So far only the Eleventh Circuit has heard anything relating to the production of passwords and they went with the doctrine of the mental cognition from producing decrypted data more demanding because it is "more akin to requiring the production of a combination". The Supreme Court has found that being compelled to produce the key to a safe was not a violation of the 5th but producing a combination is. I will refer you to this paper which shows why applying the key-combination algorithm shouldn't apply to encrypted drives.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

I agree with the author's final assessment:

Alternatively, courts could explicitly incorporate interest balancing into the calculus. So the decrypted data could be compelled only if there is a significant state need for compulsion. Drawing this line in practice would not be difficult. Imagine the government subpoenas the accused for the production of decrypted data and the accused moves to quash on Fifth Amendment grounds. Under this approach, the motion would be denied if the government shows it could not realistically obtain the data through investigatory effort. This procedure would not be uncommon, as similar iterations exist elsewhere in criminal procedure. Obtaining a search warrant, for example, requires the government first show the existence of probable cause, and a later determination that cause was deficient may result in excluding any evidence obtained under the warrant.

Ummm... You need to re-read the Constitution if you think the court ruling on a warrant is "disingenuous and illogical". The courts are simply following the Constitution you deride them for not following. BTW, it is the 4th that concerns this more than the 5th although they do go hand-in-hand most of the time.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

You are referring to the part "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;" It is the court that dispenses due process of law. So encryption would most certainly block that due process.

Lastly, there are remedies to compel a suspect to comply with court orders to include imprisonment for contempt of court. Many have gone to jail for not complying with a legally issued court order to divulge their encryption password. So I don't see what this FBI Chief's issue is. He is using the age old "ticking time bomb" argument that was used to justify torturing detainees in Guantanamo. I don't buy it.

In short, it is not evil for a donor to say funds can't be used for a study where there doing so would produce a conflict of interest.

Which completely invalidates the whole concept of peer review. Go ahead... Try and find funding for privacy research amongst the crowd without any interest in the data. Good luck with that. Open peer review of any study is necessary to weed out bias. After all, you would pay for data you have no interest in right?

Double posting from the same article with this nugget:

Why the difference? The Florida landfill did not have a clay cap during the study, which would have sealed it from the elements. Caps are federally mandated to reduce pollution from water flowing into landfills. In the process, however, they reduce moisture content in the waste, the "master variable" in helping garbage decompose.

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/...

Does anyone know if that capping is still a federal mandate? If so, this is a case where regulation against one hazard is creating another.

The residents are still free to waste all the food they want as long as they put it in the correct bin.

Although the issue here is about what bin you put waste food into, let me point you to a 1998 article on the topic of waste landfills and the types vs. the time of decomposition:

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/news/...

The point I am trying to make is that this law is targeting the wrong thing.

The study found that food decomposes relatively quickly. After six years in the Madison site, pasta, lima beans, peanuts and sunflower seeds all lost at least half of their dry weight, and pasta almost completely vanished. In Florida, the food samples were all more than 75 percent decomposed after only two years.

Newspaper was the only material that showed little change: Only 17.4 percent decomposed in Florida after two years, and 8.5 percent in Madison after six years.

Given a choice, putting the fine on paper products especially newspaper makes more sense from the point of view of reducing landfill real estate. Of course, someone putting food in the paper bin would upset the recycling process a miniscule amount not one that is too difficult to solve at the dump site. I suspect this is more about generating more revenue selling the compost since that pile would be reduced from wrong bin sorting. That's just my speculation though not supported by any facts.

Personally, I cannot wait to move into a completely rural area where I can either compost it or burn it. Saves $40/mo for as little as they have to do at my bit of the street.

Even in rural areas there are restrictions on what you can burn and when you can burn it. I live in one of the most rural areas in the country here in West Virginia and can tell you that you can be fined if you burn the wrong things at the wrong times.

Things like plastic, painted materials or other hazardous materials such as furniture foam and rubber are banned. That still doesn't stop people from doing it but the fines can get very steep especially for repeat offenders.

Of course it's not going to flip around because there is pressure among women to focus on making a family instead of pursuing a demanding career.

It is pressure but not as much sociological as it is biological. If women don't start a family before menopause, then that family will never start for that woman. So women literally do have a biological clock they are listening to unlike men. But having a family shouldn't stop a woman from having a good career with equal pay. Many if not most middle class families do have both parents working if only to keep on top of the bills especially since wages have stagnated or in some fields fallen. That isn't a choice. That is a necessity.

The computer I had before the M7 was HP TX-2. It too had a touchscreen but had a matte finish to it. It died due to other design flaws (poor airflow caused overheating) but the touchscreen was the thing that drew me to it.

In the case of the M7 its other features outweigh the glossy touchscreen. I just don't use the touch features on it. Besides, as I said, it isn't a true tablet but a big laptop. So a touchscreen with multigesture capabilities seems pretty useless on it.

Ummm... No. It isn't a case of being gooped up. It is a case of a single print is noticeable on this glossy screen. I am doing the solution to the problem which is not to use the touch features.

No. It is because people are treating a computer as an appliance. If it works out of the box they keep using it. Also, people won't go out of their way to replace a working product especially one they paid money for.

What you are talking about is the difference between those that see computers as appliances and those that take an interest in the workings of that appliance. And with today's distros being geared to making the install as easy as possible (for whatever level of literacy you have) it is making Linux easier for those that see it as an appliance.

To put this into the proper slashdot car analogy it is the difference between the guy who always puts new gear and tricks out their cars and their wives who get into it, toss the kids in the back seat and goes. That wife really doesn't appreciate the work done by her husband until something goes wrong.

the biggest problem is microsoft's insistence upon having a microsoft account, and use of trickery to ensure they are created, to login to the local pc, or to use the 'store' to download 'free' apps, or to use office 2013.. that's a total pain in the ass that no one should tolerate.

Yet Google does the same with Android. Amazon does the same thing with its platform too. So this isn't unique to Microsoft.

I hear ya! I have an HP Envy M7 laptop that has a touchscreen and I never use the touchscreen for that reason. To make it worse, the screen (which is a very good LED HD display) has a high gloss panel that shows the prints extremely well. Why in the world HP chose to put a glossy screen as a touchscreen is beyond me. Touchscreens should have a matte finish to try and hide the print marks as much as possible.

Why upgrade, Windows7 does everything I need.

Good for you. However, you won't be too happy when you get a new machine that doesn't come with anything other than 9. Or when your windows 7 drivers need an update to fix a bug or add a feature and the only available ones are for Windows 9. Or you want that snazzy new program and it's minimum requirements are Windows 9.

Like it or not, the world moves on. If standing still works for you then more power to you.

I know for a fact that the forms you submit to the OPM ask you in plain English "have you ever belonged to an organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the US government"

Yes it does ask that and I also believe that question leads to guilt by association. It needs to be changed to:

Have you ever advocated the violent overthrow of the US Government?

That change will remove the friend of a friend of a friend is a terrorist thing.

Besides, if you were to apply that question to the government as a whole, then they too would fail considering the perpetrators of 9/11 itself was US supported during the Afghanistan / Russian war during the Reagan administration as "freedom fighters".