I understand your aversion to Google knowing everything about you, but you can soon lay your fears to rest. Once CISPA is law, you'll have absolutely no privacy anymore, even if you totally avoid Google. Companies will have total legal shielding about sharing your information with any government agency that asks for it. Even your local dog catcher will be able to find out anything they want about you.
The country is doing okay. The government... not so much. Many of the policies put in place over the last 50 years have been directly detrimental to the interests of the peoples of the United States.
When I, and many others, took the military entrance oath, it included the phrase,"defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Many of the actions taken by the government, and its myriad subordinate entities, would easily fall into that category. The problem is that even if you throw out the old rascals, the new ones probably won't be much better for very long.
The people that want to "use the methods of the system to clean it up" are stuck in a bad place. They want to fix the system, but the system has protected itself by making sure that the methods in place quit working. Instead the methods simply point out which ants need to have a finger put on them.
I love my country. It's people are my family. It's natural resources and history are my treasures. I understand now why my 97 year old grandmother was so ashamed of what our government had become. It hurts my family. It steals my treasures. It makes me a criminal in my own home.
It's setting up the conditions for the Second American Civil War. Too many people have little to nothing left to lose.And that number is growing despite the claims of a "recovery". The current policy makers seem to think that if they keep us distracted by constant foreign war, we'll not notice the corruption of our leaders, or the growing impoverishment of the people. That we're not informed enough, or smart enough to take a step back and see the big picture.
They know it would only take a spark in the right, or wrong, place to set the country ablaze. The internment camps have been built and in place for decades, and various agencies, policies, and procedures created to help control a popular uprising. It's understandable, of course. Any organism without a sense of self-preservation dies quickly, and a government is definitely an organisation. But it's poisoned itself for so long, it's starting to choke and wither. Soon, it won't even be able to defend itself against its own people, who've been disenfranchised and made into modern Huns. So many people are already enslaved in the American penal system, that numerically it's a country in its' own right.
Forget the scary "muslims", be afraid of the politicians, and the homeless, and the vanishing middle class who will soon be homeless.
Or maybe at the controls of some of those new quadcopters? A nice, big one, with a telescopic camera and... gun barrel? Those can be made for how much a piece? Could a SAM even TARGET something that small?
Actually, US military personnel have always been subject to double-, or even triple- jeopardy. They can be punished by military law and regulation, U.S. federal law, and if it happened in a foreign country involving native peoples, their laws also.
The government loves sending troops "over there", where ever "there" is this week, but the troops *really* don't want to go once they find out that they are in as much danger from bureaucrats as they are bullets. Not trusting others comes easy, but when you can't even trust your own people...
I've told people for several years that Apple, Windows, and Linux are for totally different philosophies. Apple seems to be more for the creative content producers, that don't really want to know how the computer works, or play with it, they just want to focus on whatever it is that they want to do. They may pay a premium, and have a severely limited selection, but they are getting what they want. Windows seems to appeal to the largest percentage of the consumer market and industry. It's got everything under the sun available for it, and is fairly well locked down, but with some work you can dig into it and do some limited customizing.
You didn't think I was going to leave out Linux/Android, did you? My personal favorites, but I don't recommend them for everyone. They seem to appeal to the tinkerers and hackers, not afraid to get their fingers burned or let the magic smoke out. Linux does run most of the Internet though, and most smartphones, and a lot of tablets now, and Google and Yahoo! and Ebay, and 9 out of 10 financial institutions, and is embedded in most home routers and god-knows-what-all. Just not most desktops.
I don't know about "free of viruses". They are currently dealing with over 650,000 Macs that are infected with the Flashback Virus. Remember, OSX (and maybe iOS, I'm not that familiar with Apple products) is based in a proprietary *nix, and there have been rootkits for *nix almost since the beginning.
Another point: when you have a walled garden, and you're the gatekeeper, you are ultimately responsible for what gets let in. Of course, you severely limit what gets let in, to reduce your chances of liability. Freedom? Not here.
Still better than Windows, but not nearly as good as the Apple fanbois want to believe.
I would like to applaud your application of logic, and a good situation analysis (that I happen to agree with). I'm afraid that the only viable method to prevent governmental shutdown of the internet is a loose, ad-hoc, "dark net" that can allow http, sftp, and email traffic. A "pirate box" application on a netbook or tablet would be a great start. Something along the lines of TOR, Bittorrent with magnet links, or Packet Amateur Radio, that works with a distributed DNS system as a self-healing mesh network and is adaptable to varying transmission methods and speeds would be awesome.
The only way to shut that down would be to cut every line, and use military grade radio jamming systems. Unless they're using line-of-sight laser comms...
