Unless the particles aren't the message but the means of communication. Maybe they form some kind of field mechanic communications bridge to enable instantaneous communications?

We should consider something like this instead of probes like Voyager. Eventually we'll find a way to use fields or lasers as a communications field conduit that enables immediate lagless communications. Someone is probably working on this right now. To some extent the teleportation technology we've seen for communications could use such beams as guidance and accelerators that cut down lag. So maybe instead of thousands of years the lag is like a day or an hour or a few minutes.

A darker side of this could mean that the existence these focused particles could prove someone is communicating with their homeworld from Earth.

The film Kpax used this kind of idea as his transportation method, which was a pretty awesome film.

Makes for some awesome sci-fi even if it's far fetched!

It would be really cool if we discovered these particles were actually packets of alien data. I mean if WE found a new civ and we decided to contact them I wonder how they would adapt to our technology. Wouldn't it present in a kind of similar way?

Because if these particles are pretty special, which they are, then can we not assume they might not be naturally occurring?

Mobile industry is afoul with moral hazard. They simply don't care about their clients because they only want to get paid once and then milk the clients for information.

Google's Android phones flat out REFUSE to uninstall Facebook, for example.

Users do not have control because we're experiencing what Oligarchy feels like.

Some of us remember what it was once like when you wanted to buy something and they would kiss your ass and make you at home while you were shopping. If you had any problems they would bend over backwards to serve you. That mentality is dead in the goods & service industry.

We are approaching the dusk of the psychopathic corporation era. Nothing after that folks. Thanks for playing.

JS is totally impulsive for a site designer. They just decide to add so many different bells and whistles that they don't have enough time to do penetration tests on any of it. They grab source code from ANYWHERE and tack it on their site. Nobody checks that stuff.

Run NoScript and there are tons of sites calling 10+ different JS blocks.

Moral hazard.

Hear, here!

This doesn't surprise me. Few developers truly understand how many vectors JS opens up. Just KISS and let's move forward.

JS fanboys are ruining everything.

TFA tries to compare the legal aspects of one country's police using a legitimate cell tower's data (a "tower dump") with a court request for a copy of the purchase order of a surreptitious TriggerFish by a police force located in a different country. Different countries, different laws, different technologic approach to collecting the data, different accusations. The primary thing they share in common seems to be the outrage they spark.

The declassification rules in the US are such that all documents are to be publicly released 50 years after the end of their active life. That's why they were compelled to release ULTRA and VENONA information in the 1990s, 50 years after the end of WWII. The declassification process is not automatic, in that someone still redacts the names of involved people who are still alive, and they make sure that the release won't endanger any current activities, but for the most part they are compelled to release it all.

If you are at all interested in the history of our intelligence services, and you find yourself in the D.C. area, I strongly recommend visiting the NSA's Cryptologic Museum. http://www.nsa.gov/about/crypt...

Here are a few more differences and corrections:
* Mitrokhin turned the data over to British officials only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He did not endanger his country's ongoing intelligence operations. He may have embarrassed several former Soviet officials, but the revelations were not a crime against his country, as that country no longer existed at the time of their release. While the act of copying the classified data would certainly have been a crime against the Soviet Union, again, that country was gone. (Snowden released the data of his own still-active country, including information about active operations.)
* The data he turned over was archival material spanning decades and ending in the 1980s; he gave it up in the early 1990s. Some of it was less than ten years old at the time it was delivered. (Snowden's data was indeed more current and relevant.)
* After the publication of his notes in two books, the SVR actually provided academic access to the old KGB archives for a time. I think that was ended after the wrong person was embarrassed by his historical record, perhaps a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB. (The NSA has not yet opened their doors to the public in response to Snowden's release.)
* He was not a "whistleblower" in that he did not release this data in an attempt to change any ongoing practices. He was a historian who respected the truth, and did not want the facts distorted or destroyed by a regime with a long history of rewriting history. (Snowden is an activist, who is trying to effect change.)
* Mitrokhin's position was a Senior Archivist. He had access to essentially all KGB historical records, not simply operations of which he was a part. (Snowden was an administrator of systems, and had access to the records they contained; he also used other people's credentials to gain additional access to other records.)

Well, considering Mitrokhin had Christopher Andrew publish selected information in two English language volumes already, "The Sword and the Shield", and "The World was Going Our Way", I think your pleas for ignorance are not going to have much effect. This is simply a release of the rest of the materiel he exfiltrated.

C'mon, guys, when they aren't even on the same continent, you ought to realize they have their own laws. I know you think American law applies everywhere, but maybe you should try to find some more relevant perspective.

Blizzard is dying. Minecraft confirms it.

While I don't want to provide a detailed how-to, it goes something like this:

1. Go to store.
2. Fill cart with TVs and other expensive goods.
3. Wait for cashier to ask "would you like to save money by opening a credit card?"
4. ???
5. Profit.

The parent wasn't quite right, in reality software flies your airplane 100% of your journey right now.

Modern Boeing and Airbus designs are pure fly by wire. 100% of the time you fly it though software. The engines are FADEC (full authority digital engine controls).