"There are processes in place to deal with law violations committed under the veil of state secrecy. Snowden did not lift a finger for even a moment to follow those processes, electing instead to break the law himself and go straight to the public."

If that was even true he would have had good reason to do that. Two of his predecessors had their lives completely ruined after they tried to follow process.

One of my favorite lines (gleaned from a post here as a matter of fact) is, do you really expect to win a rigged game by playing by the rules?

what, exactly? Calendars are synthetic tools used to synchronize human activity. That is their one and only value. They do not exist in nature; nature synchronizes with itself without our intervention.

But we need a shared, common way to refer to particular dates in time so that we can refer to records and events retrospectively and arrange for future events prospectively—together, in a coordinated fashion.

So your proposal replaces one time measurement system on which everyone is more or less on the same page, in which the representation of a particular moment in time is broadly accepted across a large swath of humanity...by another system in which across that very same swath of humanity, a moment in time can be represented in multiple ways.

This would seem to reduce, not increase, the value of a calendar for all practical intents and purposes.

This proposal is most likely to catch (well, let's be honest, it's never likely to catch) but it's most likely to catch in advanced industrial/post-industrial societies where the resources and level of education to make use of it are in place. So you're proposing to introduce extensive new ambiguity in timekeeping into the population in which there is currently the least ambiguity in timekeeping.

Again, seems ass-backward to me.

Heh. That doesn't even mean you're safe. I recall a project back in the late 1980s, when I was part of a team hired by a big company (who shall remain unnamed so you'll suspect it was your company ;-). We'd had a few discussions with "top management" who'd hired us, about their problems with the DP department. Their computer folks effectively owned the data, and all access was mediated by the DP department. There was a lot of information that was there, but management couldn't get at it, because the DP folks feigned an inability to provide it.

One evening, a bunch of us decided to stay around after hours. We went to work on their big (IBM of course) mainframe, and in the morning, we demoed to management that we could read any file on their machine. Our demo included a few reports we'd printed out that got wide-eyed reactions. We'd given them access to all of their own data, and they were very happy with us. We stuck around and provided them with a lot more reports ("over the dead bodies" of some of the DP department ;-).

Some time later, we discussed in private the question of what we should tell the IBM folks about what we'd done. Our decision was essentially "Nah; they'll just block our current clients' access to their own data and give control back to the DP priesthood. And we have other customers who'll pay us to similarly break into their own data."

The fact that your own employees can't access their own data doesn't necessarily mean it's safe from outsiders.

(We never did discuss with them the implication that other outsiders might as easily access their data, if they happened to know the things we did. In the late 1980s, managers at corporate computer installations generally had no concept of a "network" other than as a way to connect remote terminals to the mainframe. There's no way we could have got them to understand the wider implications of the security holes we knew about and exploited for their benefit. It's not obvious that most of today's "management" class has such understanding, either. The current story pretty much demos the extent that understanding. ;-)

Indeed, and this is also an excellent example of where we can use the canonical /. automotive simile: There is a long tradition of government agencies (and some corporations) requiring that all purchased vehicles come with complete shop manuals. This is a direct parallel to requiring the source code for software. In both cases, such a requirement makes it possible for the purchasing organization to set up their own repair shop to fix the products when something fails. It also allows the purchaser to make their own mods to handle their special needs.

Many US states (and a good number of other countries) require that shop manuals be available for all vehicles sold in their jurisdiction, not just to the government. This is done to guarantee that independent auto shops can exist, and the vendor can't have a monopoly on repairs and spare parts. The same argument applies to software. With open source, you can hire local independent software contractors to debug (and/or extend) purchased software. Without this, both government agencies and private purchasers are at the mercy of the vendor when problems or special needs arise.

Of course, we can expect to hear from the usual corporate shills (paid or ideologically motivated ;-), pushing their usual misleading claims. But note that nobody much ever claims that open-source software is bug-free. The argument is that, when bugs are discovered, people not working for the vendor can study the code and fix the code. And they can also publicize bugs and fixes, unlike what happens all too often when dealing with secret, proprietary software. This also applies to both software and vehicles.

The article doesn't actually describe anything similar to 3D printing either. The justification for calling it that is pretty much: 3D printing involves assembling a final product from raw materials; the proposal also involves assembling a final product from raw materials; therefore we're talking about 3D printing.

In general the idea is interesting -- although it's hardly new, and we're so far from the technology level required to do it that it's still in the realm of science fiction -- but the 3D printing angle is nonsense.

Please proceed, Senator from Arizona.

sPh

(I was trying to be reasonably neutral - after all, the nation's financial stability was at risk)

= = = The difference between banks and MTGox is that while banks also use fraction reserve, the full liabilities are backed by assets in the form of loans they have handed out, and security on the assets of the borrowers such as property. At the time of the financial crisis, those assets and collateral were not sufficient to cover the fractional reserve liabilities, but at least they had something, unlike MTGox which had nothing to back the fractional reserve liabilities. = = =

Spot-on. Of course the major Western money center banks and financial institutions also had the backing of the full faith and credit of major, stable governments including both the maligned US Federal Reserve and ultimately the US Treasury. While bitcoin has the full faith and backing of... Satoshi I guess.

sPh

There is no question that the financial structure of the United States, and mostly likely the world as a result, was in danger in the 2008 time frame. President Bush and Secretary Poulson took the responsible course of action, deflected those whose advice was to let it all burn on principle, put together a bailout plan, invited the presidential candidates to review it, and got it signed into law. IMHO the only competent thing that W did during his entire Presidency.

What President Obama can be held responsible for is not following up TARP with detailed investigations into violations of civil and criminal law, including prosecutions where appropriate. Particularly investigations into the utterly illegal shadow mortgage documentation "registry" that the financial industry apparently created around 2000. This was the first major financial crisis in the history of the United States that did not generate a strong investigatory response. There are undoubtedly reasons why that didn't happen, reasons noble, neutral, and craven, but the lack of _any_ investigation or prosecution is an utter failure of President Obama and his Administration.

sPh

Just to be precise about the situation, Candidates McCain and Obama were invited to the meetings where TARP was agreed upon. They weren't directly responsible, but neither did either object.

sPh

some of the window management features seem interesting to me.

Why has nobody else implemented the Haiku version of tabs and the ability to "stitch" windows at borders? I can see convenient uses for those. Were these features in BeOS? (I never used it.)

"Realize that businesses are doing this in response to demand."

There is no negative demand. In other words, people are not demanding no service. What's really going on here is that businesses are seeing how little they can get away with as far as customer support and still sell a product.

This isn't consumer grade, but at work we still have a number of Solaris machines in use. One of the reasons in the past that we stayed with Solaris was their outstanding support. That support has become a joke in the past few years thus removing another barrier to switching over the Linux.

You're just noticing this? A successful business model these days includes limiting how much you actually have to deal with your customers. It's not just tech. Forums, voice menus and FAQs are the order of the day for problem solving.

If people don't want to die a horrid painful death, they should avoid being born in the first place. What do you think most of us have to look forward to in the last couple years of our lives?