Spending doesn't win elections, unless I missed President Romney somehow.
Dear Anonymous Coward, do you have a source for that (reliable. Here in Oz we have the Electoral Commission (parties are required to record their electoral spending and get it back on a "how many votes did you get" basis). According to the AEC - electoral spending does relate to votes garnered in an election.
Who wants to be Nate Silver will be able to make sense of the polls?
Still some interesting points, and yes we may reach a point where polls actually have no predictive value. But I doubt we've gone from "100% accurate if you know how to interpret them" to 0% in 4 years;-)
I found the article interesting - though I'm still "digesting" it and have yet to read up supporting material. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to point me at some sources about what the poll results gets used for - and, correct me if I'm wrong in "suspecting" that poll results don't reflect election results (in the USA). TIA.
Do you know why? It isn't that you aren't a talented musician, it is because you don't have one of those "big bad record companies" backed by the RIAA behind you. Those people market the music for you. They MAKE "musicians" successful. They don't even call them musicians now, just "artists".
Slashdotters like to rail against the RIAA and record companies but the fact is that all the music they listen to is because of marketing by those entities, even the "indie" bands they listen to.
Good point! Do you have some information on the advance fees - and the number of "artists" that don't get "priority" promoted? (just some context, it's not much to ask is it?).
Euro-laws. The very reason your economy sucks and you have 20% unemployment.
Good point. That's why so many Europeans work two full time jobs and live in their cars. Lucky for Europe a large percentage of their population is in prison or the economy of so many towns built entirely on the local prisons, would collapse.
Oh wait - that is the USA.
Oh well, lucky for the USA the entire European economy is built on debt... oh, crap - that is the USA too.
While we did have a mandatory life sentence for cannabis cultivation in QLD (don't laugh, it's only 10 years for killing a cop, and one guy got life for being in possession of cannabis seeds that "sprouted" while in the evidence locker) - the law was revoked a while back. Meanwhile in the US there is at least one guy serving 13 years for possession of 2 joints - he's not eligible for parole until he's served 10 years. (here in Oz it's called a "spent conviction" after 5 offense free years - which makes it an offense for someone to point at you and say "criminal").
The major difference is the laws don't vary much between Australian States and Territories. The USA not so much. While we (Oz) do have some strange laws by US standards (yeah, we ban having guns for the sake of having guns - and don't have the same 1:34 justifiable to non-justifiable shootings ratio) - the USA has "fucking insane" laws by comparison - especially some of the southern states. You can be charged with an offense for letting your children walk to school - playing unattended, and extremely fascist laws about soft drugs (in some states).
Except me! I'm unique. Just because I have no actual experience with the NSA, or any spy agency, it's obvious how they'd do things.
Likewise stonemasons - how gullible do they think I am? They might of needed to spend years to gain the basic knowledge and experience needed to do their jobs - but not me! Hit rock with hammer, repeat until done, collect lots of money, go to pub. Easy.
I only have to glance at any given subject to intuitively understand it completely. Except medicine - I had to watch an hour of television to master that. What a waste of time - it only confirmed what I already knew. Doctors know nothing and hide it behind fancy words. Arrogant, clueless bastards. If only they could see how stupid they really are - but they totally lack self-awareness, and I bet they never test their presumptions (at least, I assume so).
And as for those pretentious rocket scientists....
It is either sloppy or intentionally misleading. The headline could have been "Schneier: Chinese and Russian Spies Probably Had Snowden Docs Before Snowden."
...or intentionally misleading. A submission by cold fjord? Satire, and sarcasm. Well done. All that's missing is irony.
Snowden had physical access to the network and still had to social engineer passwords.
Anyone who thinks Snowden is the first and only person who had the access, ability, and inclination to take the data he took is as high as a fucking kite.
Or just stupid.
Snowden is just the only one who went public.
If you had been reading Bruce's posts over the last few months you'd know that there is definitely at least one other NSA leaker. As to other leakage (other than to the media) - that is the main thing that the NSA is scrambling to divert everyone's attention from. The fact that so many companies have been tasked with gathering and processing the material (not just meta-data) that FiveEyes gather - given that it's impossible to stop them using that information to advance their own corporate interests. That and the fact that a NSA core mission is to protect the economic dominance of the USA - not just "from terrorism".
"I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they've penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside."
As a computer security professional I would be most interested in your thoughts on what were these files even doing on these networked computers
As a computer professional I would be most interested in why you claim the title of security professional but can't work out why files that are shared with thousand of people throughout the world would be on a network.
