Yep, and thanks for the rhyme compliment,
but my rank's time is better spent
busting cranks in the government
pulling pranks with the taxes spent.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
"No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent."
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865 (assassinated)

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."
"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings."
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (assassinated)

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 (assassinated)

"Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one."
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
- John Lennon 1940-1980 (assassinated)

The secret spy agencies' COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program) is tasked with carrying on the long tradition of maintaining the status quo via silencing "radicals" such as Civil Rights Activists, Women's Rights Activists, Privacy Rights Activists, Anti-War Activists, etc.

They could justify their actions, but you wouldn't like the justification. Here's their justification: The NSA is tasked to silence "radicals" such as Privacy Rights Activists, Women's Rights Activists, Civil Rights Activists, and nearly every Anti-War Activist group to maintain the status quo. The cold war is over, the military industrial war machine was not dismantled, it fell into the wrong hands. These secret programs have been corrupt since their inceptions.

They'll point out where their counter intelligence is leveraged against folks you don't like, but fail to tell you how it's also used against good innocent people as well. Note that this NSA tactic is the same evil as their COINTELPRO justification.

What Snowden did was Patriotic and Honorable, not Treasonous because Treason is exactly how you would describe the actions of the wiretap surveillance agencies. I have no problem at present of the visual surveillance of all outdoor activity. However, since the cold war is over, and we have mutually assured nuclear destruction, we don't need wiretap spying. No force can make a move against us without our instant knowledge. Any war fought on our soil will not succeed against us. So, the Terrorist Threat was invented, meanwhile Cars and Cheeseburgers kill 400 times more people than 9/11 every year and we don't have a war on Automobiles and Happy Meals. We must end the government secrecy so we can trust our governments again. A spy can not harm a government without secrets.

The Snowden leaks illustrate that the NSA has become a huge single point of failure. State sponsored enemy spies have Far More access to the information than Snowden ever dreamed. The Stasi like spying has disgraced us and stripped us of any honor we would bestow. What soldier would answer the call to fight for a country who's actions are indistinguishable from that which we are sworn to fight against? The NSA is now, and has always been, an enormous threat to national security.

Agreed. I use coreboot on all my systems. I put my /boot/ on the firmware, and used a saved configuration so there's no searching for IDEs, etc. at boot. I boot to the login in less than a second.

I do a little firmware / OS dev of my own. Coreboot is far superior than "Secure Boot". Here's why: An OS must kick off its own crypto chain to verify executables and maintain the security provided by signed boot loader. Instead of having to go into the BIOS and enter some long hex code that you and your users WILL mess up for UEFI, I just put the crypto stub of my OS in the firmware. The BIOS just needs an option to say:
[x] Allow OS install on next boot. Then the BIOS can load a stub of the OS into firmware.
That's far simpler, and just as secure -- I mean, if the (possibly PW protected) BIOS can be exploited beyond boot-time then Secure Boot isn't secure either. Bonus: You don't have to implement a FAT32 file system and risk getting sued by MS, like you do with UEFI.

Public key crypto means my OS stub in firmware doesn't have to change every time the kernel does. It can just validate the OS image signature. The benefit is that you don't have to pay the Microsoft tax to get the security features of secured boot sectors. Additionally, if your OS boot payload is small enough then you can deliver the whole thing, and use it as a fall-back if the up to date kernel is missing or corrupt. Let me tell you, today's firmware has space enough for a full OS already -- Complete with animated graphics, backgrounds, and sound effects on many systems. If an OS stub in firmware isn't enough then a second stage loader or data file can be loaded from storage and verified (especially useful for between-boot configuration stuff, to select what OS to multi-boot by default, etc. -- If missing, use sane defaults from firmware install).

An OS stub firmware loader far simpler, more flexible, has no vendor lock-in, and is just as secure (or more secure) than UEFI Secure Boot. Unfortunately, Coreboot isn't going to help if the HDD, GPU, etc firmware or chip microcode has been exploited by the Ken Thompson Hack. The answer is to demand the end of government secrecy -- We have no expectation of privacy outdoors, so we don't need wiretap spies -- Without it we still have more than enough spying. A government without secrets is immune to spies.

