The fact that the "Wake-up" command is Alexa which happens to be the name of one of the original web data mining firms seems like an unfortunate confluence. We may have crossed the privacy Rubicon with the mass acceptance of smartphones, but placing a cloud-connected device inside our homes to monitor all conversations is much too creepy for me.
You are correct. The reason why you are correct is key though. You can keep everything up-to-date, and lock down systems as tight as you want. But as long as any user has legitimate access to the system; there are weak links in the chain. If a user has access to the internet or a phone, they're susceptible to social engineering attacks.Email or web in particular, exposes the company to spear phishing attacks. Access to I/O ports or removable media devices creates a potential attack vector. Heck even without users who aren't highly security conscious, any hardware is a potential trojan assuming you haven't fully examined the code in every ROM of every motherboard, peripheral, router, etc. Every piece of software is also susceptible to 0-day exploits.
So despite all best practices, there'll almost always be low-hanging fruit for attacks. Conversely, any system sufficiently locked down to make them impenetrable not just by script kiddies, but by organized criminal enterprises or by foreign or domestic surveillance would also make it pretty much impossible to get any work done. So while doing your best to enforce basic security measures is a good first step, delving into the arcane and esoteric to further secure systems is still necessary if you wish to stay afloat in the arms race of cybercrime.
The problem with your assessment is that you, yourself, referred to "MAD levels". So within the Cold War "USA vs USSR" context, those stockpiled warheads are utterly useless. Say Russia launched all their nukes toward the US,; the US would retaliate by launching all its deployed nukes toward Russia. So within about 30 minutes or so, most of the world's urban populations will be wiped out in a radioactive firestorm. Okay, so then the CIA spooks within Russia report that most of the Kremlin is now speeding off toward some previously unknown remote underground bunker in the Urals.
How much time do you think it will take to pull some of those extra warheads out of mothballs, arm them, load them onto a supersonic jet, fly them within range, and finally launch them at the suspected target? The warheads wouldn't even be close to getting out into the sunlight before the mushroom clouds appeared at the military base where they were stored.
Now in the post Cold War era, it's theoretically possible that the US, Israel, or other actors could launch a few tactical nukes against reactors in Iran, Pakistan, and/or North Korea, and then theoretically deploy enough stored warheads to replenish the supply to the level before the strikes. But you'll have to factor in the blowback these strikes would have on the global stage--particularly in China and Russia. and a full scale nuclear war might ensue shortly thereafter. If not, at least a huge build up on all sides would promptly commence and tensions would rise the world over to levels not seen since the Cuban missile crisis.
I was thinking more along the lines of a remake of Top Gun. Instead of the USSR, the villains are the tagging drones, and the heroes are now the removal drones. But most of the action revolving around dogfights between drones. The epilogue will show the train cars are all blown to pieces, but completely free of graffiti.
We could reach a happy medium... Why not arm the drones with solvents and/or paint sprayers... They can immediately remove or paint over any exterior graffiti, which would destroy the appeal of tagging in the first place. Bonus.. they can tag the perpetrators too facilitating their identification, arrest, and conviction.
Yes, sounds great. But while you will be a hero/martyr amongst the tech crowd.. Think how this would play out in the corporate controlled courts, media, and the populace:
1. You violated the DMCA in reverse-engineering their IP..
2. With forethought and malicious intent, you modified their IP to cause innocent parties systems to be flagged as suspicious.
3. You "infected" computers and "hacked" networks across the country and around the world with this malware.
4. You knowingly caused widespread failure and shutdown of critical IT infrastructure, jeopardizing national security, disrupting commerce and businesses large and small leading to massive layoffs, mass panic, rioting, etc.
Your defense: "Well they did it first! And it was actually their code which shut everything down!" again will be supported by the techies and many fringe groups. But to everyone else, you'll simply be known as "the {wo}man who destroyed the internet!" Expect the popcorn you planned to munch when the SHTF will be buried in shit too!
