And the courts, ever since Magna Carta. Trump isn't subject to any court.
I thought I was clear on that point. Was I clear enough this time?
You are clearer, but still not correct. The courts do have jurisdiction over the president, as long as there is some relevant law -- including in particular the Constitution. Whether or not the president can be prosecuted in criminal court without first being impeached is an open question. It was debated by SCOTUS in the process of the Watergate proceedings, but never actually decided. But the courts clearly can order the executive branch to do or not do things, though what happens if the executive defies the order is something of an open question. It's really only happened once, that I know of (Andrew Jackson & the Trail of Tears), and what happened was nothing. The president absolutely can be sued in civil court over personal matters, but in official matters the suit would be against the government, not the president personally.
In the UK, the crown is completely immune to personal criminal prosecution or civil actions against his or her person. Until the Crown Proceedings Act of 1947 the crown was also immune from civil actions arising from official actions. The UK courts can order the crown to do or not do something, and as far as I can tell it's similarly unclear what happens if the crown does not comply.
So, yet again, King George was strictly under fewer constraints than George Washington, and while the Queen today isn't quite as unrestrained by the courts as King George was, she is still less restrained by courts than Trump.
you've got yourself a King who is above the law - so that's a worse situation than the King that George Washington fought against.
In what way is it worse? It seems to me that it's basically the same; the King was subject to Parliament, and the President is subject to Congress. If anything, the UK situation is slightly worse because the King had (and has, AFAIK) the power to dissolve Parliament, though this power is only exercised in consultation with the Prime Minister, per long-standing convention. The President cannot touch Congress, but they can fire him, and even prosecute him. Since the 18th century the power of the monarch to govern has, of course, been severely reduce to the point where very little of the Royal Prerogative remains.
Don't get me wrong; I think the office of the president has too much power at present, particularly after the massive expansions it underwent during the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations. In that way, I'm actually glad for Trump's election, because it makes clear that having so much power in one man is a real problem when he turns out to be an idiot. But it seems to me that it's still strictly weaker than the position of King in George's day.
There have been at least two cases where he has called bullshit on testimony against him, given in court, and under oath, by producing a recording that contradicted the testimony.
We should have a contest to see creative hackers will mess with this.
Indeed. Google should add it to one of the regular hacking competitions.
Have Home Notifications call grandma - at 3 in the morning to tell her the grandkids have been kidnapped.
Are you assuming said hackers have physical access to the device, so they can issue voice commands to make phone calls? If you're assuming that the house has been penetrated, much, much worse than that can be done. Fiddling with the Home is the least of concerns.
Or are you talking about remote attacks? If that's the case, you're basically assuming they can either (a) break the TLS encryption on the communication between Google's servers and the Home to extract the authentication credentials and gain the ability to issue commands to it or (b) break into Google's servers. Both of those are very tall orders. Google is seriously good at security. Do you remember that last time that Google's servers were cracked and big piles of data were leaked? Oh, no, because it doesn't appear to have happened, ever[1]. You may remember a few years ago when Google reported that they had caught Chinese hackers trying (and failing[2]) to penetrate Google's systems, which provoked lots of other companies and government agencies to look and discover that they had actually been hacked by the Chinese some time earlier... but no one other than Google even noticed.
I repeat, Google is seriously good at security. I suppose you might call me biased, but what you should call me is informed. I was a security consultant for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, including such security, er, "conscious" organizations as the Israeli Ministry of Defense, for 15 years before joining Google (as a security engineer), and Google's security is better than anything I saw anywhere else, public or private sector.
Have Home call Iceland - over and over again...
Yeah, just like all those hacks of Google Voice to run up big phone bills... oh, wait, there don't appear to have been any.
Hacking competitions are good, but if you truly expect anything like you describe to be possible, much less easy, I think you're greatly underestimating Google's capability in this area.
[1] In fairness, we do know of one massive breach of Google's data security; Snowden revealed that the NSA had been tapping fiber in and out of Google data centers. When that came to light Google already had an effort underway to encrypt all inter- and even intra-data center communications. Google immediately accelerated that effort and had it completed within a few months. Tapping Google's internal networks is no longer useful unless you can also subvert the key management subsystem used to deliver keys for point-to-point encryption, because nothing is cleartext.
[2] As I recall, the Chinese did succeed at penetrating a portion of Google's corporate network, but could not make the jump from there to the production network where all user data lives. The two are very strongly separated, and no employees have access to user data except in limited ways, the minimum required for their job function, and all such access is audited.
I think what's left after parsing all the fences you've put up is, biometrics (fingerprints) are a good username specifically for unlocking a local-only store of credentials or generator of authentication tokens.
