"You are under arrest."
citizen: "What law did I break. Please show me the law."
"I'm sorry sir, I cannot show you the law that you broke, it is copyrighted."
All you have to do is put humans "in" the CAPTCHA interpretation logic, by way of a porn site. BOT -> PORN SITE -> SCRAPE REAL CAPTCHA AND PRESENT TO USER -> USER TYPES CAPTCHA TO SEE PORN -> BOT USES SOLUTION TO PASS REAL CAPTCHA
Not to say that you wouldn't be justified, but we cannot allow individuals to start shooting soldiers/police officers every time they think their impending imprisonment is unjustified. Yes, this is a slippery slope. Really, I was imagining being Jewish in nazi germany when I wrote what I wrote. We live in very different times today. But where is the line? At what point is extreme defense a reasonable response?
Clearly, when we live in a sane society where human rights are respected and the rule of law is fair and balanced, extreme defense is an abomination.
Equally clearly, if we live in a tyrannical totalitarian regime where you run the risk of going to the gas chamber for your beliefs, extreme defense is a necessary requirement for staying alive.
The first example resonates with the America that I grew up in. The second with nazi germany.
The suspension of Habeas Corpus and the various war-on-terror legislation has pushed America somewhere in between these two endpoints. I really don't know what the correct answer is, but I can tell you that if a time ever came where people were being dragged from their homes and disappearing, I think keeping extreme response options "on the table" would be quite important. In fact, I would go even further and say that we have the responsibility to go help neighbors when they are being dragged from their homes as well...
No. If someone breaks my door down, I don't care if it is a policeman, a soldier, a thief or a vampire, I have the right and obligation to defend my family and my space with deadly force. You had a convincing argument until this point. Now you look like a nut that has no place in a civilised society. Clearly, this part of my post has been misinterpreted. I am not saying that one should use deadly force like some kind of paranoid reactionary. This topic was about the German government putting a virus on people's computers to steal keys in order to spy on them. This obviously resonates with people's memories about the nazi regime and that was very much in my mind when I posted. I am certain that if you asked Holocaust survivors if they, knowing then what they know today, would choose to use deadly force when nazis broke down their doors, I am sure they would say "Yes". We are not in a situation today like they were, then, but there are precedents for such things. I should have premised my sentence with something like, "If I were in nazi germany and someone broke my door down to drag me away,...."
No. If someone breaks my door down, I don't care if it is a policeman, a soldier, a thief or a vampire, I have the right and obligation to defend my family and my space with deadly force. You had a convincing argument until this point. Now you look like a nut that has no place in a civilised society. Which part of this sentence offends you?
No. If someone breaks my door down, I don't care if it is a policeman, a soldier, a thief or a vampire, I have the right and obligation to defend my family and my space with deadly force.
Personally I think that you are being a bit paranoid here about your response. It makes you as bad as the group you rally against. How? I'm not sure I understand your implication? Are you saying that if a soldier breaks my door down in the middle of the night intending to pull me out of bed and drag me off to be tortured in some secret detention center for voting for Ron Paul that I shouldn't use deadly force to stop him?
Or do you just think that it is paranoid to think that anyone might want to do that to someone just because they support Ron Paul?
Are you against defending your family? If someone breaks your door down, would you defend them?
Except maybe for the vampires. To my understanding deadly force is pretty ineffective against them. (Just a friendly tip on that one:)
Michael Depends on which kind of vampire. I doubt the movie variety would show up to break down your door.
The Indo-Iranian peoples were the opposition to the Babylonian/Egyptian wizards. They finally defeated the Assyrians. Yea, that's why I think it was an ironic transposition in the movie. Fact inversions are part and parcel of what we see coming from these groups. They are excellent at projecting the character of who they actually are on their intended victim in order to demonize their victim and ensure that all of the blame for the resultant horrors is juxtaposed in such a way as to make the victim responsible.
9-11, 9-11, they will cower in fear and let the government do whatever the hell it wants.
