What would you do if you knew whose system was compromised? Tie up the courts with lawsuits? Head over in a mob and smash their front windows? What are you going to do if their initial suspect turns out not to be at fault? File more suits? Form more mobs?

What a silly assumption. I can't speak for the poster, but as one who agrees with him 100%, I'll tell you what I would do:

STOP GIVING THE COMPROMISED VENDOR MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER

If it's a parking garage I use, I'd start paying the bill in cash, with receipt. Ditto for any other vendor I need to use but is compromised. If it is someone I don't need to use, I'd dump them for a smarter or less corrupt competitor. Probably someone who vets their employees, or at least doesn't use a call center housed in the local penitentary.

I don't think anyone (except you) is thinking law suits, smashed windows, or forming mobs. We're just thinking about how to avoid having it happen a second (or third, or fourth) time.

But if the bank won't tell you who is stealing your credit card, you have no way of taking preventative measures, and getting a new credit card is a pain in the ass, particularly if you've set up most of your bills to clear through the card to amass reward points (which at 2-5% of your purchases can be very worthwhile), and have to go back through and do it all again, all the time wondering if one of them is the culprit.

Gah
^lower common denominator^lowest common denominator

Let countries maintain their own TLDs and give jurisdiction over the international ones to a UN body.

That is a terrible idea. If you understood the simple fact that the UN does not, never has, and never will represent you or any other single, individual Human Being, you would understand the rediculousness of what you propose.

The UN represents GOVERNMENTS, most of whome are actively oppressing their own people to one degree or another. Cede control of key Internet infrastructure to that organization, and you cede control to an organization that represents the interests of REGIMES, not people. Censorship, filtering, domain seizures, etc. will follow the path of least resistence, and the lower common denominator. Governments will be pleased, and rarely will one stand up for you unless a specific political interest crosses enough borders, and gains enough attention (e.g. maybe Tibet, or Dafur, certainly not YOU, me, or anyone else on slashdot, in the EFF, the FSF, etc.).

You think American suppression of speech is bad? It is, but no where near as bad as it will be if we cede that authority "to a UN body."

This is why any kind of Hacking intent should never be combined with monetary interests.

That is true, but since the source is Fox News (Rupert Mudoch), as another poster pointed out we need to take this with a huge dose of salt.

If, however, this should turn out to be true, I find it disturbing on so many levels. Is anyone reminded of 1984 at all? The government running an underground resistence organization, to attract and arrest "revolutionaries." I'm not a fan of lulzsec at all, but this story, if at all true, is one of the more overtly Orwellian things I've seen, and living in an age of Orwellian behavior, with western democracies perched on the precipice of right-wing fascism, the middle east largely given over to their brand of sectarian fascism, and authoritarianism on the rise in Russia, China, and elsewhere, that is saying a lot.

What is even more telling, is how blase people are about the idea of a countercultural "leader" inciting criminality and then handing those he's managed to influence over to the authorities for "processing." Too many of us don't even seem to know enough to be ashamed, or appalled, by this kind of thing, so few in fact, that the GOP mouthpiece is essentially bragging about using such methods to take down a group they've found so easy to demonize. A process made easier no doubt, if the story is true, by the very behavior their mole incited and coordinated in the first place. Agent provocateur on steriods.

If this turns out to be at all true, and if we were a healthy democracy, the "leader" and his handlers would be facing serious jailtime, while those incited into this behavior would see a blackmark on their record and probation, hopefully scared straight. But those days died out sometime in the early naughties, and things have only gone downhill from there.

1. Simply ignore prior art and claim everything as your own invention.

2. Make a trivial change and then claim that and bamboozle the patent office into believing you have therefore invented the wheel.

You left out:

3. Simply pay the US Patent Office Bribe, I mean "Fee". Patent approved, no questions asked.

(And quietly, from one patent lawyer at the USPTO to another, at Corporation X, or defending defendent Y: go forth and make money!. We win, the only losers are the corporations who filed, and the innovators who "violated" the bogus patent. Extra points if you get a judge who was once a patent attorney. Any way you slice it: Profit!).