No. When you were told by someone that something happened, it wasn't an anecdote - until I read it. When I tell you I saw something it's not an anecdote. When I tell you someone told me something - it's an anecdote to you.
So you admit you weren't paying attention
Huh? The live television broadcast did not run for "hours". How hard is it for you to pay attention to something written on the same page you're replying to?
So, back then would they have called you "A little fucken smart arse" instead?
By people like you - yes. And not just then. Do you even think about the things you say? Them words have meanings - have you considered that and what they mean? It's a rhetorical question. Undoubtedly you don't like "smart arses" and prefer the company of the opposite - for obvious reasons - given that the opposite of a smart arse is a dumb prick.
When I lost my virginity?
That must of been a slow news day....
Why is it that the only time the two parties agree is when it is to pass some laws to become more intrusive.
Because they're both competing for election funding from the same business interests? According to the AEC the party who spends the most gets the most votes. Because if two parties compete the one that creates the biggest fear of loss gets the most votes (presuming they have the same level of electoral campaign funding). e.g. one party proposes to tax chocolate to fund public dental care and the other campaigns to cut dental care "rorting by bludgers and illegal immigrants" so that Australians can get better quality chocolate - the "you aren't getting the chocolate you deserve" party gets most of the votes. Losses loom larger than gains? The only reason you're not a millionaire is because of lesbians rorting the maternity leave benefits. Vote for the party against lesbians being entitled to paid maternity leave - or, vote for increased tax for higher income earners to fund better public education. Let the voters choose. More on this story tomorrow night. Our next guest will explain how to double your investment returns on the share market. We'll be back after the ads for expensive non-essentials you need to have. Followed by ads for Telstra (formerly the taxpayer funded entity called Telecom - before they changed the name and sold it back to taxpayers). This show is brought to you by the Commonwealth Bank (originally created with taxpayer funds so every Australian had access to a bank account - then sold back to taxpayers, who now stand in ever lengthening queues watching ads for new loan "products" while waiting to see how much their shares have increased as a result of cost saving).
That it is no conspiracy and I agree, Australia needs a bill of rights.
It's a conspiracy if you don't know about it(?). Alan Jones managed to convince many that the Bill of Rights was a conspiracy to rob them of their rights. Agreed we need a Bill of Rights but... look immigrants stealing our high paying jobs, um, illegal immigrants, um, on boats (not planes), um, on fishing boats (not liners). What this country really needs is less pointy-headed academics - they think they're too good to clean toilets and work in factories. The less we waste on public schools the more real workers we'll have to build a strong economy on. (sigh)
Hint for the thick. News publications. By definition that doesn't include sites that publish a rehash of the same "information" that lined the cockie cage last week. Like/.
Irony. Alanis Morrisette is not the only American who doesn't get it.
Flawed logic? Q. How do you determine a biased news service? A. Be a discerning reader/viewer. Q. How do you deal with a biased news service? A. You don't - it just encourages them. Redirect your views to an unbiased news service. (watching Fox and reading the Murdock press only makes them worse).
Outsourcing responsibility is the mother of all stupidity i.e. if you rely on "news" to give an impartial and balanced insight into world events you just might be doing it wrong. Complaining about them is like complaining about Apple - they have plenty of happy customers, they aren't going to change unless the competition starts eating into their revenue.
Officially vetted videos will become the only place most journalists will look,[...]
If "they" use Youtube for "news sources" they're not journalists - so I struggle to follow your logic. Unless you call Fox and the Murdock Press (gang) news.
I live in a capitalist country - we vote with our wallet. I don't view publications that scrape from the internet's - it seems kind of redundant.
Are you sure those are happy pills you've been gobbling?
Does anyone want their div by zero errors to result in anything other than zero?
Yes.
Me too. For payrolls and billing. Payrolls we round the result down and subtract five. For billing we reverse the process. In all other cases the result is nothing.
It is encouraging to see the occasional radical, original, and highly controversial theory end up being validated by the data. Really, who ever would have thought that people consume feel-good videos of cute animals to numb the psychological pain of their actual lives?
But wait, there's more. Watching cat videos produces better code. First you have to sack all the people who spend their day watching cat videos. It's so obvious I don't need to do a double-blind study - or even get a professional to conduct the survey. It was so simple an idiot did the study.
They have? It's official? Yay!! Hey code monkeys and desk bunnies - get me a case of beer and take the rest of the day off. It's party time - tell the clients we're compiling all day.
My bad, I didn't mean anecdotal (posting tired). They were family members who heard those words from the broadcast and have maintained the story with no variation.
When you say "I was told" "some people in my family"/"at least 2 people" it is an anecdote (to us).
