Snowden said he wrote emails that he can't produce despite taking almost two million documents. You can't explain that away since you are directly challenging him.

Ok, I'll stipulate that he claims he wrote them.

All this while intending to make the claim that he was a "whistle blower" on the US? And he forget the whistle he claims to have blown, repeatedly, while there? That doesn't wash.

I honestly and sincerely don't even see it as related. He may not even anticipated that someone would challenge. He was seeking to establish beyond credible doubt that the NSA was doing XYZ. That is "the story" he was looking to tell. That someone would try to argue that a big part of the story would be "hey, can you prove you tried to tell someone inside, first" possibly didn't even enter into his mind.

In the big picture, it doesn't even matter. What matters is what the NSA was doing, not how vigorously Snowden tried to change it from within first.

Regardless of how important this particular detail is to you, its at best a tangential detail to the main story.

Its just a small minded distraction to try and divert attention from the main story. Like obsessing over Julian Assange's significant personal flaws instead of focusing on the actual wiki leaks leaks.

Maybe because they don't exist?

That doesn't fly within this thread of the sub-argument.

You'd stipulated they DID exist and contained the NSA's response that they were legal. You can't now argue that maybe they didn't exist, at least not within this sub-thread.

Or they discuss classified programs that are still classified?

They could redact them. Even if they were just "walls of black ink", they would establish that they existed.

I expect that the NSA has done that in the proper forums for discussing classified matters: in meetings with the administration, in closed sessions of Congress, and before the courts in closed hearings.

You are contorting like an acrobat. You are arguing that "if they exist, the NSA is rightfully keeping them secret, therefore we should assume Snowden is lying about their existence, and that they don't exist". That's not even coherent.

Seems to me then, its perfectly reasonable to accept Snowden's claim they exist.

Which "general consensus" is that?

Lets see:
the 5 member Privacy and Civil liberties Oversight Board created by Congress ruled them illegal.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled them illegal.

United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled them illegal.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/b...

And even the NSA itself, has ADMITTED substantial wrongdoing.

http://thehill.com/policy/tech...

"The one on Slashdot?"

Yeah, sure, the one on slashdot too. ::eyeroll::

Isn't it ... "odd" ... that Snowden could manage to steal 1.7 million documents, but apparently didn't manage to get copies of his own emails showing his alleged attempts to raise the issues through official channels?

a) Because when I suspect my employer of illegal wrong doing doing I always write an email? Oh, wait, no, we're trained that those sorts of inquiries are supposed to go through channels without permanent records for legal liability reasons. You can argue that that's a bad thing, but that's reality in a LOT of places.

b) While I'm sure he'd have been capable of snagging his email, maybe it simply didn't occur to him.

You don't think it could be because even if he did "raise the issue" of legality he was given the reasons why they were legal and chose to steal the documents anyway?

If your argument is that Snowden didn't keep and release them because they would contradict and harm his 'narrative', then why is the NSA not bending over backwards to get them out there?

The NSA should be happy to provide us with such a relevant record that details their dutiful adherence to the law, and how they conscientiously explained to Snowden why he was mistaken in raising concerns.

If you really beleive what you wrote, why do think the NSA is refusing to release them?

And if you really believe what what the NSA was doing was legal, how do you reconcile that with the general consensus that a great deal of what they were doing was not, in fact, legal.

didn't you get the memo?

Lol, evidently not. I don't play D3. Good on them... i guess.

So now you have to use a 3rd party site? Has anything really changed, other than to make the whole situation a bit less offensively in ones face to the people who don't want to engage in that "meta-game"?

Is it still the case, that if you want to be 'competitive' that you will engage in that sort of play-style? After all, just because blizzards not hosting the AH, doesn't mean its not still there, or that its not still the "best" way to advance in that game?

The speed of light through space is distinct from the rate at which the universe itself expands. Weird fun things ensue. :p

I would have picked something more mainstream; its very nearly just as bad: Diablo III for example.

Chest drops, valuable rare farming, AH selling... its all there. And some people are just as obsessed for exactly the same reasons.

It applies just as well.

There are huge tax advantages for income properties, in terms of you can take losses against capital gains on them, but you can't on a property you used as a residence? Why?

"Under 26 U.S.C. 121 an individual can exclude, from his or her gross income, up to $250,000 ($500,000 for a married couple filing jointly) of capital gains on the sale of real property if the owner used it as primary residence for two of the five years before the date of sale."

You can't claim take losses because you have this massive exemption on gains on your primary residence. In the vast majority of cases that's a much better deal for tax payers.

There is already enough food and power in the world to give to everyone.

Enough food yes, for sustenance, but we could use more. And its still produced by a lot of human labour. Far less than 2 centuries ago, but still far more than I'm suggesting we need to get to. And its not in the right places. There are a variety of deficiencies in energy to transport it, and labor to distribute it. So we need more automation, and limitless energy.

