Which reminds me, AC, You're Beautiful, I'm N Luv, and I'd hate to Be Without You. You make me so hot Everytime We Touch. I'm not sure what Temperature exactly, but you should Check On It. Also, I'm finna get me some Grillz, Yo (Excuse Me Miss), even though they make you So Sick.
Many phones that can play MP3s (or any form of audio) can be connected to a PC via USB and (in some cases) special software. It's then possible to transfer files directly to the phone. It's not as convenient, but at least you can use your existing recordings rather than whatever company X tells you is appropriate. Although, if your time is worth a lot, it would probably be cheaper to just download clips rather than spending time trimming, converting, downsampling, and learning how to use some hacker's software (usually) to transfer the files. Which is why you'd want to do it at work, obviously.
Better conductivity and heat dissipation. Double the cross section of a conductor and you halve its resistance. Wires are not the most efficient conductors, just the most convenient for many applications.
That's really not surprising, nor alarming.. at least to me. That particular operation was a swift retaliation where time and stealth were of the essence. In fact, I believe the attacks actually missed, as the camps had already been evacuated (just going by memory here). There would have been no reason for Congress as a whole to have known about it in advance, although certain committees were likely briefed.
However, that's a lot different than, say, ongoing -- possibly unconstitutional -- programs. It's also a lot different than members voting on bills they've never read. Legislation is Congress' primary responsibility, and they have trouble doing even that right...
Not really.. Resonance is a factor of physical size versus wavelength. The resonant frequency of something the size of a jet is very low.. single digit cycles per second; not exactly the frequency a cell phone operates at. Sure, harmonics will be amplified as well, but you're talking 100th order harmonics for MHz in something like an airplane cabin. There may be joints, ducting, conductor capacitance, and all manner of other things on a plane which might, MIGHT have a resonant frequency (or low Z) close to the broadcast frequency of a cell phone, but there's nothing special about a cabin itself.
I just took the Accela from Boston to DC (due to bad weather, flights were delayed, etc.) The quiet car, where I camped out, was completely full. The other cars were ~50% full. The quiet car is awesome.
Glad you think so.
-Guy sprawled out on all the free space created by the infatuation with "quiet cars."
Un[f]ortunately, the same self-important yapping that has people talking just to hear themselves speak ensures that nobody will ever pay much attention to what they're saying until an actual idiot is created, and is conclusively proven to have been caused by listening to crazy-talk.
Sad, really.
In related news, 96% of plane crashes had people walking up and/or down the aisles, which might have caused the plane to lose its balance and fall. I'm not saying that walking up and down the aisle causes plane crashes conclusively, but we should probably ban it just to be safe. Additionally, dead people have been found at 90% of crash sites. While this is obviously not as great a risk as aisle-walking, it's obvious that dead people are a factor in a significant number of crashes, probably because they hate alive people. How many more innocents must die before we ban aisle walking and dead people? Write your congressman today, and let him know how you feel. Let him know you've had enough of this tomfoolery, and it's time to make our skies safe!
If I notice someone poking around at my systems in such a way that looks like it's looking for exploits, I'll contact the ISP responsable and ask them to chave a chat with that user. If they blow me off, I'm likely to blacklist the ISP entirely.
Don't be ridiculous.. If you really did (do) that, you'd spend (are spending) an inordinate amount of time hunting down probes, since you're likely getting scanned several times per day, if not per hour. Especially if you're running any servers designed to be accessible to the public. If the analogy of "someone sitting outside your house" held up, you'd expect to see hundreds of people sitting outside at any given time. You'd spend every minute of every day asking people why they were there, what they were up to, if they were aware they were sitting there, etc. Even if YOU do it, it's not a reasonable response for everyone.
Furthermore, the probes are likely coming from bot nets, or infected systems. Moreover, a sufficiently patient attacker will spread the probes over a long enough period that you won't see anything unusual. There are many techniques which make it difficult for you to notice anything in the first place, or determine the true source of the probes, and even the true target. If you've got multiple systems, an attacker might mount a pre-attack on one of them to try to get you to investigate, only to hit his true target while you're busy checking logs and calling ISPs. Blocking an IP (or IP range) is, at best, an inconvenience to a dedicated attacker. If you foil anyone, it's the people who are least likely to present a threat.
