Where were you racist idiots when these programs were being started by President Bush?
LOL Really? I was right here bitching about it. And are you seriously trying to say Republicans are racists? Are you retarded, or were you just raised on hatred?
But, unfortunately, he's staying the course on things that I would rather he not stayed the course on. But, you're a naive moron if you think that Romney or McCain wouldn't have. And in all likelihood they would be abusing it even worse.
Which is why I voted Libertarian. I actually vote for who I'd like to see in office. The only difference between Repub and Dem nowadays is their corporate sponsors.
So basically corporate America wants to take IT and turn it into a field full of migrant workers with no benefits supporting families on unsteady contract work? Along with treating them as untrustworthy as well as being an expense/necessary evil rather than critical team assets.
And they wonder why so many are leaking secrets, stealing or leaving them in a bind when they've finally had it or the contract nears its end?
With Linux, GUIs like KDE had been the default from day 1, and now there's a bonanza of them - GNOME, LXDE/Razor-qt, XFCE, Unity, Cinnamon, et al.
Ummmm.... No.... they really haven't. You obviously weren't a Linux user around 1995. Just getting X11 running was a serious PITA affair much less getting it to do anything. FVWM and FVWM95 were pretty popular. xfm was a common file manager. OpenLook was around for Linux too. Commercial versions of Motif and CDE were around I think.
DOZENS of Window Managers for X11 have existed over the years. Full desktop environments you can probably count on 2 or 3 hands.
Have I fallen behind on what the NSA has been accused of doing? I thought they weren't so much reading our emails as collecting transmission information - the equivalent of reading the to/from addresses on everything we snail-mail. Collecting WHO we talk to, not what we're talking about. I still think it should be a violation without some sort of warrant, but it's not quite as bad.
Even if that were the case, which I'm sure it's not. They would simply use CALEA equipment at ISP or Telco to monitor and dump your traffic into a DB in real-time if anything REMOTELY looking like an interesting pattern showed up in your e-mail subjects or sender/recipient info. And now they can decrypt the vast majority of SSL traffic at least from those who use US-based providers or CA's.
The problem is that it's been shown that they often don't bother with the courts before spying on Americans. It's illegal, immoral, thuggish, expensive and f**king stupid.
Well, it doesn't seem fair that you have to pay extra to have something better. What about those people who can't afford any more, shouldn't they have the best things too?
Um.... in a word.... NO....
People that can't afford decent goods will have to settle for equipment that can be built for a lower cost. And if I have the cash to get a premium product, I can get a premium product.
That's like saying Macbook Pro's should cost $300 because walmart sells $300 Toshibas.
I can't believe I have a front row seat to everything that's going down. Maybe someday I'll find myself telling someone where I was when the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights were permanently suspended.
Nah, they'll simply redefine the "legal definition" of various clear english terms and use creative interpretation based on the new definitions until the Constitution no longer matters. It's already effectively useless if the Feds are keen on ruining you.
Maybe someday I'll tell someone how the entirety of US history really went down from founding ideals to however this ends - I'm sure it will be nothing even remotely close to their heavily censored, revisionist textbook.
Last but not least: this really sucks.
Textbooks will likely try to spin it in a positive light about governments getting "stronger" to fight "criminals and terrorists" because more democratic and decentralized systems of government proved too weak in the modern age to handle the modern threats. Unfortunately we're all criminals under current law and we're all, as Americans, descendents of criminals, terrorists and thieves. They are trying to stamp out the sort of people that made this nation possible in the first place. They know what they are doing is evil. They know it's illegal. They specifically set the system up so abusing it would be easy and efficient. They don't care. And they never will.
Words and waving signs won't fix it this time folks. This isn't just a slippery slope. We've been sent off a cliff. It's Fascism without the openly racist elements and the illusion of freedom/democracy. Corporations and lapdog politicians have worked REAL HARD to make it that way for a long time. Since at least the 1930's, probably before that.
I tried to show him that this stuff was sheer fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true. —Hoover Memoirs 3:420
Guns are actually incredibly simply to operate. And a simple single shot 12 gauge shotgun with a short barrel will only set you back maybe $150. Pop in shell, close barrel, pull hammer, squeeze trigger.... *BLAM*
And why are calling women stupid? My wife is actually a damn good shot. And quite mechanically inclined.
And not all suicidal people that haven't brought themselves to do it yet are "putting on a show". A lot of them genuinely want to die but are afraid of the pain involved in death and it takes a while to build the courage.
We also have federal judges that we've put in place who are not subject to political pressure. They've got lifetime tenure as federal judges
Don't we have entire government departments dedicated to shortening lifetimes as efficiently as possible? Even if it's illegal and during times of peace?
Seriously, if the system of laws that enabled our society to thrive and exist thus far no longer apply to the people entrusted to enforce and protect them..... we have a serious f**king problem on our hands.
