This isn't about money, this isn't about closing down one specific named program. It's about raising awareness, for one, and about fighting for our rights in general. I'm behind that.
What I wish they'd do is make the situation more sorely obvious. They have the eyeballs and the screen real estate, and they used it once, back when the 2nd (I think) SOPA attempt was coming around. For all the times I've seen those slide-in banners talking about "Buy one programmer a cup of coffee," I wonder about the impact if those banners instead said "Your government is watching you read this article right now!"
I'm a middle-aged guy and I wind up on Wikipedia at least once a day, I know the younger generation is probably hitting it more frequently doing research for papers and assignments. Put it right in their face. That big yellow donation banner, but with substituted text for visitors from the US,
"Your government watches everything you do on the internet. Even your religious and church communications! Even your private Snapchats! This is unconstitutional. Complain loudly to your representatives today."
I have a hard time taking seriously any website that loads a 2MB image into a 108x118 author avatar. The topic becomes irrelevant when I see the journalist's picture slowly coming in like a GIF from the 2400bps days.
I can parse that complaint, and I agree with it. I bought my car for $foo and we worked it out to a monthly payment. I always made that payment via check until I received the title. I'm one of the holdout types who still likes to write checks and put them in an envelope with a stamp, there's some personal empowerment there where I remain the final arbiter over the distribution of my money.
But once a contract was in place, and I was driving the car, I could have shown up with cash, or mailed them such which is an enormous risk. GMAC/Ally would have been obligated to accept that payment. In cash bills. Nothing says that GMAC/Ally is required to accept Bitcoins or Dogecoins or any other made-up "money." But my hundreds, twenties, tens, fives, and even down to $1 bills, my government may do a lot of things wrong but they will guarantee that those pieces of paper will be accepted for any debt.
Is it the government's business what I'm doing with 100 $100 bills? Fuck no. I should make it very clear that I don't approve of reporting requirements. And the idea of civil forfeiture is entirely ridiculous.
I'm not arguing against BTC. I don't own any, don't want any, the whole concept seems messed up. If you have BTC and can cash them out for money, do that! Just don't come around after your BTC "investment" disappears and say you've been screwed.
The notion that cash is available for "all debts, public and private" without government oversight is naive at best. Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.
McLaren Special Operations?;) Kidding of course, but any business is well within their rights not to sell you something for cash. Note the word "debt" printed on US currency. If you walk into a dealership and offer to buy a car with stacks of $100 bills, you have no debt to them, so they're under no legal obligation to accept your offer. I'm not so thrilled that large cash transactions must be reported to the government, but that strays off topic.
Have you tried to purchase a car using BTC? If there are dealers somewhere accepting it, that's pretty cool. There are also dealers somewhere who will take cash. So I don't see the difference except for the fact that the BTC price will probably go up and down during the course of a given day, where the cash price will probably remain stable for a week or more at a time.
Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.
The coins I have don't say anything about being good for all debts, public, private, or otherwise. Do you have US coins that do carry such a guarantee?
But the OLD rules for Title II common carriers stipulated that your communications can't be legally "intercepted" without a warrant. So deep packet inspection by ISPs is probably out the window.
I assume the government has already served any ISP worth mentioning with a secret FISA warrant that says "give us everything."
Taboola is an advertising and user-tracking company whose CEO says the company looks for "unorthodox solutions to monetize and engage consumers."
"Prior to founding Taboola, [CEO] Adam [Singolda] developed his analytical skills while serving as an officer in an elite mathematical unit of the Israeli National Security Agency. Adam is an honored alum of the [IDF's] elite Mamram computer science training program, graduated first in his class at the Officers Academy of the IDF." Right from the source.
In other words, block that shit at the edge of your network.
I think it's more likely they were afraid that Bing would continue to have the upper hand. Or the lower hand. Or maybe the hand stroking both up and down...
Why not both? It's not like losing a civil complaint would absolve Lenovo of criminal liability. A lawsuit is the only option available to the consumer.
I see they have gold colored print, that has to boost the sound quality by about 10 bucks. But is Monster selling titanium-plated connectors for them yet? Have any advertisers signed up to preload audio advertisements on the cards? This doesn't seem ready for prime time. Sony, give me a call just as soon as you're ready to start charging me a monthly fee!