Apparently you didn't actually read the "wall-o-text", because I explained in some detail why they're terrible usernames.
The old fogies on Slash dot can probably remember operating systems that ran fine on 10,000KB of memory and seemed to do at least as much as a phone would need to do.
Said "old fogies" are mostly younger than I am, and they're wrong, unless you define what "a phone would need to do" as much less than what phones do today. I started programming on a machine with 1 KiB of RAM, upgraded to one with 16 KiB, then 256 KiB, and as recently as a few years ago I was writing code for a device with only 256 bytes of RAM (no, that's not a typo). Much of my work today is on devices with only 64 KiB of RAM. I know what can be done with small amounts of memory... and you can't manage all of the hardware in a modern smartphone and provide the services required to run all of the apps users want to run in 10 MB of RAM.
Make the Android developers personally only use a 510,000KB phone and it will run fine.
Sure. And it will do less than an iPhone, and do it more slowly (having RAM to cache data is critical to performance).
developers should always focus on the single core model with 512MB RAM and 32MB storage. After all, that which runs acceptably on the low-end model should be screaming fast on the high-end one.
I don't agree with this. Developers should put effort into all relevant markets, yes, but developing only for low-end devices means simply not doing anything that might require more horsepower than the bottom end has, and makes high-end devices mostly pointless. If the low-end can run the software fast enough, then there won't be any difference between midrange and high-end devices. Meanwhile, the competition that does focus on the high end will own that market because feature-light blisteringly fast devices will be uninteresting compared to devices that actually use the available horsepower to be prettier and more interesting.
The concept of freely-floating out-of-control balloons serving any purpose is downright loony.
I saw a presentation by the Project Loon team, and the project leader made the same point. He said that the idea was so loony it had to fail, but they kept failing to find the reason. The Loon team has spent years failing to fail.
That is the Google X methodology, BTW, "fail fast". Find a bizarre idea, think about the reasons it can't work, starting with the most likely to fail, then test to see whether it actually fails for that reason. If it doesn't, move on to the next most-likely reason for failure, and so on. Eventually (so the theory goes) you've either proved the idea doesn't work, or you've exhausted all the reasons for failing... by succeeding.
Why SHOULD the US shoulder the responsibility, when we aren't even the worst polluter?
We are the worst polluter. Well, technically we're the 11th worst (of over 200), in terms of CO2 emitted per capita, but the 10 who are above us are all tiny countries. Among major nations of the world, USA is #1 in per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
We're #1! We're #1! We're #1... and we shouldn't be.
For examples of how this is SUPPOSED to work... Have a look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Many in that movement went though the courts, lobbied their government officials and even peacefully protested to sway public opinion, and only then did they resort to breaking the law... You keep trying.
Your problem is you have preconceived notions about some conspiracy for which you have no proof but you strongly believe to be true. You've been amassing "evidence" to bolsterer your world view by seizing any fragment of something said or done and ascribing great importance to it and ignoring the mountains of evidence which doesn't support your belief.
Could it possibly be that the members of the intelligence community are really trying to protect the USA and it's citizens? Could it be that having classified information is integral to maintaining that safety? If you allow either or both of these, you have to believe that what Manning did was ill advised and counterproductive at best and treason at worst.
For examples of how this is SUPPOSED to work... Have a look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's
So, that's a no. Thanks for clearing that up.
Also, you really need to review your history of the Civil Rights movement. It included quite a bit of lawbreaking which was necessary to raise awareness and move the issue forward. I'd say it constitutes a pretty decent counterexample to your claim, actually. But even if it didn't, the fact that you had to reach back almost 60 years to find an example of someone allegedly fixing a governmental problem through official channels is telling enough.
Your problem is you have preconceived notions about some conspiracy for which you have no proof but you strongly believe to be true. You've been amassing "evidence" to bolsterer your world view by seizing any fragment of something said or done and ascribing great importance to it and ignoring the mountains of evidence which doesn't support your belief.
Nonsense. You should read about John Crane, Thomas Drake and the others who were persecuted (and prosecuted) for trying to reveal what Snowden did, but to do it "the right way". The evidence is abundant and well-documented by serious journalists. This isn't some conspiracy theory crap, and if you're unaware of it it's because your own confirmation bias has led you to avoid it. Here's an article to get you started: https://www.theguardian.com/us...
Could it possibly be that the members of the intelligence community are really trying to protect the USA and it's citizens?
Good intentions are not a defense against bad actions. I sincerely believe that the members of the intelligence community are trying to protect the country, but that doesn't mean they can just do anything they want. There is tremendous potential for abuse, which is why we need laws that strictly circumscribe what the intelligence community can do, and real oversight -- with teeth -- to verify that the laws are being followed. We manifestly lack real oversight, and as a result the intelligence community regularly breaks the law, which itself is dangerously permissive.