The president has a license to murder people and the means to spy on them with impunity. Outside of judicial oversight for the most part. For the safety of you and the nation of course.... Does this bother anyone but me?
If our government had the balls to use tanks and bullets on its own people to get their point across, you may have a valid comparison.
Our government doesn't.... because they know what martyrdom can bring. They saw the video of the guy standing in front of the tank too. And really? That guy accomplished nothing but that video brought a lot of attention. Even if it got him stuffed in a death van. Snowden's actions got him one thing..... publicity. If he had waited for the SWAT team, he would have simply joined 10% of our population giving free labor to the state. Assuming he wasn't killed outright.
Sometimes waiting to be run over by a criminal organization you pissed off is NOT the best way to do business. Especially if said criminal organization has been "elected".
Heroes stand up for what's right, even if it means staring down a tank on an otherwise empty street. Snowden ran away like a child who knew he'd done something wrong. He's a coward. To call him a hero does a disservice to every real hero in the world.
MARTYRS don't care about fighting another day.... heroes can.
He ran because it would bring a force that no one would have a chance of single-handedly defeating down on him and a propaganda machine that would successfully destroy any credibility he had after he was "accidentally shot" by a SWAT team. To stay and stare them down means either suicide or secret prison. He might have gotten a show trial eventually if he was lucky. He did the right thing.
To be a hero does not necessarily mean to be stupid and martyr yourself.
When is the last time you ever fought a speeding ticket much less espionage charges? Let's see how brave you are in that situation. But then again you probably wouldn't have the testicular fortitude to do the "right thing" when put in his situation. You would probably just STFU and hope the programs were never turned on you. THAT is a coward. Or a criminal accomplice. Or both.
BTW, Tienanmen-guy got disappeared most likely. Martyrdom might have been pretty successful for that Jesus guy, but it hasn't worked out well for most.
It's not JUST the government you should be worried about. I've been trying to make people aware of exactly how insecure SMTP is for a really long time.
I don't "promote" reading everyone's e-mail but I certainly know exactly how easy it is to intercept e-mail. I know they legally aren't supposed to but face it, we are dealing with a corrupt government that is willing to break every law that protects its citizenry from them.
Yet these bastards expect us to follow the law to the letter because they have the bigger guns. If they can ignore our 1st, 4th and 5th amendment rights.... when do we get to start ignoring THEIR basic rights? Such as their right to liberty at the VERY least.
The expectation of privacy comes from how email is used. You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence). You aren't CCing the NSA. No one can overhear the message in normal usage unless they happen to have an email address that gets the message (say because you sent the email to a huge list) or one of your recipients forwards the email on in some way.
Wrong. I run mail servers.... you can easily run a packet sniffer and read e-mail as it goes across the wire on the local LAN as well as at the ISP unless SSL or TLS is used. And at the ISP or mail provider the messages can simply be read by a server admin. Now that TLS is becoming more popular, the NSA is leaning on CA's to hand over keys so they don't have to get the ISP involved as much.
The raw SMTP protocol is quite insecure. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Especially if you are connecting to port 25 with no TLS and spewing plaintext.
If you are concerned about people viewing the content of your e-mails, use GPG or another alternative. Anything but e-mail encryption certs from Verisign or another popular CA.
No, what I'm saying is there are other PIM packages besides Outlook that talk to an Exchange server and don't suck. If you're too lazy to spend 5 minutes learning a new e-Mail package when Outlook isn't available then you have issues.
And if Outlook is the only capable PIM package for WinRT, maybe your choice of platform sucks and you should look for better alternatives with a real application base.
People like you are why substandard, buggy software continues to reign supreme because learning a few new icons to click and maybe a keyboard shortcut or two is such a horrid task.
Hillarious, Mr. IT Awesomeness, that you admit that for most people this is enough. So I guess you're real point is that only the 10% that do REAL computing need to have anything at all and the rest of the people shouldn't have any device or should have something way over-powered for their needs.
For most consumers using the devices at HOME with no real need for serious computing devices, yes they're adequate. From a business standpoint..... Hell no. It's a great TOY for grandpa to get on Facebook.
When that extra computing power comes at the same or LESS cost than a decent tablet when the laptop cost MORE to produce then yeah, I think people should learn how to use a computer. Not a content consumption appliance that cost much less to produce and will be crippling when you DO need the extra horsepower and decide you actually need to do real work.
Stuffing crippled tablets down the throats of school children and basing their computer education on them is going to do more harm than good. People should be educated with real computing skills.
Tablets are a burden on IT and have so far provided no additional benefit besides people thinking they hopped on the new wave of the computing future. Tablets are PDA's. Supplemental devices. NOT full computer replacements. And arrogant folks with tablets that think I'm not going to manage their devices forced upon my network because they "BYOD" have another thing coming. I manage it, or it doesn't touch my network. The end.
