The pessimism and dystopia in sci-fi doesn't come from a lack of research resources on engineering and science. It mainly comes from literary fashion.

If the fashion with editors is bleak, pessimistic, dystopian stories, then that's what readers will see on the bookshelves and in the magazines, and authors who want to see their work in print will color their stories accordingly. If you want to see more stories with a can-do, optimistic spirit, then you need to start a magazine or publisher with a policy of favoring such manuscripts. If there's an audience for such stories it's bound to be feasible. There a thousand serious sci-fi writers for every published one; most of them dreadful it is true, but there are sure to be a handful who write the good old stuff, and write it reasonably well.

A secondary problem is that misery provides many things that a writer needs in a story. Tolstoy once famously wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I actually Tolstoy had it backwards; there are many kinds of happy families. Dysfunctions on the other hand tends to fall into a small number of depressingly recognizable patterns. The problem with functional families from an author's standpoint is that they don't automatically provide something that he needs for his stories: conflict. Similarly a dystopian society is a rich source of conflicts, obstacles and color, as the author of Snow Crash must surely realize. Miserable people in a miserable setting are simply easier to write about.

I recently went on a reading jag of sci-fi from the 30s and 40s, and when I happened to watch a screwball comedy movie ("His Girl Friday") from the same era, I had an epiphany: the worlds of the sci-fi story and the 1940s comedy were more like each other than they were like our present world. The role of women and men; the prevalence of religious belief, the kinds of jobs people did, what they did in their spare time, the future of 1940 looked an awful lot like 1940.

When we write about the future, we don't write about a *plausible* future. We write about a future world which is like the present or some familiar historical epoch (e.g. Roman Empire), with conscious additions and deletions. I think a third reason may be our pessimism about our present and cynicism about the past. Which brings us right back to literary fashion.

Well, I'd be with you if the government was poking around on the users' computers, but they weren't. The users were hosting the files on a public peer-to-peer network where you essentially advertise to the world you've downloaded the file and are making it available to the world. Since both those acts are illegal, you don't really have an expectation of privacy once you've told *everyone* you've done it. While the broadcasting of the file's availability doesn't prove you have criminal intent, it's certainly probable cause for further investigation.

These guys got off on a narrow technicality. Of course technicalities do matter; a government that isn't restrained by laws is inherently despotic. The agents simply misunderstood the law; they weren't violating anyone's privacy.

There's a certain wonder to that too.

I had the same reaction when I saw the ST:TNG props in person. You wouldn't buy a toy that looked that cheesy. The wonder of it is that the prop makers knew this piece of crap would look great onscreen. That's professional skill at work. Amateurs lavish loving care on stuff and overbuild them. Pros make them good enough, and put the extra effort into stuff that matters more.

These kinds of responses are conditioned on certain assumptions that may not hold for all users.

For example, let's assume that you have no need whatsoever to prevent other users from using your gun. Then any complication you add to the firearm will necessarily make it less suitable, no matter how reliable that addition is. An example of someone on this end of the spectrum might be a big game hunter who carries a backup handgun.

On the other hand suppose you have need of a firearm, but there is so much concern that someone else might use it without authorization that you reasonably decide to do without. In that opposite situation you might well tolerate quite a high failure rate in such a device because it makes it possible to carry a gun. An example of someone on this end of the spectrum might be a prison guard -- prison guards do not carry handguns because of precisely this concern.

This isn't rocket science. It's all subject to a straightforward probabilistic analysis *of a particular scenario*. People who say that guns *always* must have a such a device are only considering one set of scenarios. People who say that guns must *never* have such a device are only considering a different set of scenarios. It's entirely possible that for such a device there are some where it is useful and others where it is not.

When you are about to have an economic crash groups like Occupy and the Tea Party are an inevitability, whatever the names or politcal leaning may be. When you are about to have an economic crash the powers that be prepare to suppress revolt and domestic spying is job one. Militarizing the police is job two.

During the Great Depression Fascism was where economically desperate people turned as they are doing in Greece today.

