Re:Believe Glenn Greenwald's book got it perfect .
on
Why Snowden Did Right
·
· Score: 1
Remember that Edward Snowden was a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, and has proven to the world his unimaginable and extraordinary access to the most senstive of NSA programs --- and who owns Booz Allen?
Wow, that's ten tons of crazy piled into a half-ton pickup.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your inability to imagine something is not proof of its non-existence; it's only proof of your limited imagination.
As far as the case in Germany goes... It sort of makes sense to prohibit someone from publishing compromising photos of their ex, but requiring that certain photos be deleted is impractical, unreasonable, unenforceable, and just plain dumb. Are they also going to demand that he forgets what she looked like naked? As long as he keeps the photo to himself, what's the difference between that and a memory? Nothing.
Keeping a photo as a reminder of a pleasant experience in your past is by no means crazy or immoral. That's exactly what photo albums are for, and why everybody keeps them! Just because you have a picture of someone (naked or otherwise) doesn't mean you obsess or masturbate to it. My shoebox of old travel photos (including various ex-girlfriends) just sits in the closet until I get nostalgic once every year or five and have a look through it. No obsession, no masturbation, no reputations smeared.
The rights of the Constitution only apply to US citizens.
False. The Bill of Rights limits the power of the US government, justifying those limitations by referencing inalienable human rights. The US government is prohibited from violating anybody's human rights, anywhere in the world.
It is US law, it's not natural law.
It's US law, and it applies to the US government everywhere. Even Afghanistan.
The human race is incapable of being second fiddle to any other life form,
Nonsense. Look back at history and see the millions of humans who allowed themselves to be enslaved, subjugated, or otherwise oppressed. Humans are excellent at playing second fiddle.
And much of that oppression / subjugation / slavery was based on race or religion, so it doesn't particularly matter if the new overlords are some new kind of "alien", and it doesn't matter what our gods tell us about them. If they stomp their boots on our necks hard enough we will kneel before them.
Snowden basically walked out of the NSA with all their secrets; who's to say a few dozen or hundred other contractors didn't do the same thing before him? Everything the NSA knew or had access to before 2013 was most likely available in blackhat circles through clandestine leaks.
Any backdoors in TrueCrypt would be a security disaster, and the NSA has already proven itself willing and able to put backdoors in highly trusted security software. It's also proven itself incapable of keeping secrets.
Worrying about NSA-planted vulnerabilities is not the same thing as worrying about a direct attack from the NSA itself.
Well, this is it -- an early test of whether Bitcoin can stand on its own as an underground currency. The crutch of traditional currency exchange has been kicked out from under it. Will the bitcoins currently in China be abandoned? smuggled out? or actually used as money like Satoshi intended?
There are some randomizing anonymizer services which take money from lots of people and return it randomly so nobody knows exactly which amount came from which source....
Does this mean it's technically illegal for anyone in America to say, "I have received no National Security Letters today"? I feel a T-shirt design coming on....
IMHO the best reason to vote for a minor party candidate is to send a message to the major parties: If you move in the direction of this minor party, you might get my vote next time.
The problem of liability is relatively easy to solve. Define a set of operational standards, then limit liability by statute as long as those standards are met. Update and refine the standards as we gain experience.
A few unfortunate people will be killed by programming errors and deficient standards, but far more lives will be saved by getting the deadly menace of human drivers off the road.
Why is that whole mess supposed to be interesting to anybody besides the people directly involved? I never understand why cheating spouse celebrity "scandals" are such a big deal.
Lane doesn't matter. Drivers in the eastern US get uneasy if they see a gap in traffic. They just aren't comfortable unless they're tailgating. And they won't pass unless they can see someone else up ahead to tailgate.
Taco Cowboy's experience allegedly happened on 2011-04-11 at 16:07 SGT. The big quake happened on 2011-03-11 at 14:46 JST, which is 13:46 SGT. So neither the date nor the time of the story checks out. If his memory of those particular details is so sketchy, then all his other memories of the experience are suspect -- perhaps whatever caused the hallucinations also disrupted his time sense, or perhaps the entire memory is false. (I'm not suggesting that the story is fictitious, just that it's based on an unreliable memory.)
Even ignoring the date/time errors in the story, we don't really see any evidence of spooky premonition. There had been a magnitude 7.2 quake two days earlier, which probably had a lot of people thinking randomly about earthquakes just before the big one hit.
Every year or so I make a forensic copy of my Windows machine's HDD and use F-prot to scan it on an air-gapped clean scratch system. It always comes up clean. It is possible to use Windows without any active AV and still not get infected. It'll be a sad day if ever universal active antivirus becomes mandatory as suggested by GP.
Humans aren't designed at all. Our bodies are a hodge-podge of randomly accumulated survival traits, all very sub-optimal for much of modern civilized life. That's why we have machines and other technology to help us.
Maybe the next experimental technology will lead to mass psychotic breakdown, or maybe we'll adapt and it will become another routine part of our unnatural lives.
Slashdot Mirror
I give up. Who owns Booz Allen?
Wow, that's ten tons of crazy piled into a half-ton pickup.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your inability to imagine something is not proof of its non-existence; it's only proof of your limited imagination.