A better solution in this case is just to be passive, or subversively active in supporting them. Don't shout from the rafters like we did for DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, et al.. Let the RIAA spend billions greasing legislators' palms and on shaping popular opinion of what a good and important step this is in protecting the media industry. We can help with the legislation, "Any system flagged for piracy will be immediately block the user from accessing the internet. However, a daemon will continue to run, searching the flagged system for any and all identifying information and sending it to the legal and RIAA authorities to facilitate prosecution." We can help them with their spin, "Don't let the music go away. Register it today!"
They can steamroll it through Congress, Declare the.mp3 age is over and install the most odious rootkit DRM scheme ever devised! The shit will still hit the fan, but this time, all the blame will fall squarely on the MAFIAA's shoulders. Ironically, their defense would have to be something like, "The tech industry should have realized this will be a problem and raised objections!" To which our response will be, "You mean like when we spoke out about all those other schemes and laws you tried to shove down our throats?"
I've got the perfect 3d-printed device that will stop wars, infighting, greed, jealousy, and so forth! It's a tall and wide-jawed set of calipers At its center point, there's a long and razor-sharp blade attached to a spring-loaded release mechanism. Simply press the calipers against whatever item is contested as belonging to two different people and depress the plunger. Behold! a precisely even split of a cupcake, pizza, or whatever else the kids or roommates are fighting over,
First World Problems, I hear you scoff?? Not so fast! Eliminate this sense of perceived injustice amongst middle-class brats, and they'll be less likely to grow into the folks wanting to invade other lands for their natural resources and exploitable citizens. Surely Gandhi would have approved of that! Still think this idea still only directly benefits self-entitled Westerners? Imagine how useful this device would have been for Solomon when he was dealing with those ladies fighting over a baby!
I got it! We can flee en masse to Canada as refugees! No wait. Too many of the folks who distrust our political system are the paranoid paramilitary types, -- They'll simply invade Canada and rename it "Patriot Land",
My apologies to Canada, but if it's any consolation, it'll leave an even larger percentage of the morbidly obese, reality-show fanatics behind, making the US look even more like Idiocracy. I suppose we can both then seek asylum in Mexico.
Perhaps, but It wouldn't necessarily need to capture every single bit of data being transferred. The titles of the movies you stream from Netflix could be collected, but the stream itself ignored. Ditto for the eBook you bought, the MP3 album you downloaded, the game you pirated, etc. Or put another way: The only time your personally created video of your cat is collected by the feds is when you upload it to your site, YouTube, Facebook or whatever. Every time that it's liked, re-tweeted, emailed, hotlinked, or otherwise used elsewhere, It's more or less recorded as "At [TIME/DATE], mianne viewed phantomfive's cat video obtained at prior {TIME/DATE]."
I have no way of knowing how much bandwidth/storage that would entail, but I would guess it'd be a much more modest scale from nnn MBs/min to nn GBs/min.
Right now, people are indeed making comparisons to 1984, absurd as they might seem. Indeed, a common sentiment expressed this past week is that it was tough, but that we're tougher and should celebrate! When, since at least the mid-20th century, have men not used metaphors about sports cars to describe attractive women? Admittedly there isn't much talk these days about the Rhythm Pigs. But I can say with certainly that most males have always seen attractive women as objects of sexual desire and conquest--whether such women are an important authority figure in their lives, a supermodel whom they've never met and never will, or even a "lady of the night." It is a sad fact, but some men become too obsessed with women leading to very tragic endings.
So except for the spy cameras on the street and the references to James Paul Koncek, I must say that '1984' is very relevant to the modern world in which we live.
Not necessarily. However the standard security apparatus from the 1970's, known as the "Walk-Through Metal Detector", would have easily detected these devices.
