I'll answer by assuming you're just a moron and not a troll. They came to me, unprompted, and offered me $1,000. I didn't ask for it or imply to them that they owed me something. I was repaired and my car was repaired and that was good enough for me. Still, their offer (which would not "set me up for life" for values of "life" greater than "a few days") was in return for something tangible: my promise not to sue them down the road. They came to me and said, "hey, are we cool? We are? If you're willing to sign off on that, we'll make it worth your while." I legally waived my right to come back 2 years later and claim that the accident made my kid stupid or my face uglier. While I wasn't going to do anything that crazy, plenty of people would. GEICO-the-thieving-bastards decided that it was worth $1,000 to make sure I wouldn't be one of them.
I accepted their offer in good faith and they stole most of it back from me. Let me repeat that earlier part: they were legally obligated to pay those bills. They weren't being goodhearted to pay for my car repairs and medical appointments. They were legally bound by contract with their customer to cover my expenses in this situation. By deducting those payments from the offer they extended to me, it's my opinion that they effectively stole that money from my settlement.
Suppose your boss said, "hey, VisceralLogic, if you come in and flip burgers this weekend, I'll give you $250!" So you agree to his offered terms and give him something of value - your time - in exchange for his payment. Come payday, you're expecting $200 that he already owed you from mopping bathrooms last week plus the $250 from working over the weekend. But surprise! Your check is for $250! Oh, I see what happened: that clever boss of yours deducted what he already owed you from his new offer. You should admire his trickiness and not threaten to knock his teeth out, right!
OMG, ain't that the truth. Last winter, I was driving the kids home from school when a woman lost control of her SUV, slid through an intersection in front of me, and caused me to run into her. Everyone was mostly OK (and the kids were thrilled - "that was awesome, Dad!") but my car needed a little work and I wrenched my back.
I went to a chiropractor (read about my previous experiences before you start in) for a few visits and felt great afterward. The body shop did a nice job fixing my car. When everything was done, her insurer, GEICO-the-thieving-bastards, called me to offer a settlement. I wasn't about to sue them or anything, but they basically wanted to buy my agreement to end the matter once and for all. It was a small amount - let's call it $1,000 for roundness - but I was willing to cash the check they were offering to write. It sounded fair.
So the check came, for $200. As it turns out, they hadn't paid any of my medical bills and not all of my car repair bills. That $1,000 settlement included the final payments on the bills those assholes were already legally obligated to pay. I checked with the state board of insurance, but they thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing for GEICO-the-thieving-bastards to do.
I am physically incapable of seeing a commercial for GEICO-the-thieving-bastards without yelling "fuck you, lizard!" at the TV. When the zombie apocalypse happens, that's one pack of jackasses who won't be allowed in my bunker. I'll wait for them to get eaten or infected and double-tap them for pleasure.
I don't think so because stocks are liquid. If you don't like the ones you have, a call (or click) to your broker will turn them into ones you'd rather own. I think it's more of an ego issue in that buyers were just certain they were in for a wildly profitable ride and don't want to believe that they simply chose poorly.
Back in the real world, my mom was a union employee of a railroad. At the high point of her career, she had the job title of Wire Chief and was basically in charge of their communications system (which included a phone switch in her office - not a PBX, but a 5ESS). When she'd worked there approximately forever, they closed her office and gave her a choice of moving to Minnesota or the local railyards. She hates winter and decided to stay. Well, her new role was sucky and only got suckier as she grew closer to retirement. She had a lot of seniority with the company but almost no seniority at the railyards, the yard employees resented an office worker occupying one of "their" jobs, and management gave her boss orders to make her quit before she retired.
At first, her main job duty was to stand next to the tracks and write down the numbers off the sides of train cars as they rolled past. By the end, they had her mopping the outhouses the train crews used. She made a game of the the situation:
Boss: So, how's the outhouse cleaning going for you? (with a nasty smile)
Mom: Oh, I love it! I hated being stuck in that old office and now I get to spend time outside!