When it gets to that level of food availability then sure.

Ah, so your argument isn't that you disagree with me at all then. You merely wish to argue that we aren't there yet. But there is no disagreement there.

Even when food is free, the effort to go and grab it is still an effort. Effort which I will not give away willingly. Go get your own plate and push your own damned button and stop taking the food off of my plate. I did not push the button and walk 15 feet so you could sit there and take the food off of my plate.

Is this a problem you experience often today? You have guests over for dinner and they are too lazy to serve themselves or cut and chew their own food and they try to suck it down a straw right from your mouth?

I've no argument that with plentiful food society would still have social norms and rules, and I think we can agree they'd be expected to order their food and have it delivered to them via whatever the socially accepted process was.

I'm not suggesting a world where people are going to climb into bed with you at night with a sandwich they took out of your fridge, and its ridiculous that you even raising this sort of scenario as a reason plentiful food "won't work".

The real question is how can it be done. If it requires taking even the smallest thing from someone else, you are wrong.

It would require precisely the smallest thing from everyone.

It is better to die than to force slavery onto others.

Yes, I imagine all 30 billion people on earth dying out because not one of them was willing to volunteer to work for 1 hour to produce all the food the world would need for a year.

Hopefully someone will volunteer, even out of their own self interest, since that 1 hour produces all the food they will need for themselves for the year too.

I guess sure, if nobody steps, I'm not going to force someone to put in 1 hour of work in a year. That iteration of humanity deserves to die out.

What you dream of will never happen until their are fully autonomous robots harvesting raw material from outside of the planet and the ability to transform those raw materials into any other configuration required.

We actually don't have to get quite that far along. Productivity will reach a tipping point where charity is sufficient long before we reach full mechanization.

At some point, suppose we develop space based solar power that taps that limitless fusion reactor 8 minutes away to a degree we can't currently even imagine. Some mega-corp builds a for profit power transfer station and charges market rates for power. So far so good, I'm sure you can imagine that.

Meanwhile costs come down, they get more and more efficient, and cheaper to build. At some point they become cheap enough that wealthy individuals can buy them, and yet they produce enough power for an entire country.

A generation further down, a rich philanthropist buys few dozen, puts their maintenance in a trust fund, and provides power to the world as his legacy. hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours allocated to each and every person on the planet.

Think its impossible? Maybe. I don't. We're seeing all sorts of things happen like this with the internet. Wikipedia for example. When the cost of providing a service falls to below the level of charity required to make it happen, it can happen.

We're a long ways out for power or food still, but if you look at the trends, we could get there.

You do not get the car if you manage to hack into it.

I guess that depends how well he hacks it. :p

Forced charity is not charity.

That doesn't answer the question.

There is enough food in the world right now to feed everyone. Does that mean everyone should eat? No. Some should die.

I'm not necessarily a fan of everyone on the planet, but I'm not convinced "some should die" simply due to food allocation difficulties.

While that food is edible, it has value. That value belongs to someone.

Unless it belongs to everyone. Like oxygen, nobody holds individual claim to it. There is nothing "inherently right" (or wrong) about something belonging to someone. If there were enough food that you could have all you wanted, would you really wander around saying "this food is mine", "this food is mine"... is that how you treat air? Of course not.

Remember, I harvest for ME. If you expect me to harvest for you, you are sadly mistaken

I don't expect you to spend time harvesting food at all. Let the 'bots do it. Help yourself to as much as you feel like eating. Treat it like air. Now, yes, if you take more than you can eat, pile it in your cave and then jealously guard so much of it that others are starting to suffer.. then yeah... you deserve to be treated like criminal, and a nutter, because you would be one.

Imagine if you did that with air, walked into a building, and starting sucking all the oxygen out to the point others couldn't breathe, while ranting about how you harvest for you. And everyone is looking at you like you are off your rocker, because if you want some air, just breathe. There's plenty. Of course you'd be locked up as a criminal.

Soon (geologically speaking), there will NOT be enough clean air full of oxygen to breathe, at that point, it becomes a scarce resource.

Possibly. Not necessarily. But either way you are missing the point -- the point was that food and energy could become as ubiquitous as oxygen is today, not that oxygen might become scarce enough to start hoarding.

Either eventuality is possible, which one are you working towards?

I do not begrudge anyone anything they have earned for themselves.

And I don't begrudge anyone clean air, whether they've worked for it or not, and if we could support public works projects to deliver limitless energy and abundant food I wouldn't begrudge stoners and layabouts that either.

To you, he is a criminal.

