60 pieces of data sounds like a lot. From the article:
"European officials had balked at the U.S. request to get access to additional information airlines may collect that could reveal more detailed personal data, such as medical conditions and political affiliation."
This implies that airlines have that information in the first place. Political affiliation? How can they get such information, and why do they? This is a concern even before they start making it available to anyone.
I voted for my country to join the EU. I would have reconsidered this vote today.
Economic common sense is a factor for all sides involved. I doubt China is going to act on its threats before the 2008 Olympics that were handed to them on a plate.
The day corporate CEOs get to run previously democractic countries I'm sure you'll applaud their decision to yield Taiwan to a tyrannical regime so that you can continue to buy cheap RAM. What if it was YOUR country's independence at stake?
Yes, but I don't think anyone is being insidious here. Some sites allow free access to fresh content (like, today's or this weeks's stories). After that content has been archived, you have to pay. So Goggle may index some of the stuff while it's free, but when you search for it later, it's already been defreed. (CNN transcripts archive is an example.)
You go to a library, take out some books. Later FBI visits the library and requests all records regarding the books you borrowed. They don't have to give any reasons, let alone a court order. The librarian must comply and must not let you know this happened. It's just one example of what the partiot act does. Now, are you sincerely saying it is patriotic to support this kind of encroachment on freedom? How is this different from any totalitarian method? Or are you saying it's patriotic to support totalitarian methods of governing the country?
Thing is, you cannot know, because one of the major provisionso of the act is FBI's ability to conduct entirely secret investigations. Even the person under investigation or his/her lawyer cannot so much as tell anyone that the investogation is ongoing. Still doesn't bother you a lick?
Oh yeah, those stinky foreigners. No rights for them, no sir! Why, if it weren't for foreigners, this country... Oh wait.
Meanwhile, what about the FBI agent who knew and reported about shady characters taking flying lessons? What about those owners of flight schools who called FBI and told them the same? All the information was there, but your president was on vacation, fly-fishing and watching Barney chase armadillos.
Ask John Ashcroft if he sees any middle ground. You know, the one who anoints himself with oil (and Crisco on at least one occasion) before he takes a governmental post; the one who decided a bare breast on the Statue of Justice was indecent and had it covered.
Not including more links because while these facts are common knowledge, the worth of any link is relative to a slashdot poster's idea of a reliable source. Find your own.
So let's establish the balance of the trade. For 3000 deaths, you are willing to give up your liberties in return for security - for how long? Forever? Until something (what specifically?) happens? Until you have caused a commensurate number of deaths for the enemy? (Define the enemy; you're not going to kill folks indiscriminately, right?) And exactly how much of you liberty are you trading in for exactly how much security?
A trade is a trade. You gotta have some well-understood rules and condtions. Before you lay them all out in detail, you can't really know if the trade is fair and if you're getting a good deal, can you?
This is not what I wrote. I was replying to a post that basically said "The US are the good guys". I said it was bullshit. You're not good guys if you bomb civilians to death - read the article I linked to - *even if* the bombing in question was an honest mistake, i.e. neither the the pilot not his commanding officers meant to kill those people. The whole distinction between good guys and bad guys is politcal propaganda and feelgoodism. And I don't feel a bit safer knowing that the US is
I specifically provided an example of a horrible accident that was clearly NOT dreamt up by GWB and his cronies. It would be much easier to provide examples of provably intentional evildoing on part of Messrs Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al (or, historically, the US under many presidents), but when you do that on slashdot, you're an instant tinfoil-hatted commie in the eyes of much of the readership, so I avoid that where a better argument can be made.
"Exactly. "U.S. continues"?? Oh, you mean one university = US?"
Surely you remember the ruckus your president made when, in the days leading to the Iraq war, the UN inspectors found one (1) vial of anthrax or somesuch in one (1) researcher's private (private) home? That was, like, OMG, BIOWEAPONS, BOMB THEM NOW!
There's only one (1) country that feels safer overall now that Saddam is gone. That country is not the US.
Were *you* afraid Saddam was gonna kill you in the night? Were you sincerely afraid of Iraq? And if you were, then knowing what you now know - that Iraq had no deployable WMD whatsoever - was that fear rational?
"Would you rather be fully disclosed about a potential security hole or would you rather live in ignorance?"
There's a good chance of more than one person discovering the same exact security hole. The chance of someone manufacturing the same exact strain of virus is practically nil, and so is the chance of any vaccine effective on this strain being also effective on THAT strain.
"Would you rather have no research done on how to protect against these?"
