I would like to add to that, that from the USA's security risk/reward perspective, it's probably better to have and keep allies, rather than to spy on those allies.
BTW I said "allies", not "vassals". Noam Chomsky's book is called "Hegemony or Survival", not "Hegemony and Survival".
So, the obvious solution is, to make a "Constitutional Reform Party" with only 1 agenda point: to change election law to normal representative voting like all other non-commonwealth democracies, and then call new elections within half a year.
Oh and take money out of politics. "The best democracy money can buy" indeed...
Judging from the reactions yours was indeed an unpopular opinion:-)
Snowden committed crimes. For the rule of law, he should be tried and sentenced to the prescribed penalty for those crimes.
I'm glad we know what he told us. But you can't not prosecute people who undoubtedly did commit crimes because you agree with their stated motives.
(emphasis mine) You bring up an interesting point, and I don't think that you're trolling.
But your statement presupposes that you're living under the rule of law, in the USA at the moment.
But, we have proof that this is not so:
1. US Congress security oversight committee asks Clapper: is it true that you're doing mass surveillance on US civilians? (I paraphrase; feel free to look up the original text yourself and post it here)
2. Clapper says no.
3. Snowden proves that the answer should have been "yes"
???
5. Security oversight committee notices that Clapper was lying under oath to his bosses (them), and begins an impeachment procedure against that recalcitrant underling
no... that's *NOT* what happened; and this is, in fact, the scary thing for us outside the USA:
5. Security oversight committee notices that Clapper was lying under oath to his bosses (them), and decides to increase the NSA's budget
6. If you haven't noticed this yet, this is actual proof that you currently don't have the rule of law, otherwise the media's attention would be directed to Clapper and Alexander and not to scapegoat Snowden.
7. No profit. Seriously. I think you have NO idea of the damage this has done to US interests worldwide.
To paraphrase it in computer-like Slashdot terms:
NSA >> official USA government
NSA pwns official USA government
NSA is above the US law (which means that you don't have rule of law which was your original point)
So... tell me.. if we want to do business with an American multinational; or sign a trade agreement with the USA; who do we have to talk to? Whose is the hand up the puppet's bum? It is unclear. Conspiracy theories are just theories, but the reality is that outsiders cannot know who currently leads the USA (just that it's not the official president and government).
Better not to do any business with USA until the situation is cleared up. If it turns out that e.g. the Mafia is pulling the strings of the NSA/USA government, then we'll at least know whom we're negotiating with, and what negotiating points might be of strategic value of them.
tl;dr version:
security organizations cause scandal. well, shit happens. that is not nice but there are procedures under rule of law to correct it. For government employees in USA I belive it's called "impeachment" (it's not just for presidents, you know).
the people in oversight/power react to the revelations with "oh well.. so our employees lied to us.. let's increase their budget". That is NOT normal. People in power (congressmen) are probably not the kind of pushovers that would react like that, or they wouldn't have climbed to the top of the US political pyramid in the first place. Can you tell us if many congressmen like Senator Dianne Feinstein actually have humble, kindly personalities? We don't see them on TV very often over here.
That can only happen after the USA has repealed the "The Hague Invasion Act", otherwise you're just shuffling those poor people back-and-forth all the time.
Thank you for your informative post. I suspect (no proof) that if corporate leadership is so attached to established expensive technology like Microsoft XP ATMs, then higher-level economical effects will come into play:
On the scale of entire banks, those banks that have more secure ATMs (i.e. NOT running Microsoft Windows XP) will have fewer attacks, southeast european skimmers will have a tougher job of attacking the ATMs, the reputation of the banks in the high street will be ranked according to the scale "does the ATM work or does it show some cryptic Microsoft error message all of the time and an "out of order" sign".
I know I don't like Microsoft, so there's a subjective factor involved, but when I saw the ATM of the bank where we have OUR money, with some Microsoft error message screen (I made a photo of it if you don't believe me), I seriously thought: "I am SO going to switch to a bank which takes my money a bit more seriously than giving it to Bulgarian scammers" (apologies for the stereotypic slur--I love Bulgarian wine and music).
Because in my personal biased opinion, that's what using Microsoft for serious tasks (such as ATMs) means.
Disclaimer: I've worked a bit with money transfer protocols and a bit for banks, but I'm not really a security or banking professional. I know that the secure systems are all mainframes, Unix and Linux. I seriously could not believe that a bank would use Microsoft for ATMs, until I saw it with my own eyes.
