So taking security seriously is not something we should do?
If you take security seriously, you're not going to use DRM-infested proprietary software at all, fool. In fact, you'd stay far away from *Sony* products, as you should be aware.
Don't understand this at all. What rights am I sacrificing?
Do you know what DRM is? It inherently restricts you.
And obviously proprietary software does not respect the four freedoms.
But it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative of telling everyone everything about your security system.
Free software is often more secure, so no.
But I really don't see the rationale in avoiding any good product because you don't like the brand that makes it.
It's called voting with your wallet and not supporting evil activities. Sony's products aren't "good" 99% of the time anyway because they're filled with DRM and proprietary software.
All you do by doing that is encourage all of them to make worse products, by not giving the market the signals they need to know what you are looking for.
That makes no sense. You don't buy from them because they're doing Evil Thing X. If lots of people do this and make it known why they are not buying, they will hopefully stop.
It seems to me you buy into the idea that a "brand" means something. It doesn't, it's purely fiction surely? For the good and the bad.
That's because it does. I stay away from companies that do evil things, as I don't want to fund their evil activities. Sony still makes proprietary software and DRM, so I don't want to give them funding. This is very easy to understand.
So does that mean we should avoid using it ourselves to protect ourselves from government surveillance?
Yes, and also to protect yourself from the company's malicious 'features.'
The fact they did DRM properly, means no hacked games and no cheaters.
The ends don't justify the means. Maybe they should have real security rather than relying on locked-down, DRM-infested consoles and obscurity. This would never happen with free software. Good security doesn't rely on obscurity like this.
If you're willing to sacrifice your rights so you can avoid the bogeymen known as cheaters, you lack principles.
And I showed him how the differences make them not comparable.
Good thing he wasn't comparing them then. You never explained why the logic doesn't apply in the other situation. The logic of, "Criminals have it, so police should too." is ridiculous.
And you have a similar arbitrary line between what is private and what is public.
Your view of privacy isn't sustainable in any free country.
Everything you say about my line could be said about yours.
No, it couldn't, because you're the one who wants to give the government near-unlimited surveillance powers. You'll be crying when you find them in your precious house, because there's nothing else for them to do.
You did actually study the reasoning behind political behaviour and not just conclude that because your candidate lost, people must be idiots?
When people vote in candidates supporting mass surveillance and the continued erosion of our fundamental liberties, constantly vote for 'the lesser of two evils' using shaky reasoning, and actively defend their choices, I can reach no other conclusions. You might think that's completely irrelevant, but I disagree.
People typically hold metaphysical positions based on personal subjective experience and channel these through whatever cultural imagery is available. Obnoxious as the result can be, the strawman of "magical sky fairy" has nothing to do with it.
There is no straw man here; that's an accurate description of what many believe in. There is no evidence that it exists, so I don't believe. Personal subjective experience isn't reliable given what we know of the human mind.
Given the rather obviously non-sequiter nature of ("There exist education that isn't working, therefore no education can") I can only assume you're holding it for irrational reasons, such as egomania.
But that is a straw man. I simply don't see the evidence that most people are all that intelligent, so I don't see a reason to believe it. I see lots of things that convince me otherwise, as I've explained. You're certainly not providing anything convincing.
Show me an education system that enables a significant majority of people to truly understand complex mathematics (rather than just be mere users of it) and I'll be impressed. I can't prove that such a thing doesn't exist, and I do think many current education systems are flawed beyond belief, but most people can't even seem to do this in the best of environments.
...This one's so obvious I'm not even going to bother.
Not so obvious to me. No need to play Internet psychologists.
I suggest that you learn to stop being an authoritarian moron, and then I'd feel no need to call you such things. As it is, though, the personal attacks you're getting are well-deserved, because people with attitudes such as yours are literally destroying our freedoms.
How did you go from gathering communications to "unlimited power"?
Information is power. Enough information combined with things like parallel construction means they can silence nearly anyone, and therefore crush democracy.
Furthermore, what you want violates the laws in many countries. A government allowed to violate the law is unlimited government.
The issue is that many of these organizations want complete liberty and complete freedom.
Where are these anarchist organizations? Not here. Neither the ACLU or the EFF fit that description. They're merely trying to protect our fundamental liberties from freedom-hating scumbags such as you who wants everyone to be spied on merely because there's a non-zero possibility they could be terrorists, an idea which is in complete opposition with the principles that free, democratic countries are supposed to aspire to.
