The Rs want big brother and to funnel all the money to the 0.1%. The Ds want big brother and to spread the money around.
Sure must be nice to live in a universe where one major party actually wants a fair wealth distribution...how do I get there from my parallel world where we have on Republicrat party that just wants power for itself?
D or R, all politicians *are* the 1%. I heard a congressman the other day refer to himself as "lower middle class" -- when he's in the top fraction of 1%! So even if they *want* to help lower income Americans (which I haven't seen much evidence of), how the hell can they actually do that when they consider 4x the median salary to be "low income"?
Where in the Constitution does it say that the US government has zero legal constraints on its actions outside of US territories? Because that seems to be your argument. I mean if there's a declaration of war or something, fine, that's all constitutional. But we can't just go abduct someone in the middle of London and deprive them of their rights and say that it's all perfectly legal under US law because we aren't acting within US territory (Sure, we've done that before, but it wasn't constitutional). Of course doing so would probably be illegal under British law, but it's illegal under US law as well.
And to be perfectly clear, let me repeat that I'm *certainly* not saying the Constitution applies to the actions of *other* governments within their territory. They can do what they want. But it constrains any and all actions of the US federal government, regardless of where that action takes place.
Furthermore -- under the Constitution, the federal government's powers are explicitly enumerated, and they do not have the power to do anything that is not enumerated. Therefore, if it doesn't say that they're allowed to violate these rights outside of their territories, then they aren't. It's that simple.
Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
Why on earth would that be true? What law would he be held in prison under?
That's the point! The Fifth Amendment is exactly what prohibits such a law!
But in the hypothetical situation of not having this protection -- I imagine the charges would be something like contempt of court or obstruction of justice or perjury. They say 'we know you did it, admit it!' and you say 'no, I'm innocent' and they say 'we're arresting you for obstruction of justice for not admitting what you did!' -- that is the sort of tyranny the 5th amendment is protecting against.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done.
No it doesn't. The 5th amendment says nothing about whether they can arrest you, or how much evidence they need before they arrest you. It merely says something about whether you're allowed to hide the truth of the situation from one investigating party, and then pull it out at the last minute.
Have you read it? Because the exact phrase is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" -- and I can't see any way that can be interpreted to be about someone changing their story. It says quite plainly that you can't be compelled to testify against yourself. You can't be forced (which would generally be under threat of criminal prosecution) to produce evidence of your own guilt. Because you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. So if you're testifying, you haven't been proven guilty yet, so how can they compel you to give evidence that you committed a crime which you are (presumably) innocent of?
The comment was about U.S. citizens who think their constitutional rights DO apply outside the U.S. (they don't)
Please show me where in the US Constitution it restricts the Bill of Rights to within US borders or to applying only to US citizens. Neither of those restrictions are present.
Granted, it doesn't have any legal weight against OTHER governments -- but it doesn't have that even within our borders! It's specifically about what *the US government* may and may not do, and that applies anywhere in the world. Contrary to Bush's and Obama's wishes, the US Constitution still applies in Guantanamo Bay as well as the CIA black sites in Europe and Africa, and anywhere else in or outside of this world. Shit even if we somehow found a path to parallel dimensions, it'd still apply there too.
I'm pretty sure a significant part of the US population think that their constitutional rights also apply outside of the US...
That's because they do. Our *constitutional rights* (not the same thing as 'our rights') are restrictions on the power of our government. Take part of the first amendment -- they cannot restrict our freedom of speech. Now, whether I'm in Pennsylvania or fuckin Japan, *the US government* cannot take any action to restrict my freedom of speech. They also cannot take any action to restrict the freedom of speech of a Japanese citizen sitting in Tokyo -- the Bill of Rights does not say what rights citizens have; it does not say what powers the government has within its borders; it says what the government may NEVER do, to ANY persons. If they meant citizens, they would have fucking said citizens. They use that term elsewhere in the document. And if they meant within US borders, they would have said within US borders. They do not.
