Why do you assume the American public is not capable of locating other media outlets across the world? Do you think you are some how smarter then everyone else? It's becoming harder everyday to get to the truth about anything. Media outlets with prejudicial and biased editorial lines publish nothing more than opinions which are usually derived from information taken out of context and purposely omitting any facts that would contradict the publishers predetermined stance. It's become a competition between those supporting opposite ends of any controversial issues and winning the argument is put ahead any facts that might force someone to re-examine their arguments.
"People expect Linux to look like Windows." No, people expect the applications they use on a daily basis to continue working. In the end that is the only thing that matters.
The only thing you should push lawmakers towards is a high cliff so they take a flying leap and protect the country from their idiocy and malfeasance. And there are plenty ways to disable a microphone and a little piece of black tape takes care of the camera problem. If you need the government or a corporation to protect your privacy then you really don't deserve any.
I don't think the problem is about corporations providing requested information to law enforcement. The problem is more about making sure there is a valid warrant before handing over the requested data. Court provided warrants have been a crucial and well litigated part of US law enforcement and are used to provide a level of protection that satisfies the requirements under the 4th Amendment. It's never been a perfect system but it is what it is.However the FISA warrants introduce a gigantic loophole into the entire process. People are just supposed to "trust" the government which is an absurd notion in the extreme. FISA warrants are basically requests for information that can be used to obtain a regular court approved search warrant. Any information collected using a FISA warrant can be presented to the court when trying to obtain a normal warrant but none of the information collected under a FISA warrant can be used in court against a defendant.
And what exactly would you expect the government to do about the Russians annexation of Crimea even if they knew in advance? What exactly did you expect the government to do about all the turmoil in the middle east caused by the Arab Spring? As long as the government can spot an incoming flotilla of troop ships from China or missile launches coming over the north pole why should the US do anything except let the various calamities resolve themselves one way or another? The US gets hammered for doing anything and gets hammered even harder when it doesn't act so why bother doing anything?
It's ironic that the H-bomb has indeed stopped war on the scale of WW2 since it's development but today the advances in missile defense could very well do the opposite. Any country sitting on a nuclear stockpile of missiles would lose their ultimate defense if the missiles are rendered useless against a robust missile defense system. The defense systems are only going to get better and it won't be long before orbital defense platforms get added to the mix regardless of any treaty about weaponizing space.
There are already pressure meters, flow rate monitors, gravity meters, automatic shutdown valves. Every origination station, booster station, tank farm, delivery station, and pumping station monitors their assigned segments while simultaneously passing all the monitoring data back to a centralized pipeline control center. However these precautions cannot stop at least some product from being released into the environment if the actual pipeline is ruptured.
The NK government stays in power because of the severe isolation that it keeps it's citizens in. 65 years of non-stop government repression coupled with brutal penal laws for any dissent has produced a docile, compliant, and non-questioning public that literally knows nothing about the outside world and how there lives measure up when compared to others around the world. There will never be any citizen led protests against the NK government.
Outside of a full military invasion there is not much China can do about NK. The NK hissy fits and temper tantrums hurt China more than they do the US. Do you think China wanted to see the US and it's Asian allies beefing up their missile defense systems? That's exactly what they got when NK was spouting all the BS about launching nuclear attacks against the US and anyone else who happened to be in range.
Actually it gives Cuban citizens a non-governmental channel they can use to communicate with one another. Such communication doesn't necessarily need to be political in nature. Twitter was born out of the efforts to provide Iranians with a way to communicate that could bypass the government controls.
Memory and CPU power are there to be used so why not take advantage of it. And what the hell is a hand coded app? Or are you referring to programming against a runtime versus programming directly against the OS? And what does eschewing OO approaches mean? Are you talking about an application that encapsulates all it's functionalities without referencing any external resources or dependencies?
I see absolutely no propaganda in my earlier statement. Are you actually saying only the US operates foreign intelligence programs to push for desired outcomes that could benefit its own interests? As far as a US Ministry of Truth goes the US is the only major power that places national firewalls or internet filters to restrict access to any information. People that speak of Ministries of Truth are just upset that their pet opinions might not be as popular as they would like them to be. Anyone expressing a differing opinion is automatically stupid, lying, or a state agent looking to suppress the truth.
Wasn't there a recent private company looking for people to sign up for a one way trip to Mars?They got a couple hundred thousand applications. NASA could just chip in some money for access to study the health data on those going to help research ways into making it safer.
The US does not act in a vacuum. It is not the only country with aggressive intelligence agencies looking to collect information from every one they can. And the preposterous claims that the US should not spy on it's "friends" is hilarious in the extreme. Countries don't have "friends" they only have interests which are constantly in flux. Outside of some initial indignant statements for public consumption concerning the NSA foreign intelligence programs the issue has been gradually pushed to the background because hypocrisy does have it's limits. When the Russian FSB, China's MSS, England's GCHQ, Brazil's ABIN, France's DCRI, Germany's BND, and all the other international agencies close up shop then the NSA and CIA can be disbanded.