Er, wait a sec, did you say Germany? Hmm. Maybe we'll get to see what it looks like when an the public, enraged by the abuses of their government, shows the bastards who's boss. Sounds familiar. Didn't the German people do exactly that when they chose Hitler to tear apart their perceived bondage and servitude to the Internationalists? The German people reacted with a violent xenophobia that ultimately gave rise to the second world war. The German people targeted one group in particular, because they were incensed at their perceived control over Germany's finances, media and political apparatus and their perceived ruthlessness; squeezing the German people mercilessly and without pity with such tools as the Versailles treaty.
We have no Versailles treaty destroying our economy and creating hyper-inflation, so perhaps we won't follow in Germany's footsteps. After all, our economy is strong, with no indication of hyperinflation in the future, right? And we are totally in control of our own media, banking and political apparatus, right? At least we can take comfort in that.
Definitely things that are not the same about the rize of fascism in Germany and modern day USA:
The Reichstag fire in no way resembles the 911 event in NY. It is reasonably clear that the nazis themselves started the Reichstag fire in order to provide the political ammunition necessary to institute the Enabling Act and invade Poland. Clearly, the three buildings in NY collapsed into a tiny pile of atomized concrete and molten steel because some kerosene ignited eighty stories up when a few religious fanatics rammed jetliners into skyscrapers while the US was playing simulated war-games that made it impossible to react properly. Very different situations.
Hitler's Enabling Act in no way resembles the Patriot Act. Hitler's Enabling act was the second major step after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the Nazis obtained dictatorial powers using legal means. The act enabled the cabinet under Hitler to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The Patriot act simply allows US intelligence agencies to find terrorists, it has nothing to do with suspending the federal government to take dictatorial control. There are no "Granite Shadow" type actions such as that coming out of 911.
Hitler's Invasion of Poland, being provoked by the Reichstag fire in no way resembles Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, since we were going to get the terrorists responsible for 911. Clearly Hitler was just on a crusade for land and resources to further his war ambitions.
Hitler's association with the occult can not be compared to Bush's membership in Skull & Bones. Being a part of a masonic, babylonian mystery school with secret doctrines of death magic cannot be compared to being a part of a secret Yale fraternity.
Hitler's financing came in large part from American bankers, including a bank run by Prescott Bush. This bank was later seized for trading with the enemy. This cannot be compared to Bush's financing, because he does not get any financing from any of Hitlers relatives. It would be preposterous to imagine that any of Hitlers relatives have ownership in the US Federal Reserve, where Bush gets his financing.
Hitler used extreme scare tactics, including but not limited to jailing supporters of political opponents. In America, that never happens and Bush certainly doesn't do it.
I'll stop here for now, I think this partial list makes it pretty clear that we are on very different tracks and the two situations have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.
Babylonian death magic - carried out by the presumed descendants of an Egyptian fringe society. They are certainly memetic descendants, in any case. But yes, the Babylonian mystery schools are exactly what I was talking about. The recent movie, 300, did a very good job of portraying the ancient reality of that system, "The thousand nations of the persian empire will fall upon you!"... ironic transposition...
The nazis and fascism were created, funded and directed by the same occult forces that control Communism, Zionism, Western Democracies such as the USA, the various media empires around the world, all central banking establishments, world energy production and all militarization.
All of the rest of it, the intrigue, the espionage, the media wars, etc... All of it is simply a tool for shaping society, forcing people to act and think in particular ways, to experiment with political systems and methods of human control, etc... The world has become overpopulated and difficult for these groups to manage lately, and the Internet is making it possible to investigate their activities on a wider scale than anytime in recorded history. These factors are vectoring the world towards a great conflict. Buckle your seat belts.
