Even if they were TRYING to respect the 4th amendment and the traditional NSA distinction between foreign and domestic spying, it wouldn't matter with this type of collection. Such a large fishnet would inevitably yield *way* more "false positives" than actual criminal calls. I would not be surprised if this program didn't even catch a single true terrorist of foreign threat.
This leads to the inevitable question of whether sussing out foreign threats was even the program's *intention* (rather than just its justification). If the guy in this article is telling the truth, it would seem that it was never about foreign threats to the U.S. at all, but rather about spying on domestic threats to the Bush Administration and plugging leaks (a la Richard Nixon's plumbers).
Hi, I represent Uncle Sam. Please understand that we must ask you some strict questions before we can give you your bailout money. First of all, would you like your bailout in 20 or 100 dollar bills? Secondly, do you PROMISE not to blow it on hookers and executive jets, cross your heart? And finally, what percentage of your bailout would you like to allocate in political contributions to the Congressmen who gave you this bailout?
As a follow-uy I finally did find a Britannica entry on Cherenkov Radiation, featuring all of a paragraph of info and no pictures (had to use Google, not Britannica's own search engine, to find it). Now, compare that to the Wikipedia entry. And they WONDER why Wikipedia's articles rank higher?!?!
It's also the fact that Wikipedia just has so much more content and depth, especially on specific topics (Britannica just has articles on the big and obvious stuff). The sheer volume of information on Wikipedia makes Britannica look like a Kindergartner's encyclopedia. Just this morning, on an earlier topic on plutonium, someone on/. pointed to a fascinating Wikipedia entry on "Cherenkov Radiation" (in response to someone saying that radiation didn't actually make things glow in real life). Later I went and typed in "Cherenkov Radiation" in Britannica just to compare and got...well nothing. Britannica has an article on "radiation" in general, but nothing nearly as specific as this.
I picture a Britannica HQ populated by a bunch of old farts complaining about the "kids and their damned internets." When they decided to develop an online version, they probably just went with the first developer who could impress them with some cheap Flash and a lot of impressive-sounding jargon. "That guy really knows his internets," was no doubt overheard at the end of his presentation.
I would wonder even HOW they plan to review changes. Aside from the sheer volume issue (Good morning editors, each of you will be reviewing 14,850 edits in the next 8 hours), there is also the question of exactly HOW they can practically review technical changes for accuracy, without a wide variety of specialists on staff. Are they going to phone up a physicist every time someone changes a few sentences on the "Quantum Mechanics" article? And how are they going to deal with academically debated topics? Wikipedia does it by democracy, basically. But, with editors, Britannica is now going to be faced with editors having to "choose sides" on debates which they know nothing about.
Well Jorge, first of all you take a swipe at Google for respecting the very encyclopedia that you yourself are tacitly acknowledging is at least somewhat superior (by imitating it). Then you show just how PROFOUNDLY out of touch you are by insisting that your changes will require editorial review (unless you're about to expand your editorial staff with thousands of new hires, you must not be expecting much participation).
Sorry, but this is just pathetic. If this is the best you can do online, just stick with what you do best (the printed page). Admittedly, Brittanica has always been a great source for academic quality articles, especially back when basic information was hard to come by. But this sort of half-hearted effort only highlights just how much you still don't "get it."
Star Trek was too hopelessly utopian to be taken seriously. Every moral issue was just a setup for the Federation to show off how much more enlightened it was than everyone else. Only DS9 departed from that tired formula (and, appropriately, it was on DS9 that Galactica creator Ronald Moore started as a writer).
Yeah, that's called "realism." People in real life often rarely grow sufficiently large backbones to "do the right thing" either, particularly when they're threatened and running for their lives.
And, as for secrets, is there any one of us who doesn't carry a TON of those around with them? Do you wake up every day and tell your wife that she's become a fat, bitter shrew and that you don't want to be married to her anymore because you want to go find a cute younger woman who isn't a fat, bitter shrew? Do you tell your kids that you're disappointed that they're not as smart or handsome as you'd hoped they'd be? Do you tell your boss he's a fucking idiot and that you think you could do a better job than him? Do you tell you mother that you don't want to visit her or call her because you're too different from her now to have anything to talk about? Do you tell yourself that you're not the hero of the story, just another loser in a world full of losers?
I was a kid when the original BSG was on in the late 70's, and so remember it fondly (I can still remember how sad I and other kids were when they cancelled it). And when I heard they were bringing it back as a miniseries, I was skeptical to say the least. My first thought was "Jesus, can't Hollywood come up with ANYTHING original anymore?" and my second thought (after hearing that Starbuck and Boomer would be female) was "Oh great, and they've made it politically correct too, even better." At that point, I vowed I would never waste my time on it.
