I suppose that's why they say this then:

That would work too, but getting your hands on CF cards is getting harder and harder, and so is the likelihood that end users will have a card reader capable of using them.

Chromebooks dont use CF.

This does throw a nasty little wrinkle in.
we would need a custom SD card ASIC that purposefully does not accept writes, and does not have any code inside its firmware to facilitate writes.

That's gonna make it significantly more expensive though.

there's a possible alternative though, but it still requires custom hardware fab. A filter sleeve.
It does a man-in-the-middle between the actual sdcard and the sdcard slot. it allows read requests through, but denies write packets. It instead lies, and says a write was denied, emulating the behavior of the write protect notch on the sdcard logically to the controller, while actively also prohibiting the write from getting through at all. The ideal form factor here is in the "SDHC to microSDHC adapter sleeve" format. Sits inside a real SDHC slot, accepts microSDHC, but strictly enforces write protection.

Really, revelations like this are all the more reason to run a fully rom based OS for anything touching the internet.

Before somebody says something absurd, this is basically what a thin client does anyway. The difference is that you keep the system image inside the thin client itself, rather than pulling it from the network. A modified chromebook would work just fine. An sdcard slot that is hardware designed to be electronically incapable of raising its line voltages to write-enable levels, while still being physically accessible by the owner, would round out the package for where to store the system image.

Everything else is stored exclusively in RAM, and blanks completely on power off.

If the user WANTS persistent data, they can use external media. it comes in quite acceptable sizes these days.

This could very easily be done with a chromebook with some simple modifications. Instead of doing google chrome, pack it with a squashfs knoppix image.

watch all the seditious cat videos you want.

There-in lies the rub.

Politicians are expert liars and manipulators. They have agendas. they arent always good, and almost always have some kind of barb in them. Positions of power attract those who hunger for power, and that hunger is insatiable.

What is "War for what I want" to the politician, he spins as "War to prevent $atrocity" to his citizenry.

As voltaire pointed out, those who believe absurdities, can be made to commit atrocities.

The absurdity is that there is a justification for war to begin with-- a "right reason." To the politician, that just means he needs to push that "right reason" button, and you will go to war for him, and he will get what he wants.

Be it "Spreading freedom" or "assisting a revolt" or whatever.

Think about what war actually *IS*.

"I disagree with you, so strongly, that I feel compelled to use lethal violence against you to either eliminate you, or force you to adopt my position in this argument."

When you look at war that way, all pretext of "right reasons" dissolves.

As I pointed out earlier, "War is necessary because war exists(elsewhere)!" is a tautology. That is what "Violence in the name of self-defense" is. "My violence is necessary because there is violence (elsewhere)!"

The issue, is that you have governments that dont know the meaning of a peaceful "no."

You know, like,

"Hey bro-- I see you have lots of untapped oil resources. Would you please make some backroom deals with me so I can get some of it real cheap? I'll give you all the stuff to get it out of the ground for a reasonable bait and switch arrangement..."

"no, your deal is clearly not in our best interests. Seek your oil elsewhere."

"Oh, sorry to hear you say that..." (Turns around, spreads propoganda in his own country to rile up the 'For the right reasons' crowd) "For FREEDOM!(tm)"

(censored)
[sounds of killing and horrors of war of scene]

[new scene, completely different person is now in charge of the other country.]

"Thanks so much for putting me in power! Now, how can I help you?"

"yes, about that oil...."

THIS is why we must not allow people to be moved by speeches about "right reasons" for war. There would never have been a war without them. That's the point.

The argument in favor of 'For the right reasons' revolves around war being inevitable and necessary. It is a logical tautology.

"War is needed, because war exists(elsewhere)"

Wow is this uneducated. I can't speak to the federal workforce as a whole, but for a variety of technical fields, like the one described in this article, as well as my own (data science), the federal government pays "competitively" but salaries in the private sector tend to be quite a bit higher. As for the hours and the benefits, that's largely a function of where you work, but I will point out that federal pensions for new hires got slashed as part of a recent round of budget negotiations.

Little problem there, pal.

If EVERYONE did this, then there would be a scarce few idiots to join in behind dangerous, power-mad people, like the ones you mentioned.

Why? Because they would know that what that guy wanted, would lead to war, and know exactly what it is.

What REALLY contributes to those kinds of atrocities you cited, are people who think war is OK for "the right reasons".

Those people can be made to commit atrocities.

http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

That would be a very relevant and interesting comment if we weren't talking about a completely different sport in a completely different country.

Can there be only one pandemic in a year or something? The fantastic summary said nothing about swine flu.

How well does it work with a helmet on?

I wasn't aware the Google Glass had a rear-facing camera.

Half the reason of owning and riding a motorcycle is the excuse to look awesome.

Shut up and take my money already!

Well, let's not be hasty.

This is a little short sighted. Video files are not th eonly kinds of file that have grown demonstrably larger over time, due to "hey, everyone has the spaces these days, let's fill it! It's CHEAP!" being a development consideration.

Be it audio files (FLAAC vs MP3), Images (jpg vs png vs bmp vs RAW), Documents (RTF vs DOC vs DOCX) 3D object files (OBJ vs MAX vs BLEND) and of course, application files (I've seen 10mb and larger DLLs and other libraries become commonplace these days, where previously they were a few kilobytes to meg or two, with 5mb being 'large')

What you mean to say, is that 1TB is more than enough for anyone, "right now."

4 years from now, not so much.

I guess you haven't figured out that a nation run by large violent drug cartels and a wave of immigration from that nation might be related. If you want to stop the poor immigrants from washing into our country (mind you, I'm not convinced that's a problem), then work to make Mexico less of a failed state, and that has to involve working against the drug cartels.