I'd really like to know how a Canadian would happen to have a future US spook as a colleague, and still talk with him about things like classified work areas.
Hopefully someone mods you up. Even my experience with basic packet inspection software and hardware shows that it is possible to monitor and inspect traffic generated by thousands of simultaneous users. This stuff costs 4 figures and scales easily. With the damn near unlimited budget of the intelligence agencies, your numbers don't surprise me at all.
You can't prove Godwin's law. It's an observation or a codicil, which is not subject to scientific observation. Nice that you don't know what you're talking about.
And I looked up Herman. I see references on right-wing blogs and wikis, but what few discussions and reviews take place outside of conservative echo chambers are routinely dismissive of Herman's work. The consensus seems to be that he mistakes political pamphlets for academic discussion. Would you like to try again?
I was wondering when you were going to show up. Here's your mistake:
when the mechanisms of law and judicial oversight have explicitly established the activities as legal.
You're confusing legal and legitimate. Not to mention that if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, talking about what is legal and what isn't is not your job - it's the job of the court system. And even if the courts come down with a decision, there's always room for a discussion whether the decision was right, and whether laws ought to be changed to produce a better result.
Finally, you're completely overlooking the logistics behind your conveniently bolded statement:
In order to determine which traffic can be lawfully collected without a warrant, basic information about the traffic, such as its source and destination, must also be examined. Such examination of traffic -- a "pen register" -- also does not require a warrant.
In order to find out whether traffic is coming from a US person, more than just the source and destination IP has to be collected and analyzed - that's the entire problem of sigint. For you to blithely assume that sigint can magically distinguish between a US citizen and a foreign citizen when sniffing traffic coming to and from Internet cafes is.... astounding. As in, pie-in-the-sky, Puff-the-magic-dragon and magic-mushroom astounding.
I've said it before, I'll say it again - your love of authority and rule of law, regardless of what the law says, is mind-boggling.
The article cites prof. Herman's research and the book "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator". The book's scholarship is impeccable.
And who exactly is Herman? Looking through the article, I have no idea who he is, what else he has published and what that conference exactly is. Merely stating that "the book's scholarship is impeccable" doesn't tell me anything, as it is nothing I can verify, short of buying the book myself and reading. At which point, I don't need your opinion on its scholarship anyway.
As others pointed out, the accuracy - or lack thereof - of his initial accusation is not what he is hated for. It's the destructive witch hunt that he started for which he is hated. Claiming he is a hero for his communist witch hunt very much ought to make Mussolini and Hitler your heroes as well, since the method used to defeat communism doesn't matter to you.
The taps that were set up for the NSA were at the backbones, where they had access to all communications, incoming and outgoing. Since it is impossible, even for the NSA, to know with 100% certainty who was at the end of each communication, they would have had to collect everything, as well as store everything. At that point, it is irrelevant what they said they did with the mountains of data they collected.
Finally, it is also impossible to create a classification system that just happens to ignore american citizens during its training/creation phase. Again, it means that it is guaranteed that the NSA would be able to classify the groups involved in the communication. And again, it is irrelevant that the NSA said "Trust us, we're ignoring all of that."
The only real news is that the NSA didn't even internally pretend that they were only interested in communications with or between foreign agents. Everything else has been predicted the instant it became apparent that wiretaps were being done without oversight.
I'll respond because someone decided to mod you up: no, it's not an ad(vertisement). It's an article by someone who really likes the show. What's the difference? One's paid for, the other not. How do I know this? I don't. I'm making an educated guess. Does it matter? No.
Let me rephrase that last part: no, it doesn't matter if you know how to a) read past advertisement bullshit, and b) can discuss ideas without discussing who said what. If you can't - well, then the last bit obviously matters. But you are mature enough to differentiate between an idea and the person who puts it out there, can't you?
There are even companies that specialize in this sort of tactic. I can't find it anymore, but I found one around the time that I was doing work for a gaming site. It basically said that it would use Digg to increase a site's exposure. That meant lots of "Diggs" and positive reviews on the site via established accounts.