You seem to think that something unusual should be allowed? You think that they went overboard shutting down down the airport over an unexpected robot device being on a plane? I've seen a military airbase practically shut down because some guy forgot his effing briefcase. THAT scares people, because unattended cases are a traditional method for carrying and deploying explosives. How are they supposed to react to something that is obviously technical, but can't be readily identified? Poke it with a stick?
When I fly, I damn well want them to be cautious about allowing strange devices on board. At 30,000 feet, I become one of the most conservative individuals you've ever met. I'm much more liberal when I don't have to worry about dying.
Actually, it's more like "Lots of Americans hate THEIR GOVERNMENT." I actually love my country, and it's idiots, very much. Most of them are fairly kind and happy. But lawyers and CEOs are usually suspected of vile anti-social behavior (correctly) until proven innocent.
But that doesn't mean I have to go dig it out of my closet to hand it to them if they can't find it themselves. I don't have to incriminate myself. I think your interpretation of the fifth amendment may need some fine tuning.
After I had been at my first tech job for a couple of years, I pointed out an interesting fact to a senior tech. An old phone listing I had received when I first got there had numerous people that had come and gone in the last two years, and the company liked to tell us that it had invested about $20,000 in training each of us before we had become profitable for them. It was to motivate us to work hard, I guess. Taking their talking point, I figured $20,000 for each person on the list that had left the company, and another $20,000 for the people that had replaced them.
This company had an effective policy of screwing their employees, and replacing them with new kids. When the senior tech decided it was his turn to go, his exit interview was with senior management, and he took the employee phone list. He informed them that over the last two years that they had thrown away $1.8 million by letting their techs walk out the door. Their jaws hit the floor. Apparently none of them had ever considered that money invested in "people" had real value.
The story ended happily though... the idiot senior management were all let go by the bank when the company went into receivership, and the new management has actually started building employee morale. I think that they're from Canada. Go Canucks!
Working my way through college in Kansas, I worked for the college as a student employee. One part of my job was to climb the towers for maintenance. We had several 50 footers, a couple hundred footers, and the main tower was 500 feet. I actually had a plane circle the tower below me one day while changing a light bulb.
As a student employee, I had very little skills or knowledge, and a bit of competition for any job. I got paid $7.50/hr wither I was sitting at a workbench or climbing a tower. God, I was so stupid. Carrying tools up was like weightlifting on a StairMaster with the chance that somebody would put a bullet in your head at any second. The tower had been there about 7 years, and most of the guys that had erected it were dead. There is an incredible mortality rate for tower workers. One of my friends was climbing when a chunk of ice fell and hit his hard hat, almost knocking him unconscious. There were so many dangers, it was literally "criminal" to put an uninformed kid on it. You could die from falling (blown off or a rung rust through underneath the paint), electrocution (you're on the tallest metallic structure for miles, and lightning strikes even in clear skies), and impacts (falling ice and broken metal parts or antennas).
Back in the early '90s the going rate for tower climbing was a buck a foot, and it would take a full hour to climb and descend the 500 footer. So $20/hr to go up, fix it, and climb down? Kiss my ass. I have skills and experience now, I don't have to risk my life for that insultingly small amount of money anymore.
There're rumors that he's been stealing other groups discoveries for years. He would closely monitor their progress, then kick the team out of the country just as they're about to make a big discovery. Come back a couple years later to their dig, and "discover" whatever the other team had found. Since EVERY team had to go through him and his office, it was very easy (and lucrative) for him to do.
Like I said, rumors. It just sounds like the truth. Is it? Don't know. But a lot of archaeologists are glad he's "former antiquities minister" now.
No kidding. All bank sites use https, along with any shopping sites payment pages, paypal, Amazon, Wal-mart, etc... Pass laws to ban encryption, you've also passed laws to ban commerce. The **AA groups would quickly find that they just took the biggest guy in the room, and pissed in his drink. Not a smart move by any measure.
I'd love to see them try it. If they thought the response to SOPA was bad...
I was thinking about something like this, just today, but for a different application. A "smart outlet" at home that IDs an object being plugged in before it starts flowing power to it. When I say "IDs" an object, I mean more like just gets a voltage/current requirement from it. That way the device is fully plugged in and seated before any power starts flowing through the contacts, it should help prevent electric shocks from children sticking things in the outlet, and with power monitoring it would let you know what's running and for how long (smart homes).
I suppose there are already smarthome systems that do this. Just not X10. Please, not X10....
You think the hatred of lawyers is "irrational"? This site is FULL of rational people, and most all of them either hate lawyers, or have had little to do with them. So guess which group you sound like...
