Comment Re: Lottery (Score 1) 247
Heck, they could earn some goodwill by using all those resources to shut down the whole "Rachel from Card Services" operation.
Heck, they could earn some goodwill by using all those resources to shut down the whole "Rachel from Card Services" operation.
Yep. Government salaries are just hopelessly uncompetitive for any position requiring high-level skills. They try to paper over the problem with flag-pin symbolism, but that doesn't work now that the mystique has been replaced by stench.
it is unclear what level of name recognition she enjoys
"Bad news, Ms Fiorina. According to the latest polls, some of the voters still remember who you are...."
It boils down to two simple facts:
1. The default option is a mix of informed choice and lazy inertia.
2. The non-default options are pure informed choice.
The "informed choice" component of the former blunts the contrast, but doesn't eliminate it.
Last time I got one of these calls, it went something like this:
"I need you to open your Windows."
"Can you call me back later when it's not raining?"
*click*
Why do you think governments should step in?
Because suppression of fraud is one of the basic responsibilities of a government.
Awww, they're so cute when they still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and politicians' honesty....
Not Eliza -- more like PARRY:
PARRY was written in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, then at Stanford University.[1] While ELIZA was a tongue-in-cheek simulation of a Rogerian therapist, PARRY attempted to simulate a paranoid schizophrenic.
The Feds' insistence on sweeping up all the innocent-communication "noise" is drowning out the signals. (e.g. "Hey, you might want to keep an eye on those Tsarnaev brothers -- see attached description of the stuff they were doing while they were still here in Russia.")
Indeed. This proves beyond any sane doubt that the targets are not foreigners (who for obvious reasons would ignore any "legal framework" and avoid using defective-by-design NSA-approved encryption). The targets are domestic.
If companies want to take the direction of removing themselves from the encryption picture altogether, that is their prerogative.
And yet that is precisely what the government is pissing and moaning and setting its hair on fire about. Showing that sort of contempt for citizens' private prerogatives is what caused them to forfeit our trust in the first place.
Actually, "both of the above" (foolish and malicious) fits the available evidence best. For instance, Rogers' answers at Monday's cybersecurity forum were both pathetically lame (foolish) and contemptuous of American values (malicious).
And their fruits are rotten and infested with vermin.
That's another advantage of forcing the snoops back to "direct access" methods -- every so often one of them will get caught red-handed snooping on the wrong (i.e. clearly innocent and rich/influential) target, re-focusing attention on them and forcing another round of retrenchment until it blows over.
Now, if a backdoor is found by the bad guys, it will be used almost immediately to destroy a company.
If it's found by really bad guys (e.g. North Korea on a day when Dear Supreme Grand High Panjandrum is feeling especially trollish), it can be publicly circulated to destroy every company.
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