Could it be that having classified information is integral to maintaining that safety? If you allow either or both of these, you have to believe that what Manning did was ill advised and counterproductive at best and treason at worst.
You have a very simplistic view of the world. There is more than one issue at stake. Classified information can be integral to maintaining safety, and yet it can still be necessary to reveal classified information in order to preserve freedom. In most cases this can be done without actually endangering anyone... but sometimes it can't, and that's just too damned bad. Freedom isn't free, and part of the cost
Only if one is willing to ADMIT to what they did and pay the price, but you do it within the system FIRST.
Do you have an example of someone who successfully worked within the system?
In the similar context of NSA malfeasance, there is abundant evidence of several other people who tried to work within the system, got hammered for it, and achieved nothing. I expect there are many such examples in the military as well, but the military is better at keeping them secret. It turns out that we need Mannings/Snowdens, because that's the only way the information gets out. I'll grant that Manning was particularly careless, and should have taken an approach similar to Snowden's, giving the information to trustworthy journalists rather than Wikileaks. But any wrongdoing was in the execution, not the basic act.
Intersex conditions (of which chromosomal reversals are a type) are surprisingly common. For example, genital anomalies occur in 1 in 300 births
You have a very lenient definition of "common." 0.33% is not common.
He didn't say they're common. He said they're surprisingly common, which means they're more common that you might expect, not that they're common in any absolute sense (whatever that means, anyway).
I'm not aware of a single case of "I thought that he gave me permission since I have the PIN" where the defendant have been judges as innocent. By the very law (at least in my country) it's actually fraud if you use another persons card+pin even if they gave it to you.
Okay. That doesn't affect any of the other points, though.
Different strokes, I guess. I have daily (minor) problems with the magsafe connector, in order to protect against potential major damage... which I've never, ever had happen in decades of laptop use. On balance, I'd rather risk the major but unlikely damage. This is true in general, but even more true with my current MBP, since (a) with four USB-C ports major damage to one wouldn't actually take the machine out of service, it would just reduce the number of ports available for connecting accessories from three to two and (b) if it were damaged tech support would replace the machine with another just like it:-)
The reason those stocks are increasing is that millions of people have their 401K investing in "tech stocks"
All evidence suggests that you're completely wrong. Tech stocks are soaring because tech revenues and profits are soaring, not because their prices are being artificially bid up.
If your argument were correct, we should expect to see crazy P/E ratios in those tech stocks, as they're bid way up ahead of earnings growth. The three you mentioned, GOOG, IBM and MSFT have P/E ratios of around 30, 12 and 30, respectively. The GOOG and MSFT numbers are slightly higher than is normal, but seem totally justifiable given that the companies both still have excellent growth prospects (rational stock prices should represent the net present value of future income). Now, if you want to look at an inflated P/E, AMZN is about 180... but that's only because AMZN chooses to keep its profits low, reinvesting instead to increase shareholder value a different way. Everyone knows that Bezos could decide to flip a switch and start generating profits an order of magnitude larger, instantly dropping his P/E to 18, where AAPL's is.
P/E is just one measure. You can do the same analysis on several others, and you'll find exactly the same thing.
Exactly how is something that you broadcast out loud around you (biometrics) as strong as something that you keep secret (PIN) ? Signatures are irrelevant here since card+pin (and not chip+pin) have been the standard here for decades.
The primary weaknesses of PINs are that they're shoulder-surfable, phishable and shareable. In credit cards in particular, one of the main forms of fraud in chip + PIN regions is "family/friend fraud", where a family member or friend "borrows" the card and uses it without authorization. Family and friends are in a great position to shoulder-surf the PIN, find where it's written down (e.g. the PIN mailer that came with the card), or to have been told it once for some specific purpose.
Of course, family and friends also have great access to your fingerprints. But we already assumed those are public information, and most people's family and friends would be daunted by the prospect of manufacturing a fake finger. In addition, when we consider legal mitigations for fraud, faking someone's finger is clearly indefensible. Using a known PIN, the fraudster can try to claim that he thought he had permission and depending on the circumstances this may be believable. But no one is going to buy the same story if it includes manufacturing fake fingerprints; and frankly it doesn't matter if people do believe it because it almost certainly constitutes fraud even if it's done with permission.
Fingerprints have none of those weaknesses of PINs, because the security of biometrics does not rely on secrecy. Biometrics have different weaknesses, which have to do with how difficult it is to fool scanners into accepting fake prints.
