To be fair we won't know if that's a stretch or not since the POTUS won't allow any citizens to read the trade treaties and those who can read the various treaties can't comment on them.
The whole idea of a proposed Treaty being Classified material is ludicrous on it's face. I don't mean drafts and such within ongoing negotiations. I mean any Treaty with foreign powers presented to Congress being Classified is repugnant and an illegal end-run around the Constitution and the entire process. Any proposed Treaty submitted for consideration by Congress should be made publicly available to read/copy/analyze at the same time as anyone in Congress is able to view it.
Not that details like end-running Congress and the US Constitution (when not flat-out violating the shit out of it) seem to bother anyone anymore. Hell, people citing and/or carrying a copy of the US Constitution are considered potential terrorist threats by DHS.
In 2009, The DHS issued a report entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."
"Right- wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti- government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."
About two weeks later, the DHS released a second report entitled: "Domestic Extremism Lexicon". That report labeled the following to be extremists, bordering on terrorism:
Those concerned over the economy; loss of jobs; foreclosures; antagonism toward the Obama Administration; Criticism of free trade programs; anti-abortion; oppose same sex marriage; believe in the âoeend times;â stock pile food; oppose illegal immigration; oppose a New World Order; oppose the UN; oppose global governance; fear of Communist regimes; oppose loss of US manufacturing to overseas nations; oppose loss of US prestige; use of the internet (or alternative media) to express any of these ideas.
Basically, if you disagree with anything the government does or says, and/or hold any traditional American values and believe in God and/or the principles in the Constitution, and particularly if you communicate your values, beliefs, and opinions to others using modern communication methods, you are a 'possible domestic terror threat' and put on a 'list' or several, maybe even the infamous 'No-Fly' list, possibly be subjected to more detailed surveillance/tracking and data analysis to identify 'pressure points' for possible future use and identify/monitor anyone you may have 'radicalized' with your dangerous views and opinions.
Corporation lobbyists roll over government. What's new?
What's 'new' (over the last 6-8 decades or more) is the idea that allowing government which gets rolled over by big money/special-interests/monolithic Parties and so was originally designed to be very limited, more and more power & control over everything and everyone is somehow a good idea.
If the courts can deem Uber drivers NOT to be contractors. Then first off, that calls into question ALL taxi services since most drivers lease their cars/taxi permit from the owner.
But taxi company/driver relationships are entirely different! Taxi companies have paid decades of campaign contributions and lobbying 'perks', and have contributed to politicians and bureaucrats gaining money & power.
All that "equal treatment under Rule of Law" stuff can't be allowed to impede Social Justice(TM) & Progress(TM)!
Well, for as long as even the illusion of 'free speech' lasts, with things like TPP, SOPA, PIPA, and whatever other secret treaties are waiting in the wings for a distraction to provide the right opportunity to sneak a 'yea' vote in.
Which would not exist if not for the US government exceeding/abusing/end-running/mission-creeping the powers it is allowed under the only document that gives it legitimacy, and even adding more powers that have no basis whatever in a plain reading (as those who wrote it said they intended it to be read) of that same sole document that gives it legitimacy.
I mean, infinity minus a day is considered "limited" when discussing US copyright law? Really? You don't change the rules by redefining the terms if not enough people agree with you wanting the rules changed.
History shows us that path usually ends with terror and mass graves filled with the innocent.
I'm pretty sure that reproducing a low resolution image of a front page headline for the purposes of commentary illustration counts as fair use? Am I wrong?
Also, the DMCA does not I repeat NOT apply outside the borders of the United States of America territory. Ergo, a British newspaper owned by an AUSTRALIAN has no claim under the DMCA. Or am I wrong about that as well?
Well, you'd be spot-on *IF* the US & UK still operated under Rule of Law instead of Rule of/by Men. In Rule of/by Men "Law" is whatever Men currently in power say it is and are themselves not bound by any such.
The 'catching terrorists' angle is simply the cover story used to justify the construction of the surveillance state.
