I did not vote for Obama because I could see what he is (even before he became the President on 2008 I could already see through his lies) but then the other side (actually there's no other side ) the Republicans, fronted an even lousier asshole as their candidate.
Where was the freedom and justice for the natives, or the slaves, or the women, or the non-Protestants? Where was freedom for the interned Japanese, or justice for people accused of Communism during the red scare? Where was the freedom and justice for all the South Americans and Middle Easterners, as they were ruled by our blood-thirsty puppets?
Fuck, was there ever even a single ten year period in which this country "held to the standards of freedom and justice"?
As a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, who originally came from China, back in the 1970's, I do need to speak up on this issue.
Yes, you are right. America does fall short of its ideal, of keeping the freedom and liberty for EVERYONE.
But then, what you are trying to get at is a utopian IDEAL that will never exist in the real world that you and I are living in.
The OP has already said that there were several mis-steps along the way - and as a non-Anglo, I can attest to the fact that the America that I used to know, the pre-1993 USA (before the Waco, Texas incident) was a country which was trying to achieve that ideal, however impossible the target turned out to be.
After the Waco incident, things gone south.
I am speaking as a non-native, non-American born, an observer from the outside.
In this age, whatever failure the other parties has met with is the lesson that one picks up.
The lesson whereby the failure of Nasa to better equip the Curiosity's wheels against abrasion / wear and tear may mean that the only country left on this world that has the will and the financial might to forge ahead with their space aspiration (China) surely benefit.
I bet if they are to send up any more space equipment (rover, dune buggy or whatever) they will put more emphasis on the parts that might face the issue of wear and tear / abrasion / friction.
The other intelligence agencies within the government are considered "customers" of NSA products.
You guys have missed one important aspect of the RSA operation.
NSA gave RSA 10 million to weaken/broken the RSA encryption that they sold to US. The "US" here means the non-NSA non-GCHQ based customers.
And spook agencies such as NSA themselves do need to encrypt their OWN secret files too, and surely they are not that stupid to use the same weaken and/or broken encryption algo on their own files.
In other words, NSA and GCHQ (and some of the "trustworthy" spooks from the other 3 countries in the "five eyes" pact) do employ RSA in their day to day encryption, but THEIR version of RSA is the unbroken/unweaken one - unlike the broken version that the RSA sold to the rest of the world.
The law, as I understand it, is to allow the authority, to issue a command to render a particular smartphone totally unusable.
However, the same law could be misused by the authority as well (think of what NSA is doing, for example) - instead of killing a smartphone that has been reported stolen, the authority could issue a kill command to smartphones that are being used by "dissidents", cutting off their communication lines.
Do not ever forget that inside the NSA datacenter they have all the information of who is using what phone, who calls whom and when and how often and where they call from, etc.
Right now, without the KILL SWITCH, all they could do is to LISTEN IN to the communications of people. With KILL SWITCH, they could kill off all the communication channels of the anti-NSA people, and render them totally unable to communicate with the world.
It seems even the definition of star isn't always clear
I fervently hope that Nasa will get enough fund to construct a much powerful equipment than Gaia and sent it to space to help us understand the universe better.
I fervently hope that the American government will stop wasting money on all the wasteful and counter-productive pork-barrel programs and put the money into GOOD USE and help put America in the lead again in the Space Frontier.
2013 is drawing to a close. Will 2014 be a better beginning for the United States of America ?
If the material Perovskite is as good as they say it is, why limit the application on only the windows ?
We can apply the same thing to walls, to roof, even to pavements, so long as the sunlight can shine on them they get to generate electricity.
Heck, we can apply it on the car windows and car body surfaces as well, and and store the power inside the battery - or use it to run, aka that solar car in the Logan Run's tv series (it was aired in the 1970's, far too old for the young uns to enjoy)
The only remedy that will make them stop is to disband them altogether
Shutting down the NSA is no longer sufficient !
They have such control over all the apparatus right now that even if we managed to shut down NSA now they can set up a super-NSA the very next minute - and they can do it totally LEGAL (remember, they have total control over the LAW) and there is NOTHING we can do about it.
What is required is much more than shut down the NSA - what is truly required is a TOTAL OVERHAUL to the ENTIRE SYSTEM !
We need proportional protection. Cut the anti-terrorism budget for NSA, DHS, etc. to 1/6th the funding we have for anti-flu, since the flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack, every year. Give the funds to NASA, or the NRO if you're really scared of your own shadow. Problem solved.
