these programs that somehow does not violate the 4th amendment, and I read the 4th amendment, and I reject the claim that these programs are legal. I welcome a public discourse with the classified courts on the legal basis for these programs. In fact, I would like this case to go to the Supreme Court, in public, with the full arguments on both sides out in the open for everyone to see and judge for themselves. I want to see the legal basis that they claim exists, and I want the public to judge the merits of it. I also want the public to judge the character and qualifications of the people who authorized these programs in the first place, starting with the Patriot Act.
For upon Secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of the kind, & for want of it, they are generally defeated, however, well planned....
Obviously secrecy is necessary in intelligence-gathering operations. Secrecy has no place, however, in the legal basis and authorization for those operations. I will counter your quote from George Washington with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, which you can find in my signature line. If you want to talk about ignoring wisdom at one's peril, let's start with the idea of trading liberty for security.
For some mind numbingly stupid reason people keep wanting to reveal US intelligence operations to all, citizen or noncitizen alike.
Allow me to reveal the mind-numbingly stupid reason: people don't feel that their government has the right to blanket surveillance of everything they do with their communications when there is no indication that the person is a criminal. If the government is authorizing blanket surveillance of its entire population, warrantless or otherwise, and they say this somehow does not violate the fourth amendment, then it sounds like the government assumes that its entire population is composed of criminals.
Alexander's defense seems to amount to "See? We stopped terrorist plots using these programs!"
That's not really much of a defense, since it doesn't claim that these programs are the ONLY way to stop the terrorist plots in question.
It also completely glosses over the ethical/moral questions that a lot of people have about these programs. I haven't heard a single complaint that the programs should be stopped because they aren't working, the complaints are about the ethical and moral problems associated with total government surveillance of its people, and the question of whether or not our rights are being violated. They like to skip those questions and instead answer the question they wish you asked, which is "are these programs effective".
Haha, you believed that one, did you? Yeah, it was funny when I read it too. Do keep in mind that it was their reply to a FOIA request for their email.
Your language and reference to Pelosi makes me think that you believe this is a partisan issue.
No, that's backwards. Dickheads like Pelosi and John Boner are nothing if not partisan, so when you see those people agreeing on something (along with Obama and Cheney), you know something is wrong. It's not that this is or is not a partisan issue (it's not, it's a people-vs-the-government issue), it's just weird that all of the hyper-partisan politicians are now agreeing with each other. That's a red flag that something seriously wrong is going on (and yeah, it's kind of sad to say that, but it's true).
Translation: not only do you have no privacy, doing what you think will make you hidden will just shine a spotlight on yourself.
It sounds like a fantastic opportunity to troll the NSA. What would it take to automate creating VPN or TOR connections to servers all over the world (it looks like they have a focus in Europe and the Middle East, particularly the area around Israel and UAE) where the clients just connect, exchange some random text including a few choice keywords, and pass around a couple images of goatse and lemonparty (maybe embedded inside an encrypted Word document, for good measure)?
Based on the example queries in the slideshow, you're assuming that things like "show me all spreadsheets sent from Iraq that contain MAC addresses", or "show me all exploitable machines in country X" only include data from people on some list? Wouldn't they have to first get the data in order to find out if it is even relevant to their list? If they already have the data, why not just store it? It may come in useful later, right? Don't worry though, they claim to have captured over 300 terrorists with information from this system. So all of our web searches, HTTP traffic, email addresses, phone numbers, files and documents, VPN traffic, VOIP traffic, Google Earth traffic, cookies, usernames, buddy lists etc are in their databases, but that's ok because they've captured over 300 terrorists.
Go fuck yourself if you're going to defend this program, and scroll up to the top of the comments and read that quote from Bill Hicks.
