I dunno. If I had the choice between no internet or satellite, I wouldn't complain about the latency.
Of course it might suck if it rains a lot, but I suppose it is far better than not having any internet. Secondly, if you are a SE Asia islander or boat traveler you might not even have dial up seeing there is no fiber to your location. You might have a LAN line, but it might be incompatible or really slow seeing regular modems don't work well with satellite phones.
No its not. If you want and analogy to real life I would say the BlueRay and HDVD war was only the Spanish civil war between Fascist and the Republicans. The real World War is pending between physical media and streaming/downloads. I'll let everyone decide who plays the part Axis, Allies, and Soviets are on their own.
Keep in mind that downloads is not simply torrent pirates but also includes corporations who would rather have their customers use their "On Demand" feature to download HD quality titles rather than buy a disc.
But with wifi technology and portable computing getting so powerful, it really is plausible to imagine homeless bums sitting under overpasses, logged into the game world. With a game like EVE Online, you can pay your monthly access fee by buying time cards from other players with in-game gold. When the panhandler comes up to you at the traffic light, he'll be wanting to know if he can bum a charge off of you instead of a smoke or spare change.
If the futurists are right (Kurzweil, Bostrum, Vinge, etc) and a singularity does happen within the next 50 to 100 years playing video games might be all that is left for mankind.
If machines and technology is powerful enough to run the world without the need for human input, then if a benevolent Strong AI existed it probaly wouldn't go out and exterminate the human race due to it being benevolent. With nothing else for the humans to do, they would most likley create games for them to play in the most elaborate fashions while the super machines with brains the size of planets try to figure out things beyond our comprehension (like how to survive heat death or the big rip or comsic ray bursts).
However, this has yet to be seen and I'm still planning on retirement.
But I like to have addictions the old fashioned way with booze and cigarettes.
I suppose being addicted to a blackberry would be cheaper and better on my health on the long run, but it just doesn't have that wonderful taste in the mouth after drinking my brains out since 9 in the morning the day before.
A fact is what you have observed. A theory is an explanation of why it is so.
I suppose the problem is that people are misunderstanding of the difference between micro and macro evolution.
One can easily observe evolution by looking at genetic changes in fruit flies over several generations. Heck, you can look at most crops and livestock animals over the past century or two to observe evolution. It happens and it is a fact.
Now the inference that animals and humans evolved from a common ancestor is a theory since we cannot of course go back in time and watch life for a few million years.
A theory has some factual backing to it more so than a hypothesis.
If you hand-wave away that phrase, then what else do you hand-wave away?
Easy. The Old Testament was originally written in ancient Hebrew which has no vowels. In order to read it, a Rabi would have to know the context of the words. When the Bible was translated into Latin and then into Vernacular one could say there is a bit of "finagalling" when it comes to terminology which somehow many people over look.
I forget the exact quote but I think in Psalms there is a part where they talk about the four corners of the earth and it being a sphere which many people like to point out as an example of the ancients knowing about the earth being round. But when you look the word up by its original definition in ancient Hebrew it translate as "Compass" which by all accounts and purposes was not a sphere in ancient Judea.
Others can point flaws to modern English translations such as the the Leviticus's part about homosexuality that there was no word for homosexual in ancient Greek. The literal translation meant "soft" or "feminine" which in ancient times more or less meant "weak willed".
The odd thing is that the Catholic Church and many Jewish Rabbis appear to have no problem with idea of evolution and big bang because they do not adhere to something that conflicts with the idea of genesis seeing that god could have used that as his method.
Ironically, most Christians who are literalists seems to ignore many of the dietary rules (Kosher, Parva, etc) set forth in the old testament that many modern Jews adhere (which also Muslims follow) and seem to not notice that Jews only read the bible in Hebrew due to the fact of the forementioned translation issues. My friend was raised conservative Jewish (not the orthodox) and she said even they would read the Torah in Jewish even in elementary bible study class at their synagogue as a young child.
They nationalized property without compensating international businesses.