Your belief is optional and the brainwashing is very strong. While it can be easy to see this self-evident truism if your mind is open, your programming will really twist and shake and rebel against this notion. That knee-jerk reaction your feeling, right now, to call me crazy is exactly part of that programming. Consider why you are having that reaction, how many times you have been conditioned to associate insanity with words like the ones that you have just read. Consider where that conditioning has come from. Now consider how easily you can accept watching someone get torn to pieces on television, or how easily you dismiss a million people being killed by your government in a far off land. Your reaction to my words was strong and negative. Your reaction to the worst human misery and the most vile displays of violence on television was lazy dismissal. Now that you have this image in your mind, ask yourself why your conditioning was so much stronger in the case of my words...
You probably mean "doesn't affect the user's legal rights" but how this adds up ethically is more to the point. Most of Nazi Germany's and Stalinist Russia's abominations were legal at the time according to their nation's laws! Judging a governmental authority in legal terms does not really amount to saying much when they create the laws we judge them by. We need a less transient ethical framework for that purpose (preferably one which includes the right-to-privacy, innocent until proven guilty etc. etc.). Oh my lord! It sounds like you are talking about the constitution and the bill of rights. How quaint. I had almost forgotten we had those.
The police are allowed to tap regular phone lines because they don't have to intrude on your property to do it.
No, they're allowed to tap phone lines because they get court orders saying they can. Do you think courts have never issued warrants allowing police to place bugs on a suspect's property? Have you been hiding under a rock for the last 5 years? Warrants are so, umm, pre-Bush dynasty.
1. It is legal (if you get permission from a judge etc.) to listen in to phone conversations.
2. With Skype using 256 bit encryption, the police cannot do in practice what it is allowed to do legally.
3. Some company makes software/hardware that enables the police to do what they are allowed to do legally.
It seems to be necessary to install some software on the user's computer to achieve this. As long as this software doesn't do anything but opening up Skype communications, it doesn't do anything that would affect the user's rights. All their Skype communications can only be heard by people who are legally allowed to hear it - even though one of them is the police, which is not the _intended_ recipient.
In the US, today, the government can legally decide that you might be a terrorist (you know, like you support Ron Paul, for instance, who is very terrifying to them). Once so implicated, they can legally break down the door to your house, pull you from your bed, take you to a detention center, refuse to give you a phone call, hold you for as long as they like, torture you and so forth. If they decide to release you, they are not legally obligated to in any way compensate you for your life that they just demolished.
I point this out to illustrate, essentially, that legality does not necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with acceptability. It is our responsibility to stop this madness. I do not believe that governments have the right to invade our lives in these ways. I do not believe the government has the right to install a virus on my computer for the purpose of taking my skype keys. We all know that the various governments around the world are infiltrated by all manner of nasty organizations. If the government has a virus in my computer, then is it safe for me to transfer funds using online banking on my computer? How do I know that there aren't members of some criminal syndicate that are working for the government that have access to that virus?
No. If someone breaks my door down, I don't care if it is a policeman, a soldier, a thief or a vampire, I have the right and obligation to defend my family and my space with deadly force. If someone breaks into my computer, I have the right and obligation to eliminate that threat and to help others do the same. We all need to take these transgressions on our personal space, lives and property much more seriously. When will we fight back? When they want to put an implant in our brains to read and control our thoughts?
I'm frustrated that despite all of human innovation and technological advancements, I have to kowtow to an alarm clock that rings at 6:30 AM. Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant? No, we're forced to work harder to compete with other organizations who also suffer the same fate as our own. I think many of us have realized just how much society *has* lied to us, about college, technology, etc. and we've grown apathetic and tired of the empty promises. I'd rather be a relatively poor slacker with time to myself to do what I want and to enjoy my family than a successful developer whose time is consumed with largely meaningless pursuits and whose life is filled with possessions. YOU ARE A WISE MAN
I'm 2 years out of College and I regularly write code that is dramatically better than what is produced by the people around me, who have many years of experience. Is that your opinion, or theirs?
I am worth more money than someone who has been around longer because what I produce is worth more than what they produce. Do you consider yourself an unbiased authority on the quality of your work and their work? As a greeny, you likely don't even know how to quantify the value of code in the environment you are working in. Is it well documented, so that others can follow it? Is it clean and easy to understand? Is it bug free and auditable for security problems?
