Do it yourself means that you manage risk and cost. Handing it over to an outside contractor means, inevitably, eventually, with all companies, some douche nozzle accountant executive with limited tech knowledge in the pursuit personal bonuses and claiming great savings and extra profit with the typical B$ spreadsheet. Will take a series of cost savings short cuts that allow risk of data loss to become a certainty of data loss.
However you don't know when this is happening. So cannot assess and manage you risk. It' s possible you may not even find out even after a loss/disclosure has occured. Note also that if the company you choose is bigger than you are then you automatically increase your risk. Since crackers, both criminal and government sponsored, tend to be interested in the biggest targets. Whilst momandpop.com might have to specifically attract the attention of the "bad guys" they are already looking at Dropbox, Amazon, Google, Skydrive, etc.
How will you ever know for sure that the program won't send your private key to the server - encrypted with another key so you will never see it if you would try to monitor traffic?
Unless you control the "client side" software you can't even know if it is even using the key you think it is. Never mind doing something as elaborate as steganography to send data you don't know it's sending.
Indeed. Mostly give up the idea of having the host encrypt files for you. You never know if they have a backdoor of some sort.
Even "pre-Snowden" relying on a remote service or software provided by that service to perform such "encryption" was a bad idea. Even without deliberate "backdoors" there are many ways in which such a system can can fail, especially if proprietary software in involved.
Not only is it untrue, but solar/wind will be much cheaper than coal in just a few years. The technology is really moving that fast.
The biggest problem with both solar and wind is that output is effectivly random. Without either alternative power sources or the ability to store huge amounts of energy it's just not possible to match supply to demand.
I recall when Windows 95 was out, Microsoft got into trouble with the Indian government for showing a part of Kashmir within Pakistan. I forget in which version they dropped the maps and made it simply a list of the major cities in each time zone.
I'd like to see someone produce a map that shows Tibet as a separate country, label China as 'Greater Taiwan' or better still, as 'Taiwanese Beijing' (as a spoof on the IOC's label of Taiwan as 'Chinese Taipei').
In the case of a timezone map the more obvious thing would be label the Hawaiian islands as "Occupied by the USA".
The problem is with schools (at least around here) is that what they teach as "IT" and "computer literacy" is in fact nothing of the sort - they are just teaching office skills, not really any different to how my mother was taught to touch type and to use shorthand.
The modern version is possibly more limited. Since the older version wasn't restricted to using one model of typewriter...
After a while they start to think that the various bad interface designs are a conspiracy against them; this is only compounded when a technical type reaches over and helps them with a flick of a single switch, and when asked why couldn't it have been designed better it becomes obvious that the technical person is hunting for a way to not say, "They assumed that you had at least a double digit IQ." and then it becomes hatred.
Assuming that the "technical type" isn't silently cursing the user interface... Also what type of person usually designs user interfaces?
The research suggests that the genetic predisposition causes the immune system to act different in response to the virus. If the research is correct, then yes you need both the genetic factor and the virus to get type-1 diabetes.
All diabetes appears to be GbyE. The interaction between both Genetic and Enviromental factors. It's supected that the genetic factors involved with T1 are more general (could be involved with many "auto immue" conditions) than those involved with T2.
Fructose is associated with fatty liver disease, fructose is a monosaccaride that the liver must convert into glucose before it can be utilized, sucrose (table sugar) is a disaccaride composed of fructose and glucose.
The liver converts excess sugars into FATS. The reason it does this is because sugars disolve in blood plasma (water) thus their concentration within the blood must be closely regulated. Where as fats, within VLDL, can circulate in the blood at various concentrations without causing any problems. The association with fatty liver disase would be that the liver is producing fat faster than either VLDL (or cholesterol). (So maybe it's more fructose/galactose without protein.) Converting fructose to glucose would serve no useful purpose in a mammal. (Even glucose to galactose dosn't appear to be a major part of lactation.) Fats are of rather more use, since they can be used "structurally" as well as for "fuel".
You might also mention that Fructose (while it taste Sweet) is the Stealth molecule.. they body "can't detect".. you can eat a ton of Fructose.. or sugars like Table Sugar, Date Sugar, Maltitol, Sorbitol or 90% Fructose Agave Syrup.. and not raise your Insulin levels one Iota.. the Body it quite literally "Blind" to Fructose.