Hey now. Batista and those international businesses (US mafia) were no saints. Most of those companies were run by the Mob and Batista took bribes all the time when it came to business practices while squandering the Cuban people's money he collected through taxes and the state lottery.
Yeah, Castro was no saint either, but the amount of corruption and totalitarianism by Batista and his cohorts is almost the same. (Heck Batista overthrew elections several times).
Had the US simply accepted Castro and opened relations with him as a legitimate government he would not have turned to the Soviets for aid. Remember... The world almost went nuclear over the fact we wouldn't just acknowledge that we could work together or at least stop Batista while we had a chance when he over threw the elections and installed a dictatorship.
I don't know of the situation either, but in most organizations the owner and those who actually do the running or often different due to delegation and management issues. It could be quite possible he wasn't involved in what transpired and even then one has to really wonder about the whole issue with the donation issue with the charity organization.
That said, it is unknown if his hired hands were thieves with or without his knowledge, but even if there was no malice there appears to be incompetence at some type of financial level to have to go Chapter 11.
The speed of light is a barrier like few the humanity has ever found.
Imagine if you would a cure to aging or a method to remain in stasis for hundreds or thousands of years. Once we get that out of the way, traveling to another solar system isn't that far fetched. It is suspect there is enough material in the vacuum of space between systems that could help refuel a fast traveling vessel to keep propulsion up and since there is no weather or space bacteria (that we know of) erosion and decay won't be much of a problem.
Now, granted ones who take such a trip will most likley never see their home planet again or those who they left behind so it will take a brave bunch to spend those long times in stasis or simply entertaining themselves with what ever VR or holodeck they have in the future.
I remember reading an article that if humans could at least travel close to the speed of light and sent ships from one planet to all the closest they could colonize and the repeat that the Galaxy could be colonized in about 1 million years. Now that seems a lot for us, but astronomically that is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of years it took nature to evolve intelligent life.
Now if people like Aubrey de Grey do acheive their goals of life extension then traveling thousands of years may not be that big of a deal for humans in the future.
That changes every 3 minutes or less? Simply share the onetime pad between the computer and access point over a wired connection and then make sure their clocks are exactly the same.
Of course making sure they have the same time might be the hard part?
There was a brief window of history between urbanization and computerization when real anonymity existed; that's closed and we're returning to the way humans have always lived.
Not to quibble, but before censuses and technology humans were generally anonymous up until the 1870s (varying country by country). Sure you knew your neighbors, but it wasn't quite hard to move to another town and change your name or publish works anonymously without a good way to track you. Many great works were actually published anonymously over the centuries that were often critiques of the powers that be or society in times when their life or limb was threatened.
The internet has provided some persons a way to speak out since anonymity has been repressed by the powers that being during the 20th century in many totalitarian governments.
Secondly, it isn't far fetched that someone given what you buy at a grocery store could target you in someway or another. They wouldn't do it on an individual basis but imagine if a "pro-dolphin" group saw that you were buying tuna from a questionable company and then targeted you by exposing you name on a list on their website.
The incredible inaccuracy of eye witness accounts is well known. It is also a truism that the camera lies; a singe perspective can be dangerous. Grammar has nothing to do with it. Being objective does not mean elitism.
True objectivism would review all sources and not just trusted or professional ones. Simply dismissing eye witness accounts and photographic evidence because they could be wrong is not objective either.
Take the execution of Saddam Hussein. One could troll Youtube for countless uncensored versions of it, but on the nightly news, it played without sound and usually cut off right before they dropped him.
If you think people can't handle the whole part of the news, then perhaps that is where elitism comes into play. The problem with the current professional news in all mediums is that there is some type of spin on it with subtraction of context and addition of irrelevant language.
Of course, that could simply be a problem with the English language and I'd rather see facts and unedited media first hand than have someone decide what is important to me.
"We must return to nature or we are doomed," to grossly paraphrase.