You might be thinking that, because your code is small, tight and extra clever, you are the better coder. But in a corporate environment, all you are doing is leaving land mines for your fellow workers when you code like that. Nobody cares if you saved a few clock cycles on a particular inner loop if nobody can follow your design decisions, read your code or make heads or tails of your tactics because you didn't document your work or you used a coding style that was too egocentrically clever.
It's really simple: Look at my code. Look at their code. Pay me more. That is very naive. You are working in a company; How much value are you adding to the company? How much value are your peers adding? Paying you more because your code is clever is something that won't happen, ever. Perhaps, if you can make a lot more quality code than others (you are faster, with easy to read and bug-free code), you should get payed more.
We don't feel that we should be expected to "earn" the right to be part of the important goings on in our culture. It should be handed to you? Some sort of divine right?
We feel that, even if we do "earn" what rights are available, we will still be pawns in someone elses game, and we have no more love or respect for their game than they have for us, so we don't bother. We older people feel like that too. Very few people throughout history have been able to evade that feeling.
We consume these "opiates" because we hate the real world we live in, we see no hope of changing it, and we have given up and fled to imaginary land. In our zoned out state, we do only what we must to exist, because we are not really here. And the inevitable result of your pathological lethargy will be the fading of America as a country of importance. Let us hope you are not all like that.
Now, some of us haven't given up. But we still don't take jobs for employers, we become self-employeed. This isn't different than any generation that came before you.
None of us are interested in taking these "entry level jobs" in the hopes that we might be blessed with something better some day. We know that someday will not come. Well, most people recognize that gaining experience makes you more valuable and more capable of starting your own business. There is no shortcut when it comes to experience. By definition, you must experience something to become experienced at it. GTA won't help you. There are no video games to put real-world business experience, real world technology experience or,..., well,..., real world experience into your brain.
If young people were going to develop responsibility, they would need to have a connection to what they're responsible for, which means giving them real power in the world, which isn't happening.
If young people do develop a sense of responsibility, they are still not going to take jobs. They are going to take over. It is every young generation's manifest destiny to take over from the older generations, eventually. But there are rites of passage. Those older guys know more than you do. They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues. They are like this because they have been at it a lot longer. You will take over as they retire off and/or as you become experienced enough to outsmart and outcompete them. Again, there are no shortcuts.
So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff. You will know when you are up to the task, because you will take over. Until then, you are just flapping your lips. And no, you aren't worth the same amount of money as someone that has been doing the job for 20 years. In all likelihood, if you disappeared, they would hardly notice - as a green kid, the company is investing in you - you likely add very little value, so you are being payed more than they are able to extract in value from your labor. You are likely being trained, groomed and given experience in the hopes that your value will eventually increase past the point where their investment is, making you a profitable employee to have on board. If the 20 year veteran disappeared, the lights wouldn't turn on, the database would stop working, nobody would be able to get a new release out, it would start raining blood, cats and dogs would be living together and the company would go into crisis mood. But you wouldn't know about that, because you haven't experienced it...
But, you know, if this country can't handle a presidency of a white female and vice presidency of black male who can win by a landslide if they just run together, and then who switch roles halfway into their term, and then actually DO make changes (without being assassinated), then this country is not much better than some of the dictatorships out there, and we are all in a delusional world pacified by tv shows, concerts, and drive-by-shooting-on-the-news hour.
I don't have anything against women or minorities and even believe that either candidate may bring some needed balance to politics in this country. However, there is not even a snowball's chance that either one of them can win a general election. There are too many rednecks, bigots, racists and fanatics in the US. It can't happen. The only thing that a nomination of either of these two people will result in is the Democratic party not getting the whitehouse in 2008.
