Well, the NSA already spies on traffic carried by privately owned semi-monopoly communications concerns.
Given that we've already lost that one, we now have the worst of both worlds - poor service and high prices from unregulated monopolies, combined with government spying which those monopolies cheerfully provide the government.
As a homeowner, that $2,000 is a small fraction of the price to fix a leaky roof.
We had to redo an ancient sewer system at a cost of $15,000
$2k for really fast internet would be a bargain.
There is plenty of capacity in St Louis and room to build more.
The cost of the pipeline is much more than the cost of a refinery. The 'surplus capacity' claim is total nonsense. The tar sludge isn't anything like the crude that the existing refineries process. There would have to be major upgrades in any case. And building a two thousand mile pipeline costs a heck of a lot more than any refinery would.
The decision was made years ago: No pipeline.
Not announcing the decision stops the Koch bros and the Keystone corp from starting their appeal. Its like an administrative filibuster.
There is already a pipeline that runs to St Louis, the only reason to build the second pipeline is to sell the sludge to China. Having that option available will allow the price to be jacked up when the sludge is sold to the US market as it will fetch the international price which is a lot higher than the refiners currently pay in St Louis.
There is absolutely no reason for the US to OK a pipeline that will increase the cost of supply to the US market. The only reason the GOP backs the pipeline is that the Koch bros stand to make $100 billion from the increase in the value of their shale tar sands.
It is a purely tactical decision because nobody outside the GOP wants the pipeline built. Everyone who wants the pipeline will vote GOP in November whatever the decision. Obama could make a short term political gain by announcing that there will be no pipeline but that would allow the appeals to start. Better for the country to wait until there have been some GOP deaths on the SCOTUS.
And certainly no true Zombie would be hurt by any amount of radiation
There's a union movement for the 20 hour work-week too.
There was a union movement for a 40 hour workweek. It was successful for a number of decades, but the 40 hour workweek seems to have gone the way of the rotary dial phone.
Might have something to do with the demise of the evil protection rackets called unions.
You object to signing a contact with an entity representing your workers, and dealing with employees according to rules set out in this contract.. I suspect you wouldn't think twice about signing a similar contract with suppliers or customers.
My only conclusion is that you prefer to deal with employees individually because you can more easily manipulate them by doing so. You enjoy the power of being the owner and being able to play favorites, taking advantage of the inherent weakness in an individual's bargaining power and the lack of any enforceable written criteria governing your rule. You accept the occasional loss of an employee able to find better conditions because you know you will always find a replacement.
Of all the inputs to your business - labor, materials, facilities - only labor is to be forced to deal from a deliberately weakened perspective.
You must be a joy to work for.
No dog ever accepted stock options as a reward.
To motivate a dog to do your bidding requires something more tangible (likely edible), while humans will accept vague promises of an abstract future reward.
Wouldn't some big company like Target have someone on staff who knows how to firewall off a network just for the HVAC? Huh? Huh?
They probably have several people who can do that. It requires some expertise but not a lot.
Of course they have people who CAN do that. The better question is - do any of those people have the political clout to require Target to spend money and inconvenience managers and "essential" vendors to prevent a "theoretical" security attack.
What I find problematic with that mode of argument is that it tends to turn McCarthyite very quickly. Castro attempted to cut a deal with the US before going to the Soviets, he is rather less committed to communism than either his supporters or his opponents believe. He also gave the CIA the location of Che Guavera when he decided he was a liability. So there has been a basis for cooperation for a long time.
The list of crimes committed by US Presidents panicking about communism is very long. Snuffing out a democracy in Iran to replace it with a bloodthirsty dictator, supporting the Khumer Rouge after Vietnam ejected them, installing Pinochet, a mass murderer in Chile. George W Bush just managed to cause the deaths of a half million Iraqis and wonders why he isn't being praised for his efforts.
The problem isn't capitalism of communism, the problem is authoritarianism and elites who believe that brute force is the solution to every problem. Castro is a thug and a murderer but its the US who set up a torture chamber in Cuba.