I'm not surprised that MS (or anyone else) is doing it - I am, however, surprised how effective it is. I thought that these corporations wouldn't be able to compete with the large masses of users who had contrary experiences. Apparently, getting paid to do something makes up in efficiency and dedication what is missing in numbers.
Dude, if you think that you're providing some type of public service... you're deluded. Newsflash - people congregate around common ideas or geographic proximity. This means that slashdot attracks people with a certain personality and/or philosophy. Welcome to Slashdot, home of gamers and IT geeks. Bias towards games and IT stuff is to be expected.
Finally - you attempt to paint people agreeing on something as groupthink. With that, you're not highlighting anything but your own douchebaggery. You deserve every flame you're getting right now.
And most of the pro-video game crowd perform flawless experiments, right?
No one's saying that. They are, however, significantly more rigorous in their approaches.
It seems to me you are more interested in a flame war than an actual discussion. Feel free to quote the actual studies in question, but at this point, you're running with platitudes that have no foundation in reality.
Something that isn't repeated often enough when this meme crops up: it's ALL about correlation. Only correlation can tell you whether your hypothesis is predictive or not.
Here's the problem with studies that make violence a cause of videogames: - the statistics don't show that - the causal mechanism is very suspicious
The fact that 99% of all videogame owners aren't any more violent than anyone is important, because it means that it has the same predictive capability as saying that eating bread or drinking milk causes people to be violent.
Seriously. This meme of correlation is not causation is trotted out by people who don't understand how statistics are used to support hypotheses. The meme a complete tautology when used properly, and a straw man when used improperly.
Why does that creep you out? It's history, it happened. It provides great context to what's taught in class. Wouldn't you want to know what was being said then, so that you can compare it to what's being said today? It's a primary source if there ever was one....
You're spot on in your analysis. You know where the problem is? The wrong people care about false positives, and the right ones don't. Not to mention that 90% of the population will just shrug and say that a 5% false positive rate is the cost to pay to safeguard the children.
Third, to lock down the computer and turn it into a controlled environment where FOSS is not permitted (MSFT et al).
What do you think the goal for the Xbox and the Playstation is?
The funny part is that all of this is easily circumvented if you a) have the knowledge, and b) have the right connections. I have the knowledge, now I just need to marry someone with the right connections. I'll draw the line at the Bush twins though. No amount of networking is going to be worth that trouble.
As opposed to previous appointees for anything else? Crimini, some appointees in previous administrations were accused of outright crimes. Someone having owed back taxes at some point, and someone having been vp of something is pretty tame. Wake me up when there's something serious going on.
Over here we question the crap that media shits out on our plate. You want to eat it and say "yum" then digg.com will suit you better.
To me, you sound like you're willing to accept things based on absence of knowledge - i.e., faith. Because that's really what the 9/11 truthers are.
Quite frankly, I'm getting really tired of this meme about media brainwashing everybody. There is no "media". There is no global media agenda. This is just standard conspirationist crap.
In any case, the outrage over this article is completely misplaced. RTFA -- they aren't requesting any information beyond that which is already requested on the paper forms you fill out in-flight. It seems to me that filling them out online 72 hours in advance isn't particularly burdensome.
But that's not really the problem. What is the major problem is that now everything is a neat little database right from the get-go, with retention policies of basically infinity. The part that bugs me is that this is now very easily combined with all kinds of other databases, all accessible to law-enforcement people of all stripes.
And judging by who gets hired into law-enforcement and what they do once they're hired, I find that quite scary. I don't want to be picked up by some cops just because I'm dating a cop's niece and he misspelled my name while looking me up in his little database. Yes, I know this is illegal. Doesn't stop it from happening.
And in even further news, corporations are not perfect.
I take it you're not familiar with how enterprises plan. They plan for regular load, not aberrant once-in-a-blue-moon load. This is bog standard behavior for a system responding to people doing stupid things. If you think this is restricted to the US government, you've never worked in corporate IT.
Jatropha and switchgrass are good alternatives as well. They have the added benefit that the technologies for extracting a good amount of oil from them already exists. However, they do not have the upside that algae have. That's why a lot of people are excited about them, including me.
As for corn/coconuts, the lack of efficiency isn't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that you're turning food (needed for survival) into fuel (needed for travel and shelter, and therefore less critical). This drives up prices for food, and causes significant pain. If we're talking cliches, this is stealing from Peter to pay Paul.
And that matters how? Being good at your job isn't only a functionality of whether you know what buttons to press, but also how well you get along with whoever you are interacting with.
Algae are the most promising because you can grow them on refuse and sun-light. The energy captured is sun-light - think of it as biological solar panels. The processing of algae is not where it needs to be right now, but they're the best long-term bet.
Algae is the only really viable bio-diesel source. The closest thing to it is switchgrass, but even that can't be fully turned into bio-diesel. The only - and significant - issue with algae-derived bio-diesel is that it's difficult to efficiently turn algae into diesel.
What astounds me though is the number of times people try to turn slow-growing foodstuff into fuel. Coconut oil? I'm sure the same genius came up with the idea to use corn for ethanol fuel. Here's why those are dead ends: - they require a lot of surface, water and nutrients. - only a small fraction of the entire plant gets used. - impacts food prices.
Compare that with algae, which: - can grow in vats of arbitrary size. - can be grown in sewage treatment plants. - main growth restriction is light. - the entire organism is used in the production of the fuel.
Every time I hear someone advocate fuel from coconuts or corn, I'm wondering how much he's getting paid by corn and coconut growers.
Pretty much. I had this discussion constantly about 10 years ago. It was ill-defined then, though the common assumption was 1K = 1024. The abuse by HDD manufacturers spurred the development of actual definitions.
The only thing I thought was worthwhile in that entire magazine was Quarterman. Sushi-X was annoying, and I certainly wouldn't call him huge. The personality was lame, the spirit juvenile.
The reason EGM went under? It was blog-level writing that was generally 2 months late with reviews and news.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd really like to know how a Canadian would happen to have a future US spook as a colleague, and still talk with him about things like classified work areas.
I'm gonna call bullshit here.
Hopefully someone mods you up. Even my experience with basic packet inspection software and hardware shows that it is possible to monitor and inspect traffic generated by thousands of simultaneous users. This stuff costs 4 figures and scales easily. With the damn near unlimited budget of the intelligence agencies, your numbers don't surprise me at all.
You can't prove Godwin's law. It's an observation or a codicil, which is not subject to scientific observation. Nice that you don't know what you're talking about.
And I looked up Herman. I see references on right-wing blogs and wikis, but what few discussions and reviews take place outside of conservative echo chambers are routinely dismissive of Herman's work. The consensus seems to be that he mistakes political pamphlets for academic discussion. Would you like to try again?
I was wondering when you were going to show up. Here's your mistake:
when the mechanisms of law and judicial oversight have explicitly established the activities as legal.
You're confusing legal and legitimate. Not to mention that if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, talking about what is legal and what isn't is not your job - it's the job of the court system. And even if the courts come down with a decision, there's always room for a discussion whether the decision was right, and whether laws ought to be changed to produce a better result.
Finally, you're completely overlooking the logistics behind your conveniently bolded statement:
In order to determine which traffic can be lawfully collected without a warrant, basic information about the traffic, such as its source and destination, must also be examined. Such examination of traffic -- a "pen register" -- also does not require a warrant.
In order to find out whether traffic is coming from a US person, more than just the source and destination IP has to be collected and analyzed - that's the entire problem of sigint. For you to blithely assume that sigint can magically distinguish between a US citizen and a foreign citizen when sniffing traffic coming to and from Internet cafes is.... astounding. As in, pie-in-the-sky, Puff-the-magic-dragon and magic-mushroom astounding.
I've said it before, I'll say it again - your love of authority and rule of law, regardless of what the law says, is mind-boggling.
