In fact, Hawking himself has frequently joked about his "American accent" because most of the speech synthesizers in his assistive computers have been made in America.
No more than the RIAA has "won" by imposing or using DRM on their music downloads and on iTunes. In that case it only takes one cracked version to leak out before everyone else gets the benefit of the original cracker's behavior ad-infinitum. Likewise, once the detection is worked into a Javascript blocking and filtering tool, such as no-script, everyone using no-script benefits from the original analysis (it doesn't have to be cracked afresh each time it comes up). So the malware author is really only inconveniencing the really uninformed users and not those who understand and take steps to protect their hosts from attack.
Having dynamically generated captchas does not help here, as the spammer never needs to store captchas. As long as people want to download porn
Agreed, but it was also my assertion that the number of potential humans available at any given moment would not be enough to keep up with the demands of the spamming program. The spam program wants to send millions of messages per second and crack new accounts, when they are needed, as fast as possible. Unless the attack can be fully automated it is likely that the CAPTCHAs will continue to frustrate the spammers, if only by severely limiting their volume to much less than they would like (have to wait for a human to come along to help with cracking new accounts to replace the ones that get banned). My point was that the Human assisted attack was sporadic at best in its availability for use by the spammers, unless the spammers are going to hire people to do it (which was a caveat mentioned in the summary).
I am not so sure about that. Scientists and engineers are, by and large, very reasonable and logical people who are persuaded by logical argument, sound evidence, and excellence and good work in their areas of inquiry or expertise. A truly reasonable and logical person, as I believe most scientists and engineers are, would recognize and respect such qualities in either a man or a woman without allowing irrelevant issues, such as gender, to cloud their professional judgment. At worst you might expect men to favor women and women to favor men for professional associations (perhaps based upon some subconscious genetic mate finding urge baked into our genetic code from the distant past before we were as logical and reasonable as we are today), all other things being equal, which would be the opposite bias to the one that you suggest exists.
The concern is that the social conditioning is detrimental. That stereotypical "women's interests" are less valued and thus less rewarding than stereotypical "men's interests."
The concern itself is irrelevant. In a free society everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it or in other words if you think that worm farming is the most interesting job in the world and don't want to do anything else then you cannot expect to receive pay equal to the lawyer, the doctor, or the CEO just because some philosopher king somewhere has decided that everyone shall receive equal pay regardless of their work. This is the same reason why communism, outside of small self-motivated groups, doesn't work.
About 80% of our customers were of the "Do whatever, just ideminfy me" stripe.
That is the first reaction of many business people before they understand the potential consequences of "do whatever, just indemnify me" black-hat SEO, up to and including getting dropped entirely from the Google index or being black listed from ad-sense or both (Google is a private company not a court of law and they can ban or black list anyone they want for any reason they like and the courts have confirmed as much when they were sued over just that by the black hat SEOs). It is probably wise, just to avoid any finger pointing later on, to explain the trade-offs to the client so that everyone understands what is being done and what the risks are. That way the client can make an informed decision on whether they want to risk flirting with the Dark Side or not given the potential benefits and consequences.
Yes, but probably only once. The good CAPTCHA implementations out there draw the CAPTCHA dynamically using a drawing algorithm so two (2) CAPTCHAs, even if the involve they exact same string, are never exactly the same. The human assisted attack is a bit to sporadic if it can only be used once as is the case with dynamically drawn CAPTCHAs because the chance of the dynamically drawn CAPTCHA hashing an exact match to a previously displayed CAPTCHA is infinitesimally small. The human assisted attack was more common in the early days of CAPTCHA, when CAPTCHAs were pre-drawn (usually manually) and selected at random from the available pool at runtime, but that was before the arms race escalated to its present state.
Peter Gibbons: You're gonna lay off Samir and Michael?
Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal.
Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure.
Peter Gibbons: Do they know this yet?
