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Comment Re:Hmmm... (Score 0) 341

Are you certain? You're assuming that the author is being truthful about its availability and not merely lying or minimizing in order to protect his sales. Also, even if the information can be obtained by you and me, why make it any easier for a would-be terrorist bomb maker to find it and make use of it. Even if withholding that information only slows down a terrorist by mere days or hours, it's worth it.

Comment Hmmm... (Score 1, Troll) 341

So, the take away from this is... what? Any author gets to decide what information does or does not constitute a breach of national security based on what the effect of its deletion on their book sales would be? I for one would sleep more soundly knowing that that information wasn't in his book than I would knowing he was going to get a big fat royalty check.

Comment Weaning myself off cable (Score 3, Insightful) 286

I've been weaning myself off cable in stages. Six months ago I realized that I wasn't watching Starz enough to justify the $40/month charge, so I dropped it.

Now I'm coming to the realization that I watch Hulu+ and Amazon Prime as much if not more than cable, so now I'm on the verge of cutting my cord to Comcast and just steaming through my pokey old AT&T DSL line. It's not quite fast enough for a 1080p stream, but it looks acceptable to me at standard def on my 55" plasma. So there you go. Comcast has just priced themselves out of my life.

Comment Denial of the root cause (Score 0) 343

Human beings are incapable of sufficiently modifying their material expectations, and hence their behavior, to address this crisis. The underlying cause of our current global environmental emergency is overpopulation. There are simply far too many of us and we continue to multiply at an obscenely accelerating rate. We've been too successful as a species for our own good, but our increase in numbers has not been met with an increase in wisdom or political will to deal with our own trashing of the biosphere. We're screwed. We won't reduce our population and we're too lazy and cheap to deal with the problem. We're going down, but before we dissolve into a gigantic cesspool of our making we'll take most higher animal and plant species with us.

Comment Re:From Germany. (Score 2) 68

At least it's not from a US company. There is another phone like this, and it's from a US based company. And I'm thinking... yeah right, NSA honey trap.

We need secure software. We cant trust hardware at all, unless it's for a single purpose, with a verifiable protocol. The Bitcoin community are coming up with some great solutions, which will help.

It's an obvious strategy for a Honey Trap. What's not so obvious is whose Honey Trap it might be. Maybe it's the NSA, but it could just as easily be Russia's SVR or Israel's Mossad or China's MSS.

Comment the cycle starts anew (Score 1) 121

And so it begins, once again. Just as North Korea begins to appear less belligerent and people like Dennis Rodman are talking up Kim as a "cool dude", North Korea turns on a dime and proves it's still Pariah #1 on the world stage. So what will it be this time, Chubs? Last time you threatened to unleash a nuclear holocaust on the You gonna invade Orlando and take Mickey and Goofey hostage? Crash the moon into the White House?

Comment no brainer (Score 4, Insightful) 362

When considering a response to the use of poison gas in Syria, the U.S. has several choices available to it.

1. Do nothing. This is the least desirable option for most Americans, whether or not they believe we should bomb. A majority prefer some kind of response.

2. Assuming that gas was used on Assad's orders, punish him by dropping bombs on something important to him, but being careful not to hurt him so badly that his regime fails and Al Qaeda-backed forces assume power.

3. Resolve the situation diplomatically. Use third parties to pressure Assad to turn over his chemical weapons arsenal to international control.

A strong case can be made that options 1 and 2 are the least likely to achieve a desirable outcome. That leaves option 3, which as of last Monday has a real chance of happening. The most reasonable course of action appears to be laid out before us. The time is now for Obama to think out of the box, have the courage to reconsider his strategy and show the world that he really did deserve his Nobel Peace Prize.

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