The Supreme Court found that the people who formed Citizens United had the right to form such a corporation in order to say certain things and the fact that they had formed a corporation did not diminish their right to say those things.

Which completely ignores the emergent properties of large groups and corporations, such as the mutliplicative effect of mob power, the internal enforcement of speech and attitude (if you say something that pisses off the group, you're out of the group), and the power of the mob to deny others their rights. It also ignores the inequalities between one person speaking their mind, and an organization pommelling back with organized propoganda at a scale only an organization can achieve. To equate the two is idiocy...unless your goal is to replace democracy with corpratism, which more and more circumstancial evidence seems to indicate that the majority of supreme court justices are looking to achieve.

Worse, and more fundamental, the Supreme Court seems to think money equals speech. Which maybe it does for people used to being bribed, but for human beings with a modicum of ethical sense and knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, the two things are clearly and fundamentally different. But not anymore, thanks to the Citizen United Abortion of Justice.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, because people really need to wake up, smell the coffee, and internalize this:

The UN doesn't represent YOU, or any other PERSON. It represents GOVERNMENTS. Governments are their constituents, not humaity.

Let me repeat that: The UN's constituents are GOVERNMENTS, not humanity. If you understand that, you will understand UN policy and why they do things that otherwise seem bizarr or incompetent.

And from the point of view of virtually every government, no matter how "benign" it may appear, the Internet is most certainly broken. Why? Because they cannot easily control it, control the content on it, or control what the people using it see and say. This impacts their ability to govern the way they would like to (and the way they used to) by feeding an official line to the media and have it echoed into every home and automobile, often without much question.

What humanity sees as a working, functioning internet that has democratized information and allowed an unprecedented level of collaboration, cooperation, and exchange of ideas, our governments one and all see as their biggest threat. What better way to reign in that threat than to turn control over to the UN, then agree by treaty how it is to be "governend". What they tried with SOPA and ACTA they'll be able to easily achieve through a simple UN governance mandate.

Sianara Internet, sianara freedom of communication. Welcome your new overlords, same as the olds ones, but with less compunction about smacking you down into place. With perfect political cover to the ostensibly liberal western democracies: to the public: "we regret the UN's decision to implement X, but are bound by treaty to abide their decision. This minor erosion of internet expression won't impact our fundamental freedoms any, and we'll learn to cope", to the Koch brothers (or Soros if you're on the other side of the aisle): "Problem solved. Can I count on your campaign contribution to my superpac next season?" Multiply across every politician, in every political system, in every government, and diversify by whatever means is appropriate to the local political climate, wether it's campaign contributions, secret tribunals, or shells raining down on opposition cities.

My credit card has issued its own currency, called "Thank You Points." The exchange rate is TYP 100 = USD 1.00, and has a volatility of zero. I exchange it for real cash whenever I hit 20,000 points or more.

On the other hand, the dollar is doing very well against my bank's currency (BAC), though volatility has been quite high the last few years.

The only people who think the Sweden extradition is some sort of grand conspiracy for the US to get its hands on Assange are... well, Assange, and a like-minded bunch of credulous simpletons

Nice ad homenim against anyone who disagrees with your view. Extra points for arrogance.

Apparently your list of "simpletons" includes your buddies at Stratfor, who claim to have specific intelligence indicating that the charges in Sweden are trumped up:

Whatâ(TM)s even more interesting is that Farnham says thereâ(TM)s nothing to the claims that Assange sexually assaulted two women in Sweden. He says that a close family friend knows one of the women involved in the case and they said that itâ(TM)s just âoeprosecutors looking to make a name for themselves.â

Ref: http://www.webpronews.com/stratfor-email-leaks-reveal-u-s-plans-to-indict-wikileaks-founder-2012-02

This may be less about extraditing Assange to the US, and more about jailing him for any offense, real or imagined, and assinating his character. Which would still be a "grand conspiracy" of sorts, just not one focused on extradition: label him a rapist and jail him for trumped up charges without us breaking any of our laws. Makes a nice example (in the Mafiosa Dom sense of the word), particularly once you throw Manning's inevitable sentence into the mix.

