I believe he was thinking of R22. Certainly a related problem.

They probably rigged their SUVs to actually manufacture CCl4 and immediately release it into the atmosphere just because.

Right now society (jobs, business interactions, legal obligations, etc) are generally structured around the common denominator of automobile transit. Your boss expects you to get to work around the basic parameters of what you can do in a car.

It's great to eliminate the car at some municipal level, now make "the bus didn't show up" or "there were no Uber/Zipcar/Car2Gos available" as some kind of universally accepted, legally unchangeable excuse for missing work, a court appearance, daycare pickup, etc.

One of the problems with the "yay, no cars!" world is that the rest of the world goes on making assumptions about people moving about that are based on the ability to get from point A to point B in a car.

Sure, in some places like NYC, a subway glitch will usually be accepted (in fact, I think they have a process for issuing excuse notes) and when I worked in a downtown office where there were a lot of bus riders, weather problems with the bus were generally not questioned or a cause for action.

But generally speaking society as a whole just assumes you're at fault.

What's worse about this is that the government buys into these security technologies as if they were magic, both financially and from a security perspective, treating them as if they were prima facie proof of guilt/innocence.

Yet at the same time they classify the technologies, prohibiting anyone from gaining any information about them or validating whether they work. The cynic of course knows this is just to hide their failings for political and commercial reasons "to prevent terrorists" from exploiting them.

And in't the oculus itself part of the structural gimmick, eliminating a not insignificant load from the top?

If *I* am the other party, it is not reasonable to forbid *ME* from voluntarily disclosing the information. Mine would be the only legitimate privacy interest.

The government itself has none.

It is easy to get complacent about that since even testing is usually quite stable, it's just not promised to be.

It is worth considering though that it is nice that installing stable and backporting is even an option. For an individual perhaps it's not worth it, but in a corporate environment it might work out to be reasonable.

I asked why the *GOVERNMENT* would have a right to privacy, not why *I* would.

Actually, those all magically went away along with the overgrowth that obscured the curve (and hid the cop car) once the courts cracked down on the practice.

Or break the law even more and drive on the shoulder or the oncoming lane to avoid the log tyruck.

None of that is at all optimal, but are nevertheless plausible reasons why ignoring the speed limit may be the safer option.

The difference is they don't keep badgering you about it. They especially don't try to block your path on your way out the door.

They also aren't generally the only store reachable from your home.

There's a time and a place. Even the McD's employee mopping the floor knows better than to ask a customer who says "clean the bathroom, the stench makes me want to vomit" "Would you like to vomit some fries with that?"

It's one thing if the customer has called to ask a "how can I" sort of question, it's another if they're calling because you are currently failing to provide what they already paid for. All you'll do that way is make them smile as they imagine sledghammering your balls.

It's far worse if the customer only got angry during the call because your flipbook/flowchart isn't solving the problem. You've just convinced me that I know more about your network than you do and now you want to sell me more based on your "expertise"?!?

There's a lot of data that suggests you can get a pile of cash robbing people in the park as well, but that doesn't make it right. The only reason the megacorps get away with it is where the competition is equally slimy.

No. When they violate the public trust, they have no right to keep it a secret.

Why would a government body have any right to privacy at all?

For other cases, I would say the cutoff point is the public courts. If you can come to an agreement privately, fine. But as soon as the courts are involved AT ALL, it becomes a public matter. They are, after all, PUBLIC courts.

If my experience serves, the average user will have no backups of any kind. The above average user will hire someone or ask a knowledgable friend to set something up for them.

If you're already recommending something to them and it would only take 5 minutes to set up, why wouldn't you set them up with a proper cron job and snapshotted backup volume?

Who said anything about letting viruses loose? I certainly don't recommend that.

Don't underestimate the fact that users cannot write the binaries they run. It may be possible to corrupt the memory space of a running app, but when it's closed, the hack goes away. There's not a good hook to insert a virus into.

If you wish to argue that enhancing the security model could be a good idea, I certainly agree. It may be a harder problem than you think. The NSA took a stab at it w/ SELinux, but that gets so complex to admin that professional admins question the possibility of properly tracking it all, so home users wouldn't stand a chance. AppArmor looks feasible for professionals in a real world environment, but probably will be ignored by home users.

Capabilities are a win, but are primarily used behind the scenes right now. Controlling them with fs xattrs lags behind.