And who exactly was threatening their shipping traffic? Even the most idiotic countries understand that attempting to interfere with international shipping traffic gives any maritime power all the authority it needs to correct the situation. Even supposedly allied countries frown upon any disruptions of the established shipping lanes as the US proved when it refused to support England, France, and Israel from taking control of the Suez canal from Egypt in 1956. The Egyptians and surrounding Arab countries paid a steep price when they tried to deny Israel the use of the Suez canal in 1967. Just a few poor fishermen hijacking shipping off the coast of Africa resulted in a multi-nation modern task force being formed to secure shipping through the area. If Iran was to ever attempt to follow through with their threats to close the Strait of Hormuz they would give the US, SA, Israel, and possibly China all the justification they need to correct the problem.
And now the Russians are burdened with propping up Syria and tying up resources in the Ukraine for little or no gain while scaring the European countries into breathing life back into NATO. Not to mention they have kicked off a mad dash for Europe to come up with alternative natural gas sources because they don't want to be at the Russians mercy. That will hit the Russians where it really counts. It seems the Russians are no better than the US when it comes to entering into pointless and ultimately unproductive foreign policies.
It doesn't matter whether it was a Civil or Military expenditure, what matters is that the project was funded. There is also a manned version of this vehicle in the works. If you need billions to pursue technology research you are more likely to get your funding if your project can pitched as having any military related applications.
There buggy software might have something to do with the rapid evolution of the processors and memory architectures during this era. In the beginning good enough replaced perfection when it came to releasing new software. By the time something was perfect you risked the chance that your targeted architecture was deemed obsolete. During this time you also had rapid increases in the number of peripherals such as network cards, video cards, printers, and input devices. This all happened when there were no industry standards and companies were building proprietary hardware and software solutions. It's amazing things worked at all.
All of the countries who don't like the US (as if it were a popularity contest) still invest their reserves in the US. The oil producing countries are well aware that US dependency on their oil is rapidly disappearing and their leverage over the US has also disappeared. One more thing, an 18% drop in exports is enough to rollback every economic advancement China has made over the last 20 years.
You would think both sides in the government would welcome a return trip to the moon because it would boost the sense of national pride and show that the government has not given up trying to show the US is still capable of doing things others would not dare try. The first moon mission created a sense of national pride that overcame the problems the US was dealing with at the time. The Vietnam and Cold War were temporarily moved to the background when the country became mesmerized by the spectacle of going to the moon. Even the costs are manageable if the project is funded as a military project. Even the companies that supply all the high tech systems and armaments can leverage their knowledge to create the technologies needed for a manned mission. The companies who benefit from military arms sales would have another revenue stream that is not so controversial.
Exactly why would the government need leverage over me? That assumes the government wants force me to do something against my will but I cannot think of a single thing that would make this happen. My purchasing and travel habits get logged every time I use a credit or debit card. Just like all my phone calls get logged so the phone company can bill me. My cars are registered with the state and county along with my insurance details. Property that I own is registered in county records for tax assessments and if I was married my marriage license would be logged. My freaking dogs have county rabies inoculation licenses stored in the county database. These are all ordinary pieces of information that have been collected and stored way before the computer age. It just took longer to obtain process this type of information without computers. I think people are having a hard time understanding the difference between privacy and anonymity. All of the domestic data supposedly collected by the NSA was already being captured and stored by others. The question is whether it is legal for the phone companies or web sites to hand over call logs and other information without first obtaining a warrant. Google and other mainstream sites capture every click you make and packages up the results to sell to 3rd parties to generate revenue while also utilizing your browsing habits to "customize" the ads you see on your screen.
Well I don't know about everyone else but the state already has my picture and address on my drivers license. Add the information on my tax returns and the state really doesn't need to do anything else if they want to find me. Both of these sources of information were available well before the Internet ever existed.
Stuxnet got through thanks to the inside state supported intelligence operative with physical access to the Iranian centrifuge control system who inserted a USB stick to kick things off. Stuxnet was successful exploiting the OS but the creators also stole 2 signed certificates from 2 different Japanese companies that happened to be located in the same office park. Without these certificates they would have had a harder time exploiting the OS. It looks to me that when Stuxnet eventually propagated across the internet it was more of a test for the designers to see how the exploit delivery mechanism behaved in the wild while also re-directing attention from the fact that there was a mole inside the Iranian nuclear program. The version that appeared on the internet did not contain the same payload that wreaked mayhem on the Iranian centrifuges.
