Not even joking. You dare criticize anything about President Obama and you will be accused by some establishment 'journalist', pundit, or talking head of being racist. Or being labelled with something else that is one or two words. Moron. Islamaphobic. Tea-tard. Republitard. Pro-terror. Anarchist. Conspiracy Lunatic.

Why risk getting involved politically with anyone? Why talk politics at work or in your social sphere? Politics are so partisan and cutthroat that it is best to keep to yourself. You say something out of turn and you might lose your job or be run in by the mainstream media. Actors, singers, writers, secretaries, teachers, and so on. They've all been fired for expressing even moderate criticism against whoever is running things.

When it was President Bush you would get slandered and hammered for being against the wars. You'd be a pussy liberal faggot. Pro-terrorism. Against the troops. Disrespecting the 9/11 victims. And so on.

Now it's the same game. Disagree with Obama on gun control? Then you're a gun nut. An asshole. Anti-children. Pro-school shooting. Think Obamacare is bad? You're a racist. Probably homophobic as well.

When Imus got fired for jokingly saying "nappy headed ho" it was over. Ted Kennedy can drown a woman because he's part of the establishment. Cheney can rake in millions in war contracts with the blood of our soldiers and lots of innocent civilians. Pelosi and Al Gore can rake in millions with backroom deals and insider trading. When you're the establishment you can start wars that kill thousands of people. Manipulate the stock market or use business inside information to net yourself millions.

But try to operate within the mainstream at all while criticizing the people who run this country (into the ground). Anyone count how many journalists have joined the Obama administration? Anyone see how Fast and Furious and Benghazi are treated as "right wing fantasies" by the mainstream press? Or how sites like Slashdot have new accounts signing up to spam pro-establishment talking points on political articles?

Criticize any of Obama's policies and you're entire argument will be reduced to one or two words and repeated ad nauseum by the media. You're entire argument no matter how eloquent or well formed will suddenly be reported by the NYTimes, Politico, CNN, and ABC News as "right wing gun nut goes crazy" or "fringe thinking" or "opinion fueled by racism".

"The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced."

This is only "highly unusual" because it is being reported throughout the mainstream media. But anyone who has been through an FBI/CIA interview knows that gambling issues are something that they probe for quite a bit. I doubt he was the first person fired or reprimanded that week for gambling.

Want to work in the defense industry? Then don't gamble or bet on sports because it is a red flag that often disqualifies people from employment or association. The higher up you go the more they'll pry into your personal life. Asking friends from college or even high school if you ever gambled (or had a drinking problem, used drugs, etc.).

Two years? For cheating at cards? That's nothing. Lots of people are killed over cheating at high stakes gambling. You cheat the casinos and they usually take it up with the police and lawyers. They can't break your legs and keep operating a legitimate business.

You cheat a private game? You deal with individuals who might smash your fucking face in and throw you in a six foot feet hole in the desert. At the very least you get beaten within an inch of your life and then they take back all of your 'winnings'. Those guys should have tried to get into a private game where high rollers in organized crime or even professional sports play.

The most hilarious part about this story though. Is that there are bankers that make billions cheating the system. Insider trading, fraud, embezzlement, Ponzi scheme, and so on. And those guys get a free pass as long as they throw the occasional six-figure-pass to the politicians. These morons get two years for cheating the casinos.

It's hard to survive in space. It requires ingenuity, investment, hard work, lots of money, and time. But when you can survive in space...you can use that knowledge to make life far easier on earth. That's what space exploration that is manned should be about.

For long term space living you need new bio-medical research that prevents blindness, spinal stress, and other negative effects of being in low gravity. Ever seen what happens to an astronaut's eyes when they are out in space for a few months? You figure out how to combat space blindness and you likely find new ways to combat vision loss. Maybe even eliminate vision loss on earth.

We evolved to work as a species on earth. We are shaped to earth's resources, gravity, our sun, and so on. Yet everyone is mortal, we die of disease, go blind, lose our hair, suffer, and perish. You figure out how to prevent blindness in space where we aren't evolved to even function as living biological units. And you can take that information and use it on earth where we are much closer to homeostasis.

Also...manned moon and mars missions. Manned asteroid intercepts, space station research, and other manned space research. Those all cost a FORTUNE. That money can only come from not wasting so much on the military/dea/prison/cia/fbi industrial complex. Robots are cheap compared to sending humans. You'd need to maybe do something like end the war on terror or war on drugs to get another manned moon mission.

"Weather on Earth might be shifting in part because of human activity....".

I think every /. article should start out with some click-baiting about something. Global warming, Mitt Romney, New Age of Linux, Trayvon Martin, the NSA, and so on. No matter how farfetched or ridiculous the link is just crowbar and shoehorn in something that gets those clicks. Get those clicks!