Not a chance that that statement is true.
So far we have evidence of 'parallel construction' and other abuses against civil rights while actual, real, kill-people-and-blow-crap-up terrorists are getting through.
Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is because the system was designed for use against the general population not against terrorists. Mass surveillance is meant to control mass populations. Targeted and specific surveillance is meant to identify and track specific individuals.
Besides, I am much less concerned about terrorists than I am with having my civil rights violated, especially with no actual 'safety' having been purchased with the mass violation of our civil rights, only very-poorly-scripted 'security theater'.
Read my other post; I am well aware of this. But both can be true. The potential for unlimited blackmail and or targeted destruction AND the leaking of methods and tactics to the enemy. Both.
No. The 'catching terrorists' angle is simply the cover story used to justify the construction of the surveillance state.
A non-existent propaganda justification is incapable of being crippled, except as being revealed as the propaganda it is. Mass surveillance's usefulness in catching terrorists cannot be harmed as it was never intended to catch "terrorists" of the type portrayed in mass media. The system's practical utility is almost exclusively as a tool of the State to oppress and control the general population.
Snowden blew the whistle on illegal and unconstitutional practices AND ALSO terrorists were made aware of techniques and methods that otherwise would have been used to catch them.
Yeah, like the Tsarnaev brothers and the others. It should not be a surprise that so many terrorists seem to slip by/around all this surveillance.
The type of mass surveillance being carried out is not suited for, nor is it intended to, catch foreign terrorists.
It is intended to and is most useful for gathering detailed data on as many individuals as possible, so if somebody 'steps out of line' the data can be sifted through to find some convenient method of silencing them, either by leaking (or threatening to) damaging personal information or to find something with which to (threaten to) charge them with.
It is a tyrant's surveillance-WMD wet dream. As designed and implemented, the US's domestic mass-surveillance dragnet has little utility other than spying on and controlling the domestic population and needs to be scrapped, with those in charge sent to prison or executed.
In the long run he did more harm than good. The same practises will continue to happen, he just enabled our enemies to know about them too.
Yes, most of us are aware how those in the US and other '5-Eyes' governments view their citizens.
China and Russia? They knew long before Snowden. These guys are not amateurs. The only people who did not know were the general populations of the US and the world, the ones upon which this global surveillance & tracking behemoth is aimed.
You write like government is a thing to be weighed and parceled out instead of an activity people do.
Government *is* a thing. It's called force, power, or elementally, violence. When discussing 'size' in relation to government, it is generally assumed it's the amount of power it can exercise and wealth it controls/redistributes.
Power/force/violence *IS* something I want to allow any government as little of as possible while still attaining the goals the people it governs intend.
Think of it as a computer network. It's much harder to corrupt the system when each machine is a stand-alone system with it's own IDS/firewall/security than it is a system of a single mainframe with a bunch of dumb terminals, as once the mainframe is pwned, the entire system is pwned.
The authors of the US Constitution are, in a very real sense, the first distributed-network system designers, only instead of a network for digital data, it's a network for the distribution and securing of government power against corruption and abuse.
And so called "free enterprise" republicans are behind much of it.
It's the Progressive "establishment" Republicans and Progressive Democrats vs more small-'L' libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats. It's the Progressives in *both* major US political parties. The same Progressives that want to maintain/expand NSA-style 4th-Amendment-violating dragnet domestic surveillance and weaken encryption, etc., who use government agencies like the IRS & BATF as partisan/ideological political WMDs.
Amsterdam officials had intended to keep this tech under wraps until this test project was successfully completed, as they were hoping to convince US leaders to use it to build themselves a bridge to sanity.
"The shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way," said President Obama last night in his State of the Union Address."But the debate is settled," he added emphatically. "Climate change is a fact."
The debate is SETTLED. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A FACT.
No need to "look at it again". What a waste of time. Its settled.
yes, because we all know President Obama has never lied about anything during his tenure.....