I got the Evo 4G right when it came out, I think even the day of (June 2010, I think). I switched to Sprint to get it. The salesman I talked to said that Phoenix would be getting 4G service "soon". By the time I dropped Sprint a few months ago to go to T-Mobile and get the HTC One, there still was no 4G service in Phoenix. I'm not talking about LTE either, I'm talking about whatever Sprint thinks is 4G. I would see network speeds around 20-40kbps frequently on the Evo 4G in Phoenix. I just ran a speed test on my HTC One on T-Mobile and it shows 20MB down, 10MB up. That's actually by far the fastest speed I've seen on it, the other 2 tests I have saved are 3MB and 4.6MB down, and under 2MB up (still 2 orders of magnitude better than Sprint's network). Maybe the network got an upgrade. Unfortunately for Sprint, I was done waiting around for them to get their shit together.
At some point, you have to know the user's password.
If you ever need to know what the user's password is, then you ask them for it. You run into that when you implement a different or stronger hashing algorithm. You can't just re-hash everyone's password, because it's already hashed and you don't know what the original was. So you store the version of the hashing algorithm for their current password, and any time they enter their password (on login or other places depending on the application) then after you authenticate them you compare their hash version with the current version, and if it's not the current version then you take their plain-text password that they just entered, hash it with the new algorithm, and update the hash and password version in the database. You can't update everyone's passwords unless the enter them. If you need their password, then you ask them for it.
What if you're an online start-up, with little legal know-how? Are you really going to resist demands from such a high level?
Sort of depends on your ethics and principles, doesn't it? If it's important to you to defend the constitution and your rights, then yeah I hope that you would resist those demands. It's about principles, if the reason you're doing business in the US is to make money, then you probably don't care. If the reason you're doing business in the US is because you like the US and what the founders stand for, then hopefully you'll grow a spine and stand up for your principles, with the knowledge that they might try to make an example out of you.
I'm doing my part. My representative got a load of this from me:
Ms. Sinema, how can you justify allowing the NSA to continue its activities by voting against the Amash amendment? That amendment was the single best hope to send a message to the government that Americans are not willing to trade their freedom for security. If we are going to claim that we are a free society, and if we want the freedoms that people have died for over the past 250 years to make sure we have, then we need to make sacrifices. One of those sacrifices is security. A truly open and free society can never be fully secure by its nature, the two goals are not compatible. Your statement talks about striking a balance, but Benjamin Franklin knew the danger about trying to strike that balance:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Our strength as a free society is not in covert government programs that are hidden from the public, our strength is our freedom. Even if we have to face the fact that we might be vulnerable to attacks from time to time, the single most important thing that we have is our freedom. We do not have a history of trading that for anything. In fact, it is in direct contravention of our history and the intentions of those who came before us to do so. It is unconscionable to seek to trade those freedoms in exchange for the hollow promise that programs which are actively hidden from the public (in our supposedly free and open society), and which also actively and flagrantly violate our rights, would protect us so much that we no longer need to be free. If and when we get attacked, we don't look to the NSA to help us get back up, we depend on each other and we help each other because we all have a stake in our society. That's what freedom does for us, and the NSA's domestic surveillance programs are in direct opposition to that concept. The NSA and the president love to talk about how effective their programs are. No is denying that if you know everything about everyone then you can be effective. The problem is that doing so violates the core principals that are most important to us, and I am not willing to trade those to gain a little temporary safety. At this point I can't imagine that I would vote for you again.
The general public has no need, nor desire to remember which of the Houses and Clans is which
Yeah, I guess you're right. That would explain the complete failure of Game Of Thrones, for example. No one watches that.
It's not like Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones, where virtually everyone in the western hemisphere has either read it, or knows someone who has.
I would guess that more than half of the viewership of Game Of Thrones has not read the book series. I haven't read any of them, and the people who finally got me to watch it didn't even realize it was based on a book series (yes, it says so in the opening credits). I don't even think the writers and producers target the show to fans of the book series. If they were, they would use the original name.
They simply aren't worth the effort for J. Q. Public to immerse themselves in.