1.) Encryption: It's not hard

Shouldn't really be a factor now that Snowden is known publicly. When Snowden was trying to escape the U.S. it was necessary for him to be paranoid and secretive. Now he's already given a full copy of all of his information to Greenwald in person. Snowden was protected well by his news contacts. They had him reveal himself to the world on his own time and not have his name leak before he wanted it to leak. He was safe when it mattered. The Guardian did an acceptable job getting Snowden to safety.

2.) Use clean machines

Extremely difficult. The US has deals with phone companies, operating system creators, and hardware manufacturers, to put backdoor systems into so many devices. They monitor so many email and phone companies. How can you be fully sure you didn't buy a machine that has a secret backdoor entry that the FBI or CIA can get into easily? How can you know that your PC isn't already set up for intercepts on all of your activity? You'd need to be an expert on computer software, hardware, intercept technology, and so many other things just to detect that you were being actively monitored. And being passively monitored like how the NSA just copies everything sent anywhere.

3.) How to shift the data securely

The governments of the world can potentially intercept ANYTHING. Phone calls, emails, text messages, picture messages, faxes, voices through a hidden microphone, credit card transactions, smoke signals, bank statements, parabolic intercepts. Nothing is truly secure in this day and age. A reporter can use a courier by land or plane and that person can be held in a cell for nine hours while being interrogated. But an in-person intercept is known to both parties. A phone intercept is tough to fully know about unless you have an inside source telling you "your personal phones and prepaid phones are all tracked". Thanks to Snowden I now assume that EVERYTHING is tracked by the government.

4.) Using hidden services

The government is cracking down on those. Lavabit could not stop the government. Why would any other black site or anonymous exchange be able to stop the government? The government can stop billion dollar companies from operating overnight. Like a small email or messaging company can withstand the onslaught of a multi-national cyber-military operation?

The media gets dozens, hundreds, of documents. They slowly release them one or two at a time. Why? Not to make them easier for the public to digest. Not because they need to spend time reviewing them, writing articles, or gather sources. Not even because they enjoy being the gatekeepers of desired information.

No. This is almost entirely about making money and a major ego trip. The writers enjoy getting off on being the center of a public spectacle. You put a few articles out a week and you get more viewers. You keep stringing everyone along and keep those numbers up for more advertising revenue and to try to attract more subscribers. You keep your own name in the papers and get a higher profile for a book release. That's what this game is all about. Snowden leaked his information to people who are using it as leverage to manufacture news.

The reporters that Snowden contacted could easily release everything tomorrow. Total transparency. It would eliminate them being part of the story. But they get off on the attention. Glenn Greenwald wants to BE THE STORY. We've seen this repeatedly with Assange who comments on himself as often as he comments on the news. They don't want to report on some of the most relevant news and whistleblowing in the last decade. This is a chance for Greedwald to make a lot of money, a low of news appearances, some Real Time with Bill Maher, and maybe even a Howard Stern Show appearance. If he releases all of the documents then he's no longer important. His ego can't take that.

I know at Slashdot that people are upset when the news media focuses on Snowden and Greenwald not the major revelations that Snowden has given us regarding the U.S. government's total war on privacy. But this is not new territory for Greenwald. He loves being the center of attention. Look at his news appearances regarding this case. He talks about himself and his involvement far too much in my opinion.

I think that the U.S. citizenry has a right to know about the government's war on privacy. Show us everything. Be transparent the way Obama said he would be when he campaigned. Let us judge. Stop being the gatekeepers of information that you don't have a right to hide from us like the government did. Enough of the games. I can't take anyone in the media seriously anymore. If Greenwald and Snowden want less attention then give the world the information to help people combat the government's overreach.

Maybe the earth's orbit changes right now are because there are too many people living in one area and they are weighing down the earth like a seesaw? Like if too man people live on one side of an island the island tips over?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q

That doesn't really work with murder and gang violence. You can't hide gunshots and dead bodies from society. You can massage arrest stats and crime stats for drugs, gambling, prostitution, and even burglaries and auto-theft. Let a few prostitutes go because it's not worth the hassle. Knock down some felony thefts into petty larceny.

Ever seen an arrest sheet for a kid who fires at police with a gun? Kids in gangs have huge arrest sheets. Dozens of violent arrests but all knocked down to minor crimes. It hides the stats and makes NYC look safer. Then these kids get out into the streets and eventually are killed by police after a few robberies, murders, and rapes. All the gang violence by kids like Shaaliver Douse and Kimani Gray are hidden from society until it is too late.

