Let's hope that this treatment works well, and is approved for human use quickly. Terry Pratchett's abilities to tie fascinating details of human experience, knowledge, and even science into an entertaining and educational story is an incredible loss to the world. Even if you only recovers enough to enjoy the well-earned adulation of his fans, the chance to thank him personally for his work is worth significant medical research.
I understand he particularly likes banana daiquiris.
That's why I didn't think a deadman switch would be a question. If Snowden retains control of any information or documents he has _not_ already revealed, how can that information be obtained? That's actually 2 important remaining questions which can't be answered by a press interview.
> Well, if Snowden's saying it to the press, I'm not sure the Russians will be able to deduce any more
The press does not, and can not, print everything from every document or interview they receive. They must edit, for reasons of space if nothing else. Careful discussion with an alert, intelligent person can often give details of operations and infrastructure that were never in any document or in previous interviews: that's why I treasure face time and telephone with remote personnel. They often leave out details in written documentation, other interviewers may not know the right questions to ask or to report.
>> What inspiration do minor details about NSA monitoring provide for Russian surveillance?
> Uh, are we accusing him of inspiration via minor details now? That's... pretty specious. Just gonna leave it at that.
I'm not accusing Snowden of planning this. It's a logical step for intelligence analysis of existing NSA practices. Analysis of NSA's abusive practices also provides metadata about the working technologies to follow those practices.
There are many _questions_ that remain. How much additional information does Snowden have squirreled away in dead drops, that will be revealed if he is killed or imprisoned? How much information can Russian personnel gather about subtle policies of NSA, by indirect deduction of what Snowden says to press or to his handlers? What has, or can, the NSA do to protect its revealed policies and assets? What inspiration do minor details about NSA monitoring provide for Russian surveillance?
The concept that there is "the only remaining question", and posing the question to cast the Russians as aggressive victims, is a straw man. It's a side issue distracting debate from much more important issues.
I've double checked the reviews, especially for Quicken. They match what I remember: namely inconsistent compatibility even after performing recommended manual registry entries and cleanup applications that are not part of Wine or Quicken itself. It's listed at https://appdb.winehq.org/objec....
I'm afraid that Wine remains an unusable option in a business, scientific, or personal environment where basic software _must_ work without frequent manual debugging.
Wine itself has consistently failed my reviews, due to complexity and inconsistency of behavior. The last time I took a close look was roughly 3 years ago: it may have improved. But it consistently failed with MS Outlook, VMware clients, and Quicken.
On which none of the business critical, no longer available or extremely expensive to upgrade applications will run. I do a great deal with Linux, but old fiscal and CAD software is notorious for failing upgrades.
> As an IT guy you need people to trust you, which means you need to be ethical.
You need to _appear_ to be ethical to gain trust of co-workers, and to improve your position. I'm afraid to say that this is orthogonal to doing a good job at IT. It's often much, much easier and safer to appear trustworthy by being clear, honest, and open. It reduces the complexities of maintaining various approaches to various people.
But don't mistake such approaches with technical competence or business success.
I went to their page. Then I tried to actually _use_ the "switch to us and keep your old phone", which they'd advertised extensively, and I ran into a series of forms and options that did not actually allow keeping phones. I will admit that I was looking for a family plan, that made it more intriguing. (I pay for my parents' phone bills, they're retired and it's the least I can do to stay in touch.)
T-Mobile has been taking full advantage of the difficulty of jailbreaking. Their monthly rates are attractively low, but they do their absolute best to _insist_ that you buy a new phone from them instead of migrating your old phone, and their sales people do their level best to discount even the _possibility_ of such an option. So they've turned around the old model of "free or cheap phones, the money comes from their monthly bills" and separating the costs. This allows them to advertise as the "cheapest", with the hidden and often hideous cost of a new phone amortized over the first few years of your plan.
The other vendors are also now doing this, as well, in their "we'll lower your monthly fee". The confusing plans and options among all the carriers are textbook cases in "bait and switch".