Note the date, 2008, not 2002. Approximately the time financial markets started crashing and the Occupy and Tea Party movements started building. Ya think the U.S. government was more worried about Islamic terrorists or ordinary Americans who would soon be fed up with massive corruption in D.C. and Wall Street. Were they trying to prevent another 9/11 or building the capacity to suppress the backlash when millions of ordinary people would soon be thrown out of their jobs and homes, while Wall Street would get massively bailed out, and return to business as usual, getting rich.

The U.S. did a spectacularly good job of crushing Occupy. Did they use domestic spying to do it.

War is when your government tells you who the enemy is, revolution is when you figure it out for yourself.

The Eastern half of Colorado is in the Great Plains so it is valid to call that part of the state the Midwest. Denver sits on the West edge of the Great Plains. Everything west of Denver is the Rocky Mountains.

Gates doesn't even have an undergraduate degree.

Nothing he's so far achieved among his many considerable accomplishments leads me to believe he understands anything about the requirements of rigorous intellectual thought or well-constructed rational arguments.

Hey Slashdot editors or whomever you are

When I self-flagged these posts and asked for them to be removed because I was concerned that they dox someone who has not yet been charged with a crime, I didn't expect you'd simply moderate them as flamebait, which they are most certainly not.

To boot, the posts are still visible to those browsing at -1 which means the doxxing still, technically, is live. Why don't you just simply delete the posts? I know you can because from time to time /. does delete posts. I think this should be one of those exceptions.

Thanks for considering.

RTFA from Buzzfeed linked in the deadspin link: "The Main Suspect Blamed For The Jennifer Lawrence Nude Leak Says He Is Innocent".

There's a lot more incriminating evidence in the updates to the Buzzfeed article.

Whoa, it looks like the paste has been removed!

Let's put it here for posterity, shall we?

Ok. I didn't think this was really going to be anything at first but things started to get very very suspicious... I'll try to provide screenshots for anything I think may be taken down later.

Woke up today and bam see a reddit thread on front page called "One more because I am kind" posted in /r/JenniferLawrence. That thread is here http://www.reddit.com/r/Jennif.... (SCREENSHOT http://imgur.com/GsGyrs6)

When you go to that link now you will notice that the creator of it says deleted. Now this is where it get's interesting. I know and remember who the OP was that created that thread. It was http://www.reddit.com/user/Blu....

But that thread was made over 16 hours ago! How could you remember that guys name?

Because when it was created /u/BluntMastermind (the OP) wrote in the comments of the "One more because I am kind" (you can see where he posted, they all say deleted now because he deleted his account) was mentioning he was willing to sell portions of the collection.

It's hard to tell you exactly what he said but I'm telling you what I remember from memory. It wasn't really THAT long ago anyways.

/u/BluntMastermind also mentioned he wasn't the leaker but he just had the collection, someone shared it with him.

What if he was one of the thousands just reposting a picture after it was already posted?

But he wasn't. Somebody called him out on it saying he was getting the pics from 4chan. He posted a reply pretty much showing 4chan's posts of the pic he posted came after his. He used timestamps to back up that he was the real first poster of that specific picture before anyone else. You'll also see the user who called him out on it take it back after he OP replies to him with proof in the comments. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/Hj0NREG.png)

Maybe you're not convinced now but keep reading to the very end.

So after seeing BluntMastermind refute claims with timestamp proof it looked like he was really the first person to release that specific Jennifer Lawrence picture.

Even more he mentioned he was willing to sell them. So I PM'd him pretty much asking what's the rate for another celeb's pictures to know if this guy was the real deal.

His reply was "$100 but they're not as good as the others and I might not have all of them. I have 13, 4 full nude." Here's the picture of the reply. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/UC6Nu05.png)

I replied back saying ok but I want to see a sample clothed picture and I can't pay in bitcoin.

He didn't respond and I'm pretty sure it was because I mentioned no Bitcoin and maybe he thought I was wasting his time trying to get a freebie (I was wasting his time, I don't have money to pay for what's going to be free shit in a week lol).

-- A few hours pass, other leaks started coming out and I didn't pay attention to him after he didn't reply.