(aside, seriously, what *is* the logic behind the 5th? Why should you have the right to not own up to things you've done?)
Either they have sufficient proof that you've done it, or they don't.
If they do, they don't need you to testify.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done. Which is pretty important, considering that you may still be innocent. In fact, there have been people *on death row* proven to be innocent. Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
In western PA at least, highway generally referred to pretty much any numbered route, usually having a speed limit of 55MPH or greater.
Interstates are...well, federally designated as such, so that's pretty clear.
'Freeway' is some strange term people use on the west coast. I have never actually heard anyone ever use that term. But I've read that in some specific regions, freeway is generally used to mean larger divided roads with fewer on and off ramps (basically roads built like interstates but not designated as such I guess). Other places it means large roads with no tolls ("free-as-in-beer"-ways)
What about secrets that are good for humanity but bad for the person -- Possibly a Snowden type situation, possibly just an employee advising against purchasing from his own company due to some internal reasonings. Good for the people he's advising, but the company may fire him if they find out. Anonymity is VERY important.
Don't forget the ones who have all of the training and equipment to actually be able to carry out an attack provided by our own law enforcement officials, so they can swoop in at the last moment and play the hero...
1) take photo 2) do steno stuff to hide data 3) delete original
Ideally you wanna get a digital camera with a ton of megapixels and a very crappy sensor -- ie, one with a very noisy image. I've got a Canon SX100IS that should do nicely, particularly if you use dim lighting...
Seriously, you get the point I'm making, but you're going to dispute it based on a single word chosen? Sure, a replica black powder pistol still works and can still shoot someone, but you think you'd get more than a couple shots off before being stopped? If you start shooting people with a freakin original Springfield rifle in the middle of a shopping mall, the moment you pull out that ramrod you're going down! How many shots until you have to reload? How long is it gonna take to do that? How many people own and fire such guns today, compared to when they were first produced? How expensive is the ammo? How long would it take to produce *by hand*?
Point is, OF COURSE the guns will still be around; OF COURSE they'll still be lethal; but it'd make them a hell of a lot less likely to be used in mass shootings.
Of course, this all assumes you could somehow cease global production of new firearms or halt any and all smuggling. Which we all know is absurd.
So once the FBI subpeona'd Tor to get the IP number that sent the threat, it was a done deal.
...what? Do you know what Tor is? That sentence doesn't even make sense...
My guess is: Tor only encrypts things that are passing through Tor. So if the email provider he was using didn't secure the session (and I'm pretty sure most don't) then they probably had a copy of the email *leaving* the Harvard network before it even hit Tor.
Depends how you define "enemies". Which the Constitution doesn't entirely define.
Members of the armed forces however swear an oath which includes the line: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
Now, if we use that definition of enemies, it is enemies of *the Constitution*, and is explicitly defined to include domestic enemies. If you accept that the NSA's actions are violating the constitution, then they are indeed an "enemy" under that particular definition. Of course, if their actions are declared legal by the supreme court, that decision is legally a part of the Constitution and they could therefore not *legally* be considered traitors...but until then and for any issues not explicitly decided on by the courts, that question remains open.
Do you mean to say that those on the right never say statements that are misleading?
You should never assume -- particularly on Slashdot, in my experience -- that people are die-hard supporters of one of two non-existent "teams".
Particularly when there's so little difference between them...odds are anyone who is actually paying attention and hates one is going to hate the other just as much.
Embedded links are meant to be fetched only by the recipient's browser.
No, they're not. They're public URLs, and the only sane assumption is that anybody and everybody can and will try to access those. If it needs to be secure, it needs a login.
For google to play man in the middle, and pre-fetch all of these urls, may well be illegal.
Again, my ISP does it. My university did it. My employer does it. Everybody does it. You lost this battle at least a decade ago man. It's already over and accepted. That's just how proxies work. And yes, it is like caching DNS requests -- when I request a DNS entry, my ISP does not go out and get the location of my request on demand. They already have it stored somewhere, from some other request, probably not even initiated by a user in many cases,
That you are willing to hand over this right, without even a hint of objection is somewhat disturbing.