Manitol and sorbitol are "sugar alcohols" a different type of ogranic compound. "Table Sugar" is sucrose, a disaccharide of fructose and glucose. Fruits tend to contain a mixture of glucose, fructose and sucrose. As plant based foods the will also contain galactan, a galcatose polysaccharide. Some, such as bananas, also contain high levels of the glucose polysaccharides amylose and amylopectin.
The body can't burn Fructose, it has to turn it Into human Fat, then store that Fat, then Break that same Fat down into Glucose before it can burn it to fuel..
Human cells are prefectly able to "burn" frutose (or galactose for that matter). These get turned into fat by the liver since fats are of considerably more use than sugars to mammals. Any glucose which cannot be used in fairly short order is also converted to fats (assuming insulin is available.) The only cells which can't "burn" fats are those without mitochondria there's thus no need for anything other than a fairly low level of GNG even with a zero glucose diet.
you've already filled your Fat cells with the Jellied Fructose Fat.
Fats produced by the liver enter the blood inside VLDL, which are likely to remain in the bloodstream considerably longer than any dietary glucose.
Quite literally makes any Glucose that would have been harmless before.. Toxic and in Life threatening instantly.. congratulations.. you have Type 2 diabetes.
An excess of glucose in the blood is dangerous in itself. This would also be the case with fructose and galactose. But the regulatory mechanism is different here. T2 diabetes occurs when it cannot be removed quickly enough from the blood to keep it below toxic levels (7.6 mmol/l). Doing this is going to be easier with every cell taking up glucose than if only the liver and fat cells are doing so...
I thought Fructose was the prime candidate for over production of Fatty Acids and Triglycerides that literally "jam up" the mechanism that normally brings high blood sugar down. And that Insulin "resistance" was simply a conservation of mass problem.. literally.. all available Fat cell space is used up.. until the body can make more.. like a Housing Shortage
The human (or any other mammal) body dosn't work that way. Some cells need insulin before they can take up glucose. But more or less all cells can take up fructose and galactose without needing it to be present. What typically happens in practice is virtually all dietary fructose and galactose is changed into fats by the liver. It's impossible to fat cells to become "full up" since they can always undergo mitosis.
So the Blood Sugar and Fat Triglycerides just sit in the blood stream congealing and eroding the outside of the cells in the arteries and veins and organs exposed to the soup.
Sugars disolve in blood plasma, thus must be cosely regulated to maintain the required physical and chemical properties. Lipids are carried in cell like structures called lipoproteins. The number of lipoproteins in the blood, especially chylomicrons and VLDL can vary greatly. Usually cells would taking glucose from the blood once the concentration in the cytoplasm exceeds a certain level. (Regardless of how much insulin is present in the blood.) Insulin resistance is the case insulin receptors remaining "off" even after cytoplasm glucose levels fall e.g. due to glycolysis. High levels on insulin and/or glucose tend to inhibit formation of lipoprotein receptors so an insulin resistant cell can't easily switch its ATP production from glycolysis and TCA cycle to beta oxidation or ketosis. Since liver and fat cells have the additional metabolic pathway of converting glucose to fat they don't tend to become insulin resistant.
I became a type 1 at 28, after I was sick for a week. My father became type 1 at 32. They used to call it Juvenile Diabetes, but obviously that is a misnomer. The later you get exposed to the virus, the later you become diabetic.
Similarly T2 used to be called "Mature Onset Diabetes". Thus you end up with terms such as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA) and Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY). IIRC the oldest person diagnosed T1 was in their 90's and the youngest person diagnosed T2 around 7. It turns out than many people with MODY actually have a mitochondial abnormaility. Whilst this produces "insulin resistance" the biochemical mechanism is different.
It is worth noting this is for type 1 diabetes, not type 2 which is the modern plague resulting largely from bad diet and inactivity. That said, if you know somebody for whom diabetes is a lifelong affliction since childhood, and kids who need shots for diabetes, that's type 1.