Anyway, it's a lot like locking your car: Unless your systems are wide-open, or there's something of obvious value, an attacker is likely to just move on to the next target. Obviously if you're in charge of highly sensitive systems where knowing your attacker is at least as important as preventing the attacks, then tracing is justified, otherwise following up is just a waste of your time. But if you've got the time to waste, by all means...
It stands to reason that some amount of the teaching will be using the actual computer, rather than just the specific software in question. It would probably behoove the students to be exposed to both OS's. When I was in school, way way back in the 80s, we had Commodores, Apples, and PCs, and everybody managed to learn each just fine.
Or just chuck the golf ball at earth, preferably at a PGA tournament in progress. Seeing a golf ball smash into the hole at Mach 10 would finally give me a reason to watch golf.
The author implies that multiple licenses can insense your customers, provide discounts to the people who can afford pay you the most (corporations), and may ultimately fail because large corporations have purchasing divisions whose sole purpose is to get you to charge less. Worth a read, at least.
I, for one, welcome the Chinese separationist policies. It gives us someone to point to as an example when companies start trying to take similar steps in the US.
If the intent is to use this for censorship, then I think ultimately the not-100%-accurate assessment that "the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" will hold true for this particular attempt, in that people will just set up grassroots name servers, or point to external name servers, or run their own DNS over unconventional protocols with the help of external participants. How's that for a run-on sentence?
Hi, it's me again. The same "troll." Because anyone who isn't a fanboy is a troll, obviously.
Yes, I did miss the part about the VGA, Composite, S-Video, and HDMI out. I only saw the connectors on the back. If there's an adapter, then I retract my complaint about lack of such.
And yes, you can most certainly do HD video without HDCP. (???)
Not really. True, there are no BluRay or HD-DVD drives even on the market yet, but could you add one when they're released in May? I doubt it. I'm not saying it makes the Mac Mini worthless, just not great as a media center, even for the price.
And only a "couple of shows" on an *80 GB* drive
80GB is tiny for PVR purposes, especially when you factor in that the same storage is used for the OS and any other software you want to install. PVR, in my opinion, is part of what makes a "media center PC" a media center PC. Roughly 50% of it, in fact.
no one's forcing you to buy a Mac mini
So I can only voice my opinion when someone's forcing me to buy things? I'll keep that in mind in the future. Thanks for straightening me out.
And as for your button complains, apparently you've never used, or even seen, Front Row.
I'm not going to argue about fewer buttons = less efficient input; that's a given. Think cell phones vs. keyboards. Unless FrontRow can read my mind, it's going to need more menus for the same functionality when compared to a more complete remote.
Those who fear the government... Are doing something illegal.
First of all, who said anything about fear? Second, you conveniently ignore the fact that Legal and Illegal are defined by the government. Further, you fail to make a distinction between ethics and legality, which, while they should ideally be the same, are separated by human weakness; particularly the inability to forsee unintended consequences, and the failure to learn from past mistakes. See also: Those who don't study history.
The government is responsible for protecting its citizens and making sure laws are being followed.
Most people agree with that, myself included. Just like I'm responsible for, say, paying my bills. That doesn't mean that I'm going to pay them, or even that I'm going to pay them in the best way -- with cash -- rather than procrastinating by putting them on my credit card. To believe that the government is incapable of making mistakes is to believe that it is infallible -- the opposite of what humans are. Last I checked, the government was still run by people. As far as I can tell, that's the only acceptable form of government. We accept fallibility; we ask only that our leaders consider that they can make mistakes and be open to those who voice criticism. That's the definition of a free and open society.
I am completely fine with government doing what is reasonably neccessary to protect me...
So am I; it's the definition of reasonable that I disagree with. Reasonable, for the past 200 years or so, has meant that personal and private affairs require warrants for law enforcement to violate. A warrant is basically a written explanation of probable cause. Is simply making an international phone call probable cause? I don't think so, but regardless, it's for a court to decide. Separation of powers: It's not perfect, but it's the best we've come up with so far. But apparently you disagree.
For once, someone has the balls to protect this country
As opposed to when we were attacked in the past and we just sat on our thumbs? Back in.. uh.. never?
and the "civil rights" propronents want to bring it down.
Those "civil rights" are the only things that distinguish a free society. And if you disagree, if civil rights are not the mark of a free society, then what is? Lip service? "We say we have freedom, therefore we do." A rose by any other name..
