Russia certainly can't be run by men anymore crooked than those who are running the US.
There are elements of the federal government of the United States have been being run as a criminal enterprise for many years; like HUD for one... Ask Catherine Austin Fitts. That's not even the worst of it.
I love America, I love the country and the people and our best traditions, but our government is beyond broken and I think that it is likely that ICANN could be in better hands - with everything that is going on here with "big content" like the RIAA/MPAA - the economic situation, the facists in government who want to make this a nanny state....I can think of a lot of threats to the resources ICANN controls if it stays. .
The ideas behind this are absolute bullshit; (especially using the type of technology they are discussing).
It won't help. It won't work reliably, and it's basically a "thought crime" scenario. Warrantless "no probable cause" searches etc are bad enough already without some technological pseudo-justification.
I am thinking that any technology which would truly work for this would be quite intrusive; the current research and cutting edge development in electromagnetic neuro interfaces is almost unbelievable, like science fiction. It's actually quite scary and goes way beyond stuff mentioned in this article. That is where the real threat will emerge, according to some it already has.
This explains the "nano football hooligans" who are constantly harrassing my cat.
I thought he had been hitting the catnip a bit hard lately until I noticed about 100 nano empty Foster's lager cans falling out of the brush after his nightly brushing and the distinct smell of eurotrash permeating his fur.
School; particular compulsory education, is not the same as work.
The fact that this was parody created on her own time outside of school means that the school has no business using its internal punishment aparatus against the student.
It's clearly a wrong-headed decision.
Additionally, I agree about how fucked the double standard is in regard to American television and movies and how nudity and sex are blackballed and violence is treated like nothing...I think that this isn't an accident.
I submit that this decision clearly indicates that the principal AND the judge truly are "small dicked" (at least when it comes to their understanding of the rights of others).
My guess is that you don't even know him; yet you're throwing all of these sweeping generalizations against "his generation," (tell me, which generation is he from? Which generation are you from)?
Seems to me I could make sweeping generalizations against you based on how you are attempting to blame the complacency and procrastination of the general public on some undefined "other generation" that you have assumed he is part of and has participated in, instead of getting outside of your comfort zone and doing whatever is necessary to take the country back.
How do you know he didn't do anything? Maybe the guy has been an activist.
All he is arguing for is liberty - the way you're reacting to his post it's as if he said: "I want to do what I want, damn the consequences for the rest of America" - but I didn't see anything like that - His argument is that he's tired of the government taking away his rights. I am too.
The thing is that you make a few decent points but they're buried in this "blame the people who came before" bullshit. Well, that is the same thing the politicians are doing. Some of the boomer generation haven't sold out and have fought all of their lives against the kind of crap that you're referring to. I'm in my mid thirties and know several.
The problem cannot be laid purely on "older people;" - However, one of the many problems is that all people in general have become apathetic across the board, but more than that they have been misled, conditioned and lied to by politicians, television and all of this bullshit for so long - and now the general public are either too cmplacent, dumbed down, controlled, (or too scared of stepping out of line and protesting). The government knows this, this is one reason why they are behaving extralegally/unconstitutionally in places like Seattle 99, St Paul and Denver this year, etc). People are just too caught up to truly get out there and do what is necessary.
Unfortunately from what I can tell things are going to get much worse, I think we;re headed for an economic crash that will make 1929 look like cupcakes. The powers that be are preparing for this, and their plans for the masses (from what i can tell) certainly aren't what I would call accomodating...or even "American."
I can understand the arguments people are making against what this kid did; it could have been done in much better ways that would have covered his ass a bit more and saved face a bit for whoever was responsible for securing that particular network/system.
I think that possible jail time (especially of 10 years) is extremely harsh. Especially because he is already probably going to lose his education, at least at that school - that is a massively huge blow that will likely affect the rest of his life.
Even from the article I don't feel like I know enough to discern whether he was truly trying to do this stuff for the "right" reasons or was either trying to do something else and figured he could cover his ass by providing documentation to the school after the fact or was simply looking for the prestige. All I do know is that judging by what I read he probably embarrassed the person whose job it is to ensure security and others and they are looking to pay him back for that - this often happpens, because in a lot of IT departments people don't do the things they should out of laziness or busy-ness - to have someone come along and expose that you haven't done your job well enough can make one feel extremely defensive..(which is no excuse, but can explain harsh responses).
