To be clear, they are absolutely hacking her personal email, no doubt about it.

I'm willing to feel bad for anyone who gets illegally wiretapped -- except for people like Feinstein who openly call for practically everyone (except her) to be illegally wiretapped. She deserves it; the rest of us don't.

Fuck that. If an asshole makes fucktard arguments, then you can attack both the asshole and the fucktard arguments. Fuck Feinstein, she's an asshole, and her fucktard opinions are fucking retarded. I was astounded to read this news today -- not because the CIA was spying on Congress but because this piece-of-shit Senator had the ovaries to say out loud that it is somehow wrong to illegally spy on her, but not to illegally spy on other people. Fuck her. Let this be a lesson to her, and maybe she can think about it for the next 20 years after she gets voted out of office for having fucktard opinions.

I came here to read this article and engage in the discussion. I am leaving because of Beta. I will not use Slashdot with Beta. Fuck it. It's horrible.

I came here to engage in this conversation. I am leaving because of Beta. I will not read stories presented with Beta. It sucks.

Today the reason is because I tried to use the "Parent" link and I got "Coming soon!" Coming soon? What the fuck are you talking about? Don't you think you should write that feature before foisting Beta onto users?

You are successfully driving me away, Slashdot. It's been fifteen years, and I can see the end coming.

Bill Gates has $75,000,000,000. He could singly purchase a new PC for every single XP user. "Problem" solved.

Yep. It so happened once that I was reinstalling Linux on a laptop at the same time my wife was reinstalling Windows on a laptop. We both got it installed in a similar amount of time, then we wanted to watch a video. We both double-clicked on the video file and we both got an error saying the codec was absent. Then, our experiences diverged.

My experience was that the same dialog box which told me the codec was missing, offered to install it for me. I clicked OK, waited a few seconds, didn't restart even the program much less the whole computer, and the video started playing.

My wife clicked OK, quit the program, spent an hour searching the internet for codecs, manually installed one, restarted, and by the time Windows was ready to play the file, the movie was over and we went to bed.

All your data and configuration is intact, down to the desktop background

You say that as if the desktop background is in the top one thousand most important configs to survive an upgrade. It's not. When I upgraded my Mac, suddenly Maven was gone. That's a big failure. Also, several applications apparently weren't compatible, and were moved from where they had previously been (in Applications) to a place where I didn't know to go look for them. That's a big failure. Also, suddenly my Mac refused to open certain text files, claiming they were applications (like opening a .cgi text file with BBEdit, which is not in any way running the .cgi as an application). That's a big failure. Moreover, there is that ridiculous setting that prevents Macs from installing software which isn't personally blessed by the ghost of Steve Jobs -- until you enter a root password to disable the setting. That's a big failure.

Worst of all is the online-only upgrade system. What if I'm trying to scrub a Mac and I don't have an internet connection? Where's the install disk? That's an egregious, unforgivable failure.

I use Macs and think they are pretty good but let's not pretend that they don't have upgrade problems.

Perfectly good computer? I thought we were talking about computers running Windows?

I don't know what ISK is and I don't play Eve. All I'm saying is that the implied meaning of the OP is wrong because nonphysical things still have value, nonphysical things can still be taken without authorization, nonphysical things can also be taken with deprivation of use, and theft of nonphysical things is not legally different than theft of physical things. If someone steals your ISK or whatever it is that has value, you can press the case against them.

This is true for game goodies but it is all the more clear with an explicit commodity-currency like bitcoin. I'll eat my hat if any judge ever rules that theft of bitcoin doesn't count because bitcoins aren't physical.

That's kind of neat. It is almost as functional as the same concept done by Cyberduck about a decade ago. The Cyberduck site let you actually drag icons around, single click to select, double click to open. I guess I was expecting more when I went to this site, but it's still okay.

The cost of the hardware doesn't count in the marginal cost of production. Those are up-front costs. To be sure, those costs count, but in economic theory a competitive marketplace should eventually see prices fall to the marginal cost of production, which for Bitcoin would be pretty much just the electricity.

I've actually wondered about that. Do you know of a good dissection of the cost of bitcoin mining? I've looked but the pages I've found don't seem to be reliable.

Right. I agree with that (maybe; a company isn't always protected just because the company said something in the TOS).

But the GP was trying to say that because bitcoin is nonphysical, there is nothing lost. That is plainly wrong. The law has long since recognized nonphysical things of value. I was responding to that. Here's what GP said:

If you breeak into an imaginary bank and steal imaginary currency who do you imagine will care?

Liable for what? For unauthorized taking with depravation of use (that is, theft) of a nonphysical thing that has real value -- of course. It's pretty obvious, what did you think they would be liable for?

I don't own any bitcoins, but I hardly think security breaches at a couple early exchanges is a death knell for the idea.

Also, the unregulated nature of bitcoin is not at all the "only" benefit. It is one of many benefits.

The bitcoin idea is fine, the problem is with the value. A bitcoin's value should be the marginal cost of production, which is, what, a dollar or so. Above that, it's just speculation. At some point people will realize that the benefits of bitcoin are indistinguishable from the benefits of all the other altcoins, meaning the overall quantity of bitcoin is unlimited (insofar as it can be exchanged for doge or lite or whatever comes next), making the held value very low. ...In my opinion.

As an aside, what the motherfuck am I supposed to do to get two fucking carriage returns between paragraphs? I can't just type the two CRs, apparently, nor does inserting a <p> tag work. How fucking retarded is this piece of shit Beta idea anyway? Fuck beta.

"Why is anyone assuming this is being done by 'criminals'?"

Probably because many of us don't run around assuming the truth of unevidenced hypotheticals. But you go on and be you, okay? Don't let us keep you down.