Comment An Unbiased Opinion, Eh? (Score 5, Insightful) 182
In other news, a spokesman for gun maker Smith & Wesson said today that "gun ranges are the classrooms of the future." Film at eleven.
Comment Re:Problem? (Score 1) 286
If this saved the life and virtue of even one child, then I have a hard time feeling like they did anything wrong.
Okay. So let's have all your passwords and full access to your home, office and other property to make sure you're not breaking any laws. What? You have nothing to hide? Good. So we can install audio and video monitoring devices in your car and your house, including the bedroom, bathroom, providing full 24/7 coverage. Nothing to worry about citizen, this is for your protection.
Navy Guilty of Illegally Broad Online Searches: Child Porn Conviction Overturned 286
An anonymous reader writes In a 2-1 decision, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that Navy investigators regularly run illegally broad online surveillance operations that cross the line of military enforcement and civilian law. The findings overturned the conviction of Michael Dreyer for distributing child pornography. The illegal material was found by NCIS agent Steve Logan searching for "any computers located in Washington state sharing known child pornography on the Gnutella file-sharing network." The ruling reads in part: "Agent Logan's search did not meet the required limitation. He surveyed the entire state of Washington for computers sharing child pornography. His initial search was not limited to United States military or government computers, and, as the government acknowledged, Agent Logan had no idea whether the computers searched belonged to someone with any "affiliation with the military at all." Instead, it was his "standard practice to monitor all computers in a geographic area," here, every computer in the state of Washington. The record here demonstrates that Agent Logan and other NCIS agents routinely carry out broad surveillance activities that violate the restrictions on military enforcement of civilian law. Agent Logan testified that it was his standard practice to "monitor any computer IP address within a specific geographic location," not just those "specific to US military only, or US government computers." He did not try to isolate military service members within a geographic area. He appeared to believe that these overly broad investigations were permissible, because he was a "U.S. federal agent" and so could investigate violations of either the Uniform Code of Military Justice or federal law."
Submission + - Treasure Map: NSA, GCHQ work on real-time 'Google Earth' internet observation (spiegel.de) 1
wabrandsma writes: from Der Spiegel:
According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom.
The document that Der Spiegel has seen shows a map with the name 'Treasure Map'. On the map are the names of Deutsche Telekom and NetCologne and their networks highlighted in red, where the legend says that within the networks 'access points' exist for 'technical observation'.
Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.
Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn't just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.
The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to "map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time."
Treasure Map allows for the creation of an "interactive map of the global Internet" in "near real-time," the document notes. Employees of the so-called "FiveEyes" intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird's eye view of the planet's digital arteries.
The New York Times reported on the existence of Treasure Map last November. What it means for Germany can be seen in additional material in the Snowden archive that SPIEGEL has examined.
According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom.
The document that Der Spiegel has seen shows a map with the name 'Treasure Map'. On the map are the names of Deutsche Telekom and NetCologne and their networks highlighted in red, where the legend says that within the networks 'access points' exist for 'technical observation'.
Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.
Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn't just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.
The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to "map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time."
Treasure Map allows for the creation of an "interactive map of the global Internet" in "near real-time," the document notes. Employees of the so-called "FiveEyes" intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird's eye view of the planet's digital arteries.
The New York Times reported on the existence of Treasure Map last November. What it means for Germany can be seen in additional material in the Snowden archive that SPIEGEL has examined.
Submission + - diaspora* version 0.4.1.0 released (diasporafoundation.org) 1
jaywink writes: A new diaspora* version 0.4.1.0 is out. It includes a lot of pages ported to Bootstrap, many bug fixes and small enhancements. Also included is a Terms of Service -feature for podmins. Diaspora* is an open source social networking server that joins all running pods into one big decentralized social network.
Comment Re:hoooray (Score 1) 75
I can see that someone lied to you. That's probably a sign that a lot of people have and you believed them.