In this day and age of massive corporate/government/institutional dishonesty and hubris where checks and balances are being lost by the day "white hat" hacking can be extremely important and at times an extremely valuable and courageous thing to do - these governments, corporations and institutions have proven time and again that they only care about power, money and control. They don't care about people usually or protecting people and their assets, privacy, personal information. When someone is "hacking" ethically and for the right reasons it can provide a societal "check and balance" on hubristic organizations - hopefully causing better security before someone with knowledge and no conscience comes along and wreaks really harm.
I am sure everyone can think of what sort of things happen when government and corporations and institutions don't secure things - had it been someone who truly was being malicious the damage would have been much worse.
I tend to agree with the spirit of your post, and also with your auggestion of what the proper thing to do would have been; (though it is easier to see that when you are on the outside of situation) - but I am not sure if he started it entirely - it certainly seems like he did as far as committing the first illegal act; but IIRC there were allegations of some wrongdoing and malfeasance prior to his withholding this info.
The fact that he must have known that there'd be consequences and should have been well aware of their severity and still continued forward makes me think that he either thought there was some evidence of wrongdoing that he was trying to preserve or prevent or something else was going on.
If the prosecuting side hadn't shown their incompetence and disdain for accurately reporting and protecting information as well as sort of proving the allegations he made against them it might be easier for me to dismiss this nagging feeling I have that there is more to the story then we know even at this point.
It isn't that simple; it seems that there is waaaaay more to the story that some ego tripping sysadmin.
Everytime another piece of the story or fact about what happened comes out it seems to vindicate Mr. Childs to some degree (not that his judgement was flawless in how this was handled, but still).
Is he still locked up? If so it's a travesty.
It seems like those who are trying to have him tarred and feathered constantly want to make it look like he's some super-e-terrorist who was holding the entire city for ransom and has dealt an economic blow from which the city will never recover.
I am not saying everything he did was right, or that he committed no wrongs here; but I think it's pretty obvious that this was viewed as a pissing match by those in the city who wanted him to hand over that information and they have gone to great lengths to make it look like something much more malicious than it was in the press.
He may have had very good reason to protect it; (I mean aside from the fact that it appears as though those who wanted him to hand it over were incompetent) - because I don't think anyone would put their own ass on the line for jailtime and the loss of their job unless there was something else going on. I am not saying I know this to be true, just that that is how it appears to me based on the available information.
At this point I view anything coming from the anti-Child's side of this issue with a healthy does of skepticism and try to read through the sensationalization. Something has always stunk about this situation.
the Universe WAS destroyed.
on
LHC Success!
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· Score: 1
I woke up this morning and all of my spoons were sporks!...and I don't even want to discuss the strange state of my feline companion.
Saying that any DNA is "Junk DNA" is like saying that all dark matter in the universe (which we don't quite yet fully understand) is "Junk Matter."
It's the sort of misnomer that has no place in science IMO.
It always blows my mind when I think about things like this, how people think that at this point in our development that humans are the be all end all, that we understand everything there is to understand - it's such bullshit. I am not saying that our science and advancements aren't incredible and amazing; they are - I am only saying that it is incredibly foolish to think we know everything..about anything really... (in the natural world especially).
I really cannot say enough good things about newegg.com.
I have been using them since 2001; my order history with newegg.com is over 20 pages long (at least) and I have ordered well over 200k worth of items from them. In all that time I have never had a problem. We're talking hundreds of orders. I have been through every conceivable situation - I have had to return things for refund or exchange, I have had to call them once and that call was handled very well.
Here are the general reasons why i think newegg.com is awesome:
1. Price (their prices will be as good or better than most other vendors, online or brick and mortar). 2. Shipping cost and shipping time: They have a lot of free shipping, and even when you are paying the prices are excellent - they generally ship things the same day you order, if not then then by the next days, always. 3. Stock, selection, and the technology behind their store and website - They have their own super high tech system for processing orders. I have seen video of how it works and it is very impressive - THey generally never make errors, their website is always up to date with what is and isn't in stock. I have never ordered something from them only to get a notice that it isn't in stock. It just doesn't happen becuse their site seems to be updated in real time. 4. Customer product reviews - you can get a great idea about particular products you may not know anything about by reading the customer reviews.
All in all I just can't think of any other retailer which I have dealt with that has their act more together than newegg and that has consistently flawless. I order personal stuff, I order stuff for the IT dept that I run, I order gifts and things for family and friends.