Bob Slydell: No. No, of course not. We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
I think that Microsoft would do better to simply drop the DRM altogether, it is creating large amounts of customer confusion and frustration (even Joe Sixpack is starting to realize that DRM == BAD) and more than a little bad PR. Microsoft is in the Software business and their customer is the user and NOT the MAFIAA (the sooner they realize this the better). As for the bundling of software, Microsoft has been busted before for this behavior (although only the Europeans made the consequences stick, the Justice Department let them off the hook) and as long as they can continue to get away with it I don't see that changing and especially not with Ballmer firmly in charge going forward.
This has been discussed previously here on Slashdot and the problem lies with the notion of robotic refueling assistance (whether it be liquid fuels or batteries) without damaging people's vehicles. The wide variety of vehicle shapes and sizes, different fuel opening (or battery compartment) locations, and variability of angles and how people pull up to the refueling station (current industrial robots work on very precise alignments and paths of travel) make this a very difficult problem in robotics and AI which would add substantially (even if it is only one-time development costs) to the cost of any sort of robotic refueling situation. The battery swap out station is not practical at present due to the excessive weight of batteries and the attendant need for hydraulics and robotics to swap them out in an automated fashion or at the very least specialized equipment with skilled human operators (ala full serve).
Maybe a new (and hopefully environmentally friendly) administration will do it correctly.
Whoever that is I hope that they will do it in a fair and equitable fashion, taking into account the science concerning the ability of our environment to tolerate and absorb a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions and then instituting a cap and trade system of pollution credits to most effectively allocate that permitted amount of emission. My concern is that just as there are some on the right who wish to completely gut any environmental regulations in the name of profit there are also those on the left who wish to crack down so hard that the modern world as we know it (complete with relatively cheap food, antibiotics, electricity, and all of those things that have made life since the beginning of the industrial revolution more livable) would grind to a screeching halt. It would be better for everyone if both Greenpeace and the utility mega corps remained on the sidelines, but that is probably too much to hope for in this day and age.
Actually, I think that this particular issue is even a bit beyond Congress at the present time because it would really be stretching the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to the breaking point to construe that there exists sweeping federal authority to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions everywhere in the United States. Perhaps I am merely ignorant with regard to the scope of the existing laws and the decided cases, but it seems to me that an amendment to the Constitution may be required in order to more effectively address the sorts of nationwide and even global externalities, greenhouse gas emissions being foremost among them, that are becoming ever more common in our modern world.
Unfortunately, these types of job postings are not uncommon and they are not generally being posted on the Job sites because the HR people are stupid (although that does sometimes occur). Rather, the purpose of these listings is to guarantee that no qualified American applications will be received for a job opening. After carefully documenting their "attempt" to hire a qualified American applicant the company can proceed, having covered their butt legally, with importing cheap H1-B labor (which btw also fails to satisfy the requirements in the original job posting) to fill the positions for which they were "unable to find a qualified American applicant" because they had intended all along to import H1-Bs. If you don't believe that this is happening then have a look at this video: (PERM Fake Job Ads defraud Americans) which was taken at a conference for HR executives put on by an American law firm in which they describe the process of satisfying the H1-B requirements while ensuring that no qualified American applicants will be found (on purpose) to make an end run around the intentions of the H1-B laws.
Actually the source code would probably not be very instructive, even if was released, due to strict rules set down in the JPL code requirements (no use of dynamic memory for example) that would make the programs largely unsuitable for re-use in other projects or, at the very least, a poor example of how to write efficient code (no malloc, pointers, or other associated language features).
i.e. it's generally bad for kids to play violent games
So be a good parent and don't let them. The price of convenience for lazy parents cannot and must not be the end of free speech for everyone else. The ratings system was and is a good compromise, it puts the tools into the hands of the parents to make their own decisions with regard to the welfare of their children and it should have ended with that. What I don't understand is why anyone would want to be on the side of limiting freedom of speech. The founding fathers were extremely wise in the considered trade-offs they made in those first ten amendments to the Constitution. They knew that some people would say things which they didn't agree with or didn't like hearing, but they had the foresight to realize the tremendous upside potential and value of free speech, even potentially objectionable speech, to the continuation of freedom and the democratic way of life. If you have to suffer the reality of violent video games, pron, and Rush Limbaugh so that free speech can continue then I say so be it.