Boss: [seethe]
But back to the original point: her union didn't do jack to help her. Nothing. Nada. She was a paying member for nearly three decades and the "proper" union provided her no assistance whatsoever.
And that's why I have nothing but disgust for American-style unions. Maybe they're legitimate and useful where you live, but as far as I can tell the ones we have are utterly useless.
Given a good master password, I'm not sure how an attacker could compromise the key store on a properly-implemented [1] password manager.
In the common-secret system (as shorthand for the PasswordMaker idea; I don't know what else to call it), your master password is only as secure as the weakest website you use it on. Given that the algorithm is published and easy to implement, if an attacker steals the login database of some unpatched phpBB system, they have a very short list of tests to run against each potential master password you might be using. Assume they control a botnet of more than 30,000 machines they could crack your "protected" password roughly as easily as a single machine could crack the un-PasswordMaker'ed original.
Sure, password managers involve putting all your eggs in one basket, but that basket is protected by MILSPEC encryption. I don't worry about using DropBox to sync it between my laptop and my iPhone because I don't have to trust any of the intermediaries - my data is encrypted at the endpoints.
And last, I'm at least as confident of my password manager as I am of any random Windows box not to have a keylogger installed.
I was thinking of something simpler such as "echo MyPassword69! slashdot.org|md5sum" and then "aaa53a64cbb02f01d79e6aa05f0027ba" using that as my password since many sites will take 32-character long passwords or they will truncate for you. More generalized than PasswordMaker and easier to access but no alpha-num+symbol translation and only (32) 0-9af characters but that should be random enough, or you can do sha1sum instead for a little longer hash string.
DO NOT DO THIS. I don't mean this disrespectfully, but you don't know what you're doing. That's OK! People not named "Bruce" generally suck at secure algorithms. Crypto is hard and has unexpected implications until you're much more knowledgeable on the subject than you (or I) currently are. For example, suppose that hypothetical site helpfully truncates your password to 8 chars. By storing only 8 hex digits, you've reduced your password's keyspace to just 32 bits. If you used an algorithm with base64 encoding instead, you'd get the same complexity in only 5.3 chars.
Despite what you claim, you're really much better off using a secure storage app that generates truly random passwords for you and stores them in a securely encrypted file. In another post here I mention that I use 1Password, but really any reputable app will get you the same protections. Your algorithm is a "security by obscurity" system; if someone knows your algorithm, gaining your master password gives them full access to every account you have. Contrast with a password locker where you can change your master password before the attacker gets access to the secret store, and in the worst case scenario provides you with a list of accounts you need to change.
I haven't used PasswordMaker but I'd apply the same criticisms to them. If an attacker knows that you use PasswordMaker, they can narrow down the search space based on the very few things you can vary:
URL (the attacker will have this)
character set (dropdown gives you 6 choices)
which of nine hash algorithms was used (actually 13 - the FAQ is outdated)
modifier (algorithmically, part of your password)
username (attacker will have this or can likely guess it easily)
password length (let's say, likely to be between 8 and 20 chars, so 13 options)
password prefix (stupid idea that reduces your password's complexity)
password suffix (stupid idea that reduces your password's complexity)
which of nine l33t-speak levels was used
when l33t-speak was applied (total of 28 options: 9 levels each at three different "Use l33t" times, plus "not at all")
My comments about the modifier being part of your password? Basically you're concatenating those strings together to create a longer password in some manner. There's not really a difference, and that's assuming you actually use the modifier.
So, back to our attack scenario where a hacker has your master password, username, and a URL they want to visit: disregarding the prefix and suffix options, they have 6 * 13 * 13 * 28 = 28,392 possible output passwords to test. That should keep them busy for at least a minute or two. Oh, and when you've found out that your password is compromised? Hope you remember every website you've ever used PasswordMaker on!
Seriously, please don't do this stuff. I'd much rather see you using pwgen to create truly random passwords and then using something like GnuPG to store them all in a strongly-encrypted file.
