I'm sure the government will glean a plethora of useful data after spending countless hours sifting through viagra ads, pandora spam, notifications that the t-mobile bill is now ready to view, and other such highly sensitive information one would trust to a Gmail account.

While I agree with you on a philosophical level, keep in mind that North Korean authorities probably aren't (in comparison) as understanding and level-headed as those in Germany, or (gasp) even the United States!

As a youngster growing up in the 1980's, countless dozens of hours were spent both in my own basement and the basement of my childhood (well, still) best friend's parents house listening to vinyl, cassettes, and analog FM radio. I later became a smalltime audiophile, I don't buy Monster Cable or equipment that costs more than 4 figures, but I still enjoy a good audio listening experience.

About 5 years ago, my friend's parents finally retired and I was around to help them move out west. While the old Pioneer receiver we used to jam out on had long since died or been retired to the local landfill, the off-name floor speakers were still there. I believe one had the same old lamp sitting on it that it always did, and the other one was just sitting there in the corner. They told me to put them out to the street.

Of course, they went in the trunk of my car, where I promptly took them home and stored them in my garage. This summer, as the garage had now collected enough surplus computer and electronic equipment to need it's twice a decade cleaning, I found the old "Utah" speakers and decided to hook them up to my receiver and see if they were dead or alive. I flicked on the local "oldies" station (meaning 70's and 80's music now) and I was immediately transported back in time. Radio still sounded today like it sounded back in 1986. The speakers provided all the "warmth" and "fullness" that people are always chasing after.

This may sound like a no-brainer, but speakers determine what you hear. Those speakers are now a permanent fixture out in my garage/man-cave. No, they don't sound like any of the big-name equipment I run in the home theater. But they are immersive with only 2 channels in a way a 9.2 surround system can never match. And when I sit outside on the weekend, enjoying a few beers and some (sometimes herb-fueled) tinkering with Linux boxes and electronics, to me at least, it's like going backwards to a time when things were still exciting, the guy on the radio was someone everyone knew, and you had the whole world in the palm of your hand.

I do apologize for waxing nostalgic on a public forum, and I do love my new technology, but damnit sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy something simple that you love. I can understand the value to youngsters of sitting around listening to a piece of tangible vinyl that you can hold in your hand, look at the album art, read the lyrics (all without a LAN connection or Wi-Fi AP being involved) rather than some logical arrangement of bits on a chip or spinning platter. So yes, of course, put your money into speakers (or vinyl, or whatever makes you happy)! I recommend garage sales, swap meets, and flea markets!

As opposed to your divine entity of government. Both (government and corporations) are just as equally fucked. Why do people not realize that the words "free market/business" and "government" can be fully interchanged in tirades like this and still be true. See below:

Oh, horse shit.

You're delusional. The (useful/open/representative) government doesn't exist. It doesn't solve problems. It doesn't achieve optimal outcomes.

It's a fucking abstraction describing long-term outcomes under a perfect hypothetical model based on crap assumptions, not some divine entity.

In practice, the only thing government is doing is picking your pocket and giving you the finger.

It isn't some magical entity. It doesn't make good choices. It doesn't care what happens to you. It doesn't actually care if you have perfect information. It doesn't really exist.

The government is the collective actions of the power elite over an extended period of time -- and collectively the government is rigged, and people are gaming the system. The government won't fix that.

The premise that the government achieves perfect outcomes over the long haul assumes the system isn't corrupt, and that the players aren't actively undermining it.

But humans are corrupt, and always will be. Which means in practice the "government" devolves into cartels and other things by which to stop the citizens from being free.

It doesn't exist. Has never existed. Cannot exist. And if by accident it (useful/open/representative government) briefly existed, it would be undermined immediately by the humans.

You hit the nail on the head. Human nature is the problem, and I, for one, don't want that extinguished (unlike many "progressives" who would love nothing more than exactly that to happen) just so we can declare taxicabs 100% safe, or whatever other delusion the free market Republican morons/government worshipping Democratic idiots think their system can be responsible for.

Stop worrying about this my team vs. your team minutia and live your life.