The search results, even in the early days when the main Google page was still marked as beta (I remember using the beta version in 2000 when I was still at the uni), were (and still are although somewhat less glaringly now) superior to any of the established commercial operators (like Yahoo) at that time. It was clear even then that Google had an emerging franchise in an industry that was already packed with me too and also ran search companies (anyone remember HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, etc...).
GWB is a moron and the middle eastern adventure didn't help matters with gas prices, but there is NO way that the present $4+ is $1.50 plus $2.50 risk premium because of Iraq. The $4+ gas has much more to do with increased world demand and mortgage meltdown inflationary pressures (again rooted firmly in the higher priced oil) which are keeping the dollar weak.
But, because of a few greedy individuals, we are now shoveling hundreds of billions into the pockets of a few and we've created the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
It is the OPEC nations that are making out like bandits, not any individual(s) per se (although King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Sheikhs of Dubai and Kuwait certainly aren't doing too badly). Everyone loves to bash the US oil companies, but 90%+ of the worlds liquid petroleum reserves are in the hands of government owned monopolies. If you were the Sultan of Brunei would you be cutting the United States a price break on your exported oil? I think not.
So, go on, spout on about how the democrats are to blame for everything. In the meantime
The Dems and their environmental allies share a major part of the blame for systematically obstructing almost all substantial oil and gas development here in the United States for the past two (2) decades at least. Not drilling when the price is $4+ is insane, it smacks of costal upper class elitism which is out of touch with average Americans who are struggling to fill their gas tanks and make ends meet. The trust-fund limousine liberals don't care about $4 per gallon gas because they can afford to wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills.
GWB will continue to lose popularity, and will likely be considered "Worst President in American History"
I don't know about that, Martin Van Buuren and Herber Hoover are generally ranked pretty low too. GWB will probably make the bottom five (5), but there are several other contenders for worst of all time. In any case, the fact the GWB is a moron does not excuse two (2) decades of horrible energy policies by the Democrats (the senators in particular) (blocking drilling every time GWB and congress tried to pass a drill bill).
As for being the party of greedy, self-centered, fat white people I guess that is what elitist lefties call people who actually want to work hard and make a living running their business or trying to invest and save for their retirement in fly-over country (as the east-coast liberals are fond of saying). All I know is that the federal government keeps rewarding the spendthrift masses and punishing those who work hard and diligently save and invest their money. If I save a few million over a lifetime of prudent investing and savings then why should I have my captial gains and dividend income taxed at positively punitive rates? The government should be encouraging people to take responsibility for their own financial futures instead of enacting policies which ensure a permenant underclass of people who cannot get by without government assistance.
"I don't want to turn down my thermostat in winter (or up for AC on hot days in California), I don't want to drive around in a small car, I don't want to live like a European"
This is basically how the average American feels about the present situation. Whichever political party pushes us to live like Europeans will be politically dead in the next election. The Unites States has more oil locked up in oil shale than anyone else, 1.5-2.6 trillion barrels. How about we work on getting that out of the ground before our economy has a very hard landing? To say that we should NOT exploit the natural resources that we have here in the United States is insane and that is what the left is saying. Anyone who cares about what they pay at the pump cannot vote Democratic (and have a leg to stand on when prices go up even faster) in the next election if they want the price to come down because "no drilling" ala Obama is a prescription for extremely high gas prices and punitively taxing the oil companies on top of that will make them even higher. To which the left responds, "well let's pass a law making it illegal to pass the cost of the taxes onto the consumers." Which sounds great until reality sets in and people realize that the lawmakers might just as well have passed a law saying that water is not wet or that gravity is suspended for all the good it will do.
My own personal theory is that when everyone with half a brain in their head began attending university and pursuing more cerebral careers the potential hiring pool for the border gestapo was relegated to an ever shrinking pool of lower IQ sheriff Jim Bob types who take their jobs entirely too seriously and enjoy roughing up the "suits" who, in their minds, earn too much money, have too many nice things, and generally remind them of all of the things which they are not or do not have.
