Please give an example of a country that is? And the EU (and a whole bunch of other countries)works hand in hand with the NSA collecting and sharing data. Why do you think the EU politicians stopped their vitriolic accusations in record time? Could it be that their own intelligence agencies pulled them aside and quietly told them they were cooperating with the NSA so shut the hell up? The naivety displayed by the people raging about the NSA in particular and America in general is breath taking. By failing to recognize that there are other very powerful and intrusive state security agencies involved in the mix makes any complaints are meaningless.
The prohibition on hollow point ammunition was declared in 1899. The US JAG office formally repudiated the prohibition and therefore hollow point ammunition is legally used by US military personnel. To even argue this point is silly in the extreme. In war bullets serve one purpose and that is to kill whoever you are shooting at. Getting shot in the head with hollow point ammunition is no different than getting shot in the head with non-hollow point ammunition.
I think reusable orbital entry vehicles, Mars landers, and the half a dozen other probes scattered on missions throughout the solar system might be something to brag about. Granted it's no warp drive or space elevator but show me any other space agency, private or public, domestic or global, that has did anything but but use the past 50 years worth of NASA R&D to accomplish anything worth bragging about.
Humans have been fighting and killing one another ever since there were enough people to pick sides. It most likely began with a cavemen wielding a club and waving a sharp piece of flint to get a nicer cave and better women. The fact we pretty much fight over the same reasons today leads one to wonder whether confrontation, aggression, and violence is built into human DNA. Are we just hardwired for aggression, confrontation, and violence? I suspect that without those built-in traits the human race would have never made it to the top of the food chain. Maybe one day the human race will channel these built-in traits into deep space manned exploration.
It would have been interesting if the drone was detected and they actually tried to shoot it down using the ground to air missile battery installed around the WH. Talk about massive overkill. They are going to end firing the rest of the current Secret Service agents who kept their jobs after the last security breach when someone actually made it into the WH. This drone serves as an excellent proof of concept and the next one might not be so benign.
Storing your stuff in China or Russian jurisdictions only raises you to the top of the governments shit list. On the other hand you can always join the US expat group in Russia. At least until Russia and the US agree to exchange certain individuals that may be resident in their countries. The US and Russia have a long history of making these kind of deals.
Spin my ass. I was there when Netscape had the largest browser marketshare and then gave it all away to became nothing more than a footnote in the history of the Internet browser evolution. It was right around the same time Java was a full fledged cluster fuck but I will leave that sad topic for another day. In the time it took to resurrect Netscape into Firefox and Firefox into Chrome MS had already grabbed 90%+ of the browser market. And Opera was hardly a competitor that could threaten MS dominance in any form or fashion. And as far as standards go when you have a 90% market share you are the standard. Even when you have "standards" the majority of website developers never follow or implement them correctly any way. Demanding some one adhere to standards is the same thing as demanding they stop trying to do new things not covered in the holy standards. And updating the standards is not a process that has ever happened quickly enough to keep up with the evolving web development platform. And re-read my earlier comment when I said MS still had a very healthy share of the INTRANET applications. Intranet applications allow a company or organization to pick their own standards when it comes to building their IT infrastructure. If an Intranet web application works in IE but has issues with Chrome who gives a shit when the company has determined IE as there Intranet standard? And of course the same thing happens in reverse if Chrome has been designated the company standard.
MS still holds a hefty market share for intranet web applications. And targeting multiple browsers, including IE, has become increasingly easier over the years for those who know what they are doing. And MS market share has declined because there are now other choices. It's easy to capture a +90% market share when there are no competitors. .
" many of us have heard " Define "us". Hearsay and fanboi forums are hardly the birth place of factual information. But judging from the rest of your comment you must already have full access to the MS source codebase. You sound almost smart enough to develop your own super secure rendering engine which is capable of maintaining at least a 1 year backwards compatibility window so your users are not forced to upgrade every 2 weeks to maintain a running system. Of course nobody has managed that particular feat quite yet but you sound smart enough to give it a shot.