The sealed indictment (if real) adds another sinister bent to the whole thing. Regardless, that a very nasty game is afoot here is not in doubt, what is, is exactly what the nature of the game is.

What role a secret indictment would play is interesting to speculate about (and that's all anyone can really do). Can Assange be rendered more easily from Sweden (or points en route), or is he more vulnerable to extradition as a convicted felon and ex-con after he's served jailtime on trumped up charges and his reputation is in tatters? Or is it just an Ace the government keeps up its sleave, on the off chance Assange someday has a layover on US soil, say, on his way to a speaking engagement in Rio?

In response to the underhanded update, users take to the ratings system with a vengeance and downmod the developer into oblivion. Thus, the app ecosystem sees shady behavior as 'damage' and 'routes' around it.

Citation please?

Or is this just how you would like to see the free market work, because you believe in the free market, with no evidence of it actually working that way?

What "right" does a teacher have to keep their employment evauations secret? Please.

Please post your mid-year and year-end review for the last three years for us to evaluate. The slashdot community will then reach a determination on whether your opinion is worth listening to.

After all, what "right" do you have to confidentiality on your employer's opinion of how well you do your job?

So, if Congress made a treaty with China that they would violate their people's right of free speech and we'll violate ours, then that would be just peachie keen?

Yes. C.f. ACTA

While most would share your assumption that fact implies truth, and indeed the first three definitions of the word support that view, the 4th and 5th definitions clearly allow for "false facts":

factâ â[fakt]
noun
1. something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact.
2. something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is now a fact.
3. a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth.
4. something said to be true or supposed to have happened: The facts given by the witness are highly questionable.
5. Law . Often, facts. an actual or alleged event or circumstance, as distinguished from its legal effect or consequence. Compare question of fact, question of law.

In legal terms, "false facts" not only exist, they are arguably quite common in legal circles. Most defense attorneys would probably admit as much, over a pint of beer.

One thing people often forget is that individual citizens are NOT constituents of the UN. The UN does not represent you, your rights, or your interests.

The UN represents GOVERNMENTS, whose interests are often at odds with, or diametrically opposed to, the interests of the people they govern. Indeed, the UN only represents people's intrests when they happen to coincide with the interests of a sufficient number of sufficiently powerful governments, which is quite rare (WHO and the Human Rights folks notwithstanding). Moving authority from a democratically elected government (however dysfunctional, however provincial) to an unelected body that represents government interests over human interests is not a change for the better.

Cable providers will simply bundle and resell subscriptions to these services (along with the live channel feeds) at a "discount" (compared to buying them individually, not compared to actual value for what you use), and link your Comcast/Charter/Cox account to your HBO GO/etc. accounts seamlessly.

It's already happening. Just one of dozens of recent, disturbing datapoints to crop up in the last few weeks, but free content on thewb (and elsewhere) is diminishing. For example, the first 10 episodes of Fringe Season one went away this weekend...probably doesn't matter to most, but since I was out of the country when the series started, and just happened to discover it a couple of weeks ago, and since they're not available on Netflix, I'm either going to have to skip episodes 3-10, or pay for them at an inflated rate / episode on the iStore or Amazon (or even worse inflated rate on Vudu), or buy the blue-ray set for season one (which ironically is cheaper than the streaming rental on a per episode basis).

Less and less content available via a general web interface ... first steps toward the crappy iStore model of shit, where you download the WB or Fox app, or worse, have to download the Fringe app to watch the show. I curse Apples contribution to this ... the endgame is a walled garden worse in every respect from the one that existed with CompuServer, GEnie, AOL, and other dialup services before the Internet became common.

Welcome to your lobotimized world. Not government or big brother, but big content Apple, all driven by megalomaniacal monopolists that make Bill Gates look positively benign in comparison.