Use a passphrase unless there's some stupid limit on password length.
I use 1Password to generate and store unique passwords for every site and service I use (but any other secure generator would do as well). Assuming a site uses hashes correctly, good luck cracking passwords like "rdLRslj67aqJ".
I know that tax strategies are always foremost in my mind when trying to get laid.
I have a hard time believing anyone's going to change their reproductive behavior because they'd lose a deduction or get fined, short of implementing China-level deterrence.
It ought to greet me with an offer to try out a unique Slivovitz or the vintage Calvados rather than offering me the pitcher of Coors Lite for one buck less than yesterday as if I care. [...] If I sit down at a computer I've never used before and plug in my iPod, shouldn't it notice that I've never listened to a three minute pop song since I bought the device, but I do have 16GB of hour long lectures in the areas of technology, psychology, politics, history, and economics?
Third, as is pointed out every time an incident like this occurs, trademark owners have to take no chances and must enforce perceived violations or risk losing their right to it.
They don't have to enforce them via lawsuits. They could very easily say, "admit that your logo kind of looks like ours, pay us a dollar, and we'll give you lifetime non-revocable, non-transferable rights to keep using it". Then true infringers down the road can't say that Apple ignores brand dilution because Apple can demonstrate that they have licensing agreements in place. Suing them? That's just a dick move.
If that's an app I've installed specifically for its screenshot abilities, cool! If not, I don't want it running on my desktop. I don't want a text editor connecting to Facebook or an instant messenger to open a disk device node. Systems like SELinux implement these permissions as access controls. Apple seems to have decided to implement them at the code review level.
So a free Twitter app isn't allowed to take screenshots while I have my checkbook app open? I'm OK with that. Every one of those restrictions seem perfectly reasonable and good.
This is despite the fact that Microsoft has publicly said that they prefer that vendors do not do this but that they cannot mandate this, as it is ultimately the vendors choice, not Microsofts.
Mmmm-hmmm. And shipping a pre-installed alternative browser was the vendor's choice. And selling non-Windows operating systems pre-installed was the vendor's choice. And making netbooks with decently non-crappy specs was the vendor's choice. Sorry, but I've seen what happens when the vendors are given free rein - as long as they're OK with losing their OEM Windows license discounts. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 247 times, kiss my ass.
So far not a single hardware vendor has said they will disable the on/off switch, if you disregard the very suspicious claim by Red Hat employees that they "know" one vendor who has "privately and anonymously" declared that they will disallow Linux.
anonymous AppleCare support representative spoke to ZDNet's Ed Bott over the weekend, telling the reporter that complaints about malware infections on the Mac increased significantly in the first half of May.
I haven't used Red Hat in over a decade, but quite frankly I trust their references to "private and anonymous" sources more than those of Bott, who seems to have made a career of "other OSes suck, too!"
What you want is an ability to compress small individual blocks of the file that can be accessed separately without having to decompress the entire file. But doing that creates all sorts of other problems such as how to efficiently allocate the space for the compressed contents which might change over time (and change size) without causing a great deal of additional fragmentation. This is rather harder to do.
On Solaris and FreeBSD, it's zfs set compression=on tank. The problems have been solved, for suitably large values of "solved".
If you accept that the world wasn't made in seven days, when the genesis story says it was, then... how can you trust any of it?
OK, let's assume that the Bible is the inspired word of God for the sake of argument. Further assume that Genesis was meant as a literal explanation of the origin of the universe, Earth, and man.
It was targeted for a group of nomadic shepherds who had effectively zero knowledge of math, physics, or cosmology, and written in phrases they'd be able to understand and identify with.
Bible believers have a very easy and legitimate way to handle its inaccuracy here: accept that it was a reasonably simplified version of the truth but not meant to be scientifically precise.
The headphones I've seen are completely nonmetallic. The speaker is in a different room from the scanner and sounds are transmitted via a plastic tube.
You can download my stuff - legally - in a lot of places. Share and enjoy!
It is not only about big corporations and big media, independenst and small artists alike need this badly.