What "right"? First of all, rights (at least in American law) don't really come into play in a private business relationship. That's why NDAs are legal even though you have a right to free speech.
Secondly, sure I'm willing to allow them to do that in order to better combat spam and such. Actually, *I* don't, because I don't load images. Ever. But even if I did, it's not like they're secretly monitoring everything you view. It's an automated system proxying requests. It's entirely public, and it's not being analyzed -- at least not in regards to *you*. If that is found to be false, then I'd be concerned. Until then, why the hell *would* I care?
That you are unaware of how embedded links work in html email suggests you probably aren't the best person to be commenting on this subject.
I certainly know what a URL is -- do *YOU*?
Email is not a secure technology, and it's pretty well assumed that each endpoint at least will perform some automated processes on the contents of your message. These images are embedded into the message, which makes them a part of that message -- just like the Slashdot logo is a part of the Slashdot page, even though it's really just a URL that points to a separate resource. So why in your mind is it legal to scan some parts of the message, but not others?
Also, I would perhaps be somewhat outraged were they following href attributes. But they're not; they're following src attributes. There's a difference.
Easily defeated. Google loads a couple of the images, detects they're all the same, detects they're placed the same in the message, determines the pattern and replaces all images fitting that pattern with the first copy downloaded from their cache.
...which is why we're requiring a greater use of hazardous chemicals which are all but certain to not be properly disposed, rather than the relatively harmless materials in a standard incandescent bulb?
CFLs may use less energy, but there's a lot more mercury (not a ton, but that's infinitely more than 'none at all') So talk about dumping chemicals may not be the most persuasive argument here....
As Google *always* cache the image, the sender does not knows anymore when or even if the image was viewed and, so, doesn't knows anymore if the email was opened.
If they have specific knowledge about Gmail. Unfortunately, mailers that don't would make the more dangerous assumption (that you read the mail) under that behavior.
...which will result in a massive amount of their spam mailings being sent to Gmail addresses which do not exist, which I'd hope Google would be smart enough to detect as a sign of spam. After all, if you're using standard double-opt-in, it shouldn't really be possible to get any non-existent addresses on your list.
So, contrary to that being the most damaging possible result, it may actually be the most *helpful* possible result in terms of curtailing spam.
Unless you have previously enabled 'don't load external content' (which is off by default), external images will now load by default. Prior to this change they would not.
Here's a novel idea: If you want to know your readers' opinions, how about you *ask them* instead of assuming you are the all-knowing guru who best knows what everybody else wants?
Yes, I realize that's difficult. Yes, I realize most people won't respond. Those people don't care, so why should you? Then your data will be based on people who actually want and read your mailings rather than people like me who just open everything so it's all marked as read. Although I block all images anyway to prevent the exact sort of spyware you're pushing....
Its not at all clear that Google has the right to cache image files that were intended to be sent directly from my Brokerage account to me via an embedded URL in an email.
Right. And I suppose they may have no legal right to scan for spam or viruses? And my ISP has no legal right to cache traffic like DNS requests?
Your service providers can do pretty much whatever they want. If you have a problem with that, use encryption.
Bush being a crony corporatist doesn't mean Obama isn't also a crony corporatist. In fact, if they have an (R) or a (D) in front of their name, they are probably a crony corporatist.
Spoken like a true Ayn Rand Paul Coo Coo Nut. .
How's the tea? A bit bitter?
Every socialist or anarchist or even "progressive democrat" I know would say the exact same thing regarding the major parties being corporatist. In fact, the main problem we all have with the Libertarian (as in the party, not the concept) or "Tea Party" types is that they're the only ones we can find who would argue AGAINST this concept! Although even many of them will take this corruption as a given -- they just consider it to be beneficial for some twisted reason...
I've never encountered a virus that was more difficult to remove than Norton. I've also never had as much damage from a virus as the damaged caused by simply running Norton. I quite honestly treat Norton as malware.