It's because of Obama sagely employing the diabolically-clever 'Bart Simpson' political strategy;
"I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything!"
Thus outsmarting and out-maneuvering his "opposition" who are unable to counter this seemingly-airtight alibi.
Let's hope none of the judges drive a Mercedes, especially a C250 coupe or a modern Porsche with all the electronics. Inconvenient people seem to have been having unfortunate accidents in those type vehicles lately.
I'm saying that most people are not like that. The original claim was that firearms were the best defense, and I'm arguing that this is not true of everybody. Most people will find them useless in an attack. If you want to argue against me, forget about the relatively small segment of the population we're agreed on.
The only *other* people who carry a firearm *without* going through the rigorous process described are criminals. The instruction, training, and testing are not optional in order to legally carry.
You are arguing that "most people", who are a group of people who will never legally carry a firearm being unable/unwilling to go through and successfully complete the training/testing/background checks required, are not suited to carrying a firearm. We do not disagree.
However, that does not change the basic properties of a firearm. Firearms *are* the best defense. Sadly, not everyone is capable of responsibly carrying a firearm and will be unable/ineligible to legally carry one, and thus will be weeded out if they attempt to obtain the required licensing.
Brushing one's teeth is the best way to prevent cavities, regardless of whether or not some individuals are incapable of understanding how to do it properly or unwilling to do it regularly. Likewise, guns are the best defense, regardless of whether or not some people are incapable of successfully completing the required training, instruction, and testing in order to legally carry a gun.
So, what are we arguing about? The people you describe cannot become legal gun-carriers. It's a non-sequitur.
I see, a lukewarmer. You must be extremely confident in your prediction of a century or two before AGW becomes a problem. If you're wrong we're in for a hell of a ride. By the time it's blindingly obvious to everybody it's way to late to stop some serious effects like multiple feet of sea level rise and the breakdown of permafrost in the Arctic.
Did you know that China actually used less coal last year than the year before? China is taking the problem seriously.
The problem is uncertainty. There is nowhere near enough certainty about if there actually is a problem, how bad it really is, and just what can effectively be done about it without risking destroying the only environment we have.
Politicians/political groups, environmental activist groups, and others have thoroughly muddied and politicized the issue, destroyed/faked data, on and on, and have all but completely destroyed scientific credibility related to the climate in the eyes of the public.
The solutions put forth thus far are mainly different methodologies to effectively increase energy costs to force conservation. The problem with this is it affects the poorest people, those least able to absorb the increases, the most and the worst. It means people suffer and die.
How many lives are you willing to sacrifice? How much proof would you require to sacrifice *your* life, or someone you love's life? It's easy to be OK with such things when you believe that *you* & yours will not have to sacrifice or suffer.
Are the 3D-printing fanbois trying to ride on the Warmist's:"perceived-legitimacy" coattails, or is it the Wamists who are attempting to ride 3D-printing's "perceived-legitimacy" coattails?
I did that too on a 10" TEAC 4 channel. Probably needs new belts by now:)
You could pack about three hours of music on a 10 1/2 reel. It was great for partys, etc. Throw on a tape and forget it. I've been thinking about getting a reel-to-reel player to mess with. They're pretty cheap now days. But would probably go with a two- channel player that can play 10 1/2" reels and has auto-reverse. Direct drive would be nice to have for the reason you mention. The pre-recorded music catalog for this format is pretty weak. Time to think about taking my old, dusty mp-3s out of storage and making some new tapes from them.:-)
Yup, I remember reel-to-reel. Ah, the '70s! A good Teac or Akai deck through a pair of monobloc McIntosh MC60 tube amps driving a good set of horn-loaded speakers is some serious ear-candy. Even by today's standards.
With that system it was always a matter of "Gee, that 3 hr tape is over already?" because there was just no listening fatigue at all and you just did not notice how long you'd been listening, even at significant volumes.