As far as the case in Germany goes... It sort of makes sense to prohibit someone from publishing compromising photos of their ex, but requiring that certain photos be deleted is impractical, unreasonable, unenforceable, and just plain dumb. Are they also going to demand that he forgets what she looked like naked? As long as he keeps the photo to himself, what's the difference between that and a memory? Nothing.
Keeping a photo as a reminder of a pleasant experience in your past is by no means crazy or immoral. That's exactly what photo albums are for, and why everybody keeps them! Just because you have a picture of someone (naked or otherwise) doesn't mean you obsess or masturbate to it. My shoebox of old travel photos (including various ex-girlfriends) just sits in the closet until I get nostalgic once every year or five and have a look through it. No obsession, no masturbation, no reputations smeared.
The JOB of the NSA is to violate the US Constitution and local laws in other countries? No wonder it's always been so secretive.
According to him, he took the job so he could gather evidence and expose the NSA's illegal activities.
False. The Bill of Rights limits the power of the US government, justifying those limitations by referencing inalienable human rights. The US government is prohibited from violating anybody's human rights, anywhere in the world.
It's US law, and it applies to the US government everywhere. Even Afghanistan.
Huh. 321 - 100 - 40 - 8 seems obvious. 221 ... 181 ... 173.
I'm gonna need some of this gene after reading the articles on alien encounters and noncomputable consciousness. Me dumber now.
Nonsense. Look back at history and see the millions of humans who allowed themselves to be enslaved, subjugated, or otherwise oppressed. Humans are excellent at playing second fiddle.
And much of that oppression / subjugation / slavery was based on race or religion, so it doesn't particularly matter if the new overlords are some new kind of "alien", and it doesn't matter what our gods tell us about them. If they stomp their boots on our necks hard enough we will kneel before them.
Correct. E.g. Bussard ramjet or laser-propelled sailship.
Snowden basically walked out of the NSA with all their secrets; who's to say a few dozen or hundred other contractors didn't do the same thing before him? Everything the NSA knew or had access to before 2013 was most likely available in blackhat circles through clandestine leaks.
Any backdoors in TrueCrypt would be a security disaster, and the NSA has already proven itself willing and able to put backdoors in highly trusted security software. It's also proven itself incapable of keeping secrets.
Worrying about NSA-planted vulnerabilities is not the same thing as worrying about a direct attack from the NSA itself.
If every monkey just sits there typing 123456 over and over, they will only ever crack half the users' passwords.
Well, this is it -- an early test of whether Bitcoin can stand on its own as an underground currency. The crutch of traditional currency exchange has been kicked out from under it. Will the bitcoins currently in China be abandoned? smuggled out? or actually used as money like Satoshi intended?
So... sort of a money laundromat?
I guess by the time we're ready to build this thing, every available spot on Earth will already be covered with solar panels.
Your inability to imagine a reason for browsing without javascript does not mean that there is no such reason.
If Slashdot ever starts requiring javascript, I'm out forever. FWIW.
Using "Classic" "Nested" view with no javascript. Works fine on all browsers and devices. Please keep it as an option.
Does this mean it's technically illegal for anyone in America to say, "I have received no National Security Letters today"? I feel a T-shirt design coming on....
IMHO the best reason to vote for a minor party candidate is to send a message to the major parties: If you move in the direction of this minor party, you might get my vote next time.
That's exactly how quantum computers work!
The problem of liability is relatively easy to solve. Define a set of operational standards, then limit liability by statute as long as those standards are met. Update and refine the standards as we gain experience.
A few unfortunate people will be killed by programming errors and deficient standards, but far more lives will be saved by getting the deadly menace of human drivers off the road.
Why is that whole mess supposed to be interesting to anybody besides the people directly involved? I never understand why cheating spouse celebrity "scandals" are such a big deal.
Lane doesn't matter. Drivers in the eastern US get uneasy if they see a gap in traffic. They just aren't comfortable unless they're tailgating. And they won't pass unless they can see someone else up ahead to tailgate.
Taco Cowboy's experience allegedly happened on 2011-04-11 at 16:07 SGT. The big quake happened on 2011-03-11 at 14:46 JST, which is 13:46 SGT. So neither the date nor the time of the story checks out. If his memory of those particular details is so sketchy, then all his other memories of the experience are suspect -- perhaps whatever caused the hallucinations also disrupted his time sense, or perhaps the entire memory is false. (I'm not suggesting that the story is fictitious, just that it's based on an unreliable memory.)
Even ignoring the date/time errors in the story, we don't really see any evidence of spooky premonition. There had been a magnitude 7.2 quake two days earlier, which probably had a lot of people thinking randomly about earthquakes just before the big one hit.
Every year or so I make a forensic copy of my Windows machine's HDD and use F-prot to scan it on an air-gapped clean scratch system. It always comes up clean. It is possible to use Windows without any active AV and still not get infected. It'll be a sad day if ever universal active antivirus becomes mandatory as suggested by GP.
Humans aren't designed at all. Our bodies are a hodge-podge of randomly accumulated survival traits, all very sub-optimal for much of modern civilized life. That's why we have machines and other technology to help us.
Maybe the next experimental technology will lead to mass psychotic breakdown, or maybe we'll adapt and it will become another routine part of our unnatural lives.
FTFY.
Learn the file format and write a program to strip out any executable script elements.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html.