Imagine what might happen if one of the revelations-to-be is evidence of spying on members of Congress? Maybe this is suspected by said members, and while this might anger them, they would rather the "revelations" to be kept secret. A secret kept secret is power. A secret revealed forces action in ways that are not preferred.

After all, burning gas in an engine produces useful work, burning it outside just produces a loud bang.

Yeah, the other 2 are "Broken Angels" and "Woken Furies." Not related, but "Market Forces" was also good, set in a sort of dystopian future of class warfare taken to its logical conclusion. (Thanks for the tip on the RPG, but I hardly ever get to play board games anymore. No time, and nobody I know is even interested anymore.)

My politics are irrelevant, though in most things I trend liberal, not conservative. That said, I voted for the guy, since I preferred him over the guy with the magic underwear. And now I have signed that damned petition, and if that puts me on a list, so be it. I love this country more than any one politician, curse his soul!

If the Supreme Court ruled that some Government activity was unconstitutional, and the Government (including executive and legislative branches) just shrugged and continued said activity, what then? Or what if Congress voted to impeach the President, but he ignored this action, what then? Who enforces on the enforcers? Would this be the tipping point to civil war?

The Universe does not cause me, I cause it. So does everyone else.

Read "Altered Carbon" by Richard Morgan.

From the Amazon synopsis: "In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen."

It is the first in a series of novels featuring the detective Takeshi Kovacs, and blends noir detective crime fiction with scifi. May remind you of Blade Runner.

Remember this?

I think he was trying to spell distance. American Distance. Our encrypted email servers need some distance from America.

Could something be done using TOR? If web servers can be setup on TOR, why not mail servers? Forgive me, but I barely know enough about TOR to spell it.

I understand that the Blackberry network is encrypted, and their servers are in Canada. Of course, what's the likelihood that Blackberry (via the Canadian government cooperating with the US) has already been sharing stuff? At least its not in the US.

I take you seriously. I cross-posted your post to facebook. Sorry I didn't ask your permission first, but I thought this should circulate outside the geeks at slashdot. I wonder how this affects hushmail or are they even US? Don't know.

This promises to be full of win.

Wow, thanks! This will come in handy if I ever do this for Bluray.

I have developed a way to store data on a CD/DVD such that if scratching causes data loss, all the files (including the readable portions of the damaged files) can be copied off to hard disk, the damaged files can be restored, and a new original CD/DVD can be created. Each data set recorded (for a full DVD) takes about 4 hours to calculate on a fairly decent dual core computer running Ubuntu, using about 15% redundancy. Actually burning the DVD takes 6 minutes.

I mastered a DVD movie for a client (he had a collection of pictures in slideshow format), and in addition to providing a DVD master that would play in any standard DVD player, I kept an archival version of the original ISO for his movie. He can come back to me any time and I can just pull the ISO and make him another playable copy.

Of course, this wouldn't have helped your copies of Stargate SG-1, but any files specially prepared and burned this way (say, your pirated copies of Stargate) would be protected. And I have tested it: I was able to recover a DVD after running my car keys across it fairly vigorously. For the last 2 years I have been archiving the most useful and critical software and data (OK, pr0n) with this method.

Here's the other thing, ever since I have been using this technique, I don't trust any other storage medium for long-term storage: not hard disks, not flash drives, not even (or especially not) the "cloud." Unless you melt the optical media in a fire or break them in half, data loss I have found to be at least gradual, not all or nothing like hard disks or flash drives can be.

And since I have demonstrated being able to recover from *gradual* data loss, this is the way I will go. (And so far I have not tried this method on Bluray media yet, though it should -hopefully- work the same.

Go into a bar, I mean, an Iranian space capsule. The mouse says... Come on, help me out here.