And a four hour movie could easily become a five or six episode miniseries. If the directors/producers/studio wanted to tell the entire middle-earth saga then it could be part of a greater work too.
Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.
I kind of wish that the miniseries format would become more popular again. Design the entire series in advance, figure out where the source-material will need bolstering as it changes from print to film, figure out how to time the dramatic elements so that each episode has something to look forward to, and package the thing where it makes sense.
Yeah, I know it isn't especially cool but so far it isn't failing the Occam's Razor test. What's even more insidious about it is that as people get defensive when their faith is called into question they usually get more violent in their defense of it. Something that literally means nothing to them normally suddenly becomes paramount.
I wonder if that's really all there was to this particular instance of radicalization. The religious equivalent of calling them chicken, goading them into doing something that they wouldn't have otherwise considered doing.
Look at parallels in Christianity. How many people that self-identify as Christian actually go to church weekly? Regularly? For holidays? How many know the name(s) of the official(s) that run the church that they claim to be a member of? How many actually stop to consider the rules about coveting what others have?
How many Christians even understand why Christ sacrificed himself on the cross?
Now, consider how many of the Christians that are easily described by this scenario would argue bitterly and violently how Christianity is the true religion and how, "their," faith is correct and all others are wrong, while they single-handedly do not understand or follow the tenets of, "their," faith.
I suspect this is what we're seeing in these terrorists. They are literally useful idiots and are used as pawns by the actual players behind the scenes. And they don't even know that they're being played.
I will agree with this hardware issue. I'm using what is probably the best compromise in their laptops at the moment if it weren't for the problems that have led to recalls, a "Late 2011 15" MacBook Pro with the i7. This computer has Ethernet. Firewire 800, "Thunderbolt"/Displayport, USB3, and both headphones and microphone ports, plus an integrated DVD. Only things that would make it better would be a Blu-Ray, an option that Apple has never offered, and if this unit had a higher-resolution screen.
All models subsequent to this lack things that I regularly use and it's aggravating.
The news has reported that many of the attackers, prior to recent radicalization were shiftless layabouts with no particular interest in their religion and violated most of the popular tenets of it. They drank. They had sex. They did drugs. They obviously weren't praying on a schedule.
This changed within the last few weeks to transform them from this into people willing to kill themselves. Find that catalyst and you not only find the people that masterminded the attacks but you also find the particular weaknesses that allowed these people that seemed to have nothing to do with their religion to be transformed into willing pawns for sacrifice. Maybe knowing what these weaknesses are can help societies identify hotbeds where this radicalization occurs and put a stop to it before the pattern repeats.
I'll give you one hint, when people feel like they belong they're a lot harder to exploit. When they feel connections with their neighbors, with the government officials they elect, even to an extent with the police, they are much less likely to try to tear-down the system in which they live. That neighborhood in Brussels that's described as a major source of terrorist development clearly has something unhealthy going on if the residents do not have this connection. Figure out why they feel isolated. Is it jobs? Is it racism? Is it religious bigotry even if they aren't particularly subscribing to "their" religion? Is it feeling bad about themselves because they're unemployed while the non-Muslims are employed? Figure it out and address it and perhaps this problem will actually go away.
The thing with this "direct bank access" in Germany is that I can go to my bank inside six weeks after the transfer and just tell them "reverse that transaction" and they just do it no question asked. So no scammer would ever use that to get money.
So what happens when the receiving-account is now empty or has been closed?
"From what I've read" does not require a citation. I haven't dug into it myself, and can't say it on my own knowledge.
Then you're passing-on unverified information as if it's factual. If it's patently incorrect then it actually furthers harm, especially if people attempt build defenses based on this fallacy.
Please give a citation for your first statement. I have heard that it's about power for ever and ever, but no one ever substantiates that claim. That why I question that. Why would it be about power? Power to do what? That's why I said that fundamentally they have a lot in common. Both want something. Both don't care that they're victimizing in order to get it.
As for your other statement, I have no doubt that a rape kit is traumatic. On the other hand, bruises and other tissue damage heals, drugs that might have been introduced into the victim against their knowledge will metabolize-out; evidence will be lost. Which is more traumatic, being seen-to by a doctor, or potentially seeing one's rapist for the next so-many-years with no recourse?