Try a machine with both Norton and McAfee installed side-by-side.
That was a few years ago. My god that thing was SLOW. Two bloated virus scanners constantly scanning, and constantly interrupting and messing with the other...literally would take more than thirty minutes to get the control panel open. Ended up going in with a Linux LiveCD, overwriting the executables for both of those, and suddenly the PC was actually *usable*!
That, and a few other problems with that same system, are what got me to also start thinking of Norton as malware...
Well...what is going wrong? Anything? Are you sure it's worth the effort?
My parents are still using the same ancient Dell laptop they bought when my brother and I were still in highschool (I graduated college two years ago; he's now working on his PhD). It's unpatched Windows XP, and the only real security software on there is Avast! free antivirus. Other than re-registering Avast! every couple months when I'm home, I have never had to touch that system. And now they're mostly switching over to tablets and such.
Are your parents REALLY doing anything so risky that they need such a high level of protection? For casual browsing and such you really shouldn't need any more than a decent anti-virus tool. If they need more, find and plug the holes and move on.
Hell my parents don't even get backups -- because frankly, anything essential is already "in the cloud." Should there be some catastrophe I can't recover from (which has never occurred), the worst-case is I restore from the backup I took last time I had their computer (months ago) and tell my dad I lost part of his music collection (most of which he isn't even aware he has -- it's a few hundred gigs at this point). Everything truly critical they have on there is based on some sort of online service, so it's all safely "in the cloud" where I don't have to deal with it.
Although I will say one of the best things I ever did was move my mom from directly accessing her Comcast email through Outlook to placing gmail in there as a middle-man. She still uses the Comcast address, but her now multiple devices stay in sync, and in an emergency I can help her login to the web interface from anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
The Rs want big brother and to funnel all the money to the 0.1%. The Ds want big brother and to spread the money around.
Sure must be nice to live in a universe where one major party actually wants a fair wealth distribution...how do I get there from my parallel world where we have on Republicrat party that just wants power for itself?
D or R, all politicians *are* the 1%. I heard a congressman the other day refer to himself as "lower middle class" -- when he's in the top fraction of 1%! So even if they *want* to help lower income Americans (which I haven't seen much evidence of), how the hell can they actually do that when they consider 4x the median salary to be "low income"?
Where in the Constitution does it say that the US government has zero legal constraints on its actions outside of US territories? Because that seems to be your argument. I mean if there's a declaration of war or something, fine, that's all constitutional. But we can't just go abduct someone in the middle of London and deprive them of their rights and say that it's all perfectly legal under US law because we aren't acting within US territory (Sure, we've done that before, but it wasn't constitutional). Of course doing so would probably be illegal under British law, but it's illegal under US law as well.
And to be perfectly clear, let me repeat that I'm *certainly* not saying the Constitution applies to the actions of *other* governments within their territory. They can do what they want. But it constrains any and all actions of the US federal government, regardless of where that action takes place.
Furthermore -- under the Constitution, the federal government's powers are explicitly enumerated, and they do not have the power to do anything that is not enumerated. Therefore, if it doesn't say that they're allowed to violate these rights outside of their territories, then they aren't. It's that simple.
Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
Why on earth would that be true? What law would he be held in prison under?
That's the point! The Fifth Amendment is exactly what prohibits such a law!
But in the hypothetical situation of not having this protection -- I imagine the charges would be something like contempt of court or obstruction of justice or perjury. They say 'we know you did it, admit it!' and you say 'no, I'm innocent' and they say 'we're arresting you for obstruction of justice for not admitting what you did!' -- that is the sort of tyranny the 5th amendment is protecting against.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done.
No it doesn't. The 5th amendment says nothing about whether they can arrest you, or how much evidence they need before they arrest you. It merely says something about whether you're allowed to hide the truth of the situation from one investigating party, and then pull it out at the last minute.