Re:That might betray the presence of a hidden volu
on
TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It was my understanding that FAT was selected because it's inherent properties allow for plausible deniability which was a stated feature and goal of the TrueCrypt project.
The only thing worse for it is hiring "managment consultants" to "streamline" the process.
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
that's enough circumstantial evidence to arrest and probably convict somebody in any state in this country.
It might be enough to warrent a trial (grand jury indictments are not too difficult to obtain), but any decent defense attorney when faced with no body and no murder weapon should be able to raise enough reasonable doubt, particularly if the defendant has even just a plausible alibi, to acquit his client of murder charges. IANAL, but if there is no body (and therefore no time of death or timeline to establish against any reasonable alibi of the defendant) and no murder weapon then it is just a missing person until the prosecution can prove otherwise. About the only thing a prosecutor could point out are circumstantial peices of evidence such as possible motives for murder or perhaps some circumstantial observations (extra mileage on the car for that week, sand from a particular beach, missed work a couple of days during the time in question, etc...).
Probably what got Hans was the sheer amount of very suspicious circumstantial evidence. There were the blood spatters, the unusual book purchases, the missing passenger seat and socket set, his bungling attempts to elude surveillance (you never attempt to dump your surveillance, as every CIA case officer well knows, even if you succeed in eluding them you will only have confirmed their suspicions that you are an interesting person with something to hide. The correct strategy is to continue doing every day boring things until the watchers get bored and give up, however long that takes), and of course (this is probably the unfair part since most of us programmers have a few ecentricities) his odd courtroom manner and selective memory (which is classic Aspergers) didn't help. The confession (proving that he knew were the body was) sealed the deal in any case, but better lawyers (ala OJ Simpson) might have been able to get him off by systematically breaking down the prosecution case and keeping their socially challenged client from opening his mouth or doing anything else odd in court, but Hans didn't have millions of dollars for a legal dream team so now he does 15 years instead.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, Hawking himself has frequently joked about his "American accent" because most of the speech synthesizers in his assistive computers have been made in America.
Here the malware author clearly won
No more than the RIAA has "won" by imposing or using DRM on their music downloads and on iTunes. In that case it only takes one cracked version to leak out before everyone else gets the benefit of the original cracker's behavior ad-infinitum. Likewise, once the detection is worked into a Javascript blocking and filtering tool, such as no-script, everyone using no-script benefits from the original analysis (it doesn't have to be cracked afresh each time it comes up). So the malware author is really only inconveniencing the really uninformed users and not those who understand and take steps to protect their hosts from attack.
Having dynamically generated captchas does not help here, as the spammer never needs to store captchas. As long as people want to download porn
Agreed, but it was also my assertion that the number of potential humans available at any given moment would not be enough to keep up with the demands of the spamming program. The spam program wants to send millions of messages per second and crack new accounts, when they are needed, as fast as possible. Unless the attack can be fully automated it is likely that the CAPTCHAs will continue to frustrate the spammers, if only by severely limiting their volume to much less than they would like (have to wait for a human to come along to help with cracking new accounts to replace the ones that get banned). My point was that the Human assisted attack was sporadic at best in its availability for use by the spammers, unless the spammers are going to hire people to do it (which was a caveat mentioned in the summary).
Nothing but quotas will ever force a change.
I am not so sure about that. Scientists and engineers are, by and large, very reasonable and logical people who are persuaded by logical argument, sound evidence, and excellence and good work in their areas of inquiry or expertise. A truly reasonable and logical person, as I believe most scientists and engineers are, would recognize and respect such qualities in either a man or a woman without allowing irrelevant issues, such as gender, to cloud their professional judgment. At worst you might expect men to favor women and women to favor men for professional associations (perhaps based upon some subconscious genetic mate finding urge baked into our genetic code from the distant past before we were as logical and reasonable as we are today), all other things being equal, which would be the opposite bias to the one that you suggest exists.
The concern is that the social conditioning is detrimental. That stereotypical "women's interests" are less valued and thus less rewarding than stereotypical "men's interests."