Then everything changes here.. http://www.reddit.com/r/news/c... (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/APnc3uW.png)

You see deleted? That was /u/fappeningwhistleblow. http://www.reddit.com/u/fappen....

His comment was this (I didn't save the comment but got this one from 4chan which is almost the exact same comment) (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/Jnq2qn4.png) -- "This will probably get buried, but I'm pretty sure I figured out the identity of the leaker, or at least ONE of them. The leaker was posting censored screenshots on 4chan of his desktop folder with the thumbnails. In this one he forgot to block out the labels on his homegroup and his network. His homegroup: Tristan. Other computers on his network: BARTANDJENNA and BH. So, after a little bit of google searching, I found this site for Southern Digital Media. And check out the names of the team: Jenna, Bart, Bryan Hamade (BH), and TRISTAN, the 15 year old intern. (there's also a guy named andrew and a monkey, both of whom I suppose could be behind the leaks, but my money's on Tristan). So, yeah, if (and I do mean IF) all the leaks are by the same guy who made the one screenshot, and IF there is only one organization that matches those criteria, then everyone on 4chan is benefitting from the efforts of a 15 year old web development intern. And JLaw has the weirdest mortal enemy of all time." --

Ok, gotta hand it hand it to this guy/girl who did this insane detective work. He got me thinking to typing this out.

I said it's ALMOST the exact same comment because /u/fappeningwhistleblow included links to the image of the censored screenshot where he teases us but forgets to censor his homegroup info (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/oNtNZ7g.png). He also provided a link to http://www.southerndigitalmedi... which now crashed because everyone tried to go there at once. So the guy who copied pasted the /u/fappeningwhistleblow reddit comment (now deleted) to 4chan probably took the links out so he could paste the comment since direct links aren't allowed on 4chan. And he was probably too lazy to change change the link a little so it wasn't a direct clickable link.

Anyways that comment got me started. I went to the website he posted and sure enough the employee's were listed. But it only showed their first name and not their last.

That would make it super hard to find any of them on Facebook! Except the address of the company was listed at Lawrenceville, Georgia at the bottom of the page. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/hohpuHM.png)

Ok. That makes things easier. So /u/fappeningwhistleblow lists Tristan as the prime suspect behind everything. I go to Facebook and search for a Tristan that looks like the Tristan on the website's page that lives in Lawrenceville. Nothing..

Next I try "Jenna" who is listed on the company's website too. Lots of women with "Jenna" as their first time in Lawrenceville. Scroll down a little and there it is! (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/FjkuCON.png) Jenna uses the same picture on the company website that shows her, for her Facebook profile picture.

I go to her profile and wow, even easier. She didn't turn on a few privacy settings so you can see all of her friends. Search for a Bart. There he is, but he doesn't use the same picture as he does on the company website. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/RgQHKzg.png) So I look closer, looks like Bart on the website... plus his last name is the same as Jenna so it seems they are married? Jenna even looks like the woman in Bart's profile picture..

Moving on... search for a while and cant find Tristan's Facebook through anybody's friends list...

The next idea I get pretty much makes me shift the attention away from Tristan...

The last person on the list that works at that company...... "Bryan Hamade". He doesn't have a Facebook that I can find either. But Jenna is friends with a bunch of Hamades, some that live in Georgia. Bryan's relatives probably? (SCREENSHOT http://imgur.com/oP4MKkN)

Seriously out of a random thought I think back to /u/BluntMastermind the person who I'm almost certain collected or could be the hacker behind all this that posted earlier today.

I go to www.reddit.com/u/BluntMastermind after getting a thought about him. Haven't looked at his profile since he ignored my message hours ago and hadn't thought about him.....

But when I go back his profile is deleted! http://www.reddit.com/user/Blu...

Suspicious! I don't have screenshots of his comments today and can't find an online archive of his profile or posts from today. But I know /u/BluntMastermind wasn't a throwaway because when I went to his profile to message him I saw all his awards and he's been a user for I think more than a year! (Down below I find an archive.org that shows his account is old, full of posts, karma, etc. So /u/BluntMastermind wasn't a throwaway.)