I care about freedom a lot and am fine with sacrificing unnecessary freedom for necessary security.
If you're fine with sacrificing everyone's fundamental liberties so you can feel safe, then I suggest moving to North Korea, which is one possible result out of many authoritarian results of your desired form of government.
False parallel as blowing something up causes physical damage while surveillance does not.
Work on your logic. He did not say that the situations were exactly the same. He was testing your own idiotic logic in a different situation, which was "If criminals can use X, police should be able to use X." It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't understand the difference between saying two things are exactly alike and using analogies.
Another false parallel as I am generally alone and doing something very private. Anything that happens in my house is very private. Once it gets out of my house it is a different matter.
So you've arbitrarily decided that everything in your house is magically private while everything outside of your house isn't, and that because you don't care about privacy outside of your house, no one else should have any privacy. Amazing. Remind me why I should care about the privacy you want to have in your house? If the government doesn't respect any other form of privacy and you have to become a hermit if you don't want your privacy violated, why the hell would they respect your precious, precious form of privacy?
But I realize we live in the real world where there are more forms of privacy than just what you do in your house.
Non sequitur. The validity of my arguments remains the same regardless of whether or not I attack you. I could have said "1 + 1 = 2" and then called you an idiot, but that would not make what I said wrong.
That's not to say you need to use your real name for the login; only that you be identified and that identity available to the server administrators in case they get subpoenaed.
That fortunately sounds technically impractical since it requires server administrators to all cooperate and somehow know you're telling the truth, but more importantly, unconstitutional in the US if you want the government to force that to happen. The US constitution doesn't grant the government the power to do such a thing, and furthermore, since the government would be forcing people to identify themselves if they want to speak, it would be a form of censorship. If you don't send your data the way we want you to (by identifying yourself), you don't get to speak at all.
People who know they aren't anonymous tend to think twice about what they're saying and posting
Yeah, that's called a chilling effect. You've basically just silenced any speech that the majority vehemently disagrees with in the name of safety, which is the telltale sign of an authoritarian. I would rather bump into things I disagree with than get rid of anonymity.
and so they should, because we don't have the "stick" of a punch in the nose on the internet.
Anyone who physically assaults others over speech is a barbarian and should be punished appropriately.
Privacy is dead. Finished. Over. Nothing is going to change that.
Freedom is dead. Finished. Over. Nothing is going to change that.
Nice self-fulfilling prophecy. While you whine and cry about how we're done for, there are people actually doing something. I'm sure many people felt the same as you during the civil rights movement, but thanks to people not giving up, it had many successes.
Grow up.
I'm not going to tell you to grow up, because your age/height has nothing to do with the conversation, but I will tell you to grow a brain.
I won't give my money to companies that continually do evil things; it's pretty simple. I don't want to support Sony's behavior; they support DRM, proprietary software, make use of rootkits, and their software has actual malicious features so they can screw over users (like they did with OtherOS).
They've been pulled up more than others for some of the shit they do, but I don't see why that makes them better or worse than any other company
Because there are other companies that don't do such evil things. Not Microsoft or Nintendo, but they exist. I don't really see the need to buy Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo garbage in the first place; it's so easy to avoid it.
Just like YOU want to feel safe at the expense of everyone else's fundamental liberties and the US constitution. Screw off. If you feel otherwise, you don't really belong in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or any free country. You would rather the government unlimited power so you can have your perfect safety, all the while you pretend the people in the government are perfect beings. Move to North Korea and you'll have you ideal government.
It's funny how you hardcore authoritarians are always on the opposite side of organizations dedicated to protecting our liberties and privacy. That should make you feel bad, but you don't care about freedom one bit.
If you act based on demands, your actions are your own. You can't blame anyone but the rapists for raping.
Remove the demand and the offer diminish.
Fortunately, censorship is nigh impossible. You'll have to find another solution... like going after the rapists and encouraging other countries to change their laws.
Say something unpopular (like disagree with the "for the children" crowd) and you may find yourself the target of a lynch mob, or you may find that many employers might decide to not give you a job.
But arguments stand on their own merits in the first place.
Also, comparing faces to names is ridiculous. No one is going to remember your face. A name on the Internet is easily searchable, so it's a different world altogether. Encouraging anonymity allows far more people to say unpopular things that challenge the status quo.