At bottom, fingerprints are less of an obstacle to sophisticated attackers than PINs, but more of an obstacle to unsophisticated attackers. That's why I say they're roughly equivalent. In the context of credit cards, fingerprints are probably slightly better than PINs, based on the sorts of attacks and attackers we see in the real world.
However, it's worth pointing out that it would be fairly trivial to do chip + fingerprint + PIN. The effort of making a payment would be basically the same as chip + PIN; you'd just have to hold the card a certain way when you tapped or inserted it. Then you'd enter your PIN. No significant additional effort, but now you have three-factor authentication (something you have, something you know and something you are). An attacker would have to steal your card, surf/phish your PIN and fake your finger. Add in some real-time analytics for on-line transactions and fraud would be extremely low (not zero; never zero).
Good point. It would be worth comparing gross revenues of various sectors of the economy and see the long term trends. I would bet that tech would weigh in quite well, especially when growth trends are considered. But the stock price is really the wrong place to look.
I looked at BEA numbers and found that the "Information-communications-technology-producing industries" grew by 3.05% between 2015 and 2016, while all industries grew by 1.62%. So "tech", very broadly and loosely defined, grew nearly twice as much as the rest.
However, it's also much smaller. Goods-producing industries generated $8T in 2016, services industries almost $20T, while tech was less than $2T.
It is better to accidentally disconnect than to put torque on the connector.
That's the theory, but I got my first laptop 23 years ago and I've had and used one continually since then. In all that time I have never broken a connector or a cord... and I'm not particularly careful with them. However, I regularly had problems with my MacBooks with the magsafe connector whenever I was sitting in an "abnormal" position (which is usually... if I want to sit down at a desk, I use my desktop). Sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knees, and the weight of the cord pulls down on the connector, causing it to lose connection. If I put the laptop on a soft surface (most often the bed), it sinks down a bit and causes upward pressure on the connector, causing it to lose connection. Those are two examples, but there are many more.
I always liked the *idea* of the magsafe connector, but I find it problematic in practice, and the problem that it solves has never been a problem.
Do you actually believe that even if auto makers stopped selling gas powered cars tomorrow, they wouldn't continue to be absolutely everywhere for another 50 years as the filter through the "pre-owned" markets and finally find their way to the junk yard?
The author of the article never claimed that they wouldn't still be on the road in eight years, just that you couldn't buy a new one -- which is also somewhat questionable, but not completely impossible. And once you can't buy a new one, the old ones will disappear quickly, because the infrastructure needed to support them will disappear pretty quickly, and that even without a big carbon tax. Reduce the number of ICEVs on the road by 10% and you will see the number of gas stations decline by at least that much (not to be replaced by an equivalent number of charging stations; most EV charging is done at home). The number of automobile repair shops will fall similarly. Not quite as much because EVs also need some maintenance (though much less than ICEVs). It will rapidly become less and less convenient and more and more expensive to own an ICEV.
And that analysis ignores the effects of self-driving cars. As soon as fleets of self-driving cars get deployed in an area, many people will decide that they no longer need to own a vehicle at all, which will very rapidly deplete the existing inventory. This will hugely exacerbate the effects described in the previous paragraph, because it will cause the number of ICEVs to drop much faster than merely cutting off the inflow of new vehicles. That in turn will cause more gas stations and garages to close up. And many of the newly-purchased EVs will be fleet vehicles, which will have their own fleet maintenance depots, hitting garages even harder.
And *that* analysis ignores the effect of legislation banning manually-driven cars. If that happens, it will almost certainly not be cost-effective to retrofit self-driving capability into existing vehicles, and the number of old ICEVs in operation will implode to basically zero. Of course, we'll have to get to a critical mass of self-driving cars on the road before that step will be feasible, but once that tipping point is reached, boom.
So, no, they will NOT continue to be absolutely everywhere for 50 years. And they won't even fill traditional auto junkyards, where they're harvested for parts. They'll just get crushed and recycled. Eight years is a bit optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on your perspective), but it is going to happen, and it is going to happen much faster than you expect.
And those of us who ENJOY driving, especially motorcycles (which can likely never be self-driving) are royally screwed.
I expect there will be a vast expansion in motorsports, and even probably roads set aside for sporting use, including nice windy mountain mountain roads through beautiful scenery. Driving for sport/pleasure won't go away, just driving for transportation.
Slashdot Mirror
And the courts, ever since Magna Carta. Trump isn't subject to any court. I thought I was clear on that point. Was I clear enough this time?