I disagree, if there's one thing that Hollywood excels at, it is taking a complex world and culture and distilling it and dumbing it down to the point that it has widespread appeal. People like good writing, you can tell that from the success of several notable TV series. It wouldn't be that difficult to get the good writers together with the people who know Battletech, and get someone to fund it. One major appeal for the studios is the fact that there are plenty of built-in sequels.
Pacific Rim would be decent if it was set in the Battletech universe, employed people with experience at writing stories in that universe, and stayed true to the vehicles and politics. In other words, a completely different movie. A Battletech series would be fantastic if done correctly.
That line apparently leaves out the movie "Turbo", which is an animated movie about a racing snail that I haven't heard of before this. I'm not sure that one counts as a "summer blockbuster".
I was lucky enough to see the one on display at Kennedy. It's pretty impressive to walk through the doors and be met with this. The first stage of that one is part of a test platform, but the second and third stages are from the vehicle that was designated for Apollo 18 or 19.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at the pwn2own website for results from 2012, they only listed browsers. I assumed no mobile devices were included. I looked at this:
http://pwn2own.zerodayinitiative.com/
and this:
http://pwn2own.zerodayinitiative.com/status.html
Every year Android has existed: 99% of viruses on Android
Don't move the goalposts, are you talking about root exploits or viruses? I'm not talking about viruses, and you weren't either. Apparently, now you are.
Reality totally contradicts the picture you are trying to point. Android far more secure
That's not my point. YOUR point was that "exploits exist pretty much only for Android", and I was refuting that my pointing out exploits for iOS. I said nothing about Android's security. I know about Android's security, I'm not trying to hold it up as a bastion of security like you're doing for iOS, I'm trying to contradict your demonstrably false statements about iOS. Again, stop moving the damn goalposts.
Apple disliking jailbreaking: odd then that jailbreaks come out with great regularity after every new OS or device release
Yeah, it's pretty odd that there are root exploits in every iOS release, all right. I agree with you there. Apple obviously doesn't want that. Again, if you disagree with that, the way to prove me wrong is to point to a published statement from Apple stating the contrary. You can't do that though, because that statement doesn't exist, because Apple does not approve of jailbreaking nor do they insert exploits specifically to support it.
Apple hires jailbreak developers to work on core systems sometimes
"Sometimes"? Enough with the weasel words. Put up or shut up, I want proof not your opinion. A talented developer is a talented developer, if someone working on jailbreaks is talented then I'm sure Apple and several other companies would want to hire them. You seem to be implying that Apple is hiring them to add exploits to iOS, which is just a ridiculously stupid claim. Again, if you disagree, show me proof.
Your hatred is blinding you to reality.
That's rich coming from you, it really is. I don't hate Apple, I hate shills like you.
There have always been local flaws because Apple leaves some local exploits to keep jailbreaking viable.
No, they don't. They patch the exploits that jailbreaks use as soon as they can. If Apple wanted "jailbreaking" to be "viable" then it would be a built-in feature, not a root hack. Of course, a published statement from Apple stating the contrary would go far to further your claim.
Of course, even with said flaws actual exploits exist pretty much only for Android.
Even though I realize that "SuperKendall" is synonymous with "unapologetic Apple fanboy", for some reason I still feel compelled to respond. I guess I'm bored.
Pwn2Own 2010: iPhone 3GS compromised via bypassing code signing; Nexus One not compromised.
Pwn2Own 2011: iPhone 4 compromised via malicious web page; Nexus S not compromised.
"pretty much". "pretty much" only for Android. Is it only for Android, or is it "pretty much" only for Android? Because those two aren't the same thing. Care to throw out any more weasel words to make yourself feel secure in your purchase? You obviously don't, or you wouldn't have posted that.
The last time we had a boot-level one was when the iPhone 4 was out.
I don't know what you mean by a "boot-level" exploit, but evasi0n was out in February, several months after the iPhone 5 launched. That particular exploit does modify boot files and gain access to the kernel, if that's what you mean by "boot-level".
At best there is a 1-2 week window when a JB comes out and when Apple does an update, slamming it shut.