Not at all. Now if we had sufficient food and energy for all and Johnny Depp decided to hoard more than he could use simply to deprive others from having enough, then he would be a criminal. Why would Johnny Depp do that though? Why would anyone? Except a criminal or a nutcase.

you can make food and energy available like that, more power to you

As a species we've continually generated more food and more energy with increasingly less effort. If the trend continues (and why shouldn't it?) then eventually the labour of one person working the equivalent of one day can through the magic of technology and science produce enough food and power for the world.

Somehow or another, I expect that you want to make food and energy available like that by taking from others

Why would I want that?

Long story short, even if food, shelter, and clothing were freely available due to some unforeseen technological advance, I would be totally happy with that. If you think that just because there is enough food, shelter, and clothing existing in this world to feed everybody that you can take it from those who made it and own it to give to everyone else, I would say you are smoking crack.

You keep circling around to it being something that you are going to be making, with sweat pouring from your brow, and god forbid anyone else touch the fruits of your labor. Jeebus, let it go, nobody wants your sweaty food. I'm not even sure why you want it so badly. In a world where enough is produced by autmated labor that it can be consumed the way we consume oxygen now -- what is the point of getting worked up over ownership. If someone takes "your food" just get some more, but why would anyone take "your food" in the first place, when they can get their own, in as large a quantity they like, just as easily?

Getting worked up over it, is like making your dinner guests promise not to steal the oxygen in your house when they come to visit.

until I am at the same level of reward

How much food do you need? Your appetite is not insatiable. As soon as we can produce more than anyone can eat, the whole concern is moot. We are certainly no where near there yet... but take a look at the long term trend.

Look at the quantity of food a factory farm generates per labour hour compared to even 200 years ago. Fast forward 200 years... George Jetson complaining about having to go to work to push one button and then go home starts to seem pretty plausible. And the year after that? We both know the button can damn well push itself.

Clean water, clean air, limitless energy, enough food... if we COULD do that, we should.

Going through pointless rituals, just in case, and because it won't do any harm, is religion, not computer science.

Gotcha. Security shouldn't be layered or redundant. As long you've got one method that should be secure your good right.

I ran servers that were vulnerable to heartbleed. However, damage was effectively mitigated because although they were on the public facing internet, connections were logged through a gateway, and firewalls strictly limited the ip addresses that could make connections at all.

Wasn't all that witch doctor chicken bones? If OpenSSL had been without flaws, those extra layers wouldn't have mattered.

Are you really willing to put all your trust in truecrypt or whatever you like to use, in a situation you don't have to? If its encrypted and there are no backdoors or weaknesses in the implementation then encrypted SHOULD be good enough... but that's a big IF. Why take the chance if you don't have to?

That's not religion. That's common sense.

Are you saying that the only reason he works hard is so that he can keep other people poor?

Not at all, that is not an inference that was intended at all.

It is not important that everyone else not have what he has.

But yet it IS important that he get more than an average person? Your original response made it abundantly clear that he should get more than his peers. Regardless of how much everyone else has, your friend should get MORE?

"MORE" is a relative term; that only has meaning when compared to someone else. You didn't argue that your friend should be able to work hard to get the things that he wants -- you argued your friend should be able to work hard to get MORE than other people.

He is motivated to do what he does because more resources grant him more security and more interesting situations.

EXACTLY. This is what I expected.

I asked those leading questions to illustrate what you suggested with your argument, where you implied he need to get MORE. I expanded that to its inevitable conclusion. But he doesn't really need or want MORE at all does he?

So he would not care whether or not everyone had an equal share of wealth, provided he can get what he wants for himself: sufficient security, and the ability to pursue the opportunities that interest him, and so forth. That would satisfy him.

So it seems he'd be perfectly happy if the average were sufficiently higher, such that he was secure and was able to pursue those interesting situations.

Is demanding that others be inappropriately rewarded a positive personality trait? No.

Define "inappropriately rewarded". Because without context you just wrote that sharing and charity are both negative personality traits.

Reality says that there are limited resources.

Finite yes. But is there less then enough? What if there was enough.

There is only so much food

What if mechanization produced more than we all could eat?

only so much energy

What if we advanced and harnessed enough via fusion or solar or whatever to provide all we need, not just what I need, but enough for everyone to have enough?

only so much oxygen

That's a good example, of something that there currently IS enough of. Nobody has to pay for it. Do you think people who work harder should get more? Do you think layabouts should get less? Do you really have any objection to there being enough clean oxygen for everyone to breath as much they like?

I am perfectly fine with people carving resources out for themselves. I am not okay with people taking resources from the people who are gathering those resources because those people feel that they deserve something just for being alive.

Do you go around carving oxygen out for yourself? Imagine food and energy were available like that. Would you begrudge other people food and energy if you had all you wanted?

I can guarantee you that if you and your friends come to take what me and my friends have created, we will kill you. Thieves are weak. Builders are strong. You have no chance.