I don't always browse at -1, but when I do, I love being rewarded with a post like the GP.

How is this modded +5 or insightful? It's neither. Why are we still comparing locks and doors in meatspace to virtual servers and ports and IP addresses on a globally-interconnected network of computing nodes and electronic resources? They are nowhere near the same thing. When you advertise and/or broadcast a service on a given port and on a given IP-address, you can rest assured that unless it is properly secured, anyone and everyone will access it and utilize the resources it provides.

In most cases, there are perfectly ethical and legal reasons to access someone else's resources. For example, Google searches, YouTube, IRC, FTP. Is it unethical to download files from an open, unsecured FTP server? Of course it isn't. Is it unethical to watch someone's private camera in their home that they left with no or default credentials? Probably yes, but you'll never know for sure because the default behavior of the network is that if something's wide open, it's there for everyone to use.

When I started college in the 90's, there was a directory on some network drive that was mapped by default for all students. It was called "Network Trash Folder", and had some obscene amount of storage available on it. You better believe it was used for almost a year as a warez-and-mp3 repository for people in the know. Was it unethical to use that resource, that was obviously not officially-sanctioned to be globally available to all users, as a personal storage space? What if some cool/disgruntled/outgoing admin actually made a publicly available storage space knowing people would find it and use it for whatever they wanted? How would anyone know what the intent really was for that resource to be there?

Long story short, it's up to the administrator of a given resource to secure it, lest it be used in ways he or she did not intend. It's not as simple an analogy as "Well, B&E is illegal duh!" Because we aren't dealing with physical resources. If you don't want people watching your cameras, don't put them on publicly routeable ports/addresses or at the very minimum, change the default credentials so people can't access your resources. If you leave everything wide open (or default), expect people to use it. I realize most people don't know this, and this is why they should either learn or pay the consequences. And before I get the "don't blame the victim" song and dance, it's not victim blaming when someone doesn't know enough about how something works to use it safely or securely. If you stupid enough to run your car's engine without oil and it seizes, you're to blame, you're not a victim...if you leave your iPad and laptop and wallet full of cash laying on the seat of your unlocked car downtown and someone rips you off, you're not a victim (unless you count of your own stupidity).

Not really. What I'm saying is don't make spending commitments that you do not have a source of revenue to back it up with. Government is great at spending money that they don't have when they know all they need to do is steal some more from the public at a later date and everything will work out for them in the end.

I am absolutely shocked. How about they cut their goddamn spending and subsist on the taxes they are already collecting before instituting a ridiculous "per-GB" internet tax. FFS, does the idea of spending less money ever even cross a government's mind? Now, before I get branded some evil right-winger racist luddite tinfoil hat wearing neanderthal, I don't disagree with taxes that perform a function.

If the government is providing a service or function, such as roads, technological infrastructure, schools, etc. I fully agree with taxes to support them. But taxing arbitrary goods/services provided by third parties just because you want to keep living high on the hog? That, to me, is a sickening example of why spending needs to be scrutinized and real fiscal responsibility needs to be in place in government. It's just too easy to keep spending when it's everyone else's money.

This is what scares me the most about Ebola. It's that the government is telling me that there's nothing to worry about and that everything is going to be just fine. I know that when they say I should run for my life and be scared shitless of something that it isn't a real threat. I assume the opposite rhetoric means that it really is a threat and I should probably be scared shitless hiding out somewhere until it all blows over.

So, it should work in a way where the authorities can do whatever they want to prove someone guilty of a crime? Do you realize what would happen in a country such as the United States where for-profit private prisons exist, should your little childish scenario come into play? The punishment for "illegal search" would be a day's paid vacation for the police and a $25 fine, whereas if they uncovered some minor malfeasance by a citizen, it'd be a minimum of 3 years hard labor in a prison factory.

This is somehow better for you?

Because I love something, doesn't mean I trust it blindly. You can love your wife, but if you see signs that things might be going amiss, you would dig a little deeper to determine if there is really something nefarious going on or if there is just change happening. Or at least, I would. If your wife's phone is going off all hours of the night and she's been working "late" every night for the last 3 months with no history of having done that in the past, would you just blindly trust that everything is fine, because you love her? Give me a break.

