In this context a legitimate law enforcement reason means a warrant would indeed be needed.

Are you mad? They don't even insist on warrants when they can't meet the requirements of the 4th amendment, preferring to focus cluelessly upon the word "unreasonable" and ignoring the litany of probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation that were put there to explicitly define what "reasonable" is. They just break your door down, and shoot you -- and your pets.

And you think a law that doesn't even say a warrant is required will somehow stumble in its application on needing them?

I don't think you understand how the justice system works here. Or perhaps you're not from here.

What makes you think the government has a polynomial prime factoring algorithm?

What makes you think they don't? What makes you think they even need one? What makes you think they don't hire, and utilize, some of the most powerful math-heads out there? What makes you think that something that can't be broken today won't bring you to the vale of tears days, months, even years later, if that's what it takes? What makes you think they don't have, or won't have, some kind of quantum computing device that obviates encryption entirely? What makes you think they didn't log every keystroke you typed, thus making encryption a complete non-issue? Wait, what, your system is "pure"? You know they can tell what you're typing by the sound, right? Finally, what makes you think they won't come right to your home or place of business or your favorite club, hustle you into a dank basement somewhere, and waterboard you or pound your toes to mush with a hammer or actually, eventually, read your mind electronically and get what they want that way? Got any relatives you treasure? What about the recipient(s)? Now there are (at least) two points of human weakness.

And... you do know that "they" have access to quite a few technologies that "we" do not, right?

I would seriously bet on the idea that if you demonstrate you think you need to encrypt your stuff by simply doing so, all you've managed to accomplish is get on a list of "we'll get back to this suspicious character later."

Right now, if you've got something secret that you don't want the government to become aware of, just don't say it or otherwise communicate it. That's your very best chance of actually keeping it a secret. It may be your only chance.

Further, the presumption that because it falls under the umbrella of law, it is somehow made "ok", is utter nonsense from word one.

hey y'all, watch this... gimme my transcranial magnetic stimulator -- you can have my beer.

You want to be found dull-eyed, emaciated, sitting in a disheveled heap, squishing around on your own excrement? The three seashells ensure that you'll only be found dull-eyed, emaciated, sitting in a disheveled heap -- clean as a whistle. :)

Really, the prison system is just slavery by another name.

As is explicitly provided for in the 13th amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(emphasis mine)

So if you don't like it, the legitimate path towards getting rid of it is amendment, as provided for in article 5.

Personally, I think the problem is far too many laws making crimes out of things that should never have been construed as criminal. And that can be approached one issue at a time if you can simply bring pressure upon the state or federal legislators. Sure, that's hard, but it's not nearly as hard as trying to pursue amendment, which seems to be basically impossible at this point in time.

Ok, so I grabbed a dictionary app that provides for zhuyin. The task here is to learn an entirely new alphabet with its associated sounds. Not sure that's an improvement, lol. Though I suppose if you have no preconceptions, as come with English-like spellings, It might work out well. I didn't have any trouble at all with hangul (Korean.) I'll give zhuyin a try; I appreciate the tip.

also... once I understood the alphabet issue, I went looking for zhuyin flashcards (under Android -- I use a Note 3)... nothing in the Amazon app store... play store has some things... quizzes.. no flashcards though. Hmm. I'll keep looking. I'll check for my iPad, too. Thanks again.

Yes, they will cook actual Chinese food for us; the region they're from is southern China, they're native Cantonese speakers (and eaters) although all the adults are fluent in Mandarin. The real Chinese food is mostly for the family, but we've become good friends with them and have had the opportunity to sample quite a few... unusual... things. It's interesting to watch them eat things like chicken feet, crunching away at every last bit with great enthusiasm.

The first time I caught a cold and let them know, I was presented with a bowl of tree fungus and a big smile. :) Other surprises have ranged from durian fruit, with its amazing olfactory punch, to moon cakes (sadly, meh.) And although the for-the-public hot-n-sour soup is ok, the for-the-family version is *awesome* if you like spicy foods.