Bullshit. Independents and small artists will never have the resources to wield these sticks. This is a Hollywood power grab and there's simply no other reasonable way to describe it.
I wrote to my senator (Mike Johanns, R-NE) to urge him to oppose the Hollywood Welfare Act [1] which helps a tiny (but vocal) cartel at the expense of everyone else. His office replied to say he agreed that it was crucial legislation to protect America's creative industries. So much for letter writing.:-/
In fairness, the last time I wrote him on a completely unrelated subject, he called me himself. I got home to an answering message: "Hi Kirk, this is Mike Johanns and I wanted to talk to you about your letter. Sorry I missed you! Give me a call back if you'd like." We never managed to meet up, but I respect that he personally went of out his way to address a constituent. I just hate that he's firmly on the wrong side (in my opinion) of this issue.
[1] I called it by its official name in my letter, but call it by its real name elsewhere.
And another thing commonly blamed for "bloat" is simply using faster, more memory-intensive algorithms. If I can apply a 512MB data cache to an app to cut its runtime from 4 hours to 8 seconds, I'll do it in a heartbeat and without apologies. I also use memoization where appropriate, hash tables instead of lists when I'm going to have to search for keys a lot, and other data structures that spend some RAM to buy performance.
There are instances of real bloat out there, but RAM usage alone isn't any indication whatsoever of a sloppy codebase. Maybe the author just made design decisions that optimize for parameters other than saving ever bit.
The only thing I'm not is a 14 year old girl who wants everything to be pretty or a Mac user who values looks over functionality.
Funny, but I'm a (ahem!) seasoned developer who bought a Mac earlier this year because I value functionality over looks, and after 14 years of fighting Linux desktops I wanted something that mostly worked out-of-the-box. Sure, there are things I'd change if I could, but it's a lot closer to my ideal than I could ever get Linux to be.
Gitmo is open because the Republicans made it impossible to transfer the detainees out. Obama isn't a dictator. He can't just make things happen by declaration.
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I'll answer by assuming you're just a moron and not a troll. They came to me, unprompted, and offered me $1,000. I didn't ask for it or imply to them that they owed me something. I was repaired and my car was repaired and that was good enough for me. Still, their offer (which would not "set me up for life" for values of "life" greater than "a few days") was in return for something tangible: my promise not to sue them down the road. They came to me and said, "hey, are we cool? We are? If you're willing to sign off on that, we'll make it worth your while." I legally waived my right to come back 2 years later and claim that the accident made my kid stupid or my face uglier. While I wasn't going to do anything that crazy, plenty of people would. GEICO-the-thieving-bastards decided that it was worth $1,000 to make sure I wouldn't be one of them.
I accepted their offer in good faith and they stole most of it back from me. Let me repeat that earlier part: they were legally obligated to pay those bills. They weren't being goodhearted to pay for my car repairs and medical appointments. They were legally bound by contract with their customer to cover my expenses in this situation. By deducting those payments from the offer they extended to me, it's my opinion that they effectively stole that money from my settlement.
Suppose your boss said, "hey, VisceralLogic, if you come in and flip burgers this weekend, I'll give you $250!" So you agree to his offered terms and give him something of value - your time - in exchange for his payment. Come payday, you're expecting $200 that he already owed you from mopping bathrooms last week plus the $250 from working over the weekend. But surprise! Your check is for $250! Oh, I see what happened: that clever boss of yours deducted what he already owed you from his new offer. You should admire his trickiness and not threaten to knock his teeth out, right!
Yeah, I thought so.
OMG, ain't that the truth. Last winter, I was driving the kids home from school when a woman lost control of her SUV, slid through an intersection in front of me, and caused me to run into her. Everyone was mostly OK (and the kids were thrilled - "that was awesome, Dad!") but my car needed a little work and I wrenched my back.
