> because often assholes will have something interesting to offer to a conversation
Yes, his complaints about the voices of the various hosts was fascinating and illuminating. Really opened my eyes to the situation.
> Privacy leak? Why the fuck would anyone want to hide this stuff?
Ever heard of swatting?
There are all kinds of grief that someone can cause you if they know where you live.
It's not a leak, it is required to ensure a fair and equitable taxation system.
You are going to have to explain that one. Property taxes don't vary by who owns the property. And if you don't pay the taxes, the state will seize the property, regardless of the owner of record so it isn't like you can get away with not paying just because your name isn't directly on the records.
Yeah, online property records are a big privacy leak. You can do things to obfuscate it -- put the property in a land trust if your state permits it (do it when you buy it, as historical information is also available) or buy it in the name of a new mexico llc (which have minimal reporting requirements, so you don't have to disclose your ownership of the llc - you can use a NM llc in any state).
The federal Australian government is also attempting to have the old growth forests in Tasmania de-listed as a world heritage area so they can log there.
If anyone wants to see how gorgeous Tasmania is, check out the Willem Dafoe movie "The Hunter" - the landscapes are stunning.
FWIW, the overwhelming number of acts of terrorism are nationalist/separatist. Something like 95% of cases. That includes stuff like white power in the US as well as things like the chechen conflict. Surprisingly, over the last 30 years or so the FBI logged more cases of puerto-rican nationalist terrorism than any other single motivation.
I'm calling BS on this. It sounds like it comes from a source that wants it to be true. At any rate, while I've heard it numerous times, I've seen no compelling evidence that it's true.
I'm willing to believe it. it isn't something people just talk about with anyone. Roughly two-thirds of all the women who have been close enough to trust me with private details like that has told me they have experienced at least one sexual assault and they have all been middle and upper-class. I'm sure that women who live in poverty have it even worse.
A recent article shows that the Pentagon is reconsidering uniform requirements to permit beards and turbans for Muslims. Now consider that beards have been outlawed by our military for decades, based on "discipline" considerations. No redneck, no Jew, no mountain man has been permitted to display a beard while in uniform. Suddenly - we are courting Muslims, so out of the goodness of our hearts, we are going to allow them to wear beards and turbans.
Hey dumbfuck! It isn't boogyman muslims, it is sikhs. Turbans have no religious significance to muslims.
Also, "decades" is technically correct, but only barely so - it was 1986 that beards were banned. Given the two centuries of beards being permitted in uniform before that, those deacdes are hardly a big deal.
Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Maybe we should update our privacy laws and stop allowing companies and the government to store all this information about us in shitty databases to begin with.
This.
When even the cops use these databases on on other cops you know the only solution is to stop building the databases in the first place.
Stalking pretty girls makes for a good visceral story, but the larger problem is one of political repression -- essentially using these databases to make it harder for political upstarts to instigate change, basically co-opting democracy.
BTW, that same database the cops used to stalk other cops? Also used to stalk political candidates.
Never quite understood this whole 'privacy of license plates' thing. If I look out the window right now I can see a dozen+ license plates. If I went for a walk I'd see hundreds. How is it private if there are two of them on every car for everyone to see?
The word privacy has multiple definitions. In this case, the apropriate definition is ephemeral. You looking at a license plate informs one person, you, about the time and location of that plate. You posting a picture of that online creates a perment record that potentially millions of people can access.
It is the same thing as using a debit card and the clerk looking at the card number versus the POS computer making a permanent record of the card number. The first is a very small risk, the second is essentially an unbounded risk as customers of Target, Neiman-Marcus and Michaels have come to find out.
Yeah, KDE is a freaking klassic desktop.
Fixed that for you.
It's a leash. Like your Sam's, BJ's or Costco membership. It makes you want to buy more stuff at Amazon (on account of you don't want to waste that $80 you handed them) and they make it all up on volume and margins.
This, 100% this. Prime is about making sure Amazon is at the top of your list of places to shop at. We all have such a list, and very few of us have the time to check thee or four merchants. Lots of people don't even have the time to do more than one merchant. Having a prime "membership" helps to make sure amazon always gets a chance at your money whenever you are ready to spend it.
I've been reading that guy's blog since day one:
> That's ~50 attacks short of the total, not counting ones they can't disclose due to classification rules.
Not according to NSA deputy director John C Inglis:
"The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted "over the lifetime" of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone. "There is an example that comes close to a 'but for' example," Inglis said."
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
And, there are no secret undisclosed successes - they never disclosed the details of the "54" attacks either, just the totals, keeping the details classified.
And you cannot fight irrationality, you cannot fight stupid, and you cannot fight well-intentioned ignorance.
I disagree. Irrationality is an argument that fundamentally people can't be trusted to govern themselves.
Sure, at the margins there are people who will never be rational. But what we've been doing is catering to those extremists and we don't have too. When we treat them as the norm of course the entire gestalt becomes one of irrational fear. We'll never be completely rid of that, but we can have a more level-headed society if we focus on our stengths and resilience rather than those rare-as-hen's-teeth vulnerabilities.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
