Bigger authoritarians than the "gun nuts". Hopefully this shit stays on the other side of the pond.

In many regards, but especially to Mr. Musk's business model.

Trolling is the act of posting obviously inflammatory statements on a message board, solely to garner reactions from unsuspecting readers. I asked a simple question, to which you went off on a paragraphs-long tirade about the shortcomings you perceive of me that included questions about my intellectual capacity, my "privilege", and my "goddamned sense of self-entitlement". You don't know anything about me. You are being as prejudicial as I'm sure you think I am, whether you realize it or not.

Then why didn't you just say that in your first retort to the original poster? No need to attack me. Nevermind that I know for a fact that at the very least, certain localities/municipalities do, indeed, have policies that require a certain percentage of business to go to minority-owned businesses. See the City of Chicago and the State of Wisconsin for examples. Perhaps it doesn't exist at the federal level, I'll look into it, and if it doesn't then that's wonderful. But I'm sure I'm some kind of a racist bigot to you if I solely believe that every contract should be awarded to the enterprise that will deliver the best bang for the public buck. I would say the same thing about hiring practices. Hire the most qualified and competent person you can for every position, in every sector, public and private, and be really, truly, blind to race.

I don't watch any TV news networks. They are all way too sensationalist and partisan for me. I try to actually read through pieces of legislation and make an honest effort to understand what the real ramifications are of laws before I make a decision on whether or not to support them. As for Obamacare, I really don't want to get into all of that here, but if the web portal dedicated to it has already cost over half a billion dollars, is six times over it's initial budget, and doesn't even function...not really sure how anyone without political motivations can call (at least this portion of it) that a good thing?

How can you, in one sentence, tell me that it can't be calculated, and in the next throw out another number you've picked cleanly out of thin air to minimize it even further?

I simply asked why we aren't picking the "best man/woman for the job", so to speak. If it doesn't exist, and I've been misled, then fine. You can say that in a respectful and friendly manner without pre-judging me, belittling me, and attacking me.

Again, you don't know a damned thing about me, my life, my income, who I am, where I've been, or what obstacles I've overcome to get where I am today and what obstacles I face in the future. Not one damned thing. Maybe that's why 0.1% waste bothers me, regardless of why, because I know what it feels like to need that extra dollar a week. Yet I'm the one who is "punched in the face" for my sense of privilege and self-entitlement. Whatever I really do have, I'll say this, at least I have class. Enough class, at least, not to personally attack random people on message boards because I disagree with their position or because they're wrong about something. That must count for something. But I suppose it serves me right. Somehow, however it is that I managed, with one simple question, to earn your wrath, retribution, and hostility.

But why should we give ANYONE preference, other than the contractor that we believe will do the best job and provide the most value for the money? Even if we are "only" paying .1% [citation needed] more for EVERYTHING in the government, it is extremely wasteful of taxpayer dollars.

Yes, "drug pushers". They "pushed" TOR onto everyone's computer. They "pushed" everyone's browser to the onion URL that points to Silk Road. Then they "pushed" everyone to buy bitcoins and "pushed" them to use those bitcoins to buy contraband. Yep, "pushers" indeed!

Here are a few simple rules I follow to try and mitigate the amount of my data that third-parties can get their hands on, at least as far as mobile devices are concerned:

1. Turn Wi-Fi on only when you're around trusted (or at least known) APs. This would be at work, home, friends houses, etc. Out in public, that's why I pay for an LTE connection, no worries about Starbucks or Target's Wi-Fi doing anything nefarious. Keep Wi-Fi off unless you actually plan on using it.

2. Turn Bluetooth on only when you plan on using it. For me, this is when I'm using my headset at work, which is rare as I would rather use my desk phone, or when I'm streaming music to my car radio or home audio system. Otherwise, I try to keep it off.

3. When I don't need push email, data is turned off altogether. Yep, a really smart dumbphone until I need it to be an actual internet connected smartphone. This means that real-time tracking data is at least only stored until the next time I connect.

4. What you say about tracking transmission on licensed cellular bands, if true, I guess turn the damn thing off when you don't need it is as good as solution as any, but now you're defeating the purpose of having a mobile device at all. As far as Target tracking ESNs and anything going across licensed cellular bands, here in the States at least, it runs afoul of numerous laws and FCC regulations, and I hope that if they are doing this (I really have a "citation needed" in my head on that one) that they find out really quick why they shouldn't be.

I realize how ridiculous it sounds to be turning connections on and off all the time, but that's only until I think about how ridiculous it is that every device is trying to grab my MAC addresses and make a profile on me. I also realize that governments and service providers are going to know, at the very least, where I am at all times based on which cell site I'm connected to, at least until when (or if) the time comes that we can get stronger privacy legislation passed and actually taken seriously. But just because the 3-letter agencies and cellular providers know, doesn't mean every questionable app I've ever installed and every trash bin I pass by also needs to know.