Wow, that was a left turn into nutjob absurdity just there at the end. Lets just pretend you didn't go there.

Now explain to me why he should be rewarded the same as someone who does not do what he does

Firstly, you cherry picked your friend out of the teeming masses of people who work hard and said "hey this guys doing really great and he works really hard, why doesn't he deserve it!?" Of course he deserves it. I'm not saying he doesn't.

Now go back to that teeming mass of humanity and look at all the people who work just as hard and are living in a one bedroom apartment trying to make ends meet. Do they not also deserve better? Why does your friend deserve 200k per year and they don't?

Trust me, your friend isn't more motivated. He just got lucky. That's not to say the choices he made were not a factor, or the fact that he works hard is not a factor. They absolutely shifted the odds in his favor and he deserves recognition for the effort... but he could just have easily been unsuccessful in spite of his "hard work". Lots of people are.

For just one example of thousands, your friend could have randomly contracted cancer at a young age and it would have completely changed the direction of his life. Lets assume he's still be the same motivated hard working guy today... the years in treatment would have taken their toll, lost opportunities... time away from work and school for treatment, etc...would he have ended up precisely where he is today if he'd had a 7 year struggle with cancer in his early 20s? Its doubtful.

Secondly, the way you've phrased the question, it seems that its not merely sufficient that your friend be satisfied with the quality of his life for its own sake, but that its especially important that he get MORE than most other people? Can you explain to me why you feel its so important that everyone else not have the things your friend has? Would your friends enjoyment of his life be diminished if more other people were rewarded the same as him?

Does your friend really value getting more than you that highly? Is that really the only reason he's motivated to do what he does? Just to have more than the people around him? Is that really a positive personality trait? A virtue? Something humanity should put on a pedestal and say "be like that"?

Why?

I really really really am hoping that you are talking about those people who inherited their money and use their position of power to reap more power rather than talking about my friend who is actually working

You raise an issue here unintentionally -- that only further illustrates the level of blind luck success really is.

Not only do you have bright motivated hard working people who are not successful, we have wealthy people who have done nothing at all.

And this is the system you favor? Because sometimes, if you are lucky (or at least not unlucky), working hard pays off, but probably far less than many of your wealthy peers simply inherited? And if you get unlucky... well... sucks to be you. That's your idea of a good system?

Because throwing the keys away on an encrypted drive is more secure than overwriting an unencrypted drive with zeros, as the data recovery experts will be glad to tell you.

But that's a false choice. There is a 3rd option... do both.

Take your most private information, encrypt it, and put it on a flash drive.

Then go and sell or give that flash drive away to someone else.

Are you really going to say... well they don't have the keys, so we're good. Here you go. And hand them all your data intact (but encrypted).

Or would you maybe just maybe think, yeah its encyrpted... but why tempt fate? Maybe I'll erase it first.

I mean is there any good reason NOT to erase it first?

But it is a real world coding language.

For sure.

The reason C++ is a bad learning language is that its overwhelmingly complicated -- both the syntax due to all the extensions, but also the evolution of the standard libraries with tons of ways of doing the same thing, and then throw backs for close but not quite 100% complete compatibility with C.

It's really beneficial to approach C/C++ with already having a grounding in structured programming, data structures, etc. And ideally a course in C without C++ so you can see where one ends and the other begins. (And its also a smaller bite to chew.)

I came to C/C++ by way of BASIC then Pascal then C/C++ (self taught in high school) and while that's not really a modern route to take, I think the idea still holds. By the way, the order of languages I was exposed to in university, was Modula2, Lisp, Java, then C++, and then various other courses were in special purpose languages ML, Smalltalk, Verilog, Visual Basic, Maple, there was a course I took that used some pseudo assembler language I've forgotten the name of, and probably a few more I've forgotten about completely. I think I graduated pretty well rounded in terms of exposure to different programming paradigms, which is what I think the program was trying to achieve rather than mastery in any given language.

It sounds like the course you are describing is a more advanced algorithms class -- implementing quicksort, or shortest path finding in graphs... so everyone in it should already know how to program. And C++ honestly sounds like a suitable language to teach that stuff with.

You assume that the majority of people are going to use that free time contributing to society.

I assume no such thing. We were only talking about *motivated* people. The one's who wouldn't be satisified by lounging about drinking beer and watching TV.

What are they doing with their free time?

Topping the charts for "happiness" in the world, ranking high as entrepreneurs, opportunity... etc.

trying to claim people would automatically use the vacated time for the greater good of society is incredibly disingenuous.

That's fair, and I didn't mean to say that. As I said, the context of the conversation was "motivated people who work twice as hard as everyone else"... I assume *those* people would find something fulfilling to do, whether its a "contribution" to society or they spend all their time climbing mountains and skydiving is beside the point -- I'm sure they'll be doing something they find interesting.