Being a musician (guitarist) the lower-fatigue aspect was greatly appreciated, as I spent a *lot* of time listening; to music I was learning, recorded tracks or idea snippets I was working on, plus normal everyday music listening. It was quite normal for the system to remain powered up and playing *something* for days or even weeks at a stretch.
Between UEFI and SMM I consider x86 a rootkit, period.
Very much this, along with the microcode/hardware issues noted above.
Pretty much, if you don't want it snoop-able, don't put that data on or connect it to/through a commercial consumer computer, especially if it/both is/are not air-gapped from the internet.
The old ways are best. Sneakernets, dead-drops, OTPs for a few examples. The hugely increased reliance on the compromise of digital communications and computer system/network technology and the funding they've necessarily curtailed in other areas as a consequence is their weakness. In large measure they have 'hitched their star' almost exclusively to digital surveillance & control.
The intelligence services, with the concentration mainly on the digital world, have far fewer personnel and smaller budgets these days for the old human-resource-intensive sectors of domestic intelligence work to tie up doing time-consuming boots-on-the-ground tasks like actually following/trailing multitudes of individual subjects for any extended time and/or tasking personnel to weeks/months/years of ongoing residential/urban surveillance of multiple thousands of individuals/small groups. It's a numbers game.
It's simply a matter of if/when enough people feel things have gotten bad enough that actually taking action to defend their civil rights is better than the alternative.
That's kind of the way they typically accomplish these sorts of things, is it not? It's not like you get the compromised software/encryption tools/etc directly from some NSA server farm in Alexandria, VA. Sorry if I assumed everyone took that as a given.
Like all courts, SCOTUS has jurisdiction where it can enforce its rulings. That means on US territory, against people with US bank accounts, against companies doing business on US soil, against people who travel to the US, against nations the US invades, etc. That isn't rocket science, and it has nothing to do with "fascism".
Tell that to Julian Assange. The US wants to bury the guy under the prison, and has and still is going to incredible lengths to get their fascistic hands him.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair we won't know if that's a stretch or not since the POTUS won't allow any citizens to read the trade treaties and those who can read the various treaties can't comment on them.
The whole idea of a proposed Treaty being Classified material is ludicrous on it's face. I don't mean drafts and such within ongoing negotiations. I mean any Treaty with foreign powers presented to Congress being Classified is repugnant and an illegal end-run around the Constitution and the entire process. Any proposed Treaty submitted for consideration by Congress should be made publicly available to read/copy/analyze at the same time as anyone in Congress is able to view it.
Not that details like end-running Congress and the US Constitution (when not flat-out violating the shit out of it) seem to bother anyone anymore. Hell, people citing and/or carrying a copy of the US Constitution are considered potential terrorist threats by DHS.
In 2009, The DHS issued a report entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."
"Right- wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti- government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."
About two weeks later, the DHS released a second report entitled: "Domestic Extremism Lexicon". That report labeled the following to be extremists, bordering on terrorism:
Those concerned over the economy; loss of jobs; foreclosures; antagonism toward the Obama Administration; Criticism of free trade programs; anti-abortion; oppose same sex marriage; believe in the âoeend times;â stock pile food; oppose illegal immigration; oppose a New World Order; oppose the UN; oppose global governance; fear of Communist regimes; oppose loss of US manufacturing to overseas nations; oppose loss of US prestige; use of the internet (or alternative media) to express any of these ideas.
Basically, if you disagree with anything the government does or says, and/or hold any traditional American values and believe in God and/or the principles in the Constitution, and particularly if you communicate your values, beliefs, and opinions to others using modern communication methods, you are a 'possible domestic terror threat' and put on a 'list' or several, maybe even the infamous 'No-Fly' list, possibly be subjected to more detailed surveillance/tracking and data analysis to identify 'pressure points' for possible future use and identify/monitor anyone you may have 'radicalized' with your dangerous views and opinions.
Strat
Corporation lobbyists roll over government. What's new?
