It really isn't that difficult...linux, postfix...add in a bit of 'magic' spam filter settings...and email server from home!!!

No reporting required?

You forgot c3po and r2d2, who must be in every movie no matter how hard you have to strain.

I do, but I don't, respectively. I only watch TV on Netflix. I listen to music from my phone when in the car. Fuck ads.

Ahhh, I miss living in Milton-Freewater. Good to hear that the summer weather hasn't changed much :)

This, right here.

VDI is a very good solution for it, or Citrix, or VCAC, or... For high-security data, there should be only a very small handful of reasons why someone has a full-blown workstation on their desk these days, let alone a laptop. Sadly, at least one of those reasons is "because the CxO needs one, that's why!"

s/brandy/drool/

Blackmail is illegal. One crime at a time. Releasing this data, done well, won't lead back to you. Blackmail is only useful if you get paid, and that creates a trail. You know they can scan and record the serials in 1 million in small non-sequential bills in a pretty short period these days, right?

Here's the problem with doing business with criminals, whether they're ordinarily-labeled "criminals" or intelligence agencies or whatever: if they're incompetent, you don't want to do business with them because of all the ways in which they can implicate you. But if they're competent, you don't want to do business with them because of all the ways in which they could take advantage of you. If they're incompetent, then they ought to be little danger to you, so you don't need that kind of protection. If they're competent, then they can and will do anything to you, and they're probably smart enough to have some third party check your work and look for back doors... and when they find them, your ass is grass.

These guys will be lucky if they get to go on drawing breath.

Calm your knee, that's not [necessarily] what was meant by that comment. Guess you could read it either way, but I don't think it necessarily has that content. I think the point was that it's easier to attack someone in Snowden's position outside of the courts, because it avoids many uncomfortable questions. Snowden has done a bunch of interviews, people know what he's like. You can't torture him and fill him full of drugs and then put him on the stand like they did with Saddam. Putting him in court would be a horrible idea, they don't ever want to do that. At best they label it 'classified' and nobody trusts them.

Thank you for your service to your country AC. We'll inform the Joint Chiefs of your novel recommendations and have them implement it immediately. Not a one in the entire chain of command thought of these points, at all.

No, you've got it ass-backwards. My solution comes before someone invades another country.

My point was that a very small shell script can detect memory conditions on most Unix systems through typical file access mechanisms. Apple will doubtless have overcomplicated this. I wonder if they have also created dependencies on that daemon. Does it do anything else?

The problem with that idea is that these wars are engineered so that certain people can profit, so that's really not what they made a sacrifice for, is it? They were sacrificed on the altar of profit.

Well, no, no I am not. Here we go:

"In the late 1930s and early 1940s Sir Albert Howard and his wife Gabrielle Howard, both accomplished botanists, developed organic agriculture. [...] In the United States another founder of organic agriculture was J.I. Rodale." OK, so now we have decided who might get to define terms, yes? Let us continue. "Howard observed and came to support traditional Indian farming practices over conventional agricultural science. Though he journeyed to India to teach Western agricultural techniques he found that the Indians could in fact teach him more. One important aspect he took notice of was the connection between healthy soil and the villages' healthy populations, livestock and crop. Patrick Holden, Director of the UK Soil Association quoted Howard as saying "the health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible." The maintenance of the soil is critical. Guess what they do with poop in India? Anyway, moving on. "To Rodale, agriculture and health were inseparable. Healthy soil required compost and eschewing poisonous pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Eating plants grown in such soil would then help humans stay healthier, he expounded." Now, where you do you think compost comes from?

Anyway, as usual, even a quick scan of Wikipedia would have proved my point. And in fact, that's what I did. But this idea was based on a conversation I had with my lady some years ago. She doesn't remember it at all, and I don't remember it very well, so I don't remember precisely what she stated at the time, so I had to go to WP. I didn't even use google. Why not quickly glance at the readily available materials which cost you nothing, before claiming that someone is wrong? While you're reading WP, you could also look up Biodynamic Agriculture, a sort of spiritually-guided precursor to organic gardening which is gaining traction today. I think some of their rituals are a bit hilarious, but the basic fundamental principles basically cover all the original founding principles of "organic" gardening. Agriculture is a cyclical system.

My understanding is that these days many if not most sewage plants are actually cooking their wastes for maximum methane production, capturing it and selling it or burning it on site for power production, where they used to try to minimize it and then flare off the unwanted product. The sludge is sold on for agricultural use. There's an "organic" version of this process known as Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems (AIWPS) which also produces algae, which can be used as a fuel feedstock... and clean water, even separating out heavy metals. And all it takes to make it is some piping. If you want to also capture the methane, then you also need some other goodies including a sheet of plastic, and you'll probably want a liner for catching the heavy precipitates, but there's not a whole lot to it. And of course, we could be making a whole lot more use of composting toilets, for example the Bason (sorry for PDF, but it's really the best link I know so far. Someday I will build one, and then I will make a nice page on it... even if it is full of shit)