You'll need lots of cheap labour, so do like these people did: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Vaisseau_de_pierre (in French)
Ask your Friendly Neighbourhood Necromancer to resurrect an army of revenants to help move their descendants' stuff.
Maybe that FNN can also dig up some extra-strong local workforce to subcontract to;-)
then sail away on the Torne Älv..
PS: A big thanks to messrs. Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal
After reading the previous 48 posts in growing confusion, every single one of them troll posts with 0 signal/noise ratio, all I can say is:
WTF is going on? Skype doesn't work properly anymore. I skype with my parents, and the connection breaks after less than 10 seconds. Did Microsoft change the skype protocol, just before the holiday days, just for a laugh to see what happens?
Oh sure, it's the fault of some terrorists. I admit that I haven't read TFA, but can someone please reply to my comment then we'll start a thread here discussing Microsoft and Skype and VOIP protocols, instead of insane GNAA garbage.
If you're scared about the correct layout of your documents, why don't you try out some test documents first, or push your own documents through the officeshots.org round-trip test suite? And be sure to complain if something doesn't render your correct ODF document properly.
N.B. I have seen in the past that not all test engines are on-line all the time.
Next up: They sue Google, Apple, Samsung, and all the others for infringing on "their" work.
Probably NOT. Probably some lesser known company like Vringo or Intellectual Ventures, who have nothing at all to do wiht Microsoft (legally), will sue Google Apple Samsung et. al. for infringing on "their" work.
When I looked at the map, I saw the following countries were missing from the list (plus lots of Oceania countries):
Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Fiji, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.
Isn't it odd that at least Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Panama are excluded? I'd imagine they do lots of trade across the Pacific Ocean (for Panama I meant transport rather than production).
Don't believe me, google images CO2 IR absorption spectrum (N.B. often the scale is right to left)
google it yourself ffs
One article I found that shows the very broad peak at around 675 cm-1 is a PDF from a US military document from 1976. Are you saying they're into the tree-hugger conspiracy now?
That's right; it seems that now it works as a subtle tax on the people that don't have solar panels / subsidy to those who do. Obviously, so the state can steer citizens towards installing solar panels.
If I read the thread correctly, the utility was forced to pay retail rate for power until the breakeven point, but wholesale if (at the end of the year) the consumer turned out to have been a net producer.
Or the sodium-sulfur battery (ironically, invented by TEPCO, I believe). Cheap material, just a bit explosive so keep it away from rainwater and air.
The best idea I've read is, to store it in the form of extra cooling for cold storage (e.g. meat) warehouses. Electricity surplus supply is used in some kind of "smart grid" to cool the warehouse below its normal temperature, and then it's allowed to warm up again to -18C or so when electricity demand is high (and electricity prices to cool your meat warehouse are high). The grid has a "storage" load balancing supplier, and the meat warehouse has spot-market adapted electricity prices (buy when cheap, don't buy when expensive).
This is America, where undercutting the large corporations doesn't make you a good citizen, it makes you an enemy of the state.
If people had solar, that would undercut oil. And they're not going to allow that.
Well, here's something to think about; a nice "teh eevil terrists" counter-argument: Distributed power generation, like solar or spread-out wind, is terrorism-proof. It would take thousands of coordinated attacks (people climbing around on your roof wearing a bomb girdle ?!?) to take down the grid in case of terrorism or war.
On the other hand, a centralized nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, is NOT terrorism proof. It needs just a single terrorist engineer, undercover for as long as it takes to be in the "inner circle" with access to the "Homer Simpson control room" to bring the grid down.
This argument was particularly potent in the '70s-'80s, when governments seriously considered building fast breeder reactors: You'd need a police state to protect the reactor from terrorists so it doesn't contaminate your own country; and you'd need a surveillance state for background checks on the engineers allowed to operate it. Basically, you'd need a police state. With central control of the electricity (just cut off any provinces or states that get too "uppity").
Of course, some people were obviously all FOR it.
Utilities are weird though.. there was a complicated operation done on the utilities in the Netherlands, whereby 1 company owns the entire grid (Tennet, government-owned I believe) and the other ones compete on a spot market to provide electricity on it. There are all kinds of subtleties involved to make it efficient; I don't understand the half of it.