As for this escrow system, reporting to it without reporting to the police does not stop the perpetrator. It does not well-document the perpetrator's actions in a way that can be factually cited. It is no better than the past victims giving personal testimony, and arguably could be worse because it allows the defense to call into question the motives of those who come forward because they did not come forward to the police earlier, and could possibly be excluded as evidence or even could help the defense prevent previous-victim-witnesses from being allowed to testify.
The only way to fight back may be a poor way to do so, but there is no better way at the moment, as anything else becomes word against word or word against the right to say nothing at all.
There are two major aspects to this. The aspect that seems to be en vogue to talk about is the perpetrators of the crime. The other aspect, that people get very upset when it's talked about, is how to avoid being a victim. As this thread shows, some people automatically assume that discussing how someone can avoid being a victim somehow excuses the behavior of the perpetrators. It doesn't. It merely acknowledges that there are circumstances beyond the control of the would-be victim, and that it is in that individual's interest to control those circumstances that they have influence over to avoid being victimized.
When I meet to buy or sell property through the classifieds I am very mindful of the meeting place and the surrounding circumstances. I don't bring more money than I'm prepared to spend. I keep the money separate from the wallet. If what I'm purchasing or selling is small enough to be readily moved I pick locations that are public, visible, and in safe areas. I pick either times of day where it's light outside, or else I pick places that are more likely to be safe even at dusk or early evening. I leave a printout of where I went with the contact info, I tell someone, and depending on what it is or if I cannot satisfy some of these other conditions (like for large things that will be loaded into a vehicle once and only after purchase) I bring someone along. In any meeting place I attempt to maintain awareness of what's going on around me.
I do these things because while it is completely against the law for someone to rob me, I know that there are people in this world that will try to rob me anyway. I could go through life without taking this kind of care and get indignant when I hear of robberies or when I'm robbed, or I can accept the fact that there are bad people, take precautions to not be harmed by them, and move on with my life.
The nature of the discussion of rape is much of the time in fallacy. In many ways, the motivations of the robber and the rapist are not wholly dissimilar. Both want something. Both are willing to ignore the wants of the victim in order to get it. It's not about power, it's about being callous in taking what one wants against the will of the victim. Both obviously know that it's wrong, but they do it anyway because it's about what they want.
I don't know how effective a system like the one the article describes is going to be. The prosecution of rape is already complicated by the nature of physical evidence and by the difficulty in distinguishing forced sexual contact with consensual sexual contact, becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate as time past the episode passes. Look at accusations against Bill Cosby, somewhere around forty women have accused him of sexually assaulting then, but without physical evidence collected at the time, all Mr. Cosby has to do is invoke his right to not speak with authorities and he will never see the inside of a courtroom. In the case of this escrow idea, if women don't go to the police/hospital to document their attack then justice cannot be served against the attacker. Conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. An accusation without supporting evidence does not meet that standard, even when everything in that accusation is true. I suspect that's why juries are asked to find a defendant either, "guilty," or, "not guilty," rather than, "guilty," or, "innocent." "Not guilty," does not mean innocent. It simply means that it could not be proven.
So that brings us back to the whole point, try to avoid being a victim in the first place. Ideally all bad people would be caught or would stop, but pragmatically, bad people exist and being intelligent about the dangers in the world can prevent or reduce the number of bad things from happening to you.
His statement is true if you consider it to mean that a real programmer does not care about any one language to the exclusion of others.
I was at a Cisco event recently that had a discussion on Application Centric Infrastructure, basically using a master controller to do all kinds of fancy on-demand things to switchports at the access layer depending on factors like authentication of the device or user account. The presenter basically said there are two ways to go about it, the first is to use the somewhat crappy GUI/Web interface, and the second is to write stuff in Python that the controller makes use of. As someone that uses a lot of Bash right now the Python approach is definitely more my style than relying on a web page.
There are more journalism graduates per year than there are journalism jobs in the totality of the profession.
I blame two things on creating this situation- a college degree requirement or strong preference where it does not actually contribute anything, and a glut of people going through programs in college to get any degree in order to satisfy the unnecessary requirements.
Now that there's a bubble in the number of those seeking college, colleges charge more for tuition. That in turn means students take on a greater debt-load or their families spend disproportionate money on something. Those that do not finish college or can't find the work that they trained for effectively wasted tens of thousands of dollars or more. It also means unscrupulous businesses operating as colleges can collect tuition money so long as they manage to squeak-by with their accreditation, and I'm not entirely certain that the ratio of enrollees-to-graduates factors into accreditation.