Yep, it's too bad the NSA doesn't actually protect national security, and is instead just ensuring all the other state sponsored enemy spies can get at more info than a contractor like Snowed did.

Imagine what it would be like if the government wasn't allowed any secrets or wiretaps. Our public policy would be the same policy we actually furthered around the world -- We wouldn't have to worry about diplomats making secret arms deals behind our backs; If such things were actually required to save lives then we'd understand the circumstance. The only reason we can't trust their actions is because secrets mask their motives, even when they are on the up and up.

We have amazing spy satellites launched via the biggest rockets in the world already. They would simply have more funds to split with NASA and be more benefit to actual security, science, disasters relief, while ensuring no force can make a move against us without us knowing instantly. They could even map submarines from space with ground/water penetrating radar. Better space collaboration would ensure decommissioned tech helps the space exploration initiative. No spies can threaten a government without secrets.

If the NSA were actually protecting the national security of America then they could be tasked with finding all the backdoors in the hardware and software. No one could put backdoors in for fear the NSA would find out, publish it, and ruin their business. Today they stay silent and let the public purchase systems the NSA likely knows have been compromised by enemy spies -- This saves the NSA time: They can just use the existing backdoor instead of put their own in. If the NSA weren't allowed secrets, they'd be eliminating exploits instead of leveraging them and our hardware, firmware, and OS's would be more secure. Eventually other governments would have to start up their own programs of outing intentional exploits just to ensure their people they weren't compromising public security. In addition to the Space Race, we'd have a Privacy Race, where competition would be in building the most secure systems. Public and private sector security experts could be assisted with new tools to show where flaws lie. Security would be a selling point and methods of provable security would be devised (I have done so myself on small scales). Computers and programs have finite state, so provable security is not impossible: Instead of spying the data centers and supercomputers could be tasked with hardening all the hardware and software. People would buy the USA security endorsed systems with pride. We'd have less identity fraud -- one of the most prevalent crimes. Conspiracies could be silenced through truth not ignorance. If we outlawed government secrets and required scientific evidence that their programs were helpful not harmful then we could trust our governments more than any citizens ever could before.

Sadly, we're too primitive and politically oppressed to apply the simple Scientific Method to governance. None can have assured trust or security from prying eyes because we allow the government to have secrets. That the priority of secrets is valued above security by the spies is obvious and evidenced by the way they compromise security and do not inform the world that we are buying insecure products. They risk spies accessing more than Snowden ever dreamed due to the priority they place on secrecy over security in their digital spying programs. These secret programs aren't getting beat up nearly as bad as they should be in the press. Gee, I wonder why.

A scientist would say: Prove their evidence is real.

They lied to congress, and have a a long history of evil. It would be foolish to trust anything they say. See, that's the thing with secrets and lies: You can never trust anything they say to be true. "Oh we're strengthening security." Prove it -- Could be weakening security instead, we don't know because: Secrets. Oh, so they say these guys are terrorists? Prove it. You'll have to use independent evidence -- not like digital records can't be fabricated, what with all the routers and systems backdoored or exploited. They could have written the damn email from the guy's system themselves at a whim. These spooks are real creeps, tasked with socio-political control, not safety. What they do is target "radicals". They thought the Civil Rights Movement was "radical". The Privacy Rights Movement is considered "radical" too, especially since it requires an end government secrets. Everyone knows the atrocities the CIA gets up to, you think any of theses guys have qualms about silencing "radicals" any way they can?

Anyone think these programs are beneficial? That's an unproven claim. Disprove the null hypothesis: No secret spy organization can be proven to be beneficial. They can't be proven to be telling the truth. A secret oversight committee just moves the problem around.

You're 4 times more likely to die from lightning strike. The flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack every ear. Cars and cheeseburgers have killed Four Thousand times more lives than a 9/11 scale attack since 9/11. The cost to benefit ratio of the spying programs is ridiculous. Life is dangerous: There are risks that are acceptable. If we're brave enough to drive the kids to get a Happy Meal, then what possible fear can we have of a minuscule in comparison terrorist threat? Even if all 50 of those supposed bombers would have gone off, they'd still wouldn't justify the cost to privacy, freedom, and trust in our governments -- Falling down in the shower is more dangerous than terrorists. Where's the free government bath-mats if terrorists are such a big concern? Mutually assured destruction means big countries are no threat. The cold war didn't end, the military industrial complex just turned on its own people in secret. Everything Eisenhower warned us about came true.

