Headline: Town rejects location for solar farm, also, listen to these idiots
I can just hear JJ saying "The Bugle can't run that! It's too many words. Just trim it to 'Listen to these idiots' since that's all people care about anyway."
Funny world where the terrible boss in a 1963 comic book would still recognize the stupidity of the public today.
Thank goodness you're here. I was terrified that people might not know or (gasp) care what you think. I can't believe the town didn't just consult you before making this stupid mistake.
I think we're there with what we have now. I think there are a handful of well researched and publicly documented encryption algorithms that simply cannot be broken by anyone in the world for the foreseeable future.
I know there are some tinfoil hat wearing people who think the government has perfected quantum computers, but those people don't understand the tech. There are others who think it's possible to break 256 AES if enough computers work on it, but those people don't understand math.
What is possible is guessing passwords, which is very doable. But if you and I exchange keys securely, and practice, we can exchange messages created by doing math on paper that I don't believe anybody in the world could decode.
The actual problem isn't that there isn't a way to prevent mass surveillance, its that nobody cares. And that's changing. Since Snowden, people and businesses have been changing the default choice to using strong encryption and that's why there are all these political statements about needing a way around it. The government has been used to being able to spy on our communications precisely because nobody cared and now the tide is turning to prevent it and they're panicked.
Sounds like what you want is a bunch of governments banded together for only the smallest portion of law that affects how they interact. It sounds like you want the option to have some people get strict gun control and all abortions illegal, while a hundred miles away another government might have legalized and subsidized abortions for fetuses up to twenty-three months and mandatory gun training and ownership for everybody. You'd have a bunch of small governments that could succeed or fail on their own, with the only laws tying them together being about the interactions between them. That could work. Then you'd only need a very small and inexpensive coordinating governing body for the disputes between the smaller governments.
I read about such a place. There was no income tax. There was freedom for whatever people cared most about and if it wasn't where they lived, they could move (mostly.) Some of the small governments got bothered when there were human rights violations by other small governments, preventing people from moving where they wanted not even being the greatest of the problems. They had a little war and the ones that wanted to tell others what to do won. Now that place still has their little governments but the central oversight government has taxed and legislated itself into a massive center of power and the differences between the laws by the little governments are insignificant in comparison. Oddly, most people still think their own little government is the best and still think they're "free" despite having to carry government issued identification papers at all times and having their private communications tracked and recorded doesn't seem to bother most of them. This guy Edward Snowden tried to tell the people there was a problem and had to flee the country and even though his revelations were in the news for months and months, most people couldn't tell you his name.
Freedom is scary because people will abuse it and harm other people. Real freedom means that you have to let Fred beat his wife to death and watch his starving children die of preventable illness because Fred is "free." Real freedom means some people make other people slaves and other people embark on genocides.
My personal belief is that the only valid roles of government are justice, preventing people from harming each other and protecting the public from being harmed by outside actors. I believe in supporting the common good, but not in forcing people to support what others consider the common good with threats of violence or imprisonment. Schools? Firemen? Police? Roads? All things I'm in favor of supporting, but I'm not in favor of jailing people who don't. People often think Libertarian and Tea Party views are about providing less services, but in reality they're about who goes to jail for not helping. I'm not really a Libertarian but I have voted for Libertarian candidates and I'm not a member of the Tea Party but I do like tea and parties. What I don't like is guns and jails used on people who disagree but don't harm anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Headline: Town rejects location for solar farm, also, listen to these idiots
I can just hear JJ saying "The Bugle can't run that! It's too many words. Just trim it to 'Listen to these idiots' since that's all people care about anyway."
Funny world where the terrible boss in a 1963 comic book would still recognize the stupidity of the public today.
Then thank you internet citizen, you are my hero.
Story: Town rejects thing for insanity
Truth: Insanity was ignored, good reasons
The town's reasons are good reasons. The internet got this one wrong.
(One idiot on the internet thinks the reasons in an actual researched article are bad, but nobody cares.)
Thank goodness you're here. I was terrified that people might not know or (gasp) care what you think. I can't believe the town didn't just consult you before making this stupid mistake.
I think we're there with what we have now. I think there are a handful of well researched and publicly documented encryption algorithms that simply cannot be broken by anyone in the world for the foreseeable future.
I know there are some tinfoil hat wearing people who think the government has perfected quantum computers, but those people don't understand the tech. There are others who think it's possible to break 256 AES if enough computers work on it, but those people don't understand math.
What is possible is guessing passwords, which is very doable. But if you and I exchange keys securely, and practice, we can exchange messages created by doing math on paper that I don't believe anybody in the world could decode.
The actual problem isn't that there isn't a way to prevent mass surveillance, its that nobody cares. And that's changing. Since Snowden, people and businesses have been changing the default choice to using strong encryption and that's why there are all these political statements about needing a way around it. The government has been used to being able to spy on our communications precisely because nobody cared and now the tide is turning to prevent it and they're panicked.
Talking about doing illegal things is sometimes illegal and recently, fantasizing about them was too: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Sounds like what you want is a bunch of governments banded together for only the smallest portion of law that affects how they interact. It sounds like you want the option to have some people get strict gun control and all abortions illegal, while a hundred miles away another government might have legalized and subsidized abortions for fetuses up to twenty-three months and mandatory gun training and ownership for everybody. You'd have a bunch of small governments that could succeed or fail on their own, with the only laws tying them together being about the interactions between them. That could work. Then you'd only need a very small and inexpensive coordinating governing body for the disputes between the smaller governments.
I read about such a place. There was no income tax. There was freedom for whatever people cared most about and if it wasn't where they lived, they could move (mostly.) Some of the small governments got bothered when there were human rights violations by other small governments, preventing people from moving where they wanted not even being the greatest of the problems. They had a little war and the ones that wanted to tell others what to do won. Now that place still has their little governments but the central oversight government has taxed and legislated itself into a massive center of power and the differences between the laws by the little governments are insignificant in comparison. Oddly, most people still think their own little government is the best and still think they're "free" despite having to carry government issued identification papers at all times and having their private communications tracked and recorded doesn't seem to bother most of them. This guy Edward Snowden tried to tell the people there was a problem and had to flee the country and even though his revelations were in the news for months and months, most people couldn't tell you his name.
Freedom is scary because people will abuse it and harm other people. Real freedom means that you have to let Fred beat his wife to death and watch his starving children die of preventable illness because Fred is "free." Real freedom means some people make other people slaves and other people embark on genocides.
My personal belief is that the only valid roles of government are justice, preventing people from harming each other and protecting the public from being harmed by outside actors. I believe in supporting the common good, but not in forcing people to support what others consider the common good with threats of violence or imprisonment. Schools? Firemen? Police? Roads? All things I'm in favor of supporting, but I'm not in favor of jailing people who don't. People often think Libertarian and Tea Party views are about providing less services, but in reality they're about who goes to jail for not helping. I'm not really a Libertarian but I have voted for Libertarian candidates and I'm not a member of the Tea Party but I do like tea and parties. What I don't like is guns and jails used on people who disagree but don't harm anyone else.