GOOD

After the previous "Likely unconstitutional" ruling, it was only a matter of time before any momentum counter to the "everybody's a terrorist and that gives us an excuse to do whatever we want" point of view was stopped in its tracks. I'm not surprised this happened and I am even less surprised that his NSA-fellating ruling sounds like it was written for him.

I first learned Unix in school from a classic GUI-hating Unix veteran, and my line of thought was typical of anyone who had grown up on DOS and Windows. "What a pain. This is so archaic. Why do I have to bother with this?" Eventually, though, it started to fascinate me. It was like I was truly learning to use a computer for the first time. Maybe it was just the geeky hacker feel of scrolling white text on a black background. When I was taking Windows Server courses a couple semesters later, I was really beginning to miss the simple flexibility of a command prompt; now that I had experienced the alternative of pumping a mouse cursor through an endless torrent of snap-ins and pop-up menus. When I first started tinkering with various Linux distros around the same time, there was no turning back. I still had a graphical interface which a lot of things obviously require, but any time I needed to I could open a terminal and interact with the system directly. I was enthusiastic about Powershell when it first came around, but got turned off of it pretty quick. Even if MS didn't change the freaking syntax with every service pack, it just isn't the same.

Indeed. Do they actually expect us to believe that this kind of power will never be abused? Even if they could convince us that the hundreds or even thousands of people who have access to this system are all completely trustworthy and have only our best interests at heart (I doubt even a significant fraction of them are); as soon as some corrupt megalomaniacs come into power(worse ones, I mean), there it is; all nice and packaged up for the taking. There might as well be a giant red button labeled "Transform into oppressive, Orwellian police state" with a bunch of jerks standing around it saying "Nobody is going to push it. Honest ;)".

If I had a dollar for every broken power jack I have seen and/or replaced, I would buy Apple's MagSafe patent. Seriously though, it will probably be something that will vary in quality depending on the manufacturer. I just hope they all adopt it so we don't have to deal with this mess anymore.

The hilarious part is that the ragtag piracy groups manage to offer a superior product to anything offered by the actual studios or their affiliates; all while evading attempts by the studios and governments to shut them down.

I almost forgot why I don't purchase individual videos that don't give me either a tangible copy or an actual file download. Now I remember!

I really should let this go at this point, but I didn't read your comment until now. Why are you assuming that I am from the UK? Seriously, I am genuinely curious. (FYI I am from the US. Never even been to the UK.)

Well said. Of course the NSA's defense to that will be all of the horrible terrorist plots that they have supposedly foiled; which is, of course, a steaming pile of bullcrap, but that is the vague defense they always resort to. Every day I cringe to see how much of the budget is spent on this nonsense while actual important things like education and research are left to wither and die.

As it currently stands, they are gathering more data than they could conceivably know what to do with. Wouldn't they be more effective if they only target actual suspects? No matter how many colossal data centers they build or how many employees they hire, there is no way to effectively put that much data to use. It seems to me that the NSA cares less about being good at what they do and more about collecting more and more data just because they are addicted to the power it gives them. When the NSA chief models his "war room" after the freaking bridge from Star Trek, it says a lot about his mindset on the whole thing. Seriously, I bet that most of their ideas start with something like "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we could just tap Google's data center links and get ALL their data?". Everyone has these sorts of fantasies at their jobs; the difference being that the NSA can then proceed to actually DO them because they have been given a blank check to do whatever they want with as much taxpayer money as they need to make it happen. This is getting beyond ridiculous.

I didn't realize that it was such a soul-crushing, career destroying endeavor to slap a return label on something and drop it off; or to make a 5-minute phone call to arrange a pickup at a convenient time, which it sounds like Zawi was willing to do. I'm sorry but you really seem to be grasping at straws.