Sadly, too many environmentalists are quite religious - you don't see the altar or the idol that they worship, but I assure you that they have a full catechism and dogma in place.
I think that was the case back when they tried to raise a banner against the Mexican drug cartels a few years back... the nanosecond that shit got real (that is, when one of their Mexican brethren got a few subtle threats in real life, as opposed to online), they backed off and shut down that idea almost instantly.
It's one thing to wield some semblance of power if the thing you're trying to change is solely online, but once you go after changes off-the-wire, it's a whole different ballgame.
Everybody wants to have privacy from everyone except them.
Does this mean for a moment that Facebook won't harvest your personal data for their advertisers, and Google won't track your behavior around the internet? No, it does not. It just means they don't want to share. Few to none of these companies want you to have actual privacy or anonymity online.
In a perverse way, this actually works:
1) it still gives you (the consumer) ultimate control over who gets your data (by choosing the product(s) you use, that is)... and in a way, you can even partially control what data they get (fake statistics, fake addresses, fake whatever...)
2) It still keeps fascistic governmental tendencies at bay.
Don't think for a minute any one of these companies will do anything that inhibits their ability to mine your data.
Newsflash - the apps themselves do that without any need to compromise encryption on the device/computer/whatever.
Besides, even if $evilAppDataMiner was scouring your drives for every last bit of information, you'd want that datastream (to your servers) encrypted too, if only to prevent the competition from snagging your hard-earned data.
If you could go back in time and expose J. Edgar Hoover as a cross-dressing sadomasochist BEFORE he managed to seize control of the FBI, would it still be the same kind of power-mad agency?
Actually, yes. The Progressive Movement is by its very nature prone to totalitarianism over time. Now if we were also able to hold off or eliminate the Cold War, and then go back to FDR's time and cut back the overreaches of the federal government that he pulled off, and then go back further to the whole Elliott Ness thing...
But you mention this yourself:
I often wonder if it would be a milder government law enforcement agency with narrower authority if Hoover had been sidelined for some other bureaucrat, or if what the FBI has become is essentially an inevitability -- a byproduct of the bank robberies of the 1930s, the security panics of the 1940s, the Red Scare and anticommunism, the cold war and the 1960s civil unrest.
Perhaps it would still be what it is, but somehow with a different tone had it not been one man's personal kingdom for 40 years, a man who scared most Presidents into leaving him alone.
It was a byproduct of the things you mention, *plus* the progressive tendency towards centralizing government. It all sort of meshes together. Even if Hoover never got the job, I can assure you that someone else equally tyrannical probably would have, given that he was appointed to the job.
(I know, there's likely lots more to it, but damn... it's not like there's all that much hidden. I mean, you'd think the FBI were demanding source code to one of Microsoft's OS variants or something.)
Sorta... you can still build all the new housing you want in Washington and Clackamas counties (and anywhere else that surrounds Portland's Multnomah County.) Portlandia's grasp stops cold at the county line... and while they do have ideological allies (*cough*Beaverton*cough*), most everyone else is cashing in on Portland's lack of new housing.
It should be noted that Portland (the city, not Metro) really doesn't have anywhere to build new housing except upwards, and looking out the office window, I see at least six skyscraper cranes all busily stacking new housing skyward (now mind you they're mostly condos, but...) Finally, it should be further noted that Portland doesn't do rent control, at least not by edict like you see in SF or NYC.
Most of the new construction for housing in PDX Metro is going nuts west of Hillsboro, south of Lake Oswego, the east of Gresham, and beyond in all directions. Even Washington State is getting into the act, with subdivisions going up from Camas to Longview, and northwards to Kalama.
Why should a renter be compensated? Just find something else to rent. That's the point of renting.
Agreed, but if you're going to pay up a very significant portion of your income each month to house yourself, you may as well get something back for your efforts. With few exceptions (e.g. the housing bubble burst), you usually get at least most of your money back when you sell (yeah, it costs more to do that, you have to factor equity in, and yeah it's a hassle, but the results are usually well worth it.)
Assessments and Eminent Domain means that you get at least most (if not all) of your monetary investment back (via the sale of property to the local gov or to someone else).
Eviction/termination-of-lease for any reason means that you get $0.00 in compensation - in other words, you're just fscked.
Dude, I recently bought a modest (1040 sq. ft) empty-nester house sitting on six acres, and I only paid $250k for it. Mind you, it's a 60-minute commute to downtown Portland (where most the jobs are in the area for my field), but well worth it since traffic ain't half bad (for most of the commute anyway) and I can always work from home.