What's 'new' (over the last 6-8 decades or more) is the idea that allowing government which gets rolled over by big money/special-interests/monolithic Parties and so was originally designed to be very limited, more and more power & control over everything and everyone is somehow a good idea.
Very Progressive.
Strat
If the courts can deem Uber drivers NOT to be contractors. Then first off, that calls into question ALL taxi services since most drivers lease their cars/taxi permit from the owner.
But taxi company/driver relationships are entirely different! Taxi companies have paid decades of campaign contributions and lobbying 'perks', and have contributed to politicians and bureaucrats gaining money & power.
All that "equal treatment under Rule of Law" stuff can't be allowed to impede Social Justice(TM) & Progress(TM)!
Strat
- An American Enjoying Their Freedom of Speech
Well, for as long as even the illusion of 'free speech' lasts, with things like TPP, SOPA, PIPA, and whatever other secret treaties are waiting in the wings for a distraction to provide the right opportunity to sneak a 'yea' vote in.
Strat
a US statute, the DMCA
Which would not exist if not for the US government exceeding/abusing/end-running/mission-creeping the powers it is allowed under the only document that gives it legitimacy, and even adding more powers that have no basis whatever in a plain reading (as those who wrote it said they intended it to be read) of that same sole document that gives it legitimacy.
I mean, infinity minus a day is considered "limited" when discussing US copyright law? Really? You don't change the rules by redefining the terms if not enough people agree with you wanting the rules changed.
History shows us that path usually ends with terror and mass graves filled with the innocent.
Strat
I'm pretty sure that reproducing a low resolution image of a front page headline for the purposes of commentary illustration counts as fair use? Am I wrong?
Also, the DMCA does not I repeat NOT apply outside the borders of the United States of America territory. Ergo, a British newspaper owned by an AUSTRALIAN has no claim under the DMCA. Or am I wrong about that as well?
Well, you'd be spot-on *IF* the US & UK still operated under Rule of Law instead of Rule of/by Men. In Rule of/by Men "Law" is whatever Men currently in power say it is and are themselves not bound by any such.
Strat
So far we have evidence of 'parallel construction' and other abuses against civil rights while actual, real, kill-people-and-blow-crap-up terrorists are getting through.
Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is because the system was designed for use against the general population not against terrorists. Mass surveillance is meant to control mass populations. Targeted and specific surveillance is meant to identify and track specific individuals.
Besides, I am much less concerned about terrorists than I am with having my civil rights violated, especially with no actual 'safety' having been purchased with the mass violation of our civil rights, only very-poorly-scripted 'security theater'.
Strat.
Read my other post; I am well aware of this. But both can be true. The potential for unlimited blackmail and or targeted destruction AND the leaking of methods and tactics to the enemy. Both.
No. The 'catching terrorists' angle is simply the cover story used to justify the construction of the surveillance state.
A non-existent propaganda justification is incapable of being crippled, except as being revealed as the propaganda it is. Mass surveillance's usefulness in catching terrorists cannot be harmed as it was never intended to catch "terrorists" of the type portrayed in mass media. The system's practical utility is almost exclusively as a tool of the State to oppress and control the general population.
Strat
Snowden blew the whistle on illegal and unconstitutional practices AND ALSO terrorists were made aware of techniques and methods that otherwise would have been used to catch them.
Yeah, like the Tsarnaev brothers and the others. It should not be a surprise that so many terrorists seem to slip by/around all this surveillance.
The type of mass surveillance being carried out is not suited for, nor is it intended to, catch foreign terrorists.
It is intended to and is most useful for gathering detailed data on as many individuals as possible, so if somebody 'steps out of line' the data can be sifted through to find some convenient method of silencing them, either by leaking (or threatening to) damaging personal information or to find something with which to (threaten to) charge them with.
It is a tyrant's surveillance-WMD wet dream. As designed and implemented, the US's domestic mass-surveillance dragnet has little utility other than spying on and controlling the domestic population and needs to be scrapped, with those in charge sent to prison or executed.
