I was just about to post something similar. The full PDF report implies that all this we see in the USA now was brought about by the events of 11 Sep 2001. I believe this is disingenuous since it artificially ties surveillance to terrorism. By making even a slight connection, people would tend to approve of the situation, even if tacitly.
It's true that the Department of Homeland Security was created after the attacks, however we would be lying to ourselves if we were to believe the machine was not already in place, and used terrorism as an excuse to launch it full-scale.
Well we know there is this HUGE band of rock at the outer edge of our system called the Oort Cloud
Last I heard, it was tought to exist but not confirmed. Visual tests failed to find this cloud since it's not shiny enough. To push it further, I tend to recall it was hypothesized to exist since there are no other explanation regarding the origin of comets and asteroids.
In other words, I wouldn't say we "know", rather we "believe".
They're mammals, because we've decided that anything laying eggs are birds or reptiles (I am voluntarily skipping other arbitrary criteria), and anything giving live births are mammals (again, I'm simplifying here). That's okay then to put bats in the mammals category.
But this way of classifying is rather recent. If you classified animals in groups using other arbitrary criteria (for instance: if it has 2 legs and flies, it's a bird), then you would put bats with that group.
You cannot say their classification system got it wrong when you are judging it against your own, different, classification system.
Let me take another example. Certain cultures associate colours with emotions or situations. Assuming you're Western European or North American, you likely associate mourning with black, while if you were Chinese, it'd be white, or Eastern European it would be yellow, or South American it would be purple (ref: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/).
Are all the other wrong because they're not using the same classification as you?
So it's true, everyone now agrees on the same classification system for animalia based on certain (arbitrary) characteristics. Don't forget it's a recent phenomenon and documents produced prior to using this classification system is not bound by it.
I've often wondered why some people are more seriously affected with this syndrome than others. I've even heard someone calling it "mild trisomy" versus "severe trisomy". One hypothesis I developed (although IANAGeneticist) is that the fertilized egg was "normal" at the start, but after a number of mitoses (let's call that number K), one of the resulting cell ends up with an extra chromosome while the other is left short and dies. At the next mitosis, that trisomic cell replicates into trisomic cells unabashed.
If that is how it works, the severity would be dependant on K. Low K means high severity, high K low severity.
Of course, it would be easy to test. Take someone with a mild case and sample cells from many different parts of the body to see if they all are trisomic.
[...]Allowing encrypted traffic would allow me to sell internet service to people in rural areas because there's no way to detect what is in the encrypted content. If something becomes profitable enough eventually you'll choke the spectrum and make it unusable for everyone.[...]
I found the less propagandist news sources were: 1) RT.com 2) Aljazeera.com
I welcome other sources if any of you knows of them. Anything from US, Canada, UK, Australia, and NZ is tainted. I also slightly mistrust the rest of Europe in terms of journalistic integrity.
Maybe the best way is to decentralize the Internet even more. Wi-Fi routers to share neighbourhoods to neighbourhoods. That's what Project Byzantium is trying to accomplish.
And before you object "so what if she is?", I will respond "indeed, so what?". It's not her lifestyle I condemn, it's the misconstrued and possibly disingenuous way you present the information. Don't colour or doctor the truth. It stains it.
And finally, yes, she is the target of the NSA because of her connections. The problem is that everyone is connected to Edward Snowden by 7 links or less, so we're all under suspicion too.
It might seem trivial to many readers here, but I just wanted to remind the younguns here what does a Constitution mean, what it is for, and who should not be its authors.
I speak of all Constitutions, not just the one in the US.
So whether you're in France, Spain, Denmark, Honduras or any other country (except Canada, UK, NZ and Israel), there is a document, called the Constitution that is specifically crafted to restrict what all branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) of the land can do against you. It's created as a protection against abuses. Any law passed must first and foremost not run afoul of the Constitution otherwise it's non enforceable (that's the primary goal of the Constitution).
In light of this, let me ask you the question: who should write a country's Constitution? Do you believe it would be in your interest to have politicians, lawyers, or judges write your Constitution? What do you think would happen if that were the case?