Ok. So he deleted his account. At the time I didn't know /u/BluntMastermind had anything to do with this company. But I got curious and started thinking more. This guy, /u/BluntMastermind said he had a bunch of pictures unreleased and again, I'm certain, provided timestamp proof that was the first ever to post one of the earlier Jennifer Lawrence pics from today.

So I google "BluntMastermind". Here's the first page of the search results for that..

FIRST, notice the second listing. It's a part of the comment he deleted from earlier when I mentioned how he commented to prove he was the first poster of the pic.

"16 hours ago - Look at the time stamps dumbass. You checked 4chan before reddit. Hover over where it says 22 minutes ago to see the timestamp. 11:55" (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/bbiU9Ij.jpg)

That's the deleted comment he said in reply to /u/Namnilb who called him out at first for just reposting the pic from 4chan. But you can see /u/Namnilb on the thread at http://www.reddit.com/r/Jennif... take back his claim after /u/BluntMastermind posted the fact about timestamps showing he was the first poster as proof.

Ok, with that shown. The other links I looked at regarding his profile didn't really prove much or show anything...

Except his www.tf2outpost.com user page at http://www.tf2outpost.com/user... (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/oQwGAe8.jpg)

Huh, that page doesn't show much either.

Then you click on Steam Profile and it takes you to http://steamcommunity.com/id/b...

HOLY FUCK THIS IS EVERYTHING. This is where he fucked up. Look at his custom Steam URL he chose. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/TaxdSCs.jpg)

bryanhamade

Familiar? Yeah well first it's on the company website where /u/fappeningwhistleblow first came up with in his comment I mentioned earlier.

Second where does he list his location?

Georgia. He doesn't specifiy what city but remember? The website and how I found two employees of the company, Jenna and Bart. They only listed first names but I found them through them listing Lawrenceville, Georgia as the company's location on their website. And Jenna having the exact same picture on Facebook and the comapany's website showing her.

Hey I said the website was down up there earlier but now checking as I write it's back up!

Which one is Bryan? Hover over his picture. If the site is down check this picture out. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/iq91rUE.jpg)

So /u/fappeningwhistleblow's idea was Tristan was the guy with the pics.

But let's go in order of these four people in the circles. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/hohpuHM.png)

Jenna (Matches the Facebook profile pic by the way), it says Web Designer when you hover over her pictures. Bryan (I'm certain this is /u/bluntmastermind. Don't think he has a Facebook or he deleted it.), hover over and it says Server Administrator. Bart (Found him off Jenna's friend list.), hover over and it says Graphic Designer. Tristan (15 year old kid), hover over and it says Web Development Intern.

By the way when you click the arrow on the right in the green box it takes you to the next two employees. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/dUCuvdn.jpg)

Andrew (Can't find him on Facebook.), hover over his pic and it says Sales & Marketing Jingo Jax (the monkey, not a real person lol), hover over and it says Social Media.

Hmm out of everyone that might be responsible for leaking the nude pics who would it be? I highly doubt Tristan, the 15 year old web development intern. Yeah... it's probably Bryan Hamade "Coding specialist", graduate of the University of Georgia. He's their "technical expert and specializes in PHP, MySql, HTML, and Java. Maybe the others are involved. I don't know but I seriously wouldn't bother the other people when prime target Brian Hamade has shit stacked up for him. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/iq91rUE.jpg) -- I think you should understand now Bryan Hamade = /u/BluntMastermind = He has a collection of the pics. Either he's fucking the guy behind this all or got it from someone else and most if not all the pics even unreleased right now. I'm certain it's one of those two or BOTH.

Does he have the experience to pull something like this off?

I don't know you tell me. Did you see his employee description on the Southern Digital Media website compared to the others that work there? (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/uxJobi8.png) What about his LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/br.... Wow he does an awful lot of SERVER Admin management. I don't even know what the fuck "CentOS server administration" or "Nginix configuration, administration, and deployment" is but man that sounds more fucking convincing than a 15 year old kid named Tristan who is an INTERN web developer. Keep in mind the current idea is also the hacks were done through iCloud! A fucking cloud SERVER! --

Ok ok, so maybe he does have the experience. You also got some pretty convincing proof but do you have any more!?