I know that we should have freedoms, but in a post 9-11 age, there is certain information that should not be released for the public to have.
There is no such thing as a "post 9/11 age." The only thing that changed is our perception of the world. Remember that whole lesson about witch hunts and McCarthyism that you learned in high school? There's a reason they taught that part. Rampant paranoia, no matter how legitimate, can only consume and destroy us. It makes us view otherwise absurd behavior as somehow legitimate. Courage isn't reacting based on fear, it's doing the right thing in spite of fear.
This is why we elect government officials.
Actually, most elected officials don't have security clearances. The courts check the executive branch, the executive branch checks the legislative, and the legislative checks the courts. Most judges are appointed, not elected. But whatever, that's neither here nor there.
I love freedom, but I am willing to give some up if it means my wife and daughter are safer as a result.
Freedom means being vulnerable. There's no getting aroun it. It means we trust others not to impinge on our rights, and when they do, we seek justice through the courts. Sometimes people will disregard the rights of one another, but that doesn't mean we start living in fortresses.
Often victims of crime will have a hard time putting themselves in potentially vulnerable situations. They start viewing otherwise innocuous events with suspicion. It's called post-traumatic stress, or shell shock
I bet most people wouldn't mind if we put a camera in your house either. Heck, I wouldn't mind. We don't even have to be at war. In fact, I don't care about anything that happens, as long as it doesn't negatively affect me and possibly has some upside.
But you can get realistic bass response from tiny speakers powered by D batteries with no clipping. It's easy, just ask Bose! Makes you wonder why they even bother making 12" woofers anymore.
Right, but if he just blames the HDD, people will believe it, ignoring the fact that regardless of the reason, Apple didn't provide enough power to display HD.
Not to mention, won't TVs scale down the resolution of HD content unless it's provided through HDCP?
A Mac Mini "Media Center" with only DVI out? That makes sense. You'd think they would have thrown in at least an S-Video out. Or do they just expect that anyone who would buy it would already own a TV with DVI in?
No HDCP out, so no HD, no video inputs of any kind, so an external tuner is required if you want to use it as a PVR, although good luck storing more than a couple of shows on an 80GB drive.
Adding a remote does not a media center make. And while Jobs touts 6 buttons as an improvement, fewer buttons means more menu navigation. I prefer buttons with direct access to the operations I want to perform, thanks.
True, but so do HDDs. I predict lots of crashes as hard drives that people keep plugged in wear out.
Seriously though, modern flash memory can sustain 500k-1M write cycles. That's several years of use, especially with "load balancing" controller chips which spread the use around the chip to prevent certain spots, like the beginning of the chips, from wearing out prematurely. They might not last as long as HDDs, but (especially if warnings start going off when error rates surpass a certain threshold) they could be suitable substitutes for the purpose mentioned and last a couple of years at a time.
The type of people interested in using such techniques to increase performance are likely to be buying new memory at intervals less than 2 years, especially as performance and capacity increases.
I realize this is completely off-topic, but what happened to all the mods? I browse comments at a threshold of +3, and there's a single digit number of posts that meet that criteria for all but a handful of topics over the past few days. Did/. stop handing out mod points?
only petty thieves are stupid enough to pick up the phone and call their cohorts overseas to discuss their next nefarious scheme.
In all fairness, that's not a historically accurate statement. Mafia cases have been, and continue to be, decided on wiretap evidence, despite the fact that Mafia Boss X replaced Mafia Boss X-1 after X-1 was sent away on wiretapping evidence.
Sure, they're careful most of the time, but it only takes one slipup. One "oh sh1t, I don't have time to find my encryptor" or "I'm so angry I'm just going to threaten to kill someone right over the phone."
That said, illegal wiretaps are unconstitutional, and trampling civil liberties to preserve "freedom" is the perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I'm just saying the argument that they're ineffective isn't the one you should be making. They are effective, and as long as people make mistakes, they will continue to be effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Which reminds me, AC, You're Beautiful, I'm N Luv, and I'd hate to Be Without You. You make me so hot Everytime We Touch. I'm not sure what Temperature exactly, but you should Check On It. Also, I'm finna get me some Grillz, Yo (Excuse Me Miss), even though they make you So Sick.