Don't just take my word for it - check out www.resellerratings.com for unbiased ratings of newegg.com and most other online stores. You will find that newegg consistently is on the top of their list of tens of thousands of stores. Generally with a score just below a perfect 10.
"Oh, wel pulled your merchant account because we didn't like what you said."
No, that isn't how it works. Standard practice is to pick some other reason or infraction (of which there will be many, which 99% of the time would be overlooked or not mentioned).
Believe me, they have more than one way of dropping somebody for a reason which will provide no recourse.
"I'd prefer to have my government announcing plans which will infringe on my privacy before they are implemented rather than them being uncovered by reporters several years in."
Well, I'd prefer to have them both just summarily fuck off and stay out all of our lives to the maximum extent possible.
Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be a possibility now that (at least in America) we have two corrupt parties both addicted to power and control.
Some of the things you hear about in the UK in the past couple of years really do seem to be like some sort of big brother nightmar: taking overweight kids away from their parents, profiling and marginalizing children of age 5 who "seem like they will have criminal tendencies;" It just seems to get incrementally worse every year.
America isn't much better because as you pointed out, we hear about this secret stuff after the fact, almost all of it is unconstitutional and illegal - and it kinda makes you wonder what it going on that we AREN'T aware of - I'm pretty much convinvced that there are many such things and that they are probably quite "unamerican."
This arresting of "suspected protestors" in St. Paul this weekend is disgusting - basically police acting like jackbooted nazi thugs trumping up charges. Don't buy the stuff you hear about these groups planning violence of having containers filled with urine, that is total bullshit - I've spoken to people who were there and the police and people involved in these raids were looking for things you'd find in any home in that area to try to insinuate that these were planning something dangerous or hurtful to others - nothing could be further from the truth - these are peaceful college students protesting (as is their right) what is happening in America - one of the most truly American things you can do, and something that is a huge part of our heritage. Luckily a lot of people in the area are angered by what has happened and are supporting those targeted for intimidation - what the police tried to do failed and was exposed for what it truly was.
All of these sorts of things are so dangerous to all of us, to our liberties and to everything we supposedly hold dear about America and what it means to be "free." I hope that people stand firm against these sorts of things wherever they occur. It's disgusting that authorities and police would be used for political intimidation and harrassment rather than truly doing their job and protecting and serving the community.
There are programs in place in the US like the one discussed in TFA. Spy of your neighbor type programs - the cornerstone of the Stassi's method was the same thing, and people also tend to use these sort of programs to get even rather than to truly provide benefits to the community.
I didn't say I could explain how it was done; but there is nothing to preclude perparation, or people seeing something (as there were reports of this). I certainly didn't say everyone agrees with my viewpoint, but there are many people who do.
I don't want to rehash the entire argument of what happened that day as it's been debated ad nauseum, but there are a lot of variables and people seem to make a lot of assumptions about how things would have to have been done to create a particular outcome.
It is compeltely obvious to so many people on so many levels that the building was imploded, and until there is an explanation that can address all of the ignored or glossed over issues, people who have truly looked at this without an agenda and who have a problem with these official theories aren't going to feel differently.
I am not saying I know exactly what happened, and I am not chiding anyone who wants to believe this report...If that settles it for you, then great. I don't think it settles it for anybody who has questions who has looked at the situation with a critical eye, and who can think for themselves.
Anybody who knows anything about engineering and controlled demolition can watch the video of that builidng coming down and know that it didn't collapse from a fire; not like that, no way - and that is ignoring all of the testimony from firemen and other who were there who claim it was imploded.
I would believe that the world mass hallucinated before I would give creedence to some of the bullshit "official explanations" about a lot of the 9/11 events.
I would so much rather have a browser that has the option of not recording or logging anything at all instead of one that "clears" or "erases" my tracks after that. If anything is ever stored that is a vector for someone to somehow capture that data. I would like something that only uses that data for precisely as long as it needs to to do the job and keeps no history or metadata in any way, shape, or form.
How can you expect them to be informed about voting when they don't even understand history and a huge percentage can't even list all 50 states let along tell you where Iraq or any other country is on a map of the globe?
The real question is my mind is: "Are people in the US informed about anything that is not on TV shows?"
Now obviously I can point to myself and some people I know and probably many of you here on Slashdot who are vociferous readers and who think most TV is trash designed to dumb down the public and say, yes, there are Americans who are very informed.
But as far as the general public is concerned? I think the answer is "no."
In general whe people talk about this there is a snarky lightheartedness that comes out, but I think behind that is a sadness for our country and the prospects for the future; a sort of resignation of hopelessness.
