Someone's job is on the line.

I'm assuming the GP's argument is that the higher than previously expected possibility of life-bearing planets early in the life of the universe increases the possibility of panspermia, all other things being equal.

The probability of panspermia is product of (at least) two other possibilities:
1.) Life exists somewhere
2.) Life is carried though space from one planet to another by some means.

Regardless of the probability of the latter, (which may be infinitesimal in any case) increasing the probability of the former at any point in time increases the overall probability of panspermia.

Right. Because nobody in their right mind would ride around in vehicles powered by a fuel known to burn violently from the smallest spark or even explode when mixed with air.

So how does that work? I thought the Supreme court was the highest authority on the law in the US?

GP's argument:

Your argument:

Which is shooting down a different position to the one the GP took. No one is arguing that privacy for all isn't the best situation. But this technology now exists, so the genie is out of the the bottle and that option is almost certainly off the table.

We now get to choose between the option where a small powerful elite has this technology, and the option where everyone has it.

I, for one, prefer the latter.

Sudo was written around 1980.

Ubuntu's first release was in 2004.

You can find sudo in every major linux distribution that I'm aware of - and in fact all of the Unices I've used in my 15 years as developer.

The reason why I so strongly dislike the Toyota Corolla can be summed up in three words: reciprocating petrol engine.

Somebody needs to buy it and run it. How much would it cost?

The targets of this idea are not people, but the automated systems that scan all content and communications for random keywords etc. The bots searching for starting points that can be investigated further by humans. The idea is that if too many false postitives are thrown up, the manual parts of the process get overloaded, reducing the value of the automated systems.

Once an individual has the attention of human spooks he's already past the point where this strategy is relevant. So your anecdote is valid, but slightly off-topic.

I totally agree on Retroshare... I saw it and immediately loved it. I've had a hard time convincing non-techy friends and family to start using it though.

I think it just needs to be pushed more, and maybe some of the buggy bits will get a bit more attention.

At https://www.adeccowaytowork.com/en/contact

For example:

Incidently their twitter feed is interesting reading at the moment. As is their facebook page.

Ditto. I've only ever successfully migrated one non-techy person (my brother) to Linux. He uses it as a media centre mostly and never touches a command line. But most people seem to have a morbid fear of installing a different OS on a computer to the one it came out of the shop with.

I recommend macs now to all my friends who complain about their slow/buggy/malware-ridden boxes. It's astonishing how the support calls drop off overnight.

If the OP has to help maintain this code, and is also held partially responsible for the performance and robustness of the software, (management tends to see development teams as an amorphous software-producing blob) then the guy IS making his job a lot harder.

So;

When you deliver criticism of someone's code, always be as specific as possible. Choose one class, or function, or whatever and offer an alternative solution which is demonstrably better.

The message should not be, "You fscked up," but, "Hey I found a better pattern for this class of problem, don't you agree?"

Try to make the atmosphere of the interaction collegial rather than instructive. Nobody wants to be corrected, particularly by someone more junior, but if you can persuade him that you just have good ideas you might have a better chance.

You can probably find lots of other advice on effectively delivering criticism, I'm sure people write about this stuff. You can google for it, I can't be bothered.

I'm going to assume that this is a serious question, if slightly fuzzily worded. And that what you want is the best security position that is practical, and still have a computing environment that is useful to you.

So this is going to draw some fire I suspect, but maybe start by reading the PCI DSS Data Security Standard and apply as much as possible of the practical stuff to your environment.

PCI DSS has its issues and its critics and is most definitely not perfect. But it is an attempt by a group comprising of all the major credit and debit card brands to define how to secure a computing environment that is connected to the internet and contains sensitive information.

A lot of it won't be relevant to you. But if you're not trying to achieve compliance, you can throw out the bits you don't need.

Specifically the difference between what the camera has focussed on and what your eye is trying to focus on.

When we look at things In Real Life we look at something close, like our hand, and objects in the background are blurred. Your eye is not focussed on them. If we look out to the middle distance though, our eye quickly re-focusses and things near to us become blurred.

But in a 3D movie this doesn't work. Whether something is in focus or not is decided by whether the CAMERA was focussed at that distance when it was filmed. This is just as true in 3D movies as it is in 2D movies.

Now in a 2D film your eye never changes focus. It's focus is the movie screen. There is the false focus of the camera, but we're used to that. It's one tool (the primary one) the director has for telling us what is significant in the current shot.

In a 3D movie however, apparent distance is changing and your eyes ARE adjusting shot by shot, for parallax at least. But you have to guess what the camera has focussed on, or your eyes are going to strain to focus on objects that will simply never come into focus.

This is why 3D movies are so much more tiring to watch. And one of the reasons why it's not real 3D. And why I'm still suspicious of whether it will ever become the dominant form in the art of cinema.

Interestingly, there is the potential for CGI to make much better 3D movies, for the simple reason that everything can be in focus all the time. I have yet to see a fully CGI movie in 3D I believe.

Discuss,