What a "radical" thought.

It's such a damn shame innit? They start crazy fights for privacy rights but aren't winin' it. Keep on moving on, getting inspected, not a single elder respected -- Like the old coulda told anything about info set management or social net arrangement; Not like we're the ones inventing the tech they keep renting: token ring, cold war dialling, social engineering, or any such thing.

I recall the good ol' days, a BBS on my relays, on my own damn machine, bought by car, truck and van washing. My crew and I were the ones who invaded, berated, and sysoperated, ruling every line on your dime one at a time. We ATA'd every call since we had it all: From hiphop to funk, cyberpunk and phreaking, cracking, hacking, dumpster leaking, from robotics to erotics, sharewares and GIF scares and ANSI scrolls so thick they make your third eye sick. Through trace busting out-dials we'd drop hot fresh files, and leave notes scrawled on boards we crawled -- that's a "wall" for yall not the age to breed, or maybe "feed". Kermit and XModem had the fiends' heads explodin' from phat noise-free downloadin'. Your game's No-CD crack has chiptunes and whack splash screens thanks to zero-day smack boasting knack for Demoscenes.

That TXT speak is weak; For fast finger walking prose we had Crosstalk macros. Web clients? I ain't buyin' it. How about No Fear to Peer-to-Peer, and our homebrew free as in beer? Ours had real crypto -- symmetric; You got SSL and wrecked it: Security went down the chutes since you trust bad actors as roots. References? Romance? What's the Hong Kong Post to you? Why: Preferences, Advanced, Certificates and View. To key shit we left you HTTP-Auth; You treat it like a scruffy nerf herder on Hoth. You got images and kerned text full of bot scrimmages and defects. Let me tell you, we got viewers too, with more features than yours do; No terminals hung playing Kung to this senior's Fu. Cindy Crawford wasn't so fine coming down that line in a 16 color swimsuit, but if you think that hot dithered mess hasn't seen progress take an app dirt-nap and reboot.

The pigs don't have a clue where all that data got off to. Bit rot got mold, disk platters went cold, forgave our digital sin: ASCII pages of old never to be scrolled or softly trolled ever again... You never forgive, never forget? You're caught in the Web, not the Internet. Before shit was Y2K compliant any machine was a server or client -- Now you pay the man his business plan just to show off your furry friends or pets: From your system you can't list 'em 'less holes get cut in your nets. Forget any of that or encrypted chat, if you're found at any 3rd party site: Folks at the Hong Kong Post can just as simply roast your connection's toast with state sponsored thermite.

Your browser skids marks like hand writ perjury: You got a "Referer" Header; It's not rocket surgery. Net ended up routing out behind NAT, buffer bloated pouting and all that; You kids can flunk Hogwarts but not forward ports. Not all of yall ignored the call of the tech wild, just enough it's rough to get inbound data dialed. I tried to STUN the sense back in your fool head; Nowhere to TURN symmetric NAT left you dead.

Half the world flushed IP6 down the commode, at least back in the day I had a unique dial code. Rolled out regulators instead of mounting up switches, and ASIC instead of firmware? Keep fucking up, bitches.

Look under the hood of your wireless modem, a separate OS: To the fire let's hold 'em.
Secure like DOS show the specs, programming, namers: Oh yeah, AT commands! Stay flaming, Lamers!

B-b-but!
This line noise hero's signal ain't stopped:

+++
ATH0
CARRIER DROPPED

Yes, and yes.
Whether I would have the power to do anything about it is an altogether different matter.
Rallying support would require some huge screw-up, for instance: If someone leaked the details about what Room 641A is for.

Don't forget, they'll want funding for more militarization of the local police force.

I am a scientist. That is an unevidenced claim. Prove it. Ah, but the mathematics of information disparity show that you can not prove a secret agency is working in the public benefit. Prove the NSA is not still doing COINTELPRO.