Dear VortexCortex,
I have read many of your comments and I must thank you for the many informative and insightful leads that you have provided.
Now, back to the very thing that I've quoted.
If I were the NSA, I could turn your proposal on its head - that is, I, as the all-knowing spook with all kinds of network throughout the world, could easily import terrorism into the United States of America and create A HELL OF A LOT OF PROBLEMS for the Americans.
And I, as the NSA, could also provide the jihadists some fancy gadgets (mini nukes or dirty bombs, for examples) to aid them to accomplish their "allah u akbar" campaigns by flattening some 2nd-line cities in the U.S. of A.
And when that happened, the Americans will die in the MILLIONS, and everyone, including those who oppose the NSA, will demand to PUT ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCE BEHIND NSA to "fight terrorism".
Want proportional funding? NSA could, in theory, turn that game into their advantage, in a split second.
Treason, you say ?
Treason ? Isn't what NSA been doing right now anti-constitutional ?
NSA dogs DARE to LIE UNDER OATH IN THE CONGRESS. What else is there that they dare not do?
There is no change, those are only recommendations
The panel is a dog and pony show.
It's a circus-like entity to fool us into believing that "CHANGE IS COMING" while actually there will be NO CHANGE.
They understand that the people are VERY UNHAPPY about what NSA has done to us.
They understand that they can't go on doing the same old things the same old ways - but they also know that they have to CONTINUE TO DO THE SAME OLD THING, that is why they put up this fucking dog-and-pony panel publicly stating their so-called "82 recommendations" and hope that by doing so people will be "satisfied" and will not pay so much attention to what they do anymore.
I can bet every last penny that I have that at the end of it the SAME OLD THING WILL STILL BE DON and the only difference is that THEY WILL DO THE SAME OLD THING IN A NEW METHOD.
Or to put it another way --- even after Obama approved all the 82-recommendations (even if it's 820,000 recommendations) the end result will be SAME WINE IN DIFFERENT BOTTLES.
The only effective thing that we need right now is to CHANGE THE SYSTEM.
Anything short of that --- ie., keeping the same old system --- will not work, because it's be manned (and womenned) by the same batch of fuckers, and they will be continuing what they do.
There's this thing called "Algorithmic Music Composition" - they analyzed the composition of famous music composers such as Bach and copied the "style" and transfer the algorithm into computer and let it churn out music.
What TFA suggests is to get a "dirty dog" which pass on some "gut microbes" onto the human babies which, according to TFA, may help the human babies to fight allergies.
This scenario has several implications:
1. How the "gut microbes" being passed from that "dirty dog" to the human infant ?
Shit.
Specifically, dog shit.
Which means, the human infant somehow ingested some of the dog shit which contains the microbes that previously reside inside the dog's guts.
2. The transfer of a microbe from a species (dog) to another (human) may, or may not work.
It may even be very harmful.
If the microbes are of the "benign" kind, yes, it may benefit the human baby, as TFA has suggested.
But if the microbes are of the nasty kind, it may bring on transgenic diseases.
3. There may be a better and more hygienic way of boosting the human baby's immune responses --- Mother's milk.
Human babies who were fed the milk from their mothers are healthier and have better protection from many diseases. This is because, when the baby consume the milk from their mothers, they also consume beneficial microbes that were mixed in with the milk.
In conclusion - it is better to have your human babies to be fed mother's milk than to be fed dog shit.
Quit blaming the presidents when congress is fully invested in the law
Just because someone handed you a gun do you really have to use that gun ?
Just because the congress handed the president a law does that mean the president MUST use it ?
And furthermore - the Patriot Act itself is NOT a violation of the Constitution - it's the ACTION of the NSA, the one which INVADED THE PRIVACY OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENS - which has constituted BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA !!!
The congress was full of shit, yes, but that asshole living in the white house is also full of shit !
In the balance of power/abuses, I'd still consider the NSA more appropriate than say... the Chinese/Russian equivalent...
Just look at the modus operandi of the apologists...
They are actually TRYING VERY HARD to compare an apple to an orange !
RUSSIA and CHINA are NOT democratic countries.
THEIR GOVERNMENTS are RUTHLESS and VERY AUTOCRATIC, and they have the power to PERSECUTE, and even EXECUTE their people WITHOUT REASON.
I am from China. I know what I am talking about !
On the other hand, the United States of America is supposed to be A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY - where *LAWS* are obeyed, and even the government has to OBEY THE LAWS.
