An oversimplification. The US, UK, and allies variously broke many cipher systems throughout WWII. Still the US benefitted from this.

What if the Germans were using, say, Windows, Android phones, SSL, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype, instead of Enigma machines?

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

We'll still all complain that the 8 poll options are insufficient to sufficiently express the number of sides of said coin.

I travel a ton and stay in dozens of different hotels every year. Domestically, and in maybe 50% of the foreign cases, the high priced hotels had worse and slower internet up until a couple of years ago. For the last 2 years they have gotten better, on the average. Oh, I was in a 5-star Vegas resort last night that had horrible bandwidth. In the past, my joke was accurate that the difference between a Four Seasons (just an example) and a Super 8 is that at the Super 8 the internet worked and was free. The most important thing to me in a hotel is computer use. The fancy suites in major hotels are often set up for entertaining friends and DON'T even have a computer desk. I ask my wife to book me into Super 8's whenever possible.

http://www.forumsforums.com/3_9/showthread.php?t=62716

Make sure you're not confusing the "white" you see with, for example, LED flashlights, with the "white" that you would get if you bought good LED lightbulbs. The Philips ones are especially good, in my experience. You can get them in usually at least 3 different colors; warm white, cool white, and daylight. Warm white, usually around 2700K-3300K color temperature, is what most people have in their homes; it's the same as tungsten, and is considered "relaxing". Cool white is more bluish; something like 5000K. It is more often used in offices, because studies show that people are more productive with cooler-colored lighting (perhaps because it's closer to the color of noontime sun than tungsten, which is more like sunrise or sunset). It's also used in kitchens and bathrooms, because it's a fairly neutral color. Finally, daylight is the bluest color, at 6500K; it's also used in work areas or factories and places like that.

Sometimes, the cheapest and most efficient LED bulbs are in the blue end of the spectrum, especially when the color temperature doesn't matter too much - like a flashlight. So cheap lights will have a poor blue color to them. But good quality lights can give you any color you want - so you can pick which color looks best to you. I'd recommend seeing if there is a home improvement or other store in your area that sells light bulbs and has a display so you can compare a variety of lamps when turned on.

In the end, LEDs basically have it all; instant-on like tungsten, longer lifespan and lower energy usage than CFL, and available in any color you like. Not all of them support dimming, and not all dimmers support LEDs, so that's something to be aware of, if you have any dimmer circuits. I replaced nearly all of my bulbs with LEDs (and one of my four dimmers), and you'd never know the difference. My power bill sure does, though...

A not-entirely-dissimilar story; I worked for a small company where there was an HR manager and two assistants. During the downturn in 2000, they had to lay off a number of employees, so the manager directed one of the assistants to prepare and assemble kits for each of the earmarked employees giving them information on the benefits and resources available to them. At the meeting where the layoffs were announced, the assistant handed out these packets to the employees, and was then handed her own by the manager. (Ouch.)

Several years later, when things weren't looking terribly rosy, the HR manager quit; there were rumors that there might be another round of layoffs to come, and she didn't want to go through the painful process of doing them again. (Despite the rough delivery above, she was genuinely a nice person; just forced to be less compassionate by corporate need. Case in point; I burned my finger on a soldering iron while at work, and stopped by her office to ask if we had any ice available. I could see on her face that her first reaction was genuine concern and sympathy, followed very shortly afterwards by an "oh dear, there's going to be some paperwork associated with this" look.)

Luckily, we mostly avoided the feared second round of layoffs - 7 people were let go, which was probably more just thinning the herd than layoffs due to purely financial concerns. Thankfully, I had left by the time that the office was shut down several years later. I think everybody knew it was a sinking ship, but nobody was motivated enough to find a different job until they had the engineers packing boxes and disassembling office furniture.

End goal: change the constitution. We need a start. It's easy to see how hard this will be and to give up early, but some of us feel the imperative to fight for it. We can change things. The vast will of the masses (corporation political donations are not equivalent to the free speech we enjoy as individuals) needs to be strategically gathered. Critical mass could take decades, as with things like gay marriage.

...Ford is offering a rebate on a new Fiesta (with power locks and windows!) for anybody willing to trade in their Tesla Model S.

Spammers or hackers could get your IP turned off. But I'd do it anyway to be helpful.

Thanks. I understand and appreciate where you are coming from.

As a founder of the EFF, I do stand up for the small consumers vs. the wealthy and powerful. There is no perfect solution.

When you make the rules, you are right when you're wrong.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that you didn't buy a "really fat kid" for yourself, and 'splain some things that I've learned as a nerdy Prius owner...

First, it's not gutless as you might think. It's not going to win any awards for acceleration, but it can do 0-60 in 9.7 seconds. That's probably on the slower half of the scale, but still faster than a Yaris Hatchback or Matrix, as well as non-US models like the Avensis, Aygo, or Auris - and that's looking only at Toyota sedans. Most of the gutlessness comes from us schmucks inside the car, who are in no hurry to rush you to the next red light when we can get there at the same time as you, and with half as much fuel, by taking it easy. Some of the gutlessness comes from a software setting that adjusts the throttle response to the gas pedal's position; in Eco mode, you really have to mash the pedal if you want to move, while PWR mode makes it more like most American cars where it's jumpy if you so much as look at the gas pedal. In between is "Normal" mode. There are plenty of Prius owners who hate the car in anything but PWR mode because they like to accelerate fast.