You can do the research on existing strains of known viruses. Hell, we're still a long way off from a vaccine that'll work on all known strains of HIV. Inventing new lethal viruses is just sick, even if it serves a dim theoretical purpose.
"For those of you thinking the US would actually weaponize this stuff, I suggest a full body tinfoil suit."
Why? It's an earnest question, not a troll. Why would a contry not use a powerful weapon, especially if it believed the adversary was incapable of mounting a like response? Hello, Hiroshima?
"You cannot create an anti-agent without first CREATING the agent your going to attempt to create the anti-agent against."
But the agent and the anti-agent need not be the same guy, eh? Because if they are, then maybe AV companies really *are* the ones who actually create computer viruses? Same logic.
"if someone developed a pandemic strain of flu in the lab and managed to make a vaccine against it (which the can ONLY DO because they made the virus) and it prevented millions of deaths..."
Bogus. There would not be a single death caused by this strain if the lab had not developed the strain in the first place. Unless you're developing a new strain with an intntion to release it and then make bucks selling the vaccine.
If you're genuinely interested in developing vaccines, there's plenty of existing viruses you can do your work on.
Apparently the US dropped the second bomb to make sure the Japanese wouldn't think they only had one. But they didn't have to drop the second one on a *city*.
Sorry, you're right, you're the good guys. One tends to forget. You may want to remind this lady that you're the good guys too. She lost six children and her husband when her house was bombed in October 2001. She probably forgot as she was scraping her daughter's brains from the floor.
Shit happens. Everyone - people and countries - make horrible mistakes. And making an honest mistake doesn't make them evil. But to say that one side is "good" by definition, by someone's fiat, and the other side is "bad" - this is just blind arrogance and jingoism of the worst head-in-ass kind.
In my book, whoever has nuclear weapons or other WMDs is just as dangerous. Whoever has them is capable of using them on me and is in danger of letting them loose through an honest mistake. I don't care WHO the fuck they think they are.
Has it ever ocurred to you that we might HAVE the cure for cancer by now if all those billions had not been spent on inventing new lethal strains of virus instead of inventing new fucking cures, huh?
No, Diebold is not out to make voting illegal. Rather, through gross ineptitude *or* intent -- it's not clear which -- they are well on the way to make voting irrelevant. As in, "doesn't change anything".
Slashdot Mirror
>I think GPS in phones is a great idea.
It may be a great idea if a mother is tracking her child. It's not such a great idea if a stalker is doing the same.
60 pieces of data sounds like a lot. From the article:
"European officials had balked at the U.S. request to get access to additional information airlines may collect that could reveal more detailed personal data, such as medical conditions and political affiliation."
This implies that airlines have that information in the first place. Political affiliation? How can they get such information, and why do they? This is a concern even before they start making it available to anyone.
I voted for my country to join the EU. I would have reconsidered this vote today.
"Fortunately" for whom?
Economic common sense is a factor for all sides involved. I doubt China is going to act on its threats before the 2008 Olympics that were handed to them on a plate.
The day corporate CEOs get to run previously democractic countries I'm sure you'll applaud their decision to yield Taiwan to a tyrannical regime so that you can continue to buy cheap RAM. What if it was YOUR country's independence at stake?
Yes, but I don't think anyone is being insidious here. Some sites allow free access to fresh content (like, today's or this weeks's stories). After that content has been archived, you have to pay. So Goggle may index some of the stuff while it's free, but when you search for it later, it's already been defreed. (CNN transcripts archive is an example.)
Biometrics are not necessarily hard to forge. This guy duplicated fingerprints and created dummy fingers - 20 of them for ten bucks, in 15 minutes:
r es ting-people/200311/msg00095.html
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/inte
Aren't Diebold a big manufacturer of ATMs? The general public is using their machines every day.
You go to a library, take out some books. Later FBI visits the library and requests all records regarding the books you borrowed. They don't have to give any reasons, let alone a court order. The librarian must comply and must not let you know this happened. It's just one example of what the partiot act does. Now, are you sincerely saying it is patriotic to support this kind of encroachment on freedom? How is this different from any totalitarian method? Or are you saying it's patriotic to support totalitarian methods of governing the country?
Thing is, you cannot know, because one of the major provisionso of the act is FBI's ability to conduct entirely secret investigations. Even the person under investigation or his/her lawyer cannot so much as tell anyone that the investogation is ongoing. Still doesn't bother you a lick?
Meanwhile, what about the FBI agent who knew and reported about shady characters taking flying lessons? What about those owners of flight schools who called FBI and told them the same? All the information was there, but your president was on vacation, fly-fishing and watching Barney chase armadillos.