The folks who enforce the policy are far removed from the folks who make the policy. So the TSA agent's job is miserable enough already, between passengers who are asshats in general, especially to the "peons who serve and/or inconvenience them" They get the constant DHS brainwash: "You are the last line of defense against the terrorists, blah, blah, blah...", have to work crappy split shifts without a consistent schedule, and know they'll be reprimanded or fired if they let one of those fake guns or explosives go past.So deliberately giving them additional grief in hopes of changing the policies, is not only piling on to what's probably one of the most stressful, and unsatisfying jobs in the country, but will have absolutely no effect on those policies is probably one of the most despicable ideas I've heard in a while.
I'm no fan of the TSA in general, and defunding it would be a good first step in solving the sequestered fiscal ceiling or whatever the current self-inflicted economic crisis is being called today. But please direct your loathing of the Security Theater boondoggle to those who can actually do something about it. John Pistole, Ray LaHood, Barack Obama, and your own congress critters. Write them, call them, encourage your family, friends, fellow forum members, etc. to do likewise--and do it often. Don't make threats or resort to name calling, rather provide a concise argument why you think the policy(ies) need to be changed or eliminated.
Hassling the TSA screener is most definitely not a productive conduit for change, and will only increase the turnover--Maybe the TSA will start hiring people straight out of prison when they exhaust the current labor pool.
Then please tell us.. Why on Earth did you squander funds on something at Amazon for your personal use in the first place? You should give that money back to your employer or the clients it serves! Also, why are you posting on/.? You must cease squandering time on your personal pursuits and return to work or community service immediately! /sarcasm /AC troll food
I'd rather members of the 1% sought to eradicate world hunger, disease, and poverty... Oh wait, Bill & Melinda Gates, along with Warren Buffet are quite involved in that pursuit. Sure there should be more CEOs, hedge-fund managers, etc doing likewise.. but this is a free country right?
So beyond that, I'm pleased that Jeff Bezos is recovering and preserving important artifacts from history, rather than some other uber-wealthyindividuals in recent memory.
As a postscript.. You do remember another country's populace that rose up with the Arab Spring, don't you? It's a small island known as Bahrain. The crackdown by its government is still very oppressive. But for some reason it never got quite the level of coverage and events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, or Syria have attracted.. Surely, it couldn't be due to its location in the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Iran could it? We can't seriously chide a despotic regime that happens to provide a hugely strategic base near several large oil distribution hubs now can we?
Perhaps you might remember this quote though, "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." --George W.Bush, 09/20/2001 Often considered the core of the Bush Doctrine. Another famous quote: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." -- Condoleezza Rice, 09/08/2002 I'm sure I could find some other choice quotes "Axis of Evil", "uranium from Niger", etc. to add to these.
Sure, the Bush administration may not have explicitly implicated Saddam Hussein in the 9/11 attacks, but these statements so soon after the 9/11 attacks were still playing havoc with the emotions of Americans in particular, and the world at large; would make it easy for any average joe, or journalist, to conflate the regime of Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. Preying on our fears that another attack on our shores via Saddam's "WMD program" was imminent. Thereby systematically branding anyone who thought this march to war was a mistake as unpatriotic. Or don't you remember, "Freedom Fries?"
Back to the point of what Twitter could have done or not had it existed then, I agree with the "No." Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites may have played a huge role in fanning the flames of the "Arab Spring", But this was in nations accustomed to far, far less freedom of speech than one has in the USA, Canada, much of Europe, etc. thus had far greater effect on organizing protests. Ee can easily access any meetup site, and view videos anytime on YouTube showing police crackdowns against (war, OWS, G8 summits, etc.) protesters within the developed world. So as others have said, Twitter would have been used just like we could (and did) via email, message boards, IRC, etc. But when the critical mass of war supporters is larger than that of the opponents, Twitter remains irrelevant.
And a hacker would never, ever be able to bribe an undocumented janitor with a C-Note, 6-pack, and/or weed to take pictures of any monitor with a post it note stuck to it. It'd be positively unthinkable for a worker to take note of co-workers passwords in hopes of wreaking havoc should they be terminated...