Apologies
No skin off my back.
It's a tragic loss
Yes. Maybe the Russians stole it?
I don't know many children can maintain that attention for that many hours.
Huh?! The radio broadcast started before breakfast, but it was a normal school day until just before lunch. The television broadcast (via Parkes) started just before lunch East Coast Time. It didn't run for "hours". No such thing as ADD or dsylexia then.
If you do your maths I have to be somewhere between 53 and 67 (between 5 and 18 at the time, ). Do you not have complete memories of important, much heralded events during that time? It helps that television was very new - we "watched" it then (and wearing onions on our belts was a custom at the time, back in nineteen dicketty doo).
TThey don't drink, smoke or take drugs.
There's the problem! [brains are probably soft as their arteries, mutter, mutter]
You can pursue the truth if you can evaluate it rationally.
... and have all the facts. Otherwise you run a strong risk of finding only facts that support a preconceived rationale.
Which Bill of Rights?
The one we didn't vote for (1988) - thanks to Alan Jones and other conspiracy nutters. As such the only constitutional rights we have is free trade between states - which we do not have.
If you want to pursue conspiracies try looking at what Harold Holt had for breakfast instead of hunting for Chinese submarines, read the transcripts of the Falcon and the Snowman trials, or consider whether a peppercorn of rent is a compliment. And then there's the full story of Maralinga - more than just a few hundred pallets of radioactive material dumped just outside of Sydney Heads. Or just accept that conspiracies are a fact of life - most of which come to naught.
Slashdot Mirror
Spending doesn't win elections, unless I missed President Romney somehow.
Dear Anonymous Coward, do you have a source for that (reliable. Here in Oz we have the Electoral Commission (parties are required to record their electoral spending and get it back on a "how many votes did you get" basis). According to the AEC - electoral spending does relate to votes garnered in an election.
Who wants to be Nate Silver will be able to make sense of the polls?
Still some interesting points, and yes we may reach a point where polls actually have no predictive value. But I doubt we've gone from "100% accurate if you know how to interpret them" to 0% in 4 years ;-)
I found the article interesting - though I'm still "digesting" it and have yet to read up supporting material. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to point me at some sources about what the poll results gets used for - and, correct me if I'm wrong in "suspecting" that poll results don't reflect election results (in the USA). TIA.
"we are talking tiny sums of money made"
Do you know why? It isn't that you aren't a talented musician, it is because you don't have one of those "big bad record companies" backed by the RIAA behind you. Those people market the music for you. They MAKE "musicians" successful. They don't even call them musicians now, just "artists".
Slashdotters like to rail against the RIAA and record companies but the fact is that all the music they listen to is because of marketing by those entities, even the "indie" bands they listen to.
Good point! Do you have some information on the advance fees - and the number of "artists" that don't get "priority" promoted? (just some context, it's not much to ask is it?).
Euro-laws. The very reason your economy sucks and you have 20% unemployment.
Good point. That's why so many Europeans work two full time jobs and live in their cars. Lucky for Europe a large percentage of their population is in prison or the economy of so many towns built entirely on the local prisons, would collapse.
Oh wait - that is the USA.
Oh well, lucky for the USA the entire European economy is built on debt... oh, crap - that is the USA too.
Your statement about "black children are incarcerated like this and put in debt bondage to the state" is rubbish, absolute rubbish." That is nonsense.
Do you have a source to back your claim that Giant Electric Bra is wrong? Because it seems, sadly, you are very much incorrect:-
Next you'll be telling us people don't go to jail for owing the IRS.
I thought the incarceration rate in Australia was 100%.
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
While we did have a mandatory life sentence for cannabis cultivation in QLD (don't laugh, it's only 10 years for killing a cop, and one guy got life for being in possession of cannabis seeds that "sprouted" while in the evidence locker) - the law was revoked a while back. Meanwhile in the US there is at least one guy serving 13 years for possession of 2 joints - he's not eligible for parole until he's served 10 years. (here in Oz it's called a "spent conviction" after 5 offense free years - which makes it an offense for someone to point at you and say "criminal").
The major difference is the laws don't vary much between Australian States and Territories. The USA not so much. While we (Oz) do have some strange laws by US standards (yeah, we ban having guns for the sake of having guns - and don't have the same 1:34 justifiable to non-justifiable shootings ratio) - the USA has "fucking insane" laws by comparison - especially some of the southern states. You can be charged with an offense for letting your children walk to school - playing unattended, and extremely fascist laws about soft drugs (in some states).
As most people that are stupid [...]
Except me! I'm unique.
