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Comment Re:They've invested billions (Score 4, Informative) 142

The bill that made it to the house floor was so watered down it was meaningless. It got so many votes because it was a way for congressmen to clean their skirts, while doing nothing significant to curtail the activities of the NSA.

This.

Hope it gets defeated in the Senate, and they just let Sec. 215 expire. Call or write your Congresscritters in the Senate and tell them to vote down this deceitful POS. Sunset 215!

Comment Re:Typo: Digital Rights Management (Score 1) 371

What he's wrong about, and what you're right about, is that in Netflix's case DRM is perfectly acceptable since the key problem with DRM is it makes access to data temporary.

But that doesn't automatically make it okay.

The ruling SCOTUS made in the "Betamax decision" had solid reasoning behind it. It is precisely that "temporariness" that people have legitimate reasons for wanting to bypass.

Comment On Individuality (Score 2) 42

What I observe with the majority of people: they are fully capable of being free-thinking individuals, but the main way they use this capability is to follow the crowd.

With herd animals that are prey creatures (i.e. cattle, sheep) this makes sense in terms of survival. There is safety in numbers. Stray from the herd, and you get targeted by ever-present predators.

With humans, who are at the top of the food chain and generally have no natural predators, it's just a form of cowardice. I'm not sure the DNA of fruit flies is going to provide a satisfying explanation here, at least not one that can be extrapolated to include people, fascinating though it may be.

Comment Re:Bureaucrats (Score 1) 312

Your habit of misrepresenting comments taken out of context is very likely to get you nailed to a very rough wall one of these days, if you keep it up. It's not as though I haven't warned you. And I'm not even saying I would be the one to do it. If you do this to other people too, it would probably not be reasonable to expect them to be as tolerant as I have.

Comment Re:Bureaucrats (Score 1) 312

As a general principle, I don't lie. I make jokes now and then, and that sort of thing, but I am probable far LESS of a liar than about 99 out of 100 people you'll meet.

I have no problem at all with conscience. But I strongly suggest you start examining yours. Because at some point you may have to defend it.

Comment Re:Bureaucrats (Score 1) 312

Why should I "admit" anything? I don't owe you anything.

However, if this is the claim you make, then I am happy that you are reinforcing my case that you have been abusively "cyberstalking" me for years. You claim to be following even my deleted tweets. How interesting.

In fact, I now have two good pieces of evidence in less than 24.

I repeat what I said before, more that once: you aren't as smart as you think you are.

All you have to do to protect yourself is to stop being an asshole. I've told you before. You have refused to listen.

Comment Re:Capitalism is great... (Score 1) 142

You don't get to pick and choose only the positive results of profit motive as representing "real" capitalism.

Of course not. But that's not what I was doing, so the rest of your comment is moot.

Abuse of a system that was intended to be used differently in capitalist America is no different from abuse of a system that was intended to be used differently in formerly "communist" Russia, or China. The economic system has no bearing on it whatever: it's still just abuse of the system.

People have abused laws in all socioeconomic systems and they almost invariably do it for their own interests. You don't get to blame something that happens in ALL socioeconomic systems on "capitalism".

Comment Re: Homegrown (Score 1) 111

I can think of a pretty good example: TrueCrypt's ability to use Twofish in conjunction with AES. Twofish is pretty good by itself, but maybe not quite up to AES. Even so, there's still AES backing it up. Even if one is cracked, good luck with the other.

One-Time-Pad is 100% pure security-though-obscurity, and nothing beats it if you have leakproof key management. But that last is a "little detail" that can be pretty hard to achieve.

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