The patch that fixed the exploits used by evasi0n was released more than a month after evasi0n went public.
If you're going to shill for Apple, it's probably good to at least stick to facts. But then it wouldn't really be shilling, would it?
Apple was selling 3GSs with iOS 6 less than a year ago, and as far as I know, those little guys won't run 7.
And you're thinking that's a reason why Apple would support the people who aren't paying them money anymore instead of trying to push them to buy the new version?
"Notwithstanding any other provision of this title or section 705 or 706 of the Communications Act of 1934, it shall not be unlawful for an officer, employee, or agent of the United States in the normal course of his official duty to conduct electronic surveillance, as defined in section 101 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as authorized by that Act."
For some reason I'm having a hard time finding the text of section 101 of FISA. Even so, don't you think it's a little bit suspicious for the government to cite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to support the collection of records of Americans not suspected of a crime? A foreign national doesn't enjoy fourth amendment protections, but I'm pretty sure Americans do. Or should, anyway. I don't think you can find anything in FISA which authorizes the NSA to collect and store electronic communications of any American for no reason other than that they are communicating.
Still, I keep seeing people writing comments as if there is a lengthy file on them, or there could be at a moment's notice. I call bullshit on that for most people. Yes, they could look at Facebook and get information on you. So can I.
Can you get my Facebook chat logs, private messages, all of my HTTP traffic, web searches, files I upload or email, VPN traffic, VOIP traffic, Google Earth traffic, my usernames, buddy lists, etc? Because the NSA can, and does. Their training materials show how to query that data. Can you find an encrypted VPN, decrypt the traffic, and determine who is using the VPN? The NSA can. Can you get a list of all IP addresses that visit a website? The NSA can.
I think it is fair to ask, "are they actually using it in the way that we fear", as opposed to simply assuming the worst.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It doesn't matter how they are using it, it matters what they are collecting. It is a violation of my rights, plain and simple, for the government to intercept and store all of my electronic communications when I am not even suspected of committing a crime. That is a violation, how they use that data is not relevant to the question of whether or not it is a violation. You might be willing to hand over your rights whenever the government scares you, but I'm not. You can probably use a little wisdom from Benjamin Franklin also, see my signature line.
If you read the article it states that General Alexander addressed the legal basis.
I did read the article, thanks.
Some people don't want intelligence surveillance to be legal at all, so they ignore the legal basis for doing it and chant about violations of the 4th amendment.
Maybe that's true, for some people. For me, I don't ignore the legal basis. I question it. I question the rubber-stamp court which claims that these are legal, and I question the decisions that court makes and the fact that their decisions, the legal basis for these programs, are classified. I hear the claims that there is a legal basis for these programs that somehow does not violate the 4th amendment, and I read the 4th amendment, and I reject the claim that these programs are legal. I welcome a public discourse with the classified courts on the legal basis for these programs. In fact, I would like this case to go to the Supreme Court, in public, with the full arguments on both sides out in the open for everyone to see and judge for themselves. I want to see the legal basis that they claim exists, and I want the public to judge the merits of it. I also want the public to judge the character and qualifications of the people who authorized these programs in the first place, starting with the Patriot Act.
For upon Secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of the kind, & for want of it, they are generally defeated, however, well planned....
Obviously secrecy is necessary in intelligence-gathering operations. Secrecy has no place, however, in the legal basis and authorization for those operations. I will counter your quote from George Washington with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, which you can find in my signature line. If you want to talk about ignoring wisdom at one's peril, let's start with the idea of trading liberty for security.
For some mind numbingly stupid reason people keep wanting to reveal US intelligence operations to all, citizen or noncitizen alike.
Allow me to reveal the mind-numbingly stupid reason: people don't feel that their government has the right to blanket surveillance of everything they do with their communications when there is no indication that the person is a criminal. If the government is authorizing blanket surveillance of its entire population, warrantless or otherwise, and they say this somehow does not violate the fourth amendment, then it sounds like the government assumes that its entire population is composed of criminals.