NSA is NOT an apparatus of the Russian nor an apparatus of the Chinese government.
NSA is a branch of the government of the United States of America.
Which means, NSA has the OBLIGATION to operate ACCORDING TO WHAT HAS BEEN CLEARLY STATED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Has NSA done that ?
Nope.
NSA has VIOLATED the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA !
Apologist, you are forewarned !
We will hunt you down, no matter where the fuck you are !
... if, say, the military or state department actually follows the NSA's suggestions, there's a decent chance that those suggestions are pretty close to as good as it gets...
Are you saying that NSA hasn't yet created enough havoc, that you wish the State Department and the Military to join NSA in making even more violations to our Constitutions ??
Slashdot Mirror
You are not the only one who is sad.
I too, as an American, am very sad.
I did not vote for Obama because I could see what he is (even before he became the President on 2008 I could already see through his lies) but then the other side (actually there's no other side ) the Republicans, fronted an even lousier asshole as their candidate.
That is why I voted for the 3rd party, TWICE
We changed our minds on god and the bible in this country, why not change our minds on the constitution?
If you think that the Constitution is obsolete, and you want to replace it with something else, pray tell, what you want to replace it with ?
Fanatic Islamic Theocracy ?
Fascism ?
Communist hegemony ?
Or a combination of all the above ?
Where was the freedom and justice for the natives, or the slaves, or the women, or the non-Protestants? Where was freedom for the interned Japanese, or justice for people accused of Communism during the red scare? Where was the freedom and justice for all the South Americans and Middle Easterners, as they were ruled by our blood-thirsty puppets?
Fuck, was there ever even a single ten year period in which this country "held to the standards of freedom and justice"?
As a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, who originally came from China, back in the 1970's, I do need to speak up on this issue.
Yes, you are right. America does fall short of its ideal, of keeping the freedom and liberty for EVERYONE.
But then, what you are trying to get at is a utopian IDEAL that will never exist in the real world that you and I are living in.
The OP has already said that there were several mis-steps along the way - and as a non-Anglo, I can attest to the fact that the America that I used to know, the pre-1993 USA (before the Waco, Texas incident) was a country which was trying to achieve that ideal, however impossible the target turned out to be.
After the Waco incident, things gone south.
I am speaking as a non-native, non-American born, an observer from the outside.
In this age, whatever failure the other parties has met with is the lesson that one picks up.
The lesson whereby the failure of Nasa to better equip the Curiosity's wheels against abrasion / wear and tear may mean that the only country left on this world that has the will and the financial might to forge ahead with their space aspiration (China) surely benefit.
I bet if they are to send up any more space equipment (rover, dune buggy or whatever) they will put more emphasis on the parts that might face the issue of wear and tear / abrasion / friction.
NSA has customers? Surely not the voters
The other intelligence agencies within the government are considered "customers" of NSA products.
You guys have missed one important aspect of the RSA operation.
NSA gave RSA 10 million to weaken/broken the RSA encryption that they sold to US. The "US" here means the non-NSA non-GCHQ based customers.
And spook agencies such as NSA themselves do need to encrypt their OWN secret files too, and surely they are not that stupid to use the same weaken and/or broken encryption algo on their own files.
In other words, NSA and GCHQ (and some of the "trustworthy" spooks from the other 3 countries in the "five eyes" pact) do employ RSA in their day to day encryption, but THEIR version of RSA is the unbroken/unweaken one - unlike the broken version that the RSA sold to the rest of the world.
The law, as I understand it, is to allow the authority, to issue a command to render a particular smartphone totally unusable.
However, the same law could be misused by the authority as well (think of what NSA is doing, for example) - instead of killing a smartphone that has been reported stolen, the authority could issue a kill command to smartphones that are being used by "dissidents", cutting off their communication lines.
Do not ever forget that inside the NSA datacenter they have all the information of who is using what phone, who calls whom and when and how often and where they call from, etc.
Right now, without the KILL SWITCH, all they could do is to LISTEN IN to the communications of people. With KILL SWITCH, they could kill off all the communication channels of the anti-NSA people, and render them totally unable to communicate with the world.
It seems even the definition of star isn't always clear
I fervently hope that Nasa will get enough fund to construct a much powerful equipment than Gaia and sent it to space to help us understand the universe better.
I fervently hope that the American government will stop wasting money on all the wasteful and counter-productive pork-barrel programs and put the money into GOOD USE and help put America in the lead again in the Space Frontier.