Yes, but many corporate networks *still* require a user to enter a password containing alpha, numeral, and special characters, and have the passwords expire after 2-3 months. Eventually, the users get the beat down by the boss or IT about writing it on a post-it stuck on their monitor. IT therefore has successfully trained most users to write down passwords in a notebook or a desk calendar. Indeed! The users have grokked the corporate mantra toward information security: Security through Obscurity.
Not to mention for a couple bucks, one can download one of several Android or iOS pinball apps with multiple layouts, excellent sound and graphics, and spot-on physics. A couple seconds to load a different table vs. loading a new ROM & replacing the upper play field for this system.
If you gotta have an actual full sized pinball in your game room, you can probably find the machine you dumped countless quarters into during your misspent youth for sale online, probably for around $2K in decent condition.
Chrome OS seems geared to those same folks who'd otherwise install trojans, spyware, etc. for the sake of getting an animated cat to chase their cursor. So these users are protected from themselves in not directly hosing their OS from sheer ignorance, and the geeks who purchased these systems might now be lulled into complacency in knowing that they aren't likely to need to LLF the drive and then explain to their relatives where all their funny pictures went...
The problem I foresee is that a user of Chrome OS will therefore have a large target painted on them they they'll be much more likely to fall prey to a phishing campaign. Have you trained Aunt Mabel well enough to know that when she receives that "Important message regarding your mortgage account" informing her that her payment wasn't properly credited, she won't immediately be clicking through to log into her account or calling the "customer service hotline" for assistance?
Neither "hard-core conservative" nor "hard-core liberal" refer to any political party. Ideologies perhaps. You could equate Tea-Partiers to the former and Occupiers to the latter, but neither group appears to have much faith in their "designated party" from the 2-party system we've got. Liberals complain that Obama is perpetuating and strengthening heavily criticized policies from GWB. Meanwhile, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al) under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies. And the GOP is torn apart as their try to pander to this group while distancing themselves from nutjobs such as Todd Akin.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty certain that the advertisersame are paying for the ads, regardless of the medium by which you receive them.
The fact that the "Wake-up" command is Alexa which happens to be the name of one of the original web data mining firms seems like an unfortunate confluence. We may have crossed the privacy Rubicon with the mass acceptance of smartphones, but placing a cloud-connected device inside our homes to monitor all conversations is much too creepy for me.
Audience input is no guarantee of success either.. Exhibit A is Snakes on a Plane which was essentially a crowd-sourced movie, and a big flop as well.
You are correct. The reason why you are correct is key though. You can keep everything up-to-date, and lock down systems as tight as you want. But as long as any user has legitimate access to the system; there are weak links in the chain. If a user has access to the internet or a phone, they're susceptible to social engineering attacks.Email or web in particular, exposes the company to spear phishing attacks. Access to I/O ports or removable media devices creates a potential attack vector. Heck even without users who aren't highly security conscious, any hardware is a potential trojan assuming you haven't fully examined the code in every ROM of every motherboard, peripheral, router, etc. Every piece of software is also susceptible to 0-day exploits.
So despite all best practices, there'll almost always be low-hanging fruit for attacks. Conversely, any system sufficiently locked down to make them impenetrable not just by script kiddies, but by organized criminal enterprises or by foreign or domestic surveillance would also make it pretty much impossible to get any work done. So while doing your best to enforce basic security measures is a good first step, delving into the arcane and esoteric to further secure systems is still necessary if you wish to stay afloat in the arms race of cybercrime.
How much time do you think it will take to pull some of those extra warheads out of mothballs, arm them, load them onto a supersonic jet, fly them within range, and finally launch them at the suspected target? The warheads wouldn't even be close to getting out into the sunlight before the mushroom clouds appeared at the military base where they were stored.
