If you didn't understand that ACORN was a scam when you first heard about it, you don't understand people. Same with BlueHippo.

There are times in everyone's life when you look at someone poor unfortunate soul and decide you should do something to help them or lift them up somehow. But to make a business out of doing this? No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Neither financially or psychologically. What this means is that when you encounter any organization, group or company that seems like they are doing only good, altruistic work 100% of the time there is something wrong. Say, like when you hear about a company that takes people with no credit history or bad credit history and helps them get a computer by financing them. You can bet there is a substantial amount of fleecing going on.

Now, could Dell give 1 computer to poor people for every 1,000 they sell? Sure. Or the equivalent in some form more useful to poor people than a computer. And maybe they do with far less publicity.

So do you think an organization that is dedicated to getting housing for poor people, people with limited means, bad credit history and unstable work history might have some sort of alterior motive? Absolutely. And everything I have read about ACORN since the 1970s indicates that they have been playing games since their very inception. Games that have to do with power, control and influence that have nothing to do with their supposed mission.

You can't _entirely_ trust a machine that you haven't built yourself from individual transistors.

And not even then - because you'll probably introduce vulnerabilities yourself. B-b

However this "feature" is deliberately designed to make the machine untrustworthy - giving several pieces of control and observability to someone elsewhere on the network, overriding the intentions of the operator of the machine and the functionality of any software on it, while hiding this from them and making it inaccessable to them.

[a BIOS] bug [allowing activation of part of the AMT functionality] would be a serious problem, and would almost certainly allow the attacker the ability to execute arbitrary code, and therefore give them the ability to (e.g.) reflash your bios, install a rootkit in your OS, or any other such insidious method of taking over your system. I fail to see why the presence of AMT would make this any worse than it already is.

It makes it worse by having the components for the attack already installed. Without them they must be constructed externally and "squeezed through the crack". With them, the malware is already present - and "properly" so. Thus the vulnerability only needs to be "big enough" to get them activated. The attack doesn't need to bootstrap itself up - just get a state changed, a key inserterd, and/or an already present function activated. The code itself doesn't need to be injected.

The only difference between a compromised machine and an uncompromised one is that there is an authentication method for the attacker and perhaps that the AMT is activated when it should not have been. AMT is designed so the software and user of the machine can't detect that it is operating or what it is doing (except by noticing the effects if they are disruptive). So if you're hosed you don't know it and can't find out.

Sorry: Shipping machines that have "big brother's minion" deliberately built in, no matter for what noble purpose, is too Orwellian for me. It's an extra door from the alley into the vault, with its "security" handled (as far as I can see so far) by obscurity, bypassing all my own layers of protection. Such misfeatures mean the product is off my purchase list.

Mentioning pedophilia is trolling. It has no bearing on the discussion.

Megan's Law "requires persons convicted of sex crimes against children to notify local law enforcement of any change of address or employment after release from custody (prison or psychiatric facility)." There is no public disclosure requirement. That is handled by each state individually.

AFAIK the historical correctness of the bible is, at least, questionable. I agree most of the stories will be allegorical, and I can agree with the general tendency (love thy neighbor, do not kill etc.).
But the bible is no proof of someone standing up from death or anything like it. It tells the / a story at most, and saying this book is the best that is left of the 2000 year old literature does not make it proof either.
If for some reason at 2000 year from now the only book left would be the story of Hans and Gretel (or whatever they are called in your country), it would not be proof of the existence of houses built of gingerbread.

all is well...

From less than nothing at all there became an awareness of this and at that splitting instance consciousness and existence came to be. Both of which either exist or they don't, no in between. But what exist in consciousness and what exist in existence are variables/changing. Now if you are all that is, how do you know you will continue being? Expansion of what exist in both existence and consciousness and at some point in creation, to create life in order to experience more and to create more. Experience more as from within seeing things in part, not whole and likewise creating things with limited knowledge. When you die you go back to the whole to file your report as you are again made aware of the whole and eventually re-enter a part for additional recording to later report. But still, without existence, there can be no consciousness or place to know existence and what it contains. So the purpose of your life and the lives of other creatures and higher intelligent life is the same as it is for what some call god. SURVIVAL and as such we are all given the religion of "Survival" built-in.
There is not one religion that will counter this, as a house fighting against its foundation, will fall.
So what do you do, what is your purpose? To help provide insurance for survival....
Different forms of life have different perception and abilities and as such its a direction of helping to insure survival.
So where is the problem with so called alien life?
In the big picture, aliens don't really exist, only being different for survival insurance.
Intelligence and ability to contribute to expansion is graded on how well a life form understands self destruction is anti-expansion and not helpful.

Court records, including the names of the parties involved, are sealed all the time in the US, for a variety of reasons. Germany simply has a different set of reasons than the US does.

Of course, this isn't about Court Records, is it? The Wiki articles in question aren't "court records".

The Germans can do what they like about news articles in Germany. Alas, they don't have the power to extend their whims to news article in other countries....

Well he'd also need to prevent the phone from talking to any of the cellular towers over there. You're actually better off using an iPod Touch but ONLY if you can get on wifi near there. :P

If you use Gnome and liked Amarok 1.x, you could also take a look at Exaile. It's pretty much Amarok 1.x for Gnome, except that it's still actively developed. It doesn't feel as bloated as Songbird either.