The concern itself is irrelevant. In a free society everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it or in other words if you think that worm farming is the most interesting job in the world and don't want to do anything else then you cannot expect to receive pay equal to the lawyer, the doctor, or the CEO just because some philosopher king somewhere has decided that everyone shall receive equal pay regardless of their work. This is the same reason why communism, outside of small self-motivated groups, doesn't work.
About 80% of our customers were of the "Do whatever, just ideminfy me" stripe.
That is the first reaction of many business people before they understand the potential consequences of "do whatever, just indemnify me" black-hat SEO, up to and including getting dropped entirely from the Google index or being black listed from ad-sense or both (Google is a private company not a court of law and they can ban or black list anyone they want for any reason they like and the courts have confirmed as much when they were sued over just that by the black hat SEOs). It is probably wise, just to avoid any finger pointing later on, to explain the trade-offs to the client so that everyone understands what is being done and what the risks are. That way the client can make an informed decision on whether they want to risk flirting with the Dark Side or not given the potential benefits and consequences.
This method will suffice to crack ANY CAPTCHA!
Yes, but probably only once. The good CAPTCHA implementations out there draw the CAPTCHA dynamically using a drawing algorithm so two (2) CAPTCHAs, even if the involve they exact same string, are never exactly the same. The human assisted attack is a bit to sporadic if it can only be used once as is the case with dynamically drawn CAPTCHAs because the chance of the dynamically drawn CAPTCHA hashing an exact match to a previously displayed CAPTCHA is infinitesimally small. The human assisted attack was more common in the early days of CAPTCHA, when CAPTCHAs were pre-drawn (usually manually) and selected at random from the available pool at runtime, but that was before the arms race escalated to its present state.
Peter Gibbons: You're gonna lay off Samir and Michael?
Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal.
Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure.
Peter Gibbons: Do they know this yet?
Bob Slydell: No. No, of course not. We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
Money is the corporate god.
That would be Mammon
I think that Microsoft would do better to simply drop the DRM altogether, it is creating large amounts of customer confusion and frustration (even Joe Sixpack is starting to realize that DRM == BAD) and more than a little bad PR. Microsoft is in the Software business and their customer is the user and NOT the MAFIAA (the sooner they realize this the better). As for the bundling of software, Microsoft has been busted before for this behavior (although only the Europeans made the consequences stick, the Justice Department let them off the hook) and as long as they can continue to get away with it I don't see that changing and especially not with Ballmer firmly in charge going forward.
This has been discussed previously here on Slashdot and the problem lies with the notion of robotic refueling assistance (whether it be liquid fuels or batteries) without damaging people's vehicles. The wide variety of vehicle shapes and sizes, different fuel opening (or battery compartment) locations, and variability of angles and how people pull up to the refueling station (current industrial robots work on very precise alignments and paths of travel) make this a very difficult problem in robotics and AI which would add substantially (even if it is only one-time development costs) to the cost of any sort of robotic refueling situation. The battery swap out station is not practical at present due to the excessive weight of batteries and the attendant need for hydraulics and robotics to swap them out in an automated fashion or at the very least specialized equipment with skilled human operators (ala full serve).
Maybe a new (and hopefully environmentally friendly) administration will do it correctly.
Whoever that is I hope that they will do it in a fair and equitable fashion, taking into account the science concerning the ability of our environment to tolerate and absorb a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions and then instituting a cap and trade system of pollution credits to most effectively allocate that permitted amount of emission. My concern is that just as there are some on the right who wish to completely gut any environmental regulations in the name of profit there are also those on the left who wish to crack down so hard that the modern world as we know it (complete with relatively cheap food, antibiotics, electricity, and all of those things that have made life since the beginning of the industrial revolution more livable) would grind to a screeching halt. It would be better for everyone if both Greenpeace and the utility mega corps remained on the sidelines, but that is probably too much to hope for in this day and age.
Actually, I think that this particular issue is even a bit beyond Congress at the present time because it would really be stretching the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to the breaking point to construe that there exists sweeping federal authority to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions everywhere in the United States. Perhaps I am merely ignorant with regard to the scope of the existing laws and the decided cases, but it seems to me that an amendment to the Constitution may be required in order to more effectively address the sorts of nationwide and even global externalities, greenhouse gas emissions being foremost among them, that are becoming ever more common in our modern world.