I think that we need stronger rules for accreditation and we need employers to stop pushing so damn hard for college-graduates for jobs that do not need them. We also need to be more realistic about the sizes of programs based on the actual growth of fields they train for and to put an end to churning out orders-of-magnitude more graduates than there are jobs. I'm looking at you, music schools, journalism schools, business schools, and your ilk.
The hard part is continuing to build things when so far away from the only place that we semi-reliably know how to build things, which is Earth. There are already arguments on how to build complex and large things on Mars, this will only get harder the further from an Earthlike place one goes.
Wasn't part of the point of having a multiplayer game that used books and a board and dice to actually give people some real social interaction? This technology is interesting but is limited to the social interaction of just the game, itself reduced through the lack of in-person meet, and strips off all of the associated social interaction like going out to dinner after a gaming session or the setup and teardown of the room for playing.
I could see this getting some use where existing campaigns get broken-up as people move away, but I don't know how much traction they'll get for players that did not start out, "in real life," together. If it does take off, it seems that it could actually further isolate people as now they don't even have to appear in-person weekly to play.
The only thing on that which gives me pause is when company founders and owners that work for the company and own the company when it's private transition it to public, rigid rules might require them to sell their portions. I don't think it's necessary to compel executives to not own the companies for which they work, but I do believe that there needs to be a catch to prevent a pump-and-dump.
I think it's getting to be time for public companies to have an upper limit on the nature of compensation bonuses for top management. Stop it with the golden parachutes and define the rules where their stock options given as bonuses cannot be exercised until so many years have passed and then must be cashed-out when they have matured, such that management has incentive to do what it takes to leave the company healthy even as they exit it.
Daesh's real impact on the world is limited to about 500 million people currently. There are around 400 million people in the middle east, not all impacted by them, and there are localized impacts outside of the middle east like the recent events in Paris. The world's population is over seven billion people. Daesh impacts about 7% of the population of the world.
They need to be dealt with, but there are a whole lot of other people that have their own wants and needs completely irrespective of Daesh. The world does not stop because of relatively local events.
More like, homeopathic doctors are useless, so we should stop paying homeopathic doctors and use a different approach so that less people die. Like, police that do not leave the major artery roads are useless at helping reduce crime in neighborhoods, better re-evaluate how the police operate to help reduce crime.
Age wasn't relevant. Time-based rates were based on usage model on the network. Calling it a congestion charge may have confused consumers, so they called it a time-based rate and simply defined tiering based on previous usage patterns, and after behaviors changed, would modify those over time to correspond better with usage models.
It's the exact same thing that power companies do with power usage, if one is on a time-of-use plan then the kW/h price is higher in the first couple of hours after people get off work because on arriving home, that's the time when they're more likely to turn on appliances or electrical devices, and dragging that out will reduce the demand at any given point to prevent overloading the grid.
can we get 1 article not about terrorism?
Something like 30 Americans have died from terrorism in the past 5 years. You're far more likely to die by slipping in your bathtub. The news coverage on terrorism is INSANELY blown out of proportion. I'd be fine not seeing another one for the rest of this decade.
At least this article has a technical angle, albeit a strange one. Throughout history entities have sought to keep their communications secret. At times obscurity was the order of the day, at other times cryptography was the method of choice, and sometimes a combination of the two are used.
Now that it's pointed out I'm not all that surprised that this kind of Internet-based medium would be used; it's specialized enough to be easily overlooked and given the nature of what's said on gaming systems during gameplay that there might not be much desire on the part of the operator of the proprietary system to monitor or even log communications. Of course, a downside, playing devil's advocate, is that if the operator of the system is logging, even if only to be able to address abuse after the fact, they might be able to comb through communications and uncover the participants, their IP addresses and possibly a degree of geolocation, plus any discussed plots including those that might not have been carried-out.
One of the things that kind of bothers me is that in this era of so much spying, including the very likely state of warrantless surveillance, that we've had high profile examples where that questionable system has failed. We had a fake expert on terrorism that lied about his credentials for many years. We've had cases of American domestic terrorism and mass-shootings that were publicized in advance by the shooters that were not uncovered or stopped. We've had cases of international terrorism in Western nations that were not uncovered. Clearly this spying is not only questionable in its legitimacy, but it's not even effective. Proponents can't claim that all of this spying on us, all of this expense and the chilling effects of known surveillance aren't even making us safer, so it's a net-negative.
Slashdot Mirror
... if he didn't do it this way one could say his responses would have been Comic Sans...