Have you read it? Because the exact phrase is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" -- and I can't see any way that can be interpreted to be about someone changing their story. It says quite plainly that you can't be compelled to testify against yourself. You can't be forced (which would generally be under threat of criminal prosecution) to produce evidence of your own guilt. Because you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. So if you're testifying, you haven't been proven guilty yet, so how can they compel you to give evidence that you committed a crime which you are (presumably) innocent of?
The comment was about U.S. citizens who think their constitutional rights DO apply outside the U.S. (they don't)
Please show me where in the US Constitution it restricts the Bill of Rights to within US borders or to applying only to US citizens. Neither of those restrictions are present.
Granted, it doesn't have any legal weight against OTHER governments -- but it doesn't have that even within our borders! It's specifically about what *the US government* may and may not do, and that applies anywhere in the world. Contrary to Bush's and Obama's wishes, the US Constitution still applies in Guantanamo Bay as well as the CIA black sites in Europe and Africa, and anywhere else in or outside of this world. Shit even if we somehow found a path to parallel dimensions, it'd still apply there too.
I'm pretty sure a significant part of the US population think that their constitutional rights also apply outside of the US...
That's because they do. Our *constitutional rights* (not the same thing as 'our rights') are restrictions on the power of our government. Take part of the first amendment -- they cannot restrict our freedom of speech. Now, whether I'm in Pennsylvania or fuckin Japan, *the US government* cannot take any action to restrict my freedom of speech. They also cannot take any action to restrict the freedom of speech of a Japanese citizen sitting in Tokyo -- the Bill of Rights does not say what rights citizens have; it does not say what powers the government has within its borders; it says what the government may NEVER do, to ANY persons. If they meant citizens, they would have fucking said citizens. They use that term elsewhere in the document. And if they meant within US borders, they would have said within US borders. They do not.
(aside, seriously, what *is* the logic behind the 5th? Why should you have the right to not own up to things you've done?)
Either they have sufficient proof that you've done it, or they don't.
If they do, they don't need you to testify.
If they don't, the 5th amendment says they can't arrest you for not admitting to something they *think* you've done. Which is pretty important, considering that you may still be innocent. In fact, there have been people *on death row* proven to be innocent. Without the 5th amendment, an innocent man in prison could be punished for saying he is innocent.
In western PA at least, highway generally referred to pretty much any numbered route, usually having a speed limit of 55MPH or greater.
Interstates are...well, federally designated as such, so that's pretty clear.
'Freeway' is some strange term people use on the west coast. I have never actually heard anyone ever use that term. But I've read that in some specific regions, freeway is generally used to mean larger divided roads with fewer on and off ramps (basically roads built like interstates but not designated as such I guess). Other places it means large roads with no tolls ("free-as-in-beer"-ways)
Tell that to the people of Libya.
What about secrets that are good for humanity but bad for the person -- Possibly a Snowden type situation, possibly just an employee advising against purchasing from his own company due to some internal reasonings. Good for the people he's advising, but the company may fire him if they find out. Anonymity is VERY important.
Don't forget the ones who have all of the training and equipment to actually be able to carry out an attack provided by our own law enforcement officials, so they can swoop in at the last moment and play the hero...
If you can make the diff of the documents
1) take photo
2) do steno stuff to hide data
3) delete original
Ideally you wanna get a digital camera with a ton of megapixels and a very crappy sensor -- ie, one with a very noisy image. I've got a Canon SX100IS that should do nicely, particularly if you use dim lighting...
The only people who say spraying, as if guns were garden hoses, are those who have never fired a gun.
Oh hey look, it's me, and what's that in my hand...?
https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/8916_141224576484_3554876_n.jpg
Seriously, you get the point I'm making, but you're going to dispute it based on a single word chosen? Sure, a replica black powder pistol still works and can still shoot someone, but you think you'd get more than a couple shots off before being stopped? If you start shooting people with a freakin original Springfield rifle in the middle of a shopping mall, the moment you pull out that ramrod you're going down! How many shots until you have to reload? How long is it gonna take to do that? How many people own and fire such guns today, compared to when they were first produced? How expensive is the ammo? How long would it take to produce *by hand*?