Unfortunately, these types of job postings are not uncommon and they are not generally being posted on the Job sites because the HR people are stupid (although that does sometimes occur). Rather, the purpose of these listings is to guarantee that no qualified American applications will be received for a job opening. After carefully documenting their "attempt" to hire a qualified American applicant the company can proceed, having covered their butt legally, with importing cheap H1-B labor (which btw also fails to satisfy the requirements in the original job posting) to fill the positions for which they were "unable to find a qualified American applicant" because they had intended all along to import H1-Bs. If you don't believe that this is happening then have a look at this video: (PERM Fake Job Ads defraud Americans) which was taken at a conference for HR executives put on by an American law firm in which they describe the process of satisfying the H1-B requirements while ensuring that no qualified American applicants will be found (on purpose) to make an end run around the intentions of the H1-B laws.
Actually the source code would probably not be very instructive, even if was released, due to strict rules set down in the JPL code requirements (no use of dynamic memory for example) that would make the programs largely unsuitable for re-use in other projects or, at the very least, a poor example of how to write efficient code (no malloc, pointers, or other associated language features).
i.e. it's generally bad for kids to play violent games
So be a good parent and don't let them. The price of convenience for lazy parents cannot and must not be the end of free speech for everyone else. The ratings system was and is a good compromise, it puts the tools into the hands of the parents to make their own decisions with regard to the welfare of their children and it should have ended with that. What I don't understand is why anyone would want to be on the side of limiting freedom of speech. The founding fathers were extremely wise in the considered trade-offs they made in those first ten amendments to the Constitution. They knew that some people would say things which they didn't agree with or didn't like hearing, but they had the foresight to realize the tremendous upside potential and value of free speech, even potentially objectionable speech, to the continuation of freedom and the democratic way of life. If you have to suffer the reality of violent video games, pron, and Rush Limbaugh so that free speech can continue then I say so be it.
The search results, even in the early days when the main Google page was still marked as beta (I remember using the beta version in 2000 when I was still at the uni), were (and still are although somewhat less glaringly now) superior to any of the established commercial operators (like Yahoo) at that time. It was clear even then that Google had an emerging franchise in an industry that was already packed with me too and also ran search companies (anyone remember HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, etc...).
GWB is a moron and the middle eastern adventure didn't help matters with gas prices, but there is NO way that the present $4+ is $1.50 plus $2.50 risk premium because of Iraq. The $4+ gas has much more to do with increased world demand and mortgage meltdown inflationary pressures (again rooted firmly in the higher priced oil) which are keeping the dollar weak.
But, because of a few greedy individuals, we are now shoveling hundreds of billions into the pockets of a few and we've created the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
It is the OPEC nations that are making out like bandits, not any individual(s) per se (although King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Sheikhs of Dubai and Kuwait certainly aren't doing too badly). Everyone loves to bash the US oil companies, but 90%+ of the worlds liquid petroleum reserves are in the hands of government owned monopolies. If you were the Sultan of Brunei would you be cutting the United States a price break on your exported oil? I think not.
So, go on, spout on about how the democrats are to blame for everything. In the meantime
The Dems and their environmental allies share a major part of the blame for systematically obstructing almost all substantial oil and gas development here in the United States for the past two (2) decades at least. Not drilling when the price is $4+ is insane, it smacks of costal upper class elitism which is out of touch with average Americans who are struggling to fill their gas tanks and make ends meet. The trust-fund limousine liberals don't care about $4 per gallon gas because they can afford to wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills.
GWB will continue to lose popularity, and will likely be considered "Worst President in American History"
I don't know about that, Martin Van Buuren and Herber Hoover are generally ranked pretty low too. GWB will probably make the bottom five (5), but there are several other contenders for worst of all time. In any case, the fact the GWB is a moron does not excuse two (2) decades of horrible energy policies by the Democrats (the senators in particular) (blocking drilling every time GWB and congress tried to pass a drill bill).