Grr... people participating here should know enough about cryptography to know that it's 100% doable to vote anonymously, while allowing anyone to verify that their vote was counted correctly, and allowing anonymous tallies, plus statistical verification. It's just plain simple and stupid. There are good algorithms that have been patented, but here's the one I come up with in 120 seconds or less, after 2 glasses of wine:
...
Anyone can download the database and add up the votes. Anyone can verify their own vote by looking for the entry with their encrypted personal data. To verify the statistical accuracy of the result, have a call center randomly ask people to verify their own votes, and see if anyone got screwed. Yes, this can work to do a statistical validity test. There may even be a way to make a recount possible if the encrypted votes are categorized by voting location along with a list of names of voters at each location. One could call for a general re-count, where Americans verify their own votes en-mass. Not everyone would do it, but it wouldn't be necessary that everyone did. Only a significant percentage of voters (say 20%) would be necessary to pin-point locations where voting irregularities exist, and then those locations could be scrutinized extensively (calling all voters in those locations or some-such).
It's my opinion that ballots are secret primarily to allow people to cheat. I agree. Let's assume, for purposes of discussion, that any opportunity for corruption will be filled to capacity by those in the position to exploit the opportunity to corrupt and control such things as "the vote". Can anyone argue this assumption?
Ok, so if we take that assumption as a given, then we can now examine secret vs. non-secret ballots from the perspective of exploitable corruption.
Secret ballot: Exploitation of corruptibility yields completely fraudulent results. It should be assumed that anyone in the position to exploit this corruptibility, such as Diebold, does exactly that and the result is fake elections. We should assume that we are living in that reality today.
Open ballot (name and vote audit-able by anyone on the Internet): Exploitation of corruptibility yields a variety of vote harvesting techniques ranging from vote purchasing to vote extortion. However, because these activities are illegal, there are remedies. Companies that attempt vote extortion on employees could be sued. Organizations that attempt vote harvesting in other forms would face civil and criminal charges. It's in the open for all to see. Remedies exist.
The obvious question is, which is worse? Is it worse to live in a system where we think our vote counts, but in fact we are a bunch of complete bozos - a bunch of hypnotized sheep being led around by wolves that do whatever they feel like doing and make us think it was our idea? Or is it worse to live in a system where various powers may try to put pressure on you to conform to their will, but the will of the people *does* decide what happens in their own governance.
We live in a system where pressure from powerful organizations and interests is ubiquitous anyway. Additional scrutiny and pressure for our political beliefs and voting records would hardly be something noticeable in this land of surveillance and data-mining.
By any measure, it is better to have a system where the peoples' voice counts than any alternative.
Open the vote. The ramifications can be dealt with and the alternative is not acceptable.
There's that possibility of the user base forking your work and taking it over if they don't like the direction you're going... and that's exactly what I predict will happen with BitTorrent. And while they're at it, they'll probably go ahead and build into it some anonymity protection. And good riddance. I can think of few reasons why having bittorrent proprietary would be advantageous for users. But I can think of many reasons why special interests would pay to make it so. I also agree with anonymity protection, something like a lightweight tor cloud between p2p endpoints makes good sense.
Slashdot Mirror
"You are under arrest." citizen: "What law did I break. Please show me the law." "I'm sorry sir, I cannot show you the law that you broke, it is copyrighted."
All you have to do is put humans "in" the CAPTCHA interpretation logic, by way of a porn site. BOT -> PORN SITE -> SCRAPE REAL CAPTCHA AND PRESENT TO USER -> USER TYPES CAPTCHA TO SEE PORN -> BOT USES SOLUTION TO PASS REAL CAPTCHA
Seems simple to me.
I think what makes him terrifying isn't whether he can win or not, but simply what his message is. He is waking people up.
Clearly, when we live in a sane society where human rights are respected and the rule of law is fair and balanced, extreme defense is an abomination.
Equally clearly, if we live in a tyrannical totalitarian regime where you run the risk of going to the gas chamber for your beliefs, extreme defense is a necessary requirement for staying alive.
The first example resonates with the America that I grew up in. The second with nazi germany.
