You mean, like Canada, that slum-ridden cesspit to the North?

Try dialing down the dogma a fraction, and accept that there are reasonable compromises that provide reasonable mitigation to the worst aspects of any economic system. You might find that it is indeed possible for sober public investment in private enterprise not only to work, but to work well. There's a whole sub-discipline in economics devoted to the study of it. Yes, there are downsides to Public/Private Partnerships (it even has a name!!), but with the proper checks, they can sometimes work better than either a purely public or a purely private undertaking.

We'll just do as we've always done:

Eat the rich.

(P.S. What's the emoji for 'deadpan'?)

I like your post, but aren't all answers correct only a posteriori?

I've clearly been on Slashdot for far too long. I read 'Doze Mode in the title and thought, 'Goddammit, if you're going to talk about Windows Mode, just fucking call it "Windows"!'

And then I realised that it actually is 'Doze Mode'. Because 'Naptime' was taken, I guess.

Yes, Dupont sat on the patent for a chemical compound they knew was safer until it became clear that the courts and governments were going to act, and then and only then did they finally file the patent on an HCFC compound to replace Freon. It was an act of stunning cynicism, but you're aiming your contempt in precisely the wrong direction.

Physician, heal thyself.

Schneier suggests that actually they have, and that media is mis-reporting the results:

It's worth reading these results in detail. Overall, these numbers are consistent with a worldwide survey from December. The press is spinning this as "Most Americans' behavior unchanged after Snowden revelations, study finds," but I see something very different. I see a sizable percentage of Americans not only concerned about government surveillance, but actively doing something about it. "Third of Americans shield data from government." Edward Snowden's goal was to start a national dialog about government surveillance, and these surveys show that he has succeeded in doing exactly that.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the lack of action is your fault, not Rand Paul's. He's more than done his part. He's offered a rallying point for anyone who cares about the issue, and he's elucidated in the most detailed way possible just what the hazards are. He's actually stopped the machine for a moment, and all you can manage is to diss him for too little, too late?

Look, I don't even like the guy. He stands for a lot of things that I fundamentally oppose. But I respect him. At least he is willing to do politics using the machine the way it was designed, rather than breaking it further—which is what the rest of the right-wing establishment seems to want to do.

Rand Paul is someone I feel I could reason with on most matters. I can't say that of most other politicians. And the fact that you're damning him with faint praise is actually enabling the others and contributing to the sense of futility that pervades so much of modern political discourse today.

Nobody here is going to get that, and tragically and alas, I am without mod points at this moment. But take comfort in the knowledge, sjames, that somewhere on the internet, someone LOLed.

Also, Mojolicious.

Oh - and Mojolicious.

Okay, seriously: Mojolicious is an excellent and fast way to jump from legacy Perl to modern, rapid turn-around, DevOpsy kinds of web work. I've written a fairly non-trivial web service in it, and it's everything a (Perl) guy could want. The documentation is a little opaque; the authors assumes too much knowledge about the approaches he's taking, but once you learn his... uh.. dialect, I guess.... Once you get the way he expresses stuff, it's pretty easy to do non-trivial work with it.

Also, learn CouchDB or similar, because NoSQL and regexes can do wonderful things together when you're dealing with large amounts of heterogeneous data. And just because some new things are actually worth it, start learning NodeJS and Angular (or similar), because they incorporate some very cool—and accessible—new approaches to things that will appeal to a dyed-in-the-wool PerlMonger.

Me? I'm a 51 year old ex-Web guy who just recently decided to move on to entirely new things after facing a similar dilemma, so pardon my hypocrisy. If I were to stay in software, that's what I'd be doing. :-)

TAKE 1

Director: That was good, but let's get another, just to be sure.

TAKE 2

Director: Yeah.... Not bad. I'm just not sure that we're really nailing this. Let's try another angle....

TAKE 3

Director: Cut and pri-

Director of Photography: We could see him breathing.

Director: Oh fer fuck... alright let's try again. (to actor:) You know we hired you just for this, right?

TAKE 4

Director [reviewing tape]: Yeah, I see it. (to actor:) You blinked. You know dead people generally don't blink, right? Right?!?

TAKE 5

Special Effects Coordinator: No, look, all I'm saying is it would cost less just to corset him so his ribs can't move than it would to CGI out the breathing. The risk of asphyxiation is minimal, and anyway, the insurance is still less than green-screening him.

[...]

TAKE 14

Director: Yeah, I fucking get it that you're tired and can't breathe. Now why don't you tell that to to those 14 teamsters over there who have been waiting SIX FUCKING HOURS for you to get one fucking scene right? Still tired, hotshot? Good, now get to your fucking first position.

[...]

TAKE 34

Director: Finally! Print that, it's fucking magic! Perfectly lifeless. Look at that part—right there—see that? A fucking fly walks right across his eyeball. Kid, that was fucking amazi- kid? You okay? Oh for fuck sakes. We lost another. Propsmaster! Get this body off my set. And can somebody please tell me why we can't just fucking offshore these parts?

'Allo? Polizei? Ve bin finden der... four... five... six... er, FOUR hundred kilos von der cocaine!'

When you've been Digital Resident longer than many of these so-called Digital Natives have been alive, it's hard to take the term very seriously.

It's also easy to imagine how a 50-something might bridle under the 'tutelage' of a 25 year old. There's a lot to be said for a society that rewards innovation and youthful energy, but that doesn't mean there's no longer any reason whatsoever to venerate our elders. And I, for one, would not hesitate to remind any youngster of that, should circumstances require.

But it's true that we oldsters shouldn't just assume that we deserve respect by default. Not at all. I should earn it, by reminding these callow youths that hipster used to actually mean something, and that I knew Mick Jagger back when he wrote music, and not only did I have an Apple ][, but I rebuilt it on Saturdays just for fun, and that was a time when cars had exhaust and tires actually squealed, and the TV had channels, and a real man earned his stripes by dismantling one of those cathode ray tubes without dying in the explosion. And THAT was being a geek back then, so fuck you, you sniveling little runt, go climb back up your mother's vagina for a few more years until you're ready for this world. Fuck.

Or something like that. :-)

Wait no more!

The article states that the analysts have identified 8,867 infected IP addresses. In April 2014, Netcraft confirmed that there were roughly 958,919,789 sites on the web at that time. Independently of them, W3Techs state that nearly 68% of servers are running some form of Unix, and the vast majority of those can be safely assumed to be running Linux.

So let's say, then, that better than half a billion sites are potentially vulnerable to this exploit, but in practical terms, over the course of years, a mere 8,867 of them actually were infected by this exploit. That means that, uh... carry the 9... somewhere around, oh... 0.0017734% of all vulnerable Linux sites have been compromised by a hitherto unknown and unmitigated active exploit.

Clearly this debacle is indisputable proof that Linux security is a shambolic, shameful charade that needs to be stopped before the world collapses into chaos.

Except that his indiscretions were discovered because his electronic cloak-and-dagger skills weren't what he thought they were, and that the FBI discovered this in an electronic dragnet, and that he, the director of the CIA, disclosed state secrets to his soon-to-be-jealous lover, which constitutes a greater potential breach of security than Snowden and Assange combined....

But aside from that, yeah, no relevance to the life of the average geek. None whatsoever.

If nothing's changed, then why do we need a law to un-change the unchanged?