> I like the part where they are magically going to make OCR work
I'm afraid you could have left it right there, with no mention of cell phones or their cameras. OCR, much like speech-to-text software, has plateaued and not noticeably improved in the last 10 years. It's became more available as software has become more powerful. But the underlying technologies have been quite stable. Despite flurries of new patents with every update to such software, the fundamental algorithms remain unchanged and have been stable for roughly 20 years.
> there's never been a more secretive administration in the US.
Oh, my. I don't know if you're young, or if the easy access of the modern Internet has confused you about just how _little_ information was available to the general population about government programs 30 years ago or more. Do, please, look up the history of the Pentagon Papers.
> This is especially bad if they turn out to be seriously vulnerable to any missile system developed that isn't ruinously expensive per shot or a closely held secret used only by somebody's elite guard
Or if, say, the very large and expensive amount of fuel used b supersonic aircraft can be cut off by the opposing force bombing the oil lines from their own country that we relied on to get cheap fuel. It's a bit of a conundrum when the country you're invading is a major source of your fuel. Or if what you need to "win" the conflict is troops and engineers and nurses on the ground to re-establish water, food, and medical supplies after a decade of civil strife.
$500,000 missiles that can hit another supersonic craft at speed is a complete waste of resources in most modern conflicts. The more sophisticated US craft, and their pilots, very effectively cleared the air and the ground of Iraqi and Afghanistani armor and military vehicles in the last few wars. But I'm afraid the lessons of Vietnam and Korea were ignored. Successful air campaigns lead to wars of occupation, and both countries have _centuries_ of experience of outlasting foreign invaders.
Please, please. Don't compare a restaurant to a plane, or bus, or a public street, or a simply invent legal anaglogies. It gets very confusing very fast.
A plane is not a "public place". People need purchased tickets to board, and that ticket can be _revoked_ by the other party. It may be enormously inconvenient, or expensive, or a contract violation, But that has little if nothing to do with law about "public spaces". It doesn't make this situation reasonable.
> How did you know that others didn't click on it and then not mention it to anyone?
Of course they did. Why would anyone normal report this kind of incident to a security department that is bombarding them with warnings, and will fire you if you can't prove you've read their warnings?
Especially when bragging gets you sent to a concentration camp, any of the illegal prison camps in Afghanistan right now, or political asylum in Russia.
> So you prefer the risk of massive law infringement, including invasive species smuggling, drug running, and terrorism, to a 5% risk that somebody who shouldn't know about Natalie Portman's meal choices finds out whether she's keeping Kosher? No operation on the scale of COINTELPRO could come from the TSA, because the TSA doesn't have the resources to pull it off.
I'm afraid that's a straw man argument. It's not been shown that the massive metadata gathering on USA citizens has been effective against any of those. Where are the convictions? NSA data gathering, in fact, is not supposed to be applied to domestic communications. It's far more useful, and demonstrably so, for internal political abuse. Look at the history of the Stasi for examples of how decades of broad information gathering can be used against moral, law abiding citizens.
Decentralizing the databases, spreading them out, is actually a good goal. Broad, flexible databases with large amounts of data are much easier to steal, and much easier to abuse, than smaller, isolated systems. That's a harsh lesson from decades of security work. And "random searches" are much safer than having it all stored in a central database where it can, and it _will_ be used for political and personal abuse.
The Nisei were a wholesale incarceration, and was quite public. I was referring more to illegal acts in living memory. The other acts involved the abuse of private information, held in federal hands. It doesn't have to be in a database. The extent of the data and its ease of access _expand_ the risk, not reduce it.
> So we have a database, that will be useful in numerous perfectly legitimate law enforcement operations, and a small risk of it leading to bad things
The "risk" is real. I'm afraid that its abuse is inevitable with so much data concentrated behind closed doors, without any judicial review or enforceable consequences for its misuse.
> This kind of mass data collection on everyone is a huge waste of resources.
Compared to the cost of intelligently filtering it down to unpredictably "relevant" information, and only storing that? Picking out only the "relevant" or even "legal to hold" information would be, in espionage terms, a complete waste of time, prone to error and reducing the effectiveness of exactly the sort of personal, detailed information which this helps gather.
