You're right. And do not forget that the batteries degrade over time, which is an additional worry.

*facepalms*

Ok...let's just have them burn static HTML pages on a DVD containing the operating system, and work from there. The other side can then play to win against Write Once media.

I'll be on my island, brooding, and watching anime. ;-)

Dude, it's agreed that slashvertizements are in bad taste...like asking a girl for sex when you go to pick her up for a date (i.e. it's super rude), but having said as much (seriously editors, do something about this), everything this blurb is talking about was predicted. NSA goes on privacy knifing binge, other Powers decide not to trust the US with their secrets, the businesses of the US cry out. Predicted, known, and they still didn't care. And now they want our trust, again, so they can betray it, again. The NSA's nickname might as well be Judas Iscariot or Jesus Christ, depending on whether you're on the receiving end, or the giving end. In either case, people are pissed.

So make a bad choice: pure honesty, with our super bad laws (God help you with that, as you're screwed inside and outside the US...victim of our foreign policy, or victim of our domestic policy)...or pure honesty, we're human, you're going to fail at some laws, and you might / might not receive some help when you do. Frankly, I see suffering, which, while not being a Buddhist, I am not a fan of...mine or others. Frankly, I'd prefer laws that everyone could follow flawlessly.

True, but think about it. The truth is the truth; if your defined enemy has you by the balls (blackmail), why let him continue to apply pressure to your testicles? Just coming clean means you can relieve that pressure, and nail the other guy for attempted blackmail. This works, of course, only if you don't hide the truth or mitigate things, etc. once you are in that situation...so if the NSA is still trying to cover up or redact some things, it's still going to hurt with this strategy, unless it changes.

The truth only works so well as you let it. Try to hide something when you use it, and it works less successfully.

Indeed. In the choice between retiring the military early with golf-course careers and spending the money on healthcare, or rolling with a super police state, I favor the former.

Disagree. You're using your hypothesis to prove your conclusion. It's a common logical fallacy: all known societies engage in invasion of privacy, ergo, society must engage in invasion of privacy, or it is not a society.

In other words...consolidation. People were fine with Google et al. running things until they realized how badly they are being pwned. Now people want to change, to save their lives / businesses / etc., and they have to scramble to rebuild some of the things that were thrown away.

Remind me...why are they so easily offended?

Because building websites is a tad bit more difficult than they are giving credit for? Think about it. They want to be commanders, handing down orders, and seeing them implemented...but they are seeing themselves fail time and time again. They are then obviously missing something...something so close to home that it's taken for granted.

Building websites means dealing with potentially dozens of vendors, whose products are more like legoes than fine tools. (Not that we don't love the tools we do have...we just know how difficult it is to build tools that are good). It means dealing with abstracts, and putting their designs into an implementation. That's a lot of mental travelling.

This is not taken into account by those who understand least, yet control the most, of their wages. It's a communication issue, a wage issue, and several thousand other issues which, at this point, even I've thrown up my hands in frustration.

You seem to assume that the choices are mutually exclusive: Soviet KGB-style interrogations and intelligence, or total Anarchy.

I ask you, why did we even fight the Cold War, and win it, if we were just going to embrace everything at a later time?

Well...from a realpolitik viewpoint...you do. Countries are only interested in protecting their own (f*ck the world...and their allies), and even then, only so much as is necessary to stay in power.

Allow me to explain this to you in more pragmatic terms: if your country could, with reasonable effort, turn everyone outside its borders into slaves, sell them and their children on the open market, as well as anyone inside its own borders (up to 50% + 1 to keep itself in power 'democratically), it totally would. Buying and selling people's information, 'social' justice without any sort of reason...these are simply preludes to what is already here.

"Due to National Security concerns, we can only tell you that the person charged is guilty...we cannot provide any evidence, and you will need to totally believe us, no matter how many times we have been found engaging in practices that are considered immoral."

Nonsense. Terrorism, as apparently defined by many an agency, is anything, ordinary or non-ordinary, that causes at least one person to get their knickers in a twist, i.e. the current and past three generations have now attained the ill-fated title of being composed of entirely 'girly men.'

Snickers bar someone dropped in the elevator of your corporate building? Better call a bomb squad, wouldn't want to expose yourselves to the risk that a candy bar might be filled with something other than chocolate, peanuts, and possibly some forth of caramel. Someone speaking in a foreign language nearby, looking very animated and 'angry'? Well, obviously the FBI needs to intercede on Al-Him's third daughter's wedding planning, and how they will not have the flowers she wants in time. The Amish have a bumper crop of corn this year? Well, they're obviously up to no good.

The X-Ray dose is trivial...especially the digital versions, which use, I believe, six times less radiation than a normal non-digital version.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/dental.htm

2 or 3 mrem is the reported dose for a dentist X-Ray.

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/doses-daily-lives.html

On average, Americans receive a radiation dose of about 0.62 rem (620 millirem) each year.
   

Someone who has journalism (possibly even 'Tech' journalism) experience is trying to run /., perhaps? Or maybe a lack thereof?

Let's review earlier /. submissions: http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers

Compare that one to the current post, and note the differences. First, /. is generating new content in that post...they are interviewing, even if by email, one of the higher tech people in the industry; what more, they are asking the right questions, because the person asking them lives in the tech world...the interview is quicker, and perhaps juicier because of that.

The current submission is, perhaps, something similar to pulling a story off the AP wire, and dumping the first paragraph verbatim as the summary.

The Tech industry is filled with people, both major and minor, who have email addresses. /. could always try emailing some people (not in Marketing / PR / etc.) for an interesting piece (helps if the people writing it are actually nuanced in the tech world...better learn to program, build a machine by hand, and attend the Cons (large crossover with the anime world) / Trade Shows).