Genetics appears to be a strong factor in ALL forms of diabetes. As for "bad diet" this may well be the low fat, but very high glucose, diet pushed as "healthy" since the late 1970's (in the US). Given that diabetes is the inability to effectivly handle dietary glucose.
However the 4th amendment does put some limits on searching the effects and papers or taking of property from citizens:
Except that it dosn't say "citizens" it says "the people". The second paragraph of Article I, Section 2 states "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen." Making it rather clear that "US Citizens" are a subset of "the people". Where does the idea that these are synonyms originate? Nowhere in any of the ammendments is such a redefinition apparent. About the only definitions of "the people" which would make any sense would be "all people anywhere", "all people in US territory plus US citizens elsewhere" or "all people legally in US territiory plus US citizens elsewhere".
You say that as if it doesn't apply to proprietary software as well. Your metric is stupid and if you think it's a good way of measuring, you are stupid. Make no doubt about it: Sturgeon's Law applies to most everything, including proprietary software and FOSS. And it's amazing what kind of garbage people will pay lots of money for in niche usage.
Any actual Total Cost of Ownership would need to address the issue of broken software which is unfixable. Something which is only possible with proprietary software. (Including "It's a feature not a bug" cases.)
How is the project named? Is it something reminiscent of the function (like PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, Internet Explorer) or something entirely random, forcing more cognitive load on an uninformed user (Gimp, Firefox, Juice)?
With the likes of Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Exchange, even Oracle clearly indicating function?
Open-source documentation is like an insomniac cat. Theoretically it exists somewhere, but no one's ever seen it.
Plenty of software is poorly documented. Alt least with OSS you always have the source code as documentation. So it's impossible for OSS to have undocumented "features". Unlike the situation with proprietary software.
I've got news for you, friend. Information has never harmed a single soul. It takes action to do that. Information doesn't kill people, people do.
Indeed many things blamed on "The Internet" actually involve people meeting in person.
The NSA does not preempt terrorist threats, and even if they did, the cost to the rest of our lives is too much. They've inundated themselves with data and can't make sense of any of it until after the actions have been performed. Besides, folks could just send post cards with stenographic messages on them, or any other low-tech solution.
Even moderatly good codes (which includes using "slang terms) would more or less ensure that interceptions would be useless in preventing anything.
More folks die of heart disease every year than over fifty 9/11's... 2,996 died in 9/11. 597,689. Two Hundred Times More, Every Year! If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food.
Similarly it would make more sense for the TSA to spend all it's budget on improving road safety. As for the issue of "healthy food" they'd probably first need to find out what is healthy for people as opposed to profitable for the food industry.
To put it another way: free speech means some folks will say things that match your opinion (a "good" thing!), but sometimes, they dare to say stuff you don't agree with! And the latter can't be allowed.
Where the ethics gets tricky is "you" (be that an individual, a "majority" or vocal "minority") agreeing with an opinion or not may not be a good metric as to if something should be allowed or not in a society. Something which is "popular" may be very "bad", whereas something which is "unpopular" may be very "good".
And the reason James Clapper here wants to forbid you to use encryption is pretty nefarious, even if he claims to want only "your good".
Very often those who seek to impose something on people "for their own good" are the most oppressive.
You have to draw a line somewhere and wherever you draw it it'll be arbitrary. Not drawing that line at all would be even sillier. To me it's best that you draw a single line and get the full power and responsibility at the same age (with exceptions for the severely mentally handicapped).
If you are already making an exception for "severely mentally handicapped" then age is no longer the only criteria anyway. Maybe instead what's needed is someway of testing "mental competence". Or a biological method of testing if someone is "child" or "adult".
Otherwise you have multiple arbitrary lines like in some countries the age you can be conscripted/sign up as a soldier is lower than the age you can vote for the leaders who'd send you to die and which itself is lower than the age you can drink alcoholic beverages. And that to me is even sillier than a single arbitrary line.
There's also things like being able to operate highly dangerous machines in public.
If they are already unable to detect and prevent bad things from happening at the hands of terrorists, what justifies attempting to crack one of the few means of privacy we have left?
The whole thing being based on the assumption that mass snooping actually does anything against "terrorism" (or any of the other "threats" used as justifciation.)