Just because I have no actual experience with the NSA, or any spy agency, it's obvious how they'd do things.
Likewise stonemasons - how gullible do they think I am? They might of needed to spend years to gain the basic knowledge and experience needed to do their jobs - but not me! Hit rock with hammer, repeat until done, collect lots of money, go to pub. Easy.
I only have to glance at any given subject to intuitively understand it completely. Except medicine - I had to watch an hour of television to master that. What a waste of time - it only confirmed what I already knew. Doctors know nothing and hide it behind fancy words. Arrogant, clueless bastards. If only they could see how stupid they really are - but they totally lack self-awareness, and I bet they never test their presumptions (at least, I assume so).
And as for those pretentious rocket scientists....
Indeed
Bullshit repeated is no less bullshit. Did you think we'd miss that or are you now claiming it's accurate and the complete truth?
It is either sloppy or intentionally misleading. The headline could have been "Schneier: Chinese and Russian Spies Probably Had Snowden Docs Before Snowden."
Snowden had physical access to the network and still had to social engineer passwords.
Anyone who thinks Snowden is the first and only person who had the access, ability, and inclination to take the data he took is as high as a fucking kite.
Or just stupid.
Snowden is just the only one who went public.
If you had been reading Bruce's posts over the last few months you'd know that there is definitely at least one other NSA leaker. As to other leakage (other than to the media) - that is the main thing that the NSA is scrambling to divert everyone's attention from. The fact that so many companies have been tasked with gathering and processing the material (not just meta-data) that FiveEyes gather - given that it's impossible to stop them using that information to advance their own corporate interests. That and the fact that a NSA core mission is to protect the economic dominance of the USA - not just "from terrorism".
"I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they've penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside."
As a computer security professional I would be most interested in your thoughts on what were these files even doing on these networked computers
As a computer professional I would be most interested in why you claim the title of security professional but can't work out why files that are shared with thousand of people throughout the world would be on a network.
Kind of like your story is to me.
No. When you were told by someone that something happened, it wasn't an anecdote - until I read it. When I tell you I saw something it's not an anecdote. When I tell you someone told me something - it's an anecdote to you.
So you admit you weren't paying attention
Huh? The live television broadcast did not run for "hours". How hard is it for you to pay attention to something written on the same page you're replying to?
So, back then would they have called you "A little fucken smart arse" instead?
By people like you - yes. And not just then.
Do you even think about the things you say? Them words have meanings - have you considered that and what they mean? It's a rhetorical question.
Undoubtedly you don't like "smart arses" and prefer the company of the opposite - for obvious reasons - given that the opposite of a smart arse is a dumb prick.
When I lost my virginity?
That must of been a slow news day....
Why is it that the only time the two parties agree is when it is to pass some laws to become more intrusive.
Because they're both competing for election funding from the same business interests? According to the AEC the party who spends the most gets the most votes.
Because if two parties compete the one that creates the biggest fear of loss gets the most votes (presuming they have the same level of electoral campaign funding). e.g. one party proposes to tax chocolate to fund public dental care and the other campaigns to cut dental care "rorting by bludgers and illegal immigrants" so that Australians can get better quality chocolate - the "you aren't getting the chocolate you deserve" party gets most of the votes.
Losses loom larger than gains?
The only reason you're not a millionaire is because of lesbians rorting the maternity leave benefits. Vote for the party against lesbians being entitled to paid maternity leave - or, vote for increased tax for higher income earners to fund better public education. Let the voters choose. More on this story tomorrow night. Our next guest will explain how to double your investment returns on the share market. We'll be back after the ads for expensive non-essentials you need to have. Followed by ads for Telstra (formerly the taxpayer funded entity called Telecom - before they changed the name and sold it back to taxpayers). This show is brought to you by the Commonwealth Bank (originally created with taxpayer funds so every Australian had access to a bank account - then sold back to taxpayers, who now stand in ever lengthening queues watching ads for new loan "products" while waiting to see how much their shares have increased as a result of cost saving).
That it is no conspiracy and I agree, Australia needs a bill of rights.
It's a conspiracy if you don't know about it(?). Alan Jones managed to convince many that the Bill of Rights was a conspiracy to rob them of their rights. Agreed we need a Bill of Rights but... look immigrants stealing our high paying jobs, um, illegal immigrants, um, on boats (not planes), um, on fishing boats (not liners). What this country really needs is less pointy-headed academics - they think they're too good to clean toilets and work in factories. The less we waste on public schools the more real workers we'll have to build a strong economy on. (sigh)
Oooh ... There's no such thing, at least while humans are still involved.[...]