I went to a chiropractor (read about my previous experiences before you start in) for a few visits and felt great afterward. The body shop did a nice job fixing my car. When everything was done, her insurer, GEICO-the-thieving-bastards, called me to offer a settlement. I wasn't about to sue them or anything, but they basically wanted to buy my agreement to end the matter once and for all. It was a small amount - let's call it $1,000 for roundness - but I was willing to cash the check they were offering to write. It sounded fair.
So the check came, for $200. As it turns out, they hadn't paid any of my medical bills and not all of my car repair bills. That $1,000 settlement included the final payments on the bills those assholes were already legally obligated to pay. I checked with the state board of insurance, but they thought it was a perfectly reasonable thing for GEICO-the-thieving-bastards to do.
I am physically incapable of seeing a commercial for GEICO-the-thieving-bastards without yelling "fuck you, lizard!" at the TV. When the zombie apocalypse happens, that's one pack of jackasses who won't be allowed in my bunker. I'll wait for them to get eaten or infected and double-tap them for pleasure.
I don't think so because stocks are liquid. If you don't like the ones you have, a call (or click) to your broker will turn them into ones you'd rather own. I think it's more of an ego issue in that buyers were just certain they were in for a wildly profitable ride and don't want to believe that they simply chose poorly.
Ha! Yeah! A union would fix that right up!
Back in the real world, my mom was a union employee of a railroad. At the high point of her career, she had the job title of Wire Chief and was basically in charge of their communications system (which included a phone switch in her office - not a PBX, but a 5ESS). When she'd worked there approximately forever, they closed her office and gave her a choice of moving to Minnesota or the local railyards. She hates winter and decided to stay. Well, her new role was sucky and only got suckier as she grew closer to retirement. She had a lot of seniority with the company but almost no seniority at the railyards, the yard employees resented an office worker occupying one of "their" jobs, and management gave her boss orders to make her quit before she retired.
At first, her main job duty was to stand next to the tracks and write down the numbers off the sides of train cars as they rolled past. By the end, they had her mopping the outhouses the train crews used. She made a game of the the situation:
Boss: So, how's the outhouse cleaning going for you? (with a nasty smile)
Mom: Oh, I love it! I hated being stuck in that old office and now I get to spend time outside!
Boss: [seethe]
But back to the original point: her union didn't do jack to help her. Nothing. Nada. She was a paying member for nearly three decades and the "proper" union provided her no assistance whatsoever.
And that's why I have nothing but disgust for American-style unions. Maybe they're legitimate and useful where you live, but as far as I can tell the ones we have are utterly useless.
Given a good master password, I'm not sure how an attacker could compromise the key store on a properly-implemented [1] password manager.
In the common-secret system (as shorthand for the PasswordMaker idea; I don't know what else to call it), your master password is only as secure as the weakest website you use it on. Given that the algorithm is published and easy to implement, if an attacker steals the login database of some unpatched phpBB system, they have a very short list of tests to run against each potential master password you might be using. Assume they control a botnet of more than 30,000 machines they could crack your "protected" password roughly as easily as a single machine could crack the un-PasswordMaker'ed original.
Sure, password managers involve putting all your eggs in one basket, but that basket is protected by MILSPEC encryption. I don't worry about using DropBox to sync it between my laptop and my iPhone because I don't have to trust any of the intermediaries - my data is encrypted at the endpoints.
And last, I'm at least as confident of my password manager as I am of any random Windows box not to have a keylogger installed.
[1] Yeah, I know: big assumption.
I was thinking of something simpler such as "echo MyPassword69! slashdot.org|md5sum" and then "aaa53a64cbb02f01d79e6aa05f0027ba" using that as my password since many sites will take 32-character long passwords or they will truncate for you. More generalized than PasswordMaker and easier to access but no alpha-num+symbol translation and only (32) 0-9af characters but that should be random enough, or you can do sha1sum instead for a little longer hash string.