Now in the post Cold War era, it's theoretically possible that the US, Israel, or other actors could launch a few tactical nukes against reactors in Iran, Pakistan, and/or North Korea, and then theoretically deploy enough stored warheads to replenish the supply to the level before the strikes. But you'll have to factor in the blowback these strikes would have on the global stage--particularly in China and Russia. and a full scale nuclear war might ensue shortly thereafter. If not, at least a huge build up on all sides would promptly commence and tensions would rise the world over to levels not seen since the Cuban missile crisis.
They found a dime inside when they tore it down?
I was thinking more along the lines of a remake of Top Gun. Instead of the USSR, the villains are the tagging drones, and the heroes are now the removal drones. But most of the action revolving around dogfights between drones. The epilogue will show the train cars are all blown to pieces, but completely free of graffiti.
We could reach a happy medium... Why not arm the drones with solvents and/or paint sprayers... They can immediately remove or paint over any exterior graffiti, which would destroy the appeal of tagging in the first place. Bonus.. they can tag the perpetrators too facilitating their identification, arrest, and conviction.
Yes, sounds great. But while you will be a hero/martyr amongst the tech crowd.. Think how this would play out in the corporate controlled courts, media, and the populace:
1. You violated the DMCA in reverse-engineering their IP..
2. With forethought and malicious intent, you modified their IP to cause innocent parties systems to be flagged as suspicious.
3. You "infected" computers and "hacked" networks across the country and around the world with this malware.
4. You knowingly caused widespread failure and shutdown of critical IT infrastructure, jeopardizing national security, disrupting commerce and businesses large and small leading to massive layoffs, mass panic, rioting, etc.
Your defense: "Well they did it first! And it was actually their code which shut everything down!" again will be supported by the techies and many fringe groups. But to everyone else, you'll simply be known as "the {wo}man who destroyed the internet!" Expect the popcorn you planned to munch when the SHTF will be buried in shit too!
A better solution in this case is just to be passive, or subversively active in supporting them. Don't shout from the rafters like we did for DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, et al.. Let the RIAA spend billions greasing legislators' palms and on shaping popular opinion of what a good and important step this is in protecting the media industry. We can help with the legislation, "Any system flagged for piracy will be immediately block the user from accessing the internet. However, a daemon will continue to run, searching the flagged system for any and all identifying information and sending it to the legal and RIAA authorities to facilitate prosecution." We can help them with their spin, "Don't let the music go away. Register it today!"
They can steamroll it through Congress, Declare the .mp3 age is over and install the most odious rootkit DRM scheme ever devised! The shit will still hit the fan, but this time, all the blame will fall squarely on the MAFIAA's shoulders. Ironically, their defense would have to be something like, "The tech industry should have realized this will be a problem and raised objections!" To which our response will be, "You mean like when we spoke out about all those other schemes and laws you tried to shove down our throats?"
I've got the perfect 3d-printed device that will stop wars, infighting, greed, jealousy, and so forth! It's a tall and wide-jawed set of calipers At its center point, there's a long and razor-sharp blade attached to a spring-loaded release mechanism. Simply press the calipers against whatever item is contested as belonging to two different people and depress the plunger. Behold! a precisely even split of a cupcake, pizza, or whatever else the kids or roommates are fighting over,
First World Problems, I hear you scoff?? Not so fast! Eliminate this sense of perceived injustice amongst middle-class brats, and they'll be less likely to grow into the folks wanting to invade other lands for their natural resources and exploitable citizens. Surely Gandhi would have approved of that! Still think this idea still only directly benefits self-entitled Westerners? Imagine how useful this device would have been for Solomon when he was dealing with those ladies fighting over a baby!
I got it! We can flee en masse to Canada as refugees! No wait. Too many of the folks who distrust our political system are the paranoid paramilitary types, -- They'll simply invade Canada and rename it "Patriot Land",
My apologies to Canada, but if it's any consolation, it'll leave an even larger percentage of the morbidly obese, reality-show fanatics behind, making the US look even more like Idiocracy. I suppose we can both then seek asylum in Mexico.