They used to do this stuff using human assets - actual members of the CIA going out and recruiting agents, analyzing data received, finding targets and then determining what to do about them, but when they came across the absolute "sexiness" of electronic spying, they cut waaaaaaay back on human spying, turned the problem over the NSA and cut the budget (more likely spend more on the NSA than they did on CIA employees and bribes to prospective agents).
WIth the obvious problem that without humans in the loop it can be impossible to separate "signal" from "noise". Assuming you are even looking at the right communications channel in the fist place. With this being identified as a serious problem over 12 years ago!
The NSA agents have no reason why they wouldn't sell any intel to the highest bidder, since there's no traceability nor accountability (remember that the agents only got caught because they confessed; somebody selling the same info would never do that). I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of US companies that'd love to get their hands on the intel the NSA collects.
Unlike Edward Snowdon spys within the NSA wouldn't go telling the entire world what they'd been up to. Also the NSA undoubtedly freely exchanges information with "partners". So a US company might find it easier to get hold of such information in London or Tel Aviv...
And sometimes in the EU the bottled water actually even is tap water...
This can be the case elsewhere in the world too. No doubt some of it comes with pictures on the lable and a name to make people think it is something else.
Moderating by scientists in the field seems better than letting some gatekeeper decide which new ideas get to see the light of day, and which get deep sixed simply because they are unpopular points of view at the moment.
Even for more trivial reasons like disliking the author or where they are from. Science isn't ment to work by "argumentum ad populum" or "argumentum ad auctoritatem" in the first place.
How much actual damage can be done by publishing rubbish? (Its a serious question, because I don't pretend to know the answer). Aren't all results subject to verification by peers anyway?
Sometimes a good way to test a theory can be obvious to an "outsider", but completly overlooked by "experts in the field". Even more potential "loss of face" if it's someone pointing out a basic flaw in the reasoning behind a popular theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Do it yourself means that you manage risk and cost. Handing it over to an outside contractor means, inevitably, eventually, with all companies, some douche nozzle accountant executive with limited tech knowledge in the pursuit personal bonuses and claiming great savings and extra profit with the typical B$ spreadsheet. Will take a series of cost savings short cuts that allow risk of data loss to become a certainty of data loss.
However you don't know when this is happening. So cannot assess and manage you risk. It' s possible you may not even find out even after a loss/disclosure has occured.
Note also that if the company you choose is bigger than you are then you automatically increase your risk. Since crackers, both criminal and government sponsored, tend to be interested in the biggest targets. Whilst momandpop.com might have to specifically attract the attention of the "bad guys" they are already looking at Dropbox, Amazon, Google, Skydrive, etc.
How will you ever know for sure that the program won't send your private key to the server - encrypted with another key so you will never see it if you would try to monitor traffic?
Unless you control the "client side" software you can't even know if it is even using the key you think it is. Never mind doing something as elaborate as steganography to send data you don't know it's sending.
Indeed. Mostly give up the idea of having the host encrypt files for you. You never know if they have a backdoor of some sort.
Even "pre-Snowden" relying on a remote service or software provided by that service to perform such "encryption" was a bad idea. Even without deliberate "backdoors" there are many ways in which such a system can can fail, especially if proprietary software in involved.
Not only is it untrue, but solar/wind will be much cheaper than coal in just a few years. The technology is really moving that fast.
The biggest problem with both solar and wind is that output is effectivly random. Without either alternative power sources or the ability to store huge amounts of energy it's just not possible to match supply to demand.
I recall when Windows 95 was out, Microsoft got into trouble with the Indian government for showing a part of Kashmir within Pakistan. I forget in which version they dropped the maps and made it simply a list of the major cities in each time zone.
I'd like to see someone produce a map that shows Tibet as a separate country, label China as 'Greater Taiwan' or better still, as 'Taiwanese Beijing' (as a spoof on the IOC's label of Taiwan as 'Chinese Taipei').
In the case of a timezone map the more obvious thing would be label the Hawaiian islands as "Occupied by the USA".
The problem is with schools (at least around here) is that what they teach as "IT" and "computer literacy" is in fact nothing of the sort - they are just teaching office skills, not really any different to how my mother was taught to touch type and to use shorthand.