Point is, OF COURSE the guns will still be around; OF COURSE they'll still be lethal; but it'd make them a hell of a lot less likely to be used in mass shootings.
Of course, this all assumes you could somehow cease global production of new firearms or halt any and all smuggling. Which we all know is absurd.
So once the FBI subpeona'd Tor to get the IP number that sent the threat, it was a done deal.
...what? Do you know what Tor is? That sentence doesn't even make sense...
My guess is: Tor only encrypts things that are passing through Tor. So if the email provider he was using didn't secure the session (and I'm pretty sure most don't) then they probably had a copy of the email *leaving* the Harvard network before it even hit Tor.
Depends how you define "enemies". Which the Constitution doesn't entirely define.
Members of the armed forces however swear an oath which includes the line: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
Now, if we use that definition of enemies, it is enemies of *the Constitution*, and is explicitly defined to include domestic enemies. If you accept that the NSA's actions are violating the constitution, then they are indeed an "enemy" under that particular definition. Of course, if their actions are declared legal by the supreme court, that decision is legally a part of the Constitution and they could therefore not *legally* be considered traitors...but until then and for any issues not explicitly decided on by the courts, that question remains open.
Do you mean to say that those on the right never say statements that are misleading?
You should never assume -- particularly on Slashdot, in my experience -- that people are die-hard supporters of one of two non-existent "teams".
Particularly when there's so little difference between them...odds are anyone who is actually paying attention and hates one is going to hate the other just as much.
Embedded links are meant to be fetched only by the recipient's browser.
No, they're not. They're public URLs, and the only sane assumption is that anybody and everybody can and will try to access those. If it needs to be secure, it needs a login.
For google to play man in the middle, and pre-fetch all of these urls, may well be illegal.
Again, my ISP does it. My university did it. My employer does it. Everybody does it. You lost this battle at least a decade ago man. It's already over and accepted. That's just how proxies work. And yes, it is like caching DNS requests -- when I request a DNS entry, my ISP does not go out and get the location of my request on demand. They already have it stored somewhere, from some other request, probably not even initiated by a user in many cases,
That you are willing to hand over this right, without even a hint of objection is somewhat disturbing.
What "right"? First of all, rights (at least in American law) don't really come into play in a private business relationship. That's why NDAs are legal even though you have a right to free speech.
Secondly, sure I'm willing to allow them to do that in order to better combat spam and such. Actually, *I* don't, because I don't load images. Ever. But even if I did, it's not like they're secretly monitoring everything you view. It's an automated system proxying requests. It's entirely public, and it's not being analyzed -- at least not in regards to *you*. If that is found to be false, then I'd be concerned. Until then, why the hell *would* I care?
That you are unaware of how embedded links work in html email suggests you probably aren't the best person to be commenting on this subject.
I certainly know what a URL is -- do *YOU*?
Email is not a secure technology, and it's pretty well assumed that each endpoint at least will perform some automated processes on the contents of your message. These images are embedded into the message, which makes them a part of that message -- just like the Slashdot logo is a part of the Slashdot page, even though it's really just a URL that points to a separate resource. So why in your mind is it legal to scan some parts of the message, but not others?
Also, I would perhaps be somewhat outraged were they following href attributes. But they're not; they're following src attributes. There's a difference.
Easily defeated. Google loads a couple of the images, detects they're all the same, detects they're placed the same in the message, determines the pattern and replaces all images fitting that pattern with the first copy downloaded from their cache.
...which is why we're requiring a greater use of hazardous chemicals which are all but certain to not be properly disposed, rather than the relatively harmless materials in a standard incandescent bulb?
CFLs may use less energy, but there's a lot more mercury (not a ton, but that's infinitely more than 'none at all') So talk about dumping chemicals may not be the most persuasive argument here....