I don't blame the people entirely, even mostly. it has happened so slowly, and I think it is the result of policies that have allowed corporations and profits to come over everything else, including people and politicians/legislators who have abdicated or been corrupted and allowed this to occur.
I will give one example. Look at television (which I think is a HUGE part of the problem) and the FCC - the airwaves are supposed to be for the peoplel, the people supposedly own them. This is a total fucking joke. Corporations own the airwaves, even public broadcasting. "Public Access" stations, which were so few and far between except in some major metro areas have been almost wiped out. Instead we have "infotainment" news that focuses on scandals and sex; (hey, sex is great, but not in the place of real news). Reality TV? Seriously, why watch this crap, who cares what some completely brain dead over-privileged Laguna Hills teen slut obsesses over?
Look at how textbooks have been politicized, especially in primary education and in one area in particular: history. I had a chance to look through some high school and jr high history books several years back and was appalled. There are decent history books like Howard ZInn's "A People's History of the United States" which seem to only be used in better schools.
So these sorts of things progressing over years are what allows a populace to end up where ours is, with a system that has institutionalized corruption and an administration that has ushered in the age of a kinder, gentler fascism - So are the voters informed? FUCK NO - and it's so much worse.
One reason for this is because windows is the dominant platform, especially for those who are not that technically literate; (and likely those who are own at least one machine running windows).
Certianly I am not saying that OSX and linux (or any unix variant) don't present more of a challenge, but if their adoption was as widespread and in as many areas as windows there would likely be much, much more malware to contend with.
All in all there is no perfect system. There will likely always be something to exploit when you are taking user convenience into the equation.
I agree somewhat; it may be that he has people telling him that "this will enable people to conduct a terror attack" or some other stuff and buys into this post 9/11 patriotact bullshit "everything is different now, even how we interpret the constitution" line of thinking.
What's even more clear is that he doesn't seem to understand how technology and digital data work, the data was (and still is) on MIT's website - I am sure his injunction probably didn't cover that, and if it did, kudos to MIT:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
I wasn't trying to say that non-mainstream media sources are always truthful either; my issue lies with the fact that it isn't only lust for ratings that causes manipulation of the truth in the media - there are other things going on as well - look at what happened with fox getting caught taking talking points directly from the white house. Was anybody surprised? Not at all, and between government and corporations the amount of truly unbiased unfiltered news seems to be decreasing every year.
As far as the term "mainstream media" I was not aware of baggage that this term seems to have for some people - for many people, fox, abc, nbc, cnn, cbs, nyt, etc are the only places they get their news and are the only places they are likely to see as being "credible."
For me, the best way to get news is to look primarily at a wide variety of sources, mainly online - starting with some I seem to recognize as having some integrity and then look at some mainstream coverage and cobble together what seems most likely to be accurate in that way. Most of the time the reporting is the same, sometimes it isn't and occasionally you can see agendas at work - I'd say that any savvy consumer of media likely see this a lot more in large corporate news sources (eg mainstream) than others, but there are always exceptions...
I realize that it's easier for me to say it than it is for them to do it. That goes without saying. My entire point is that if people down start saying "damn the consequences, fuck this, I believe I have the right" then you might as well give up completely on having rights at all when you come up against any organization (corporate or governmental) that wants to stop what you are saying.
I didn't say anything in my post about "taking up arms and shooting down the government" - I didn't even allude to such a thingm in the slightest, so I don't know where that even came from.
Was that an attempt to raise an objection to something I didn't even say?
Yes, I know it's out there; hence "public record" and "the cat is out of the bag."
It's clearly a first amendment issue, and when people allow things like threats from the authorities or bullshit unconstitutional court injunctions to stop them from what they want to tell the masses it only serves to justify the actions of those who would try to stop people from expressing important matters.
From what i can tell this isn't about public safety at all, it's more about money. If it were about public safety, they would take it seriously and work with these guys to resolve the issues.
On top of that, when these sorts of uses for RFID were being planned and discussed years ago (things like this and passports, etc) many, many people warned that this would occur...
Someone needs to take that CD and quickly get the contents onto usenet. It's already in the public record anyway - once the cat is out of the bag it's out of the bag.
Slashdot Mirror
Russia certainly can't be run by men anymore crooked than those who are running the US.
There are elements of the federal government of the United States have been being run as a criminal enterprise for many years; like HUD for one... Ask Catherine Austin Fitts. That's not even the worst of it.