Since the US government has been spending a large amount of money to get the Internet into Cuba, giving them a pipe and letting them rip with it seems like the best way forward. They will try to control it but everyone knows that Cuba is going to liberalize in the near future.
The logical way forward would be for the US to lift the blockade and let the commerce flood in. The communist system would collapse pretty quickly when there was money to be made. But the problem is that there is a faction that is less interested in bringing democracy to cuba as returning their assets that were nationalized. Since they stole the assets under the corrupt Batista regime, there aren't going to be many interested in that happening.
The Dutch government is very clear about not being a haven for drug dealers shipping to other countries. Unlike the US police, they don't spend time going after domestic pushers or users. But anyone who is shipping through the Netherlands to another country is in for serious grief.
>Hmm... perhaps their mistake was even dumber than simply believing tor is magic.
Magical thinking is very common in security. Lots of people think BitCoin is anonymous despite the fact the transaction log is public.
Call Tor services 'hidden' and some people think that means the NSA and GCHQ can't find them. Call them the 'dark Web' and they think its protected by Professor Dumbledore himself.
No, Tor is not compromised. Tor isn't really designed to protect the privacy of Web Sites. Tor is designed to protect the privacy of Web Site users.
If you have a server that is visible to any client on the Tor network then either the server IP itself must be visible to an exit node put up by Law Enforcement or an intermediary node that is directly conspiring with the server has to be visible to law enforcement.
That is just a basic limitation of onion routing. A client can hide because it gets to choose the entry node. A server can't hide because anyone can set up an exit node.
This illustrates one of the big problems with computer security, people want to believe that security claims are true so they tend to be very gullible. They often rely on claims being made about a product by people talking about it on Web sites rather than the people who built it. And note I said 'rely'. Taking note of someone saying 'steer clear, this is why' on a Web site is very different to following the advice of people playing the pied piper.
There are lots of people who are convinced that Bitcoin is anonymous. This despite the fact that every transaction is public and every wallet tracks every one of them. The BitCoin people don't like hearing that their scheme might not be the future of currency or that it really isn't very different from e-Gold or GoldAge or Liberty Reserve which the FBI had no trouble rolling up. Take a look at the comments on my Bitcoin podcast, not a single substantive comment from a BitCoin supporter. Just a regurgitation of the ideology as fact:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I think this is coming close to the endgame for BitCoin. The FBI might be nervous about the influence that the Winkelvoss twins and other rich supporters of BitCoin might be able to buy (but Senators probably don't take bribes/campaign contributions in Bitcoin). So the logical tactic to make them radioactive would be to arrest them too.
Funny how an ideology that holds the government is an oppressive freedom destroying force can be self-fulfilling. But Bitcoin can't possibly survive when LE believes that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions involve drugs or kiddie porn or gambling. And I see no evidence to the contrary.
If you think there is something wrong with historically unprecedented income and wealth inequality, if you fear for the future of democracy when 85 individuals control more wealth than 3.5 billion people, if you are alarmed at the influence of this wealth on politics (to the point where a single individual can bankroll an entire presidential campaign, then you are a Nazi.
No further discussion necessary.
A few individuals have vandalized buses, therefore an entire subject is off limits.
Teaching ethics is like teaching a dog to whistle?
Understanding the 19th century telegraph system helps understand our current global internet.
I found "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers" a fascinating read, amazing what was done 150 years ago.
Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article:
The book describes to general readers how some of the uses of telegraph in commercial, military, and social communication were, in a sense, analogous to modern uses of the internet. A few rather unusual stories are related, about couples who fell in love and even married over the wires, criminals who were caught through the telegraph, and so on.
The culture which developed between telegraph operators also had some rather unexpected affinities with the modern Internet. Both cultures made or make use of complex text coding and abbreviated language slang, both required network security experts, and both attracted criminals who used the networks to commit fraud, hack private communications, and send unwanted messages.
We had e-commerce (code books for secure banking transaction via telegraph), hackers, and skilled technical workers with their own language and culture.
Telegraph operators even had their own equivalent to cell-phone text message abbreviations.
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones
