But even words like house, car, gun, etc. can be a problem, since for each of these there are example of objects you can physically point at that some people say ARE one of those, and others will say they AREN'T. Whether for physical objects or for abstract concepts, there are grey areas/edge cases that people will disagree about. Saying there is no universally accepted definition for something doesn't mean it is undefined or doesn't exist.

NSA uses same protocols on their network as everyone else (including hackers). So is this stunning revelation now what passes here as news? Is this just a slow news day or has Slashdot taken another step down?

According to Websters, the word job has a definition of "the work that a person does regularly in order to earn money", and since he is being paid to do exactly what he has done, then I think it is his job. The fact that you didn't hire him to do it doesn't change that he has been hired by someone to do it, just like you didn't hire all the pastors at the local churches, but being pastors is still their jobs. If you disagree with what he is saying then don't watch his shows or follow his tweets, just like if you disagree with the philosophy of the local church's pastor don't go to their service.

How did this get modded up? The "ends" are the handsets. As I said "the call is encrypted at one handset and the encrypted data travels to the other handset before being decrypted for the purpose of the call". One handset encrypts it and the other decrypts it. The encrypted data is sent from one handset to the other with the transport system as designed not decrypting the data anywhere in the middle. That is the definition of end-to-end encryption. The only way to push the endpoints further out, assuming the handset is treated as a single unit, would be for your ears or brain to do the encrypting/decrypting. If the system does the encrypting in an insecure manner, due to bugs or due to backdoor, that doesn't change where the transport system encryption and decryption occur and therefore doesn't change that the encryption is "end-to-end encryption". What part of that do YOU not understand?

Cellular communications are encrypted between the handset and the tower to prevent the radio buff from listening in. How effective that encryption is is up for debate. This means any end-to-end encryption would actually be double encrypting the data as it passed between handsets and towers, once for the cellular signal, and once for the end-to-end system.

Also I believe the summary is misleading. This probably is an end-to-end encryption system, meaning the call is encrypted at one handset and the encrypted data travels to the other handset before being decrypted for the purpose of the call. If there is a backdoor that compromises the encryption key, that doesn't change that the system is end-to-end encrypted, just that a snooper would be able to decrypt the traffic.

Yes, but that is for criminal trials, not civil trials. Basically, for a criminal trial if the jury returns a verdict of innocent then the defendant walks, no matter how the jury reached that verdict, even if it blatantly goes against the evidence. Jury nullification isn't explicitly codified in law, rather it is a concept that people have applied that is based on how the legal process works, i.e. a jury that returns innocent ends the prosecution. It has been used for juries to deliver justice when people have been unfairly, but legally, charged with crimes.

A civil trial doesn't really have the same protection since a judge is allowed to toss a jury's verdict if he feels it goes egregiously against the facts of the case, but if he does he must defend his decision and he doesn't get to replace the verdict with his own, but rather he in essence declares a mistrial and it has to be retried. Again, this is for the trial portion where the jury's purpose is as a determiner of facts. On the other hand, the jury award during the penalty phase can be reduced by the judge. And like always, any such action by a judge better be defensible otherwise he opens it up to being overturned on appeal.

Just like in criminal trials, in civil trials juries are given wide discretion in order to allow justice to be served. For example, it is not uncommon for the plaintiff to be awarded more by the jury than the plaintiff asked for, or for the jury to decide with their hearts instead of what the evidence logically dictates. Since civil juries decide based on the preponderance of the evidence and that is subjective, the level that must be reached for the judge to be able to toss the jury's decision is pretty high, so overturning such jury results is not very common (though make big press when the few do happen in big cases).

Then it is good that the jury doesn't interpret the law - that is up to the judge and is (supposed to be) based on case law. The sole purpose of the jury during the trial phase is to determine facts, like given the judge's instructions about what the law is, did the defendant violate it, or based on the evidence, did the party do or not do the claimed action. Any appeal will not be based on the jury getting the wrong answer, it will be based on the judge giving the jury the wrong instructions about what the law is, or on what evidence was allowed in or not allowed in, or some other procedural issue, but not the jury's decision.

Except while the real advertisers will see a 25% payout reduction, the market will also see 25% of the ad expense budget from companies go to scammers. Not the best free market outcome.

11 in binary is "1011"
13 in binary is "1101"

Two bits were flipped.

Likewise with 233 and 241:
233 in binary is "11101001"
241 in binary is "11110001"

Again, two bits were flipped.

That said, I am not a mathematician and haven't read the article so I don't understand how these two pairs are related.

I like to apply Occam's Razor. Having dealt with a variety of hackers ranging from newbies up to APT, I have found almost all of them make stupid mistakes and do things like this that leak info. I have yet to see a convincing false-flag since attackers would rather hide their origin than fake it, meaning they try to remove all such info instead of putting in fake info. Given my experience I have no trouble whatsoever believing the indicators of the Korean language pack presence on the origination computers is a strong lead for where it came from. The current beef that NK has against Sony due to the upcoming film, along with they specific threats, just adds to it as corresponding motive, like the cherry on top of the sundae.