The article cites prof. Herman's research and the book "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator". The book's scholarship is impeccable.
And who exactly is Herman? Looking through the article, I have no idea who he is, what else he has published and what that conference exactly is. Merely stating that "the book's scholarship is impeccable" doesn't tell me anything, as it is nothing I can verify, short of buying the book myself and reading. At which point, I don't need your opinion on its scholarship anyway.
As others pointed out, the accuracy - or lack thereof - of his initial accusation is not what he is hated for. It's the destructive witch hunt that he started for which he is hated. Claiming he is a hero for his communist witch hunt very much ought to make Mussolini and Hitler your heroes as well, since the method used to defeat communism doesn't matter to you.
The taps that were set up for the NSA were at the backbones, where they had access to all communications, incoming and outgoing. Since it is impossible, even for the NSA, to know with 100% certainty who was at the end of each communication, they would have had to collect everything, as well as store everything. At that point, it is irrelevant what they said they did with the mountains of data they collected.
Finally, it is also impossible to create a classification system that just happens to ignore american citizens during its training/creation phase. Again, it means that it is guaranteed that the NSA would be able to classify the groups involved in the communication. And again, it is irrelevant that the NSA said "Trust us, we're ignoring all of that."
The only real news is that the NSA didn't even internally pretend that they were only interested in communications with or between foreign agents. Everything else has been predicted the instant it became apparent that wiretaps were being done without oversight.
I'll respond because someone decided to mod you up: no, it's not an ad(vertisement). It's an article by someone who really likes the show. What's the difference? One's paid for, the other not. How do I know this? I don't. I'm making an educated guess. Does it matter? No.
Let me rephrase that last part: no, it doesn't matter if you know how to a) read past advertisement bullshit, and b) can discuss ideas without discussing who said what. If you can't - well, then the last bit obviously matters. But you are mature enough to differentiate between an idea and the person who puts it out there, can't you?
There are even companies that specialize in this sort of tactic. I can't find it anymore, but I found one around the time that I was doing work for a gaming site. It basically said that it would use Digg to increase a site's exposure. That meant lots of "Diggs" and positive reviews on the site via established accounts.
I'm not surprised that MS (or anyone else) is doing it - I am, however, surprised how effective it is. I thought that these corporations wouldn't be able to compete with the large masses of users who had contrary experiences. Apparently, getting paid to do something makes up in efficiency and dedication what is missing in numbers.
Dude, if you think that you're providing some type of public service... you're deluded. Newsflash - people congregate around common ideas or geographic proximity. This means that slashdot attracks people with a certain personality and/or philosophy. Welcome to Slashdot, home of gamers and IT geeks. Bias towards games and IT stuff is to be expected.
Finally - you attempt to paint people agreeing on something as groupthink. With that, you're not highlighting anything but your own douchebaggery. You deserve every flame you're getting right now.
And most of the pro-video game crowd perform flawless experiments, right?
No one's saying that. They are, however, significantly more rigorous in their approaches.
It seems to me you are more interested in a flame war than an actual discussion. Feel free to quote the actual studies in question, but at this point, you're running with platitudes that have no foundation in reality.
Something that isn't repeated often enough when this meme crops up: it's ALL about correlation. Only correlation can tell you whether your hypothesis is predictive or not.
Here's the problem with studies that make violence a cause of videogames:
- the statistics don't show that
- the causal mechanism is very suspicious
The fact that 99% of all videogame owners aren't any more violent than anyone is important, because it means that it has the same predictive capability as saying that eating bread or drinking milk causes people to be violent.
Seriously. This meme of correlation is not causation is trotted out by people who don't understand how statistics are used to support hypotheses. The meme a complete tautology when used properly, and a straw man when used improperly.
Why does that creep you out? It's history, it happened. It provides great context to what's taught in class. Wouldn't you want to know what was being said then, so that you can compare it to what's being said today? It's a primary source if there ever was one....