I found your comment interesting since I work with industrial control systems used in refineries and pipeline operations. I work with the applications that interface with the HMI's, Plc's, and Omni flow control systems. I find the work very interesting and after designing and implementing software for 28 years that is saying something. So far the security aspects of the systems is being handled pretty well with all the network infrastructure buried behind firewalls and using VPN services to handle all the traffic. Could someone compromise the system from outside? I suppose anything is possible but in this case I don't see how that could be done easily. One thing that has struck me is how people talk about using software exploits to shutdown these types of operations when it would be much easier to physically attack the actual pipelines. While there is a security presence there is no way a 1000 mile pipeline can be constantly guarded. The Tank farms, booster stations, and operation facilities are well guarded but blowing up a pipeline would shutdown the operations. It's the same for people who drone on about the NSA or government collecting personal data. It would be much easier for the NSA to recruit insiders in companies like Google, MS, or CISCO. Low paid data center employees would be the place to start recruitment. An insider can keep an eye on things and be ready to help the NSA or any other intelligence service when needed. One good example of needing insiders to exploit a secure control system was the Stuxnet exploit that targeted Iran's centrifuges. The exploit would never have succeeded if the people behind the exploit did not have someone to walk in the Iranian operation center and insert a USB stick containing the exploit into a PC.
Europe became pacifists and saved a lot of money at the same time because they knew the US had their back if they ever faced any serious threats. Without US military support Russia would have already reclaimed all the client states they lost when the USSR disintegrated and the Europeans could do nothing to stop Russia even if they wanted to..
Your comparing Nixon to Stalin? Nixon was ousted from office but other than that he was really not a bad President. He ended US involvement in Vietnam with the Paris Peace Accords, He opened diplomatic relations with China. He initiated a detente with the Soviet Union that led to the SALT treaty. He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and signed into law the Clean Air Act and National Environmental Policy Act. On the other hand Stalin was a certified psychopath that makes Saddam Hussein look like a fluffy pink bunny.
As long as the competing sides do not use guns and bombs to win the argument the democracy can survive. However, history has shown that competing sides never entertain making compromises to end the conflict until after 1000's or even millions have been killed. Every communist, socialist, dictator, democracy, republican, or monarchy was originally put in place by violence or the threat of violence. Ultimately the US the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not suicide pacts. Under certain conditions your rights often take second place in the decision making matrix.
Gates wasn't trying to convert the "water of life" into something safe to drink. He was merely a test taster.Associating his name to a device like this dovetails into the kind of programs his foundation has been funding in Africa and other countries lacking modern day access to clean water and medicines.
Actually the ESA does collaborate on programs with NASA-US. The ESA lacks the funding for their own manned space programs so they partnered up with NASA on the Orion manned mission project. Their biggest contribution to date is the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The recent ISRO Mars orbiter program included US-NASA advanced radar and imaging subsystems. So cooperation between agencies go both ways and it is usually better for this cooperation to stay quietly in the background to avoid getting caught up in the usual political and foreign policy bullshit which is why the US-Russian space cooperation has run into problems. NASA-US also provides the bulk of the orbital tracking capabilities while also coordinating data collected by other countries that are vital to tracking the various probes flying around the solar system.
If NK was to collapse China would end up having to put up with the aftermath. They already have enough uneducated peasants to sweep under their own rug and are not looking for more. Still, NK antics over the years have done nothing but draw more US military capabilities to the region and give Japan a second reason, China provided the first, to take a second look at their constitution in regards to obtaining offensive weapons. The NK threats about launching missiles at the US resulted in the US strengthening and increasing the budgets for their West Coast and Alaskan based anti-missile systems which coincidently covers anything launched out of China. Not to mention the B-2 flyovers for the SK-US annual military exercises which seem to grow in scope every year. China sent a million soldiers running into the NK-SK war back in the fifties to secure a buffer zone. A buffer zone that might have had some utility back then but today a buffer zone is useless against modern missile systems. The same thing could be said about the Russians trying to reclaim their protectorates to keep a buffer between them and the oh so awesome European militaries. The days of battalions of tanks and millions of ground soldiers invading either Russia or China are long gone. Nuclear weapons spiked those threats since their inception.