Strat
In the long run he did more harm than good. The same practises will continue to happen, he just enabled our enemies to know about them too.
Yes, most of us are aware how those in the US and other '5-Eyes' governments view their citizens.
China and Russia? They knew long before Snowden. These guys are not amateurs. The only people who did not know were the general populations of the US and the world, the ones upon which this global surveillance & tracking behemoth is aimed.
Strat
You write like government is a thing to be weighed and parceled out instead of an activity people do.
Government *is* a thing. It's called force, power, or elementally, violence. When discussing 'size' in relation to government, it is generally assumed it's the amount of power it can exercise and wealth it controls/redistributes.
Power/force/violence *IS* something I want to allow any government as little of as possible while still attaining the goals the people it governs intend.
Think of it as a computer network. It's much harder to corrupt the system when each machine is a stand-alone system with it's own IDS/firewall/security than it is a system of a single mainframe with a bunch of dumb terminals, as once the mainframe is pwned, the entire system is pwned.
The authors of the US Constitution are, in a very real sense, the first distributed-network system designers, only instead of a network for digital data, it's a network for the distribution and securing of government power against corruption and abuse.
Strat
And so called "free enterprise" republicans are behind much of it.
It's the Progressive "establishment" Republicans and Progressive Democrats vs more small-'L' libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats. It's the Progressives in *both* major US political parties. The same Progressives that want to maintain/expand NSA-style 4th-Amendment-violating dragnet domestic surveillance and weaken encryption, etc., who use government agencies like the IRS & BATF as partisan/ideological political WMDs.
Strat
Weird to hear about this on SlashDot first
Amsterdam officials had intended to keep this tech under wraps until this test project was successfully completed, as they were hoping to convince US leaders to use it to build themselves a bridge to sanity.
Sadly...[sigh]
Strat
Those people are Jackson, Grant, and Franklin.
I've heard they speak quite loudly.
Strat
It's because of Obama sagely employing the diabolically-clever 'Bart Simpson' political strategy;
"I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything!"
Thus outsmarting and out-maneuvering his "opposition" who are unable to counter this seemingly-airtight alibi.
Strat
that's a nice 2nd Circuit you got there....
it would be a shame if something....
Let's hope none of the judges drive a Mercedes, especially a C250 coupe or a modern Porsche with all the electronics. Inconvenient people seem to have been having unfortunate accidents in those type vehicles lately.
Strat
The politicization of the the issue has mainly been from the contrarian side.
OK, I can see I'm dealing with a True Believer.
We're done here.
Good day, Sir.
Strat
I'm saying that most people are not like that. The original claim was that firearms were the best defense, and I'm arguing that this is not true of everybody. Most people will find them useless in an attack. If you want to argue against me, forget about the relatively small segment of the population we're agreed on.
The only *other* people who carry a firearm *without* going through the rigorous process described are criminals. The instruction, training, and testing are not optional in order to legally carry.
You are arguing that "most people", who are a group of people who will never legally carry a firearm being unable/unwilling to go through and successfully complete the training/testing/background checks required, are not suited to carrying a firearm. We do not disagree.
However, that does not change the basic properties of a firearm. Firearms *are* the best defense. Sadly, not everyone is capable of responsibly carrying a firearm and will be unable/ineligible to legally carry one, and thus will be weeded out if they attempt to obtain the required licensing.
Brushing one's teeth is the best way to prevent cavities, regardless of whether or not some individuals are incapable of understanding how to do it properly or unwilling to do it regularly. Likewise, guns are the best defense, regardless of whether or not some people are incapable of successfully completing the required training, instruction, and testing in order to legally carry a gun.
So, what are we arguing about? The people you describe cannot become legal gun-carriers. It's a non-sequitur.
Strat
I see, a lukewarmer. You must be extremely confident in your prediction of a century or two before AGW becomes a problem. If you're wrong we're in for a hell of a ride. By the time it's blindingly obvious to everybody it's way to late to stop some serious effects like multiple feet of sea level rise and the breakdown of permafrost in the Arctic.
