Comment Re:Here's what's funny about all of this (Score 1) 159
a well-intentioned plan to prevent the next 9/11,
Road to hell...
a well-intentioned plan to prevent the next 9/11,
Road to hell...
And as the US discovers very quickly, it happened due to intentional inefficiencies and silo-ization of intelligence.
No, that is not why it happened but framing it that way is seductively authoritarian and one of the main reasons for the creation of the modern surveillance state. Having spent billions to stop more attacks, what do we have to show for it? The Boston bombers plus a whole host of "white" attacks like mass shootings and the NSA's official record of having stopped precisely zero attacks on USA soil.
The reason these things happen is because the real world is an immensely complex system - to say that significant acts of violence are "easily prevented" is to indulge in the fallacy of perfect knowledge after the fact.
The real inefficiency here is the futile attempt to model the real world through "collect it all" surveillance. It's been a huge bust for its stated purpose and it's had the knock-on effect of jamming up everybody trying to get on with the business of living their lives - businesses and people spending time and money to shield themselves from the surveillance as well as the psychological toll on the entire populace that in the back of their heads they are evaluating if their actions might be misinterpreted by the invisible and unaccountable watchers.
The only way to win is not to play the game. We need to get away with from the authoritarian framing of the problem of our society being constantly vulnerable and change from a surveillance state to a resilience state - where we accept life has risks, where we will take precautions proportional to the risks and spend the rest of our resources on living productive lives instead of lives of irrational fear.
Way to write a headline, editors.
Right! Slashdot's target audience are people who hear "back door" and think physical door.
Stupid editors don't have a clue who reads their own website.
This!
The AC OP's point is a terrible one because it could apply to nearly everything more complicated than a primetime tv show. It isn't about the 99.999% who can't use the information, it is the 0.001% who can use it that matter and it is no one's job to decide who qualifies.
Is Google, like MS, willing to break the Web to do this? Evidently so. Is this a big deal. Maybe not right now, but recall MS started small, the integrated the entire COM architecture into IE.
That's a stretch. Google is doing the opposite of MS - they are leaving functionality out of the browser, they are not adding proprietary functionality. Firefox and Opera are leaving out the same functions too.
I think you don't really understand the point of those rights. They aren't rights simply for being rights. They are rights because they are a necessary component of a healthy civilization. An "all seeing police state" perpetuates violence - the kind that a state visits on its citizens - it is just one or two steps removed from the actual violence that it creates.
This is probably nothing that should surprise or alert the average US citizen.
I have a vivid memory of watching congressional testimony by top Boeing executives over 20 years ago where they swore up and down that they did not want any help from american spy agencies. I'm sure they were talking about Airbus. I don't remember exactly what prompted congress to get involved, maybe it was the outing of some french industrial espionage that had recently come to light.
Bingo! To the "government is bad" zealots, nothing can interfere with their ideology. The many successes of government must be ignored, downplayed, or historically rewritten as failures or "less successful than they should have been."
I'm not even going that far. What I'm saying is that "starving the beast" without also putting the effort in to make sure that the government that remains is well managed means we get the worst of both worlds. The carrot and the stick.
Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.
Interestingly, that seems to be completely made up.
In 2012 there were 170 teaching days for elementary school teachers. After the strike and contract negotiations there were 180 teaching days in 2013. High school teachers also had a 10 day increase. In both cases, the length of the work day also increased (see the same link as before).
Yeah, meaningless quips are definitely a good basis for political philosophy.
The government that skips competitive bid processes because it doesn't have the funding to effectively evaluate the bids is totally governing best.
Therein lies the problem. "good governance", to so very many people, means "making someone else do these things I think they should do (that I am usually unwilling to do myself)".
Anyone who thinks that is an idiot. Good governance is good management. It means things like no cronyism, honest book-keeping, effective planning. In short competency. And it requires public participation way beyond voting - it requires citizen review boards, contributions of expertise, etc.
They sure are... Have you been in a Target since their breech? It is a ghost town in the one here.
Sounds like it was a ghost town before the breach too. In my case, I've been to the nearest store about a dozen times and it has been no different than before the news broke. I always use cash so it made no difference to me.
Oh please, if we characterized each political movement by the lowest members,
How about we characterize each political movement by its most effective members? When things like food-stamp programs get cut while subsidies to ADM and the like are renewed, then you have to wonder what part of the tea party is in control.
I take my role in a participatory democracy very seriously, which is why I strongly advocate smaller government, less government spending, and more liberties, and I will vote for and support candidates that take our country in that direction.
And I'm telling you that simply voting for candidates that you like is simply not enough.
You think of government as an animal that you can reward and punish and that will learn and improve over time, but that's ridiculously naive.
That's funny
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. - Voltaire