Um, no, I'm a UNIX/Linux/OSX guy. But please, continue to enjoy your sub-standard crappy OS, it makes people like me lots of money supporting it and fixing issues for people like you who think they know more than they do. Make no mistake, I love Windows.... precisely because it makes me LOTS of money because it's an inflexible piece of crap that requires far more money and effort than it should just to achieve a working, stable, crapware/malware-free environment.
I don't like the iPhone or the iPad.... Surface just sucks even WORSE than those two products yet people want to try to cram it down business's throats like it'll revolutionize their workflow. The reality is the opposite. It's only useful to the computer illiterate that don't want to learn anything to compute and are happy fumbling through tasks for 20 minutes that would normally take me 30 seconds on a real OS.
They are useful to introduce folks to computers that have no intention of learning how to use a real computer. They are content consumption devices for the masses that actually get in the way when you have real work to do.
Today's crop of tablets are NOT very useful as actual computing devices. They are slow, clunky, finnicky PDA's that kids like to play games on and dig around on facebook because they are too lazy to learn to use a real computer. Period. Most are too locked down and restricted for real work unless your real work only involves looking at eBooks and doing minor clunky editing to word documents or spreadsheets.
Tablets are not the "future" of computing. They are supplemental devices for people that want to look cool or simply want a toy for browsing the internet.
Surface is a joke, the iPad is too restricted to be useful and Windows Phone 8 is a flop. The only use for tablets is basic computing needs for the computer illiterate that are happy fumbling through inefficient interfaces poking at a screen because they don't want to learn how to use a full-fledged OS properly and struggle with real computers.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see ARM make inroads into desktop and laptop devices but interfaces like Windows 8, iOS and Android will NEVER displace real Linux, Windows and OSX systems for REAL WORK. You bought an overpriced toy. Sorry. Tablets have been around for years, the only thing that caused them to take off was cheap embedded 3D accelerators for games and poke-and-drool interfaces that inexperienced users can get used to. For power users and real computing professionals they are near useless except as a convenient way to browse the net on the toilet. Oh and Angry Birds or Worms Armageddon.
Small lightweight laptops are far better for people with real jobs that involve heavy computer use. Sales monkeys that can't touch type anyway are the only people I've seen get real use out of them besides a cool toy. They are a solution in search of a problem.
Touch screens have been around forever. There's a damn good reason they never became the sole input device. It isn't practical to have ONLY a touch interface for complex apps. It doesn't work well and ends up being less efficient. Technophobes like them more because they don't have to think or learn anything.
For 90% of computing needs for the average joe, you're right. But the average joe does very little useful with a computer. It's an entertainment appliance. I'd be happy to get rid of that crowd in the standard computing space anyway. They are a hassle. The issue is going to be the rising cost of real computers which tablets will never displace. This fad of tablets being the future of computing is nothing more than wishful thinking and hype.
I *AM* an IT Director with over 16 of experience in IT including mobile computing, some development experience, some graphic arts experience so I think I can speak with some actual weight on this subject. Especially considering I've developed apps for mobile platforms going back to NewtonOS 2.1, PalmOS 4 and Windows CE 2.0.
2.) It can be used to encrypt traffic between client and server and serverserver assuming one end isn't using some 15 year old MTA or is too lazy to set up TLS.
So no, it's not a backwards step. It helps prevent sniffing e-mail traffic on the local LAN from client->server at least and most of the time serverserver. It's more like they are 15 years late doing something that should have already been done. It does NOT help with mail stored on the server so if it's hacked/siezed you're still screwed.
The biggest problem is the NSA is basically trying to render SSL/TLS useless by bullying CA's into handing over keys.
The NSA has shown us the most basic weakness with TLS/SSL recently. Really, until everyone starts using GPG or SMTP is replaced with something more modern, there is no such thing as comfortable end-to-end e-mail security.
But you're right, they shouldn't try to instill a sense of false security but that's not the same as NO security. SSL/TLS does really help and any mail provider that doesn't support it by now should be considered insane and possibly blacklisted.
Think about it though, if they came out and told the public "we're spending a bunch of money and resources to help e-mail security out a little bit so people can have a slightly smaller chance of reading your mail" they would get screamed at.
I'm writing on my Surface right now while traveling in Bolivia. I know it is fun to slam MS on everything they make and many will wet their pants when Apple comes out with a new digital tennis shoe that will record your steps and post it on Facebook someday.
See, the problem is that both the Surface RT *AND* the iPad suck. The Surface RT is a solution in search of a problem. The iPad is an oversized Newton running a crippled version of OSX designed to imprison users with no computing skills into a walled garden of limited apps designed for users with no computing skills.
The trend of crippling interfaces and software so retards can use it with no training is not "innovation" by any means. I would be more productive on a Mac Plus running System 7 or an old ThinkPad tablet an than an iPad or Surface.
For me, the Surface RT beats out my ultrabook for portability and durability (beginning to get screen marks on the Samsung Series 9 from getting it mashed in the overhead bin of the planes), the battery lasts a long time, the type keyboard is great (not the touch version), and it has most of the programs I need for regular work.