These secret organizations are known to do evil. COINTELPRO seeks to control the socio-political space by discrediting or silencing "radicals" like civil rights and anti-war activists. Martin Luther King was considered "radical". The privacy rights activists (those advocating removal of all government secrecy) are considered radical. What does the NSA think of radicals? Hey, let's COINTELPRO them.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
- John F. Kennedy

Funny thing in common about radical thinkers like Kennedy, MLK, and John Lennon: They got assassinated.

Were you paid to do your work? Yes? Ok, then we're good. Your mechanic doesn't charge you for each time you drive your car does he?

So, if I make an indie game, and I self publish, and someone in France pays me to download a copy over the Internet we both already pay to access... I should pay the French government? For what? For their ability to farm their citizens? No, if you want to farm people, then tax the purchasers. If you want more French gamedevs, just because I made a game, it's my fucking fault -- All the resources are free and available online: Compilers, Engines, Assets, Tutorials, etc. Just like anyone else. It's like saying: Men don't want to be romance novelists! Help! We need more male romance novelists!

If the French produce content the rest of the world wants, then they get paid for it. Why should they also get paid when other peoples create content the French want? You can't have your cake and eat it too: Either distribute all French film for free to the whole world (yay! eliminate piracy!), and charge the rest of the world to access your French chattel, Or you have citizens who pay taxes on what they buy. I'm not "doing business in France" when I sell a game online. The French are coming to the US and doing business with me here, change your citizens a duty tax if you want to play that Fascist censorship game again.

Next thing you know they'll be wanting to charge the bittorrent protocol for distributing the game for free to... Preserve French culture! Fuck right off. This is the Earth, we're in the Information Age. Cultural borders don't exist anymore, only pens for your human taxable livestock. Another name for culture manipulation is Fascism.

On yet another hand you can propose the idea directly to the consumers. If they think the idea is any good they can choose in aggregate to fund the production. Since you just got paid to do work, you let everyone download the product for free -- It's in infinite supply, thus has zero price regardless of cost to create (that's why you charged up front). You want more money? You create more works. Bonus: No piracy can exist, that's free publicity.

Now, you're not going to start out making a hundred million dollar production, you start small and work your way up, like everyone else. Once you gain two things: Good Reputation, and awareness that you're not charging for downloads, then folk will be willing to pay more up front -- AND! And you can conceal more of the story elements in your future proposals since you'll have trust. Just imagine all that money people pay to movie houses that the publisher rakes in, and the tiny little cut you got -- That could have been yours, but if you opt to use the antiquated information scarcity copyright futures market your brokers eat your lunch.

You see, the government hand-out can be denied to you, same as the Publisher can. However, no one can stop you from presenting your idea directly to the consumers and eliminating all the middle men.

Agreed. Anyone who says otherwise is a dumb ape who doesn't grok basic post-scarcity economics. Information is not scarce; It is in near infinite supply. What is scarce is the ability to create new information. You can charge for the work to create information, or the work to deliver information, but not the information itself: Economics 101 says that which has infinite supply has zero price regardless of cost to create; Thus you extract payment for the creation process. This is the Information Age, and all the dumb apes are having growing pains because symbols are not scarce. Look, your ancestors figured it out: In the Stone Age, stones were not scarce. If you put work into a stone, you could sell the stone tool, but you couldn't charge for each use of the stone and couldn't prevent anyone from copying your design (unless you wanted to get stoned to death).

The output of a stone tool maker or mechanic's work can be thought of as information: A change in the local configuration of matter. The mechanic does not charge each person each time they benefit from the output of their labor -- fixing the car. The benefits from their work are unbounded. So, instead the mechanic agrees on a price to do work, does the work, gets paid once, and does more work to get more money. This is the sane business model for all information creators. It's beyond ridiculous that so many think it to be a radical business method when applied to information and invention markets.

Artificial scarcity has never worked well for very long. It's economically untenable. Subsidizing breaks the contract between the customer and the service provider. It removes the customer's ability to select better service providers up front, precludes the customer's evaluation of the product, and eliminates competition between service providers; Thus you get a lot of crap that no one wants, with one or two gems despite the moronic model (not because of it). Variation and Selection is what got your molecular life out of the damn primordial ooze. When you subsidize you not only remove customer choice, it hinders progress. The Universal Law of Evolution is the reason competition is favorable than normalized methods of production.