I love America, I love the country and the people and our best traditions, but our government is beyond broken and I think that it is likely that ICANN could be in better hands - with everything that is going on here with "big content" like the RIAA/MPAA - the economic situation, the facists in government who want to make this a nanny state....I can think of a lot of threats to the resources ICANN controls if it stays. .
The ideas behind this are absolute bullshit; (especially using the type of technology they are discussing).
It won't help. It won't work reliably, and it's basically a "thought crime" scenario. Warrantless "no probable cause" searches etc are bad enough already without some technological pseudo-justification.
I am thinking that any technology which would truly work for this would be quite intrusive; the current research and cutting edge development in electromagnetic neuro interfaces is almost unbelievable, like science fiction. It's actually quite scary and goes way beyond stuff mentioned in this article. That is where the real threat will emerge, according to some it already has.
This explains the "nano football hooligans" who are constantly harrassing my cat.
I thought he had been hitting the catnip a bit hard lately until I noticed about 100 nano empty Foster's lager cans falling out of the brush after his nightly brushing and the distinct smell of eurotrash permeating his fur.
DAMN YOU NIST!
School; particular compulsory education, is not the same as work.
The fact that this was parody created on her own time outside of school means that the school has no business using its internal punishment aparatus against the student.
It's clearly a wrong-headed decision.
Additionally, I agree about how fucked the double standard is in regard to American television and movies and how nudity and sex are blackballed and violence is treated like nothing...I think that this isn't an accident.
I submit that this decision clearly indicates that the principal AND the judge truly are "small dicked" (at least when it comes to their understanding of the rights of others).
My guess is that you don't even know him; yet you're throwing all of these sweeping generalizations against "his generation," (tell me, which generation is he from? Which generation are you from)?
Seems to me I could make sweeping generalizations against you based on how you are attempting to blame the complacency and procrastination of the general public on some undefined "other generation" that you have assumed he is part of and has participated in, instead of getting outside of your comfort zone and doing whatever is necessary to take the country back.
How do you know he didn't do anything? Maybe the guy has been an activist.
All he is arguing for is liberty - the way you're reacting to his post it's as if he said: "I want to do what I want, damn the consequences for the rest of America" - but I didn't see anything like that - His argument is that he's tired of the government taking away his rights. I am too.
The thing is that you make a few decent points but they're buried in this "blame the people who came before" bullshit. Well, that is the same thing the politicians are doing. Some of the boomer generation haven't sold out and have fought all of their lives against the kind of crap that you're referring to. I'm in my mid thirties and know several.
The problem cannot be laid purely on "older people;" - However, one of the many problems is that all people in general have become apathetic across the board, but more than that they have been misled, conditioned and lied to by politicians, television and all of this bullshit for so long - and now the general public are either too cmplacent, dumbed down, controlled, (or too scared of stepping out of line and protesting). The government knows this, this is one reason why they are behaving extralegally/unconstitutionally in places like Seattle 99, St Paul and Denver this year, etc). People are just too caught up to truly get out there and do what is necessary.
Unfortunately from what I can tell things are going to get much worse, I think we;re headed for an economic crash that will make 1929 look like cupcakes. The powers that be are preparing for this, and their plans for the masses (from what i can tell) certainly aren't what I would call accomodating...or even "American."
I can understand the arguments people are making against what this kid did; it could have been done in much better ways that would have covered his ass a bit more and saved face a bit for whoever was responsible for securing that particular network/system.
I think that possible jail time (especially of 10 years) is extremely harsh. Especially because he is already probably going to lose his education, at least at that school - that is a massively huge blow that will likely affect the rest of his life.
Even from the article I don't feel like I know enough to discern whether he was truly trying to do this stuff for the "right" reasons or was either trying to do something else and figured he could cover his ass by providing documentation to the school after the fact or was simply looking for the prestige. All I do know is that judging by what I read he probably embarrassed the person whose job it is to ensure security and others and they are looking to pay him back for that - this often happpens, because in a lot of IT departments people don't do the things they should out of laziness or busy-ness - to have someone come along and expose that you haven't done your job well enough can make one feel extremely defensive..(which is no excuse, but can explain harsh responses).