Then a funny thing happened. I was flipping around and caught a bit of the miniseries, a way into the first night (just after the nukes hit). It was the scene where Helo and Boomer put down on Caprica for repairs and are faced with a mob fleeing for their lives. It was one of the most powerful and dramatic scenes I had ever seen on television. The contrast with the original, where the colonials seemed to forget that their entire civilization had been wiped out almost immediately after it happened, was just stunning. And the obvious connection to 9-11 was immediate and visceral (I don't think this series could have been made before 9-11, certainly not with this kind of gritty realism).
From that point on, I wasn't a skeptic.
And just when I thought I had seen the best it could offer, along comes the first season and it somehow managed to get even BETTER. The premiere episode of that season ("33") was absolutely brilliant, "Hand of God" was touching and dramatic, and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" bordered on an almost mystical experience (the opening to that two-parter has to be the harshest montage to ever grace a television screen).
Now, the series has had its ups and downs since then. They've never again equalled the quality of the miniseries and first season, IMHO (though individual episodes like "Flight of the Phoenix" have come close). But even at its worst, this is still the best thing on television.
This skeptic will miss you greatly. Nothing else even comes close.
Games like Too Human, Daikatana, and Duke Nukem: Forever have all become legendary in the video game industry because of development delays, but few titles have managed to achieve the notoriety in recent memory that Ghostbusters: The Video Game has
I'm sorry, but Duke Nuke'em Forever is the GOLD STANDARD of developmental delays. It's the Mac Daddy. It's the God and King. It's to developmental delays what Elvis is to rock and roll, what Ozzy is to metal, what Airplane! is to spoof films. Nothing else even deserves to be spoken in the same sentence.
...it's to drive MS and other software companies into bankruptcy just to chase some hippie ideal.
Go ahead mark me troll, but have any of you seriously given thought to what will happen if open source were to become the norm and all these people were out of work, being asked to volunteer the skills they once got paid for?
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Bah, just go back to 1985, when they were selling it in every corner drugstore.
If I were Balmer, this dumbass would be the first one of those 5,000 laid off.
Even more sad is when the successor to said evil-doers himself intends to protect the criminals that helped do it.
Those were probably the only emails they DIDN'T collect.
Even if they were TRYING to respect the 4th amendment and the traditional NSA distinction between foreign and domestic spying, it wouldn't matter with this type of collection. Such a large fishnet would inevitably yield *way* more "false positives" than actual criminal calls. I would not be surprised if this program didn't even catch a single true terrorist of foreign threat.
This leads to the inevitable question of whether sussing out foreign threats was even the program's *intention* (rather than just its justification). If the guy in this article is telling the truth, it would seem that it was never about foreign threats to the U.S. at all, but rather about spying on domestic threats to the Bush Administration and plugging leaks (a la Richard Nixon's plumbers).
Don't be ridiculous. The NSA isn't monitoring your private communications, Mr. Rowland...uh, I mean anonymous coward.
Hi, I represent Uncle Sam. Please understand that we must ask you some strict questions before we can give you your bailout money. First of all, would you like your bailout in 20 or 100 dollar bills? Secondly, do you PROMISE not to blow it on hookers and executive jets, cross your heart? And finally, what percentage of your bailout would you like to allocate in political contributions to the Congressmen who gave you this bailout?
As a follow-uy I finally did find a Britannica entry on Cherenkov Radiation, featuring all of a paragraph of info and no pictures (had to use Google, not Britannica's own search engine, to find it). Now, compare that to the Wikipedia entry. And they WONDER why Wikipedia's articles rank higher?!?!
It's also the fact that Wikipedia just has so much more content and depth, especially on specific topics (Britannica just has articles on the big and obvious stuff). The sheer volume of information on Wikipedia makes Britannica look like a Kindergartner's encyclopedia. Just this morning, on an earlier topic on plutonium, someone on /. pointed to a fascinating Wikipedia entry on "Cherenkov Radiation" (in response to someone saying that radiation didn't actually make things glow in real life). Later I went and typed in "Cherenkov Radiation" in Britannica just to compare and got...well nothing. Britannica has an article on "radiation" in general, but nothing nearly as specific as this.
I picture a Britannica HQ populated by a bunch of old farts complaining about the "kids and their damned internets." When they decided to develop an online version, they probably just went with the first developer who could impress them with some cheap Flash and a lot of impressive-sounding jargon. "That guy really knows his internets," was no doubt overheard at the end of his presentation.
I would wonder even HOW they plan to review changes. Aside from the sheer volume issue (Good morning editors, each of you will be reviewing 14,850 edits in the next 8 hours), there is also the question of exactly HOW they can practically review technical changes for accuracy, without a wide variety of specialists on staff. Are they going to phone up a physicist every time someone changes a few sentences on the "Quantum Mechanics" article? And how are they going to deal with academically debated topics? Wikipedia does it by democracy, basically. But, with editors, Britannica is now going to be faced with editors having to "choose sides" on debates which they know nothing about.