True. In fact I enjoy a little bias - in favor of facts. "News" publications like the Murdock Press aren't biased in favor of facts.
[stupid reply]
Now there's a surprise.
Hint for the thick. News publications. By definition that doesn't include sites that publish a rehash of the same "information" that lined the cockie cage last week. Like /.
Irony. Alanis Morrisette is not the only American who doesn't get it.
[stupid reply]
Now there's a surprise.
How does this service deal with bias?
Flawed logic?
Q. How do you determine a biased news service? A. Be a discerning reader/viewer.
Q. How do you deal with a biased news service? A. You don't - it just encourages them. Redirect your views to an unbiased news service. (watching Fox and reading the Murdock press only makes them worse).
Outsourcing responsibility is the mother of all stupidity i.e. if you rely on "news" to give an impartial and balanced insight into world events you just might be doing it wrong. Complaining about them is like complaining about Apple - they have plenty of happy customers, they aren't going to change unless the competition starts eating into their revenue.
Officially vetted videos will become the only place most journalists will look,[...]
If "they" use Youtube for "news sources" they're not journalists - so I struggle to follow your logic. Unless you call Fox and the Murdock Press (gang) news.
I live in a capitalist country - we vote with our wallet. I don't view publications that scrape from the internet's - it seems kind of redundant.
Are you sure those are happy pills you've been gobbling?
Because the world can never have enough calculator utilities. But mostly because .Net is the perfect zombie code.
Does anyone want their div by zero errors to result in anything other than zero?
Yes.
Me too. For payrolls and billing. Payrolls we round the result down and subtract five. For billing we reverse the process. In all other cases the result is nothing.
It is encouraging to see the occasional radical, original, and highly controversial theory end up being validated by the data. Really, who ever would have thought that people consume feel-good videos of cute animals to numb the psychological pain of their actual lives?
But wait, there's more. Watching cat videos produces better code. First you have to sack all the people who spend their day watching cat videos. It's so obvious I don't need to do a double-blind study - or even get a professional to conduct the survey. It was so simple an idiot did the study.
It's not like you can catch toxoplasmosis from watching videos. Unless you forget to wash your hands.
Slashdot - the new home of bad science. Oh, and chocolate is good for you. I read it on NineMSN, so it must be true (apologies to Jack Nicholson).
"Skeletons can't teach, nor do they emerge from rooms."
Ah but with 'AGI' / 'ASI' machine / human super-intelligence they can.
"SAI manual 26 Hyper Field Manipulations, Part 3 - Reversing Entropy and Raising the Dead." and no its not magic its just very advanced science..
My mistake.
Must. Disengange. Brain. Before. Posting.
I'll stop now.
I've stopped.
Now that we've finally ditched Java and Flash?
They have? It's official? Yay!! Hey code monkeys and desk bunnies - get me a case of beer and take the rest of the day off. It's party time - tell the clients we're compiling all day.
My bad, I didn't mean anecdotal (posting tired). They were family members who heard those words from the broadcast and have maintained the story with no variation.
When you say "I was told" "some people in my family"/"at least 2 people" it is an anecdote (to us).
Apologies
No skin off my back.
It's a tragic loss
Yes. Maybe the Russians stole it?
I don't know many children can maintain that attention for that many hours.
Huh?! The radio broadcast started before breakfast, but it was a normal school day until just before lunch. The television broadcast (via Parkes) started just before lunch East Coast Time. It didn't run for "hours".
No such thing as ADD or dsylexia then.
If you do your maths I have to be somewhere between 53 and 67 (between 5 and 18 at the time, ). Do you not have complete memories of important, much heralded events during that time? It helps that television was very new - we "watched" it then (and wearing onions on our belts was a custom at the time, back in nineteen dicketty doo).
TThey don't drink, smoke or take drugs.
There's the problem! [brains are probably soft as their arteries, mutter, mutter]
You can pursue the truth if you can evaluate it rationally.
... and have all the facts. Otherwise you run a strong risk of finding only facts that support a preconceived rationale.
Which Bill of Rights?
The one we didn't vote for (1988) - thanks to Alan Jones and other conspiracy nutters. As such the only constitutional rights we have is free trade between states - which we do not have.
If you want to pursue conspiracies try looking at what Harold Holt had for breakfast instead of hunting for Chinese submarines, read the transcripts of the Falcon and the Snowman trials, or consider whether a peppercorn of rent is a compliment. And then there's the full story of Maralinga - more than just a few hundred pallets of radioactive material dumped just outside of Sydney Heads. Or just accept that conspiracies are a fact of life - most of which come to naught.