Second, it is a HUGE car on the inside relative to most of my friends' sedans. A good amount of the space is vertical, so it helps if whatever you're carrying is tall or can be stacked. But I've carried 3'x8' sheets of plywood, an 8-foot ladder, or 4 people and backpacking gear for a 4-day wilderness trip. Many people can carry several bicycles inside the car without taking them apart - my wife and I are both very tall, so we have to take off the front wheel of our bikes to fit our bikes in. Out of all my friends, none have cars that can carry any of those things - except one bicycle with the wheels removed, and the handlebars sticking out the window.

Third, I'd say it doesn't really have two power trains; it has one power train of which the gasoline engine and two motor-generators are an integral part. The car would be incapable of driving if any of them are removed, although it'd be easier to remove the gasoline engine if anything. The Prius doesn't have a normal transmission; there are two planetary gearsets that connect the MGs and engine to the wheels. By adjusting the speed and direction of the MGs, pretty much any gear ratio can be obtained. It's sometimes called an "eCVT" because of this, but it could just as easily be called a single-speed transmission. Get rid of the electronic parts of the powertrain, and you'd have to put in a transmission instead to replace it. Also, you'd lose the regeneration abilities of being a hybrid. Of course, if you remove the engine, you'd have to use a much larger battery instead - and even then, the Prius motors are not designed for high-speed use (over 45 mph, the engine has to be spinning to keep the motors from over-revving; I think the limit is about 60 mph in the plug-in variant of the Prius). So both halves of the powertrain are really required for it to work, much less for it to work as efficiently as it does.

That's not to say it's a car for everybody - and indeed, if your choices come down to a Tesla anything or a Prius, I'd go with the Tesla any day unless you plan on regularly exceeding its range in areas where high-speed charging is not available. But it's a good choice of cars for many people.

That said, I'm not surprised that hybrid sales occasionally have a down year - but the trend still seems to be pretty positive. Even though they mention share dropping from 2009 to 2010, the hybrid share is still up about 15% since 2009, at about 3.2% of all cars. Meanwhile, EVs are starting to take off, and often catch the attention of the same eco-minded type that was purchasing the early hybrid models years ago. Still, they only amount to about 0.6% of all vehicle sales. But I don't think hybrids are a long-term solution, just like gas cars aren't either. Unless we start synthesizing gasoline from something other than oil, we'll need to find an alternative fuel sooner or later - whether that means EVs or something else, only time will tell.

All I can say is that I hope Tesla gets other auto makers fired up, otherwise I may have to find a big pile of cash next time I want to buy a car...

You're misunderstanding. (And I didn't really try to explain it thoroughly, so here you go:)

There are several displays. The speedometer always shows the actual speed. There is another display to the right of the speedometer that shows various settings relating to the radar cruise control - the set following distance, whether the system detects a car in front of you, the set speed, and (if the Lane Keep Assist feature is turned on) whether the car has detected the lane edges or not.

When turning on the cruise control, the set speed shown on the right display is equal to the current speed. When you use the Accel or Coast buttons, it adjusts the set speed shown on the right display, independently of whatever speed you are actually going. Because of this, you can adjust your set speed even when the system is going slower than the set speed due to traffic in front of you. Also because of this, you can adjust your set speed much faster than the car is capable of reacting to match.

There is something to be said for consistency - for example, the Prius fakes "engine drag" when you let up on the accelerator, by drawing power off of the electric generator and charging the battery. It is also programmed to have creep like an automatic car does, where it starts crawling forward when you let off the brake pedal. Both of these are done to make it feel like any other car; there's no inherent reason that it needs to do these. Woz's difficulties with the cruise control stem from the fact that they depart from the standard cruise control behavior. On the other hand, if they didn't, performing some actions (like adjusting your set speed) would be much more difficult, so I don't really fault them for it. Honestly, if you're paying $30k+ for a car with all the bells and whistles, you really ought to RTFM. It may be *mostly* like every other car you've ever driven, but it will also answer a lot of questions you'll probably have, and even a few you didn't know you had.

No, Woz said he had an entirely different problem - one that he later clarified was more akin to a "broken button on the radio" than the alleged unintended acceleration - the cruise control would start accelerating rapidly, but he could still tap the brakes and cruise control would turn off. Initially, he mentioned it as a "hey, this is something different, but maybe it's related and will help you track down the issue!", but later it became clear that this was not an issue.

In the end, it turned out to be an unexpected behavior-as-intended. Most people are used to cruise control where you hold the Accel button until you reach the speed you want; once there, you let go of Accel and it maintains the speed. However, with the radar cruise control on his (and my) Prius, the Accel button adjusts the set speed shown on the LCD on the dashboard independently of (and generally more rapidly than) the vehicle speed - first, by 1 mph at a time, and eventually by 5 mph at a time if you keep holding it. So if you start out at 55 mph, and hold Accel until you're going 70 mph, the set speed shown on the dash might be 110 mph by then. So yes, the car will continue accelerating - but his issue was from not understanding the intended behavior of the system, not from a bug. This is possibly an indicator that the behavior is unintuitive and should be modified, or possibly an indicator that car owners should just read their damn manuals, even if you're Woz.