'Tis not science, I tell you, 'tis the result of congress with Lucifer!
This may become the most famous Sexeteria since the one in Jerusalem.
Well Jorge, first of all you take a swipe at Google for respecting the very encyclopedia that you yourself are tacitly acknowledging is at least somewhat superior (by imitating it). Then you show just how PROFOUNDLY out of touch you are by insisting that your changes will require editorial review (unless you're about to expand your editorial staff with thousands of new hires, you must not be expecting much participation).
Sorry, but this is just pathetic. If this is the best you can do online, just stick with what you do best (the printed page). Admittedly, Brittanica has always been a great source for academic quality articles, especially back when basic information was hard to come by. But this sort of half-hearted effort only highlights just how much you still don't "get it."
Year, except Galactica uses actual drama, not just melodrama. It's also not just a hopelessly one-sided, where liberals are always noble and right.
Star Trek was too hopelessly utopian to be taken seriously. Every moral issue was just a setup for the Federation to show off how much more enlightened it was than everyone else. Only DS9 departed from that tired formula (and, appropriately, it was on DS9 that Galactica creator Ronald Moore started as a writer).
2. Racist Americans assumed Japanese soldiers to be fanatical killing machines.
I wonder if the people of Nanking would consider that an unfair characterization of the Japanese military at the time? Or are they just racists too?
Yeah, that's called "realism." People in real life often rarely grow sufficiently large backbones to "do the right thing" either, particularly when they're threatened and running for their lives.
And, as for secrets, is there any one of us who doesn't carry a TON of those around with them? Do you wake up every day and tell your wife that she's become a fat, bitter shrew and that you don't want to be married to her anymore because you want to go find a cute younger woman who isn't a fat, bitter shrew? Do you tell your kids that you're disappointed that they're not as smart or handsome as you'd hoped they'd be? Do you tell your boss he's a fucking idiot and that you think you could do a better job than him? Do you tell you mother that you don't want to visit her or call her because you're too different from her now to have anything to talk about? Do you tell yourself that you're not the hero of the story, just another loser in a world full of losers?
I was a kid when the original BSG was on in the late 70's, and so remember it fondly (I can still remember how sad I and other kids were when they cancelled it). And when I heard they were bringing it back as a miniseries, I was skeptical to say the least. My first thought was "Jesus, can't Hollywood come up with ANYTHING original anymore?" and my second thought (after hearing that Starbuck and Boomer would be female) was "Oh great, and they've made it politically correct too, even better." At that point, I vowed I would never waste my time on it.
Then a funny thing happened. I was flipping around and caught a bit of the miniseries, a way into the first night (just after the nukes hit). It was the scene where Helo and Boomer put down on Caprica for repairs and are faced with a mob fleeing for their lives. It was one of the most powerful and dramatic scenes I had ever seen on television. The contrast with the original, where the colonials seemed to forget that their entire civilization had been wiped out almost immediately after it happened, was just stunning. And the obvious connection to 9-11 was immediate and visceral (I don't think this series could have been made before 9-11, certainly not with this kind of gritty realism).
From that point on, I wasn't a skeptic.
And just when I thought I had seen the best it could offer, along comes the first season and it somehow managed to get even BETTER. The premiere episode of that season ("33") was absolutely brilliant, "Hand of God" was touching and dramatic, and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" bordered on an almost mystical experience (the opening to that two-parter has to be the harshest montage to ever grace a television screen).
Now, the series has had its ups and downs since then. They've never again equalled the quality of the miniseries and first season, IMHO (though individual episodes like "Flight of the Phoenix" have come close). But even at its worst, this is still the best thing on television.
This skeptic will miss you greatly. Nothing else even comes close.
Most of us have to code our sites for the benefit of our clients and users, not our own egos.
Quoting from the article:
Games like Too Human, Daikatana, and Duke Nukem: Forever have all become legendary in the video game industry because of development delays, but few titles have managed to achieve the notoriety in recent memory that Ghostbusters: The Video Game has
I'm sorry, but Duke Nuke'em Forever is the GOLD STANDARD of developmental delays. It's the Mac Daddy. It's the God and King. It's to developmental delays what Elvis is to rock and roll, what Ozzy is to metal, what Airplane! is to spoof films. Nothing else even deserves to be spoken in the same sentence.
I used to think so too. Then I found out that my landlord stubbornly refuses to take satisfaction in lieu of cash.
But they've made millions and millions of theoretical dollars. Those are just as good as regular dollars...right?
...it's to drive MS and other software companies into bankruptcy just to chase some hippie ideal.
Go ahead mark me troll, but have any of you seriously given thought to what will happen if open source were to become the norm and all these people were out of work, being asked to volunteer the skills they once got paid for?
In their defense, the page is being hosted on a Commodore 64. Every time you click on to the next page, they have to swap out discs.