Go walking down the street of your hometown with a mask/costume or KKK robes on and see how that works for you.
I'm pretty sure you could, unless you live somewhere with draconian laws. And I *will* have to start doing that if the government starts really making use of mass surveillance of public places.
Hold up now. You're conflating mathematical and logical thinking with atheism.
However, it is irrational to conclude that a magical sky daddy exists without evidence. This does not instantly mean that someone is not very intelligent, but it seems the probability of that being true is somewhat lower.
You reach a conclusion that atheism makes sense because you use logic with certain assumptions.
There is no evidence that magical sky daddies exist, so I lack a belief in them, much like I lack a belief in magical pink unicorns living on Mars. You can literally come up with any nonsensical idea and conclude that anyone who says it's nonsense is just using logic with certain assumptions. Not all ideas are equal; some are more rational than others.
If you're speaking in generalities, they have a lot more hope than those who believe their limitations.
In practice, you don't know your limits until you at least try, so I would suggest that giving up is counterproductive even if I am correct. And you might not be a genius at everything, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot that you still can do. Even someone who is mediocre can do quite a bit.
Violating your privacy infringes upon your freedoms, so yes, it does. The United States constitution's fourth amendment mentions that you are secure in your papers among other things. The papers themselves? No, what is really protected is the information on the papers.
If repressive things happen with the gathered data then that would be a problem but not the surveillance itself.
You can't separate the two, you insufferable moron. One inevitably leads to the other, as history shows. Information is power, and mass surveillance is a means of crushing democracy and destroying people who challenge the status quo. They tried to do that with MLK, they tried it with nearly every anti-war movement, they try it with nearly every movement that challenges the status quo, and now with mass surveillance, they'll be that much more efficient at crushing those who challenge authority.
Slashdot Mirror
So taking security seriously is not something we should do?
If you take security seriously, you're not going to use DRM-infested proprietary software at all, fool. In fact, you'd stay far away from *Sony* products, as you should be aware.
Don't understand this at all. What rights am I sacrificing?
Do you know what DRM is? It inherently restricts you.
And obviously proprietary software does not respect the four freedoms.
But it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative of telling everyone everything about your security system.
Free software is often more secure, so no.
But I really don't see the rationale in avoiding any good product because you don't like the brand that makes it.
It's called voting with your wallet and not supporting evil activities. Sony's products aren't "good" 99% of the time anyway because they're filled with DRM and proprietary software.
All you do by doing that is encourage all of them to make worse products, by not giving the market the signals they need to know what you are looking for.
That makes no sense. You don't buy from them because they're doing Evil Thing X. If lots of people do this and make it known why they are not buying, they will hopefully stop.
Avoiding Sony's products is easy. In general, you should avoid giving money to evil companies if you can.
It seems to me you buy into the idea that a "brand" means something.
It doesn't, it's purely fiction surely?
For the good and the bad.
That's because it does. I stay away from companies that do evil things, as I don't want to fund their evil activities. Sony still makes proprietary software and DRM, so I don't want to give them funding. This is very easy to understand.
So does that mean we should avoid using it ourselves to protect ourselves from government surveillance?
Yes, and also to protect yourself from the company's malicious 'features.'
The fact they did DRM properly, means no hacked games and no cheaters.
The ends don't justify the means. Maybe they should have real security rather than relying on locked-down, DRM-infested consoles and obscurity. This would never happen with free software. Good security doesn't rely on obscurity like this.
If you're willing to sacrifice your rights so you can avoid the bogeymen known as cheaters, you lack principles.
You and your ilk are the real bullies for attacking everyone's fundamental liberties.
And I showed him how the differences make them not comparable.
Good thing he wasn't comparing them then. You never explained why the logic doesn't apply in the other situation. The logic of, "Criminals have it, so police should too." is ridiculous.
And you have a similar arbitrary line between what is private and what is public.
Your view of privacy isn't sustainable in any free country.
Everything you say about my line could be said about yours.
No, it couldn't, because you're the one who wants to give the government near-unlimited surveillance powers. You'll be crying when you find them in your precious house, because there's nothing else for them to do.
You did actually study the reasoning behind political behaviour and not just conclude that because your candidate lost, people must be idiots?