But you can't realistically turn a murder into something else unless you really stretch the truth. You can't say that a dead body filled with bullets was a suicide or a hunting accident in NYC. So these magic fake stats that the police use rarely apply to murder. A body is a body. We are seeing this with the Ft. Hood mass shooting. Obama refuses to call it terrorism because it counts negatively towards his anti-terror stats. So he classifies that as 'workplace violence' when an admitted terrorist is firing into crowds of people screaming 'Allah Akbar'.

The reason why police profile certain races, certain age groups, certain dress types, and other attributes and behaviors, is that those help them narrow down the likely perpetrator of a gang crime. Gang violence in NYC, LA, Detroit, Chicago, is what causes the majority of street murders. Stop and Frisk was meant to profile gang members and then allow police to search them for weapons. It's solved a considerable number of murders. And prevented a considerable number of murders.

The majority of murders solved and prevented by Stop and Frisk have been of black victims. Because black on black crime is almost an epidemic in large urban areas in the United States.

Yes...orcas are killers. Seen the wild they will use a baby seal like a volley ball. Torturing it for quite some time before it dies. They are 6-ton predators who rule the waters. Evolved natural killing machines. It is a risk to swim with them of course.

But for the most part they don't kill humans. In fact some of the deaths have been result of the orcas playing too hard and not fully understanding that their human companions are land based creatures not capable of being underwater too long. Some, I guess I'll call them 'water show entertainment' deaths, were because the whales kept a trainer in their mouths for fun but ended up swimming beneath the surface for two or three minutes. Drowning their human trainer.

But the safety records are fine. If the Animal Right's Groups are saying that the wild animals should not be kept captive because they are dangerous to humans it is a terrible argument. The overwhelming majority of captive animals don't kill or harm humans. If these groups were against animal captivity they need to argue about the exploitation of animals and effectively animal slavery for corporate profits. Instead they are wasting time exploiting deaths, many accidental, many not even of actual trainers but of idiots who jumped over the fence to play with killer whales, giant monkeys, and fully grown lions.

This is the same alarmist response the news media does whenever a shark attack kills someone. "Oh my god it was 20 feet long...fin those sharks....for the children". Sharks kill a few people a year and there are millions of sharks and millions of humans who swim in the ocean. No need to sensationalize.

Personally I don't think that most zoo animals enjoy captivity. But most zoo animals are smart enough to know that they are at the mercy of their human masters. The humans provide them clean living conditions, food, and water. They can get a whale to swim ten laps and fly out of the water for a fish treat. But sometimes a killer whale remembers that animal instinct and forgets his training. The trainers know the risks. It's not like these whales are flying out of the stands like a NASCAR crash gone wrong and killing people in the crowd.

When your entire news slant is to the extreme left you tend to alienate anyone who is on the right, anyone who is centrist or moderate, and anyone who is center-left. You end up with an audience that is composed of one single viewpoint politically. An extreme viewpoint at that. The NYTimes, another extreme left paper, had control over the Globe and ran it into the ground. Everyone saw this coming.

Of course you're looking at a 93% loss of value. You're only talking to less than 10% of the population. What was once a newspaper that examined all of society with a fair eye it now only caters to a small minority of zealots. There was no investigative journalism at all. No honesty or insight to anyone with a (D) next to their name. Just nonstop bias and pandering to a single narrow viewpoint. Of course you're dooming your paper to obscurity.

I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate. The panels and editorials are filled with a strong selection of liberals, conservatives, and moderates. And the ratings reflect that because Fox News national brings in the viewers. You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one. And the conservative commentators don't hide their bias. Whereas the Boston Globe would pretend that it was 'progressive' and refuse to at all accept the reality that it was practically a propaganda newspaper for liberal Democratic operatives. Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.

They can blame it on the internet. On the economy. On low advertising revenue. But a newspaper is supposed to objectively report the news. And stand as the Fourth Estate against political corruption. They are not supposed to maintain the political status quo and effectively serve as a PR firm for politicians. The Globe was failure all over.

Ultimately this is a win for John Henry. He'll spend $75 million on a busted arm for a pitcher that gives him no return for the Red Sox. But $70 million is almost worth it alone for some of the Boston Globe's web domains that it owns. Now John Henry (who is a major Democratic Party donator, in the millions) has a liberal PR institution to output his views. He has the ability to shut down all negative conversation about the Red Sox from current Globe employees. And he can use the Globe and Boston.com to heavily market Red Sox tickets and jerseys. This will pay for itself within a few years with the boost to Red Sox branding.

Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators. As if newspapers aren't PR machines for the politicians enough. Now they are literally being run by GOP and DNC donors.

