The idea that if someone does something you don't like, they have to be punished, even if you can't find a law that exactly names the thing you didn't like as a crime, is moronic.

This is ten steps worse than I thought from the summary, though. The court decided that any use the company decided was felony 'hacking', at the companies discretion through the application of its internal policy, without requiring the company to actually install blocks against the usage!

Let's let businesses come up with new felonies on the fly! Woo!

The big fix that I'm looking for isn't there - we recently had an article pointing out that TrueCrypt volumes are of a uniform sector size, making them detectable (though still encrypted, of course). That is a bug I would like to see fixed in a new release. Perhaps next time?

Oh.. yea. I suppose I could pretend that I caught that but.. I didn't. Still, I always thought that it was nice the NSA released those recommendations. I'm sure they didn't leave themselves a hole to exploit in that!

NSA linux : http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/index.shtml

Even the article itself says that it isn't much of a big deal, once you get past the headline, of course.

And this seems like the sort of issue that will be resolved in the next generation, anyway.

Now, I didn't read any of that, of course, as it was long and boring looking. But as I scrolled downward to click reply, I noticed a general negative tone, and Microsoft was mentioned a few times. Since you seem to be saying something bad about M$, preach on, brother!

[quote]It's important to note that Obama's cuts, if implemented, would not actually reduce government spending. The cash would be shifted to areas the administration rates as higher priorities.[/quote]

Courtesy of the CSM article on the same subject. These are just programs being killed in favor of other things. It isn't like he's trying to balance the budget or anything.. that was more of a Clinton thing.

That's a very disappointing list! I was hoping for something crazy to rant about. I suppose the elimination of the subsidies to help fund new nuclear power plants isn't something I agree with, but it sounds more like they already subsidized 25 possibles and just aren't looking at any more this year.

[citation needed] If you could point out where the parent said torture of anyone was OK I would appreciate it, thanks.

None of this works when they are monitoring both the system you are communicating with and your own connection. As our ability to encrypt/obfuscate traffic increases, so does the ability to perform traffic analysis

I'm a fan of encrypting all traffic over the internet, but don't think for a moment that it will help anything once the government decides it is ok to monitor everything for evidence of 'crimes' like copying the newest songs or books.

Well, I'd love to use it for the 40 gigs worth of DnD 3.5 PDF's I have. Yes, I own the books, as well, simply because they are better as reference amongst a group of people.

But if I could put them all on an ebook reader? It depends on the interface, but that would be great, I think. And I'd surpass that 4 gig limit with pdf's within 4 months, even without the DnD crap.

Good thing this was modded off topic, I'm glad we have some mods willing to take a stand against people willing to compare apples to.. er..

Death is "another natural progression of the aging process". I bet you do a lot to avoid that on a regular basis, if unconsciously. All aspects of science and human advancement are to make the lives of humans better in some way or another. To strive for the betterment of oneself is the noblest of causes, how can you advocate the opposite?

The freedom to seek gainful employment should not be infringed.

While not a specifically enumerated right of the people, it is both expected that we work in a productive manner, and beneficial to the society in which we live.

The only way I could possibly agree with the enforcement of such a contract would be through compensation - have them pay his salary for each of the 12 months they expect him to be employed.

Even then, it deprives society of the good work he could be doing. Why should the government agree to such a thing?

This post, and your entire attitude, shows that you don't have the first clue WHY copyright exists in the first place.

Copyright doesn't exist for the purpose of protecting your 'rights' to your imaginary property. Copyright exists to allow you a limited period of time to benefit from works you create.

The WHOLE POINT of copyright protection is so that anyone can use your work!

If you don't see work you created used by someone else, somewhere, over the course of your life, the constitution has failed and business interests have been declared more important than the general public.