The suspension of Habeas Corpus and the various war-on-terror legislation has pushed America somewhere in between these two endpoints. I really don't know what the correct answer is, but I can tell you that if a time ever came where people were being dragged from their homes and disappearing, I think keeping extreme response options "on the table" would be quite important. In fact, I would go even further and say that we have the responsibility to go help neighbors when they are being dragged from their homes as well...
Clearly, this part of my post has been misinterpreted. I am not saying that one should use deadly force like some kind of paranoid reactionary. This topic was about the German government putting a virus on people's computers to steal keys in order to spy on them. This obviously resonates with people's memories about the nazi regime and that was very much in my mind when I posted. I am certain that if you asked Holocaust survivors if they, knowing then what they know today, would choose to use deadly force when nazis broke down their doors, I am sure they would say "Yes". We are not in a situation today like they were, then, but there are precedents for such things. I should have premised my sentence with something like, "If I were in nazi germany and someone broke my door down to drag me away,
Does this make more sense?
Yes, that's right. But he did have sufficient support to put himself into a position to pull the rug out from under the existing system.
Which part of this sentence offends you?
Personally I think that you are being a bit paranoid here about your response. It makes you as bad as the group you rally against. How? I'm not sure I understand your implication? Are you saying that if a soldier breaks my door down in the middle of the night intending to pull me out of bed and drag me off to be tortured in some secret detention center for voting for Ron Paul that I shouldn't use deadly force to stop him?
Or do you just think that it is paranoid to think that anyone might want to do that to someone just because they support Ron Paul?
Are you against defending your family? If someone breaks your door down, would you defend them? Except maybe for the vampires. To my understanding deadly force is pretty ineffective against them. (Just a friendly tip on that one
Michael Depends on which kind of vampire. I doubt the movie variety would show up to break down your door.
Er, wait a sec, did you say Germany? Hmm. Maybe we'll get to see what it looks like when an the public, enraged by the abuses of their government, shows the bastards who's boss. Sounds familiar. Didn't the German people do exactly that when they chose Hitler to tear apart their perceived bondage and servitude to the Internationalists? The German people reacted with a violent xenophobia that ultimately gave rise to the second world war. The German people targeted one group in particular, because they were incensed at their perceived control over Germany's finances, media and political apparatus and their perceived ruthlessness; squeezing the German people mercilessly and without pity with such tools as the Versailles treaty.
We have no Versailles treaty destroying our economy and creating hyper-inflation, so perhaps we won't follow in Germany's footsteps. After all, our economy is strong, with no indication of hyperinflation in the future, right? And we are totally in control of our own media, banking and political apparatus, right? At least we can take comfort in that.
Definitely things that are not the same about the rize of fascism in Germany and modern day USA:
The Reichstag fire in no way resembles the 911 event in NY. It is reasonably clear that the nazis themselves started the Reichstag fire in order to provide the political ammunition necessary to institute the Enabling Act and invade Poland. Clearly, the three buildings in NY collapsed into a tiny pile of atomized concrete and molten steel because some kerosene ignited eighty stories up when a few religious fanatics rammed jetliners into skyscrapers while the US was playing simulated war-games that made it impossible to react properly. Very different situations.
Hitler's Enabling Act in no way resembles the Patriot Act. Hitler's Enabling act was the second major step after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the Nazis obtained dictatorial powers using legal means. The act enabled the cabinet under Hitler to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The Patriot act simply allows US intelligence agencies to find terrorists, it has nothing to do with suspending the federal government to take dictatorial control. There are no "Granite Shadow" type actions such as that coming out of 911.
Hitler's Invasion of Poland, being provoked by the Reichstag fire in no way resembles Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, since we were going to get the terrorists responsible for 911. Clearly Hitler was just on a crusade for land and resources to further his war ambitions.
Hitler's association with the occult can not be compared to Bush's membership in Skull & Bones. Being a part of a masonic, babylonian mystery school with secret doctrines of death magic cannot be compared to being a part of a secret Yale fraternity.