And my Macbook Air has decent battery life, can run OSX and Windows 7 and is capable of running complex useful applications without fumbling through clumsy, inadequate and VERY inefficient poke-and-drool touch interfaces.
A cheap $200 Android tablet is perfectly adequate for lame touch "apps" and content consumption.
The Surface RT is nothing more than the modern version of the "Handheld PC Pro" class of Windows CE devices. Instead of a real embedded OS they ported the NT kernel to ARM and locked it down a bit.
Of course, I'm not designing with CAD on this...will do that when I get home. I'm not programming either...will do that when I get home.
Exactly, what you bought is a toy. A content consumption device with an unpopular OS with a terrible interface. And very limited application availability. There's lots of other products out there with a better library of applications with hardware that is more open. I can run standard Linux GUI apps on an Android tablet if I root it as well.
While traveling, this is better than a tablet and laptop for the basic needs that many have. I will look forward to Outlook because that is what I use at home as well as a hundred million other people. Get that basic tool included (which should have been in the first release) and this will be even better for us power-travelers that don't need power-laptops.
Umm.... dude..... it IS a tablet. An oversized PDA with a keyboard attached and a version of Win8 ported to ARM.
Outlook is an e-mail client and PIM package. It's not a "basic tool" everyone needs. There's lots of other E-Mail clients with comparable feature sets that are compatible and quite nice.
If you're too lazy to learn to use a different eMail client and something like that is actually a challenge for you, you won't be happy with ANY product other than the one you initially memorized a few tasks on. Just because a lot of people learned about eMail and PIM apps on MS Outlook does not mean that MS Outlook is a "basic tool" and nothing else does the job as well.
Your claims of being a skilled CAD guy and programmer sound pretty damn weak.
This is disgusting. BTW, you can bet your ass Slashdot has been or will be approached. Funny.... now I trust sites with self-signed certificates more than ones who paid all the dough for EXTENDED-VALIDATION SUPER-GREEN ADDRESS BAR SSL 65,535-bit MEGA-AES certificates from Verisign.
The idiot redneck tea partiers still have the right to own firearms.
I'm a libertarian, not a tea partier. And yes I live in the woods but that doesn't make me a redneck. And nothing would stop *me* from owning a firearm. Just people like you who would choose to follow an unconstitutional ban.
I'm a productive member of society. I hold a senior IT position. I have a family. And guess what, I own guns! Several of them. I really don't care if you don't like it. And NONE of them are for "hunting or sporting" purposes in any way shape or form. They are *WEAPONS*.
It's a *RIGHT* for a reason, not a privilege. The day the 2nd amendment dies or is neutered is the day this government finally becomes completely illegitimate instead of just "getting there".
Funny how the "dumb" people still have the right they think is important, but the "smart" people seem to have lost all the ones they think is more important.
I consider the 2nd amendment just as vital as the 1st, 4th and 5th and I speak out just as much on those.
Since when does owning a gun make you a dumb redneck? Even when I lived in a major US city as an apartment-dweller I had guns. A lot more people own guns than you think. A *LOT* more. There's no gun registration here either. Good luck with that gun ban. I'm sure it will lift the firearms right out of "dumb people's" hands and give the govt that monopoly on force you wish for so much.
Posted speed limit in my state converts to 112km/hr on the interstate. Usually around ~100km/hr on state hwys. Under 128km/hr on the interstate and they usually won't bother.
The 100K/yr goes to the senior management that keeps all those uppity programmers that think they're so smart in line. The people that executive management really think drive innovation by reminding those dangerous smart people who they work for.
Sorry pal... programmers are not in the top 1%. Shareholders and senior management are the top 1% and their jobs rarely, if ever, are outsourced.
Don't you dare use the term "slave" if you know what it means, you fucking idiot.
Yeah, getting a few cents on the dollar compared to standard wages for the position simply makes you an indentured servant instead. Which is *SO* much better. heh
Besides, American Slaves could have quit and headed North at any time right? I don't understand what had those abolitionists so flustered.
You sir, are a douche. Wanting qualified Americans to work in American companies down the street from their homes making a reasonable living instead of bolstering other countries through abusing H1-Bs does not equal communism. That is the kind of mentality that will eventually lead to us eating the rich. And I'm going to grab some popcorn (and extra ammo just in case) and enjoy it when that day comes.
A fake "Free Market" does not make it morally acceptable to screw over your neighbors just because you've found shady legal loopholes you can get away with.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit.
Where were you racist idiots when these programs were being started by President Bush?
LOL Really? I was right here bitching about it. And are you seriously trying to say Republicans are racists? Are you retarded, or were you just raised on hatred?
But, unfortunately, he's staying the course on things that I would rather he not stayed the course on. But, you're a naive moron if you think that Romney or McCain wouldn't have. And in all likelihood they would be abusing it even worse.