DO NOT DO THIS. I don't mean this disrespectfully, but you don't know what you're doing. That's OK! People not named "Bruce" generally suck at secure algorithms. Crypto is hard and has unexpected implications until you're much more knowledgeable on the subject than you (or I) currently are. For example, suppose that hypothetical site helpfully truncates your password to 8 chars. By storing only 8 hex digits, you've reduced your password's keyspace to just 32 bits. If you used an algorithm with base64 encoding instead, you'd get the same complexity in only 5.3 chars.
Despite what you claim, you're really much better off using a secure storage app that generates truly random passwords for you and stores them in a securely encrypted file. In another post here I mention that I use 1Password, but really any reputable app will get you the same protections. Your algorithm is a "security by obscurity" system; if someone knows your algorithm, gaining your master password gives them full access to every account you have. Contrast with a password locker where you can change your master password before the attacker gets access to the secret store, and in the worst case scenario provides you with a list of accounts you need to change.
I haven't used PasswordMaker but I'd apply the same criticisms to them. If an attacker knows that you use PasswordMaker, they can narrow down the search space based on the very few things you can vary:
My comments about the modifier being part of your password? Basically you're concatenating those strings together to create a longer password in some manner. There's not really a difference, and that's assuming you actually use the modifier.
So, back to our attack scenario where a hacker has your master password, username, and a URL they want to visit: disregarding the prefix and suffix options, they have 6 * 13 * 13 * 28 = 28,392 possible output passwords to test. That should keep them busy for at least a minute or two. Oh, and when you've found out that your password is compromised? Hope you remember every website you've ever used PasswordMaker on!
Seriously, please don't do this stuff. I'd much rather see you using pwgen to create truly random passwords and then using something like GnuPG to store them all in a strongly-encrypted file.
Use a passphrase unless there's some stupid limit on password length.
I use 1Password to generate and store unique passwords for every site and service I use (but any other secure generator would do as well). Assuming a site uses hashes correctly, good luck cracking passwords like "rdLRslj67aqJ".
The root problem is greed. I never said (nor do I believe) that any other type of economy is going to avert that
But that must've been your point or you wouldn't have mentioned it and implied a relationship.
I know that tax strategies are always foremost in my mind when trying to get laid.
I have a hard time believing anyone's going to change their reproductive behavior because they'd lose a deduction or get fined, short of implementing China-level deterrence.
It ought to greet me with an offer to try out a unique Slivovitz or the vintage Calvados rather than offering me the pitcher of Coors Lite for one buck less than yesterday as if I care. [...] If I sit down at a computer I've never used before and plug in my iPod, shouldn't it notice that I've never listened to a three minute pop song since I bought the device, but I do have 16GB of hour long lectures in the areas of technology, psychology, politics, history, and economics?
I am so never taking you on a pub crawl.
Third, as is pointed out every time an incident like this occurs, trademark owners have to take no chances and must enforce perceived violations or risk losing their right to it.
They don't have to enforce them via lawsuits. They could very easily say, "admit that your logo kind of looks like ours, pay us a dollar, and we'll give you lifetime non-revocable, non-transferable rights to keep using it". Then true infringers down the road can't say that Apple ignores brand dilution because Apple can demonstrate that they have licensing agreements in place. Suing them? That's just a dick move.
If that's an app I've installed specifically for its screenshot abilities, cool! If not, I don't want it running on my desktop. I don't want a text editor connecting to Facebook or an instant messenger to open a disk device node. Systems like SELinux implement these permissions as access controls. Apple seems to have decided to implement them at the code review level.
Strictly, yes: I bet at least two people are hacking out fart apps as we speak.
So a free Twitter app isn't allowed to take screenshots while I have my checkbook app open? I'm OK with that. Every one of those restrictions seem perfectly reasonable and good.
This is despite the fact that Microsoft has publicly said that they prefer that vendors do not do this but that they cannot mandate this, as it is ultimately the vendors choice, not Microsofts.
Mmmm-hmmm. And shipping a pre-installed alternative browser was the vendor's choice. And selling non-Windows operating systems pre-installed was the vendor's choice. And making netbooks with decently non-crappy specs was the vendor's choice. Sorry, but I've seen what happens when the vendors are given free rein - as long as they're OK with losing their OEM Windows license discounts. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 247 times, kiss my ass.