You are clearer, but still not correct. The courts do have jurisdiction over the president, as long as there is some relevant law -- including in particular the Constitution. Whether or not the president can be prosecuted in criminal court without first being impeached is an open question. It was debated by SCOTUS in the process of the Watergate proceedings, but never actually decided. But the courts clearly can order the executive branch to do or not do things, though what happens if the executive defies the order is something of an open question. It's really only happened once, that I know of (Andrew Jackson & the Trail of Tears), and what happened was nothing. The president absolutely can be sued in civil court over personal matters, but in official matters the suit would be against the government, not the president personally.
In the UK, the crown is completely immune to personal criminal prosecution or civil actions against his or her person. Until the Crown Proceedings Act of 1947 the crown was also immune from civil actions arising from official actions. The UK courts can order the crown to do or not do something, and as far as I can tell it's similarly unclear what happens if the crown does not comply.
So, yet again, King George was strictly under fewer constraints than George Washington, and while the Queen today isn't quite as unrestrained by the courts as King George was, she is still less restrained by courts than Trump.
you've got yourself a King who is above the law - so that's a worse situation than the King that George Washington fought against.
In what way is it worse? It seems to me that it's basically the same; the King was subject to Parliament, and the President is subject to Congress. If anything, the UK situation is slightly worse because the King had (and has, AFAIK) the power to dissolve Parliament, though this power is only exercised in consultation with the Prime Minister, per long-standing convention. The President cannot touch Congress, but they can fire him, and even prosecute him. Since the 18th century the power of the monarch to govern has, of course, been severely reduce to the point where very little of the Royal Prerogative remains.
Don't get me wrong; I think the office of the president has too much power at present, particularly after the massive expansions it underwent during the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations. In that way, I'm actually glad for Trump's election, because it makes clear that having so much power in one man is a real problem when he turns out to be an idiot. But it seems to me that it's still strictly weaker than the position of King in George's day.
There have been at least two cases where he has called bullshit on testimony against him, given in court, and under oath, by producing a recording that contradicted the testimony.
Interesting. Cite?
We should have a contest to see creative hackers will mess with this.
Indeed. Google should add it to one of the regular hacking competitions.
Have Home Notifications call grandma - at 3 in the morning to tell her the grandkids have been kidnapped.
Are you assuming said hackers have physical access to the device, so they can issue voice commands to make phone calls? If you're assuming that the house has been penetrated, much, much worse than that can be done. Fiddling with the Home is the least of concerns.
Or are you talking about remote attacks? If that's the case, you're basically assuming they can either (a) break the TLS encryption on the communication between Google's servers and the Home to extract the authentication credentials and gain the ability to issue commands to it or (b) break into Google's servers. Both of those are very tall orders. Google is seriously good at security. Do you remember that last time that Google's servers were cracked and big piles of data were leaked? Oh, no, because it doesn't appear to have happened, ever[1]. You may remember a few years ago when Google reported that they had caught Chinese hackers trying (and failing[2]) to penetrate Google's systems, which provoked lots of other companies and government agencies to look and discover that they had actually been hacked by the Chinese some time earlier... but no one other than Google even noticed.
I repeat, Google is seriously good at security. I suppose you might call me biased, but what you should call me is informed. I was a security consultant for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, including such security, er, "conscious" organizations as the Israeli Ministry of Defense, for 15 years before joining Google (as a security engineer), and Google's security is better than anything I saw anywhere else, public or private sector.
Have Home call Iceland - over and over again...
Yeah, just like all those hacks of Google Voice to run up big phone bills... oh, wait, there don't appear to have been any.
Hacking competitions are good, but if you truly expect anything like you describe to be possible, much less easy, I think you're greatly underestimating Google's capability in this area.
[1] In fairness, we do know of one massive breach of Google's data security; Snowden revealed that the NSA had been tapping fiber in and out of Google data centers. When that came to light Google already had an effort underway to encrypt all inter- and even intra-data center communications. Google immediately accelerated that effort and had it completed within a few months. Tapping Google's internal networks is no longer useful unless you can also subvert the key management subsystem used to deliver keys for point-to-point encryption, because nothing is cleartext.
[2] As I recall, the Chinese did succeed at penetrating a portion of Google's corporate network, but could not make the jump from there to the production network where all user data lives. The two are very strongly separated, and no employees have access to user data except in limited ways, the minimum required for their job function, and all such access is audited.
I think what's left after parsing all the fences you've put up is, biometrics (fingerprints) are a good username specifically for unlocking a local-only store of credentials or generator of authentication tokens.
Apparently you didn't actually read the "wall-o-text", because I explained in some detail why they're terrible usernames.
The old fogies on Slash dot can probably remember operating systems that ran fine on 10,000KB of memory and seemed to do at least as much as a phone would need to do.