Alexander's defense seems to amount to "See? We stopped terrorist plots using these programs!"
That's not really much of a defense, since it doesn't claim that these programs are the ONLY way to stop the terrorist plots in question.
It also completely glosses over the ethical/moral questions that a lot of people have about these programs. I haven't heard a single complaint that the programs should be stopped because they aren't working, the complaints are about the ethical and moral problems associated with total government surveillance of its people, and the question of whether or not our rights are being violated. They like to skip those questions and instead answer the question they wish you asked, which is "are these programs effective".
I thought they couldn't search their own e-mail
Haha, you believed that one, did you? Yeah, it was funny when I read it too. Do keep in mind that it was their reply to a FOIA request for their email.
Your language and reference to Pelosi makes me think that you believe this is a partisan issue.
No, that's backwards. Dickheads like Pelosi and John Boner are nothing if not partisan, so when you see those people agreeing on something (along with Obama and Cheney), you know something is wrong. It's not that this is or is not a partisan issue (it's not, it's a people-vs-the-government issue), it's just weird that all of the hyper-partisan politicians are now agreeing with each other. That's a red flag that something seriously wrong is going on (and yeah, it's kind of sad to say that, but it's true).
Translation: not only do you have no privacy, doing what you think will make you hidden will just shine a spotlight on yourself.
It sounds like a fantastic opportunity to troll the NSA. What would it take to automate creating VPN or TOR connections to servers all over the world (it looks like they have a focus in Europe and the Middle East, particularly the area around Israel and UAE) where the clients just connect, exchange some random text including a few choice keywords, and pass around a couple images of goatse and lemonparty (maybe embedded inside an encrypted Word document, for good measure)?
Based on the example queries in the slideshow, you're assuming that things like "show me all spreadsheets sent from Iraq that contain MAC addresses", or "show me all exploitable machines in country X" only include data from people on some list? Wouldn't they have to first get the data in order to find out if it is even relevant to their list? If they already have the data, why not just store it? It may come in useful later, right? Don't worry though, they claim to have captured over 300 terrorists with information from this system. So all of our web searches, HTTP traffic, email addresses, phone numbers, files and documents, VPN traffic, VOIP traffic, Google Earth traffic, cookies, usernames, buddy lists etc are in their databases, but that's ok because they've captured over 300 terrorists.
Go fuck yourself if you're going to defend this program, and scroll up to the top of the comments and read that quote from Bill Hicks.
I got the Evo 4G right when it came out, I think even the day of (June 2010, I think). I switched to Sprint to get it. The salesman I talked to said that Phoenix would be getting 4G service "soon". By the time I dropped Sprint a few months ago to go to T-Mobile and get the HTC One, there still was no 4G service in Phoenix. I'm not talking about LTE either, I'm talking about whatever Sprint thinks is 4G. I would see network speeds around 20-40kbps frequently on the Evo 4G in Phoenix. I just ran a speed test on my HTC One on T-Mobile and it shows 20MB down, 10MB up. That's actually by far the fastest speed I've seen on it, the other 2 tests I have saved are 3MB and 4.6MB down, and under 2MB up (still 2 orders of magnitude better than Sprint's network). Maybe the network got an upgrade. Unfortunately for Sprint, I was done waiting around for them to get their shit together.
At some point, you have to know the user's password.
If you ever need to know what the user's password is, then you ask them for it. You run into that when you implement a different or stronger hashing algorithm. You can't just re-hash everyone's password, because it's already hashed and you don't know what the original was. So you store the version of the hashing algorithm for their current password, and any time they enter their password (on login or other places depending on the application) then after you authenticate them you compare their hash version with the current version, and if it's not the current version then you take their plain-text password that they just entered, hash it with the new algorithm, and update the hash and password version in the database. You can't update everyone's passwords unless the enter them. If you need their password, then you ask them for it.
What if you're an online start-up, with little legal know-how? Are you really going to resist demands from such a high level?