I sincerely doubt that the NSA cares about the fine grained accuracy of such bulk data. That's what analysis is for, not filtering. And by collecting bulk information on US citizens, they've gathered an enormous currency in private data that can be provided to the US government without a warrant, or that can be traded with foreign intelligence to gather the information they _are_ chartered to obtain.
> And we can actually be quite sure it was not widely shared at the TSA, because if it had been some asshole would have stolen his Credit Card number.
Except that they're available, in bulk, to whoever administers that database. And a theft or loss of a backup of that database is hideously unlikely to ever be reported, for "national security reasons" but also to reduce bureaucratic business. And given the history of federal agency personal and political fraud against private citizens, especially politically active citizens, it verifies that they have far too much data, far too easily accessed, available at whim for whatever purpose is desired.
Just because "it's boring text" does not mean it's not incredibly useful for political espionage or frame-ups. Please, do not try to claim that it "wouldn't happen here" The abuse of confidential federal information to harass political opponents certainly _has_ happened here, in the McCarthy hunt for Communits, with the Committee to Re-Elect the President in Nixon's presidential reign whose failures cost Richard Nixon his presidency, and with the Valerie Plame affair during George W. Bush's presidency.
The collection and aggregation of "uninteresting" private information or "metadata" represent risks to political careers and private liberty that will not cease simply because "who would care" or "it's dull". It's hardly dull to be able to use someone's personal information and credit card data to track the nature, times, and location of _every purchase_, and have warrant free monitoring of travels and personal business. And there is, effectively, no oversight of such access because it's the NSA: they operate under a tremendous shroud of national security that prevents rational oversight of such sensitive information.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's hope that this treatment works well, and is approved for human use quickly. Terry Pratchett's abilities to tie fascinating details of human experience, knowledge, and even science into an entertaining and educational story is an incredible loss to the world. Even if you only recovers enough to enjoy the well-earned adulation of his fans, the chance to thank him personally for his work is worth significant medical research.
I understand he particularly likes banana daiquiris.
> if he had some kind of deadman's switch set up.
That's why I didn't think a deadman switch would be a question. If Snowden retains control of any information or documents he has _not_ already revealed, how can that information be obtained? That's actually 2 important remaining questions which can't be answered by a press interview.
> Well, if Snowden's saying it to the press, I'm not sure the Russians will be able to deduce any more
The press does not, and can not, print everything from every document or interview they receive. They must edit, for reasons of space if nothing else. Careful discussion with an alert, intelligent person can often give details of operations and infrastructure that were never in any document or in previous interviews: that's why I treasure face time and telephone with remote personnel. They often leave out details in written documentation, other interviewers may not know the right questions to ask or to report.
>> What inspiration do minor details about NSA monitoring provide for Russian surveillance?
> Uh, are we accusing him of inspiration via minor details now? That's ... pretty specious. Just gonna leave it at that.
I'm not accusing Snowden of planning this. It's a logical step for intelligence analysis of existing NSA practices. Analysis of NSA's abusive practices also provides metadata about the working technologies to follow those practices.
There are many _questions_ that remain. How much additional information does Snowden have squirreled away in dead drops, that will be revealed if he is killed or imprisoned? How much information can Russian personnel gather about subtle policies of NSA, by indirect deduction of what Snowden says to press or to his handlers? What has, or can, the NSA do to protect its revealed policies and assets? What inspiration do minor details about NSA monitoring provide for Russian surveillance?
The concept that there is "the only remaining question", and posing the question to cast the Russians as aggressive victims, is a straw man. It's a side issue distracting debate from much more important issues.
"Welcome to Bittorrent".
If the specifications are available online to one dealer, within short order they will be available illicitly worldwide.
I've double checked the reviews, especially for Quicken. They match what I remember: namely inconsistent compatibility even after performing recommended manual registry entries and cleanup applications that are not part of Wine or Quicken itself. It's listed at https://appdb.winehq.org/objec....
I'm afraid that Wine remains an unusable option in a business, scientific, or personal environment where basic software _must_ work without frequent manual debugging.
Wine itself has consistently failed my reviews, due to complexity and inconsistency of behavior. The last time I took a close look was roughly 3 years ago: it may have improved. But it consistently failed with MS Outlook, VMware clients, and Quicken.