As for being the party of greedy, self-centered, fat white people I guess that is what elitist lefties call people who actually want to work hard and make a living running their business or trying to invest and save for their retirement in fly-over country (as the east-coast liberals are fond of saying). All I know is that the federal government keeps rewarding the spendthrift masses and punishing those who work hard and diligently save and invest their money. If I save a few million over a lifetime of prudent investing and savings then why should I have my captial gains and dividend income taxed at positively punitive rates? The government should be encouraging people to take responsibility for their own financial futures instead of enacting policies which ensure a permenant underclass of people who cannot get by without government assistance.
To paraphrase from Who Killed the Electric Car:
"I don't want to turn down my thermostat in winter (or up for AC on hot days in California), I don't want to drive around in a small car, I don't want to live like a European"
This is basically how the average American feels about the present situation. Whichever political party pushes us to live like Europeans will be politically dead in the next election. The Unites States has more oil locked up in oil shale than anyone else, 1.5-2.6 trillion barrels. How about we work on getting that out of the ground before our economy has a very hard landing? To say that we should NOT exploit the natural resources that we have here in the United States is insane and that is what the left is saying. Anyone who cares about what they pay at the pump cannot vote Democratic (and have a leg to stand on when prices go up even faster) in the next election if they want the price to come down because "no drilling" ala Obama is a prescription for extremely high gas prices and punitively taxing the oil companies on top of that will make them even higher. To which the left responds, "well let's pass a law making it illegal to pass the cost of the taxes onto the consumers." Which sounds great until reality sets in and people realize that the lawmakers might just as well have passed a law saying that water is not wet or that gravity is suspended for all the good it will do.
My own personal theory is that when everyone with half a brain in their head began attending university and pursuing more cerebral careers the potential hiring pool for the border gestapo was relegated to an ever shrinking pool of lower IQ sheriff Jim Bob types who take their jobs entirely too seriously and enjoy roughing up the "suits" who, in their minds, earn too much money, have too many nice things, and generally remind them of all of the things which they are not or do not have.
It was my understanding that FAT was selected because it's inherent properties allow for plausible deniability which was a stated feature and goal of the TrueCrypt project.
The only thing worse for it is hiring "managment consultants" to "streamline" the process.
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Subversion + Ant + CruiseControl = source control with fully automated builds and reporting and it's free (as in beer).
that's enough circumstantial evidence to arrest and probably convict somebody in any state in this country.
It might be enough to warrent a trial (grand jury indictments are not too difficult to obtain), but any decent defense attorney when faced with no body and no murder weapon should be able to raise enough reasonable doubt, particularly if the defendant has even just a plausible alibi, to acquit his client of murder charges. IANAL, but if there is no body (and therefore no time of death or timeline to establish against any reasonable alibi of the defendant) and no murder weapon then it is just a missing person until the prosecution can prove otherwise. About the only thing a prosecutor could point out are circumstantial peices of evidence such as possible motives for murder or perhaps some circumstantial observations (extra mileage on the car for that week, sand from a particular beach, missed work a couple of days during the time in question, etc...).
Probably what got Hans was the sheer amount of very suspicious circumstantial evidence. There were the blood spatters, the unusual book purchases, the missing passenger seat and socket set, his bungling attempts to elude surveillance (you never attempt to dump your surveillance, as every CIA case officer well knows, even if you succeed in eluding them you will only have confirmed their suspicions that you are an interesting person with something to hide. The correct strategy is to continue doing every day boring things until the watchers get bored and give up, however long that takes), and of course (this is probably the unfair part since most of us programmers have a few ecentricities) his odd courtroom manner and selective memory (which is classic Aspergers) didn't help. The confession (proving that he knew were the body was) sealed the deal in any case, but better lawyers (ala OJ Simpson) might have been able to get him off by systematically breaking down the prosecution case and keeping their socially challenged client from opening his mouth or doing anything else odd in court, but Hans didn't have millions of dollars for a legal dream team so now he does 15 years instead.
I should keep count of how many "articles" here aren't actually news but heavily biased editorials designed to feed the paranoid.
What is worse, thinking that you might be paranoid or knowing that you should be?