In this day and age of massive corporate/government/institutional dishonesty and hubris where checks and balances are being lost by the day "white hat" hacking can be extremely important and at times an extremely valuable and courageous thing to do - these governments, corporations and institutions have proven time and again that they only care about power, money and control. They don't care about people usually or protecting people and their assets, privacy, personal information. When someone is "hacking" ethically and for the right reasons it can provide a societal "check and balance" on hubristic organizations - hopefully causing better security before someone with knowledge and no conscience comes along and wreaks really harm.
I am sure everyone can think of what sort of things happen when government and corporations and institutions don't secure things - had it been someone who truly was being malicious the damage would have been much worse.
I tend to agree with the spirit of your post, and also with your auggestion of what the proper thing to do would have been; (though it is easier to see that when you are on the outside of situation) - but I am not sure if he started it entirely - it certainly seems like he did as far as committing the first illegal act; but IIRC there were allegations of some wrongdoing and malfeasance prior to his withholding this info.
The fact that he must have known that there'd be consequences and should have been well aware of their severity and still continued forward makes me think that he either thought there was some evidence of wrongdoing that he was trying to preserve or prevent or something else was going on.
If the prosecuting side hadn't shown their incompetence and disdain for accurately reporting and protecting information as well as sort of proving the allegations he made against them it might be easier for me to dismiss this nagging feeling I have that there is more to the story then we know even at this point.
I disagree.
It isn't that simple; it seems that there is waaaaay more to the story that some ego tripping sysadmin.
Everytime another piece of the story or fact about what happened comes out it seems to vindicate Mr. Childs to some degree (not that his judgement was flawless in how this was handled, but still).
Is he still locked up? If so it's a travesty.
It seems like those who are trying to have him tarred and feathered constantly want to make it look like he's some super-e-terrorist who was holding the entire city for ransom and has dealt an economic blow from which the city will never recover.
I am not saying everything he did was right, or that he committed no wrongs here; but I think it's pretty obvious that this was viewed as a pissing match by those in the city who wanted him to hand over that information and they have gone to great lengths to make it look like something much more malicious than it was in the press.
He may have had very good reason to protect it; (I mean aside from the fact that it appears as though those who wanted him to hand it over were incompetent) - because I don't think anyone would put their own ass on the line for jailtime and the loss of their job unless there was something else going on. I am not saying I know this to be true, just that that is how it appears to me based on the available information.
At this point I view anything coming from the anti-Child's side of this issue with a healthy does of skepticism and try to read through the sensationalization. Something has always stunk about this situation.
I woke up this morning and all of my spoons were sporks! ...and I don't even want to discuss the strange state of my feline companion.
Saying that any DNA is "Junk DNA" is like saying that all dark matter in the universe (which we don't quite yet fully understand) is "Junk Matter."
It's the sort of misnomer that has no place in science IMO.
It always blows my mind when I think about things like this, how people think that at this point in our development that humans are the be all end all, that we understand everything there is to understand - it's such bullshit. I am not saying that our science and advancements aren't incredible and amazing; they are - I am only saying that it is incredibly foolish to think we know everything..about anything really... (in the natural world especially).
I really cannot say enough good things about newegg.com.
I have been using them since 2001; my order history with newegg.com is over 20 pages long (at least) and I have ordered well over 200k worth of items from them. In all that time I have never had a problem. We're talking hundreds of orders. I have been through every conceivable situation - I have had to return things for refund or exchange, I have had to call them once and that call was handled very well.
Here are the general reasons why i think newegg.com is awesome:
1. Price (their prices will be as good or better than most other vendors, online or brick and mortar).
2. Shipping cost and shipping time: They have a lot of free shipping, and even when you are paying the prices are excellent - they generally ship things the same day you order, if not then then by the next days, always.
3. Stock, selection, and the technology behind their store and website - They have their own super high tech system for processing orders. I have seen video of how it works and it is very impressive - THey generally never make errors, their website is always up to date with what is and isn't in stock. I have never ordered something from them only to get a notice that it isn't in stock. It just doesn't happen becuse their site seems to be updated in real time.
4. Customer product reviews - you can get a great idea about particular products you may not know anything about by reading the customer reviews.
All in all I just can't think of any other retailer which I have dealt with that has their act more together than newegg and that has consistently flawless. I order personal stuff, I order stuff for the IT dept that I run, I order gifts and things for family and friends.
Don't just take my word for it - check out www.resellerratings.com for unbiased ratings of newegg.com and most other online stores. You will find that newegg consistently is on the top of their list of tens of thousands of stores. Generally with a score just below a perfect 10.
It's not like they would say:
"Oh, wel pulled your merchant account because we didn't like what you said."