The trickle down theory simply purports that the best way to increase the condition of the poor is to improve the economy so they have more opportunities and a common theme in achieving this is to lower taxes in order to allow more capitol investment in areas that would improve the economy. Contrary to popular belief, lowing taxes across the board is simply just that. It is not a gift to the wealthy, it is not a foot on the back of the poor, it is lowering taxes and its impact generally ends in more investment that create more jobs. Yes, the rich get richer but that happens without it.
But be a good little liberal and don't believe me or bother thinking for yourself. I mean how many poor people have given you a job that you could live from? Some people simply have to have more money than others and if you take all of it from them, they will not be creating jobs. It is the factual economic reality we live in. Until such time the government mandates people will work somewhere and receive whatever pay they declare valid, we will have to rely on people with money creating jobs. Its really that simple to anyone but liberals and communists.
I've seen "supply-side" economics in action, and it doesn't work. Well, not for the neediest, at least. You can call me whatever names you want, but I'm neither a "liberal" nor a "communist." I find it amusing that you didn't seem to notice that overall employment and wages have stagnated or declined since the supply-siders started implementing their policies.
Hayek and Friedman were wrong. That's not to say that Keynes was right about everything either. Higher wages and progressive income (or, potentially even a VAT) taxes led to the largest economic expansion in history in the 25 years after WWII, That's history. Look at the data. I believe in evidence and data. It's quite refreshing. You ought to try it sometime. I'm not going to get into a protracted debate with someone who (apparently) is unwilling to change their mind when provided with data and logical reasoning.
I don't need others to tell me what to think or say. I do my own thinking and draw my own conclusions.
I tell you what, You keep on calling me names and believing whatever you want. I have no desire to bad-mouth you or your beliefs (even if I disagree), nor am I interested in evangelizing my own. You might consider that sometime.
In any case, have a nice day!
Submission + - Child porno conviction overturned because government violated Posse Comitatus (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: This is another example of parallel construction, where a Navy contractor scans computers in a geographic region, and then passes the results to Law Enforcement.
NOTE: child pornography is what the Navy cops to, but left unsaid is what else is being supplied under parallel construction, and what other locations have Navy (and Army, and Air Force and ...) contractors scanning.
Agent Logan’s search did not meet the required limitation. He surveyed the entire state of Washington for computers sharing child pornography. His initial search was not limited to United States military or government computers, and, as the government acknowledged, Agent Logan had no idea whether the computers searched belonged to someone with any “affiliation with the military at all.” Instead, it was his “standard practice to monitor all computers in a geographic area,” here, every computer in the state of Washington.
The record here demonstrates that Agent Logan and other NCIS agents routinely carry out broad surveillance activities that violate the restrictions on military enforcement of civilian law. Agent Logan testified that it was his standard practice to “monitor[] any computer IP address within a specific geographic location,” not just those “specific to US military only, or US government computers.” He did not try to isolate military service members within a geographic area. He appeared to believe that these overly broad investigations were permissible, because he was a “U.S. federal agent[]” and so could investigate violations of either the Uniform Code of Military Justice or federal law.
Comment Re:hoooray (Score 2) 75
What affects the 1%ers today will affect the 99%ers tomorrow. This was true for Electric Light and phones in cars, and will be true for imortality.
What about trickle down economics? While it has surely affected the 99-percenters, it was hardly in a positive way. Not everything that benefits the wealthy makes its way to the common person.
Trickle-Down Economics (n)
1. A (repeatedly) failed economic policy (sometimes referred to as Supply-Side) which posits that increasing wealth at the top of the socioeconomic ladder will increase wealth at all socioeconomic levels, i.e., the wealth will "trickle down" and raise everyone up.;
2. A poorly constructed lie stating that giving more to those who have the most will somehow make those with less (or nothing) better off;
3. Pissing on the poor;
Comment Re:Why VPN? (Score 1) 238
Yes, you've forgotten your fucking manners. No reason to be a doooooooosh.
I assume that's meant to be humor. If not, I'm guessing you didn't take your medication today. Oh, and it's spelled 'douche'. Have a wonderful day, my rude, spelling-challenged friend.