The modern version is possibly more limited. Since the older version wasn't restricted to using one model of typewriter...
After a while they start to think that the various bad interface designs are a conspiracy against them; this is only compounded when a technical type reaches over and helps them with a flick of a single switch, and when asked why couldn't it have been designed better it becomes obvious that the technical person is hunting for a way to not say, "They assumed that you had at least a double digit IQ." and then it becomes hatred.
Assuming that the "technical type" isn't silently cursing the user interface... Also what type of person usually designs user interfaces?
The research suggests that the genetic predisposition causes the immune system to act different in response to the virus. If the research is correct, then yes you need both the genetic factor and the virus to get type-1 diabetes.
All diabetes appears to be GbyE. The interaction between both Genetic and Enviromental factors. It's supected that the genetic factors involved with T1 are more general (could be involved with many "auto immue" conditions) than those involved with T2.
Fructose is associated with fatty liver disease, fructose is a monosaccaride that the liver must convert into glucose before it can be utilized, sucrose (table sugar) is a disaccaride composed of fructose and glucose.
The liver converts excess sugars into FATS. The reason it does this is because sugars disolve in blood plasma (water) thus their concentration within the blood must be closely regulated. Where as fats, within VLDL, can circulate in the blood at various concentrations without causing any problems. The association with fatty liver disase would be that the liver is producing fat faster than either VLDL (or cholesterol). (So maybe it's more fructose/galactose without protein.) Converting fructose to glucose would serve no useful purpose in a mammal. (Even glucose to galactose dosn't appear to be a major part of lactation.) Fats are of rather more use, since they can be used "structurally" as well as for "fuel".
You might also mention that Fructose (while it taste Sweet) is the Stealth molecule.. they body "can't detect".. you can eat a ton of Fructose.. or sugars like Table Sugar, Date Sugar, Maltitol, Sorbitol or 90% Fructose Agave Syrup.. and not raise your Insulin levels one Iota.. the Body it quite literally "Blind" to Fructose.
Manitol and sorbitol are "sugar alcohols" a different type of ogranic compound. "Table Sugar" is sucrose, a disaccharide of fructose and glucose. Fruits tend to contain a mixture of glucose, fructose and sucrose. As plant based foods the will also contain galactan, a galcatose polysaccharide. Some, such as bananas, also contain high levels of the glucose polysaccharides amylose and amylopectin.
The body can't burn Fructose, it has to turn it Into human Fat, then store that Fat, then Break that same Fat down into Glucose before it can burn it to fuel..
Human cells are prefectly able to "burn" frutose (or galactose for that matter). These get turned into fat by the liver since fats are of considerably more use than sugars to mammals. Any glucose which cannot be used in fairly short order is also converted to fats (assuming insulin is available.) The only cells which can't "burn" fats are those without mitochondria there's thus no need for anything other than a fairly low level of GNG even with a zero glucose diet.
you've already filled your Fat cells with the Jellied Fructose Fat.
Fats produced by the liver enter the blood inside VLDL, which are likely to remain in the bloodstream considerably longer than any dietary glucose.
Quite literally makes any Glucose that would have been harmless before.. Toxic and in Life threatening instantly.. congratulations.. you have Type 2 diabetes.
An excess of glucose in the blood is dangerous in itself. This would also be the case with fructose and galactose. But the regulatory mechanism is different here. T2 diabetes occurs when it cannot be removed quickly enough from the blood to keep it below toxic levels (7.6 mmol/l). Doing this is going to be easier with every cell taking up glucose than if only the liver and fat cells are doing so...
I thought Fructose was the prime candidate for over production of Fatty Acids and Triglycerides that literally "jam up" the mechanism that normally brings high blood sugar down. And that Insulin "resistance" was simply a conservation of mass problem.. literally.. all available Fat cell space is used up.. until the body can make more.. like a Housing Shortage
The human (or any other mammal) body dosn't work that way. Some cells need insulin before they can take up glucose. But more or less all cells can take up fructose and galactose without needing it to be present. What typically happens in practice is virtually all dietary fructose and galactose is changed into fats by the liver. It's impossible to fat cells to become "full up" since they can always undergo mitosis.