Long story short, only use what you need, when you need it, and never trust third party apps or infrastructure unless you have a good reason to, which is almost never as far as I'm concerned.

By disabling it in the BIOS, or if that's not an option, don't install the driver. And since when do Blu Ray discs and Windows need the TPM to be enabled to run?

So basically from mopping the floor up to $200k/yr. with access to all this top secret data. This smells like it was "leaked" to cover up some bigger goings-on. This guy is a patsy.

Why do people hate that "faded piece of parchment" so badly? It's the only thing protecting your right to liberty (including pissing and moaning on internet forums), and you would piss upon it if you had the chance. Are you mentally unstable?

Considering they really were doing this, I wouldn't exactly call it paranoia.

You're absolutely right. If you have a coal plant and a nuclear plant running under normal operating conditions side by side, yes, the coal plant will put out OMFG 100 TIMES THE RADDDS OF A NUKE PLANT!!!!11one , that is correct. Considering a nuclear plant should effectively put as close to zero radiation into the environment under normal, safe conditions, the 100x number still probably isn't that large. But should there be a major malfunction at both plants, a catastrophic failure of their safety or backup systems, the worst you have at the coal plant is a big, nasty fire to burn itself out. If the nuke plant fails catastrophically, well, see Chernobyl. The problem isn't when a nuclear plant is running properly, it's when it fails.

What the hell has happened to the Slashdot that I once knew and loved? Someone posts something which is common sense and it gets modded down to -1, Troll? Of course, we SHOULD be able to leave a pile of cash sitting around unguarded, but everyone knows you can't. Just like everyone knows if something is on the Internet, unsecured, someone is going to access it.

So, when someone accesses some private information by changing a URL or some other trivial means, it's OK to blame the victim, as everyone on here does. But someone steals from the loving, mother government, they should be hanged from the highest tree in town, correct?

Interesting, I didn't know that. I knew certain countries overseas had similar requirements, but I didn't know any US states were so restrictive.

I'm a cell phone geek (or junkie if you ask my friends), and I've purchased countless cheap Androids and such just to toy around with at Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers here in the midwest and have never once had to produce ID. Then you can just phone up customer service, which is a free call on the new phone, and activate it before you leave the parking lot.

Right, in this case I doubt it would matter. However, obtaining an anonymous "burner" is honestly no harder than walking into a gas station or convenience store that you've never been in before and buying a prepaid with cash.

Exactly. I don't have any rose-colored glasses, nor do I harken back to any halcyon days where the government was just completely honest, free from corruption, and always did what was in the best interest of the people. The United States government has never done that.
 
However, I do firmly believe that 9/11 had to happen before they could "come out" with what they had been doing for years. Of course, there were terrorist attacks before 9/11, but those were mostly small time acts perpetrated by Americans. The people in charge know that we won't give up our liberties (again, knowingly) because one of our own did something crazy. We know other Americans, and we know that the majority of them aren't up to any no good.
 
No, to give up our rights, we needed someone who didn't have any constitutional protections. A foreign enemy, but one that could be living right here amongst us. They could be using our email systems our cellular networks, our internet service providers!!!
 
You see, the terrorists hated our freedoms. And they were using them against us! So of course, the only obvious solution is to get rid of the freedom. With freedom, comes risk. Once the average citizen had become stupid, fat, and lazy enough to care more for their own comfort and perceived safety than being free, it was time to drop the hammer on us. Now that the precedent has been set, any legal victory or victory over the minds of people that can be attained by the minority who treasure their freedom and can actually see and understand what is happening can be countered simply by giving some relatively small incident wall-to-wall media coverage for a few weeks, then letting the "pundits" sit and tell everyone how anti-American it is to not want to do "x". (x being reading everyone's emails, listening to everyone's phone calls, banning guns, placing a large urban area under martial law, or warrantless this or national security letter that...the list goes on and on.)
 
So, essentially, any time the people on the side of good win back one step of freedom or due process, we take 5 more steps down the road to slavery. This is why it's so egregious now. Someone essentially disabled the firewall (the public caring and fighting for freedom), then used a root exploit (a perceived massive threat to safety sold to us by the media) on the constitution.
 
The only way to fix it is to remove the offending exploit (stop caring about every little incident that occurs) and put the firewall back up (make people care about freedom again). Unfortunately, given how we are all asleep at the wheel, there's a snowball's chance in hell of that actually happening. As long as the average citizen has food, booze, sex, and "Ow, My Balls!" on the TV, why would they want anything more?