The microphone on the TV stays off until you command it to listen.
Five years ago, I probably would have believed this. Hell, two years ago I might have bought it. But after the revelations of June 2013, I don't trust claims like "the microphone stays off until you command it to listen" any more than I believe "no, the NSA does not collect data about millions of Americans" or "we at Lenovo thought consumers would enjoy ads injected into their SSL sessions."
Trusted by default is done, thanks to overzealous advertisers and overzealous governments. That goose is cooked, go find a fork. Everything is suspect, now. Engineer accordingly.
You'd think the young would suffer from age discrimination just as much as the 40 and up crowd.
When it comes to employment in the US, the young are expected to work for peanuts in exchange for gaining experience. They also tend to be mostly part-time, owing to other responsibilities like schoolwork, and therefore aren't eligible for those pesky socialist expenses like vacation time or health insurance. The 40 and up crowd faces discrimination because they already have the experience to demand fair compensation (and benefits) for their time.
Employers love young workers. If more companies could figure out how to run their entire operation on the backs of teenagers working 20 hours a week, they'd gladly do so.
It sounds to me like the system is already being DOSed, but from the inside. Locating and capturing one guy produced 13,000 separate case files?
The lesson every government agency will take from this is that each action, investigation, or report, no matter how petty or inconsequential, should somehow involve generating enormous tomes worth of documentation. Attach a reference to the entire United States Code to every case file, for example; some part of it must be pertinent. Then anytime anyone files any FOIA request, no matter how narrow or mundane it is, the cost-satisfy burden will simply be too high to meet.
During the webcast, the product manager for Falcon kept referring to a telemetry problem on the SpaceX side that they needed to resolve before T -2:00. Somewhere around T -8:00, reports started showing up online that there was also an issue with the AF radar. The webcast never clarified what the telemetry issue was. Elon mentioned a "1st stage video transmitter (not needed for launch, but nice to have)." It sure sounded like they intended to scrub the launch if they hadn't fixed the telemetry problem by T -2:00, so either the video transmitter really was needed, or they had another problem.
He bought a car with the ability to blind oncoming drivers. This is illegal.
I bought computers with the ability to infringe copyright (which is illegal), make unauthorized connections to and/or deny service to other computer systems (which is illegal), utter forged instruments (which is illegal), and they can do a lot of other illegal things too.
The manufacturer fixed the car so it now meets regulations.
My computers' operating systems have evolved over the years to enforce various DRM, Windows in particular has some socket limitations by default, most image software and printer/scanner drivers use the eurion constellation so I can't scan and print $100 bills. I accepted these things by choice because I don't feel like they deprive me of any functionality that I would use.
If he still wants to blind oncoming drivers, there is a thing called "high beam" which he can use whenever he wants... just hope that it's not a highway patrol he's blinding.
In other words, even if he gets his car "upgraded" to disable a feature that he paid for, he can still do essentially the same thing? Why get the "upgrade" and remove a paid-for feature, then? As I mentioned and you reiterated, there are police to take care of unlawful operation of his vehicle's features.
Your computer analogy is stupid... how about a car analogy?
Heh. I bought a car with the ability to go 120MPH, and I know it will do at least 100MPH (erm, according to what the speedometer claims that is, of course I've never ever tested that personally...). That speed is not legal in any jurisdiction in the United States. Should it be okay if the next time I go in for an oil change, they install a governor that stops my car from going over 75? Fuck no, and if that became some sort of mandatory thing, I'd start changing my own oil.
"You might do something illegal with that!" is never a valid reason to take something away from someone.
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This isn't about money, this isn't about closing down one specific named program. It's about raising awareness, for one, and about fighting for our rights in general. I'm behind that.
What I wish they'd do is make the situation more sorely obvious. They have the eyeballs and the screen real estate, and they used it once, back when the 2nd (I think) SOPA attempt was coming around. For all the times I've seen those slide-in banners talking about "Buy one programmer a cup of coffee," I wonder about the impact if those banners instead said "Your government is watching you read this article right now!"