> consider trying Xubuntu or Lubuntu
On which none of the business critical, no longer available or extremely expensive to upgrade applications will run. I do a great deal with Linux, but old fiscal and CAD software is notorious for failing upgrades.
> As an IT guy you need people to trust you, which means you need to be ethical.
You need to _appear_ to be ethical to gain trust of co-workers, and to improve your position. I'm afraid to say that this is orthogonal to doing a good job at IT. It's often much, much easier and safer to appear trustworthy by being clear, honest, and open. It reduces the complexities of maintaining various approaches to various people.
But don't mistake such approaches with technical competence or business success.
I went to their page. Then I tried to actually _use_ the "switch to us and keep your old phone", which they'd advertised extensively, and I ran into a series of forms and options that did not actually allow keeping phones. I will admit that I was looking for a family plan, that made it more intriguing. (I pay for my parents' phone bills, they're retired and it's the least I can do to stay in touch.)
How long ago did you do this? Your experience is completely opposite from mine, less than 3 months ago.
Dealing with the work paperwork is billable time. I use this as leverage to discourage complex, Gant chart based approaches to micromanagement.
T-Mobile has been taking full advantage of the difficulty of jailbreaking. Their monthly rates are attractively low, but they do their absolute best to _insist_ that you buy a new phone from them instead of migrating your old phone, and their sales people do their level best to discount even the _possibility_ of such an option. So they've turned around the old model of "free or cheap phones, the money comes from their monthly bills" and separating the costs. This allows them to advertise as the "cheapest", with the hidden and often hideous cost of a new phone amortized over the first few years of your plan.
The other vendors are also now doing this, as well, in their "we'll lower your monthly fee". The confusing plans and options among all the carriers are textbook cases in "bait and switch".
> They can get simple things done without understanding the whole system. That deliver something that sort of works. This makes them Java developers.
Fixed That for You.
[ Note grammatically correct but confusing capitalization, another of my pet Java peeves. ]
> I like the part where they are magically going to make OCR work
I'm afraid you could have left it right there, with no mention of cell phones or their cameras. OCR, much like speech-to-text software, has plateaued and not noticeably improved in the last 10 years. It's became more available as software has become more powerful. But the underlying technologies have been quite stable. Despite flurries of new patents with every update to such software, the fundamental algorithms remain unchanged and have been stable for roughly 20 years.
> there's never been a more secretive administration in the US.
Oh, my. I don't know if you're young, or if the easy access of the modern Internet has confused you about just how _little_ information was available to the general population about government programs 30 years ago or more. Do, please, look up the history of the Pentagon Papers.
> Can you imagine the uproar if 80% of those killed in Afghanistan by US forces were civilians?
They mostly are civilian casualties. Much of what's happening now in Afghanistan is guerrilla warfare, not military forces.
> This is especially bad if they turn out to be seriously vulnerable to any missile system developed that isn't ruinously expensive per shot or a closely held secret used only by somebody's elite guard
Or if, say, the very large and expensive amount of fuel used b supersonic aircraft can be cut off by the opposing force bombing the oil lines from their own country that we relied on to get cheap fuel. It's a bit of a conundrum when the country you're invading is a major source of your fuel. Or if what you need to "win" the conflict is troops and engineers and nurses on the ground to re-establish water, food, and medical supplies after a decade of civil strife.
$500,000 missiles that can hit another supersonic craft at speed is a complete waste of resources in most modern conflicts. The more sophisticated US craft, and their pilots, very effectively cleared the air and the ground of Iraqi and Afghanistani armor and military vehicles in the last few wars. But I'm afraid the lessons of Vietnam and Korea were ignored. Successful air campaigns lead to wars of occupation, and both countries have _centuries_ of experience of outlasting foreign invaders.
Please, please. Don't compare a restaurant to a plane, or bus, or a public street, or a simply invent legal anaglogies. It gets very confusing very fast.
A plane is not a "public place". People need purchased tickets to board, and that ticket can be _revoked_ by the other party. It may be enormously inconvenient, or expensive, or a contract violation, But that has little if nothing to do with law about "public spaces". It doesn't make this situation reasonable.