Many phones that can play MP3s (or any form of audio) can be connected to a PC via USB and (in some cases) special software. It's then possible to transfer files directly to the phone. It's not as convenient, but at least you can use your existing recordings rather than whatever company X tells you is appropriate. Although, if your time is worth a lot, it would probably be cheaper to just download clips rather than spending time trimming, converting, downsampling, and learning how to use some hacker's software (usually) to transfer the files. Which is why you'd want to do it at work, obviously.
Better conductivity and heat dissipation. Double the cross section of a conductor and you halve its resistance. Wires are not the most efficient conductors, just the most convenient for many applications.
That's really not surprising, nor alarming.. at least to me. That particular operation was a swift retaliation where time and stealth were of the essence. In fact, I believe the attacks actually missed, as the camps had already been evacuated (just going by memory here). There would have been no reason for Congress as a whole to have known about it in advance, although certain committees were likely briefed.
However, that's a lot different than, say, ongoing -- possibly unconstitutional -- programs. It's also a lot different than members voting on bills they've never read. Legislation is Congress' primary responsibility, and they have trouble doing even that right...
Not really.. Resonance is a factor of physical size versus wavelength. The resonant frequency of something the size of a jet is very low.. single digit cycles per second; not exactly the frequency a cell phone operates at. Sure, harmonics will be amplified as well, but you're talking 100th order harmonics for MHz in something like an airplane cabin. There may be joints, ducting, conductor capacitance, and all manner of other things on a plane which might, MIGHT have a resonant frequency (or low Z) close to the broadcast frequency of a cell phone, but there's nothing special about a cabin itself.
I just took the Accela from Boston to DC (due to bad weather, flights were delayed, etc.) The quiet car, where I camped out, was completely full. The other cars were ~50% full. The quiet car is awesome.
Glad you think so.
-Guy sprawled out on all the free space created by the infatuation with "quiet cars."
Un[f]ortunately, the same self-important yapping that has people talking just to hear themselves speak ensures that nobody will ever pay much attention to what they're saying until an actual idiot is created, and is conclusively proven to have been caused by listening to crazy-talk.
Sad, really.
In related news, 96% of plane crashes had people walking up and/or down the aisles, which might have caused the plane to lose its balance and fall. I'm not saying that walking up and down the aisle causes plane crashes conclusively, but we should probably ban it just to be safe. Additionally, dead people have been found at 90% of crash sites. While this is obviously not as great a risk as aisle-walking, it's obvious that dead people are a factor in a significant number of crashes, probably because they hate alive people. How many more innocents must die before we ban aisle walking and dead people? Write your congressman today, and let him know how you feel. Let him know you've had enough of this tomfoolery, and it's time to make our skies safe!
Aww, if you'd just left off the spoiler at the end.
Not that anyone's spending mod points anyway. It's like a dustbowl browsing at +3 lately.
If I notice someone poking around at my systems in such a way that looks like it's looking for exploits, I'll contact the ISP responsable and ask them to chave a chat with that user. If they blow me off, I'm likely to blacklist the ISP entirely.
Don't be ridiculous.. If you really did (do) that, you'd spend (are spending) an inordinate amount of time hunting down probes, since you're likely getting scanned several times per day, if not per hour. Especially if you're running any servers designed to be accessible to the public. If the analogy of "someone sitting outside your house" held up, you'd expect to see hundreds of people sitting outside at any given time. You'd spend every minute of every day asking people why they were there, what they were up to, if they were aware they were sitting there, etc. Even if YOU do it, it's not a reasonable response for everyone.
Furthermore, the probes are likely coming from bot nets, or infected systems. Moreover, a sufficiently patient attacker will spread the probes over a long enough period that you won't see anything unusual. There are many techniques which make it difficult for you to notice anything in the first place, or determine the true source of the probes, and even the true target. If you've got multiple systems, an attacker might mount a pre-attack on one of them to try to get you to investigate, only to hit his true target while you're busy checking logs and calling ISPs. Blocking an IP (or IP range) is, at best, an inconvenience to a dedicated attacker. If you foil anyone, it's the people who are least likely to present a threat.
Anyway, it's a lot like locking your car: Unless your systems are wide-open, or there's something of obvious value, an attacker is likely to just move on to the next target. Obviously if you're in charge of highly sensitive systems where knowing your attacker is at least as important as preventing the attacks, then tracing is justified, otherwise following up is just a waste of your time. But if you've got the time to waste, by all means...