Yeah but quick overview. -He posted (now deleted) a comment CLAIMING himself that he's the first poster of that Jennifer Lawrence pic /u/Namilb saying this "16 hours ago - Look at the time stamps dumbass. You checked 4chan before reddit. Hover over where it says 22 minutes ago to see the timestamp. 11:55". On the thread at http://www.reddit.com/r/Jennif..., and I got the comment from the second listing on the first page of Google searching "BluntMastermind". -Made comments about him having more pictures and was willing to sell them (I don't have a screenshot of that because all this research happened AFTER he deleted his account and I can find a definite archive of his posts that are recent). Which is why I PM'd him and got this response -He deleted his main old reddit account after this shit hit the fan and got big. -He's tied to this picture from which /u/fappeningwhistleblow first pointed out. Notice at the bottom left under Network? It says BH (Bryan Hamade). It's pretty much already concrete proof that Southern Digital Media is connected also. The other Network names Bart (Bart Bennett), Jenna (Jenna Bennett), Tristan (Tristan the 15 year old kid) are ALL on Southern Digital Media's website here www.southerndigitalmedia.com/about-us# (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/oNtNZ7g.jpg) -TF2outpost account led to his Steam account which uses the URL http://steamcommunity.com/id/b... while his username is "BluntMastermind". His profile lists him as from Georgia.... where everything related with proof is located at... The username "Bluntmastermind" results on search engines like Google all pretty much belong to him, it's not a common username.

-- OK that's all the proof I mentioned earlier I think. Any other proof that I haven't mentioned?

Like are you sure BluntMastermind the reddit account is Bryan Hamade? Yes I'm pretty sure cause like I said all search engine results for the username BluntMastermind are his. I'm sure he is the only one with that username.

Other proof! (Found out about www.archive.org as I was writing this. How helpful!) -http://web.archive.org/web/20120324194806/http://www.reddit.com/user/BluntMastermind. Look this archive from March 24, 2012 for reddit user /u/bluntmastermind shows a post he made about ATL Filmmakers in subreddit /r/ATLFilmmakers. ATL is Atlanta, Georgia by the way! GEORGIA!!!! -http://web.archive.org/web/20120116161250/http://www.reddit.com/user/BluntMastermind. Another archive from Janurary 16, 2012 for reddit user /u/bluntmastermind shows a post where he says "I'm in Athens near downtown" in reply to a thread named "Ents near Athens, Georgia?" in subreddit /ents/. GEORGIA AGAIN!!!

Yeah feel free to go over the few archives there is saved of his profile at http://web.archive.org/web/201....

Ironic he knows a thing or two about privacy rights. "Actually untrue, there is a legal case establishing a reasonable expectation of privacy when in your own residence. I forget the case name, but basically you can be nude in your house and people looking in are violating said privacy blinds or no blinds. I am on mobile, but I will update with the case when I get home." http://web.archive.org/web/201...

The most recent archive of his profile is here, August 11th 2014. Stuff like a comment about losing his porn on his hard drive http://web.archive.org/web/201... --

Anything else? Yeah just google "bluntmastermind georgia" and look at the results.

One example here. http://tawqer.com/comment/8831... "Same here in Georgia....." "BluntMastermind on Elon Musk explains why Texas lawmakers got Tesla sales banned in the state: "A peversion of democracy... The car dealers are such huge contributors to their political campaigns on the local level" -- Bryan's Twitter account - https://twitter.com/bryanhamad... Update- Oh look sometime during writing this he deleted his Twitter account. Can't remember the names now but he was following a lot of the girls on the list that supposedly have naked pics hacked. Didn't manage to screenshot all he was following only the top. Was planning to get the whole page but only got this before he deleted the Twitter account (http://i.imgur.com/0104XLv.jpg).

Wait but if he deleted his Twitter account is it because someone there was a massive shit storm about him while I was writing this and he got scared? He must've deleted his Twitter now because there are tons of people spamming him.