Which is why I voted Libertarian. I actually vote for who I'd like to see in office. The only difference between Repub and Dem nowadays is their corporate sponsors.
So basically corporate America wants to take IT and turn it into a field full of migrant workers with no benefits supporting families on unsteady contract work? Along with treating them as untrustworthy as well as being an expense/necessary evil rather than critical team assets.
And they wonder why so many are leaking secrets, stealing or leaving them in a bind when they've finally had it or the contract nears its end?
With Linux, GUIs like KDE had been the default from day 1, and now there's a bonanza of them - GNOME, LXDE/Razor-qt, XFCE, Unity, Cinnamon, et al.
Ummmm.... No.... they really haven't. You obviously weren't a Linux user around 1995. Just getting X11 running was a serious PITA affair much less getting it to do anything. FVWM and FVWM95 were pretty popular. xfm was a common file manager. OpenLook was around for Linux too. Commercial versions of Motif and CDE were around I think.
DOZENS of Window Managers for X11 have existed over the years. Full desktop environments you can probably count on 2 or 3 hands.
Have I fallen behind on what the NSA has been accused of doing? I thought they weren't so much reading our emails as collecting transmission information - the equivalent of reading the to/from addresses on everything we snail-mail. Collecting WHO we talk to, not what we're talking about. I still think it should be a violation without some sort of warrant, but it's not quite as bad.
Even if that were the case, which I'm sure it's not. They would simply use CALEA equipment at ISP or Telco to monitor and dump your traffic into a DB in real-time if anything REMOTELY looking like an interesting pattern showed up in your e-mail subjects or sender/recipient info. And now they can decrypt the vast majority of SSL traffic at least from those who use US-based providers or CA's.
The problem is that it's been shown that they often don't bother with the courts before spying on Americans. It's illegal, immoral, thuggish, expensive and f**king stupid.
Well, it doesn't seem fair that you have to pay extra to have something better. What about those people who can't afford any more, shouldn't they have the best things too?
Um.... in a word.... NO....
People that can't afford decent goods will have to settle for equipment that can be built for a lower cost. And if I have the cash to get a premium product, I can get a premium product.
That's like saying Macbook Pro's should cost $300 because walmart sells $300 Toshibas.
I would really *LOVE* for them to carry this out. Fire 90% of your staff trained in network security.
Awesome.
That would mean the NSA spy machine would suddenly become the property of the blackhat community. I'd find that HIGHLY entertaining.
I can't believe I have a front row seat to everything that's going down. Maybe someday I'll find myself telling someone where I was when the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights were permanently suspended.
Nah, they'll simply redefine the "legal definition" of various clear english terms and use creative interpretation based on the new definitions until the Constitution no longer matters. It's already effectively useless if the Feds are keen on ruining you.
Maybe someday I'll tell someone how the entirety of US history really went down from founding ideals to however this ends - I'm sure it will be nothing even remotely close to their heavily censored, revisionist textbook.
Last but not least: this really sucks.
Textbooks will likely try to spin it in a positive light about governments getting "stronger" to fight "criminals and terrorists" because more democratic and decentralized systems of government proved too weak in the modern age to handle the modern threats. Unfortunately we're all criminals under current law and we're all, as Americans, descendents of criminals, terrorists and thieves. They are trying to stamp out the sort of people that made this nation possible in the first place. They know what they are doing is evil. They know it's illegal. They specifically set the system up so abusing it would be easy and efficient. They don't care. And they never will.
Words and waving signs won't fix it this time folks. This isn't just a slippery slope. We've been sent off a cliff. It's Fascism without the openly racist elements and the illusion of freedom/democracy. Corporations and lapdog politicians have worked REAL HARD to make it that way for a long time. Since at least the 1930's, probably before that.
I tried to show him that this stuff was sheer fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true.
—Hoover Memoirs 3:420
Guns are actually incredibly simply to operate. And a simple single shot 12 gauge shotgun with a short barrel will only set you back maybe $150. Pop in shell, close barrel, pull hammer, squeeze trigger.... *BLAM*
And why are calling women stupid? My wife is actually a damn good shot. And quite mechanically inclined.
And not all suicidal people that haven't brought themselves to do it yet are "putting on a show". A lot of them genuinely want to die but are afraid of the pain involved in death and it takes a while to build the courage.
We also have federal judges that we've put in place who are not subject to political pressure. They've got lifetime tenure as federal judges
Don't we have entire government departments dedicated to shortening lifetimes as efficiently as possible? Even if it's illegal and during times of peace?
Seriously, if the system of laws that enabled our society to thrive and exist thus far no longer apply to the people entrusted to enforce and protect them..... we have a serious f**king problem on our hands.
The president has a license to murder people and the means to spy on them with impunity. Outside of judicial oversight for the most part. For the safety of you and the nation of course.... Does this bother anyone but me?
I don't remember voting for a King or Emperor.