I'll disagree about the returning to nature part, but systems which have some type of natural selection are usually the ones that end up being more efficient in the real world than on paper. Take planned economy versus a free economy. There are just too many variables to economics to simply plan it out and force it to work. But when you have it setup in a way that businesses sink or swim simply but "natural" process then only the strongest or at least well managed businesses survive.
Now the organizations themselves on an individual level might be very centralized, but again it depends on how well your situation scales.
The judge's ruling seems pretty reasonable to me. What the hacker did was not insider trading, because he was not an insider, so the various regulations governming insider trading should have been found not to apply here.
I guess a good analogy would if you broke into someones home to read their wallstreet journal and then used their phone to make a call to your broker to make a trade.
Calling a broker to make the trade isn't the sticking point, but rather you broke into someone's home.
Mistakes happen all the time. The appropriate thing to look for is whether the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion. It seems that the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion which basically makes this a story about an everyday occurrence.
I think the idea is if this happens once it could happen again without too much effort. There is no real oversight on how the FBI, NSA, DHS, or any other organization acquires information nor a transparent way to gather such data.
Now, I really don't see any malicious intent on the FBI with this since of the old adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." but I get the sinking feeling that they would often find themselves in situation in which they are too lazy to follow procedure and due process like maybe a warrant.
A price. That cannot be avoided (ie piracy kills the value of objects and ideas).
Artists have been making work for centuries without often being compensated for their work and many eventually dying in abject poverty only to be recognized for their talents years after their deaths.
One could argue that if one could not make money off of art then only those really interested creating art "for the sake of art" would be doing so. If copyrights went away tomorrow, there would still be musicians playing on the street corner, photographers taking pictures, painters making paintings, and writers writer stories. Now granted there will be a lot less of them, but people still desire to create work for the reward in itself rather than a monetary return. That may be a good thing or bad things depending on how you view it but I think aesthetics will enjoy the fact corporations are no longer actively creating art and the average joe will probaly not like it because no one is making art he likes anymore.
Personally, I think the ideal solution was how things were back in the middle ages. If you wanted art, you commissioned someone to do it. If no one is willing to commission it then either you give away your works for free or don't make them. The key problem with the current system is that it derives art for profit which is sometimes shallow at best due to the fact its creating something to be consumed rather than observed as art. (Damn I sound like a turtle neck art snob with a glass of wine complaining about the sad state of affairs at the New York Art gallery, but I hope you get my point)
Sounds like your own life of abuse makes you automatically associate someone having a SO and not playing games with "abusive girlfriend". You should get that problem seen to.
No. I'm fine... Its just that I've had many friends over the years simply loose themselves because they were in a relationship that was unhealthy for them, stopped doing the things they once enjoyed, and now are miserable.
If your the situation with your SO isn't giving you time to do things that you like (such as play computer games like Spore or even watch football with the guys) then you'll probaly start to resent them even if they aren't actively forcing you to not do those things.
What I think I'm saying is that having a life is no excuse for not doing the things you really like. On the flip side, there are people I know who work so much that they have neither time for a SO or games and are pretty miserable too.
Personally, a relationship cannot simply be about the fact you just be someone that happens to be of opposite sex, but rather you need to share some interests. If you don't play video games anymore... Fine! But don't tell people that it is because you are in a relationship, have kids, work 40 hours, and are too busy!
There are plenty of people who do all of the above and still find time to play games for their personal enjoyment.
Consider that a well-coordinated cyberattack on certain intelligence assets could bring down our satellite monitoring services long enough to blind us to ASAT launches.
Strategically, it would be a bad idea for any nuclear super to attempt to attack (conventionally or cyber-wise) another nuclear nations spy satellite or ICBM detection systems even if no real attack was forthcoming or just a normal conventional attack. The nation who was blinded or had their communications disrupted would assume the worse is happening and proceed with a nuclear retaliation even if that was the case.
In fact, I'd rather have an rival nation with a sufficient spy and communications that were not prone to failure in case a false-positive of an attack.