I do remember seeing a picture in the newspaper about a 2-person utility company, grinning in front of their Ferrari. I presume they were some kind of go-in-between provider.
Slashdot Mirror
And what could those Senators have done in response? Increase the NSA budget even more?
I would like to add to that, that from the USA's security risk/reward perspective, it's probably better to have and keep allies, rather than to spy on those allies.
BTW I said "allies", not "vassals". Noam Chomsky's book is called "Hegemony or Survival", not "Hegemony and Survival".
So, the obvious solution is, to make a "Constitutional Reform Party" with only 1 agenda point: to change election law to normal representative voting like all other non-commonwealth democracies, and then call new elections within half a year.
Oh and take money out of politics. "The best democracy money can buy" indeed...
Because Snowden would look weird in a turkey costume, that's why.
Yeah! Like Oliver North! ;-)
(emphasis mine)
You bring up an interesting point, and I don't think that you're trolling.
But your statement presupposes that you're living under the rule of law, in the USA at the moment.
But, we have proof that this is not so:
no... that's *NOT* what happened; and this is, in fact, the scary thing for us outside the USA:
7. No profit. Seriously. I think you have NO idea of the damage this has done to US interests worldwide.
To paraphrase it in computer-like Slashdot terms:
NSA >> official USA government
NSA pwns official USA government
NSA is above the US law (which means that you don't have rule of law which was your original point)
So... tell me.. if we want to do business with an American multinational; or sign a trade agreement with the USA; who do we have to talk to? Whose is the hand up the puppet's bum? It is unclear. Conspiracy theories are just theories, but the reality is that outsiders cannot know who currently leads the USA (just that it's not the official president and government).
Better not to do any business with USA until the situation is cleared up. If it turns out that e.g. the Mafia is pulling the strings of the NSA/USA government, then we'll at least know whom we're negotiating with, and what negotiating points might be of strategic value of them.
tl;dr version:
security organizations cause scandal. well, shit happens. that is not nice but there are procedures under rule of law to correct it. For government employees in USA I belive it's called "impeachment" (it's not just for presidents, you know).
the people in oversight/power react to the revelations with "oh well.. so our employees lied to us.. let's increase their budget". That is NOT normal. People in power (congressmen) are probably not the kind of pushovers that would react like that, or they wouldn't have climbed to the top of the US political pyramid in the first place. Can you tell us if many congressmen like Senator Dianne Feinstein actually have humble, kindly personalities? We don't see them on TV very often over here.
That can only happen after the USA has repealed the "The Hague Invasion Act", otherwise you're just shuffling those poor people back-and-forth all the time.
<tinfoil-hat>
OMG!11one!!
I KNEW it!
The NSA was behind Janet Jackson showing a tastefully decorated nipple!
</tinfoil-hat>
What is it this time, here other nipple? Think about all the heart attacks this will cause to unsuspecting American viewers!
Thank you for your informative post. I suspect (no proof) that if corporate leadership is so attached to established expensive technology like Microsoft XP ATMs, then higher-level economical effects will come into play:
On the scale of entire banks, those banks that have more secure ATMs (i.e. NOT running Microsoft Windows XP) will have fewer attacks, southeast european skimmers will have a tougher job of attacking the ATMs, the reputation of the banks in the high street will be ranked according to the scale "does the ATM work or does it show some cryptic Microsoft error message all of the time and an "out of order" sign".
I know I don't like Microsoft, so there's a subjective factor involved, but when I saw the ATM of the bank where we have OUR money, with some Microsoft error message screen (I made a photo of it if you don't believe me), I seriously thought: "I am SO going to switch to a bank which takes my money a bit more seriously than giving it to Bulgarian scammers" (apologies for the stereotypic slur--I love Bulgarian wine and music).
Because in my personal biased opinion, that's what using Microsoft for serious tasks (such as ATMs) means.
Disclaimer: I've worked a bit with money transfer protocols and a bit for banks, but I'm not really a security or banking professional. I know that the secure systems are all mainframes, Unix and Linux.
I seriously could not believe that a bank would use Microsoft for ATMs, until I saw it with my own eyes.
You'll need lots of cheap labour, so do like these people did: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Vaisseau_de_pierre (in French) ;-)
..
Ask your Friendly Neighbourhood Necromancer to resurrect an army of revenants to help move their descendants' stuff.
