There was also a very interesting endurance test done on extremesystems.org. Very impressive stuff. I don't yet own an SSD, but I'll continue to consider buying one! Maybe next Black Friday. Just waiting for the right deal.

If you are implying that LUKS + dm-crypt is more secure in practice I might mention that hidden containers have not been implemented AFAIK.

To me the most likely and simplest explanation of the strange canary-like behavior is to assume a warrant canary is indeed what we are seeing. Which probably means that 7.1a has not been compromised, but that a compromised version of 7.1a will eventually be introduced into the wild. Hence the need for a trusted repo for windows.

Nevertheless are the changes between 7.0 and 7.1 so significant that it is worth the additional risk of a more recent release? I'm thinking of using my 7.0 download from 2011 instead. A 2 year delay and then suddenly an update might in itself seem suspicious to a sufficiently paranoid individual given what we now know about the aggressive behavior of the NSA. The drawback is that the code verification process is based on 7.1a. Until the verification/cryptanalysis process is complete downgrading to 7.0 temporarily might be worthwhile.

FWIW here are some md5sums for my Windows copies.
5.0a: 4ec2b386f5d786b3017727aaecf28aa8
6.0: ec0827315825a035ff9a4203ddddfef7
6.1a: c413ecd820d2f912996ae86327b0d622
7.0: eadd4ae48541b830638f279d83938497
7.0a: 354e280c4bb56704e3925770f282588f
7.1a: 7a23ac83a0856c352025a6f7c9cc1526

Thanks for the advice. I do. I keep well away.

Really. Have a cite for that?

Define 'adulthood'. And if it can damage a younger brain that makes damage to adult brains a hell of a lot more plausible. Excellent reason for anyone who values whatever intelligence they have to stay far away until or unless long term use has been proven to be safe.

>LOL...we're talking about a much much safer alternative to alcohol, not something that needs placebo controlled studies.

What does alcohol have to do with anything? That's just a question of legality. I support the legalization of all drugs including heroin. So that's irrelevant to me. What I care about is whether Cannabis/THC has been proven to be safe. I don't care if it's safer than driving your car into a bridge support at 50 mph or downing huge quantities of Everclear every waking moment or sniffing acetone all day long or whatever. The question is whether or not regular use of the drug has any negative effects on memory or cognition. AFAIK long term effects have not been studied properly. Based on what I have seen personally in my own life I remain concerned.

I don't think it is easy to draw a particular line between a frequency of use that is harmful and one that is not. If it is harmful at all and obviously such harm has not been demonstrated scientifically (which again does not prove that it is not harmful) then it may be that the harm is proportional to the frequency of use. The relationship may be linear or nonlinear or there may be no harm at any frequency of use. It's impossible to say at this point because I don't think you can legally do such studies outside of Uruguay or Colorado and in any case none have been done AFAIK. I have personally seen anecdotal evidence of such memory decline that seems to follow taking up pot smoking. While that doesn't prove anything. It may just be coincidence, but I'm not rushing out to start smoking myself. I'm not willing to take the risk of my memory getting even worse than it is now.

It's also almost certainly safer than putting a sawn off shotgun against your head and pulling the trigger or dowsing yourself in salt water and then sticking your fingers in a light socket. The amount of harm that alcohol may or may not cause is not relevant except for legalization arguments. Not to belabor the obvious but just because something is legal does not mean it is an intelligent thing to do.

Please cite the part where I claimed to be intelligent. I made no such claim. But I value whatever intelligence I do have. Which is why I give drugs with any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, of mental decline a very wide berth.

They have? You have a cite for that? Are you seriously claiming the government has done placebo controlled studies comparing marijuana or THC and alcohol, cigarettes and coffee/caffiene?

Actually I have personally read studies that show caffeine and other stimulants like amphetamines to improve the outcome following brain damage. I have also seen plenty of anecdotal evidence that stimulants in general can increase mental performance. So that much is plausible.

Incidentally I don't drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes and I drink coffee only rarely.

If you are referring to a diceware password then 10 words is not particularly impressive. I have a truly awful memory and I also have a ten word diceware password memorized. In any case how good your memory may or may not be at the moment isn't the point. The question is how does it compare to before you started smoking regularly.