And what makes you think anything the governments of the US, UK, Australia, etc. are doing will do the slightest thing to prevent it anyway?
Right.. it's the old argument: We have to do something. This is something, so we're going to do it.
Whether it's effective or not is never questioned.
It stands to reason that some amount of the teaching will be using the actual computer, rather than just the specific software in question. It would probably behoove the students to be exposed to both OS's. When I was in school, way way back in the 80s, we had Commodores, Apples, and PCs, and everybody managed to learn each just fine.
Or just chuck the golf ball at earth, preferably at a PGA tournament in progress. Seeing a golf ball smash into the hole at Mach 10 would finally give me a reason to watch golf.
Mentioned in the comments about Vista yesterday was this article on business models: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRu bberDuckies.html
The author implies that multiple licenses can insense your customers, provide discounts to the people who can afford pay you the most (corporations), and may ultimately fail because large corporations have purchasing divisions whose sole purpose is to get you to charge less. Worth a read, at least.
I, for one, welcome the Chinese separationist policies. It gives us someone to point to as an example when companies start trying to take similar steps in the US.
If the intent is to use this for censorship, then I think ultimately the not-100%-accurate assessment that "the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" will hold true for this particular attempt, in that people will just set up grassroots name servers, or point to external name servers, or run their own DNS over unconventional protocols with the help of external participants. How's that for a run-on sentence?
Hi, it's me again. The same "troll." Because anyone who isn't a fanboy is a troll, obviously.
Yes, I did miss the part about the VGA, Composite, S-Video, and HDMI out. I only saw the connectors on the back. If there's an adapter, then I retract my complaint about lack of such.
And yes, you can most certainly do HD video without HDCP. (???)
Not really. True, there are no BluRay or HD-DVD drives even on the market yet, but could you add one when they're released in May? I doubt it. I'm not saying it makes the Mac Mini worthless, just not great as a media center, even for the price.
And only a "couple of shows" on an *80 GB* drive
80GB is tiny for PVR purposes, especially when you factor in that the same storage is used for the OS and any other software you want to install. PVR, in my opinion, is part of what makes a "media center PC" a media center PC. Roughly 50% of it, in fact.
no one's forcing you to buy a Mac mini
So I can only voice my opinion when someone's forcing me to buy things? I'll keep that in mind in the future. Thanks for straightening me out.
And as for your button complains, apparently you've never used, or even seen, Front Row.
I'm not going to argue about fewer buttons = less efficient input; that's a given. Think cell phones vs. keyboards. Unless FrontRow can read my mind, it's going to need more menus for the same functionality when compared to a more complete remote.
Next troll.
Those who fear the government... Are doing something illegal.
First of all, who said anything about fear? Second, you conveniently ignore the fact that Legal and Illegal are defined by the government. Further, you fail to make a distinction between ethics and legality, which, while they should ideally be the same, are separated by human weakness; particularly the inability to forsee unintended consequences, and the failure to learn from past mistakes. See also: Those who don't study history.
The government is responsible for protecting its citizens and making sure laws are being followed.
Most people agree with that, myself included. Just like I'm responsible for, say, paying my bills. That doesn't mean that I'm going to pay them, or even that I'm going to pay them in the best way -- with cash -- rather than procrastinating by putting them on my credit card. To believe that the government is incapable of making mistakes is to believe that it is infallible -- the opposite of what humans are. Last I checked, the government was still run by people. As far as I can tell, that's the only acceptable form of government. We accept fallibility; we ask only that our leaders consider that they can make mistakes and be open to those who voice criticism. That's the definition of a free and open society.
I am completely fine with government doing what is reasonably neccessary to protect me...
So am I; it's the definition of reasonable that I disagree with. Reasonable, for the past 200 years or so, has meant that personal and private affairs require warrants for law enforcement to violate. A warrant is basically a written explanation of probable cause. Is simply making an international phone call probable cause? I don't think so, but regardless, it's for a court to decide. Separation of powers: It's not perfect, but it's the best we've come up with so far. But apparently you disagree.
For once, someone has the balls to protect this country
As opposed to when we were attacked in the past and we just sat on our thumbs? Back in.. uh.. never?
and the "civil rights" propronents want to bring it down.