Sort of depends on your ethics and principles, doesn't it? If it's important to you to defend the constitution and your rights, then yeah I hope that you would resist those demands. It's about principles, if the reason you're doing business in the US is to make money, then you probably don't care. If the reason you're doing business in the US is because you like the US and what the founders stand for, then hopefully you'll grow a spine and stand up for your principles, with the knowledge that they might try to make an example out of you.
his name is Edward Snowden.
In death, members of Project Mayhem have a name.
We need to keep the pressure on
I'm doing my part. My representative got a load of this from me:
Ms. Sinema, how can you justify allowing the NSA to continue its activities by voting against the Amash amendment? That amendment was the single best hope to send a message to the government that Americans are not willing to trade their freedom for security. If we are going to claim that we are a free society, and if we want the freedoms that people have died for over the past 250 years to make sure we have, then we need to make sacrifices. One of those sacrifices is security. A truly open and free society can never be fully secure by its nature, the two goals are not compatible. Your statement talks about striking a balance, but Benjamin Franklin knew the danger about trying to strike that balance:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Our strength as a free society is not in covert government programs that are hidden from the public, our strength is our freedom. Even if we have to face the fact that we might be vulnerable to attacks from time to time, the single most important thing that we have is our freedom. We do not have a history of trading that for anything. In fact, it is in direct contravention of our history and the intentions of those who came before us to do so. It is unconscionable to seek to trade those freedoms in exchange for the hollow promise that programs which are actively hidden from the public (in our supposedly free and open society), and which also actively and flagrantly violate our rights, would protect us so much that we no longer need to be free. If and when we get attacked, we don't look to the NSA to help us get back up, we depend on each other and we help each other because we all have a stake in our society. That's what freedom does for us, and the NSA's domestic surveillance programs are in direct opposition to that concept. The NSA and the president love to talk about how effective their programs are. No is denying that if you know everything about everyone then you can be effective. The problem is that doing so violates the core principals that are most important to us, and I am not willing to trade those to gain a little temporary safety. At this point I can't imagine that I would vote for you again.
The structure in the first mammal was thought to be unique among all mammals, until they found a second mammal with the same structure.
The general public has no need, nor desire to remember which of the Houses and Clans is which
Yeah, I guess you're right. That would explain the complete failure of Game Of Thrones, for example. No one watches that.
It's not like Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones, where virtually everyone in the western hemisphere has either read it, or knows someone who has.
I would guess that more than half of the viewership of Game Of Thrones has not read the book series. I haven't read any of them, and the people who finally got me to watch it didn't even realize it was based on a book series (yes, it says so in the opening credits). I don't even think the writers and producers target the show to fans of the book series. If they were, they would use the original name.
They simply aren't worth the effort for J. Q. Public to immerse themselves in.
I disagree, if there's one thing that Hollywood excels at, it is taking a complex world and culture and distilling it and dumbing it down to the point that it has widespread appeal. People like good writing, you can tell that from the success of several notable TV series. It wouldn't be that difficult to get the good writers together with the people who know Battletech, and get someone to fund it. One major appeal for the studios is the fact that there are plenty of built-in sequels.
Pacific Rim would be decent if it was set in the Battletech universe, employed people with experience at writing stories in that universe, and stayed true to the vehicles and politics. In other words, a completely different movie. A Battletech series would be fantastic if done correctly.
That line apparently leaves out the movie "Turbo", which is an animated movie about a racing snail that I haven't heard of before this. I'm not sure that one counts as a "summer blockbuster".
No, no. More salt water = more desalinization plants = more power plants = more salt water.
More power plants = more greenhouse gases = global warming = higher seas
You know, assuming that all of these power plants output greenhouse gases. If not, someone needs to get on that.
I was lucky enough to see the one on display at Kennedy. It's pretty impressive to walk through the doors and be met with this. The first stage of that one is part of a test platform, but the second and third stages are from the vehicle that was designated for Apollo 18 or 19.