Said "old fogies" are mostly younger than I am, and they're wrong, unless you define what "a phone would need to do" as much less than what phones do today. I started programming on a machine with 1 KiB of RAM, upgraded to one with 16 KiB, then 256 KiB, and as recently as a few years ago I was writing code for a device with only 256 bytes of RAM (no, that's not a typo). Much of my work today is on devices with only 64 KiB of RAM. I know what can be done with small amounts of memory... and you can't manage all of the hardware in a modern smartphone and provide the services required to run all of the apps users want to run in 10 MB of RAM.
Make the Android developers personally only use a 510,000KB phone and it will run fine.
Sure. And it will do less than an iPhone, and do it more slowly (having RAM to cache data is critical to performance).
developers should always focus on the single core model with 512MB RAM and 32MB storage. After all, that which runs acceptably on the low-end model should be screaming fast on the high-end one.
I don't agree with this. Developers should put effort into all relevant markets, yes, but developing only for low-end devices means simply not doing anything that might require more horsepower than the bottom end has, and makes high-end devices mostly pointless. If the low-end can run the software fast enough, then there won't be any difference between midrange and high-end devices. Meanwhile, the competition that does focus on the high end will own that market because feature-light blisteringly fast devices will be uninteresting compared to devices that actually use the available horsepower to be prettier and more interesting.
"moral" == "legal"? You really are simple, aren't you?
The concept of freely-floating out-of-control balloons serving any purpose is downright loony.
I saw a presentation by the Project Loon team, and the project leader made the same point. He said that the idea was so loony it had to fail, but they kept failing to find the reason. The Loon team has spent years failing to fail.
That is the Google X methodology, BTW, "fail fast". Find a bizarre idea, think about the reasons it can't work, starting with the most likely to fail, then test to see whether it actually fails for that reason. If it doesn't, move on to the next most-likely reason for failure, and so on. Eventually (so the theory goes) you've either proved the idea doesn't work, or you've exhausted all the reasons for failing... by succeeding.
Why SHOULD the US shoulder the responsibility, when we aren't even the worst polluter?
We are the worst polluter. Well, technically we're the 11th worst (of over 200), in terms of CO2 emitted per capita, but the 10 who are above us are all tiny countries. Among major nations of the world, USA is #1 in per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
We're #1! We're #1! We're #1... and we shouldn't be.
Manning was legally tried and convicted under military law and rightly so. Manning broke the law. End of report.
So now you've abandoned the moral high ground and are just relying on "but it's the law!". I accept your concession.
Oops, sorry for the double quoting. I should have looked closer before hitting submit.
For examples of how this is SUPPOSED to work... Have a look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Many in that movement went though the courts, lobbied their government officials and even peacefully protested to sway public opinion, and only then did they resort to breaking the law... You keep trying.
Your problem is you have preconceived notions about some conspiracy for which you have no proof but you strongly believe to be true. You've been amassing "evidence" to bolsterer your world view by seizing any fragment of something said or done and ascribing great importance to it and ignoring the mountains of evidence which doesn't support your belief.
Could it possibly be that the members of the intelligence community are really trying to protect the USA and it's citizens? Could it be that having classified information is integral to maintaining that safety? If you allow either or both of these, you have to believe that what Manning did was ill advised and counterproductive at best and treason at worst.
For examples of how this is SUPPOSED to work... Have a look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's
So, that's a no. Thanks for clearing that up.
Also, you really need to review your history of the Civil Rights movement. It included quite a bit of lawbreaking which was necessary to raise awareness and move the issue forward. I'd say it constitutes a pretty decent counterexample to your claim, actually. But even if it didn't, the fact that you had to reach back almost 60 years to find an example of someone allegedly fixing a governmental problem through official channels is telling enough.
Your problem is you have preconceived notions about some conspiracy for which you have no proof but you strongly believe to be true. You've been amassing "evidence" to bolsterer your world view by seizing any fragment of something said or done and ascribing great importance to it and ignoring the mountains of evidence which doesn't support your belief.
Nonsense. You should read about John Crane, Thomas Drake and the others who were persecuted (and prosecuted) for trying to reveal what Snowden did, but to do it "the right way". The evidence is abundant and well-documented by serious journalists. This isn't some conspiracy theory crap, and if you're unaware of it it's because your own confirmation bias has led you to avoid it. Here's an article to get you started: https://www.theguardian.com/us...
Could it possibly be that the members of the intelligence community are really trying to protect the USA and it's citizens?
