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Comment Re: Cue the delusional "legitimate use" posts. (Score 3, Insightful) 215

"If you define "crime" properly, pretty much _everything_ anybody does on the Internet is criminal."

Well said, and correct, Anonymous poster. "Criminal" has no meaning, or any meaning they wish.

In Russia, criticizing the Orthodox Church will see them slam you in prison, and calling out Putin as a pedo will get you and half a restaurant radioactively poisoned with polonium, which only comes from government nuclear reactors.

In Israel, trying to leave your ghetto may get you killed, tortured, or dumped in prison, or all three.

In Saudi Arabia, pretty much anything is "criminal" (except, of course, anything royals choose to do, including creating and running Al Qaida).

Everything and nothing is a crime. Bedspreads are golden sprinkler cookie clowns. See? So much fun when words mean nothing at all.

Censorship

Russia Seeking To Ban Tor, VPNs and Other Anonymizing Tools 215

An anonymous reader writes Three separate Russian authorities have spoken out in favor of banning online anonymizing tools since February 5th, with particular emphasis on Tor, which — despite its popularity with whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden and with online activists — Russia's Safe Internet League describes as an 'Anonymous network used primarily to commit crimes'. The three authorities involved are the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, powerful Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor and the Safe Internet League, comprising the country's top three network providers, including state telecoms provider Rostelecom. Roskomnadzor's press secretary Vadim Roskomnadzora Ampelonsky describes the obstacles to identifying and blocking Tor and VPN traffic as "difficult, but solvable."

Comment Re:Avoiding versus evading (Score 1) 129

That's what I always thought but here in New Zealand, avoiding tax is also illegal. Any mechanism designed solely to reduce one's legal tax liability is considered to be unlawful avoidance of tax and punishable as such.

Don't you love the way that governments put the collection of taxes above all else -- giving the IRS and their equivalent more power than any other arm of the state.

Submission + - Something Resembling "The Wheel of Time" Aired Last Night on FXX (wired.com)

eldavojohn writes: If you didn't partake in the DDOS attack on Dragonmount as fans tried to figure out just what the %&#% was going on last night, you should probably prepare yourself for Billy Zane filled disappointment and watch a curious pilot covering the prologue of "Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan that apparently aired around 01:30 AM Eastern time on FXX. The reviews of said pilot are unkind and appear to contain question marks all the way down starting with Jordan's Widow disavowing its authorization. The world of film and TV development is a confusing one but it appears that NBC initially bought options to turn it into a mini series which were then optioned by Universal/Red Eagle Entertainment in conjunction with Red Eagle Games to do a coordinated release. Red Eagle games announced a combined effort with Jet Set games and around 2012 began releasing information on an "Aiel War" project to target mobile gaming platforms. But that appeared to die with its failed kickstarter attempt. It is suspected that Red Eagle Entertainment is behind the odd FXX airing last night. Was this an eleventh hour "use it or lose it" move by Red Eagle Entertainment without Universal's knowledge? In any case, it was a secretive, odd, low-budget, disappointing start to The Wheel of Time in film.

Comment Things Fox News doesn't show (Score 2, Insightful) 645

Fox News never showed the 60,000+ Iraqis we incinerated, shot, and crushed to death. Nor the burnt and mangled children and adults who survived our attacks. Or the prison camps, mostly holding people who we felt like might be a problem - and who are probably still in the camps. If you wanted to cover such things, you could go to hell, as far as the military was concerned. People died finding truth while Fox's old draft avoiding men and MILFy women pseudonewspeople in tight skirts sat in air-conditioned studios and made. Shit. Up.

Comment Re:What's actually going to happen... (Score 1) 481

And in another decade, that system is overwhelmed, and in two more decades, useless. Population growth problems expand geometrically, not linearly. Too many people in too little space trying to do things as their great-great-great-grandparents did on the open prairies and mountainsides. No matter what is done, in one or two generations it is overcome again. You have to shoot where the bird is gonna be, not where it is - solutions that solve your generation's problem will be a disaster to a future generations who are much more numerous, not to mention their proclivities to consume more each year.

Comment Too many people (Score 1) 481

Can't overpopulate and not expect consequences. The complications arrive on a hockey-stick curve, as geometric growth is *not* linear. The complexity of the structure to support that population builds slowly, then accelerates rapidly - and finally cannot be sustained. And as taxes don't expand geometrically, the lines cross and infrastructure failure commences. And that already happened; we can't - or won't- raise enough money to fix the aggregate and growing backlog of repair of structures our grandparents started. And perhaps shouldn't - open roads and suburbs made sense when there were a hundred million people. A half-billion people will grind the flow to a halt - and their very presence makes it nearly impossible to expand existing roads or train lines. We could: 1) keep pretending 1950 will last forever, and fail. 2) increase taxes and become ferocious about emminent domain and build the train lines we need whereever they need to be. 3) learn to tunnel cheaply and extensively and build out underground 4) fly 5) control population growth and the hell that comes with it when it achieves orbital velocity, as it is now - accept a slow rollback period while supporting a gigantic population of aging people for a few decades, then a stable, smaller population could be sustained at the level of expenditure we care to support (expenditure not being just money - we expend wildlife and ecologies to expand our numbers).

America declared overpopulation a solved problem - because it can't do math. Nothing can grow forever in a closed system.

United States

DOT Warns of Dystopian Future For Transportation 481

An anonymous reader writes The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a 300-page PDF outlining the grim future of transportation infrastructure in North America over the next thirty years, and inviting debate on the issue. The report presents a vision of 2045 with LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska, trains too full to pick up any more passengers and airports underwater due to climate change — all in a climate of chronic under-investment, even at levels needed to maintain existing transport infrastructure. Among possible solutions outlined are self-driving cars using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2I) crash-avoidance technologies, such as those currently in development by Google — and in fact transportation secretary Anthony Foxx was joined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the launch of DOT's "Beyond Traffic" initiative.
Canada

Canada, Japan Cave On Copyright Term Extension In TPP 227

An anonymous reader writes Last month, there were several Canadian media reports on how the work of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, had entered the public domain. While this was oddly described as a "copyright quirk", it was no quirk. The term of copyright in Canada (alongside TPP countries such as Japan and New Zealand) is presently life of the author plus an additional 50 years, a term that meets the international standard set by the Berne Convention. Those countries now appear to have caved to U.S. pressure as there are reports that they have agreed to extend to life plus 70 years as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Comment My usual comments... networked car not good idea (Score 1) 44

I started out admiring disruptive tech. As the years rolled on, I noted that computation and networking were no longer under our control; we've no choice in how we are connected, nor to which computers we use, for instance in cases such as these. The motivation for change is to make more money, first, and next to improve surveillance and control. Convenience is just a by-broduct.
I see no reason to not-use a key to open my door. At least the thief has to be physically present to break into a mechanical locked door. Networked computers will never be secure, not when backdoors are mandated by manufacturers and cops of all sorts. And those backdoors will be in the hands of crooks in months if not hours. Hell, the crooks are finding the backdoors the cops-of-all-sorts then use themselves.
Waiting on my Elio. eliomotors.com Back to the future. K.I.S.S.
And hey, it's possible to build a mechanically locked door no AAA locksmith can open. It's just that we WANT to be able to break into our own cars, if necessary. The key words being "we" and "our own".

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