Maybe that FNN can also dig up some extra-strong local workforce to subcontract to
then sail away on the Torne Älv
PS: A big thanks to messrs. Pierre Christin and Enki Bilal
After reading the previous 48 posts in growing confusion, every single one of them troll posts with 0 signal/noise ratio, all I can say is:
WTF is going on? Skype doesn't work properly anymore. I skype with my parents, and the connection breaks after less than 10 seconds. Did Microsoft change the skype protocol, just before the holiday days, just for a laugh to see what happens?
Oh sure, it's the fault of some terrorists. I admit that I haven't read TFA, but can someone please reply to my comment then we'll start a thread here discussing Microsoft and Skype and VOIP protocols, instead of insane GNAA garbage.
Eagles: the Politically Correct way to kill windmills ...
Yes indeed! Big Duck (and Cover) (SFW)
If you're scared about the correct layout of your documents, why don't you try out some test documents first, or push your own documents through the officeshots.org round-trip test suite? And be sure to complain if something doesn't render your correct ODF document properly.
N.B. I have seen in the past that not all test engines are on-line all the time.
Probably NOT. Probably some lesser known company like Vringo or Intellectual Ventures, who have nothing at all to do wiht Microsoft (legally), will sue Google Apple Samsung et. al. for infringing on "their" work.
The patents are already gone. Watch the cup with the pea here: http://www.vringoip.com/cgi-bin/index.pl.
I am amused and impressed by your reading comprehension.
When I looked at the map, I saw the following countries were missing from the list (plus lots of Oceania countries): Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Fiji, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.
Isn't it odd that at least Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Panama are excluded? I'd imagine they do lots of trade across the Pacific Ocean (for Panama I meant transport rather than production).
Look at the peak at 700 reciproke centimeter in figure 2 on this webpage:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
It is the broadest peak in the spectrum!
Don't believe me, google images CO2 IR absorption spectrum (N.B. often the scale is right to left)
google it yourself ffs
One article I found that shows the very broad peak at around 675 cm-1 is a PDF from a US military document from 1976. Are you saying they're into the tree-hugger conspiracy now?
Well duh. they're probably OWNED by the State. At least they should be?
That's right; it seems that now it works as a subtle tax on the people that don't have solar panels / subsidy to those who do. Obviously, so the state can steer citizens towards installing solar panels.
(I'm not making a value judgement on that, btw).
If I read the thread correctly, the utility was forced to pay retail rate for power until the breakeven point, but wholesale if (at the end of the year) the consumer turned out to have been a net producer.
Or the sodium-sulfur battery (ironically, invented by TEPCO, I believe). Cheap material, just a bit explosive so keep it away from rainwater and air.
The best idea I've read is, to store it in the form of extra cooling for cold storage (e.g. meat) warehouses. Electricity surplus supply is used in some kind of "smart grid" to cool the warehouse below its normal temperature, and then it's allowed to warm up again to -18C or so when electricity demand is high (and electricity prices to cool your meat warehouse are high). The grid has a "storage" load balancing supplier, and the meat warehouse has spot-market adapted electricity prices (buy when cheap, don't buy when expensive).
Well, here's something to think about; a nice "teh eevil terrists" counter-argument: Distributed power generation, like solar or spread-out wind, is terrorism-proof. It would take thousands of coordinated attacks (people climbing around on your roof wearing a bomb girdle ?!?) to take down the grid in case of terrorism or war.
On the other hand, a centralized nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant, is NOT terrorism proof. It needs just a single terrorist engineer, undercover for as long as it takes to be in the "inner circle" with access to the "Homer Simpson control room" to bring the grid down.
This argument was particularly potent in the '70s-'80s, when governments seriously considered building fast breeder reactors: You'd need a police state to protect the reactor from terrorists so it doesn't contaminate your own country; and you'd need a surveillance state for background checks on the engineers allowed to operate it. Basically, you'd need a police state. With central control of the electricity (just cut off any provinces or states that get too "uppity").
Of course, some people were obviously all FOR it.
Utilities are weird though.. there was a complicated operation done on the utilities in the Netherlands, whereby 1 company owns the entire grid (Tennet, government-owned I believe) and the other ones compete on a spot market to provide electricity on it. There are all kinds of subtleties involved to make it efficient; I don't understand the half of it.
I do remember seeing a picture in the newspaper about a 2-person utility company, grinning in front of their Ferrari. I presume they were some kind of go-in-between provider.