Hitler's financing came in large part from American bankers, including a bank run by Prescott Bush. This bank was later seized for trading with the enemy. This cannot be compared to Bush's financing, because he does not get any financing from any of Hitlers relatives. It would be preposterous to imagine that any of Hitlers relatives have ownership in the US Federal Reserve, where Bush gets his financing.
Hitler used extreme scare tactics, including but not limited to jailing supporters of political opponents. In America, that never happens and Bush certainly doesn't do it.
I'll stop here for now, I think this partial list makes it pretty clear that we are on very different tracks and the two situations have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.
The nazis and fascism were created, funded and directed by the same occult forces that control Communism, Zionism, Western Democracies such as the USA, the various media empires around the world, all central banking establishments, world energy production and all militarization.
..., that's called deprogramming folks.
All of the rest of it, the intrigue, the espionage, the media wars, etc... All of it is simply a tool for shaping society, forcing people to act and think in particular ways, to experiment with political systems and methods of human control, etc... The world has become overpopulated and difficult for these groups to manage lately, and the Internet is making it possible to investigate their activities on a wider scale than anytime in recorded history. These factors are vectoring the world towards a great conflict. Buckle your seat belts.
Your belief is optional and the brainwashing is very strong. While it can be easy to see this self-evident truism if your mind is open, your programming will really twist and shake and rebel against this notion. That knee-jerk reaction your feeling, right now, to call me crazy is exactly part of that programming. Consider why you are having that reaction, how many times you have been conditioned to associate insanity with words like the ones that you have just read. Consider where that conditioning has come from. Now consider how easily you can accept watching someone get torn to pieces on television, or how easily you dismiss a million people being killed by your government in a far off land. Your reaction to my words was strong and negative. Your reaction to the worst human misery and the most vile displays of violence on television was lazy dismissal. Now that you have this image in your mind, ask yourself why your conditioning was so much stronger in the case of my words...
Wow,
It seems to be necessary to install some software on the user's computer to achieve this. As long as this software doesn't do anything but opening up Skype communications, it doesn't do anything that would affect the user's rights. All their Skype communications can only be heard by people who are legally allowed to hear it - even though one of them is the police, which is not the _intended_ recipient.
In the US, today, the government can legally decide that you might be a terrorist (you know, like you support Ron Paul, for instance, who is very terrifying to them). Once so implicated, they can legally break down the door to your house, pull you from your bed, take you to a detention center, refuse to give you a phone call, hold you for as long as they like, torture you and so forth. If they decide to release you, they are not legally obligated to in any way compensate you for your life that they just demolished.
I point this out to illustrate, essentially, that legality does not necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with acceptability. It is our responsibility to stop this madness. I do not believe that governments have the right to invade our lives in these ways. I do not believe the government has the right to install a virus on my computer for the purpose of taking my skype keys. We all know that the various governments around the world are infiltrated by all manner of nasty organizations. If the government has a virus in my computer, then is it safe for me to transfer funds using online banking on my computer? How do I know that there aren't members of some criminal syndicate that are working for the government that have access to that virus?
No. If someone breaks my door down, I don't care if it is a policeman, a soldier, a thief or a vampire, I have the right and obligation to defend my family and my space with deadly force. If someone breaks into my computer, I have the right and obligation to eliminate that threat and to help others do the same. We all need to take these transgressions on our personal space, lives and property much more seriously. When will we fight back? When they want to put an implant in our brains to read and control our thoughts?
When is it enough, people??
It's annoying that there are no private messages on slashdot. What you are doing is interesting to me.
That's pretty great stuff you are talking about. Do you have a URL for us?