Those "civil rights" are the only things that distinguish a free society. And if you disagree, if civil rights are not the mark of a free society, then what is? Lip service? "We say we have freedom, therefore we do." A rose by any other name..
I know that we should have freedoms, but in a post 9-11 age, there is certain information that should not be released for the public to have.
There is no such thing as a "post 9/11 age." The only thing that changed is our perception of the world. Remember that whole lesson about witch hunts and McCarthyism that you learned in high school? There's a reason they taught that part. Rampant paranoia, no matter how legitimate, can only consume and destroy us. It makes us view otherwise absurd behavior as somehow legitimate. Courage isn't reacting based on fear, it's doing the right thing in spite of fear.
This is why we elect government officials.
Actually, most elected officials don't have security clearances. The courts check the executive branch, the executive branch checks the legislative, and the legislative checks the courts. Most judges are appointed, not elected. But whatever, that's neither here nor there.
I love freedom, but I am willing to give some up if it means my wife and daughter are safer as a result.
Freedom means being vulnerable. There's no getting aroun it. It means we trust others not to impinge on our rights, and when they do, we seek justice through the courts. Sometimes people will disregard the rights of one another, but that doesn't mean we start living in fortresses.
Often victims of crime will have a hard time putting themselves in potentially vulnerable situations. They start viewing otherwise innocuous events with suspicion. It's called post-traumatic stress, or shell shock
I bet most people wouldn't mind if we put a camera in your house either. Heck, I wouldn't mind. We don't even have to be at war. In fact, I don't care about anything that happens, as long as it doesn't negatively affect me and possibly has some upside.
Unless she's a card carrying PETA member, in which case you'll just get blood thrown at your iPod which also, I think, might void the warranty.
What can a $99 leather case get me?
If you buy 100 of them, you could probably stitch together a nice jacket.
But you can get realistic bass response from tiny speakers powered by D batteries with no clipping. It's easy, just ask Bose! Makes you wonder why they even bother making 12" woofers anymore.
Right, but if he just blames the HDD, people will believe it, ignoring the fact that regardless of the reason, Apple didn't provide enough power to display HD.
Not to mention, won't TVs scale down the resolution of HD content unless it's provided through HDCP?
A Mac Mini "Media Center" with only DVI out? That makes sense. You'd think they would have thrown in at least an S-Video out. Or do they just expect that anyone who would buy it would already own a TV with DVI in?
No HDCP out, so no HD, no video inputs of any kind, so an external tuner is required if you want to use it as a PVR, although good luck storing more than a couple of shows on an 80GB drive.
Adding a remote does not a media center make. And while Jobs touts 6 buttons as an improvement, fewer buttons means more menu navigation. I prefer buttons with direct access to the operations I want to perform, thanks.
True, but so do HDDs. I predict lots of crashes as hard drives that people keep plugged in wear out.
Seriously though, modern flash memory can sustain 500k-1M write cycles. That's several years of use, especially with "load balancing" controller chips which spread the use around the chip to prevent certain spots, like the beginning of the chips, from wearing out prematurely. They might not last as long as HDDs, but (especially if warnings start going off when error rates surpass a certain threshold) they could be suitable substitutes for the purpose mentioned and last a couple of years at a time.
The type of people interested in using such techniques to increase performance are likely to be buying new memory at intervals less than 2 years, especially as performance and capacity increases.
I realize this is completely off-topic, but what happened to all the mods? I browse comments at a threshold of +3, and there's a single digit number of posts that meet that criteria for all but a handful of topics over the past few days. Did /. stop handing out mod points?
only petty thieves are stupid enough to pick up the phone and call their cohorts overseas to discuss their next nefarious scheme.
In all fairness, that's not a historically accurate statement. Mafia cases have been, and continue to be, decided on wiretap evidence, despite the fact that Mafia Boss X replaced Mafia Boss X-1 after X-1 was sent away on wiretapping evidence.
Sure, they're careful most of the time, but it only takes one slipup. One "oh sh1t, I don't have time to find my encryptor" or "I'm so angry I'm just going to threaten to kill someone right over the phone."
That said, illegal wiretaps are unconstitutional, and trampling civil liberties to preserve "freedom" is the perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I'm just saying the argument that they're ineffective isn't the one you should be making. They are effective, and as long as people make mistakes, they will continue to be effective.