No, that isn't how it works. Standard practice is to pick some other reason or infraction (of which there will be many, which 99% of the time would be overlooked or not mentioned).
Believe me, they have more than one way of dropping somebody for a reason which will provide no recourse.
"I'd prefer to have my government announcing plans which will infringe on my privacy before they are implemented rather than them being uncovered by reporters several years in."
Well, I'd prefer to have them both just summarily fuck off and stay out all of our lives to the maximum extent possible.
Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be a possibility now that (at least in America) we have two corrupt parties both addicted to power and control.
Some of the things you hear about in the UK in the past couple of years really do seem to be like some sort of big brother nightmar: taking overweight kids away from their parents, profiling and marginalizing children of age 5 who "seem like they will have criminal tendencies;" It just seems to get incrementally worse every year.
America isn't much better because as you pointed out, we hear about this secret stuff after the fact, almost all of it is unconstitutional and illegal - and it kinda makes you wonder what it going on that we AREN'T aware of - I'm pretty much convinvced that there are many such things and that they are probably quite "unamerican."
This arresting of "suspected protestors" in St. Paul this weekend is disgusting - basically police acting like jackbooted nazi thugs trumping up charges. Don't buy the stuff you hear about these groups planning violence of having containers filled with urine, that is total bullshit - I've spoken to people who were there and the police and people involved in these raids were looking for things you'd find in any home in that area to try to insinuate that these were planning something dangerous or hurtful to others - nothing could be further from the truth - these are peaceful college students protesting (as is their right) what is happening in America - one of the most truly American things you can do, and something that is a huge part of our heritage. Luckily a lot of people in the area are angered by what has happened and are supporting those targeted for intimidation - what the police tried to do failed and was exposed for what it truly was.
All of these sorts of things are so dangerous to all of us, to our liberties and to everything we supposedly hold dear about America and what it means to be "free." I hope that people stand firm against these sorts of things wherever they occur. It's disgusting that authorities and police would be used for political intimidation and harrassment rather than truly doing their job and protecting and serving the community.
There are programs in place in the US like the one discussed in TFA. Spy of your neighbor type programs - the cornerstone of the Stassi's method was the same thing, and people also tend to use these sort of programs to get even rather than to truly provide benefits to the community.
I didn't say I could explain how it was done; but there is nothing to preclude perparation, or people seeing something (as there were reports of this). I certainly didn't say everyone agrees with my viewpoint, but there are many people who do.
I don't want to rehash the entire argument of what happened that day as it's been debated ad nauseum, but there are a lot of variables and people seem to make a lot of assumptions about how things would have to have been done to create a particular outcome.
I'll deny it, and I'm not "a crazy."
It is compeltely obvious to so many people on so many levels that the building was imploded, and until there is an explanation that can address all of the ignored or glossed over issues, people who have truly looked at this without an agenda and who have a problem with these official theories aren't going to feel differently.
I am not saying I know exactly what happened, and I am not chiding anyone who wants to believe this report...If that settles it for you, then great. I don't think it settles it for anybody who has questions who has looked at the situation with a critical eye, and who can think for themselves.
Anybody who knows anything about engineering and controlled demolition can watch the video of that builidng coming down and know that it didn't collapse from a fire; not like that, no way - and that is ignoring all of the testimony from firemen and other who were there who claim it was imploded.
I would believe that the world mass hallucinated before I would give creedence to some of the bullshit "official explanations" about a lot of the 9/11 events.
I would so much rather have a browser that has the option of not recording or logging anything at all instead of one that "clears" or "erases" my tracks after that. If anything is ever stored that is a vector for someone to somehow capture that data. I would like something that only uses that data for precisely as long as it needs to to do the job and keeps no history or metadata in any way, shape, or form.
How can you expect them to be informed about voting when they don't even understand history and a huge percentage can't even list all 50 states let along tell you where Iraq or any other country is on a map of the globe?
The real question is my mind is: "Are people in the US informed about anything that is not on TV shows?"
Now obviously I can point to myself and some people I know and probably many of you here on Slashdot who are vociferous readers and who think most TV is trash designed to dumb down the public and say, yes, there are Americans who are very informed.
But as far as the general public is concerned? I think the answer is "no."
In general whe people talk about this there is a snarky lightheartedness that comes out, but I think behind that is a sadness for our country and the prospects for the future; a sort of resignation of hopelessness.