Give a real life example of someone prosecuted and convicted of a crime using evidence from data collected without a warrant or using a NSL Add FISA warrants into the mix as well. Although I am sure you know that any evidence collected using a FISA warrant is in admissible and can not be used in court against a defendant. Evidence collected under a FISA warrant are used to collect enough evidence to obtain a regular court warrant. And if so was the issue addressed in a court of law to support the defense? After all you seem to think you know the ends and outs of constitutional law surely you can find one case of a person convicted even though his 4th amendment rights were egregiously violated. And can you be a little less hysterical with your "just break your door down, and shoot you -- and your pets." statement because we are talking about the US not Abbottabad. The government or law enforcement agencies can request all the data they want but if they want to use that data to prosecute someone they will have to defend their methods in court. There are literally thousands of cases of evidence being throw out of court because of a lack of warrants or other violations of the evidentiary practices and statutes.
In this context a legitimate law enforcement reason means a warrant would indeed be needed. Companies are increasingly challenging governmental and law enforcement requests for data in several different venues. Including telecommunication data, data stored in data centers, and video surveillance collected from publicly mounted cameras. Even when the FBI attempted to slap a GPS tracker to a suspects car without a warrant resulted in the evidence collected being thrown out of court. There is a system in place that while hardly perfect it does get things right now and then. However you never hear much fanfare when the system works as designed. All you do hear is a lot of complaining about this or that violating someones constitutional rights but no real life case examples of this actually happening to anyone. There have been a total of two attempted prosecutions under provisions in the Patriot Act which resulted in rulings stating the PA provisions in the case violated the accused constitutional rights. There has been no other attempt by the government to use the PA against anyone since.
It's not about security. It's always been about covering the airlines and government asses. People complain about the security procedures but if someone was able to hijack or blowup a plane the very same complainers would be howling about not having enough security to prevent such an attack. Even before 9/11 airline security was adequate and fairly reasonable. The 9/11 hijackers didn't smuggle guns or explosives onto their target planes. They bluffed using box cutters and threats about having a bomb. If someone was to try the same thing today there would be race by the passengers to see who could get the first punch in.
The rest of the world can go pound sand. The rest of the world both collaborates and undermines the US security agencies depending on their own needs. When China,Russia, and all the other countries of the world fold up their foreign espionage programs aimed at US interests and go home the US can do the same thing, But until that magical day arrives it will continue to be tit for tat when it comes to spying on your so called "friends" and "enemies".
The Europeans colonized America they just couldn't hang on to it once the early immigrants got settled and a bunch of rich aristocrats decided they didn't want to pay taxes to a king on the other side of the Atlantic. And yes, the European immigrants during the Civil War period did help the North eventually win the war. And for the those who survived the Civil War I very much doubt that they considered themselves Europeans any more.
That's the thing. The US has NEVER been an utopia that somehow reached it's zenith only to start declining. The country was founded by white wealthy land owners taking advantage of the conflicts between England, France, and Spain that were ongoing before, during, and after the US revolutionary war. The US secured it's territory by using naked force against anyone who got in the way. That included the native Americans, Mexicans, France, and of course England. There has not been one single year since it's founding when it was not engaged in some sort of military action in defense of it's interests somewhere in the world. The late 1800's and early 1900's were dominated by a select few with monopolies that dwarf anything seen in recent times and worker rights were non-existent. The 20's saw the great depression. The 40's were dominated by WW2. The 50's saw the Korean war, nuclear war paranoia, and the cold war. The 60's were dominated by racial upheaval and the Vietnam War. The 70's were consumed with a stagnant economy, declining manufacturing, Iranian hostage crisis, and the OPEC boycott. The 80's ushered in Junk Bonds, unrestrained and largely unregulated Wall Street mechanization's, dire warnings of the Japanese dominance surpassing the US, and the Iranian-contra affair. These are just some of the problems the US has faced in it's history. There has never been some golden age when the US was problem free so talks of decline really have no basis in reality.