And a four hour movie could easily become a five or six episode miniseries. If the directors/producers/studio wanted to tell the entire middle-earth saga then it could be part of a greater work too.
Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.
I kind of wish that the miniseries format would become more popular again. Design the entire series in advance, figure out where the source-material will need bolstering as it changes from print to film, figure out how to time the dramatic elements so that each episode has something to look forward to, and package the thing where it makes sense.
Yeah, I know it isn't especially cool but so far it isn't failing the Occam's Razor test. What's even more insidious about it is that as people get defensive when their faith is called into question they usually get more violent in their defense of it. Something that literally means nothing to them normally suddenly becomes paramount.
I wonder if that's really all there was to this particular instance of radicalization. The religious equivalent of calling them chicken, goading them into doing something that they wouldn't have otherwise considered doing.
Look at parallels in Christianity. How many people that self-identify as Christian actually go to church weekly? Regularly? For holidays? How many know the name(s) of the official(s) that run the church that they claim to be a member of? How many actually stop to consider the rules about coveting what others have?
How many Christians even understand why Christ sacrificed himself on the cross?
Now, consider how many of the Christians that are easily described by this scenario would argue bitterly and violently how Christianity is the true religion and how, "their," faith is correct and all others are wrong, while they single-handedly do not understand or follow the tenets of, "their," faith.
I suspect this is what we're seeing in these terrorists. They are literally useful idiots and are used as pawns by the actual players behind the scenes. And they don't even know that they're being played.
I will agree with this hardware issue. I'm using what is probably the best compromise in their laptops at the moment if it weren't for the problems that have led to recalls, a "Late 2011 15" MacBook Pro with the i7. This computer has Ethernet. Firewire 800, "Thunderbolt"/Displayport, USB3, and both headphones and microphone ports, plus an integrated DVD. Only things that would make it better would be a Blu-Ray, an option that Apple has never offered, and if this unit had a higher-resolution screen.
All models subsequent to this lack things that I regularly use and it's aggravating.
The news has reported that many of the attackers, prior to recent radicalization were shiftless layabouts with no particular interest in their religion and violated most of the popular tenets of it. They drank. They had sex. They did drugs. They obviously weren't praying on a schedule.
This changed within the last few weeks to transform them from this into people willing to kill themselves. Find that catalyst and you not only find the people that masterminded the attacks but you also find the particular weaknesses that allowed these people that seemed to have nothing to do with their religion to be transformed into willing pawns for sacrifice. Maybe knowing what these weaknesses are can help societies identify hotbeds where this radicalization occurs and put a stop to it before the pattern repeats.
I'll give you one hint, when people feel like they belong they're a lot harder to exploit. When they feel connections with their neighbors, with the government officials they elect, even to an extent with the police, they are much less likely to try to tear-down the system in which they live. That neighborhood in Brussels that's described as a major source of terrorist development clearly has something unhealthy going on if the residents do not have this connection. Figure out why they feel isolated. Is it jobs? Is it racism? Is it religious bigotry even if they aren't particularly subscribing to "their" religion? Is it feeling bad about themselves because they're unemployed while the non-Muslims are employed? Figure it out and address it and perhaps this problem will actually go away.
So what happens when the receiving-account is now empty or has been closed?
"From what I've read" does not require a citation. I haven't dug into it myself, and can't say it on my own knowledge.
Then you're passing-on unverified information as if it's factual. If it's patently incorrect then it actually furthers harm, especially if people attempt build defenses based on this fallacy.
Please give a citation for your first statement. I have heard that it's about power for ever and ever, but no one ever substantiates that claim. That why I question that. Why would it be about power? Power to do what? That's why I said that fundamentally they have a lot in common. Both want something. Both don't care that they're victimizing in order to get it.
As for your other statement, I have no doubt that a rape kit is traumatic. On the other hand, bruises and other tissue damage heals, drugs that might have been introduced into the victim against their knowledge will metabolize-out; evidence will be lost. Which is more traumatic, being seen-to by a doctor, or potentially seeing one's rapist for the next so-many-years with no recourse?
As for this escrow system, reporting to it without reporting to the police does not stop the perpetrator. It does not well-document the perpetrator's actions in a way that can be factually cited. It is no better than the past victims giving personal testimony, and arguably could be worse because it allows the defense to call into question the motives of those who come forward because they did not come forward to the police earlier, and could possibly be excluded as evidence or even could help the defense prevent previous-victim-witnesses from being allowed to testify.