Good intentions are not a defense against bad actions. I sincerely believe that the members of the intelligence community are trying to protect the country, but that doesn't mean they can just do anything they want. There is tremendous potential for abuse, which is why we need laws that strictly circumscribe what the intelligence community can do, and real oversight -- with teeth -- to verify that the laws are being followed. We manifestly lack real oversight, and as a result the intelligence community regularly breaks the law, which itself is dangerously permissive.
Could it be that having classified information is integral to maintaining that safety? If you allow either or both of these, you have to believe that what Manning did was ill advised and counterproductive at best and treason at worst.
You have a very simplistic view of the world. There is more than one issue at stake. Classified information can be integral to maintaining safety, and yet it can still be necessary to reveal classified information in order to preserve freedom. In most cases this can be done without actually endangering anyone... but sometimes it can't, and that's just too damned bad. Freedom isn't free, and part of the cost
Only if one is willing to ADMIT to what they did and pay the price, but you do it within the system FIRST.
Do you have an example of someone who successfully worked within the system?
In the similar context of NSA malfeasance, there is abundant evidence of several other people who tried to work within the system, got hammered for it, and achieved nothing. I expect there are many such examples in the military as well, but the military is better at keeping them secret. It turns out that we need Mannings/Snowdens, because that's the only way the information gets out. I'll grant that Manning was particularly careless, and should have taken an approach similar to Snowden's, giving the information to trustworthy journalists rather than Wikileaks. But any wrongdoing was in the execution, not the basic act.
Intersex conditions (of which chromosomal reversals are a type) are surprisingly common. For example, genital anomalies occur in 1 in 300 births
You have a very lenient definition of "common." 0.33% is not common.
He didn't say they're common. He said they're surprisingly common, which means they're more common that you might expect, not that they're common in any absolute sense (whatever that means, anyway).
I'm not aware of a single case of "I thought that he gave me permission since I have the PIN" where the defendant have been judges as innocent. By the very law (at least in my country) it's actually fraud if you use another persons card+pin even if they gave it to you.
Okay. That doesn't affect any of the other points, though.
Different strokes, I guess. I have daily (minor) problems with the magsafe connector, in order to protect against potential major damage... which I've never, ever had happen in decades of laptop use. On balance, I'd rather risk the major but unlikely damage. This is true in general, but even more true with my current MBP, since (a) with four USB-C ports major damage to one wouldn't actually take the machine out of service, it would just reduce the number of ports available for connecting accessories from three to two and (b) if it were damaged tech support would replace the machine with another just like it :-)
The reason those stocks are increasing is that millions of people have their 401K investing in "tech stocks"
All evidence suggests that you're completely wrong. Tech stocks are soaring because tech revenues and profits are soaring, not because their prices are being artificially bid up.
If your argument were correct, we should expect to see crazy P/E ratios in those tech stocks, as they're bid way up ahead of earnings growth. The three you mentioned, GOOG, IBM and MSFT have P/E ratios of around 30, 12 and 30, respectively. The GOOG and MSFT numbers are slightly higher than is normal, but seem totally justifiable given that the companies both still have excellent growth prospects (rational stock prices should represent the net present value of future income). Now, if you want to look at an inflated P/E, AMZN is about 180... but that's only because AMZN chooses to keep its profits low, reinvesting instead to increase shareholder value a different way. Everyone knows that Bezos could decide to flip a switch and start generating profits an order of magnitude larger, instantly dropping his P/E to 18, where AAPL's is.
P/E is just one measure. You can do the same analysis on several others, and you'll find exactly the same thing.
Exactly how is something that you broadcast out loud around you (biometrics) as strong as something that you keep secret (PIN) ? Signatures are irrelevant here since card+pin (and not chip+pin) have been the standard here for decades.
The primary weaknesses of PINs are that they're shoulder-surfable, phishable and shareable. In credit cards in particular, one of the main forms of fraud in chip + PIN regions is "family/friend fraud", where a family member or friend "borrows" the card and uses it without authorization. Family and friends are in a great position to shoulder-surf the PIN, find where it's written down (e.g. the PIN mailer that came with the card), or to have been told it once for some specific purpose.
Of course, family and friends also have great access to your fingerprints. But we already assumed those are public information, and most people's family and friends would be daunted by the prospect of manufacturing a fake finger. In addition, when we consider legal mitigations for fraud, faking someone's finger is clearly indefensible. Using a known PIN, the fraudster can try to claim that he thought he had permission and depending on the circumstances this may be believable. But no one is going to buy the same story if it includes manufacturing fake fingerprints; and frankly it doesn't matter if people do believe it because it almost certainly constitutes fraud even if it's done with permission.
Fingerprints have none of those weaknesses of PINs, because the security of biometrics does not rely on secrecy. Biometrics have different weaknesses, which have to do with how difficult it is to fool scanners into accepting fake prints.