Now, let me ask you another question: what do you do when all 3 branches collude to bypass the Constitution? In theory, you'd have the military involved to remove the offenders and restore the system. In fact, modern societies work the way they do only because of the threat of their own military. Without it, any group large enough could overpower the police and replace by force the current political/judiciary/legislative power with one of its own.
In light of this, it is *critical* that the military branch abides by its Constitution, even if it's in opposition to what they have been commanded to do by any branch of government having power to order or to restrict the military.
That said, what you have here in the case of an individual who chose to be under the umbrella of the Constitution of the United States of America. According to this Constitution, the government is not allowed to spy on its citizen. He reported the unconstitutional conduct of its government to the public and in theory should be protected by the US military, who should also intervene if the other branches won't.
In summary, a government in place is expected to obey its Constitution the same way that you, a citizen, are supposed to obey the laws that government made.
Please note I'm not advocating a political system over another or praising its workings, only stating that textbooks say about the Constitution. In my opinion (and you're free to disagree with me), any document crafted by man, no matter how well-intentioned, will necessarily be faulty, and its enforcement will be just as faulty.
Slashdot Mirror
she would have parsed, pieced, and posted all that we, techies, needed to know about such a document
reminds me of Ed Stark (Game of Thrones) who holds the sword that decapitated the man he condemned to death.
I recently read "Animal Farm" by George Orwell (yes, that one). I found the modern day political scene very much in sync with the book.
and who do you trust to double check his work?
I was just about to post something similar. The full PDF report implies that all this we see in the USA now was brought about by the events of 11 Sep 2001. I believe this is disingenuous since it artificially ties surveillance to terrorism. By making even a slight connection, people would tend to approve of the situation, even if tacitly.
It's true that the Department of Homeland Security was created after the attacks, however we would be lying to ourselves if we were to believe the machine was not already in place, and used terrorism as an excuse to launch it full-scale.
Really, get a clue dude, or at the very least stop arguing just for the sake of arguing
[offtopic but funny nonetheless] did you notice the nick of who you are responding to?
We need a new word to describe what's going on in today's world.
I enjoyed the comment at http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4261215&cid=44947107 where TWiTfan called it "Corporationalism"
Well we know there is this HUGE band of rock at the outer edge of our system called the Oort Cloud
Last I heard, it was tought to exist but not confirmed. Visual tests failed to find this cloud since it's not shiny enough.
To push it further, I tend to recall it was hypothesized to exist since there are no other explanation regarding the origin of comets and asteroids.
In other words, I wouldn't say we "know", rather we "believe".
beautiful BTTF reference. I applaud you, sir!
MOD PARENT UP, even if it's from AC. Very informative
to anyone who hasn't read Jean-Paul Marat's The Chains Of Slavery yet, I invite you to check: http://jpmarat.de/english/jpmcha4e.html#ToC6
The entire book is available at http://jpmarat.de/english/jpmie.html
Bats are not birds.
They're mammals, because we've decided that anything laying eggs are birds or reptiles (I am voluntarily skipping other arbitrary criteria), and anything giving live births are mammals (again, I'm simplifying here). That's okay then to put bats in the mammals category.
But this way of classifying is rather recent. If you classified animals in groups using other arbitrary criteria (for instance: if it has 2 legs and flies, it's a bird), then you would put bats with that group.
You cannot say their classification system got it wrong when you are judging it against your own, different, classification system.
Let me take another example. Certain cultures associate colours with emotions or situations. Assuming you're Western European or North American, you likely associate mourning with black, while if you were Chinese, it'd be white, or Eastern European it would be yellow, or South American it would be purple (ref: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/).
Are all the other wrong because they're not using the same classification as you?
So it's true, everyone now agrees on the same classification system for animalia based on certain (arbitrary) characteristics. Don't forget it's a recent phenomenon and documents produced prior to using this classification system is not bound by it.
maybe to protect the datamule. After all, there is law in UK allowing imprisonment for people who refuse to divulge their password.
What's the point then? Easy: Hidden volumes
There is no way to tell they even exist.
n/t
I've often wondered why some people are more seriously affected with this syndrome than others. I've even heard someone calling it "mild trisomy" versus "severe trisomy".