If our government had the balls to use tanks and bullets on its own people to get their point across, you may have a valid comparison.
Our government doesn't.... because they know what martyrdom can bring. They saw the video of the guy standing in front of the tank too. And really? That guy accomplished nothing but that video brought a lot of attention. Even if it got him stuffed in a death van. Snowden's actions got him one thing..... publicity. If he had waited for the SWAT team, he would have simply joined 10% of our population giving free labor to the state. Assuming he wasn't killed outright.
Sometimes waiting to be run over by a criminal organization you pissed off is NOT the best way to do business. Especially if said criminal organization has been "elected".
Heroes stand up for what's right, even if it means staring down a tank on an otherwise empty street. Snowden ran away like a child who knew he'd done something wrong. He's a coward. To call him a hero does a disservice to every real hero in the world.
MARTYRS don't care about fighting another day.... heroes can.
He ran because it would bring a force that no one would have a chance of single-handedly defeating down on him and a propaganda machine that would successfully destroy any credibility he had after he was "accidentally shot" by a SWAT team. To stay and stare them down means either suicide or secret prison. He might have gotten a show trial eventually if he was lucky. He did the right thing.
To be a hero does not necessarily mean to be stupid and martyr yourself.
When is the last time you ever fought a speeding ticket much less espionage charges? Let's see how brave you are in that situation. But then again you probably wouldn't have the testicular fortitude to do the "right thing" when put in his situation. You would probably just STFU and hope the programs were never turned on you. THAT is a coward. Or a criminal accomplice. Or both.
BTW, Tienanmen-guy got disappeared most likely. Martyrdom might have been pretty successful for that Jesus guy, but it hasn't worked out well for most.
It's not JUST the government you should be worried about. I've been trying to make people aware of exactly how insecure SMTP is for a really long time.
I don't "promote" reading everyone's e-mail but I certainly know exactly how easy it is to intercept e-mail. I know they legally aren't supposed to but face it, we are dealing with a corrupt government that is willing to break every law that protects its citizenry from them.
Yet these bastards expect us to follow the law to the letter because they have the bigger guns. If they can ignore our 1st, 4th and 5th amendment rights.... when do we get to start ignoring THEIR basic rights? Such as their right to liberty at the VERY least.
The expectation of privacy comes from how email is used. You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence). You aren't CCing the NSA. No one can overhear the message in normal usage unless they happen to have an email address that gets the message (say because you sent the email to a huge list) or one of your recipients forwards the email on in some way.
Wrong. I run mail servers.... you can easily run a packet sniffer and read e-mail as it goes across the wire on the local LAN as well as at the ISP unless SSL or TLS is used. And at the ISP or mail provider the messages can simply be read by a server admin. Now that TLS is becoming more popular, the NSA is leaning on CA's to hand over keys so they don't have to get the ISP involved as much.
The raw SMTP protocol is quite insecure. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Especially if you are connecting to port 25 with no TLS and spewing plaintext.
If you are concerned about people viewing the content of your e-mails, use GPG or another alternative. Anything but e-mail encryption certs from Verisign or another popular CA.
BS. Filemaker is more of a competitor to MS Access.
Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL also all run fine on OSX.
Apple has no dog in that fight. Filemaker is NOT going to do well as a massive enterprise database and has never claimed to be able to.
No, what I'm saying is there are other PIM packages besides Outlook that talk to an Exchange server and don't suck. If you're too lazy to spend 5 minutes learning a new e-Mail package when Outlook isn't available then you have issues.
And if Outlook is the only capable PIM package for WinRT, maybe your choice of platform sucks and you should look for better alternatives with a real application base.
People like you are why substandard, buggy software continues to reign supreme because learning a few new icons to click and maybe a keyboard shortcut or two is such a horrid task.
Hillarious, Mr. IT Awesomeness, that you admit that for most people this is enough. So I guess you're real point is that only the 10% that do REAL computing need to have anything at all and the rest of the people shouldn't have any device or should have something way over-powered for their needs.
For most consumers using the devices at HOME with no real need for serious computing devices, yes they're adequate. From a business standpoint..... Hell no. It's a great TOY for grandpa to get on Facebook.
When that extra computing power comes at the same or LESS cost than a decent tablet when the laptop cost MORE to produce then yeah, I think people should learn how to use a computer. Not a content consumption appliance that cost much less to produce and will be crippling when you DO need the extra horsepower and decide you actually need to do real work.
Stuffing crippled tablets down the throats of school children and basing their computer education on them is going to do more harm than good. People should be educated with real computing skills.
Tablets are a burden on IT and have so far provided no additional benefit besides people thinking they hopped on the new wave of the computing future. Tablets are PDA's. Supplemental devices. NOT full computer replacements. And arrogant folks with tablets that think I'm not going to manage their devices forced upon my network because they "BYOD" have another thing coming. I manage it, or it doesn't touch my network. The end.