Ask John Ashcroft if he sees any middle ground. You know, the one who anoints himself with oil (and Crisco on at least one occasion) before he takes a governmental post; the one who decided a bare breast on the Statue of Justice was indecent and had it covered.
Not including more links because while these facts are common knowledge, the worth of any link is relative to a slashdot poster's idea of a reliable source. Find your own.
So let's establish the balance of the trade. For 3000 deaths, you are willing to give up your liberties in return for security - for how long? Forever? Until something (what specifically?) happens? Until you have caused a commensurate number of deaths for the enemy? (Define the enemy; you're not going to kill folks indiscriminately, right?) And exactly how much of you liberty are you trading in for exactly how much security?
A trade is a trade. You gotta have some well-understood rules and condtions. Before you lay them all out in detail, you can't really know if the trade is fair and if you're getting a good deal, can you?
I specifically provided an example of a horrible accident that was clearly NOT dreamt up by GWB and his cronies. It would be much easier to provide examples of provably intentional evildoing on part of Messrs Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al (or, historically, the US under many presidents), but when you do that on slashdot, you're an instant tinfoil-hatted commie in the eyes of much of the readership, so I avoid that where a better argument can be made.
"Exactly. "U.S. continues"?? Oh, you mean one university = US?"
Surely you remember the ruckus your president made when, in the days leading to the Iraq war, the UN inspectors found one (1) vial of anthrax or somesuch in one (1) researcher's private (private) home? That was, like, OMG, BIOWEAPONS, BOMB THEM NOW!
But I always forget. You're the good guys.
There's only one (1) country that feels safer overall now that Saddam is gone. That country is not the US.
Were *you* afraid Saddam was gonna kill you in the night? Were you sincerely afraid of Iraq? And if you were, then knowing what you now know - that Iraq had no deployable WMD whatsoever - was that fear rational?
"I equate this to computer security releases."
Wrong analogy.
"Would you rather be fully disclosed about a potential security hole or would you rather live in ignorance?"
There's a good chance of more than one person discovering the same exact security hole. The chance of someone manufacturing the same exact strain of virus is practically nil, and so is the chance of any vaccine effective on this strain being also effective on THAT strain.
"Would you rather have no research done on how to protect against these?"
You can do the research on existing strains of known viruses. Hell, we're still a long way off from a vaccine that'll work on all known strains of HIV. Inventing new lethal viruses is just sick, even if it serves a dim theoretical purpose.
"For those of you thinking the US would actually weaponize this stuff, I suggest a full body tinfoil suit."
Why? It's an earnest question, not a troll. Why would a contry not use a powerful weapon, especially if it believed the adversary was incapable of mounting a like response? Hello, Hiroshima?
That should have read: "But the agent and the anti-agent need not be CREATED BY the same guy". I did check those URLs though :)
"You cannot create an anti-agent without first CREATING the agent your going to attempt to create the anti-agent against."
But the agent and the anti-agent need not be the same guy, eh? Because if they are, then maybe AV companies really *are* the ones who actually create computer viruses? Same logic.
"if someone developed a pandemic strain of flu in the lab and managed to make a vaccine against it (which the can ONLY DO because they made the virus) and it prevented millions of deaths..."
Bogus. There would not be a single death caused by this strain if the lab had not developed the strain in the first place. Unless you're developing a new strain with an intntion to release it and then make bucks selling the vaccine.
If you're genuinely interested in developing vaccines, there's plenty of existing viruses you can do your work on.
Apparently the US dropped the second bomb to make sure the Japanese wouldn't think they only had one. But they didn't have to drop the second one on a *city*.
Gulf of Tonkin, hello?
Shit happens. Everyone - people and countries - make horrible mistakes. And making an honest mistake doesn't make them evil. But to say that one side is "good" by definition, by someone's fiat, and the other side is "bad" - this is just blind arrogance and jingoism of the worst head-in-ass kind.
In my book, whoever has nuclear weapons or other WMDs is just as dangerous. Whoever has them is capable of using them on me and is in danger of letting them loose through an honest mistake. I don't care WHO the fuck they think they are.
Has it ever ocurred to you that we might HAVE the cure for cancer by now if all those billions had not been spent on inventing new lethal strains of virus instead of inventing new fucking cures, huh?
No, Diebold is not out to make voting illegal. Rather, through gross ineptitude *or* intent -- it's not clear which -- they are well on the way to make voting irrelevant. As in, "doesn't change anything".
This is absolutely hilarious, although my screen, my keyboard and my coffee feel otherwise~right now. Thanks!