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Please give an example of a country that is? And the EU (and a whole bunch of other countries)works hand in hand with the NSA collecting and sharing data. Why do you think the EU politicians stopped their vitriolic accusations in record time? Could it be that their own intelligence agencies pulled them aside and quietly told them they were cooperating with the NSA so shut the hell up? The naivety displayed by the people raging about the NSA in particular and America in general is breath taking. By failing to recognize that there are other very powerful and intrusive state security agencies involved in the mix makes any complaints are meaningless.
The prohibition on hollow point ammunition was declared in 1899. The US JAG office formally repudiated the prohibition and therefore hollow point ammunition is legally used by US military personnel. To even argue this point is silly in the extreme. In war bullets serve one purpose and that is to kill whoever you are shooting at. Getting shot in the head with hollow point ammunition is no different than getting shot in the head with non-hollow point ammunition.
I think reusable orbital entry vehicles, Mars landers, and the half a dozen other probes scattered on missions throughout the solar system might be something to brag about. Granted it's no warp drive or space elevator but show me any other space agency, private or public, domestic or global, that has did anything but but use the past 50 years worth of NASA R&D to accomplish anything worth bragging about.
Humans have been fighting and killing one another ever since there were enough people to pick sides. It most likely began with a cavemen wielding a club and waving a sharp piece of flint to get a nicer cave and better women. The fact we pretty much fight over the same reasons today leads one to wonder whether confrontation, aggression, and violence is built into human DNA. Are we just hardwired for aggression, confrontation, and violence? I suspect that without those built-in traits the human race would have never made it to the top of the food chain. Maybe one day the human race will channel these built-in traits into deep space manned exploration.
It would have been interesting if the drone was detected and they actually tried to shoot it down using the ground to air missile battery installed around the WH. Talk about massive overkill. They are going to end firing the rest of the current Secret Service agents who kept their jobs after the last security breach when someone actually made it into the WH. This drone serves as an excellent proof of concept and the next one might not be so benign.
Storing your stuff in China or Russian jurisdictions only raises you to the top of the governments shit list. On the other hand you can always join the US expat group in Russia. At least until Russia and the US agree to exchange certain individuals that may be resident in their countries. The US and Russia have a long history of making these kind of deals.
Spin my ass. I was there when Netscape had the largest browser marketshare and then gave it all away to became nothing more than a footnote in the history of the Internet browser evolution. It was right around the same time Java was a full fledged cluster fuck but I will leave that sad topic for another day. In the time it took to resurrect Netscape into Firefox and Firefox into Chrome MS had already grabbed 90%+ of the browser market. And Opera was hardly a competitor that could threaten MS dominance in any form or fashion. And as far as standards go when you have a 90% market share you are the standard. Even when you have "standards" the majority of website developers never follow or implement them correctly any way. Demanding some one adhere to standards is the same thing as demanding they stop trying to do new things not covered in the holy standards. And updating the standards is not a process that has ever happened quickly enough to keep up with the evolving web development platform. And re-read my earlier comment when I said MS still had a very healthy share of the INTRANET applications. Intranet applications allow a company or organization to pick their own standards when it comes to building their IT infrastructure. If an Intranet web application works in IE but has issues with Chrome who gives a shit when the company has determined IE as there Intranet standard? And of course the same thing happens in reverse if Chrome has been designated the company standard.
MS still holds a hefty market share for intranet web applications. And targeting multiple browsers, including IE, has become increasingly easier over the years for those who know what they are doing. And MS market share has declined because there are now other choices. It's easy to capture a +90% market share when there are no competitors. .
" many of us have heard " Define "us". Hearsay and fanboi forums are hardly the birth place of factual information. But judging from the rest of your comment you must already have full access to the MS source codebase. You sound almost smart enough to develop your own super secure rendering engine which is capable of maintaining at least a 1 year backwards compatibility window so your users are not forced to upgrade every 2 weeks to maintain a running system. Of course nobody has managed that particular feat quite yet but you sound smart enough to give it a shot.