So far not a single hardware vendor has said they will disable the on/off switch, if you disregard the very suspicious claim by Red Hat employees that they "know" one vendor who has "privately and anonymously" declared that they will disallow Linux.
That sounds suspiciously like Ed Bott's previous claims:
I haven't used Red Hat in over a decade, but quite frankly I trust their references to "private and anonymous" sources more than those of Bott, who seems to have made a career of "other OSes suck, too!"
What you want is an ability to compress small individual blocks of the file that can be accessed separately without having to decompress the entire file. But doing that creates all sorts of other problems such as how to efficiently allocate the space for the compressed contents which might change over time (and change size) without causing a great deal of additional fragmentation. This is rather harder to do.
On Solaris and FreeBSD, it's zfs set compression=on tank. The problems have been solved, for suitably large values of "solved".
If you accept that the world wasn't made in seven days, when the genesis story says it was, then... how can you trust any of it?
OK, let's assume that the Bible is the inspired word of God for the sake of argument. Further assume that Genesis was meant as a literal explanation of the origin of the universe, Earth, and man.
It was targeted for a group of nomadic shepherds who had effectively zero knowledge of math, physics, or cosmology, and written in phrases they'd be able to understand and identify with.
Bible believers have a very easy and legitimate way to handle its inaccuracy here: accept that it was a reasonably simplified version of the truth but not meant to be scientifically precise.
The headphones I've seen are completely nonmetallic. The speaker is in a different room from the scanner and sounds are transmitted via a plastic tube.
See you when your stuff gets 'uploaded'.
You can download my stuff - legally - in a lot of places. Share and enjoy!
It is not only about big corporations and big media, independenst and small artists alike need this badly.
Bullshit. Independents and small artists will never have the resources to wield these sticks. This is a Hollywood power grab and there's simply no other reasonable way to describe it.
As much as I love ol' Ben, I'm having trouble finding a way to twist his quote to this situation.
I wrote to my senator (Mike Johanns, R-NE) to urge him to oppose the Hollywood Welfare Act [1] which helps a tiny (but vocal) cartel at the expense of everyone else. His office replied to say he agreed that it was crucial legislation to protect America's creative industries. So much for letter writing. :-/
In fairness, the last time I wrote him on a completely unrelated subject, he called me himself. I got home to an answering message: "Hi Kirk, this is Mike Johanns and I wanted to talk to you about your letter. Sorry I missed you! Give me a call back if you'd like." We never managed to meet up, but I respect that he personally went of out his way to address a constituent. I just hate that he's firmly on the wrong side (in my opinion) of this issue.
[1] I called it by its official name in my letter, but call it by its real name elsewhere.
And another thing commonly blamed for "bloat" is simply using faster, more memory-intensive algorithms. If I can apply a 512MB data cache to an app to cut its runtime from 4 hours to 8 seconds, I'll do it in a heartbeat and without apologies. I also use memoization where appropriate, hash tables instead of lists when I'm going to have to search for keys a lot, and other data structures that spend some RAM to buy performance.
There are instances of real bloat out there, but RAM usage alone isn't any indication whatsoever of a sloppy codebase. Maybe the author just made design decisions that optimize for parameters other than saving ever bit.
I think you just re-invented Git.
The only thing I'm not is a 14 year old girl who wants everything to be pretty or a Mac user who values looks over functionality.
Funny, but I'm a (ahem!) seasoned developer who bought a Mac earlier this year because I value functionality over looks, and after 14 years of fighting Linux desktops I wanted something that mostly worked out-of-the-box. Sure, there are things I'd change if I could, but it's a lot closer to my ideal than I could ever get Linux to be.
Gitmo is open because the Republicans made it impossible to transfer the detainees out. Obama isn't a dictator. He can't just make things happen by declaration.
If only he were Constitutionally granted ultimate control over the running of the military, I'm sure things would be different.