If you really did want a situation of first strike it would actually be in the interest of the attack to make it seem as if no pending attack was imminent and then attack with something more low tech such as a nuke in a shipping container or a cruise missile under the radar.
I no longer use a PC, and I'm no longer in college. Most of my free time is spent away from the computer, doing errands (food, misc. real life stuff), or spending time with my wonderful girlfriend.
For some reason I suspect you drink a lot, take zoloft, or do you just enjoy the beatings your girlfriend gives when you ask if you can hang out with your friends after work?
But seriously, I don't know about you but I'm in my 30s and if my girlfriend doesn't at least tolerate my gaming and activities then she won't be for long. Luckily, the one I got loves her DS way more than I love mine. (I'm more of a computer FPS person)
Truth is... If you date someone for looks rather than interests, they are going to get on your skin real fast once they get old.
Side warning to the F/OSS community: That multitude of eyes may become even more important as we start to wonder, is the Godfather contributing? It doesn't even have to be in terms of direct backdoors, only has to be an exploitable bug which of course don't make the contributor look as bad.
How do know that a low paid programmer at Microsoft hasn't been bribed by organized crime and if so how do you detect the code?
What happens if your employer loses a laptop with your SSN, name, etc on it?
If you are paranoid like me you will have already called one of three major credit companies (not the free score but Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion) and put a freeze on your credit every 90 days with a fraud alert. Or you can pay one of their subsidaries a monthly fee for any notifications via email or SMS of any changes or requests in your credit (yeah it kind of feels like I'm paying them to solve a problem that is their fault).
On the downside you won't be able to get new credit lines easily while your account is locked so do this after you get your mortgage or car loan. On the upside... No one can do anything with your information without causing some major red flags. Also it seems that the junk mail has ceased.
Slashdot Mirror
Super Latency
I dunno. If I had the choice between no internet or satellite, I wouldn't complain about the latency.
Of course it might suck if it rains a lot, but I suppose it is far better than not having any internet. Secondly, if you are a SE Asia islander or boat traveler you might not even have dial up seeing there is no fiber to your location. You might have a LAN line, but it might be incompatible or really slow seeing regular modems don't work well with satellite phones.
Who really cares. At least the war is over.
No its not. If you want and analogy to real life I would say the BlueRay and HDVD war was only the Spanish civil war between Fascist and the Republicans. The real World War is pending between physical media and streaming/downloads. I'll let everyone decide who plays the part Axis, Allies, and Soviets are on their own.
Keep in mind that downloads is not simply torrent pirates but also includes corporations who would rather have their customers use their "On Demand" feature to download HD quality titles rather than buy a disc.
But with wifi technology and portable computing getting so powerful, it really is plausible to imagine homeless bums sitting under overpasses, logged into the game world. With a game like EVE Online, you can pay your monthly access fee by buying time cards from other players with in-game gold. When the panhandler comes up to you at the traffic light, he'll be wanting to know if he can bum a charge off of you instead of a smoke or spare change.
If the futurists are right (Kurzweil, Bostrum, Vinge, etc) and a singularity does happen within the next 50 to 100 years playing video games might be all that is left for mankind.
If machines and technology is powerful enough to run the world without the need for human input, then if a benevolent Strong AI existed it probaly wouldn't go out and exterminate the human race due to it being benevolent. With nothing else for the humans to do, they would most likley create games for them to play in the most elaborate fashions while the super machines with brains the size of planets try to figure out things beyond our comprehension (like how to survive heat death or the big rip or comsic ray bursts).
However, this has yet to be seen and I'm still planning on retirement.
But I like to have addictions the old fashioned way with booze and cigarettes.
I suppose being addicted to a blackberry would be cheaper and better on my health on the long run, but it just doesn't have that wonderful taste in the mouth after drinking my brains out since 9 in the morning the day before.
A fact is what you have observed. A theory is an explanation of why it is so.
I suppose the problem is that people are misunderstanding of the difference between micro and macro evolution.