2013 is drawing to a close. Will 2014 be a better beginning for the United States of America ?
If the material Perovskite is as good as they say it is, why limit the application on only the windows ?
We can apply the same thing to walls, to roof, even to pavements, so long as the sunlight can shine on them they get to generate electricity.
Heck, we can apply it on the car windows and car body surfaces as well, and and store the power inside the battery - or use it to run, aka that solar car in the Logan Run's tv series (it was aired in the 1970's, far too old for the young uns to enjoy)
Dear Girl-in-training,
Here's the thing people don't get about Snowden: He's not a revolutionary, or a hero. He's a coward.
It is entirely too freaking easy to accuse Mr. Snowden as a coward.
But before you point that accusing finger of yours at Mr. Snowden, why don't you ask yourself "What are you" first ?
At the very least, Mr Snowden has exposed the wrongdoings of the power-that-be.
What have you done that can even begin to compare to what Mr. Snowden has done ?
Are you going to join Cold Fjord in becoming NSA's sock-puppet, Ms. Girl-in-Training ?
The only remedy that will make them stop is to disband them altogether
Shutting down the NSA is no longer sufficient !
They have such control over all the apparatus right now that even if we managed to shut down NSA now they can set up a super-NSA the very next minute - and they can do it totally LEGAL (remember, they have total control over the LAW ) and there is NOTHING we can do about it.
What is required is much more than shut down the NSA - what is truly required is a TOTAL OVERHAUL to the ENTIRE SYSTEM !
With an honest president, this crap would have been stopped long before a Snowden would have appeared
America is my country and I know this for a fact - my country is famous for having its own presidents assassinated.
Abe Lincoln and JFK, remember ?
Only crooks can become the POTUS.
Honest ed will never last a day in La Casa Blanca.
We need proportional protection. Cut the anti-terrorism budget for NSA, DHS, etc. to 1/6th the funding we have for anti-flu, since the flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack, every year. Give the funds to NASA, or the NRO if you're really scared of your own shadow. Problem solved.
Dear VortexCortex,
I have read many of your comments and I must thank you for the many informative and insightful leads that you have provided.
Now, back to the very thing that I've quoted.
If I were the NSA, I could turn your proposal on its head - that is, I, as the all-knowing spook with all kinds of network throughout the world, could easily import terrorism into the United States of America and create A HELL OF A LOT OF PROBLEMS for the Americans.
And I, as the NSA, could also provide the jihadists some fancy gadgets (mini nukes or dirty bombs, for examples) to aid them to accomplish their "allah u akbar" campaigns by flattening some 2nd-line cities in the U.S. of A.
And when that happened, the Americans will die in the MILLIONS, and everyone, including those who oppose the NSA, will demand to PUT ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCE BEHIND NSA to "fight terrorism".
Want proportional funding? NSA could, in theory, turn that game into their advantage, in a split second.
Treason, you say ?
Treason ? Isn't what NSA been doing right now anti-constitutional ?
NSA dogs DARE to LIE UNDER OATH IN THE CONGRESS. What else is there that they dare not do?
There is no change, those are only recommendations
The panel is a dog and pony show.
It's a circus-like entity to fool us into believing that "CHANGE IS COMING" while actually there will be NO CHANGE.
They understand that the people are VERY UNHAPPY about what NSA has done to us.
They understand that they can't go on doing the same old things the same old ways - but they also know that they have to CONTINUE TO DO THE SAME OLD THING, that is why they put up this fucking dog-and-pony panel publicly stating their so-called "82 recommendations" and hope that by doing so people will be "satisfied" and will not pay so much attention to what they do anymore.
I can bet every last penny that I have that at the end of it the SAME OLD THING WILL STILL BE DON and the only difference is that THEY WILL DO THE SAME OLD THING IN A NEW METHOD.
Or to put it another way --- even after Obama approved all the 82-recommendations (even if it's 820,000 recommendations) the end result will be SAME WINE IN DIFFERENT BOTTLES.
The only effective thing that we need right now is to CHANGE THE SYSTEM.
Anything short of that --- ie., keeping the same old system --- will not work, because it's be manned (and womenned) by the same batch of fuckers, and they will be continuing what they do.
But modern humans are not from ONE SINGLE stock either.
For example, the Denisovans have offsprings, but only part of the modern humans are their offsprings.
And then, while most modern humans have Neandertal genes inside them, some modern humans do not.
There's this thing called "Algorithmic Music Composition" - they analyzed the composition of famous music composers such as Bach and copied the "style" and transfer the algorithm into computer and let it churn out music.