You then blame the executive branch of government, which is mostly lawyers, and seem to be saying "hate the game, not the players". But the players are the one's running the game...
I had a friend whose family was so ashamed of his uncle, he was barred from ever visiting. They used to tell people he was in prison for drug dealing. He was a lawyer. For the IRS.
Another friend actually wanted to be a lawyer, and help people. When his lessons had him shadow a real lawyer, he found out his two goals were mutually exclusive. He said it was like dealing with the mafia. Do evil for pay, and leave it at the office while pretending to be a nice person to your kids and wife. And that was one of the more reputable law firms in town...
That's almost asking for a shitload of dead code to be pasted into a routine that just adds two numbers.
The use of metrics to measure peoples performance is usually implemented incorrectly. You want to measure my performance? Okay, I did 1 thing all day. It was rebuilding a $50,000 test stand. Yesterday, I built 3 custom test fixtures for the production line, and worked on maintaining some of my equipment.
The number of events being measured is correct, but what about the value to the company of each event? A dozen people telling customers to reboot their computers are worthless to the company compared to the guy who spent 2 weeks staring at a whiteboard, but developed a new piece of software that gives them a bitchin' edge in the market.
I hear you. I'm 45 and I've been a tech in comm test gear, avionics test gear, metrology, avionics, electro-mechanical QA & testing, industrial controls, Industrial electricity, database maintenance, IT networking, IT consulting, and am currently in a fun, growing, well-funded, start up full of "old-timer" refugees of the aerospace industry, doing R&D electronics, software, and machining.
During the interview, the managers commented that they weren't used to seeing "CNC machinist training" next to "SUN Certified Java Programmer", and back in school full time for a degree in IT. I thought that this was odd. How can someone that's a "technologist" not have a wide variety of tech skills? Being adaptable and versatile is a necessary survival trait for anyone.
If you won't encourage outright piracy after this, when will you? You fucking pussy. I'll fly the fucking Jolly Roger on the hood of my car if this passes, and steal and hand out every god-damned piece of copyright crap I can find. Will I go to jail? Probably the morgue.
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I understand your aversion to Google knowing everything about you, but you can soon lay your fears to rest. Once CISPA is law, you'll have absolutely no privacy anymore, even if you totally avoid Google. Companies will have total legal shielding about sharing your information with any government agency that asks for it. Even your local dog catcher will be able to find out anything they want about you.
Feel better now? No more worries about Google!
The country is doing okay. The government... not so much. Many of the policies put in place over the last 50 years have been directly detrimental to the interests of the peoples of the United States.
When I, and many others, took the military entrance oath, it included the phrase ,"defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Many of the actions taken by the government, and its myriad subordinate entities, would easily fall into that category. The problem is that even if you throw out the old rascals, the new ones probably won't be much better for very long.
The people that want to "use the methods of the system to clean it up" are stuck in a bad place. They want to fix the system, but the system has protected itself by making sure that the methods in place quit working. Instead the methods simply point out which ants need to have a finger put on them.
I love my country. It's people are my family. It's natural resources and history are my treasures. I understand now why my 97 year old grandmother was so ashamed of what our government had become. It hurts my family. It steals my treasures. It makes me a criminal in my own home.
It's setting up the conditions for the Second American Civil War. Too many people have little to nothing left to lose.And that number is growing despite the claims of a "recovery". The current policy makers seem to think that if they keep us distracted by constant foreign war, we'll not notice the corruption of our leaders, or the growing impoverishment of the people. That we're not informed enough, or smart enough to take a step back and see the big picture.
They know it would only take a spark in the right, or wrong, place to set the country ablaze. The internment camps have been built and in place for decades, and various agencies, policies, and procedures created to help control a popular uprising. It's understandable, of course. Any organism without a sense of self-preservation dies quickly, and a government is definitely an organisation. But it's poisoned itself for so long, it's starting to choke and wither. Soon, it won't even be able to defend itself against its own people, who've been disenfranchised and made into modern Huns. So many people are already enslaved in the American penal system, that numerically it's a country in its' own right.
Forget the scary "muslims", be afraid of the politicians, and the homeless, and the vanishing middle class who will soon be homeless.
Or maybe at the controls of some of those new quadcopters? A nice, big one, with a telescopic camera and ... gun barrel? Those can be made for how much a piece? Could a SAM even TARGET something that small?
Actually, US military personnel have always been subject to double-, or even triple- jeopardy. They can be punished by military law and regulation, U.S. federal law, and if it happened in a foreign country involving native peoples, their laws also.
The government loves sending troops "over there", where ever "there" is this week, but the troops *really* don't want to go once they find out that they are in as much danger from bureaucrats as they are bullets. Not trusting others comes easy, but when you can't even trust your own people...