We've been invited for Christmas, and as it was explained to me, the plan is a single boiling pot in the center of the table and a whole bunch of unspecified things you can throw in. Looking forward to it, too.

That's only because you mumble.

I speak (and read and write) both Mandarin and Spanish.

Spanish is a lot easier for an English-speaker to learn.

But Mandarin is, at least IMHO, much more interesting. I enjoy the characters, preferring the traditional ones, coping with the simplified ones.

The most difficult problem I had learning Chinese is that the dominant system of romanization, pinyin, is wholly non-intuitive and conflicting to me as a reader of English. It's frustrating because there are *very* few sounds in Chinese that really couldn't be well-approximated with normal English character order and usage. The exceptions, like the pinyin 'r' sound, could be marked another way (for instance, as the Spanish Ñ.) So learning how to say a word without a native speaker turned out to be a real problem. I got a heck of a boost when a real Chinese restaurant opened in our little town. :)

Gosh-o-gosh. Techies on slashdot? What's the world coming to?!?!

You wanted me to just say "iPhoto", right?

lol...

That was all software, you know. Free, too.

...but it saves on random number generator cycles...

Just took a look at Imagemagick; they've definitely come a long way in RAW support. But I'm a little confused about what they mean by:

CR2 R Canon Digital Camera Raw Image Format Requires an explicit image format otherwise the image is interpreted as a TIFF image (e.g. cr2:image.cr2).

  Does it read CR2 or not? I have a 6D DSLR, so CR2 support was the first thing I looked for. Then there are the RAW, S-RAW and M-RAW variants.

Just curious.

I'm interested in power measurement (rolled my own), so I took a look.

The ready-to-buy pricing is interesting.

A power consumption measuring module for 8 lines is £324.00; a common breaker box with a capacity of 40 circuits will require five of these, for a total of £1620.00. Then you'll need 25- or 50-ampere current sensors, 40 of them at £12.00, adding £480.00. Now, if you want remote control through their cloud, add another £295.00 for the gateway module. The power supply module is £50.00. Then you get to subscribe to their cloud solution, I think, an idea I got by the "free one year of cloud subscription" you get with a small bundle of components they sell -- though I didn't find a price for the cloud itself.

So a one-breaker panel solution seems to be about £2445.00, or at today's exchange rate, $3,843.13.

That's not horrible for what it does in terms of commercial solutions, but it certainly isn't in the low-end zone, either. You can make a calibrated current sensor for under a dollar if you dig up some surplus ferrite, which I've not found to be particularly difficult (though ferrite isn't the only workable way to go. An optically isolated op amp configured balanced over a tiny resistance also works great.) So roundly, $40 for the ferrite based solution. An op amp and an A/d channel together don't amount to a dollar per either, so another $42 for those (I use a final pair of channels to watch AC voltage and phase at the breaker box, comes in all kinds of handy. Power consumption's not just about current!) Add about $10 worth of digital logic, a $40 Raspberry Pi [there's your computer and wired web server, add $5 to put it all on wifi], roll your own software and PCB or hardwiring, throw in a tiny power supply, and for about $150 US, you've got equally capable -- or better -- measurement capabilities. If you want to be fancy and uber-safe and avoid the whole ferrite space and cost and availability issues, you can add $5/line for another $200 cost for optically isolated op amps would would put you at about $350. And of course there is no need whatsoever for a "cloud." Just a webserver, which the Pi or similar can neatly provide. The Pi is a good choice because it's low power, well supplied with features, and capable and sufficient to the task. You can toss a monitor, keyboard and mouse on there permanently too if you want a fancy at-the-breaker-box position, but you don't actually need to, so I don't count that.

I did wonder what it'd cost to build from their PCBs, but there doesn't seem to be any way to really figure that out other than doing it. Pretty much has to be less than $3840, though.