You might be thinking that, because your code is small, tight and extra clever, you are the better coder. But in a corporate environment, all you are doing is leaving land mines for your fellow workers when you code like that. Nobody cares if you saved a few clock cycles on a particular inner loop if nobody can follow your design decisions, read your code or make heads or tails of your tactics because you didn't document your work or you used a coding style that was too egocentrically clever. It's really simple: Look at my code. Look at their code. Pay me more. That is very naive. You are working in a company; How much value are you adding to the company? How much value are your peers adding? Paying you more because your code is clever is something that won't happen, ever. Perhaps, if you can make a lot more quality code than others (you are faster, with easy to read and bug-free code), you should get payed more.
If young people do develop a sense of responsibility, they are still not going to take jobs. They are going to take over. It is every young generation's manifest destiny to take over from the older generations, eventually. But there are rites of passage. Those older guys know more than you do. They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues. They are like this because they have been at it a lot longer. You will take over as they retire off and/or as you become experienced enough to outsmart and outcompete them. Again, there are no shortcuts.
So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff. You will know when you are up to the task, because you will take over. Until then, you are just flapping your lips. And no, you aren't worth the same amount of money as someone that has been doing the job for 20 years. In all likelihood, if you disappeared, they would hardly notice - as a green kid, the company is investing in you - you likely add very little value, so you are being payed more than they are able to extract in value from your labor. You are likely being trained, groomed and given experience in the hopes that your value will eventually increase past the point where their investment is, making you a profitable employee to have on board. If the 20 year veteran disappeared, the lights wouldn't turn on, the database would stop working, nobody would be able to get a new release out, it would start raining blood, cats and dogs would be living together and the company would go into crisis mood. But you wouldn't know about that, because you haven't experienced it...
Almost like it was planned that way...
...
Anyone can download the database and add up the votes. Anyone can verify their own vote by looking for the entry with their encrypted personal data. To verify the statistical accuracy of the result, have a call center randomly ask people to verify their own votes, and see if anyone got screwed. Yes, this can work to do a statistical validity test. There may even be a way to make a recount possible if the encrypted votes are categorized by voting location along with a list of names of voters at each location. One could call for a general re-count, where Americans verify their own votes en-mass. Not everyone would do it, but it wouldn't be necessary that everyone did. Only a significant percentage of voters (say 20%) would be necessary to pin-point locations where voting irregularities exist, and then those locations could be scrutinized extensively (calling all voters in those locations or some-such).
This is an interesting idea.
Ok, so if we take that assumption as a given, then we can now examine secret vs. non-secret ballots from the perspective of exploitable corruption.
Secret ballot: Exploitation of corruptibility yields completely fraudulent results. It should be assumed that anyone in the position to exploit this corruptibility, such as Diebold, does exactly that and the result is fake elections. We should assume that we are living in that reality today.
Open ballot (name and vote audit-able by anyone on the Internet): Exploitation of corruptibility yields a variety of vote harvesting techniques ranging from vote purchasing to vote extortion. However, because these activities are illegal, there are remedies. Companies that attempt vote extortion on employees could be sued. Organizations that attempt vote harvesting in other forms would face civil and criminal charges. It's in the open for all to see. Remedies exist.
The obvious question is, which is worse? Is it worse to live in a system where we think our vote counts, but in fact we are a bunch of complete bozos - a bunch of hypnotized sheep being led around by wolves that do whatever they feel like doing and make us think it was our idea? Or is it worse to live in a system where various powers may try to put pressure on you to conform to their will, but the will of the people *does* decide what happens in their own governance.
We live in a system where pressure from powerful organizations and interests is ubiquitous anyway. Additional scrutiny and pressure for our political beliefs and voting records would hardly be something noticeable in this land of surveillance and data-mining.
By any measure, it is better to have a system where the peoples' voice counts than any alternative.
Open the vote. The ramifications can be dealt with and the alternative is not acceptable.
Believing that evolution is identical to advancement or progress is a fallacy. Evolution vectors change in exactly one way: Number of offspring.
..., they do not breed so very prodigiously.
..., they have lots and lots of children.
Today, the affluent, the educated, the talented,
The poor, the welfare mothers, the uneducated,
Evolution favors numbers.
Nothing else to see here. Move along.