Thanks for the clarification. So, Flashback isn't malware? Or are you just splitting hairs?
I've told people for several years that Apple, Windows, and Linux are for totally different philosophies. Apple seems to be more for the creative content producers, that don't really want to know how the computer works, or play with it, they just want to focus on whatever it is that they want to do. They may pay a premium, and have a severely limited selection, but they are getting what they want. Windows seems to appeal to the largest percentage of the consumer market and industry. It's got everything under the sun available for it, and is fairly well locked down, but with some work you can dig into it and do some limited customizing.
You didn't think I was going to leave out Linux/Android, did you? My personal favorites, but I don't recommend them for everyone. They seem to appeal to the tinkerers and hackers, not afraid to get their fingers burned or let the magic smoke out. Linux does run most of the Internet though, and most smartphones, and a lot of tablets now, and Google and Yahoo! and Ebay, and 9 out of 10 financial institutions, and is embedded in most home routers and god-knows-what-all. Just not most desktops.
I don't know about "free of viruses". They are currently dealing with over 650,000 Macs that are infected with the Flashback Virus. Remember, OSX (and maybe iOS, I'm not that familiar with Apple products) is based in a proprietary *nix, and there have been rootkits for *nix almost since the beginning.
Another point: when you have a walled garden, and you're the gatekeeper, you are ultimately responsible for what gets let in. Of course, you severely limit what gets let in, to reduce your chances of liability. Freedom? Not here.
Still better than Windows, but not nearly as good as the Apple fanbois want to believe.
I would like to applaud your application of logic, and a good situation analysis (that I happen to agree with).
I'm afraid that the only viable method to prevent governmental shutdown of the internet is a loose, ad-hoc, "dark net" that can allow http, sftp, and email traffic. A "pirate box" application on a netbook or tablet would be a great start. Something along the lines of TOR, Bittorrent with magnet links, or Packet Amateur Radio, that works with a distributed DNS system as a self-healing mesh network and is adaptable to varying transmission methods and speeds would be awesome.
The only way to shut that down would be to cut every line, and use military grade radio jamming systems. Unless they're using line-of-sight laser comms...
So you're just here to engage in "mindless fanboyism"? I think they have a spot reserved for you over at 4chan.
You seem to think that something unusual should be allowed? You think that they went overboard shutting down down the airport over an unexpected robot device being on a plane? I've seen a military airbase practically shut down because some guy forgot his effing briefcase. THAT scares people, because unattended cases are a traditional method for carrying and deploying explosives. How are they supposed to react to something that is obviously technical, but can't be readily identified? Poke it with a stick?
When I fly, I damn well want them to be cautious about allowing strange devices on board. At 30,000 feet, I become one of the most conservative individuals you've ever met. I'm much more liberal when I don't have to worry about dying.
Actually, it's more like "Lots of Americans hate THEIR GOVERNMENT." I actually love my country, and it's idiots, very much. Most of them are fairly kind and happy. But lawyers and CEOs are usually suspected of vile anti-social behavior (correctly) until proven innocent.
But that doesn't mean I have to go dig it out of my closet to hand it to them if they can't find it themselves. I don't have to incriminate myself. I think your interpretation of the fifth amendment may need some fine tuning.
After I had been at my first tech job for a couple of years, I pointed out an interesting fact to a senior tech. An old phone listing I had received when I first got there had numerous people that had come and gone in the last two years, and the company liked to tell us that it had invested about $20,000 in training each of us before we had become profitable for them. It was to motivate us to work hard, I guess. Taking their talking point, I figured $20,000 for each person on the list that had left the company, and another $20,000 for the people that had replaced them.
This company had an effective policy of screwing their employees, and replacing them with new kids. When the senior tech decided it was his turn to go, his exit interview was with senior management, and he took the employee phone list. He informed them that over the last two years that they had thrown away $1.8 million by letting their techs walk out the door. Their jaws hit the floor. Apparently none of them had ever considered that money invested in "people" had real value.
The story ended happily though... the idiot senior management were all let go by the bank when the company went into receivership, and the new management has actually started building employee morale. I think that they're from Canada. Go Canucks!
Working my way through college in Kansas, I worked for the college as a student employee. One part of my job was to climb the towers for maintenance. We had several 50 footers, a couple hundred footers, and the main tower was 500 feet. I actually had a plane circle the tower below me one day while changing a light bulb.