At bottom, fingerprints are less of an obstacle to sophisticated attackers than PINs, but more of an obstacle to unsophisticated attackers. That's why I say they're roughly equivalent. In the context of credit cards, fingerprints are probably slightly better than PINs, based on the sorts of attacks and attackers we see in the real world.
However, it's worth pointing out that it would be fairly trivial to do chip + fingerprint + PIN. The effort of making a payment would be basically the same as chip + PIN; you'd just have to hold the card a certain way when you tapped or inserted it. Then you'd enter your PIN. No significant additional effort, but now you have three-factor authentication (something you have, something you know and something you are). An attacker would have to steal your card, surf/phish your PIN and fake your finger. Add in some real-time analytics for on-line transactions and fraud would be extremely low (not zero; never zero).
Good point. It would be worth comparing gross revenues of various sectors of the economy and see the long term trends. I would bet that tech would weigh in quite well, especially when growth trends are considered. But the stock price is really the wrong place to look.
I looked at BEA numbers and found that the "Information-communications-technology-producing industries" grew by 3.05% between 2015 and 2016, while all industries grew by 1.62%. So "tech", very broadly and loosely defined, grew nearly twice as much as the rest.
However, it's also much smaller. Goods-producing industries generated $8T in 2016, services industries almost $20T, while tech was less than $2T.
It is better to accidentally disconnect than to put torque on the connector.
That's the theory, but I got my first laptop 23 years ago and I've had and used one continually since then. In all that time I have never broken a connector or a cord... and I'm not particularly careful with them. However, I regularly had problems with my MacBooks with the magsafe connector whenever I was sitting in an "abnormal" position (which is usually... if I want to sit down at a desk, I use my desktop). Sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knees, and the weight of the cord pulls down on the connector, causing it to lose connection. If I put the laptop on a soft surface (most often the bed), it sinks down a bit and causes upward pressure on the connector, causing it to lose connection. Those are two examples, but there are many more.
I always liked the *idea* of the magsafe connector, but I find it problematic in practice, and the problem that it solves has never been a problem.
No, you didn't. I asked some specific questions in my response, which you didn't answer. Try re-reading it. Or not. I'm done.
Do you actually believe that even if auto makers stopped selling gas powered cars tomorrow, they wouldn't continue to be absolutely everywhere for another 50 years as the filter through the "pre-owned" markets and finally find their way to the junk yard?
The author of the article never claimed that they wouldn't still be on the road in eight years, just that you couldn't buy a new one -- which is also somewhat questionable, but not completely impossible. And once you can't buy a new one, the old ones will disappear quickly, because the infrastructure needed to support them will disappear pretty quickly, and that even without a big carbon tax. Reduce the number of ICEVs on the road by 10% and you will see the number of gas stations decline by at least that much (not to be replaced by an equivalent number of charging stations; most EV charging is done at home). The number of automobile repair shops will fall similarly. Not quite as much because EVs also need some maintenance (though much less than ICEVs). It will rapidly become less and less convenient and more and more expensive to own an ICEV.
And that analysis ignores the effects of self-driving cars. As soon as fleets of self-driving cars get deployed in an area, many people will decide that they no longer need to own a vehicle at all, which will very rapidly deplete the existing inventory. This will hugely exacerbate the effects described in the previous paragraph, because it will cause the number of ICEVs to drop much faster than merely cutting off the inflow of new vehicles. That in turn will cause more gas stations and garages to close up. And many of the newly-purchased EVs will be fleet vehicles, which will have their own fleet maintenance depots, hitting garages even harder.
And *that* analysis ignores the effect of legislation banning manually-driven cars. If that happens, it will almost certainly not be cost-effective to retrofit self-driving capability into existing vehicles, and the number of old ICEVs in operation will implode to basically zero. Of course, we'll have to get to a critical mass of self-driving cars on the road before that step will be feasible, but once that tipping point is reached, boom.
So, no, they will NOT continue to be absolutely everywhere for 50 years. And they won't even fill traditional auto junkyards, where they're harvested for parts. They'll just get crushed and recycled. Eight years is a bit optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on your perspective), but it is going to happen, and it is going to happen much faster than you expect.
And those of us who ENJOY driving, especially motorcycles (which can likely never be self-driving) are royally screwed.
I expect there will be a vast expansion in motorsports, and even probably roads set aside for sporting use, including nice windy mountain mountain roads through beautiful scenery. Driving for sport/pleasure won't go away, just driving for transportation.
I was referring to my other response to you. Here, I'll link it: https://slashdot.org/comments....