One can easily observe evolution by looking at genetic changes in fruit flies over several generations. Heck, you can look at most crops and livestock animals over the past century or two to observe evolution. It happens and it is a fact.
Now the inference that animals and humans evolved from a common ancestor is a theory since we cannot of course go back in time and watch life for a few million years.
A theory has some factual backing to it more so than a hypothesis.
If you hand-wave away that phrase, then what else do you hand-wave away?
Easy. The Old Testament was originally written in ancient Hebrew which has no vowels. In order to read it, a Rabi would have to know the context of the words. When the Bible was translated into Latin and then into Vernacular one could say there is a bit of "finagalling" when it comes to terminology which somehow many people over look.
I forget the exact quote but I think in Psalms there is a part where they talk about the four corners of the earth and it being a sphere which many people like to point out as an example of the ancients knowing about the earth being round. But when you look the word up by its original definition in ancient Hebrew it translate as "Compass" which by all accounts and purposes was not a sphere in ancient Judea.
Others can point flaws to modern English translations such as the the Leviticus's part about homosexuality that there was no word for homosexual in ancient Greek. The literal translation meant "soft" or "feminine" which in ancient times more or less meant "weak willed".
The odd thing is that the Catholic Church and many Jewish Rabbis appear to have no problem with idea of evolution and big bang because they do not adhere to something that conflicts with the idea of genesis seeing that god could have used that as his method.
Ironically, most Christians who are literalists seems to ignore many of the dietary rules (Kosher, Parva, etc) set forth in the old testament that many modern Jews adhere (which also Muslims follow) and seem to not notice that Jews only read the bible in Hebrew due to the fact of the forementioned translation issues. My friend was raised conservative Jewish (not the orthodox) and she said even they would read the Torah in Jewish even in elementary bible study class at their synagogue as a young child.
That's still too much for me.
Has anyone have more info on this? Will there be online web based maps with chat based tools and possibly VoIP?
They nationalized property without compensating international businesses.
Hey now. Batista and those international businesses (US mafia) were no saints. Most of those companies were run by the Mob and Batista took bribes all the time when it came to business practices while squandering the Cuban people's money he collected through taxes and the state lottery.
Yeah, Castro was no saint either, but the amount of corruption and totalitarianism by Batista and his cohorts is almost the same. (Heck Batista overthrew elections several times).
Had the US simply accepted Castro and opened relations with him as a legitimate government he would not have turned to the Soviets for aid. Remember... The world almost went nuclear over the fact we wouldn't just acknowledge that we could work together or at least stop Batista while we had a chance when he over threw the elections and installed a dictatorship.
I don't know of the situation either, but in most organizations the owner and those who actually do the running or often different due to delegation and management issues. It could be quite possible he wasn't involved in what transpired and even then one has to really wonder about the whole issue with the donation issue with the charity organization.
That said, it is unknown if his hired hands were thieves with or without his knowledge, but even if there was no malice there appears to be incompetence at some type of financial level to have to go Chapter 11.
Black absorbs sunlight. The satellite would overheat.
Then why not install a fan on the heatsink? Oh wait...
The speed of light is a barrier like few the humanity has ever found.
Imagine if you would a cure to aging or a method to remain in stasis for hundreds or thousands of years. Once we get that out of the way, traveling to another solar system isn't that far fetched. It is suspect there is enough material in the vacuum of space between systems that could help refuel a fast traveling vessel to keep propulsion up and since there is no weather or space bacteria (that we know of) erosion and decay won't be much of a problem.
Now, granted ones who take such a trip will most likley never see their home planet again or those who they left behind so it will take a brave bunch to spend those long times in stasis or simply entertaining themselves with what ever VR or holodeck they have in the future.
I remember reading an article that if humans could at least travel close to the speed of light and sent ships from one planet to all the closest they could colonize and the repeat that the Galaxy could be colonized in about 1 million years. Now that seems a lot for us, but astronomically that is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of years it took nature to evolve intelligent life.