You're spot on in your analysis. You know where the problem is? The wrong people care about false positives, and the right ones don't. Not to mention that 90% of the population will just shrug and say that a 5% false positive rate is the cost to pay to safeguard the children.
Yeah, I'm a cynic. Why do you ask?
What do you think the goal for the Xbox and the Playstation is?
The funny part is that all of this is easily circumvented if you a) have the knowledge, and b) have the right connections. I have the knowledge, now I just need to marry someone with the right connections. I'll draw the line at the Bush twins though. No amount of networking is going to be worth that trouble.
As opposed to previous appointees for anything else? Crimini, some appointees in previous administrations were accused of outright crimes. Someone having owed back taxes at some point, and someone having been vp of something is pretty tame. Wake me up when there's something serious going on.
To me, you sound like you're willing to accept things based on absence of knowledge - i.e., faith. Because that's really what the 9/11 truthers are.
Quite frankly, I'm getting really tired of this meme about media brainwashing everybody. There is no "media". There is no global media agenda. This is just standard conspirationist crap.
But that's not really the problem. What is the major problem is that now everything is a neat little database right from the get-go, with retention policies of basically infinity. The part that bugs me is that this is now very easily combined with all kinds of other databases, all accessible to law-enforcement people of all stripes.
And judging by who gets hired into law-enforcement and what they do once they're hired, I find that quite scary. I don't want to be picked up by some cops just because I'm dating a cop's niece and he misspelled my name while looking me up in his little database. Yes, I know this is illegal. Doesn't stop it from happening.
And in even further news, corporations are not perfect.
I take it you're not familiar with how enterprises plan. They plan for regular load, not aberrant once-in-a-blue-moon load. This is bog standard behavior for a system responding to people doing stupid things. If you think this is restricted to the US government, you've never worked in corporate IT.
Jatropha and switchgrass are good alternatives as well. They have the added benefit that the technologies for extracting a good amount of oil from them already exists. However, they do not have the upside that algae have. That's why a lot of people are excited about them, including me.
As for corn/coconuts, the lack of efficiency isn't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that you're turning food (needed for survival) into fuel (needed for travel and shelter, and therefore less critical). This drives up prices for food, and causes significant pain. If we're talking cliches, this is stealing from Peter to pay Paul.
And that matters how? Being good at your job isn't only a functionality of whether you know what buttons to press, but also how well you get along with whoever you are interacting with.
My guess is you're not that good in the latter.
Algae are the most promising because you can grow them on refuse and sun-light. The energy captured is sun-light - think of it as biological solar panels. The processing of algae is not where it needs to be right now, but they're the best long-term bet.
Look up Solix for a company that is investigating this. Algae are really the only long-term viable source of bio-diesel.
Algae is the only really viable bio-diesel source. The closest thing to it is switchgrass, but even that can't be fully turned into bio-diesel. The only - and significant - issue with algae-derived bio-diesel is that it's difficult to efficiently turn algae into diesel.
What astounds me though is the number of times people try to turn slow-growing foodstuff into fuel. Coconut oil? I'm sure the same genius came up with the idea to use corn for ethanol fuel. Here's why those are dead ends:
- they require a lot of surface, water and nutrients.
- only a small fraction of the entire plant gets used.
- impacts food prices.
Compare that with algae, which:
- can grow in vats of arbitrary size.
- can be grown in sewage treatment plants.
- main growth restriction is light.
- the entire organism is used in the production of the fuel.
Every time I hear someone advocate fuel from coconuts or corn, I'm wondering how much he's getting paid by corn and coconut growers.
Pretty much. I had this discussion constantly about 10 years ago. It was ill-defined then, though the common assumption was 1K = 1024. The abuse by HDD manufacturers spurred the development of actual definitions.
The only thing I thought was worthwhile in that entire magazine was Quarterman. Sushi-X was annoying, and I certainly wouldn't call him huge. The personality was lame, the spirit juvenile.
The reason EGM went under? It was blog-level writing that was generally 2 months late with reviews and news.