Thar ya go.
So, essentially, the NSA is an industrial espionage agency and any government helping them is too dumb to notice it.
No, those other governments were already doing in with their own resources anyway. They were happy to have a new resource-rich partner.
Fuzzy recollection from my mid-to-late 90's Ecomonist-reading days: others (EU, Russia, China, Aus, SA, Japan, ok, pretty much everyone in the global economy) apparently had long made use of government intel assets for industrial/economic spying. There was a small stink when the US was caught doing similar things, except, it was only a small stink because the US was able to say "And here's what we saw while we were spying.. Here's the German spies, here's the UK spies, those are the French spies over there, let's see i know we have some Israeli's around here too, oh there they are discussing affairs with their Arab spy friends...." and so on, to which the collective response was something along the lines of "Oh. Yes, Well then..."
Or at least that was my take-away from the series of news articles and reports. There are no innocent parties.
This should be burned into the minds of schoolchildren everywhere.
If they want to ignore science, that's their choice. It just means their kids won't be able to find a job and my kids will have less competition. It's pretty clear there are many people in the US that don't get science and wish to deny their kids a proper education in the scientific method. The ultimate payback is when they're old and their kids can't take care of them. They have no one to blame except themselves.
Great, and then me, you and your kids will have to support these morons. Or pay for good security.
Since you mention... I've never met anyone who loooooves to play with fire more than firemen. Becoming a fireman (pardon, fire fighter) is, I've been told, the ultimate geek job for firebugs. First, they get to burn things. These guys train, and how do you think they do that? They set things ablaze. Large things when they can get them. Then they get to study and learn all about fire up close and in detail and, bonus, they get a socially useful outlet for their
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=ibm+m+keyboard&_sacat=0&_from=R40
I have a few spare 1391401's standing by, in case of emergency keyboard (or coffee cup) failure.
And I shall weep when the last one goes.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