So the Blood Sugar and Fat Triglycerides just sit in the blood stream congealing and eroding the outside of the cells in the arteries and veins and organs exposed to the soup.
Sugars disolve in blood plasma, thus must be cosely regulated to maintain the required physical and chemical properties. Lipids are carried in cell like structures called lipoproteins. The number of lipoproteins in the blood, especially chylomicrons and VLDL can vary greatly.
Usually cells would taking glucose from the blood once the concentration in the cytoplasm exceeds a certain level. (Regardless of how much insulin is present in the blood.) Insulin resistance is the case insulin receptors remaining "off" even after cytoplasm glucose levels fall e.g. due to glycolysis. High levels on insulin and/or glucose tend to inhibit formation of lipoprotein receptors so an insulin resistant cell can't easily switch its ATP production from glycolysis and TCA cycle to beta oxidation or ketosis. Since liver and fat cells have the additional metabolic pathway of converting glucose to fat they don't tend to become insulin resistant.
I became a type 1 at 28, after I was sick for a week. My father became type 1 at 32. They used to call it Juvenile Diabetes, but obviously that is a misnomer. The later you get exposed to the virus, the later you become diabetic.
Similarly T2 used to be called "Mature Onset Diabetes". Thus you end up with terms such as Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA) and Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY). IIRC the oldest person diagnosed T1 was in their 90's and the youngest person diagnosed T2 around 7.
It turns out than many people with MODY actually have a mitochondial abnormaility. Whilst this produces "insulin resistance" the biochemical mechanism is different.
It is worth noting this is for type 1 diabetes, not type 2 which is the modern plague resulting largely from bad diet and inactivity. That said, if you know somebody for whom diabetes is a lifelong affliction since childhood, and kids who need shots for diabetes, that's type 1.
Genetics appears to be a strong factor in ALL forms of diabetes.
As for "bad diet" this may well be the low fat, but very high glucose, diet pushed as "healthy" since the late 1970's (in the US). Given that diabetes is the inability to effectivly handle dietary glucose.
However the 4th amendment does put some limits on searching the effects and papers or taking of property from citizens:
Except that it dosn't say "citizens" it says "the people".
The second paragraph of Article I, Section 2 states "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen." Making it rather clear that "US Citizens" are a subset of "the people".
Where does the idea that these are synonyms originate? Nowhere in any of the ammendments is such a redefinition apparent. About the only definitions of "the people" which would make any sense would be "all people anywhere", "all people in US territory plus US citizens elsewhere" or "all people legally in US territiory plus US citizens elsewhere".
Because "no one ever got fired for buying [big vendor]" matters much less in an organization where people never get fired for being bad at their jobs.
In most federal jobs: politically unpopular activities on your own time can get you fired, being realllly bad at your job generally doesn't.
The thing to remember here is that "buying from [big vendor]" can easily be a politcial activity. Within both governments and big business...
You say that as if it doesn't apply to proprietary software as well. Your metric is stupid and if you think it's a good way of measuring, you are stupid. Make no doubt about it: Sturgeon's Law applies to most everything, including proprietary software and FOSS. And it's amazing what kind of garbage people will pay lots of money for in niche usage.
Any actual Total Cost of Ownership would need to address the issue of broken software which is unfixable. Something which is only possible with proprietary software. (Including "It's a feature not a bug" cases.)
How is the project named? Is it something reminiscent of the function (like PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, Internet Explorer) or something entirely random, forcing more cognitive load on an uninformed user (Gimp, Firefox, Juice)?
With the likes of Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Exchange, even Oracle clearly indicating function?
Open-source documentation is like an insomniac cat. Theoretically it exists somewhere, but no one's ever seen it.
Plenty of software is poorly documented. Alt least with OSS you always have the source code as documentation. So it's impossible for OSS to have undocumented "features". Unlike the situation with proprietary software.
I've got news for you, friend. Information has never harmed a single soul. It takes action to do that. Information doesn't kill people, people do.
Indeed many things blamed on "The Internet" actually involve people meeting in person.
