You guys don't get it - cops aren't against this because it'll catch them breaking the law, they do that all the time now with impunity. They're against it because their boss will be able to see them taking naps in parking lots.

The only way you get to a cop is to threaten to take away their OT, tenure, or pension.

I think that's ass-backwards, but I guess that's just me.

Be careful with words like "truly" in the context of religion.

Starbucks uses a dark roast. The darker the roast, the more caffeine is burned out. The thing that makes it stronger is the espresso extraction method, not the coffee; the problem with that is, the dark roast removes a lot of the complexity and the amount needed per cup raises the price.

If you want to experience a real coffee rush that doesn't cost you a fortune, get a light roast and put it through a Mr. Coffee. Tastes better for a fraction of the price.

There's an "FBI Surveillance Van" SSID observable from where I'm sitting now. Also an MI5.

Not to be outdone, my two networks are currently The Tal Shiar and The Obsidian Order.

The findings conveniently move the goalposts - it implies that the issue is that the spying is being done incorrectly, not that it's being done at all; if it were done "correctly" we would never know, which was the NSA's original win condition.

Yep. We're fucked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

I can't remember where I heard it, but google turns up this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57588748/most-disapprove-of-govt-phone-snooping-of-ordinary-americans/

The fundamental fact of the thing that keeps getting glossed over:

Just because a thing is LEGAL doesn't mean it's RIGHT. All these conversations about this get to the point where they go to the FISA court and they lean, hard, on the legality of the thing without mentioning how the court was set up, how it's basically a rubber stamp for the investigative services and how all the records are sealed anyway. Not that I'd expect them to, it's a talking head with a let's-hope-nobody-notices vibe, but they may as well say "and then a miracle occurs and HEY LOOK! You're safe!"

Saying something is legal doesn't have the ameliorating effect it used to.

That poll is flawed.

If you ask Americans if they're okay with the government tapping the phones of Americans for national security, 56% say yes, but if you ask them if they're okay with the government tapping the phones of ORDINARY Americans for national security, that number flips to 58% opposing it.

The way it was worded and due to the weird ways people make assumptions about the authority of the people asking polls, most people assume that the feds were only tapping the phones of bad guys.

Sony may have screwed up in the past, but they also generated a metric fuckton of goodwill at E3. That press conference was a marvel of modern brand messaging. It convinced a lot of people not at all interested in this generation of console, myself included, to seriously consider a PS4.

There's principle, and there's bloody-mindedness for the sake of itself. It's okay to change your mind.

And we are (or I am, at least; can't speak for the other guy) applying my memories of what it was like to be young with the freedom to get in relatively minor kinds of trouble without people assuming I was a terrorist.

You've got to have more faith in people than that. The world is complicated enough as it is without assuming that everybody in it is out to do damage to you.

Or some engineers, fresh out of college, got bored and wanted to go on an adventure and went exploring.

Everything we do is a learning experience. You don't have to sequester yourself in an office with a pile of books to figure out something new.

We all need to take a deep breath and relax and realize that not everybody out looking at things or throwing around what-ifs is up to no good. They could be bored and curious, and the cost of expansive freedom and the right to be curious and explore to satisfy that curiosity means that, yeah, the occasional nutter intent on harm succeeds.

I'm okay with that.

Here's your lesson, kids: caring about the thing you got your degree in should stop the minute you graduate, because any learning not done between 9 and 5 and in a school building by a tenured professor will get you arrested.

wtf is wrong with you?