The only way to fight back may be a poor way to do so, but there is no better way at the moment, as anything else becomes word against word or word against the right to say nothing at all.
There are two major aspects to this. The aspect that seems to be en vogue to talk about is the perpetrators of the crime. The other aspect, that people get very upset when it's talked about, is how to avoid being a victim. As this thread shows, some people automatically assume that discussing how someone can avoid being a victim somehow excuses the behavior of the perpetrators. It doesn't. It merely acknowledges that there are circumstances beyond the control of the would-be victim, and that it is in that individual's interest to control those circumstances that they have influence over to avoid being victimized.
When I meet to buy or sell property through the classifieds I am very mindful of the meeting place and the surrounding circumstances. I don't bring more money than I'm prepared to spend. I keep the money separate from the wallet. If what I'm purchasing or selling is small enough to be readily moved I pick locations that are public, visible, and in safe areas. I pick either times of day where it's light outside, or else I pick places that are more likely to be safe even at dusk or early evening. I leave a printout of where I went with the contact info, I tell someone, and depending on what it is or if I cannot satisfy some of these other conditions (like for large things that will be loaded into a vehicle once and only after purchase) I bring someone along. In any meeting place I attempt to maintain awareness of what's going on around me.
I do these things because while it is completely against the law for someone to rob me, I know that there are people in this world that will try to rob me anyway. I could go through life without taking this kind of care and get indignant when I hear of robberies or when I'm robbed, or I can accept the fact that there are bad people, take precautions to not be harmed by them, and move on with my life.
The nature of the discussion of rape is much of the time in fallacy. In many ways, the motivations of the robber and the rapist are not wholly dissimilar. Both want something. Both are willing to ignore the wants of the victim in order to get it. It's not about power, it's about being callous in taking what one wants against the will of the victim. Both obviously know that it's wrong, but they do it anyway because it's about what they want.
I don't know how effective a system like the one the article describes is going to be. The prosecution of rape is already complicated by the nature of physical evidence and by the difficulty in distinguishing forced sexual contact with consensual sexual contact, becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate as time past the episode passes. Look at accusations against Bill Cosby, somewhere around forty women have accused him of sexually assaulting then, but without physical evidence collected at the time, all Mr. Cosby has to do is invoke his right to not speak with authorities and he will never see the inside of a courtroom. In the case of this escrow idea, if women don't go to the police/hospital to document their attack then justice cannot be served against the attacker. Conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. An accusation without supporting evidence does not meet that standard, even when everything in that accusation is true. I suspect that's why juries are asked to find a defendant either, "guilty," or, "not guilty," rather than, "guilty," or, "innocent." "Not guilty," does not mean innocent. It simply means that it could not be proven.
So that brings us back to the whole point, try to avoid being a victim in the first place. Ideally all bad people would be caught or would stop, but pragmatically, bad people exist and being intelligent about the dangers in the world can prevent or reduce the number of bad things from happening to you.
Then why the hell are governments pushing for data-retention laws?
His statement is true if you consider it to mean that a real programmer does not care about any one language to the exclusion of others.
I was at a Cisco event recently that had a discussion on Application Centric Infrastructure, basically using a master controller to do all kinds of fancy on-demand things to switchports at the access layer depending on factors like authentication of the device or user account. The presenter basically said there are two ways to go about it, the first is to use the somewhat crappy GUI/Web interface, and the second is to write stuff in Python that the controller makes use of. As someone that uses a lot of Bash right now the Python approach is definitely more my style than relying on a web page.
There are more journalism graduates per year than there are journalism jobs in the totality of the profession.
I blame two things on creating this situation- a college degree requirement or strong preference where it does not actually contribute anything, and a glut of people going through programs in college to get any degree in order to satisfy the unnecessary requirements.
Now that there's a bubble in the number of those seeking college, colleges charge more for tuition. That in turn means students take on a greater debt-load or their families spend disproportionate money on something. Those that do not finish college or can't find the work that they trained for effectively wasted tens of thousands of dollars or more. It also means unscrupulous businesses operating as colleges can collect tuition money so long as they manage to squeak-by with their accreditation, and I'm not entirely certain that the ratio of enrollees-to-graduates factors into accreditation.