I don't particularly care about systemd either way, as I use BSD, but I see things like this happen all the time, not just in tech. A vocal minority of people who think they know what's best for everyone comes along and starts forcing changes down everyone's throats. There is no input from the vast, silent majority who just want to get by day-to-day, so the only people who end up voicing their opinion are the diehard zealots and fanatics, and boy are they loud and obnoxious.

The problem is that once the worst people stand up against something, it makes it hard for anyone level-headed, sane, or logical to do the same thing, lest they be branded in with the psychopaths. If you really want to demonize a group of people, just take their position and be as radical and destructive as possible. People aren't smart enough to actually look at real issues and facts and make decisions, it's all emotional. People with real issues, real beefs, real reasons to oppose the radical and dramatic move away from what has been the standard will now be drowned out by those who will just call them names. And then the vocal minority, those who have no real motives other than their own self-interest at heart, get their way. It happens constantly, and it has nothing to do with Linux or anything tech related.

It's human nature, and it sucks, because people who are, indeed, moderates are always being subjected to the whims of the polarized fanatics.

...slate.com/blogs...

That is all.

Yes, I also have small scratches on my 5 and 5S model iPhones. However, my 4S is still immaculate and has been used and abused more than my newer models. The larger screen glass on the 5/5S seems to be made of a softer or different type that scratches easier.

My BlackBerry on T-Mobile had Wi-Fi calling in 2007 that would hand off between the Wi-Fi and cellular network. Of course, now that the device using it has a piece of fruit on the back of it, it's magically "usable". Come to think of it, it was tough to use the feature on my old BlackBerry, you know, you just had to leave the Wi-Fi on and whenever you were in range of a suitable AP it would work automatically. I'm sure Apple has made it much easier than that.

I don't disagree about basic connectivity. I personally know plenty of people in those difficult last mile areas who would *love* to have a 4Mbit/sec downstream wired internet connection. But the difficult last miles are why we pay things like USF fees, we do things like grant monopolies, we provide tax breaks and other subsidies to those who claim they are going to provide that connectivity to the exurban and rural areas.

There was a high-profile examination of a similar situation, in New Jersey I believe, where the ILEC had taken millions in tax breaks and subsidies to provide universal broadband in their area of monopoly. Those deals dated back two decades, yet many areas of that state are still served by central offices that aren't even DSL capable. That's unacceptable. HEVC be damned, when you can't even get "broadband" (however you'd care to define it) to begin with. I'm fortunate enough to live in a suburban area in a large megalopolis served by Comcast. If it weren't for them, I'd be on a DSL line from a carrier I won't name that got stuck with the rotted physical plant left behind by the same company that took the money and ran in NJ.

Note that these same ILECs are the ones that fight tooth and nail against community and cooperative broadband in every state they do business in. If it weren't for the subsidies, tax breaks, and government-granted monopolies many of these areas would still have no POTS or electricity for that matter. The rest of the areas, the ones served by telephone and electricity cooperatives, never even got that until they did it themselves. This isn't about free market capitalism, it's about having a reliable national communications infrastructure. As it stands for broadband, the ILECs can't even do it when they have it handed to them on a silver platter.

I understand the last mile challenges are fierce, and I'm from the flat heartland of America. I know it's worse in more rural, less populated areas than I have seen anywhere even in my state. But I have no sympathy for these telcos. If we found a way to provide those folks with electricity and POTS, we can do it with fiber. Fiber runs are better suited for rural areas than copper, anyway, as the loss is negligible in comparison over longer distances. And if you are going to roll new lines, metal ones are so 20th century anyway. The rest of the world is moving on. Do we really want our rural brothers and sisters to be stuck with copper? I say make the definition of broadband 100Mbit! And force the telcos taking subsidies to get the goddamned job done or at the bare minimum, get the fuck out of the way and let a cooperative or muni do it who can and stop buying legislation to screw over the good folks out in the sticks.