No, lol. Only four people tweeted at/about him so far. (SCREENSHOT http://i.imgur.com/nMTkt83.png). If he was innocent and didn't have a clue about what was going on why does he race to delete his Twitter account? Cause he knows he fucked up and even though not a lot a people know the truth right now a shit storm is coming at him.

Unfortunately again, /u/BluntMastermind's comment history from today were deleted when he deleted his whole reddit account. Also the most recent archive of his profile on Archive.org are from 21 days ago. Not sure if anyone that saw his posts remember his username specifically like I did but if they also remember his comments they can also say that he claimed he had the WHOLE pic collection (not just what's been released) and he tried to sell them. But I really do think that this should be enough proof.

Yep, everything goes back to Georgia... where the one guy with the username he uses across the internet "BluntMastermind" lives... where the picture of the nude photo screenshot tease shows his initials BH and the names of his co-workers at Southern Digital Media that all match up... where he posted the one of the first pics of Jennifer Lawrence before anyone else, even proving it himself with a timestamp....

If you only look at /u/fappeningwhistleblow's original comment I'd say yeah that's not enough proof and I don't agree that Tristan was behind it. But there's Archive.org's that go back to 2012 where BluntMastermind AKA Bryan Hamade talks about Georgia which all comes back to everything else like the screenshot that shows the User Network listing the names of the employee that match with Southern Digital Media company based in Georgia...

Note- Of course I'm not 100% sure Jenna, Bart, Tristan, and Andrew who work with him had nothing to do with this. But I HIGHLY doubt currently that they had something to do with this given what they do at the company compared to Bryan.

I didn't look through everything, this is tiring work lol. I guess you could look at everyone in his Steam friends list (I didn't get much from those I looked at) and other stuff. Hope this clears things up.

this took a while to set up. if you'd like to donate any amount of bitcoins that'd be greatly appreciated. 13jmSKN9yUrTDzdX7FwN2nexRciWG6yXy6

tl;dr: Excluding the reddit users who put the pieces together, it wasn't social media that got Bryan Hamade. It was Bryan Hamade who screwed himself by failing to redact his network information from his attempts to sell data that didn't belong to him.

While what you say is true, that there is so much interconnection between social media services that isolating one's identity while using them is virtually impossible, Bryan Hamade screwed himself on this one.

Paragraph 47 of the pastebin "/u/bluntmastermind = bryan hamade"" points to a screenshot of the alleged perpetrator's desktop. That screenshot reveals the perpetrator failed to redact the names of the network group and servers to which the user was connected.

Some productive user Googled the names and eventually turned up the "About Us" page for Souther Digital Media (screenshot) and initially fingered the 15-year-old, but deeper searching points to Bryan Hamade (aka bluntmastermind, notice the custom URL, http://steamcommunity.com/id/bryanhamade/).

A war is when your government tells you who the enemy is. A revolution is when you figure it out for yourself.

I'm having a hard time understanding comparisons to web servers and a trams. Could you use a car analogy instead?

While a bit dated and somewhat intellectually renegade, Marshall McLuhan has done much to talk about how print fostered literacy (duh) and the transmission of ideas in a stable form across human cultures in The Gutenberg Galaxy (i.e. Gutenberg Bible and the enablement of Christianity as a proselytizing religion with a relatively stable population of "practicing" Christians all "reading" the same text). However, his writing style is a bit mimetic of the illuminated manuscript and he communicates his point in a way that makes sense to scholars of literature and critical theory. McLuhan's work is not your usual dry, codified sociocultural study of the effects of media!

But the above was only a momentary detour on the way to the work of Susan Blackmore who is interested in the evolution of life on Earth and the question of whether life on Earth will make it to the point where it can successfully leave its planet of origin. Her talk is entitled "Memes and 'temes' " (yes, it's a TED talk) and is fascinating in terms of how she thinks about memes and the transmission of ideas in a Darwinian model.

I wonder if the researchers in Indiana have any interest in the area Blackmore stakes out in her talk. Would be great if they did.