I think that we need stronger rules for accreditation and we need employers to stop pushing so damn hard for college-graduates for jobs that do not need them. We also need to be more realistic about the sizes of programs based on the actual growth of fields they train for and to put an end to churning out orders-of-magnitude more graduates than there are jobs. I'm looking at you, music schools, journalism schools, business schools, and your ilk.
The hard part is continuing to build things when so far away from the only place that we semi-reliably know how to build things, which is Earth. There are already arguments on how to build complex and large things on Mars, this will only get harder the further from an Earthlike place one goes.
Wasn't part of the point of having a multiplayer game that used books and a board and dice to actually give people some real social interaction? This technology is interesting but is limited to the social interaction of just the game, itself reduced through the lack of in-person meet, and strips off all of the associated social interaction like going out to dinner after a gaming session or the setup and teardown of the room for playing.
I could see this getting some use where existing campaigns get broken-up as people move away, but I don't know how much traction they'll get for players that did not start out, "in real life," together. If it does take off, it seems that it could actually further isolate people as now they don't even have to appear in-person weekly to play.
The only thing on that which gives me pause is when company founders and owners that work for the company and own the company when it's private transition it to public, rigid rules might require them to sell their portions. I don't think it's necessary to compel executives to not own the companies for which they work, but I do believe that there needs to be a catch to prevent a pump-and-dump.
I think it's getting to be time for public companies to have an upper limit on the nature of compensation bonuses for top management. Stop it with the golden parachutes and define the rules where their stock options given as bonuses cannot be exercised until so many years have passed and then must be cashed-out when they have matured, such that management has incentive to do what it takes to leave the company healthy even as they exit it.
Probably from Chandler, Arizona...
Daesh's real impact on the world is limited to about 500 million people currently. There are around 400 million people in the middle east, not all impacted by them, and there are localized impacts outside of the middle east like the recent events in Paris. The world's population is over seven billion people. Daesh impacts about 7% of the population of the world.
They need to be dealt with, but there are a whole lot of other people that have their own wants and needs completely irrespective of Daesh. The world does not stop because of relatively local events.
More like, homeopathic doctors are useless, so we should stop paying homeopathic doctors and use a different approach so that less people die. Like, police that do not leave the major artery roads are useless at helping reduce crime in neighborhoods, better re-evaluate how the police operate to help reduce crime.
Age wasn't relevant. Time-based rates were based on usage model on the network. Calling it a congestion charge may have confused consumers, so they called it a time-based rate and simply defined tiering based on previous usage patterns, and after behaviors changed, would modify those over time to correspond better with usage models.
It's the exact same thing that power companies do with power usage, if one is on a time-of-use plan then the kW/h price is higher in the first couple of hours after people get off work because on arriving home, that's the time when they're more likely to turn on appliances or electrical devices, and dragging that out will reduce the demand at any given point to prevent overloading the grid.
can we get 1 article not about terrorism? Something like 30 Americans have died from terrorism in the past 5 years. You're far more likely to die by slipping in your bathtub. The news coverage on terrorism is INSANELY blown out of proportion. I'd be fine not seeing another one for the rest of this decade.
At least this article has a technical angle, albeit a strange one. Throughout history entities have sought to keep their communications secret. At times obscurity was the order of the day, at other times cryptography was the method of choice, and sometimes a combination of the two are used.
Now that it's pointed out I'm not all that surprised that this kind of Internet-based medium would be used; it's specialized enough to be easily overlooked and given the nature of what's said on gaming systems during gameplay that there might not be much desire on the part of the operator of the proprietary system to monitor or even log communications. Of course, a downside, playing devil's advocate, is that if the operator of the system is logging, even if only to be able to address abuse after the fact, they might be able to comb through communications and uncover the participants, their IP addresses and possibly a degree of geolocation, plus any discussed plots including those that might not have been carried-out.
One of the things that kind of bothers me is that in this era of so much spying, including the very likely state of warrantless surveillance, that we've had high profile examples where that questionable system has failed. We had a fake expert on terrorism that lied about his credentials for many years. We've had cases of American domestic terrorism and mass-shootings that were publicized in advance by the shooters that were not uncovered or stopped. We've had cases of international terrorism in Western nations that were not uncovered. Clearly this spying is not only questionable in its legitimacy, but it's not even effective. Proponents can't claim that all of this spying on us, all of this expense and the chilling effects of known surveillance aren't even making us safer, so it's a net-negative.
I have a very simple solution to prevent this kind of thing from being a problem in a hacker get-together. It's called a cable.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?