I don't blame the people entirely, even mostly. it has happened so slowly, and I think it is the result of policies that have allowed corporations and profits to come over everything else, including people and politicians/legislators who have abdicated or been corrupted and allowed this to occur.
I will give one example. Look at television (which I think is a HUGE part of the problem) and the FCC - the airwaves are supposed to be for the peoplel, the people supposedly own them. This is a total fucking joke. Corporations own the airwaves, even public broadcasting. "Public Access" stations, which were so few and far between except in some major metro areas have been almost wiped out. Instead we have "infotainment" news that focuses on scandals and sex; (hey, sex is great, but not in the place of real news). Reality TV? Seriously, why watch this crap, who cares what some completely brain dead over-privileged Laguna Hills teen slut obsesses over?
Look at how textbooks have been politicized, especially in primary education and in one area in particular: history. I had a chance to look through some high school and jr high history books several years back and was appalled. There are decent history books like Howard ZInn's "A People's History of the United States" which seem to only be used in better schools.
So these sorts of things progressing over years are what allows a populace to end up where ours is, with a system that has institutionalized corruption and an administration that has ushered in the age of a kinder, gentler fascism - So are the voters informed? FUCK NO - and it's so much worse.
One reason for this is because windows is the dominant platform, especially for those who are not that technically literate; (and likely those who are own at least one machine running windows).
Certianly I am not saying that OSX and linux (or any unix variant) don't present more of a challenge, but if their adoption was as widespread and in as many areas as windows there would likely be much, much more malware to contend with.
All in all there is no perfect system. There will likely always be something to exploit when you are taking user convenience into the equation.
I agree somewhat; it may be that he has people telling him that "this will enable people to conduct a terror attack" or some other stuff and buys into this post 9/11 patriotact bullshit "everything is different now, even how we interpret the constitution" line of thinking. What's even more clear is that he doesn't seem to understand how technology and digital data work, the data was (and still is) on MIT's website - I am sure his injunction probably didn't cover that, and if it did, kudos to MIT: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
I didn't say anything about blogs - and I am sure there are tons of blogs that your description fits - but that is what a blog is.
A blog isn't supposed to be impartial....
If you want to have a copy of this presentation, the link below is one of the places you can download it:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
I wasn't trying to say that non-mainstream media sources are always truthful either; my issue lies with the fact that it isn't only lust for ratings that causes manipulation of the truth in the media - there are other things going on as well - look at what happened with fox getting caught taking talking points directly from the white house. Was anybody surprised? Not at all, and between government and corporations the amount of truly unbiased unfiltered news seems to be decreasing every year.
As far as the term "mainstream media" I was not aware of baggage that this term seems to have for some people - for many people, fox, abc, nbc, cnn, cbs, nyt, etc are the only places they get their news and are the only places they are likely to see as being "credible."
For me, the best way to get news is to look primarily at a wide variety of sources, mainly online - starting with some I seem to recognize as having some integrity and then look at some mainstream coverage and cobble together what seems most likely to be accurate in that way. Most of the time the reporting is the same, sometimes it isn't and occasionally you can see agendas at work - I'd say that any savvy consumer of media likely see this a lot more in large corporate news sources (eg mainstream) than others, but there are always exceptions...
American mainstream media alters the truth for many reasons, one of them is to boost ratings...
There..fixed that for ya.
I realize that it's easier for me to say it than it is for them to do it. That goes without saying. My entire point is that if people down start saying "damn the consequences, fuck this, I believe I have the right" then you might as well give up completely on having rights at all when you come up against any organization (corporate or governmental) that wants to stop what you are saying.
I didn't say anything in my post about "taking up arms and shooting down the government" - I didn't even allude to such a thingm in the slightest, so I don't know where that even came from.
Was that an attempt to raise an objection to something I didn't even say?
Yes, I know it's out there; hence "public record" and "the cat is out of the bag."
Fuck this.
They need to give their presentation regardless.
It's clearly a first amendment issue, and when people allow things like threats from the authorities or bullshit unconstitutional court injunctions to stop them from what they want to tell the masses it only serves to justify the actions of those who would try to stop people from expressing important matters.
From what i can tell this isn't about public safety at all, it's more about money. If it were about public safety, they would take it seriously and work with these guys to resolve the issues.
On top of that, when these sorts of uses for RFID were being planned and discussed years ago (things like this and passports, etc) many, many people warned that this would occur...
Someone needs to take that CD and quickly get the contents onto usenet. It's already in the public record anyway - once the cat is out of the bag it's out of the bag.