For an individual. If the US Government seriously saw BTC as a threat and wanted to use technical means to take it out, all it would need is a massive amount of processing power; the NSA either has that already or could build it out since their budget is essentially unlimited within their operational mandates.

It was wrong then, it's wrong now. It's always been wrong. Care to try again?

Just because others aspire to evil doesn't make it legitimate that we do so as well. That's not an excuse, that's sophistry. We are supposed to be BETTER than the Russians and the Chinese. We aren't supposed to cry like children that they had their hands in the cookie jar too, so it's OK if we did. No, that doesn't make it alright. We set ourselves apart. What is the USA? It's this: we hamstring ourselves, we restrain ourselves, we limit ourselves, in the restrictions and surveillance of our citizens AND THIS MAKES US FREE. THIS MAKES US OUT-COMPETE THE TYRANTS. The hawks have forgotten this. The hawks have forgotten that it is the step back from tyranny which gives you the room to breath the air of freedom; and it is the air of freedom which births prosperity.

Chase security, chase anti-terrorism, chase information awareness, but all you'll get is the opposite of what you're pursuing.

The NSA collect meta data. You can't deny this. They collect it indiscriminately. They just suck it all up, for everyone, all the time. This is now confirmed, right from the horse's mouth, the head of the NSA. This is unreasonable, thus a violation of the 4th Amendment. If you think it is reasonable, then you and I can't have a meaningful conversation with each other. We'll just have to stop here. You fundamentally accept a bigger and more onerous government than I do.

Put up or shut up. Show me something he blew the whistle on that wasn't wrong. He took documents over the course of months, selecting only the damning and illegal activity, and then in an abundance of caution gave them to journalists, and only journalists, who have so far done an honorable and commendable job disclosing only material which details the crimes of the NSA without putting any individual person in danger.

If as you say it's common knowledge that all governments spy on all other governments, then it shouldn't have done much harm to have what we already knew confirmed.

But that's not true, not all governments engage in this behavior, and not all that do take it as far as the US. Tapping the private phone of an allied head of state is out of bounds. It's not the kind of thing we should be doing. It's the kind of thing that causes an embarrassing international incident when it is revealed. Imagine our own government's reaction if the tables were turned.

Also, Snowden released the information to reputable journalists who have been selecting what to release. He didn't just dump it on a website for all to see. Those journalists have been reviewing the material and redacting anything that would actually put lives at risk. Snowden carried this off in the most responsible, most honorable, fashion possible.

Yeah, because THAT'S what's keeping him from being elected. It's not that a good percentage of the country has bought into the line that he's a communist traitor who has put American lives at risk, handed over secret documents to the "enemy", and was acting out of a desire to harm the United States. None of those things are true, mind, but that's not stopping people from demanding we send SEAL Team 6 into Russia.

The anger directed toward this man was so quick to start, so widespread, and so homogenous in tone and intent that it makes me suspect an NSA influence operation using internet sockpuppet accounts, and the already completely dominated mainstream cable channels (I won't use the word "news" to describe what they are). We actually know the government does this, we even knew before the Snowden documents, so it's not that much of a stretch in my mind. But on the other hand, I know quite a few living, breathing, people who really are that intellectually retarded. They're vociferously and sincerely calling for blood. He wouldn't live to see his name on the ballot if he comes back here. Our government has spoken: he's a traitor aiding foreign powers. We kill people for that.

At its lowest level, the hardware we use today to store data is prone to errors. Your HDD functions perfectly well misreading data hundreds of times a second. You don't even notice until it becomes especially bad; when the errors overwhelm the ability to check and correct the data. A certain amount of errors are expected, and correctable. The simplest method is a simple checksum. Report the intended length of the message you're sending and the receipient then checks to make sure at least the length is correct. Then you can build in redundancy and error correction through more sophisticated means. These problems have largely been solved in the abstract, so they're not dependent on any particular media.

I've worked in health care biling. Here's what's happening. EMR (electronic medical records) allow doctors to easily bill for all the services they should always have been billing. Before, with paper forms, it was a huge hassle and lots of things were just written off and not followed up on, or got lost in the shuffle. Now that it it's automatic, there's no reason not to take every dollar you're entitled to by law. Solution: change the law.

Enterprise customers still need millions of new workstation traditional desktops/laptops every few years. They're especially big in the medical and education markets where tablets and smart phones don't make sense.

If anything, it's MS with their abhorred Windows 8 that's threatening Dell's traditional business success. Luckily, Windows 7 will be around until 2020.

Yup, probably a lot of the same feelings and motivations there. You're not going to upset me by attacking the Democrats. I'm a Green.

I can think of someone more deserving.

No, that they voted unanimously against it indicates they were playing politics, it's what politicians do. The individual mandate was a Republican idea, but they weren't going to support it if they weren't going to get credit for it like they would have in the 90s when they were the party putting it forward. Now that it has a Democrats name prominently attached to it (Obamacare) they had to look like they hated it to remain popular with their constituencies. The Tea Party wing of the GOP held the rest of the party hostage, and there's not the political will to defy them and risk a primary challenge or fracturing of the party.

I think we'll leave that to the IRS.

They can't even support ideas they like! The idea, the individual mandate, came from the Republican party. Then once the Democrats started supporting it, the Republicans were against it. Now, this is mostly because the GOP has changed so much since the 90s. Republican leadership can't control the Tea Party wing. There are a few sane, moderate, Republicans but they are terrified of primary challenges and breaking ranks. So you end up with, as the GP elegantly put it, a reactionary party which can't actually propose any idea because their core belief (really just the core belief of a small minority holding the rest of the party hostage) is that anything the government does is by definition wrong.