Now if people like Aubrey de Grey do acheive their goals of life extension then traveling thousands of years may not be that big of a deal for humans in the future.
That changes every 3 minutes or less? Simply share the onetime pad between the computer and access point over a wired connection and then make sure their clocks are exactly the same.
Of course making sure they have the same time might be the hard part?
There was a brief window of history between urbanization and computerization when real anonymity existed; that's closed and we're returning to the way humans have always lived.
Not to quibble, but before censuses and technology humans were generally anonymous up until the 1870s (varying country by country). Sure you knew your neighbors, but it wasn't quite hard to move to another town and change your name or publish works anonymously without a good way to track you. Many great works were actually published anonymously over the centuries that were often critiques of the powers that be or society in times when their life or limb was threatened.
The internet has provided some persons a way to speak out since anonymity has been repressed by the powers that being during the 20th century in many totalitarian governments.
Secondly, it isn't far fetched that someone given what you buy at a grocery store could target you in someway or another. They wouldn't do it on an individual basis but imagine if a "pro-dolphin" group saw that you were buying tuna from a questionable company and then targeted you by exposing you name on a list on their website.
The incredible inaccuracy of eye witness accounts is well known. It is also a truism that the camera lies; a singe perspective can be dangerous. Grammar has nothing to do with it. Being objective does not mean elitism.
True objectivism would review all sources and not just trusted or professional ones. Simply dismissing eye witness accounts and photographic evidence because they could be wrong is not objective either.
Take the execution of Saddam Hussein. One could troll Youtube for countless uncensored versions of it, but on the nightly news, it played without sound and usually cut off right before they dropped him.
If you think people can't handle the whole part of the news, then perhaps that is where elitism comes into play. The problem with the current professional news in all mediums is that there is some type of spin on it with subtraction of context and addition of irrelevant language.
Of course, that could simply be a problem with the English language and I'd rather see facts and unedited media first hand than have someone decide what is important to me.
"We must return to nature or we are doomed," to grossly paraphrase.
I'll disagree about the returning to nature part, but systems which have some type of natural selection are usually the ones that end up being more efficient in the real world than on paper. Take planned economy versus a free economy. There are just too many variables to economics to simply plan it out and force it to work. But when you have it setup in a way that businesses sink or swim simply but "natural" process then only the strongest or at least well managed businesses survive.
Now the organizations themselves on an individual level might be very centralized, but again it depends on how well your situation scales.
The judge's ruling seems pretty reasonable to me. What the hacker did was not insider trading, because he was not an insider, so the various regulations governming insider trading should have been found not to apply here.
I guess a good analogy would if you broke into someones home to read their wallstreet journal and then used their phone to make a call to your broker to make a trade.
Calling a broker to make the trade isn't the sticking point, but rather you broke into someone's home.
Mistakes happen all the time. The appropriate thing to look for is whether the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion. It seems that the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion which basically makes this a story about an everyday occurrence.
I think the idea is if this happens once it could happen again without too much effort. There is no real oversight on how the FBI, NSA, DHS, or any other organization acquires information nor a transparent way to gather such data.
Now, I really don't see any malicious intent on the FBI with this since of the old adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." but I get the sinking feeling that they would often find themselves in situation in which they are too lazy to follow procedure and due process like maybe a warrant.
A price. That cannot be avoided (ie piracy kills the value of objects and ideas).
Artists have been making work for centuries without often being compensated for their work and many eventually dying in abject poverty only to be recognized for their talents years after their deaths.
One could argue that if one could not make money off of art then only those really interested creating art "for the sake of art" would be doing so. If copyrights went away tomorrow, there would still be musicians playing on the street corner, photographers taking pictures, painters making paintings, and writers writer stories. Now granted there will be a lot less of them, but people still desire to create work for the reward in itself rather than a monetary return. That may be a good thing or bad things depending on how you view it but I think aesthetics will enjoy the fact corporations are no longer actively creating art and the average joe will probaly not like it because no one is making art he likes anymore.