I'm a middle-aged guy and I wind up on Wikipedia at least once a day, I know the younger generation is probably hitting it more frequently doing research for papers and assignments. Put it right in their face. That big yellow donation banner, but with substituted text for visitors from the US,
"Your government watches everything you do on the internet. Even your religious and church communications! Even your private Snapchats! This is unconstitutional. Complain loudly to your representatives today."
GOTO is well-known as a beneficial logical statement. I suppose in this day and age, we're going to need something like this:
I'll look into that.
I have a hard time taking seriously any website that loads a 2MB image into a 108x118 author avatar. The topic becomes irrelevant when I see the journalist's picture slowly coming in like a GIF from the 2400bps days.
I can parse that complaint, and I agree with it. I bought my car for $foo and we worked it out to a monthly payment. I always made that payment via check until I received the title. I'm one of the holdout types who still likes to write checks and put them in an envelope with a stamp, there's some personal empowerment there where I remain the final arbiter over the distribution of my money.
But once a contract was in place, and I was driving the car, I could have shown up with cash, or mailed them such which is an enormous risk. GMAC/Ally would have been obligated to accept that payment. In cash bills. Nothing says that GMAC/Ally is required to accept Bitcoins or Dogecoins or any other made-up "money." But my hundreds, twenties, tens, fives, and even down to $1 bills, my government may do a lot of things wrong but they will guarantee that those pieces of paper will be accepted for any debt.
Is it the government's business what I'm doing with 100 $100 bills? Fuck no. I should make it very clear that I don't approve of reporting requirements. And the idea of civil forfeiture is entirely ridiculous.
I'm not arguing against BTC. I don't own any, don't want any, the whole concept seems messed up. If you have BTC and can cash them out for money, do that! Just don't come around after your BTC "investment" disappears and say you've been screwed.
The notion that cash is available for "all debts, public and private" without government oversight is naive at best. Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.
McLaren Special Operations? ;) Kidding of course, but any business is well within their rights not to sell you something for cash. Note the word "debt" printed on US currency. If you walk into a dealership and offer to buy a car with stacks of $100 bills, you have no debt to them, so they're under no legal obligation to accept your offer. I'm not so thrilled that large cash transactions must be reported to the government, but that strays off topic.
Have you tried to purchase a car using BTC? If there are dealers somewhere accepting it, that's pretty cool. There are also dealers somewhere who will take cash. So I don't see the difference except for the fact that the BTC price will probably go up and down during the course of a given day, where the cash price will probably remain stable for a week or more at a time.
Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.
The coins I have don't say anything about being good for all debts, public, private, or otherwise. Do you have US coins that do carry such a guarantee?
If you find the topic interesting, there was a very thorough and interesting feature in Popular Science last year, Radio Tecnico: How the Zetas Cartel Took Over Mexico with Walkie-Talkies.
I can't wait to be able to get an @bigbrother email address.
What's holding you back? GMail stopped requiring an invite years ago!
But the OLD rules for Title II common carriers stipulated that your communications can't be legally "intercepted" without a warrant. So deep packet inspection by ISPs is probably out the window.
I assume the government has already served any ISP worth mentioning with a secret FISA warrant that says "give us everything."
Except you should goof the math and actually pay them $0.008.
Taboola is an advertising and user-tracking company whose CEO says the company looks for "unorthodox solutions to monetize and engage consumers."
"Prior to founding Taboola, [CEO] Adam [Singolda] developed his analytical skills while serving as an officer in an elite mathematical unit of the Israeli National Security Agency. Adam is an honored alum of the [IDF's] elite Mamram computer science training program, graduated first in his class at the Officers Academy of the IDF." Right from the source.
In other words, block that shit at the edge of your network.
I think it's more likely they were afraid that Bing would continue to have the upper hand. Or the lower hand. Or maybe the hand stroking both up and down...
The FlashBlock extension for Firefox has an option for "Block HTML5 video as well." Silverlight, too.
Why not both? It's not like losing a civil complaint would absolve Lenovo of criminal liability. A lawsuit is the only option available to the consumer.
I see they have gold colored print, that has to boost the sound quality by about 10 bucks. But is Monster selling titanium-plated connectors for them yet? Have any advertisers signed up to preload audio advertisements on the cards? This doesn't seem ready for prime time. Sony, give me a call just as soon as you're ready to start charging me a monthly fee!