Now in Portland itself? Yeah, a typical/decent-neighborhood studio apartment in downtown PDX goes for approximately $1500-$1800+ a month, and is rising at an alarming rate. Wouldn't be surprised at all to see it break the $2k/mo. barrier by the end of this year. Want to rent a 3 bdrm house? You'll have to move out to at least Gresham and/or Beaverton (either is a 30-minute commute) if you want to pay less than $2k/mo. for the privilege. By comparison, my mortgage is $1430/mo. , and I feel pretty good about that. If I would have bought in the 90's, the same property would have cost me approximately $800/mo. in mortgage.
police don't face manslaughter charges for collateral damage when stopping crime. ask any car crash victim during a high speed chase.
They do however face civil litigation, and many (if not most) states nowadays require police to back off of a high-speed chase if there is a significant danger of harm to innocent bystanders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA Use lots of shotguns. And make sure you have lots of ammo.
Depends on the skill levels of both shooter and pilot, distance, whether or not the drone pilot sees the shooter with enough warning...
To be honest, it would be not much more than a slightly more complex version of skeet shooting, or a typical pheasant hunt at a slightly longer range, since drones are still somewhat subject to aerodynamics - In other words, completely doable.
Never thought I'd say this, but as someone who uses OSX in addition to Linux, even the Apple-loving side of me is looking down its nose and tut-tutting about lock-in...
...China needs a relatively stable NK (that doesn't actually carry out stupid shit) in order to maintain a buffer.
This brings up a fun question:
A "buffer" against... what? Puny South Korea? A Japan that is too demographically old/rich/disinterested in China to bother invading? The Philippines? Mongolia?
Historically, I get it - post-WWII, fears of Japan and such were rather justified. But it's been what, 70 years and a metric shitload of geopolitical changes? Pretty sure the whole buffer idea is a bit, shall we say, outdated.
I was thinking something similar... after all, why keep depending on old-fashioned nukes? We got railguns - why not work on miniaturization (of sorts) and launching same into orbit*? If nothing else, we could do the relatively low-tech route of carefully aiming large meteors at a city (or seven) that needs to die, wiping 'em off the map completely without so much as a single sievert of radiation as byproduct.
* yes, yes - treaties and such... but if used purely for defensive purposes, I think it counts as utilizing a loophole.
Defense R&D spending gave us stuff like solid-state electronics, jet-engines, and oh... this thing called the Internet. It continues to help advance robotics, trauma medicine, aviation, communications, and quite a bit more - even today.
But, you know, maybe next time post with your normal pseudonym if you want to impress that hipster chick sitting next to you in the coffeeshop. Just sayin'.;)
Slightly off-topic, but who says Trump will win the nomination? Cruz and Rubio could just as easily get together, pool their delegates, and become a Pres-VP combo, with whichever one having the biggest # of delegates coming out at the top of the billing. Top guy does 4-8 years, VP then does 4-8 years more as President.
Sounds sleazy at first blush, but compared to "Superdelegates"? It's doable and it actually makes sense.
And items that were classified had their classification removed before being emailed per Hillary's instruction.
Not entirely true, but your point is irrelevant anyway, because...
I used to work in the fun little world of TS and above clearances (specifically in a technical role with what eventually became the F-117A Nighthawk). Our instructions were very clear and simple: if it's marked classified, it never leaves Tonopah Test Range.
And yes, we had email back then - and so did the academic world. If I had so much as thought of doing what she did, *even if I generated/controlled the data in question*, I'd still be sitting in Fort Leavenworth, a quarter-century-plus later. And, no partisan hacks would be on the blogs or the Sunday TV shows trying to defend the act, either.
Therein lies my point - if it would land us peons in prison, then why should the law exempt her for doing the same thing?
Amazon wasn't exactly making inroads into the consumer market anyway.
now a stolen device will destroy your life they are worth less than nothing.
Actually, this is a good point. So if you have an Amazon phone (all four of you), you may well want to start shopping for a new one - probably today. No idea who would put sensitive info on their Kindle, though...
Now the fun question is, do they still have DRM/encryption on all their eBooks? I'm betting the answer to that is probably 'yes'.
1) "Oh, I don't have a smartphone. Can you issue one"? 2) Go out and buy a cheap-assed-but-usable Huawei for $100, put it on Net10/MetroPCS/whatever, and use it only for corporate stuff. Write off the costs on your taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
The environmentalists I know aren't religious...
Sadly, too many environmentalists are quite religious - you don't see the altar or the idol that they worship, but I assure you that they have a full catechism and dogma in place.
I think that was the case back when they tried to raise a banner against the Mexican drug cartels a few years back... the nanosecond that shit got real (that is, when one of their Mexican brethren got a few subtle threats in real life, as opposed to online), they backed off and shut down that idea almost instantly.