Um, no, I'm a UNIX/Linux/OSX guy. But please, continue to enjoy your sub-standard crappy OS, it makes people like me lots of money supporting it and fixing issues for people like you who think they know more than they do. Make no mistake, I love Windows.... precisely because it makes me LOTS of money because it's an inflexible piece of crap that requires far more money and effort than it should just to achieve a working, stable, crapware/malware-free environment.
I don't like the iPhone or the iPad.... Surface just sucks even WORSE than those two products yet people want to try to cram it down business's throats like it'll revolutionize their workflow. The reality is the opposite. It's only useful to the computer illiterate that don't want to learn anything to compute and are happy fumbling through tasks for 20 minutes that would normally take me 30 seconds on a real OS.
They are useful to introduce folks to computers that have no intention of learning how to use a real computer. They are content consumption devices for the masses that actually get in the way when you have real work to do.
Today's crop of tablets are NOT very useful as actual computing devices. They are slow, clunky, finnicky PDA's that kids like to play games on and dig around on facebook because they are too lazy to learn to use a real computer. Period. Most are too locked down and restricted for real work unless your real work only involves looking at eBooks and doing minor clunky editing to word documents or spreadsheets.
Tablets are not the "future" of computing. They are supplemental devices for people that want to look cool or simply want a toy for browsing the internet.
Surface is a joke, the iPad is too restricted to be useful and Windows Phone 8 is a flop. The only use for tablets is basic computing needs for the computer illiterate that are happy fumbling through inefficient interfaces poking at a screen because they don't want to learn how to use a full-fledged OS properly and struggle with real computers.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see ARM make inroads into desktop and laptop devices but interfaces like Windows 8, iOS and Android will NEVER displace real Linux, Windows and OSX systems for REAL WORK. You bought an overpriced toy. Sorry. Tablets have been around for years, the only thing that caused them to take off was cheap embedded 3D accelerators for games and poke-and-drool interfaces that inexperienced users can get used to. For power users and real computing professionals they are near useless except as a convenient way to browse the net on the toilet. Oh and Angry Birds or Worms Armageddon.
Small lightweight laptops are far better for people with real jobs that involve heavy computer use. Sales monkeys that can't touch type anyway are the only people I've seen get real use out of them besides a cool toy. They are a solution in search of a problem.
Touch screens have been around forever. There's a damn good reason they never became the sole input device. It isn't practical to have ONLY a touch interface for complex apps. It doesn't work well and ends up being less efficient. Technophobes like them more because they don't have to think or learn anything.
For 90% of computing needs for the average joe, you're right. But the average joe does very little useful with a computer. It's an entertainment appliance. I'd be happy to get rid of that crowd in the standard computing space anyway. They are a hassle. The issue is going to be the rising cost of real computers which tablets will never displace. This fad of tablets being the future of computing is nothing more than wishful thinking and hype.
I *AM* an IT Director with over 16 of experience in IT including mobile computing, some development experience, some graphic arts experience so I think I can speak with some actual weight on this subject. Especially considering I've developed apps for mobile platforms going back to NewtonOS 2.1, PalmOS 4 and Windows CE 2.0.
So yes, tablets are great "
1.) SMTP TLS has been around for a while.
2.) It can be used to encrypt traffic between client and server and serverserver assuming one end isn't using some 15 year old MTA or is too lazy to set up TLS.
So no, it's not a backwards step. It helps prevent sniffing e-mail traffic on the local LAN from client->server at least and most of the time serverserver. It's more like they are 15 years late doing something that should have already been done. It does NOT help with mail stored on the server so if it's hacked/siezed you're still screwed.
The biggest problem is the NSA is basically trying to render SSL/TLS useless by bullying CA's into handing over keys.
The NSA has shown us the most basic weakness with TLS/SSL recently. Really, until everyone starts using GPG or SMTP is replaced with something more modern, there is no such thing as comfortable end-to-end e-mail security.
But you're right, they shouldn't try to instill a sense of false security but that's not the same as NO security. SSL/TLS does really help and any mail provider that doesn't support it by now should be considered insane and possibly blacklisted.
Think about it though, if they came out and told the public "we're spending a bunch of money and resources to help e-mail security out a little bit so people can have a slightly smaller chance of reading your mail" they would get screamed at.
I'm writing on my Surface right now while traveling in Bolivia. I know it is fun to slam MS on everything they make and many will wet their pants when Apple comes out with a new digital tennis shoe that will record your steps and post it on Facebook someday.
See, the problem is that both the Surface RT *AND* the iPad suck. The Surface RT is a solution in search of a problem. The iPad is an oversized Newton running a crippled version of OSX designed to imprison users with no computing skills into a walled garden of limited apps designed for users with no computing skills.
The trend of crippling interfaces and software so retards can use it with no training is not "innovation" by any means. I would be more productive on a Mac Plus running System 7 or an old ThinkPad tablet an than an iPad or Surface.