"Just follow your nose! It always knows!"
Perhaps, but It wouldn't necessarily need to capture every single bit of data being transferred. The titles of the movies you stream from Netflix could be collected, but the stream itself ignored. Ditto for the eBook you bought, the MP3 album you downloaded, the game you pirated, etc. Or put another way: The only time your personally created video of your cat is collected by the feds is when you upload it to your site, YouTube, Facebook or whatever. Every time that it's liked, re-tweeted, emailed, hotlinked, or otherwise used elsewhere, It's more or less recorded as "At [TIME/DATE], mianne viewed phantomfive's cat video obtained at prior {TIME/DATE]." I have no way of knowing how much bandwidth/storage that would entail, but I would guess it'd be a much more modest scale from nnn MBs/min to nn GBs/min.
Right now, people are indeed making comparisons to 1984, absurd as they might seem. Indeed, a common sentiment expressed this past week is that it was tough, but that we're tougher and should celebrate! When, since at least the mid-20th century, have men not used metaphors about sports cars to describe attractive women? Admittedly there isn't much talk these days about the Rhythm Pigs. But I can say with certainly that most males have always seen attractive women as objects of sexual desire and conquest--whether such women are an important authority figure in their lives, a supermodel whom they've never met and never will, or even a "lady of the night." It is a sad fact, but some men become too obsessed with women leading to very tragic endings.
So except for the spy cameras on the street and the references to James Paul Koncek, I must say that '1984' is very relevant to the modern world in which we live.
Not necessarily. However the standard security apparatus from the 1970's, known as the "Walk-Through Metal Detector", would have easily detected these devices.
The folks who enforce the policy are far removed from the folks who make the policy. So the TSA agent's job is miserable enough already, between passengers who are asshats in general, especially to the "peons who serve and/or inconvenience them" They get the constant DHS brainwash: "You are the last line of defense against the terrorists, blah, blah, blah...", have to work crappy split shifts without a consistent schedule, and know they'll be reprimanded or fired if they let one of those fake guns or explosives go past.So deliberately giving them additional grief in hopes of changing the policies, is not only piling on to what's probably one of the most stressful, and unsatisfying jobs in the country, but will have absolutely no effect on those policies is probably one of the most despicable ideas I've heard in a while.
I'm no fan of the TSA in general, and defunding it would be a good first step in solving the sequestered fiscal ceiling or whatever the current self-inflicted economic crisis is being called today. But please direct your loathing of the Security Theater boondoggle to those who can actually do something about it. John Pistole, Ray LaHood, Barack Obama, and your own congress critters. Write them, call them, encourage your family, friends, fellow forum members, etc. to do likewise--and do it often. Don't make threats or resort to name calling, rather provide a concise argument why you think the policy(ies) need to be changed or eliminated.
Hassling the TSA screener is most definitely not a productive conduit for change, and will only increase the turnover--Maybe the TSA will start hiring people straight out of prison when they exhaust the current labor pool.
Then please tell us.. Why on Earth did you squander funds on something at Amazon for your personal use in the first place? You should give that money back to your employer or the clients it serves! Also, why are you posting on /.? You must cease squandering time on your personal pursuits and return to work or community service immediately!
/sarcasm
/AC troll food
I'd rather members of the 1% sought to eradicate world hunger, disease, and poverty... Oh wait, Bill & Melinda Gates, along with Warren Buffet are quite involved in that pursuit. Sure there should be more CEOs, hedge-fund managers, etc doing likewise.. but this is a free country right?
So beyond that, I'm pleased that Jeff Bezos is recovering and preserving important artifacts from history, rather than some other uber-wealthy individuals in recent memory.