I found your comment interesting since I work with industrial control systems used in refineries and pipeline operations. I work with the applications that interface with the HMI's, Plc's, and Omni flow control systems. I find the work very interesting and after designing and implementing software for 28 years that is saying something. So far the security aspects of the systems is being handled pretty well with all the network infrastructure buried behind firewalls and using VPN services to handle all the traffic. Could someone compromise the system from outside? I suppose anything is possible but in this case I don't see how that could be done easily. One thing that has struck me is how people talk about using software exploits to shutdown these types of operations when it would be much easier to physically attack the actual pipelines. While there is a security presence there is no way a 1000 mile pipeline can be constantly guarded. The Tank farms, booster stations, and operation facilities are well guarded but blowing up a pipeline would shutdown the operations. It's the same for people who drone on about the NSA or government collecting personal data. It would be much easier for the NSA to recruit insiders in companies like Google, MS, or CISCO. Low paid data center employees would be the place to start recruitment. An insider can keep an eye on things and be ready to help the NSA or any other intelligence service when needed. One good example of needing insiders to exploit a secure control system was the Stuxnet exploit that targeted Iran's centrifuges. The exploit would never have succeeded if the people behind the exploit did not have someone to walk in the Iranian operation center and insert a USB stick containing the exploit into a PC.
I can't remember the name but there was a film released a couple of years ago that was about the assassination of Bush.
Huh? Your response is a shocking example of idiocy in action.
Europe became pacifists and saved a lot of money at the same time because they knew the US had their back if they ever faced any serious threats. Without US military support Russia would have already reclaimed all the client states they lost when the USSR disintegrated and the Europeans could do nothing to stop Russia even if they wanted to..
Your comparing Nixon to Stalin? Nixon was ousted from office but other than that he was really not a bad President. He ended US involvement in Vietnam with the Paris Peace Accords, He opened diplomatic relations with China. He initiated a detente with the Soviet Union that led to the SALT treaty. He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and signed into law the Clean Air Act and National Environmental Policy Act. On the other hand Stalin was a certified psychopath that makes Saddam Hussein look like a fluffy pink bunny.
As long as the competing sides do not use guns and bombs to win the argument the democracy can survive. However, history has shown that competing sides never entertain making compromises to end the conflict until after 1000's or even millions have been killed. Every communist, socialist, dictator, democracy, republican, or monarchy was originally put in place by violence or the threat of violence. Ultimately the US the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not suicide pacts. Under certain conditions your rights often take second place in the decision making matrix.
Gates wasn't trying to convert the "water of life" into something safe to drink. He was merely a test taster.Associating his name to a device like this dovetails into the kind of programs his foundation has been funding in Africa and other countries lacking modern day access to clean water and medicines.
Actually the ESA does collaborate on programs with NASA-US. The ESA lacks the funding for their own manned space programs so they partnered up with NASA on the Orion manned mission project. Their biggest contribution to date is the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The recent ISRO Mars orbiter program included US-NASA advanced radar and imaging subsystems. So cooperation between agencies go both ways and it is usually better for this cooperation to stay quietly in the background to avoid getting caught up in the usual political and foreign policy bullshit which is why the US-Russian space cooperation has run into problems. NASA-US also provides the bulk of the orbital tracking capabilities while also coordinating data collected by other countries that are vital to tracking the various probes flying around the solar system.
I am going to have to go with the lots of Happy pills idea.
If NK was to collapse China would end up having to put up with the aftermath. They already have enough uneducated peasants to sweep under their own rug and are not looking for more. Still, NK antics over the years have done nothing but draw more US military capabilities to the region and give Japan a second reason, China provided the first, to take a second look at their constitution in regards to obtaining offensive weapons. The NK threats about launching missiles at the US resulted in the US strengthening and increasing the budgets for their West Coast and Alaskan based anti-missile systems which coincidently covers anything launched out of China. Not to mention the B-2 flyovers for the SK-US annual military exercises which seem to grow in scope every year. China sent a million soldiers running into the NK-SK war back in the fifties to secure a buffer zone. A buffer zone that might have had some utility back then but today a buffer zone is useless against modern missile systems. The same thing could be said about the Russians trying to reclaim their protectorates to keep a buffer between them and the oh so awesome European militaries. The days of battalions of tanks and millions of ground soldiers invading either Russia or China are long gone. Nuclear weapons spiked those threats since their inception.