Comment Re:Why VPN? (Score 1) 238
That's awesome! I think my 386 came with a really large 40MB drive and I wanted so badly get a CDROM until I found out you still needed drive space to run the games on them. I only remember because that was really when I started to get into computers on my own. I was quite a hardware geek back in those days. I bought that p166 back in 1996 I think, and it was a really expensive rig looking at hardware nowadays.
Yeah. The leaps in performance and capacity have been so huge. I remember back in the late 80s (before IDE/ATA) how awesome it was to get an 80MB (RLL format vs 40MB MFM) disk for my PC XT. Ahh, the joys of INT13 calls under DOS 3.3
Comment Re:Why VPN? (Score 1) 238
Except a PIII-100 did not exist. at 100mhz you would have been talking about a 486dx4 or a Pentium 100mhz machine. PIII ran from 450mhz-1.4ghz IIRC. However, if you are talking about bus speed, then yes, P3 did use a 100mhz-133mhz bus speed. However, when talking about a P3 (or even Pentium 1), a 200mb hard drive would have been tiny. When I bought my Pentium 166mhz machine it came with a (pricey) 4.3gb scsi drive. I believe I even had a 500MB drive hooked up to my 386. And I sure did not have 96MB of RAM, more like 4MB. Those were the days, just not quite like how you remember them...
You're right. I was incorrect. It's a Pentium Pro-200, not a PIII-100. And it's not about *remembering* It's right here, under my desk. Purchased new (Dell Dimension XPS) in 1995, IIRC.
$ cat cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 1
model name : Pentium Pro
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 199.434
$ cat
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 96964608 94928896 2035712 0 3387392 13291520
Is there anything else I'm not "remembering" from way back then, Huck?
Submission + - Lessons learned teaching software development (jmoses.co)
John Moses writes: I wanted to watch a tech talk from Pycon 2014 that happened in April of 2014. I scanned the topics to find one that was a little more advanced than an ‘Intro to Django’ and something that could hold my attention in the middle of a Friday. I found one called Sofware Carpentry: Lessons Learned by Greg Wilson.
Comment Re:Separate hardware from software (Score 1) 421
You mean we can't have a check-box on the PC vendor's web page where we configure our device, which lists several operating systems?
You can. But people will freak out when that checkbox would say "Linux + $80". They would think "But Linux is free". While it is a free OS, the OEM wouldn't get subsidies from bloatware providers which help subsidies the cost of the computer.
But folks don't even have that choice. Where we are now is a product of many years under the restrictive MS OEM licenses, and a whole, bottom feeding ecosystem has developed to exploit it. That has done a great deal, IMHO, to limit the innovation and development of alternative OSes, both free and commercial. What is more, in the absence of the predatory MS OEM licensing, as time went by, those self-same bloatware vendors would subsidize other OS' as well.
Comment Re:Dubious. I'm not convinced this is a good thing (Score 1) 421
That is a different issue. I agree it is not good that Microsoft is allowed to create predatory OEM licensing agreements. I would be in favor of regulations that would prevent MS from making such contracts.
But it's not a different issue, IMHO. In the absence of such OEM licensing agreements, vendors could have provided entree for a variety of alternative OS' (including some which were never developed because of the MS OEM lock-in),
Submission + - CERN Tests First Artificial Retina Capable Of Looking For High Energy Particles
KentuckyFC writes: Pattern recognition is one of the few areas where humans regularly outperform even the most powerful computers. Our extraordinary ability is a result of the way our bodies process visual information. But surprisingly, our brains only do part of the work. The most basic pattern recognition—edge detection, line detection and the detection of certain shapes—is performed by the complex circuitry of neurons in the retina. Now particle physicists are copying this trick to hunt for new particles. A team at CERN has built and tested an artificial retina capable of identifying particle tracks in the debris from particle collisions. And it can do it at the same rate that the LHC smashes particles together, about 800 million collisions per second. In other words, it can sift through the data in real time. The team says the retina outperforms any other particle-detecting device by a factor of 400.