As a postscript.. You do remember another country's populace that rose up with the Arab Spring, don't you? It's a small island known as Bahrain. The crackdown by its government is still very oppressive. But for some reason it never got quite the level of coverage and events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, or Syria have attracted.. Surely, it couldn't be due to its location in the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Iran could it? We can't seriously chide a despotic regime that happens to provide a hugely strategic base near several large oil distribution hubs now can we?
Perhaps you might remember this quote though, "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." --George W.Bush, 09/20/2001 Often considered the core of the Bush Doctrine. Another famous quote: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." -- Condoleezza Rice, 09/08/2002
I'm sure I could find some other choice quotes "Axis of Evil", "uranium from Niger", etc. to add to these.
Sure, the Bush administration may not have explicitly implicated Saddam Hussein in the 9/11 attacks, but these statements so soon after the 9/11 attacks were still playing havoc with the emotions of Americans in particular, and the world at large; would make it easy for any average joe, or journalist, to conflate the regime of Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. Preying on our fears that another attack on our shores via Saddam's "WMD program" was imminent. Thereby systematically branding anyone who thought this march to war was a mistake as unpatriotic. Or don't you remember, "Freedom Fries?"
Back to the point of what Twitter could have done or not had it existed then, I agree with the "No." Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites may have played a huge role in fanning the flames of the "Arab Spring", But this was in nations accustomed to far, far less freedom of speech than one has in the USA, Canada, much of Europe, etc. thus had far greater effect on organizing protests. Ee can easily access any meetup site, and view videos anytime on YouTube showing police crackdowns against (war, OWS, G8 summits, etc.) protesters within the developed world. So as others have said, Twitter would have been used just like we could (and did) via email, message boards, IRC, etc. But when the critical mass of war supporters is larger than that of the opponents, Twitter remains irrelevant.
And a hacker would never, ever be able to bribe an undocumented janitor with a C-Note, 6-pack, and/or weed to take pictures of any monitor with a post it note stuck to it. It'd be positively unthinkable for a worker to take note of co-workers passwords in hopes of wreaking havoc should they be terminated...
Yes, but many corporate networks *still* require a user to enter a password containing alpha, numeral, and special characters, and have the passwords expire after 2-3 months. Eventually, the users get the beat down by the boss or IT about writing it on a post-it stuck on their monitor. IT therefore has successfully trained most users to write down passwords in a notebook or a desk calendar. Indeed! The users have grokked the corporate mantra toward information security: Security through Obscurity.
Not to mention for a couple bucks, one can download one of several Android or iOS pinball apps with multiple layouts, excellent sound and graphics, and spot-on physics. A couple seconds to load a different table vs. loading a new ROM & replacing the upper play field for this system.
If you gotta have an actual full sized pinball in your game room, you can probably find the machine you dumped countless quarters into during your misspent youth for sale online, probably for around $2K in decent condition.
Chrome OS seems geared to those same folks who'd otherwise install trojans, spyware, etc. for the sake of getting an animated cat to chase their cursor. So these users are protected from themselves in not directly hosing their OS from sheer ignorance, and the geeks who purchased these systems might now be lulled into complacency in knowing that they aren't likely to need to LLF the drive and then explain to their relatives where all their funny pictures went...
The problem I foresee is that a user of Chrome OS will therefore have a large target painted on them they they'll be much more likely to fall prey to a phishing campaign. Have you trained Aunt Mabel well enough to know that when she receives that "Important message regarding your mortgage account" informing her that her payment wasn't properly credited, she won't immediately be clicking through to log into her account or calling the "customer service hotline" for assistance?
Neither "hard-core conservative" nor "hard-core liberal" refer to any political party. Ideologies perhaps. You could equate Tea-Partiers to the former and Occupiers to the latter, but neither group appears to have much faith in their "designated party" from the 2-party system we've got. Liberals complain that Obama is perpetuating and strengthening heavily criticized policies from GWB. Meanwhile, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al) under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies. And the GOP is torn apart as their try to pander to this group while distancing themselves from nutjobs such as Todd Akin.