I use a version number in the classic (and very useful) major.minor.revision scheme, but I also use a chronologically sortable date code to the right of it. Best of both worlds. There's no reason to be limited to "date codes that don't say when you break stuff" or "version numbers that seem arbitrary." When the programs are started, they emit "Program that Does Stuff to Your Cookies 3.4.15 (2014-11-22)" and even if the version number doesn't ring a bell, the date code tells me "that's the day you accidentally typed a backtick and divided by zero."

Thank you for this post. You said it better than I think I could have, and didn't have to put anyone down or insult them in the process. /thread

Having seen this passive-aggressive horseshit so many times in the past, this post made me genuinely laugh out loud. I never understood what people who say "I won't visit anymore!" thought was going to change. People are, by default, in the ignored background until they speak up.

I understand where you were/are coming from now. Thanks.

There is no need to be rude or presumptive about my level of education. I shall explain what I meant in more depth to clear up any misunderstandings.

OP said: "So if you can spy on the traffic from the user to the tor entry node, and can spy on the traffic leaving the tor exit node at the same time... then you can tell that the traffic you saw going to the entry node is linked to the traffic leaving the exit node"

You said: "If you can correlate the server-->exit node flow to a specific entry node-->client flow, you've just identified the client outside of Tor."

Distinction Without a Difference - The assertion that a position is different from another position based on the language when, in fact, both positions are exactly the same -- at least in practice or practical terms.

Your provided links show that "packet sniffing" and "traffic flow analysis" are not different concepts in practice. The difference is in how the collected data is analyzed or for what purpose. For the purposes of this discussion where analysis of collected packets is for identical purposes, this is also a distinction without a difference. "A packet analyzer...is a computer program or a piece of computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network." "NetFlow is a feature that was introduced on Cisco routers that provides the ability to collect IP network traffic as it enters or exits an interface."

If you feel I have misinterpreted your statements, I would appreciate additional feedback.

Go to the URL bar and hit enter. It's blocking access because of the HTTP referrer.

It seems to me that you just said the same thing as the parent post.

I can't concede that because I have been presented no evidence of that. If we're seriously going to go down this path of discussing the economic damage of air pollution, let's talk about some of the positive aspects of air pollution as well, and how they weigh against the negatives...

You asserted that air pollution causes economic damages totaling $1600 per person per year and that the people who caused that economic damage should pay for it. You also implied that $1600 per person per year is a significant enough problem to need a government-enforced corrective action, though there is not enough context given to support that implication.

What's the difference between $0, $0.01, $1, and $1600? Proportion. Your later arguments have expanded your implication to state that any value of economic damages above $0 requires government-enforced corrective action. I do not accept such a premise. This is a shade of grey, not black-and-white. I want to see some information that shows not only that the problem exists, but also that the problem is BOTH statistically significant enough to need action AND that the action being proposed will make enough of a difference proportional to its total cost to be a better alternative than maintaining the status quo.

It would be fair to say that what you just said has nothing to do with what I said. It would also be fair to say that the post I responded to pointed out a study for SoCal as evidence that there's "a problem" without acknowledging that the study doesn't cover the 99% of the United States that is not SoCal. I'm willing to bet that the air quality here is very different from that in SoCal, in large part due to comparatively sparse population density. You put the assertion of "the cost of air pollution is exactly $0.00" which is a straw man argument. Do you have a study that leads to the same rough conclusions that your original source does, but that is also more representative of the country as a whole (or even regions that are not a relatively small portion of one state?)

I am curious about this. How would the redistribution be performed? Obviously if we take the money away and then hand it right back, the original point of the fuel tax is largely negated, so I assume that's not what you meant.

On the contrary, I know quite a few people that currently and formerly live(d) in Massachusetts, though none of them live or work in or very close to Boston. I didn't want to get into the composition details of Massachusetts, though; the larger point is that while people in some places in the United States can afford to use fuel-saving transportation, the majority of places in the US are not those types of places. Most of the land in the US is rural; most of the people in those areas can't just hop on a bicycle or drive an electric car to get where they need to go. That also brings another point to mind: a $7/gal. fuel tax will hit local farmers and significantly increase the cost of food throughout the country, though imported food from countries with no such tax would not suffer the same impact. We could just get all of our vegetables from South America, I suppose.

I never said that low income Americans are the only people who end up being taxed. I said that individuals are the only people who end up paying taxes because all taxes charged to companies and other entities that individuals must make purchases from will ultimately be rolled into the final cost to those individuals at the grocery store checkout or on the plumber's service invoice. What I said is that low income Americans end up being the hardest hit. Let me clarify that statement: for the same base level of consumption required to maintain the existence of a person or family (a base level which ALL people participating in the economy must consume to meet basic human needs, not just poor people) the added taxation represents a disproportionately larger percentage of each paycheck. If you make $300 a week in take-home pay and you have to drive 30 minutes each way to work in a 30 MPG vehicle with a $7 per gallon fuel tax and $3 per gallon pre-tax fuel cost, you're spending $100 per week (33.333% of your entire paycheck) to get to your job and back. Contrast this with the $3 per gallon amount of $30 per week (10% of your entire paycheck) and the difference is clear.

Sure, you may object to the example I'm using. Here are a couple of possible objections and their answers. "Why would you work that far away?" Sometimes you don't have enough local jobs. "Why not move closer to work?" What, and pay the extra $280 a month in rent instead of fuel? Who'll pay the moving costs and the security deposit if the person is already practically broke?

I could think of more but I think you get my general point by now.

SoCal doesn't automatically extrapolate out to the entire United States of America. California is the only state with its own set of special emissions requirements for vehicles that force manufacturers to produce "California models" of everything they sell there. If that study is methodologically sound and built on solid premises (I lack the time or motivation to review it right now), sure, find a way to get SoCal residents to stop killing themselves, but keep laws meant to deal with SoCal issues away from my coast.

Germany is not the United States. Everyone pointing at Europe seems to miss one large difference: there's a whole hell of a lot more room between people and places they need to go in most the United States than in Europe. If you live in Massachusetts, half an hour is a "long drive," but if you live in North Carolina it can easily be how far away Charlotte or Raleigh or Greensboro is. If I want to visit an area with a lot of large shops and restaurants, I'm looking at a 30-mile drive at a minimum; 40 miles if I want to go somewhere that actually has American corporate icons like Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Best Buy, etc. Taxing fuel at such an astronomical rate will certainly lower the amount of fuel use, but how many businesses will have to shut down because customers can't afford to blow $14 on fuel that they weren't spending before just to patronize those businesses? How much will the cost of items on eBay, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites increase? Someone who lives 30 miles from work because they can't afford housing any closer than that could be paying an extra $70 or more a week in fuel costs just to get to and from their jobs. The worst part is that people who would be considered "poor" are the hardest hit by this sort of feel-good taxation. In a country with a dismal record of low economic upward mobility, the last thing we need is to punch everyone in the financial face while they're already struggling to move up the ladder at all.

How about the effects of such a tax on, say, diesel fuel for the carriers to bring stuff from west coast ports to this side of the country. None of this deals with the serious problems we have in this country with rampant abuse of tax money. $7 per gallon worth of fuel tax that the corrupt politicians get to freely play around with? No thank you. Perhaps if our election cycles were not so widely spaced out so that we could throw the bums out faster, it'd be different.