I'm not fan of Obama, but I'm suspicious about the results of that (single) survey. 35% of respondents rated Reagan as the best president since WW2, followed by Clinton (18%), Kennedy (15%), and Obama (8%). On the other side, 33% said Obama was the worst, followed by GWB (28%), Nixon (13%), and Carter (8%). As far as "worst president" goes, it looks like recent memory plays more of a role than anything the guys actually did. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, the 3 directly after WW2, got 0-1% of the votes. Carter is probably happy just to be included.

Maybe it's because Ada envisioned that the machines that would become computers would one day be capable of all kinds of useful things, as opposed to Babbage who saw them strictly as number crunchers.

Hardly. She didn't translate the book for a programmer, she translated the book for a machine. She was the programmer.

They aren't spending all of their oil money to gear themselves up to be a power producer and distributor. They are positioning themselves to be a financial center and tourist destination. If that fails then they have nothing to show for their oil wealth except a shiny city built on top of sand.

I sure don't, but that has no bearing on this conversation. At all.

Yes, she was wronged. Who wronged her? Was it Pinkmeth? Was it Verisign? Was it Katz? Was it the Tor project? No, it was none of those. It was whoever she sent those pictures to, whoever stole her phone, etc. I don't see that individual listed on her lawsuit, which is the reason her lawsuit (not her personally) is deserving of ridicule. Asserting that Pinkmeth is engaged in a conspiracy with Tor is ridiculous (literally - deserving of ridicule). The reason I included links was to show that suing Pinkmeth will have no effect on whether or not people will see her pictures. Those links were within the first 8 pages of Google results for her name, and none of them point to Pinkmeth. In short, not Pinkmeth, nor Verisign, nor Katz, nor Tor are the reasons why her images are online. The person who posted the images is the reason why they are online. If she wants justice, she needs to go after that person, not useful things that plenty of other people use for completely legitimate reasons.

It's a little strange that I have to point this out, but the benefit of Tor is anonymity and the ability to not be tracked. Hopefully you understand why protection of privacy is a good thing for everyone, not just people interested in committing a crime. If you want the argument for why Tor is a good thing, read what the EFF has to say about it.

I think that they'll find that selling solar power is far less profitable than selling oil.

She's on quite the fishing expedition. Here is another lawsuit filed by her, from 2012, suing Pinkmeth (again), Katz Global Media (for the crime of providing anonymous hosting), and Verisign. Yeah, she sued Verisign. Maybe that suit didn't work out so well, so she thought she would try her hand against Tor. Not exactly the best way to make a name for herself as a criminal justice major. I suspect that pursuing suits like these will serve is much more of a "loss in earning capacity" than a porn picture ever would. She might also be interested that her Facebook profile is open for the world to see. Here she is.

Maybe she's just trying to clog up the Google search results for her name with information about lawsuits instead of her actual pictures. You have to go to page 4 to find this one (which is not Pinkmeth), page 6 for this one (also not Pinkmeth), and page 8 for this one (again, not Pinkmeth).

I'm assuming she has no proof that would allow her to sue the person actually responsible for distributing the pictures (you know, other than her). Life lesson learned, I suppose. Try not to clog up the justice system.

Scroll down to the list of pictures and see if you can detect any DC-owned intellectual property.

http://sf.wish.org/wishes/wish...

And why limit it to just passwords? There's a whole onscreen keyboard there to be watched.

Who is going to rob, rape, and/or murder you? The person being tracked via satellite who is specifically responding to your request for a pick up? It's not even worth it to try and rob an Uber driver. You would need a stolen phone and credit card in order to be able to do that, otherwise it's pretty easy to prove exactly who was there. It's not like with a taxi that you can anonymously hail, shoot them while they're sitting in the seat, take everything and go.