It's one thing to wield some semblance of power if the thing you're trying to change is solely online, but once you go after changes off-the-wire, it's a whole different ballgame.
Everybody wants to have privacy from everyone except them.
Does this mean for a moment that Facebook won't harvest your personal data for their advertisers, and Google won't track your behavior around the internet? No, it does not. It just means they don't want to share. Few to none of these companies want you to have actual privacy or anonymity online.
In a perverse way, this actually works:
1) it still gives you (the consumer) ultimate control over who gets your data (by choosing the product(s) you use, that is)... and in a way, you can even partially control what data they get (fake statistics, fake addresses, fake whatever...)
2) It still keeps fascistic governmental tendencies at bay.
Don't think for a minute any one of these companies will do anything that inhibits their ability to mine your data.
Newsflash - the apps themselves do that without any need to compromise encryption on the device/computer/whatever.
Besides, even if $evilAppDataMiner was scouring your drives for every last bit of information, you'd want that datastream (to your servers) encrypted too, if only to prevent the competition from snagging your hard-earned data.
Dance like no one is watching, but encrypt like everyone is.
It's good to see industry actually doing the right thing for once. I just hope the US Supreme Court does the right thing and tosses this whole mess...
If you could go back in time and expose J. Edgar Hoover as a cross-dressing sadomasochist BEFORE he managed to seize control of the FBI, would it still be the same kind of power-mad agency?
Actually, yes. The Progressive Movement is by its very nature prone to totalitarianism over time. Now if we were also able to hold off or eliminate the Cold War, and then go back to FDR's time and cut back the overreaches of the federal government that he pulled off, and then go back further to the whole Elliott Ness thing...
But you mention this yourself:
I often wonder if it would be a milder government law enforcement agency with narrower authority if Hoover had been sidelined for some other bureaucrat, or if what the FBI has become is essentially an inevitability -- a byproduct of the bank robberies of the 1930s, the security panics of the 1940s, the Red Scare and anticommunism, the cold war and the 1960s civil unrest.
Perhaps it would still be what it is, but somehow with a different tone had it not been one man's personal kingdom for 40 years, a man who scared most Presidents into leaving him alone.
It was a byproduct of the things you mention, *plus* the progressive tendency towards centralizing government. It all sort of meshes together. Even if Hoover never got the job, I can assure you that someone else equally tyrannical probably would have, given that he was appointed to the job.
Behold the power of MASS MEDIA! Stop thinking of R vs. D and think of "Tyrants" vs. "Society".
I believe that was GP's point.
Release the source code?
Damn... can't the FBI even use a web browser?
(I know, there's likely lots more to it, but damn... it's not like there's all that much hidden. I mean, you'd think the FBI were demanding source code to one of Microsoft's OS variants or something.)
Sorta... you can still build all the new housing you want in Washington and Clackamas counties (and anywhere else that surrounds Portland's Multnomah County.) Portlandia's grasp stops cold at the county line... and while they do have ideological allies (*cough*Beaverton*cough*), most everyone else is cashing in on Portland's lack of new housing.
It should be noted that Portland (the city, not Metro) really doesn't have anywhere to build new housing except upwards, and looking out the office window, I see at least six skyscraper cranes all busily stacking new housing skyward (now mind you they're mostly condos, but...) Finally, it should be further noted that Portland doesn't do rent control, at least not by edict like you see in SF or NYC.
Most of the new construction for housing in PDX Metro is going nuts west of Hillsboro, south of Lake Oswego, the east of Gresham, and beyond in all directions. Even Washington State is getting into the act, with subdivisions going up from Camas to Longview, and northwards to Kalama.
Why should a renter be compensated? Just find something else to rent. That's the point of renting.
Agreed, but if you're going to pay up a very significant portion of your income each month to house yourself, you may as well get something back for your efforts. With few exceptions (e.g. the housing bubble burst), you usually get at least most of your money back when you sell (yeah, it costs more to do that, you have to factor equity in, and yeah it's a hassle, but the results are usually well worth it.)
Assessments and Eminent Domain means that you get at least most (if not all) of your monetary investment back (via the sale of property to the local gov or to someone else).
Eviction/termination-of-lease for any reason means that you get $0.00 in compensation - in other words, you're just fscked.
Dude, I recently bought a modest (1040 sq. ft) empty-nester house sitting on six acres, and I only paid $250k for it. Mind you, it's a 60-minute commute to downtown Portland (where most the jobs are in the area for my field), but well worth it since traffic ain't half bad (for most of the commute anyway) and I can always work from home.