One hypothesis I developed (although IANAGeneticist) is that the fertilized egg was "normal" at the start, but after a number of mitoses (let's call that number K), one of the resulting cell ends up with an extra chromosome while the other is left short and dies. At the next mitosis, that trisomic cell replicates into trisomic cells unabashed.
If that is how it works, the severity would be dependant on K. Low K means high severity, high K low severity.
Of course, it would be easy to test. Take someone with a mild case and sample cells from many different parts of the body to see if they all are trisomic.
[offtopic] scary that with just your one post, I now know your name and address as they are posted at the bottom of your draft RFC [/offtopic]
A computer game was released in 2004 that fits in less than 100 kb but expands to several hundreds of Mb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger
JigJag
[...]Allowing encrypted traffic would allow me to sell internet service to people in rural areas because there's no way to detect what is in the encrypted content. If something becomes profitable enough eventually you'll choke the spectrum and make it unusable for everyone.[...]
thereby turning ham radio into spam radio
I found the less propagandist news sources were:
1) RT.com
2) Aljazeera.com
I welcome other sources if any of you knows of them. Anything from US, Canada, UK, Australia, and NZ is tainted. I also slightly mistrust the rest of Europe in terms of journalistic integrity.
JigJag
I thought something similar.
Maybe the best way is to decentralize the Internet even more. Wi-Fi routers to share neighbourhoods to neighbourhoods. That's what Project Byzantium is trying to accomplish.
this is an insightful comment and well reasoned. thx!
Is there a statute of limitation for whatever the UK wants to seize Assange for?
a ballerina? Check your sources man, she is an exhibitionist circus performer and erotic dancer!
And before you object "so what if she is?", I will respond "indeed, so what?". It's not her lifestyle I condemn, it's the misconstrued and possibly disingenuous way you present the information. Don't colour or doctor the truth. It stains it.
And finally, yes, she is the target of the NSA because of her connections. The problem is that everyone is connected to Edward Snowden by 7 links or less, so we're all under suspicion too.
JigJag
The USPS, however, still takes a picture of both sides of every envelope (and obviously time, date, location) and stores it.
Sorry to bother, but I found nothing on this when googling. Maybe I didn't use the right terms. Do you have any reference to this?
JigJag
It might seem trivial to many readers here, but I just wanted to remind the younguns here what does a Constitution mean, what it is for, and who should not be its authors.
I speak of all Constitutions, not just the one in the US.
So whether you're in France, Spain, Denmark, Honduras or any other country (except Canada, UK, NZ and Israel), there is a document, called the Constitution that is specifically crafted to restrict what all branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) of the land can do against you. It's created as a protection against abuses. Any law passed must first and foremost not run afoul of the Constitution otherwise it's non enforceable (that's the primary goal of the Constitution).
In light of this, let me ask you the question: who should write a country's Constitution? Do you believe it would be in your interest to have politicians, lawyers, or judges write your Constitution? What do you think would happen if that were the case?
Now, let me ask you another question: what do you do when all 3 branches collude to bypass the Constitution? In theory, you'd have the military involved to remove the offenders and restore the system. In fact, modern societies work the way they do only because of the threat of their own military. Without it, any group large enough could overpower the police and replace by force the current political/judiciary/legislative power with one of its own.
In light of this, it is *critical* that the military branch abides by its Constitution, even if it's in opposition to what they have been commanded to do by any branch of government having power to order or to restrict the military.
That said, what you have here in the case of an individual who chose to be under the umbrella of the Constitution of the United States of America. According to this Constitution, the government is not allowed to spy on its citizen. He reported the unconstitutional conduct of its government to the public and in theory should be protected by the US military, who should also intervene if the other branches won't.
In summary, a government in place is expected to obey its Constitution the same way that you, a citizen, are supposed to obey the laws that government made.
Please note I'm not advocating a political system over another or praising its workings, only stating that textbooks say about the Constitution. In my opinion (and you're free to disagree with me), any document crafted by man, no matter how well-intentioned, will necessarily be faulty, and its enforcement will be just as faulty.