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I, for one, don't really use Google+, but it's not because of any particular problem other than, "No one else is using it," with just a smidge of "I don't know what I'm supposed to be using it for," thrown in.

It does seem to me like "Hangouts" should be its own thing, along with chat and VoIP. If anything, those things should should sooner be integrated into Gmail somehow. I'm not sure I want that, but it would make more sense, at least, since it's all, roughly speaking, private communications.

I also think that there should be a separate web application that is, "Where my phone automatically uploads my photos, where I can organize them and track them myself, but they're private." Personally, it just makes me a little uncomfortable for that to be bolted straight on to the "photo sharing social networking site," but maybe that's just me. I'm old. I feel ok if the social networking site can connect in and pull photos from the private site. Hell, even if I know it's all ultimately stored in the database, that's not what bothers me. It's just to have my private stuff be in the same interface as the publicly shared stuff, without a clear apparent distinction... it worries my poor little monkey brain.

Ultimately, between Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, I tend to use Facebook for sharing posts/photos/updates. Not because I like it or think it's good, and only somewhat because my friends seem to use it more. As much as anything, I think it's because it's the site that confuses me the least.

There's not much point in arguing with you because you've shown that you're both too stupid to understand the point and too stubborn to actually think for 30 seconds before pushing your own tired nonsensical point.

But here's the thing in a very basic, simple, easy to understand explanation: End-to-end encryption doesn't suddenly become useless because you've trusted a 3rd party with the encryption keys. When you trust a 3rd party, then the encryption remains as strong as that 3rd party is trustworthy.

This is especially important to know, since we're already trusting other 3rd parties as part of the security chain. If I don't trust GPG or anyone auditing their code, then I can't trust the security of things encrypted with GPG, regardless of who has the keys.

Regardless, encrypting individual messages rather than relying solely on SSL during transmission does add security against various kinds of attacks and breaches. I could give examples, but do you want them? Would examples help, or are you, as I suspect, simply being difficult because you're an asshole who can't admit to being wrong?

> Women are already empowered enough.

In the USA, it's gotten profoundly better in my lifetime, but even here it is hardly complete.

Empowering women also leads to lower birth rates and reduces poverty profoundly. One of the biggest reasons that ISIS, al Quaeda, and other fundamentalist groups grow is that they offer poor, disenfranchised people, especially unemployed young men. It's a vicious cycle of violence and poverty, and it _cannot break_ without control of birth rates, becuase there is _no work_ for these young men. Their only hope of prosperity, whether physical or spiritual, becomes the gang and tribal groups because if they do not join, the gangs and fanatics will _take_ their money, their turf, and eventually their lives.

Depends on your perspective. From a national security standpoint, if you really thought Saddam Hussein was going to be unleashing terrible modern weaponry, I would say job well-done. ISIS can probably keep that region from developing nuclear weapons any time in the next thousand years.

But from a humanitarian standpoint, what is worse than the prevalent rape, torture, murder, forced conversion, and the kind of oppression that outlaws any opposing thought? The oppressive leaders in the region such as Saddam Hussein have deserved credit for holding back the tide of lawless extremism, but what evil is it that ISIS could be credited with standing in the way of? Being as evil as possible is pretty much their objective. Saddam tried to conceal his atrocities. They literally publish theirs in their newsletters.

He apparently leaked information about 140,000 accounts. His sentence was vacated and conviction reversed on appeal because the appeals judge felt he should have been tried in his home state.

It's too bad this judge was not available for the "Amateur Action" computer porn case in 1996 (http://fac-staff.seattleu.edu/mchon/web/Cases/thomas.html).

The "lighting a fire under the IT staff" too often results in the manager of IT having meetings, submitting checklists and expense reports, and doing _nothing_ to address the actual issue. Too often it's not a specific line of code, which can be corrected, but poor practices and attitudes about what security can and should be applied to projects.

Agreed. Everyone should know your real name, your address and the fact that you rape kittens. No limits to speech I say!

The XKCD plot just makes me see gold and white at different levels of brightness. But I did find this color illusion featuring yellow and blue. The dogs are actually the same color, which you see if you look at them individually through a small aperture
http://i.imgur.com/sh5NwCK.jpg

Make it pretty obvious that at some point your brain switches from wanting to see blue to wanting to see yellow based on the color context. It would appear some of us are slightly different in where transitions like that occur.

Ah, so I guess the answer is, "a little of each."

Mark Twain supposedly said, "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it dozens of times!" (Implying that even in the late 19th century, there was a reason to want to quit smoking).

Is Digital Rvier still around? I downloaded a copy of Windows 7 Home OEM about nine or ten months ago for my wife's shitty ASUS laptop (which is now going to get Linux Mint tossed on it and be transformed into a glorified video player).

Oh, I know. He was well rewarded for playing Spock. I think we all knew this was coming for a while; he had largely retired from public appearances, and then the reports a few days ago that he had been admitted to the hospital.

I plan on celebrating his life and his unique and significant contributions by watching a collection of my favorite ST:TOS episodes;

- Amok Time (who doesn't want to watch horny Vulcans fight to the death)
- City On The Edge Of Forever (more a Kirk episode, but Spock plays a pretty damned important role)
- Doomsday Machine (great scene where Spock removes Decker from command)
- Mirror, Mirror(evil Spock is just so fucking cool, and who doesn't enjoy watching Chekhov writhe in pain)
- A Taste of Armageddon (great episode that shows how Star Trek could go after tough issues in novel ways, and also the first real introduction to Vulcan mind powers)
- The Tholian Web (has a great scene between Spock and McCoy)
- And I'll top it off with The Wrath of Khan

The only kudos I'll give to Dell is that they still ship a clean Windows install DVD and a driver disk. Pretty much the first thing I do after I've made sure a new computer starts up is to immediately wipe out the partitions and install clean from disk.

Most of it isn't helpful at all, and some of it is downright diabolical.