If there was a 10+ points score - and I had any mod points - I'd vote em all to this post. Try, slashdot, to at least maintain the appearances of impartiality. First, I'd like to know who wrote this article, and why the inaccurate meme of 'ooo, tech companies are f'd by NSA spying' was promoted as the lede. Second, I'd like to see the catalog or other evidence. Der Spiegel says 'you can't trust the gov but trust us to be unbiased.' I guess I'd accept something like "we'd share this catalog, with you but .... " and tell us why. I clicked through the Der Spiegel links and didn't find a link to the catalog, or a pic of it ...

as a parent, I'm horrified the author whored out her 5 year old for this article. Her article will still be readable on the internet, 15 years from now when her now 5 year old, pre kindergarten kid is a young adult. Her future adult's prospective employers, prospective spouses, etc, will all be able to read her DNA results. If the author wanted to share about herself ... especially as her child isn't genetically hers ... that'd be fine. Imagine her writing about her significant other, without his consent ? 'oh yea, my hubby has a marker for testicular cancer, sucks being him.' Guess that's the pandoras box that genetic testing opens up, exposing privacy of this kid without their ability to have a clue what they were consenting to.

I personally am ambivalent. I'm 'spy'd on' by my employer here in the US. I had to submit to a background checks that went back to high school to get a job. And in general, the leaks haven't revealed anyone "harmed" (yes, I'll be modded to negative 1000 for saying that but ...). For 'why' my sense is that there're a lot of 'me's ' around who say: - I have nothing to hide - warfare has changed - the rules that the genius Jefferson wrote 250 years ago didn't consider asymmetrical terrorism or email - spying on us citizens to date has been a conceptual issue - the spying hasn't led to some other wrong

amazing that a basic background check didn't catch this. I've been through a few for new jobs in 2013, and they're really thorough, going back to high school.

oops, my post didn't read right. Meant you end up with pockets of folks *who all think alike*

/. needs many more like you. Disagree without being disagreeable. /. sniffs like the other side of fox news: you know what their position is before you even hear it. since /. is self moderating, like zip codes , MD vs VA, etc, you end up with pockets of folks just like you.

You meant the possessive "their" but used "there." You, ironically, sadly, and unknowingly, made your point re sucky teachers, oh so well. So when you go back home, and visit, teach your cousins that English is one messed up language, what with the your/you're, and the their/there/they're stuff. As I tell my kids - get over it. Teach them the meaning of the stuff that all sounds the same, but when you confuse them, in writing, you just appear illiterate.

surprised no one's talked about this (yes I know TFA was about job displacement) - 'script kiddies' driving trucks off bridges to see what happens - mobs 'rerouting' that shipment of cool new tech - nation states crashing thousands 18 wheelers (or however many they'll now have) simultaneously and grinding traffic to a halt nationwide yea, yea, it's FUD. But independent of the FUD, there's a lot of work to do before the security aspects are solid.

my oldest just went into his freshman year at a nearby college. They *gave* him a mac book pro and an ipad. And he's not in an engineering or science school or degree. Is that unusual? My techie alma matter a loooong time ago was starting to give out then cutting-edge PCs There were options of new, used, rent and e- books. He asked me what I thought re paper vs ebooks. My thoughts were that in his 3rd or 4th year, when he gets access to the "for his major equivalents" of K&R's *C programming* or Aho and Ullmans *compilers* he can buy used versions of those as references or to carry around from move to move until he eventually tossed them. Till then he was all too happy to have his text books on the ipad.

would be interesting if the research(ers) could remove the tourists. Maybe tourists are identified as folks who spent most of their time tweeting from a zip other than Manhattan (e.g. they tweet most of their time from Scranton, PA, so NYC looks pretty darn cool). Enough of us laypeople blathering on about twitter as a surrogate poling technique: Time for Nate Silver to ride in and call statistical BS on tweeting as relevant means of gauging sentiment. But maybe he's busy creating data for ESPN guys calling the over/under for the opening season NFL games.

did you take notes in English class on a laptop ? :) (pls don't mod me down, the irony of the post made me do it )

in an inverted fashion from how Nate Silver surfaced way back in 08 that under-representing cell-phone-only voters in polls under- represented the young, it'd seem that using twitter as a representative sampling will under-represent the old - e.g. those who vote more than the young do? http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/obamas-lead-looks-stronger-in-polls-that-include-cellphones/?_r=0

really ?

just a matter of time till it's done

Rob - 2nd the original post. Go back and read the transcript. It was you and whoever Robin is talking vaguely about inside stuff, and making noise about circumventing paywalls. What I'd expected you to talk about: 1 - when did you see the decline of wapo coming, and what did you do to position yourself ? or were you just surprised one day when folks were shown the door ? Were all the old school folks at wapo blind about craigslist, etc ? did anyone *try* to educate the execs at wapo back when the internet was coming to age in the 90's ? 2 - how can a free press (as in press, not beer) in the western world still afford to pay experienced professionals to go places, and reliably and legibly report on stuff when their words are given away for free (as in beer). You've manged to assemble a free-lancers living from various sources, is that the way the future will be ? Why would anyone that wants to make a living go to college as a reporter ? Can you propose a - tech based - proposal that the geeks at /. can go implement over a weekend?