The same could be said for any emerging technology. That argument would have applied when SSL was new. Maybe one day Tor will be standard, you buy a new computer, get online, and it's using Tor without you ever changing any settings. The EFF is already saying that everyone should use Tor. At this point, the only reason it's not the norm is because it's fairly new. I wouldn't be surprised if we see computers within a couple years marketed with privacy in mind that come with Tor already installed and configured, or ISPs adding exit nodes to their networks as a PR privacy initiative.

I remember when Patriot passed, I was very suspicious of it. It all got rammed through the system a little too easily considering the power it granted to the government. Everyone was so gung-ho at the time though. That also reminds me of when we decided to bail out all the big banks. I was the only person at the dinner table saying that they should be allowed to fail and that other, more responsible, banks would buy up the pieces and life in the free market would go on. Everyone was giving me reasons why that wouldn't work, and then years later they were trying to tell me why the banks should have been allowed to fail.

It seems that people forget about their convictions really easily in the face of extraordinary circumstances. The fact is that those circumstances are the most important time to keep your convictions. Patriot should have never been passed. The promise to repeal it was the entire reason I voted for Obama the first time. Bastard really got me, didn't he?

What if they don't want to buy it back for that much, what if the offer is now $2 billion? What if the stock price tanked? What if a court blocks the sale for whatever reason? There are risks to both the buyer and seller that I'm comfortable having them take if that's how they want to play the game.

I simply disagree. I'll also freely acknowledge that I should not be the person to draft any kind of law like this. Hell, I wasn't even focused on campaign finance specifically, I just got behind it because Lessig is actually doing something instead of sitting around and talking like everyone else. I see his point though. If it was up to me, I would focus on 4 issues as a starting point for a fix. That paper articulates my position, or at least what it was last November. The more time passes, the more I'm starting to believe that this system is hopelessly broken and irreversibly tilted in favor of those currently in power (I'm not just talking about politicians). Maybe the fix is to abolish all political parties completely and have everyone run on their own name, I don't know. I can promise you this though: unless a substantive push for actual reform gets off the ground in this country, as soon as I can afford it I'm going to expatriate myself. I don't want to live in a hypocritical system which claims to be free but is actually ruled by money and actively tramples on everyones' rights. This country is a far, far cry from the "land of the free and home of the brave." A lot of people living here have continually shown themselves to be neither free nor brave. The people with the money have seized power for themselves, and they are willing and able to spend vast amounts of money in order to make sure that the power and freedom stays with them, at the possible cost of everyone else.

By the way, have you been reading about all of the protesting going on in Germany over the US Federal Reserve? Because I haven't seen it in the news. I've been checking Fox, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post... it's weird though, I can't find any mention of it. Like it's not even happening. Why would virtually all American media refuse to cover a story like that, wouldn't it have some sort of interest here in the US? Or worldwide media, even. I'd almost think that media around the world are controlled by the same group of people. It's almost like when small-party candidates run for office, the media virtually ignores them. Why is that? Well, I can't think about that right now, I have to keep working because I have this mortgage to pay. After work I'll stop by Wal-Mart and pick up some food, then go home and watch entertainment and sports news until I pass out. I'm sure someone else will look out for me.

What I think? I think everyone who has been running this country for the past couple decades has been a cunt and deserves to be thrown out on their ass and locked up. That's what I think.

Or juuuuuuuuust anothaaaaaaaa cuntrie.

Wait, what? All of a sudden we've decided that violating rights is OK if it makes us more secure? When did we decide that? I don't remember any court decisions that said "well, it's unconstitutional, sure, but it's OK because..."

Well, I guess it has to eliminate a significant portion of the "to/from" communications that it seeks, change the manner in which it conducts upstream collection, and develop better technology, then. Right? Or just stay exactly the same and ignore the unconstitutional part of everything?

There's a quote from Benjamin Franklin around here somewhere...

How many laborers would they need to make all of those molds to allow them to build 10 buildings in 24 hours? Would your method be any cheaper than $5,000 per building?