The microphone on the TV stays off until you command it to listen.
Five years ago, I probably would have believed this. Hell, two years ago I might have bought it. But after the revelations of June 2013, I don't trust claims like "the microphone stays off until you command it to listen" any more than I believe "no, the NSA does not collect data about millions of Americans" or "we at Lenovo thought consumers would enjoy ads injected into their SSL sessions."
Trusted by default is done, thanks to overzealous advertisers and overzealous governments. That goose is cooked, go find a fork. Everything is suspect, now. Engineer accordingly.
You'd think the young would suffer from age discrimination just as much as the 40 and up crowd.
When it comes to employment in the US, the young are expected to work for peanuts in exchange for gaining experience. They also tend to be mostly part-time, owing to other responsibilities like schoolwork, and therefore aren't eligible for those pesky socialist expenses like vacation time or health insurance. The 40 and up crowd faces discrimination because they already have the experience to demand fair compensation (and benefits) for their time.
Employers love young workers. If more companies could figure out how to run their entire operation on the backs of teenagers working 20 hours a week, they'd gladly do so.
They can already take your house, they don't need a new treaty for that.
Post the current cybersecurity issues faced by the White House
Okay, how about WhiteHouse.gov screws up SSL certificate on same day as Obama cybersecurity summit.
Then Facebook access would be monitored like phone calls.
We're talking about the Land of the Free, here. Facebook access is already monitored like phone calls. You don't even have to be in prison.
Two y's, for a youble yose of his pimpin'.
It sounds to me like the system is already being DOSed, but from the inside. Locating and capturing one guy produced 13,000 separate case files?
The lesson every government agency will take from this is that each action, investigation, or report, no matter how petty or inconsequential, should somehow involve generating enormous tomes worth of documentation. Attach a reference to the entire United States Code to every case file, for example; some part of it must be pertinent. Then anytime anyone files any FOIA request, no matter how narrow or mundane it is, the cost-satisfy burden will simply be too high to meet.
During the webcast, the product manager for Falcon kept referring to a telemetry problem on the SpaceX side that they needed to resolve before T -2:00. Somewhere around T -8:00, reports started showing up online that there was also an issue with the AF radar. The webcast never clarified what the telemetry issue was. Elon mentioned a "1st stage video transmitter (not needed for launch, but nice to have)." It sure sounded like they intended to scrub the launch if they hadn't fixed the telemetry problem by T -2:00, so either the video transmitter really was needed, or they had another problem.
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Here you are. Don't be offended if I don't wait for you to finish reading, it's going to take you a long while.
He bought a car with the ability to blind oncoming drivers. This is illegal.
I bought computers with the ability to infringe copyright (which is illegal), make unauthorized connections to and/or deny service to other computer systems (which is illegal), utter forged instruments (which is illegal), and they can do a lot of other illegal things too.
The manufacturer fixed the car so it now meets regulations.
My computers' operating systems have evolved over the years to enforce various DRM, Windows in particular has some socket limitations by default, most image software and printer/scanner drivers use the eurion constellation so I can't scan and print $100 bills. I accepted these things by choice because I don't feel like they deprive me of any functionality that I would use.
If he still wants to blind oncoming drivers, there is a thing called "high beam" which he can use whenever he wants... just hope that it's not a highway patrol he's blinding.
In other words, even if he gets his car "upgraded" to disable a feature that he paid for, he can still do essentially the same thing? Why get the "upgrade" and remove a paid-for feature, then? As I mentioned and you reiterated, there are police to take care of unlawful operation of his vehicle's features.
Your computer analogy is stupid... how about a car analogy?
Heh. I bought a car with the ability to go 120MPH, and I know it will do at least 100MPH (erm, according to what the speedometer claims that is, of course I've never ever tested that personally...). That speed is not legal in any jurisdiction in the United States. Should it be okay if the next time I go in for an oil change, they install a governor that stops my car from going over 75? Fuck no, and if that became some sort of mandatory thing, I'd start changing my own oil.
"You might do something illegal with that!" is never a valid reason to take something away from someone.