Personally, I think the ideal solution was how things were back in the middle ages. If you wanted art, you commissioned someone to do it. If no one is willing to commission it then either you give away your works for free or don't make them. The key problem with the current system is that it derives art for profit which is sometimes shallow at best due to the fact its creating something to be consumed rather than observed as art. (Damn I sound like a turtle neck art snob with a glass of wine complaining about the sad state of affairs at the New York Art gallery, but I hope you get my point)
Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...
That said, FiOS can't be rolled out fast enough. Sadly, most people have either cable or DSL and sometimes only cable as a choice for broad band.
I'd love to vote with my wallet, but its either them or dial up.
Sounds like your own life of abuse makes you automatically associate someone having a SO and not playing games with "abusive girlfriend". You should get that problem seen to.
No. I'm fine... Its just that I've had many friends over the years simply loose themselves because they were in a relationship that was unhealthy for them, stopped doing the things they once enjoyed, and now are miserable.
If your the situation with your SO isn't giving you time to do things that you like (such as play computer games like Spore or even watch football with the guys) then you'll probaly start to resent them even if they aren't actively forcing you to not do those things.
What I think I'm saying is that having a life is no excuse for not doing the things you really like. On the flip side, there are people I know who work so much that they have neither time for a SO or games and are pretty miserable too.
Personally, a relationship cannot simply be about the fact you just be someone that happens to be of opposite sex, but rather you need to share some interests. If you don't play video games anymore... Fine! But don't tell people that it is because you are in a relationship, have kids, work 40 hours, and are too busy!
There are plenty of people who do all of the above and still find time to play games for their personal enjoyment.
Consider that a well-coordinated cyberattack on certain intelligence assets could bring down our satellite monitoring services long enough to blind us to ASAT launches.
Strategically, it would be a bad idea for any nuclear super to attempt to attack (conventionally or cyber-wise) another nuclear nations spy satellite or ICBM detection systems even if no real attack was forthcoming or just a normal conventional attack. The nation who was blinded or had their communications disrupted would assume the worse is happening and proceed with a nuclear retaliation even if that was the case.
In fact, I'd rather have an rival nation with a sufficient spy and communications that were not prone to failure in case a false-positive of an attack.
If you really did want a situation of first strike it would actually be in the interest of the attack to make it seem as if no pending attack was imminent and then attack with something more low tech such as a nuke in a shipping container or a cruise missile under the radar.
I no longer use a PC, and I'm no longer in college. Most of my free time is spent away from the computer, doing errands (food, misc. real life stuff), or spending time with my wonderful girlfriend.
For some reason I suspect you drink a lot, take zoloft, or do you just enjoy the beatings your girlfriend gives when you ask if you can hang out with your friends after work?
But seriously, I don't know about you but I'm in my 30s and if my girlfriend doesn't at least tolerate my gaming and activities then she won't be for long. Luckily, the one I got loves her DS way more than I love mine. (I'm more of a computer FPS person)
Truth is... If you date someone for looks rather than interests, they are going to get on your skin real fast once they get old.
Side warning to the F/OSS community: That multitude of eyes may become even more important as we start to wonder, is the Godfather contributing? It doesn't even have to be in terms of direct backdoors, only has to be an exploitable bug which of course don't make the contributor look as bad.
How do know that a low paid programmer at Microsoft hasn't been bribed by organized crime and if so how do you detect the code?
What happens if your employer loses a laptop with your SSN, name, etc on it?
If you are paranoid like me you will have already called one of three major credit companies (not the free score but Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion) and put a freeze on your credit every 90 days with a fraud alert. Or you can pay one of their subsidaries a monthly fee for any notifications via email or SMS of any changes or requests in your credit (yeah it kind of feels like I'm paying them to solve a problem that is their fault).
On the downside you won't be able to get new credit lines easily while your account is locked so do this after you get your mortgage or car loan. On the upside... No one can do anything with your information without causing some major red flags. Also it seems that the junk mail has ceased.
Just a suggestion for those paranoid types.