There's even a freeware that you can try on your own computer, more info @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FractMus_(software)
or @ http://www.gustavodiazjerez.com/?cat=14
What TFA suggests is to get a "dirty dog" which pass on some "gut microbes" onto the human babies which, according to TFA, may help the human babies to fight allergies.
This scenario has several implications:
1. How the "gut microbes" being passed from that "dirty dog" to the human infant ?
Shit.
Specifically, dog shit.
Which means, the human infant somehow ingested some of the dog shit which contains the microbes that previously reside inside the dog's guts.
2. The transfer of a microbe from a species (dog) to another (human) may, or may not work.
It may even be very harmful.
If the microbes are of the "benign" kind, yes, it may benefit the human baby, as TFA has suggested.
But if the microbes are of the nasty kind, it may bring on transgenic diseases.
3. There may be a better and more hygienic way of boosting the human baby's immune responses --- Mother's milk.
Human babies who were fed the milk from their mothers are healthier and have better protection from many diseases. This is because, when the baby consume the milk from their mothers, they also consume beneficial microbes that were mixed in with the milk.
In conclusion - it is better to have your human babies to be fed mother's milk than to be fed dog shit.
Obama may be the POTUS, but he is a VERY LOUSY potus.
VERY VERY LOUSY !!
Obama forgot who his bosses are.
Obama thought he has become the KING of the Americans.
Obama is but one of the civil servants whose salaries are being paid by the American taxpayers.
Quit blaming the presidents when congress is fully invested in the law
Just because someone handed you a gun do you really have to use that gun ?
Just because the congress handed the president a law does that mean the president MUST use it ?
And furthermore - the Patriot Act itself is NOT a violation of the Constitution - it's the ACTION of the NSA, the one which INVADED THE PRIVACY OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENS - which has constituted BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA !!!
The congress was full of shit, yes, but that asshole living in the white house is also full of shit !
In the balance of power/abuses, I'd still consider the NSA more appropriate than say... the Chinese/Russian equivalent ...
Just look at the modus operandi of the apologists ...
They are actually TRYING VERY HARD to compare an apple to an orange !
RUSSIA and CHINA are NOT democratic countries.
THEIR GOVERNMENTS are RUTHLESS and VERY AUTOCRATIC, and they have the power to PERSECUTE, and even EXECUTE their people WITHOUT REASON.
I am from China. I know what I am talking about !
On the other hand, the United States of America is supposed to be A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY - where *LAWS* are obeyed, and even the government has to OBEY THE LAWS.
NSA is NOT an apparatus of the Russian nor an apparatus of the Chinese government.
NSA is a branch of the government of the United States of America.
Which means, NSA has the OBLIGATION to operate ACCORDING TO WHAT HAS BEEN CLEARLY STATED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Has NSA done that ?
Nope.
NSA has VIOLATED the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA !
Apologist, you are forewarned !
We will hunt you down, no matter where the fuck you are !
The character assassination of Snowden begins
No, it began when the Scotland Yard and the GCHQ tried to pin Snowden with the Pedophiles.
http://slashdot.org/story/13/11/07/038216/edward-snowden-leaks-could-help-paedophiles-escape-police-says-uk-government
Then NSA returned the favor and attacked Julian Assange
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/13/012210/was-julian-assange-involved-with-wiretapping-icelands-parliament
This is the third round.
There will be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and their intention is very simple -
The want to fill the media media with LIES.
They want to fill the world with SO MUCH LIES that nobody can discern truth from lies.
I mean, the Fox network sucks at the government teats as much as anybody else.
I am surprised with the fact that CBS was chosen over Fox network.
I always thought that NSA would choose Fox to be their media anchor. I was wrong.
Other than lies, lies and more damn lies, what else can NSA come up with ?
No matter how slick or how polished their lies be, NSA's lies are still LIES.
NSA has betrayed America.
NSA has betrayed the Constitution.
NSA is a rogue organization within the government of the United States of America.
... if, say, the military or state department actually follows the NSA's suggestions, there's a decent chance that those suggestions are pretty close to as good as it gets ...
Are you saying that NSA hasn't yet created enough havoc, that you wish the State Department and the Military to join NSA in making even more violations to our Constitutions ??
If it can handle the "Improv" (as featured in Slashdot @ http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/11/25/2313224/dual-core-allwinner-a20-powered-eoma-68-engineering-card-available ) it will be wonderful !!