[i]The worst part? Sounds like the evidence wasn't really relevant.[/i]

I watched the coverage gavel to gavel of the Zimmerman trial. What was on Trayvon Martin's phone is maybe the most damaging information of all to the State's case. It is incredibly damaging to Trayvon Martin and his family and introduces criminal findings against them.

The State withheld evidence that Trayvon Martin was dealing and using drugs, dealing illegal firearms, and was in possession of an illegal firearm. And that Trayvon Martin was into fighting and beating people up and had punched someone in the nose earlier that month. And that he had assaulted a public bus driver and the police showed up but the driver was told to continue his route and not press charges.

There is also significantly strong evidence that Trayvon Martin's father was working with his son to acquire illegal weapons and that his father's nickname 'Fruit' was used amongst organized gang circles. There are texts that mention buying and selling pistols. And even a photo of Trayvon holding an illegal pistol. The photo is all over the internet and is not hard to find. The State withheld all of this and forced the defending attorneys to run around in circles to obtain the phone data.

The judge also ruled that none of the phone data on Trayvon Martin's phone was admissible. Why? Because there was no hard proof that Trayvon was actually the one operating the phone when those messages were sent and received. And that "anyone could have been operating Trayvon's phone at any time". The phone was DOUBLE password protected and took the State an entire year to crack. But the State said in court that even a "seven-year-old child could have cracked the phone and sent those messages". The judge agreed.

This case is disgusting. It is clear from top to bottom that it was rigged. When you have even the President of the United States deliberately poisoning the jury pool by commenting on the situation without knowing any discovery evidence years before a trial begins it is unreal. The State of Florida is out of control. This entire affair was a political theater event designed to win some elections.

Forcing you to buy $100 Kinect with the system? Tracking your gaming habits and selling the data if you are connected? Tracking your movements with Kinect at all times? Putting online features that are on the discs of games behind an XBL Gold paywall? Forcing XBL Gold subscriptions to use other online services through your Xbox? Paying MS money for XBL Gold only to be bombarded by advertisements?

I'll pass still. This is looking like a weak generation for gamers. Both the PS4 and XB1 have online locked behind paywalls (even for peer-to-peer games). The Wii-U is severely lacking in quality games geared towards older gamers. Hopefully the PC gaming developers take charge and win back some of the console players this generation.

You can erode freedoms gradually or even outright remove them overnight in the name of 'fighting terrorism'. People are driven paranoid by the media and the government. Terrorism, school shootings, global warming, the boogeyman, something is around the corner waiting to kill you and your children. Want to be safe from that? Then get ready to lose a lot of your rights and get ready to pay a lot more in taxes as well to finance the loss of your rights.

We all know that airport security and border security failed before 9/11. Letting multiple armed men most of whom had passport and visa violations into airplanes was a colossal intelligence failure. After the attacks security at our airports was supposedly beefed up and billions of dollars were invested in physical security. Did that prevent the shoe bomber or underwear bomber from getting bombs onto their airplanes? No. But it gave everyone the illusion of security and the government made a killing from forcing taxpayers to pay for all sorts of wasteful security theater.

The NSA is the cyber equivalent of the TSA. Instead of groping everyone and inspecting your person they inspect your internet usage and your phone records. They go after everything you do in your personal life that they can get a hold of and use. And did that prevent the Times Square bomber? Or the Ft. Hood shooter? Or the Boston Marathon bombers? No. But everyone felt secure on the days that there wasn't terrorism. And the government made a killing. And the government got to use the NSA (and IRS, FBI, etc.) to go after political enemies as well.

You question any of this? And you're siding with the terrorists. You blow the whistle on any of this? It's treason. Get ready to flee to a foreign country or risk being murdered, jailed, rendered, or worse.

We spy on our own people indiscriminately. Ruin the rights of the people with the destruction of privacy. Intercept and record and document everything. Yet the Boston Marathon bombers were looking at radical Islam videos for months. The older brother had been thrown out of a mosque for preaching violent Jihad. The brothers names had been tipped off at the CIA by both the Russian and Saudi governments that they were linked to Al Qaeda. The Ft. Hood shooter was viewing radical Islam videos online and even told his supervisors about his Jihadist sympathy. But the government somehow in their total surveillance missed all of those things.

The fact is that most people don't care or understand. George Carlin said "think of how dumb the average American is...and realize that half of the people are even dumber". The average American doesn't care about rights or privacy. They won't defend the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The American empire is crumbling from within. Demographics rapidly changing, politicians and leaders being openly hostile to the Bill of Rights, rapidly escalating bipartisanship in politics and society, increasing loss of rights resulting from alarmist paranoia.

At this point all we can do is try to stop the bleeding. But eventually the freedoms of America. Its lifeblood. Will be gone.