When people vote in candidates supporting mass surveillance and the continued erosion of our fundamental liberties, constantly vote for 'the lesser of two evils' using shaky reasoning, and actively defend their choices, I can reach no other conclusions. You might think that's completely irrelevant, but I disagree.
People typically hold metaphysical positions based on personal subjective experience and channel these through whatever cultural imagery is available. Obnoxious as the result can be, the strawman of "magical sky fairy" has nothing to do with it.
There is no straw man here; that's an accurate description of what many believe in. There is no evidence that it exists, so I don't believe. Personal subjective experience isn't reliable given what we know of the human mind.
Given the rather obviously non-sequiter nature of ("There exist education that isn't working, therefore no education can") I can only assume you're holding it for irrational reasons, such as egomania.
But that is a straw man. I simply don't see the evidence that most people are all that intelligent, so I don't see a reason to believe it. I see lots of things that convince me otherwise, as I've explained. You're certainly not providing anything convincing.
Show me an education system that enables a significant majority of people to truly understand complex mathematics (rather than just be mere users of it) and I'll be impressed. I can't prove that such a thing doesn't exist, and I do think many current education systems are flawed beyond belief, but most people can't even seem to do this in the best of environments.
...This one's so obvious I'm not even going to bother.
Not so obvious to me. No need to play Internet psychologists.
I suggest that you learn to stop being an authoritarian moron, and then I'd feel no need to call you such things. As it is, though, the personal attacks you're getting are well-deserved, because people with attitudes such as yours are literally destroying our freedoms.
How did you go from gathering communications to "unlimited power"?
Information is power. Enough information combined with things like parallel construction means they can silence nearly anyone, and therefore crush democracy.
Furthermore, what you want violates the laws in many countries. A government allowed to violate the law is unlimited government.
The issue is that many of these organizations want complete liberty and complete freedom.
Where are these anarchist organizations? Not here. Neither the ACLU or the EFF fit that description. They're merely trying to protect our fundamental liberties from freedom-hating scumbags such as you who wants everyone to be spied on merely because there's a non-zero possibility they could be terrorists, an idea which is in complete opposition with the principles that free, democratic countries are supposed to aspire to.
I care about freedom a lot and am fine with sacrificing unnecessary freedom for necessary security.
If you're fine with sacrificing everyone's fundamental liberties so you can feel safe, then I suggest moving to North Korea, which is one possible result out of many authoritarian results of your desired form of government.
False parallel as blowing something up causes physical damage while surveillance does not.
Work on your logic. He did not say that the situations were exactly the same. He was testing your own idiotic logic in a different situation, which was "If criminals can use X, police should be able to use X." It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't understand the difference between saying two things are exactly alike and using analogies.
Another false parallel as I am generally alone and doing something very private. Anything that happens in my house is very private. Once it gets out of my house it is a different matter.
So you've arbitrarily decided that everything in your house is magically private while everything outside of your house isn't, and that because you don't care about privacy outside of your house, no one else should have any privacy. Amazing. Remind me why I should care about the privacy you want to have in your house? If the government doesn't respect any other form of privacy and you have to become a hermit if you don't want your privacy violated, why the hell would they respect your precious, precious form of privacy?
But I realize we live in the real world where there are more forms of privacy than just what you do in your house.
Non sequitur. The validity of my arguments remains the same regardless of whether or not I attack you. I could have said "1 + 1 = 2" and then called you an idiot, but that would not make what I said wrong.
That's not to say you need to use your real name for the login; only that you be identified and that identity available to the server administrators in case they get subpoenaed.
That fortunately sounds technically impractical since it requires server administrators to all cooperate and somehow know you're telling the truth, but more importantly, unconstitutional in the US if you want the government to force that to happen. The US constitution doesn't grant the government the power to do such a thing, and furthermore, since the government would be forcing people to identify themselves if they want to speak, it would be a form of censorship. If you don't send your data the way we want you to (by identifying yourself), you don't get to speak at all.
People who know they aren't anonymous tend to think twice about what they're saying and posting
Yeah, that's called a chilling effect. You've basically just silenced any speech that the majority vehemently disagrees with in the name of safety, which is the telltale sign of an authoritarian. I would rather bump into things I disagree with than get rid of anonymity.
and so they should, because we don't have the "stick" of a punch in the nose on the internet.
Anyone who physically assaults others over speech is a barbarian and should be punished appropriately.
Privacy is dead. Finished. Over. Nothing is going to change that.