Now in Portland itself? Yeah, a typical/decent-neighborhood studio apartment in downtown PDX goes for approximately $1500-$1800+ a month, and is rising at an alarming rate. Wouldn't be surprised at all to see it break the $2k/mo. barrier by the end of this year. Want to rent a 3 bdrm house? You'll have to move out to at least Gresham and/or Beaverton (either is a 30-minute commute) if you want to pay less than $2k/mo. for the privilege. By comparison, my mortgage is $1430/mo. , and I feel pretty good about that. If I would have bought in the 90's, the same property would have cost me approximately $800/mo. in mortgage.
Yeah... screw the rental-go-round.
We expect politicians to lie. Geeks, not so much (well, unless they're also vendors, but...)
Translation from McAfeeSpeak:
"I made it all up to sound big, bad, and awesome... but now with the FBI really interested in doing just that, well..."
Small problem with that -
The drone typically has a (very) finite carrying capacity. Folks on the ground are under no such limitations.
police don't face manslaughter charges for collateral damage when stopping crime. ask any car crash victim during a high speed chase.
They do however face civil litigation, and many (if not most) states nowadays require police to back off of a high-speed chase if there is a significant danger of harm to innocent bystanders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
Use lots of shotguns. And make sure you have lots of ammo.
Depends on the skill levels of both shooter and pilot, distance, whether or not the drone pilot sees the shooter with enough warning...
To be honest, it would be not much more than a slightly more complex version of skeet shooting, or a typical pheasant hunt at a slightly longer range, since drones are still somewhat subject to aerodynamics - In other words, completely doable.
Never thought I'd say this, but as someone who uses OSX in addition to Linux, even the Apple-loving side of me is looking down its nose and tut-tutting about lock-in...
...China needs a relatively stable NK (that doesn't actually carry out stupid shit) in order to maintain a buffer.
This brings up a fun question:
A "buffer" against... what? Puny South Korea? A Japan that is too demographically old/rich/disinterested in China to bother invading? The Philippines? Mongolia?
Historically, I get it - post-WWII, fears of Japan and such were rather justified. But it's been what, 70 years and a metric shitload of geopolitical changes? Pretty sure the whole buffer idea is a bit, shall we say, outdated.
I was thinking something similar... after all, why keep depending on old-fashioned nukes? We got railguns - why not work on miniaturization (of sorts) and launching same into orbit*? If nothing else, we could do the relatively low-tech route of carefully aiming large meteors at a city (or seven) that needs to die, wiping 'em off the map completely without so much as a single sievert of radiation as byproduct.
* yes, yes - treaties and such... but if used purely for defensive purposes, I think it counts as utilizing a loophole.
Defense R&D spending gave us stuff like solid-state electronics, jet-engines, and oh... this thing called the Internet. It continues to help advance robotics, trauma medicine, aviation, communications, and quite a bit more - even today.
But, you know, maybe next time post with your normal pseudonym if you want to impress that hipster chick sitting next to you in the coffeeshop. Just sayin'. ;)
Slightly off-topic, but who says Trump will win the nomination? Cruz and Rubio could just as easily get together, pool their delegates, and become a Pres-VP combo, with whichever one having the biggest # of delegates coming out at the top of the billing. Top guy does 4-8 years, VP then does 4-8 years more as President.
Sounds sleazy at first blush, but compared to "Superdelegates"? It's doable and it actually makes sense.
And items that were classified had their classification removed before being emailed per Hillary's instruction.
Not entirely true, but your point is irrelevant anyway, because...
I used to work in the fun little world of TS and above clearances (specifically in a technical role with what eventually became the F-117A Nighthawk). Our instructions were very clear and simple: if it's marked classified, it never leaves Tonopah Test Range.
And yes, we had email back then - and so did the academic world. If I had so much as thought of doing what she did, *even if I generated/controlled the data in question*, I'd still be sitting in Fort Leavenworth, a quarter-century-plus later. And, no partisan hacks would be on the blogs or the Sunday TV shows trying to defend the act, either.
Therein lies my point - if it would land us peons in prison, then why should the law exempt her for doing the same thing?
or not.
Amazon wasn't exactly making inroads into the consumer market anyway.
now a stolen device will destroy your life they are worth less than nothing.
Actually, this is a good point. So if you have an Amazon phone (all four of you), you may well want to start shopping for a new one - probably today. No idea who would put sensitive info on their Kindle, though...
Now the fun question is, do they still have DRM/encryption on all their eBooks? I'm betting the answer to that is probably 'yes'.
Two easy answers that come to mind:
1) "Oh, I don't have a smartphone. Can you issue one"?
2) Go out and buy a cheap-assed-but-usable Huawei for $100, put it on Net10/MetroPCS/whatever, and use it only for corporate stuff. Write off the costs on your taxes.