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Ah, ok...
In case you missed it, I actually spelled out the point I was making in the once sentence you didn't quote:
Sometimes (read: most of the time) the desire for privacy has nothing to do with obscuring bad behaviour.
I said nothing about the rationales people actually use, but rather was pointing out that the rationale for removal of privacy (essentially, that only bad people have stuff they don't want made public) posited by OP was flawed.
Does it matter? It stopped the plot; just lather, rinse, and repeat, and POOF! No more terrorism, with the additional bonus of not spending crazy amounts of treasure spying on millions of innocent people.
Or it just means that they change their methods to ones you either can't track, or have a harder time tracking.
Such as? Can you provide an example of this method of communication that is fast, efficient, and somehow impervious to the reach of clandestine government agencies?
No, seriously, what are they going to do, use fucking carrier pigeons? Not likely.
As a result you don't know when or where they will strike.
9/11/2001, the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, the Madrid subway bombing, the Boston bombing...
Doesn't seem TIA (which is the basic concept all this surveillance boils down to) has been doing much to stop terrorism as it stands, so that little excuse is getting a mite bit difficult to maintain, wouldn't you think? Hell, in at least 2 of the aforementioned attacks, the government had the fucking intel, and did nothing with it. If the ultimate goal of domestic spying is truly to curb attacks on American soil, don't you think they would, oh, I dunno, actually try to stop the attacks they know about?
I like your glib hand waving though. Could you do it a little faster? It's a bit warm in my room.
Well, hello Mr. Pot. Hard to recognize you with that black shit all over.
Well, if you give them the crack-slam, then you are at least in the position the government wants you in
Curses, hadn't thought of that!
P.S. Always wanted to mention, never had the chance: Your sig is by far my all time favorite; hell, I quote it to folks almost daily.
Well played, sir.
Fuel surcharges for goods? Aren't transportation costs covered by tolls, vehicle registration, car taxes, taxes on gasoline, and other transport related things?
No - those things pay for the roads the goods are transported on. The fuel surcharges are tacked on by the companies that transport the goods, not the government.
Obtuse response aside, I'm certain my point was clear.
You need proof before people will believe something this bad.
But it shouldn't be a surprise at all. Give people unchecked power and they will abuse it. What part of that do these people not understand?
The part where they realize that liberty and freedom are harder work than just letting Big Brother run their lives.
Never underestimate the power of a lazy person's attachment to their 'comfort zone.'
>"Uh, to whom am I speaking?"
I made it a habit of not telling who I am on the (home) phone unless the other person identify him/herself first.
That's a good, safe habit to engage in.
Personally, unless the caller immediately gives me their name, organization, and purpose of the call, they get the crack-slam.
...how exactly does that not give the would-be terrorists the exact information they need to know in order to abandon their plot, go into hiding, and start a different plot a week later?
Does it matter? It stopped the plot; just lather, rinse, and repeat, and POOF! No more terrorism, with the additional bonus of not spending crazy amounts of treasure spying on millions of innocent people.
They'll pay you in the same amount of time it took you to release DNF.
Sooo... never, then.
Of course they care about profits, it's all they care about. However, they're not too worried about that when suckers keep buying their crap, regardless of how shitty it is. The vgcats comic is right: if you don't like the game, why did you buy it? Yes, it's hard to try games before you buy them, but MS and EA have long reputations for shittiness, so at this point if you buy anything from them, you deserve whatever you get. It's not like you're taking a chance on some new indie game studio's product; I've been reading stories about how awful EA is for well over a decade now.
My posting of the comic has nothing to do with the quality of Mass Effect 3 on launch day, and everything to do with the attitude that companies like EA have towards their customers (without whom there would be no EA).
But yea, you are right in a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" sense.
This article is about how you can get free advertisement. Move along.
Yep, because nothing makes me more interested in checking out a game than learning of an unpopular change.
It serves as a reminder that EA are a bunch of assholes. Lest we forget.
Verily; behold the obligatory
So the tax payers will be funding roads with this technology for the use of very few users?
From TFS:
Volvo sees our future long-haul trucks and buses drawing the juice they need from the road itself,
Unless you buy... well, nothing, then you as well as the rest of us very much are "users" of the technology, and would benefit from not having to pay those damn fuel surcharges for goods.
In one of the links of above there is a nice hint:
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world’s largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes.
That seem to mean that they are actively holding the fix of 0day bugs, waiting for the "government" (or the people that have access to that information) make a successful exploit and use it, before releasing a patch.
That does explain why the feds get so pissy every time some independent security researcher finds a 0day and publicly discloses it...
"Dammit, we were using that exploit!"
Easier for us, those who read Slashdot...
Aww, c'mon man! How hard is it to run the XAMPP installer?
...but not easier for your average user that can barely sync their data through the cloud.
...
Well, shit, when you're right you're right...
He's right.
Of course he is; he's "The Wizard of Woz."
That there aren't millions of people storming the halls of government with torches and pitchforks is more telling than anything else of how oppressed the USA has become.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but as "storming the halls of government" would require the resources to make a 2000 mile journey (one way), as well as very likely costing me my source of income, my home, my family... not really feasible.
Now, you coastal folks who can hop on a train and be to DC in a couple hours? YOU have less excuse.
What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman? A used car salesman knows when he's lying.