I noticed that. They needed a multi-stage rocket to leave Earth, but the crafts alone could land on then leave the water planet (130% Earth gravity) and the ice planet (80% Earth gravity), and the main vessel could pull away from orbiting a black hole.

A couple other things also bothered me.

1) If the water planet was that close to the black hole I am pretty sure it would be ripped apart by tidal forces. Also, if it is so close to the hole, where is the star that it is getting light from? And as someone else mentioned, shouldn't the radio transmissions have been Doppler frequency shifted and dramatically slowed? And since they are reading the radio transmissions from the probe, wouldn't they have known that it had only seen a few minutes of ground time since that is all it would have (Doppler shifted) reported? The only other explanation is they chose to go to a planet that they had lost all contact from which is contrary to what the plot is.

2) And for going into the black hole, if we buy his statement about how not to get torn apart, I didn't get how they were planning on sending info out from the black hole. Once you are in, you are in, and they said they needed data from inside it, not from just outside it.

3) And how did he get out of the black hole at the end? No explanation. Just boom, there he is, along with his robot.

4) Why did the wormhole suddenly become unable to communicate back? They already had info from the first people so it was working then, and they spoke about being able to see things in the wormhole as they approached, so why the change?

5) His statement that the wormhole and the inside-the-black-hole constructs were made by far future humans is a theory, but isn't based on any evidence what so ever. Maybe it was, or maybe it is some other species. I guess it keeps them out of hot water with those who insist man is alone in the universe. But if it was future humans, why all the roundabout maneuvers? If they wanted to send a message, and they can manipulate gravity like is stated, then just send it. Big document inscribed in the desert sands. No need for subtleties. Yeah, yeah, I know, then no movie plot. ;)

I know you need to suspend some beliefs when watching movies, especially science fiction, but there has to be a limit to the amount you need to suspend. OK, feel better now.

Failure to thoroughly read a contract, in and of itself, is no defense.

Really? So if I put a line buried in the middle of a contract that says by signing you are conveying to me as consideration any and all rights to all real and personal property you own, then that clause is enforceable? Unreasonable conditions in a contract are not enforceable, and having a long, wordy, and legaleze rich contract HAS been held by the courts to potentially be a form of manipulation by sellers to deceive buyers. If a reasonable person would be shocked by something in a contract, then as a general rule it would probably not be enforceable unless the seller (the creator of the contract I might point out), explicitly singles it out to make clear the buyer knew about it and was OK with it. Hence, my original post's buried in a contract versus contained in its own form.

I also normally, though not always, read contracts that many people just sign. I spent about 15 minutes reading the sales contract for a car I recently bought, which the salesman was fine with. When I bought my last house, I also read through all the documents before signing, which pissed them off, mostly because they scheduled the signing for 4:30PM on a Friday and they couldn't leave until I finished, which took till almost 8PM.

It is wise to read anything you are signing, but failure to read it doesn't mean you are SOL if something bad was slipped in. IANAL.

That used to be a trick that stores used for mattresses, maybe they still do. The major companies like Serta, Sealy, and Simmons, would make a different model name for various major stores. Each store offered to beat any other store selling the same , IDENTICAL, item. Since they each sold their own "unique" mattress model they never had to actually match anyone. The fact that Sears' Foo and Wards' Bar were the same mattress, just with a different label and SKU, was of no help to the consumer.

I have seen things like that at Walmart too, like special version of a DVD that contains an extra trailer, or a drill that doesn't come with the carrying case like it does from Home Depot, all differences that cause it to have a different SKU.

There was a story a few years ago about Best Buy rigging their in-store computers to show a higher price than their website to the public. It was a shadow system that looked like the external site, but gave different prices. Its purpose was to trick people who look something up online, see the price, go to the store, find it at a different price, and complain. The salesman would pull it up on their "website" like the customer says they did, show the customer that they were mistaken, the marked price is the price it shows, and the customer was faced with either walking out or accepting the higher price. Smartphones were the fall of this practice since customers no longer had to use the Best Buy systems to look things up. They could whip out their iPhone/Android/BlackBerry/(cringe)Windows and look it up for themselves. When some of these people questioned the sales person's answer and independently verified the info on the spot, which didn't match, all hell broke loose.

It depends on how prominent the disclosure was. Was it in 8 point font in the middle of paragraph 37 on page 7 of the 12 pages the buyer had to sign? Or was it in 14 point font on its own form that dealt with nothing but the presence of a tracking device? Unfortunately saying the buyer signed an "acknowledgement" doesn't prove the device's presence was known, and courts interpret these things in how a "reasonable" person would find it. Also, the way that was written could mean the device's installation was acknowledged somewhere in a document, but since it was in a new sentence, the point about alerting if removed may be a comment about how it works rather than what the form contained.

I prefer sending them to an exclusive gated community with lots of large males so they can learn how to make friends. You know, opening new doors and all that.