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Why do you assume the American public is not capable of locating other media outlets across the world? Do you think you are some how smarter then everyone else? It's becoming harder everyday to get to the truth about anything. Media outlets with prejudicial and biased editorial lines publish nothing more than opinions which are usually derived from information taken out of context and purposely omitting any facts that would contradict the publishers predetermined stance. It's become a competition between those supporting opposite ends of any controversial issues and winning the argument is put ahead any facts that might force someone to re-examine their arguments.
"People expect Linux to look like Windows."
No, people expect the applications they use on a daily basis to continue working. In the end that is the only thing that matters.
The only thing you should push lawmakers towards is a high cliff so they take a flying leap and protect the country from their idiocy and malfeasance. And there are plenty ways to disable a microphone and a little piece of black tape takes care of the camera problem. If you need the government or a corporation to protect your privacy then you really don't deserve any.
I don't think the problem is about corporations providing requested information to law enforcement. The problem is more about making sure there is a valid warrant before handing over the requested data. Court provided warrants have been a crucial and well litigated part of US law enforcement and are used to provide a level of protection that satisfies the requirements under the 4th Amendment. It's never been a perfect system but it is what it is.However the FISA warrants introduce a gigantic loophole into the entire process. People are just supposed to "trust" the government which is an absurd notion in the extreme. FISA warrants are basically requests for information that can be used to obtain a regular court approved search warrant. Any information collected using a FISA warrant can be presented to the court when trying to obtain a normal warrant but none of the information collected under a FISA warrant can be used in court against a defendant.
And what exactly would you expect the government to do about the Russians annexation of Crimea even if they knew in advance? What exactly did you expect the government to do about all the turmoil in the middle east caused by the Arab Spring? As long as the government can spot an incoming flotilla of troop ships from China or missile launches coming over the north pole why should the US do anything except let the various calamities resolve themselves one way or another? The US gets hammered for doing anything and gets hammered even harder when it doesn't act so why bother doing anything?
It's ironic that the H-bomb has indeed stopped war on the scale of WW2 since it's development but today the advances in missile defense could very well do the opposite. Any country sitting on a nuclear stockpile of missiles would lose their ultimate defense if the missiles are rendered useless against a robust missile defense system. The defense systems are only going to get better and it won't be long before orbital defense platforms get added to the mix regardless of any treaty about weaponizing space.
There are already pressure meters, flow rate monitors, gravity meters, automatic shutdown valves. Every origination station, booster station, tank farm, delivery station, and pumping station monitors their assigned segments while simultaneously passing all the monitoring data back to a centralized pipeline control center. However these precautions cannot stop at least some product from being released into the environment if the actual pipeline is ruptured.
The NK government stays in power because of the severe isolation that it keeps it's citizens in. 65 years of non-stop government repression coupled with brutal penal laws for any dissent has produced a docile, compliant, and non-questioning public that literally knows nothing about the outside world and how there lives measure up when compared to others around the world. There will never be any citizen led protests against the NK government.
Outside of a full military invasion there is not much China can do about NK. The NK hissy fits and temper tantrums hurt China more than they do the US. Do you think China wanted to see the US and it's Asian allies beefing up their missile defense systems? That's exactly what they got when NK was spouting all the BS about launching nuclear attacks against the US and anyone else who happened to be in range.
Actually it gives Cuban citizens a non-governmental channel they can use to communicate with one another. Such communication doesn't necessarily need to be political in nature. Twitter was born out of the efforts to provide Iranians with a way to communicate that could bypass the government controls.
Memory and CPU power are there to be used so why not take advantage of it. And what the hell is a hand coded app? Or are you referring to programming against a runtime versus programming directly against the OS? And what does eschewing OO approaches mean? Are you talking about an application that encapsulates all it's functionalities without referencing any external resources or dependencies?
I see absolutely no propaganda in my earlier statement. Are you actually saying only the US operates foreign intelligence programs to push for desired outcomes that could benefit its own interests? As far as a US Ministry of Truth goes the US is the only major power that places national firewalls or internet filters to restrict access to any information. People that speak of Ministries of Truth are just upset that their pet opinions might not be as popular as they would like them to be. Anyone expressing a differing opinion is automatically stupid, lying, or a state agent looking to suppress the truth.
Wasn't there a recent private company looking for people to sign up for a one way trip to Mars?They got a couple hundred thousand applications. NASA could just chip in some money for access to study the health data on those going to help research ways into making it safer.
Russia is not the only country capable of this type of action. After all how much precision is really necessary when you are dealing with nukes?
The US does not act in a vacuum. It is not the only country with aggressive intelligence agencies looking to collect information from every one they can. And the preposterous claims that the US should not spy on it's "friends" is hilarious in the extreme. Countries don't have "friends" they only have interests which are constantly in flux. Outside of some initial indignant statements for public consumption concerning the NSA foreign intelligence programs the issue has been gradually pushed to the background because hypocrisy does have it's limits. When the Russian FSB, China's MSS,
England's GCHQ, Brazil's ABIN, France's DCRI, Germany's BND, and all the other international agencies close up shop then the NSA and CIA can be disbanded.
