Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:Beautiful?!? (Score 1) 141

by SomewhatRandom (#42562515) Attached to: CES: IN WIN Displays Costly but Beautiful Computer Cases (Video)

Amen, I'll stick with Silverstone cases - minimalistic design, well engineered, and quiet. Why do enthusiast cases have to be lit up like christmas trees or look like they came out of some teenage mutant ninja turtles cartoon. Efficient and functional design in and of itself can be beautiful.

Comment: Re:Can't have it both ways (Score 1) 302

by SomewhatRandom (#41011057) Attached to: The Rapid Rise of License Plate Readers

Normally, I weigh in on the side of individual privacy... but

I consider this information to be relatively public by nature and there are considerable benefits to having this type of system in place.

Ex:
Resolving amber alerts faster, Locating stolen vehicles faster, Improved efficiency of local governments, etc...

Balancing the need for individual privacy/rights with protecting the individual rights of other citizens, while operating within a limited budget is a tricky thing. The need to avoid the "slippery slope" is great, and the loss of individual privacy should always be considered a great cost, but a cost-benefit analysis should be done. The following should be kept in mind though:

1.) Individual privacy is not priceless.
  (How much Individual Privacy have some people freely given up just to use facebook?)
2.) How does the cost of hiding information like X impact the individual rights of others?

City budget cuts are pretty common these days and often translate to fewer police. I would argue that a system like this could improve efficiency and help lessen the impact of cuts like these.

I believe the information should be purged when it is older than 2 months in order to help limit the scope of the system to a near-time discovery tool as oppose to a long-term tracking mechanism.

Comment: Sky=Falling (Score 3, Interesting) 197

by SomewhatRandom (#36784486) Attached to: Judge Says You Can't Know If Google Spies For NSA

Short version = I think I speak for most individuals when I say, Duh.

Long Version =

The illusion of anonymity that is the Internet. Does anyone honestly believe you have any real expectation or right of anonymity online?

When you hit a webserver... Logs are generated/stored
When traffic you generate is either passed through or blocked at a firewall... Logs are generated/stored
When you use a search engine from a company in the advertising industry (ex: google)... logs are generated/stored
Rinse and repeat for just about anything you do online... and add in a dash of other miscellaneous things like tracking cookies, flash cookies, etc...

In some cases logs are obfuscated, but not usually. I mean c'mon - legitimate advertising companies have gotten pretty good at targeting ads for users by datamining and trending data, do you honestly believe the NSA isn't doing this to a creepy scope and scale?

Correlating data mined from multiple sources (logs, cookies, etc...). is an expensive process from a resource standpoint. Anonymity through obfuscation, apathy, and prohibitive costs may be seemingly effective, but it is not absolute.

Q: What do you call a principal female opera singer whose high C is lower than those of other principal female opera singers? A: A deep C diva.

Working...