As a student employee, I had very little skills or knowledge, and a bit of competition for any job. I got paid $7.50/hr wither I was sitting at a workbench or climbing a tower. God, I was so stupid. Carrying tools up was like weightlifting on a StairMaster with the chance that somebody would put a bullet in your head at any second. The tower had been there about 7 years, and most of the guys that had erected it were dead. There is an incredible mortality rate for tower workers. One of my friends was climbing when a chunk of ice fell and hit his hard hat, almost knocking him unconscious. There were so many dangers, it was literally "criminal" to put an uninformed kid on it. You could die from falling (blown off or a rung rust through underneath the paint), electrocution (you're on the tallest metallic structure for miles, and lightning strikes even in clear skies), and impacts (falling ice and broken metal parts or antennas).
Back in the early '90s the going rate for tower climbing was a buck a foot, and it would take a full hour to climb and descend the 500 footer. So $20/hr to go up, fix it, and climb down? Kiss my ass. I have skills and experience now, I don't have to risk my life for that insultingly small amount of money anymore.
There're rumors that he's been stealing other groups discoveries for years. He would closely monitor their progress, then kick the team out of the country just as they're about to make a big discovery. Come back a couple years later to their dig, and "discover" whatever the other team had found. Since EVERY team had to go through him and his office, it was very easy (and lucrative) for him to do.
Like I said, rumors. It just sounds like the truth. Is it? Don't know. But a lot of archaeologists are glad he's "former antiquities minister" now.
You can try... Until the onboard video is played in court and shows you staged it, at which point the judge begins to legally sodomize you.
No kidding. All bank sites use https, along with any shopping sites payment pages, paypal, Amazon, Wal-mart, etc... Pass laws to ban encryption, you've also passed laws to ban commerce. The **AA groups would quickly find that they just took the biggest guy in the room, and pissed in his drink. Not a smart move by any measure.
I'd love to see them try it. If they thought the response to SOPA was bad...
I *really* hope you're a girl. I need a pizza about now...
I was thinking about something like this, just today, but for a different application. A "smart outlet" at home that IDs an object being plugged in before it starts flowing power to it. When I say "IDs" an object, I mean more like just gets a voltage/current requirement from it. That way the device is fully plugged in and seated before any power starts flowing through the contacts, it should help prevent electric shocks from children sticking things in the outlet, and with power monitoring it would let you know what's running and for how long (smart homes).
I suppose there are already smarthome systems that do this. Just not X10. Please, not X10....
You think the hatred of lawyers is "irrational"? This site is FULL of rational people, and most all of them either hate lawyers, or have had little to do with them. So guess which group you sound like...
You then blame the executive branch of government, which is mostly lawyers, and seem to be saying "hate the game, not the players". But the players are the one's running the game...
I had a friend whose family was so ashamed of his uncle, he was barred from ever visiting. They used to tell people he was in prison for drug dealing. He was a lawyer. For the IRS.
Another friend actually wanted to be a lawyer, and help people. When his lessons had him shadow a real lawyer, he found out his two goals were mutually exclusive. He said it was like dealing with the mafia. Do evil for pay, and leave it at the office while pretending to be a nice person to your kids and wife. And that was one of the more reputable law firms in town...
That's almost asking for a shitload of dead code to be pasted into a routine that just adds two numbers.
The use of metrics to measure peoples performance is usually implemented incorrectly. You want to measure my performance? Okay, I did 1 thing all day. It was rebuilding a $50,000 test stand. Yesterday, I built 3 custom test fixtures for the production line, and worked on maintaining some of my equipment.
The number of events being measured is correct, but what about the value to the company of each event? A dozen people telling customers to reboot their computers are worthless to the company compared to the guy who spent 2 weeks staring at a whiteboard, but developed a new piece of software that gives them a bitchin' edge in the market.
I hear you. I'm 45 and I've been a tech in comm test gear, avionics test gear, metrology, avionics, electro-mechanical QA & testing, industrial controls, Industrial electricity, database maintenance, IT networking, IT consulting, and am currently in a fun, growing, well-funded, start up full of "old-timer" refugees of the aerospace industry, doing R&D electronics, software, and machining.
During the interview, the managers commented that they weren't used to seeing "CNC machinist training" next to "SUN Certified Java Programmer", and back in school full time for a degree in IT. I thought that this was odd. How can someone that's a "technologist" not have a wide variety of tech skills? Being adaptable and versatile is a necessary survival trait for anyone.
If you won't encourage outright piracy after this, when will you? You fucking pussy. I'll fly the fucking Jolly Roger on the hood of my car if this passes, and steal and hand out every god-damned piece of copyright crap I can find. Will I go to jail? Probably the morgue.
Beautiful! Accurate and concise, also.
BTW, what brand coffee are you drinking? I could sure use some, myself.