> How did you know that others didn't click on it and then not mention it to anyone?
Of course they did. Why would anyone normal report this kind of incident to a security department that is bombarding them with warnings, and will fire you if you can't prove you've read their warnings?
Especially when bragging gets you sent to a concentration camp, any of the illegal prison camps in Afghanistan right now, or political asylum in Russia.
> You think Snowden 2.0 is more likely than a judge forcing them to respond to FOIA requests?
Yes, I do. The NSA has been ignoring FOIA for decades, what would possibly make the top-heavy bureaucracy at the TSA more responsive?
> So you prefer the risk of massive law infringement, including invasive species smuggling, drug running, and terrorism, to a 5% risk that somebody who shouldn't know about Natalie Portman's meal choices finds out whether she's keeping Kosher? No operation on the scale of COINTELPRO could come from the TSA, because the TSA doesn't have the resources to pull it off.
I'm afraid that's a straw man argument. It's not been shown that the massive metadata gathering on USA citizens has been effective against any of those. Where are the convictions? NSA data gathering, in fact, is not supposed to be applied to domestic communications. It's far more useful, and demonstrably so, for internal political abuse. Look at the history of the Stasi for examples of how decades of broad information gathering can be used against moral, law abiding citizens.
Decentralizing the databases, spreading them out, is actually a good goal. Broad, flexible databases with large amounts of data are much easier to steal, and much easier to abuse, than smaller, isolated systems. That's a harsh lesson from decades of security work. And "random searches" are much safer than having it all stored in a central database where it can, and it _will_ be used for political and personal abuse.
The Nisei were a wholesale incarceration, and was quite public. I was referring more to illegal acts in living memory. The other acts involved the abuse of private information, held in federal hands. It doesn't have to be in a database. The extent of the data and its ease of access _expand_ the risk, not reduce it.
> So we have a database, that will be useful in numerous perfectly legitimate law enforcement operations, and a small risk of it leading to bad things
The "risk" is real. I'm afraid that its abuse is inevitable with so much data concentrated behind closed doors, without any judicial review or enforceable consequences for its misuse.
> This kind of mass data collection on everyone is a huge waste of resources.
Compared to the cost of intelligently filtering it down to unpredictably "relevant" information, and only storing that? Picking out only the "relevant" or even "legal to hold" information would be, in espionage terms, a complete waste of time, prone to error and reducing the effectiveness of exactly the sort of personal, detailed information which this helps gather.
I sincerely doubt that the NSA cares about the fine grained accuracy of such bulk data. That's what analysis is for, not filtering. And by collecting bulk information on US citizens, they've gathered an enormous currency in private data that can be provided to the US government without a warrant, or that can be traded with foreign intelligence to gather the information they _are_ chartered to obtain.
> And we can actually be quite sure it was not widely shared at the TSA, because if it had been some asshole would have stolen his Credit Card number.
Except that they're available, in bulk, to whoever administers that database. And a theft or loss of a backup of that database is hideously unlikely to ever be reported, for "national security reasons" but also to reduce bureaucratic business. And given the history of federal agency personal and political fraud against private citizens, especially politically active citizens, it verifies that they have far too much data, far too easily accessed, available at whim for whatever purpose is desired.
Just because "it's boring text" does not mean it's not incredibly useful for political espionage or frame-ups. Please, do not try to claim that it "wouldn't happen here" The abuse of confidential federal information to harass political opponents certainly _has_ happened here, in the McCarthy hunt for Communits, with the Committee to Re-Elect the President in Nixon's presidential reign whose failures cost Richard Nixon his presidency, and with the Valerie Plame affair during George W. Bush's presidency.
The collection and aggregation of "uninteresting" private information or "metadata" represent risks to political careers and private liberty that will not cease simply because "who would care" or "it's dull". It's hardly dull to be able to use someone's personal information and credit card data to track the nature, times, and location of _every purchase_, and have warrant free monitoring of travels and personal business. And there is, effectively, no oversight of such access because it's the NSA: they operate under a tremendous shroud of national security that prevents rational oversight of such sensitive information.