Did you know that China actually used less coal last year than the year before? China is taking the problem seriously.
The problem is uncertainty. There is nowhere near enough certainty about if there actually is a problem, how bad it really is, and just what can effectively be done about it without risking destroying the only environment we have.
Politicians/political groups, environmental activist groups, and others have thoroughly muddied and politicized the issue, destroyed/faked data, on and on, and have all but completely destroyed scientific credibility related to the climate in the eyes of the public.
The solutions put forth thus far are mainly different methodologies to effectively increase energy costs to force conservation. The problem with this is it affects the poorest people, those least able to absorb the increases, the most and the worst. It means people suffer and die.
How many lives are you willing to sacrifice? How much proof would you require to sacrifice *your* life, or someone you love's life? It's easy to be OK with such things when you believe that *you* & yours will not have to sacrifice or suffer.
Strat
TFA is unclear.
Are the 3D-printing fanbois trying to ride on the Warmist's :"perceived-legitimacy" coattails, or is it the Wamists who are attempting to ride 3D-printing's "perceived-legitimacy" coattails?
Seems to be a lose-lose either way.
Strat
Yup, I remember reel-to-reel. Ah, the '70s! A good Teac or Akai deck through a pair of monobloc McIntosh MC60 tube amps driving a good set of horn-loaded speakers is some serious ear-candy. Even by today's standards.
With that system it was always a matter of "Gee, that 3 hr tape is over already?" because there was just no listening fatigue at all and you just did not notice how long you'd been listening, even at significant volumes.
Being a musician (guitarist) the lower-fatigue aspect was greatly appreciated, as I spent a *lot* of time listening; to music I was learning, recorded tracks or idea snippets I was working on, plus normal everyday music listening. It was quite normal for the system to remain powered up and playing *something* for days or even weeks at a stretch.
Strat
You can't deny their staffers and interest groups and the media access to the legislation and expect them to know what was in the bill.
Sure you can, they can just pass the Bill/Treaty and then they can find out what's in the Bill/Treaty. Didn't Nancy Pelosi teach us anything?
It's the "New Normal".
But don't let the wrong lizard get in!
Strat
Between UEFI and SMM I consider x86 a rootkit, period.
Very much this, along with the microcode/hardware issues noted above.
Pretty much, if you don't want it snoop-able, don't put that data on or connect it to/through a commercial consumer computer, especially if it/both is/are not air-gapped from the internet.
The old ways are best. Sneakernets, dead-drops, OTPs for a few examples. The hugely increased reliance on the compromise of digital communications and computer system/network technology and the funding they've necessarily curtailed in other areas as a consequence is their weakness. In large measure they have 'hitched their star' almost exclusively to digital surveillance & control.
The intelligence services, with the concentration mainly on the digital world, have far fewer personnel and smaller budgets these days for the old human-resource-intensive sectors of domestic intelligence work to tie up doing time-consuming boots-on-the-ground tasks like actually following/trailing multitudes of individual subjects for any extended time and/or tasking personnel to weeks/months/years of ongoing residential/urban surveillance of multiple thousands of individuals/small groups. It's a numbers game.
It's simply a matter of if/when enough people feel things have gotten bad enough that actually taking action to defend their civil rights is better than the alternative.
Strat
Someone could do it for them.
Well, yeah?
That's kind of the way they typically accomplish these sorts of things, is it not? It's not like you get the compromised software/encryption tools/etc directly from some NSA server farm in Alexandria, VA. Sorry if I assumed everyone took that as a given.
Strat
Like all courts, SCOTUS has jurisdiction where it can enforce its rulings. That means on US territory, against people with US bank accounts, against companies doing business on US soil, against people who travel to the US, against nations the US invades, etc. That isn't rocket science, and it has nothing to do with "fascism".
Tell that to Julian Assange. The US wants to bury the guy under the prison, and has and still is going to incredible lengths to get their fascistic hands him.
Strat