Freedom is dead. Finished. Over. Nothing is going to change that.
Nice self-fulfilling prophecy. While you whine and cry about how we're done for, there are people actually doing something. I'm sure many people felt the same as you during the civil rights movement, but thanks to people not giving up, it had many successes.
Grow up.
I'm not going to tell you to grow up, because your age/height has nothing to do with the conversation, but I will tell you to grow a brain.
Kinda nonsense isn't it?
I won't give my money to companies that continually do evil things; it's pretty simple. I don't want to support Sony's behavior; they support DRM, proprietary software, make use of rootkits, and their software has actual malicious features so they can screw over users (like they did with OtherOS).
They've been pulled up more than others for some of the shit they do, but I don't see why that makes them better or worse than any other company
Because there are other companies that don't do such evil things. Not Microsoft or Nintendo, but they exist. I don't really see the need to buy Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo garbage in the first place; it's so easy to avoid it.
See a pattern? It's all about what *YOU* want.
Just like YOU want to feel safe at the expense of everyone else's fundamental liberties and the US constitution. Screw off. If you feel otherwise, you don't really belong in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or any free country. You would rather the government unlimited power so you can have your perfect safety, all the while you pretend the people in the government are perfect beings. Move to North Korea and you'll have you ideal government.
It's funny how you hardcore authoritarians are always on the opposite side of organizations dedicated to protecting our liberties and privacy. That should make you feel bad, but you don't care about freedom one bit.
It's *one* problem, but mass surveillance would still be wrong either way.
If you act based on demands, your actions are your own. You can't blame anyone but the rapists for raping.
Remove the demand and the offer diminish.
Fortunately, censorship is nigh impossible. You'll have to find another solution... like going after the rapists and encouraging other countries to change their laws.
I wouldn't buy anything from Sony, because they're an evil company and it's so easy to avoid their products.
Say something unpopular (like disagree with the "for the children" crowd) and you may find yourself the target of a lynch mob, or you may find that many employers might decide to not give you a job.
But arguments stand on their own merits in the first place.
Then we need more people willing to stand up for their principles, not less. If you give up, your privacy definitely won't be protected.
It sounds like the major parties want to kill people's fundamental freedoms. Bad financial policies are second to fundamental freedoms.
Also, comparing faces to names is ridiculous. No one is going to remember your face. A name on the Internet is easily searchable, so it's a different world altogether. Encouraging anonymity allows far more people to say unpopular things that challenge the status quo.
Go walking down the street of your hometown with a mask/costume or KKK robes on and see how that works for you.
I'm pretty sure you could, unless you live somewhere with draconian laws. And I *will* have to start doing that if the government starts really making use of mass surveillance of public places.
I log in because I take responsibility for my comments and opinions.
By having an account on Slashdot? Well done. That's such a difficult thing to do!
Hold up now. You're conflating mathematical and logical thinking with atheism.
However, it is irrational to conclude that a magical sky daddy exists without evidence. This does not instantly mean that someone is not very intelligent, but it seems the probability of that being true is somewhat lower.
You reach a conclusion that atheism makes sense because you use logic with certain assumptions.
There is no evidence that magical sky daddies exist, so I lack a belief in them, much like I lack a belief in magical pink unicorns living on Mars. You can literally come up with any nonsensical idea and conclude that anyone who says it's nonsense is just using logic with certain assumptions. Not all ideas are equal; some are more rational than others.
If you're speaking in generalities, they have a lot more hope than those who believe their limitations.
In practice, you don't know your limits until you at least try, so I would suggest that giving up is counterproductive even if I am correct. And you might not be a genius at everything, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot that you still can do. Even someone who is mediocre can do quite a bit.
Surveillance does not make people less free.
Violating your privacy infringes upon your freedoms, so yes, it does. The United States constitution's fourth amendment mentions that you are secure in your papers among other things. The papers themselves? No, what is really protected is the information on the papers.
If repressive things happen with the gathered data then that would be a problem but not the surveillance itself.
You can't separate the two, you insufferable moron. One inevitably leads to the other, as history shows. Information is power, and mass surveillance is a means of crushing democracy and destroying people who challenge the status quo. They tried to do that with MLK, they tried it with nearly every anti-war movement, they try it with nearly every movement that challenges the status quo, and now with mass surveillance, they'll be that much more efficient at crushing those who challenge authority.