Stone tools and mechanic work is a one to one production to consumer ratio; A customer pays for production of work once because benefit of the work is unbounded. Information and idea crafting is a one to many production:consumer ratio. Customers now have the ability to select what works they want to have created. That's why crowd funding works. The problem right now is greed: Even after being paid to do the work, the creators will charge for copies of the work: They're still double dipping because they didn't ask for enough money up front -- Subsidizing. Crowdfund raisers have a chance to ditch the parasitic publisher model whereby publishers increase price and add no benefit to the product. Market forces will drive the elimination of the publisher model; They will have to compete with those who do not leverage artificial scarcity and give their output away "for free" since it's already been paid for -- Thus decreasing the market's acceptable subsidized price.

A mechanic can accept payment via installments because the production:consumer is 1:1, and their labor is scarce -- Note that they can not extend payment to infinity. This does not scale with information and idea creators' 1:many, 1:millions or 1:billions ratio; Not because collection of payment over such distribution is taxing (it is), but because the output is infinitely reproducible. The publishing model created piracy. Stop leveraging artificial scarcity and you end piracy. Do not confuse distribution of initial payment with subsidization.

It's like we're talking to amoebas here. If subsidy was such a great idea, you'd pay for each strike of your hammer, fools.

Been there, done that. 76 year old retired air-force mechanic used all versions of windows. Tried to upgrade to Vista, called me up confused as hell. I put Ubuntu on it instead (and since moved to Debian after hated Unity debacle). He's never touched a terminal in his life, and loves Linux. It took him a day or so to figure out he could just say 'yes' when saving LibreOffice native format after opening Word / Excel. Recently he called me up because he got a laptop -- It had Windows8 on it, and he was out of his mind grinding gears over the lack of discoverable UI elements -- How was he supposed to know about the edges and corners of the screen being buttons? Sure, there's a tutorial that comes up, but he couldn't remember that information bombardment. Slapped Debian on it, he's so glad he doesn't have to change the basic user interface that he's been using for decades.

Similar stories with my elderly aunt, my red-neck brother, my mother (though she has above average computer literacy), and other family, even some of their friends use Linux now just via word of mouth (and w8 hate). Mom's biggest hurdle was, "How can all these programs be free? This isn't a piracy system is it?" No ma, it's a software repository -- She couldn't figure out why anyone was buying software then if there were free programs. She needed Adobe Pro for making fill-in forms and MS Office for some work BS, both run fine on Linux / Wine. You can pay for support on Linux just like any other operating system, however, now when my friends and relatives call me up the conversation doesn't drift to me coming over to see some weird thing their system is doing because a ton of tool-bars and pop-ups were installed by crappy "free" windows software, download agents and driver update systems.

My grandma accidentally upgraded to the latest version of her OS distro (Mint). Try installing a new windows version. Get ready to put in your Linux LiveCD to get online and get the network and device drivers, THEN boot back into windows, and spend the rest of the day applying patches -- Yeah that's right, if it had been Linux you'd have been done. Linux does have some issues with brand new hardware, but it's getting better -- even the Toshiba laptop I got has a Linux sourcecode repo for the fingerprint reader; Most older hardware will work out of the box. You shouldn't buy new hardware without checking if it worked with the OS you want anyway -- Vista, W7, and W8 drivers have been a mess for that reason.

How about this support call: Downgrading new system to Windows7 from 8, and the USB and Ethernet don't work (work under Debian LiveCD fine). W7 drivers for the USB and Ethernet weren't re-compiled -- The support page download gave the same exact binary files for both. Support says, "We don't support W7". Escalate. "We're having some problems with W7 downgrades... Ah, you're right, looks like they uploaded the wrong files to the server. 3rd party driver contractor will be contacted, no I don't know when we'll have it fixed. What do? Use Linux, screw windows.

In other words: In my experience, upgrading to Linux results in less tech-help calls than from upgrading to Windows8 or downgrading to W7. You're spreading FUD. Not sure how Android will fare, but at least it has a software repository full of software.