And who exactly was threatening their shipping traffic? Even the most idiotic countries understand that attempting to interfere with international shipping traffic gives any maritime power all the authority it needs to correct the situation. Even supposedly allied countries frown upon any disruptions of the established shipping lanes as the US proved when it refused to support England, France, and Israel from taking control of the Suez canal from Egypt in 1956. The Egyptians and surrounding Arab countries paid a steep price when they tried to deny Israel the use of the Suez canal in 1967. Just a few poor fishermen hijacking shipping off the coast of Africa resulted in a multi-nation modern task force being formed to secure shipping through the area. If Iran was to ever attempt to follow through with their threats to close the Strait of Hormuz they would give the US, SA, Israel, and possibly China all the justification they need to correct the problem.
And now the Russians are burdened with propping up Syria and tying up resources in the Ukraine for little or no gain while scaring the European countries into breathing life back into NATO. Not to mention they have kicked off a mad dash for Europe to come up with alternative natural gas sources because they don't want to be at the Russians mercy. That will hit the Russians where it really counts. It seems the Russians are no better than the US when it comes to entering into pointless and ultimately unproductive foreign policies.
As long as gay couples are mandated to use the exact same divorce laws why not let them join in the fun known as marital bliss?
It doesn't matter whether it was a Civil or Military expenditure, what matters is that the project was funded. There is also a manned version of this vehicle in the works. If you need billions to pursue technology research you are more likely to get your funding if your project can pitched as having any military related applications.
There buggy software might have something to do with the rapid evolution of the processors and memory architectures during this era. In the beginning good enough replaced perfection when it came to releasing new software. By the time something was perfect you risked the chance that your targeted architecture was deemed obsolete. During this time you also had rapid increases in the number of peripherals such as network cards, video cards, printers, and input devices. This all happened when there were no industry standards and companies were building proprietary hardware and software solutions. It's amazing things worked at all.
All of the countries who don't like the US (as if it were a popularity contest) still invest their reserves in the US. The oil producing countries are well aware that US dependency on their oil is rapidly disappearing and their leverage over the US has also disappeared. One more thing, an 18% drop in exports is enough to rollback every economic advancement China has made over the last 20 years.
You would think both sides in the government would welcome a return trip to the moon because it would boost the sense of national pride and show that the government has not given up trying to show the US is still capable of doing things others would not dare try. The first moon mission created a sense of national pride that overcame the problems the US was dealing with at the time. The Vietnam and Cold War were temporarily moved to the background when the country became mesmerized by the spectacle of going to the moon. Even the costs are manageable if the project is funded as a military project. Even the companies that supply all the high tech systems and armaments can leverage their knowledge to create the technologies needed for a manned mission. The companies who benefit from military arms sales would have another revenue stream that is not so controversial.
Exactly why would the government need leverage over me? That assumes the government wants force me to do something against my will but I cannot think of a single thing that would make this happen. My purchasing and travel habits get logged every time I use a credit or debit card. Just like all my phone calls get logged so the phone company can bill me. My cars are registered with the state and county along with my insurance details. Property that I own is registered in county records for tax assessments and if I was married my marriage license would be logged. My freaking dogs have county rabies inoculation licenses stored in the county database. These are all ordinary pieces of information that have been collected and stored way before the computer age. It just took longer to obtain process this type of information without computers. I think people are having a hard time understanding the difference between privacy and anonymity. All of the domestic data supposedly collected by the NSA was already being captured and stored by others. The question is whether it is legal for the phone companies or web sites to hand over call logs and other information without first obtaining a warrant. Google and other mainstream sites capture every click you make and packages up the results to sell to 3rd parties to generate revenue while also utilizing your browsing habits to "customize" the ads you see on your screen.
Well I don't know about everyone else but the state already has my picture and address on my drivers license. Add the information on my tax returns and the state really doesn't need to do anything else if they want to find me. Both of these sources of information were available well before the Internet ever existed.
Stuxnet got through thanks to the inside state supported intelligence operative with physical access to the Iranian centrifuge control system who inserted a USB stick to kick things off. Stuxnet was successful exploiting the OS but the creators also stole 2 signed certificates from 2 different Japanese companies that happened to be located in the same office park. Without these certificates they would have had a harder time exploiting the OS. It looks to me that when Stuxnet eventually propagated across the internet it was more of a test for the designers to see how the exploit delivery mechanism behaved in the wild while also re-directing attention from the fact that there was a mole inside the Iranian nuclear program. The version that appeared on the internet did not contain the same payload that wreaked mayhem on the Iranian centrifuges.