The NSA does not preempt terrorist threats, and even if they did, the cost to the rest of our lives is too much. They've inundated themselves with data and can't make sense of any of it until after the actions have been performed. Besides, folks could just send post cards with stenographic messages on them, or any other low-tech solution.
Even moderatly good codes (which includes using "slang terms) would more or less ensure that interceptions would be useless in preventing anything.
More folks die of heart disease every year than over fifty 9/11's... 2,996 died in 9/11. 597,689. Two Hundred Times More, Every Year! If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food.
Similarly it would make more sense for the TSA to spend all it's budget on improving road safety.
As for the issue of "healthy food" they'd probably first need to find out what is healthy for people as opposed to profitable for the food industry.
To put it another way: free speech means some folks will say things that match your opinion (a "good" thing!), but sometimes, they dare to say stuff you don't agree with! And the latter can't be allowed.
Where the ethics gets tricky is "you" (be that an individual, a "majority" or vocal "minority") agreeing with an opinion or not may not be a good metric as to if something should be allowed or not in a society.
Something which is "popular" may be very "bad", whereas something which is "unpopular" may be very "good".
And the reason James Clapper here wants to forbid you to use encryption is pretty nefarious, even if he claims to want only "your good".
Very often those who seek to impose something on people "for their own good" are the most oppressive.
You have to draw a line somewhere and wherever you draw it it'll be arbitrary. Not drawing that line at all would be even sillier.
To me it's best that you draw a single line and get the full power and responsibility at the same age (with exceptions for the severely mentally handicapped).
If you are already making an exception for "severely mentally handicapped" then age is no longer the only criteria anyway. Maybe instead what's needed is someway of testing "mental competence". Or a biological method of testing if someone is "child" or "adult".
Otherwise you have multiple arbitrary lines like in some countries the age you can be conscripted/sign up as a soldier is lower than the age you can vote for the leaders who'd send you to die and which itself is lower than the age you can drink alcoholic beverages. And that to me is even sillier than a single arbitrary line.
There's also things like being able to operate highly dangerous machines in public.
If they are already unable to detect and prevent bad things from happening at the hands of terrorists, what justifies attempting to crack one of the few means of privacy we have left?
The whole thing being based on the assumption that mass snooping actually does anything against "terrorism" (or any of the other "threats" used as justifciation.)
They used to do this stuff using human assets - actual members of the CIA going out and recruiting agents, analyzing data received, finding targets and then determining what to do about them, but when they came across the absolute "sexiness" of electronic spying, they cut waaaaaaay back on human spying, turned the problem over the NSA and cut the budget (more likely spend more on the NSA than they did on CIA employees and bribes to prospective agents).
WIth the obvious problem that without humans in the loop it can be impossible to separate "signal" from "noise". Assuming you are even looking at the right communications channel in the fist place. With this being identified as a serious problem over 12 years ago!
The NSA agents have no reason why they wouldn't sell any intel to the highest bidder, since there's no traceability nor accountability (remember that the agents only got caught because they confessed; somebody selling the same info would never do that). I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of US companies that'd love to get their hands on the intel the NSA collects.
Unlike Edward Snowdon spys within the NSA wouldn't go telling the entire world what they'd been up to. Also the NSA undoubtedly freely exchanges information with "partners". So a US company might find it easier to get hold of such information in London or Tel Aviv...
And sometimes in the EU the bottled water actually even is tap water...
This can be the case elsewhere in the world too. No doubt some of it comes with pictures on the lable and a name to make people think it is something else.
Moderating by scientists in the field seems better than letting some gatekeeper decide which new ideas get to see the light of day, and which get deep sixed simply because they are unpopular points of view at the moment.
Even for more trivial reasons like disliking the author or where they are from.
Science isn't ment to work by "argumentum ad populum" or "argumentum ad auctoritatem" in the first place.
How much actual damage can be done by publishing rubbish? (Its a serious question, because I don't pretend to know the answer). Aren't all results subject to verification by peers anyway?
Sometimes a good way to test a theory can be obvious to an "outsider", but completly overlooked by "experts in the field". Even more potential "loss of face" if it's someone pointing out a basic flaw in the reasoning behind a popular theory.