It demands no such thing. I run Arch Linux and again I have a terrible memory. I just look up commands when (not if) I forget them. Also this does not speak at all to the question of whether smoking marijuana affects memory. All it proves is it doesn't cause actual brain death or mental retardation. But it still could drop your functional IQ by 10 points for every 3 years of 'wake and bake' or something similar. Since peoples' IQs tend to drop every year after their 18th birthdays in any case this would not be simple to demonstrate.

I assume you meant to use the past tense since he was talking about the late 70s to early 80s and my experience was quite different.

Smart people don't use themselves as guinea pigs on an unstudied drug which may or may not have long term negative affects on memory. Anecdotal experience seems to support some memory decline with long term marijuana use. I wouldn't go near the stuff for that reason alone. Until it has been proven to be safe through long term placebo controlled studies I would hope that most intelligent people would give it a wide berth.

As far as the late 70s to early 80s I have to agree with the observation of potheads and geeks not mixing and that geeks who spent most of their time either playing computer games or Dungeons and Dragons or writing computer games generally did not smoke pot.

Not every corporation is evil, but most of them are. As individuals they would be sociopaths. I don't consider the encouragement of sociopathic behavior to be a particularly good idea. Corporate personhood should be abolished. Oh and I'm a Libertarian.

Oh god. Not this again. What makes you think the replacements will be any better? This whole "vote for change because change is good" is such bullshit. If you are going to vote at least do it intelligently. It's voting blindly without thought that has gotten us into this situation in the first place.

If you are going to vote for someone at least vote for someone who makes specific promises about how he would vote in this sort of critical law and what he promises to do to himself if he votes the wrong way. Suicide would be a good start. That would apply to Obama because he has broken most of his promises. Fucking liar. I'd probably only vote for someone with zero experience in politics because all experienced politicians are liars. Most lawyers too. So no lawyers either. And if both options are bad then don't fucking vote. It's just a waste of everyone's time.

Or vote for a Libertarian or a Socialist or someone else idealistic. At least you'll get more predictable votes from someone who actually believes in something other than making lots of money for themselves in bribes.

Neither US nor USA is the name of the country in question. It is an acronym. One does not extend acronyms. Perhaps you could come up with even a single example to the contrary? Would you call someone from the UK a UKian or someone from the former USSR a USSRian.

If you are going to add an extension you have to use the actual name which is technically The United States of America or at least The United States or United States for short. The fact that the US is a two word country and one that ends in an 's' makes this rather awkward unfortunately.

Since the full name of the country is 'The United States of America". You could properly refer to someone from that country as an "United States of American" I suppose. That would be the standard rule to apply for most countries that end in 'a'. Just add an 'n'. Since there is an easy rule to apply there isn't much point in talking further about usage of the complete name. Probably the only reason not to follow that simple rule is laziness. If you object to 'American' as being imprecise then just use 'United States of American' instead.

If you think United States of American is too long then you could try using just United States as the name and try to apply one of the usual rules to that as a country name. United States is one of the relatively few two word countries so I'll use examples from that domain.

Sri Lanka ends in an 'a' so the result is obvious. Just add an 'n'. The same rule can be applied to Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia and South/North Korea.

To New Zealand an -er is added probably because it ends in 'land' which is similar to island and -er is usually applied in such cases. United States would become United Stateser.

The Philippines -> Philippine. In that case you just drop the 's'. So someone from the United States would be called a United State.

Belarus -> Balarusian. There's an example of your prefered 'ian' ending. In that case you would call someone from the US a United Stateian or maybe you could drop the 'e' resulting in United Statian.

Cyprus -> Cypriot. So United Statiot I suppose if you drop the 'e'.

Honduras -> Honduran. The 's' is dropped and then the usual rule is applied to countries ending in 'a'. Just add an 'n'. So to follow this rule United States would become United Staten if you ignore the fact that you have an 'e' instead of an 'a' at the end.

If you follow the rule for countries that end in 'e' then you might follow the rule applied to Chile and just add an 'an'. So you'd have United Statean. I kind of like that one.

I disagree.

Yep. It will also be part of a forced upgrade for Windows users. I've already decided to switch to Pale Moon anyway. I don't like or trust the Mozilla team anymore.

Although you call them names you haven't offered any sort of moral argument as to why what they are doing is wrong. How exactly do they raise costs?

Agreed to pay for? Somehow I doubt the fare dodgers ever signed some kind of agreement to pay. Although I suppose I could be wrong. Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?