For me, the Surface RT beats out my ultrabook for portability and durability (beginning to get screen marks on the Samsung Series 9 from getting it mashed in the overhead bin of the planes), the battery lasts a long time, the type keyboard is great (not the touch version), and it has most of the programs I need for regular work.
And my Macbook Air has decent battery life, can run OSX and Windows 7 and is capable of running complex useful applications without fumbling through clumsy, inadequate and VERY inefficient poke-and-drool touch interfaces.
A cheap $200 Android tablet is perfectly adequate for lame touch "apps" and content consumption.
The Surface RT is nothing more than the modern version of the "Handheld PC Pro" class of Windows CE devices. Instead of a real embedded OS they ported the NT kernel to ARM and locked it down a bit.
Of course, I'm not designing with CAD on this...will do that when I get home. I'm not programming either...will do that when I get home.
Exactly, what you bought is a toy. A content consumption device with an unpopular OS with a terrible interface. And very limited application availability. There's lots of other products out there with a better library of applications with hardware that is more open. I can run standard Linux GUI apps on an Android tablet if I root it as well.
While traveling, this is better than a tablet and laptop for the basic needs that many have. I will look forward to Outlook because that is what I use at home as well as a hundred million other people. Get that basic tool included (which should have been in the first release) and this will be even better for us power-travelers that don't need power-laptops.
Umm.... dude..... it IS a tablet. An oversized PDA with a keyboard attached and a version of Win8 ported to ARM.
Outlook is an e-mail client and PIM package. It's not a "basic tool" everyone needs. There's lots of other E-Mail clients with comparable feature sets that are compatible and quite nice.
If you're too lazy to learn to use a different eMail client and something like that is actually a challenge for you, you won't be happy with ANY product other than the one you initially memorized a few tasks on. Just because a lot of people learned about eMail and PIM apps on MS Outlook does not mean that MS Outlook is a "basic tool" and nothing else does the job as well.
Your claims of being a skilled CAD guy and programmer sound pretty damn weak.
The difference being that the Osborne 1 was actually a decent machine in spite of the TINY little screen. Their next product was just better.
The Surface is a piece of shit. The next one will just be a piece of shit with newer software to replace the beta release.
This is disgusting. BTW, you can bet your ass Slashdot has been or will be approached. Funny.... now I trust sites with self-signed certificates more than ones who paid all the dough for EXTENDED-VALIDATION SUPER-GREEN ADDRESS BAR SSL 65,535-bit MEGA-AES certificates from Verisign.
The idiot redneck tea partiers still have the right to own firearms.
I'm a libertarian, not a tea partier. And yes I live in the woods but that doesn't make me a redneck. And nothing would stop *me* from owning a firearm. Just people like you who would choose to follow an unconstitutional ban.
I'm a productive member of society. I hold a senior IT position. I have a family. And guess what, I own guns! Several of them. I really don't care if you don't like it. And NONE of them are for "hunting or sporting" purposes in any way shape or form. They are *WEAPONS*.
It's a *RIGHT* for a reason, not a privilege. The day the 2nd amendment dies or is neutered is the day this government finally becomes completely illegitimate instead of just "getting there".
Funny how the "dumb" people still have the right they think is important, but the "smart" people seem to have lost all the ones they think is more important.
I consider the 2nd amendment just as vital as the 1st, 4th and 5th and I speak out just as much on those.
Since when does owning a gun make you a dumb redneck? Even when I lived in a major US city as an apartment-dweller I had guns. A lot more people own guns than you think. A *LOT* more. There's no gun registration here either. Good luck with that gun ban. I'm sure it will lift the firearms right out of "dumb people's" hands and give the govt that monopoly on force you wish for so much.
Posted speed limit in my state converts to 112km/hr on the interstate. Usually around ~100km/hr on state hwys. Under 128km/hr on the interstate and they usually won't bother.
The 100K/yr goes to the senior management that keeps all those uppity programmers that think they're so smart in line. The people that executive management really think drive innovation by reminding those dangerous smart people who they work for.
Sorry pal... programmers are not in the top 1%. Shareholders and senior management are the top 1% and their jobs rarely, if ever, are outsourced.
Don't you dare use the term "slave" if you know what it means, you fucking idiot.
Yeah, getting a few cents on the dollar compared to standard wages for the position simply makes you an indentured servant instead. Which is *SO* much better. heh
Besides, American Slaves could have quit and headed North at any time right? I don't understand what had those abolitionists so flustered.
You sir, are a douche. Wanting qualified Americans to work in American companies down the street from their homes making a reasonable living instead of bolstering other countries through abusing H1-Bs does not equal communism. That is the kind of mentality that will eventually lead to us eating the rich. And I'm going to grab some popcorn (and extra ammo just in case) and enjoy it when that day comes.
A fake "Free Market" does not make it morally acceptable to screw over your neighbors just because you've found shady legal loopholes you can get away with.
Legal != "the right thing to do"