As Google *always* cache the image, the sender does not knows anymore when or even if the image was viewed and, so, doesn't knows anymore if the email was opened.
If they have specific knowledge about Gmail. Unfortunately, mailers that don't would make the more dangerous assumption (that you read the mail) under that behavior.
...which will result in a massive amount of their spam mailings being sent to Gmail addresses which do not exist, which I'd hope Google would be smart enough to detect as a sign of spam. After all, if you're using standard double-opt-in, it shouldn't really be possible to get any non-existent addresses on your list.
So, contrary to that being the most damaging possible result, it may actually be the most *helpful* possible result in terms of curtailing spam.
Unless you have previously enabled 'don't load external content' (which is off by default), external images will now load by default. Prior to this change they would not.
Here's a novel idea: If you want to know your readers' opinions, how about you *ask them* instead of assuming you are the all-knowing guru who best knows what everybody else wants?
Yes, I realize that's difficult. Yes, I realize most people won't respond. Those people don't care, so why should you? Then your data will be based on people who actually want and read your mailings rather than people like me who just open everything so it's all marked as read. Although I block all images anyway to prevent the exact sort of spyware you're pushing....
Its not at all clear that Google has the right to cache image files that were intended to be sent directly from my Brokerage account to me via an embedded URL in an email.
Right. And I suppose they may have no legal right to scan for spam or viruses? And my ISP has no legal right to cache traffic like DNS requests?
Your service providers can do pretty much whatever they want. If you have a problem with that, use encryption.
Bush being a crony corporatist doesn't mean Obama isn't also a crony corporatist. In fact, if they have an (R) or a (D) in front of their name, they are probably a crony corporatist.
Spoken like a true Ayn Rand Paul Coo Coo Nut. .
How's the tea? A bit bitter?
Every socialist or anarchist or even "progressive democrat" I know would say the exact same thing regarding the major parties being corporatist. In fact, the main problem we all have with the Libertarian (as in the party, not the concept) or "Tea Party" types is that they're the only ones we can find who would argue AGAINST this concept! Although even many of them will take this corruption as a given -- they just consider it to be beneficial for some twisted reason...
I've never encountered a virus that was more difficult to remove than Norton.
I've also never had as much damage from a virus as the damaged caused by simply running Norton.
I quite honestly treat Norton as malware.
Try a machine with both Norton and McAfee installed side-by-side.
That was a few years ago. My god that thing was SLOW. Two bloated virus scanners constantly scanning, and constantly interrupting and messing with the other...literally would take more than thirty minutes to get the control panel open. Ended up going in with a Linux LiveCD, overwriting the executables for both of those, and suddenly the PC was actually *usable*!
That, and a few other problems with that same system, are what got me to also start thinking of Norton as malware...
Well...what is going wrong? Anything? Are you sure it's worth the effort?
My parents are still using the same ancient Dell laptop they bought when my brother and I were still in highschool (I graduated college two years ago; he's now working on his PhD). It's unpatched Windows XP, and the only real security software on there is Avast! free antivirus. Other than re-registering Avast! every couple months when I'm home, I have never had to touch that system. And now they're mostly switching over to tablets and such.
Are your parents REALLY doing anything so risky that they need such a high level of protection? For casual browsing and such you really shouldn't need any more than a decent anti-virus tool. If they need more, find and plug the holes and move on.
Hell my parents don't even get backups -- because frankly, anything essential is already "in the cloud." Should there be some catastrophe I can't recover from (which has never occurred), the worst-case is I restore from the backup I took last time I had their computer (months ago) and tell my dad I lost part of his music collection (most of which he isn't even aware he has -- it's a few hundred gigs at this point). Everything truly critical they have on there is based on some sort of online service, so it's all safely "in the cloud" where I don't have to deal with it.
Although I will say one of the best things I ever did was move my mom from directly accessing her Comcast email through Outlook to placing gmail in there as a middle-man. She still uses the Comcast address, but her now multiple devices stay in sync, and in an emergency I can help her login to the web interface from anywhere.