Give a real life example of someone prosecuted and convicted of a crime using evidence from data collected without a warrant or using a NSL Add FISA warrants into the mix as well. Although I am sure you know that any evidence collected using a FISA warrant is in admissible and can not be used in court against a defendant. Evidence collected under a FISA warrant are used to collect enough evidence to obtain a regular court warrant. And if so was the issue addressed in a court of law to support the defense? After all you seem to think you know the ends and outs of constitutional law surely you can find one case of a person convicted even though his 4th amendment rights were egregiously violated. And can you be a little less hysterical with your "just break your door down, and shoot you -- and your pets." statement because we are talking about the US not Abbottabad. The government or law enforcement agencies can request all the data they want but if they want to use that data to prosecute someone they will have to defend their methods in court. There are literally thousands of cases of evidence being throw out of court because of a lack of warrants or other violations of the evidentiary practices and statutes.
In this context a legitimate law enforcement reason means a warrant would indeed be needed. Companies are increasingly challenging governmental and law enforcement requests for data in several different venues. Including telecommunication data, data stored in data centers, and video surveillance collected from publicly mounted cameras. Even when the FBI attempted to slap a GPS tracker to a suspects car without a warrant resulted in the evidence collected being thrown out of court. There is a system in place that while hardly perfect it does get things right now and then. However you never hear much fanfare when the system works as designed. All you do hear is a lot of complaining about this or that violating someones constitutional rights but no real life case examples of this actually happening to anyone. There have been a total of two attempted prosecutions under provisions in the Patriot Act which resulted in rulings stating the PA provisions in the case violated the accused constitutional rights. There has been no other attempt by the government to use the PA against anyone since.
It's not about security. It's always been about covering the airlines and government asses. People complain about the security procedures but if someone was able to hijack or blowup a plane the very same complainers would be howling about not having enough security to prevent such an attack. Even before 9/11 airline security was adequate and fairly reasonable. The 9/11 hijackers didn't smuggle guns or explosives onto their target planes. They bluffed using box cutters and threats about having a bomb. If someone was to try the same thing today there would be race by the passengers to see who could get the first punch in.
The rest of the world can go pound sand. The rest of the world both collaborates and undermines the US security agencies depending on their own needs. When China ,Russia, and all the other countries of the world fold up their foreign espionage programs aimed at US interests and go home the US can do the same thing, But until that magical day arrives it will continue to be tit for tat when it comes to spying on your so called "friends" and "enemies".
The Europeans colonized America they just couldn't hang on to it once the early immigrants got settled and a bunch of rich aristocrats decided they didn't want to pay taxes to a king on the other side of the Atlantic. And yes, the European immigrants during the Civil War period did help the North eventually win the war. And for the those who survived the Civil War I very much doubt that they considered themselves Europeans any more.
That's the thing. The US has NEVER been an utopia that somehow reached it's zenith only to start declining. The country was founded by white wealthy land owners taking advantage of the conflicts between England, France, and Spain that were ongoing before, during, and after the US revolutionary war. The US secured it's territory by using naked force against anyone who got in the way. That included the native Americans, Mexicans, France, and of course England. There has not been one single year since it's founding when it was not engaged in some sort of military action in defense of it's interests somewhere in the world. The late 1800's and early 1900's were dominated by a select few with monopolies that dwarf anything seen in recent times and worker rights were non-existent. The 20's saw the great depression. The 40's were dominated by WW2. The 50's saw the Korean war, nuclear war paranoia, and the cold war. The 60's were dominated by racial upheaval and the Vietnam War. The 70's were consumed with a stagnant economy, declining manufacturing, Iranian hostage crisis, and the OPEC boycott. The 80's ushered in Junk Bonds, unrestrained and largely unregulated Wall Street mechanization's, dire warnings of the Japanese dominance surpassing the US, and the Iranian-contra affair. These are just some of the problems the US has faced in it's history. There has never been some golden age when the US was problem free so talks of decline really have no basis in reality.