From Eli Lake at The Daily Beast: Sorry, Snowden: Putin Lied to You About His Surveillance State—And Made You a Pawn of It

Lets expand on that. Why can't ordinary citizens of the many nations (US, UK, AU, NZ, CA) that Snowden took documents from and leaked have a grievance against him? Do they all work for the intelligence services of their government? Or can ordinary citizens be against it and express an opinion? If not, are you working on the side of the FSB and Chinese intelligence in the conduct of political warfare against the US by advocating in favor of Snowden? If not, why can't someone have a contrary view, that Snowden's actions were bad, without working for the NSA? Does the fact that he arranges for a few of the documents that he stole to be published make it all OK? Does that give Snowden a pass to do whatever he wants without criticism?

Imagine for a minute, an associate of Alan Turing escaping Bletchely Park in 1944 with files recording the facility's activity — and with details of its capability to decrypt Enigma traffic.

He is outraged about the government's attempts — often successful — to intercept other people messages (some intercepts leading to deaths of hundreds) and is smart enough to envision the future, where such ungentlemanly conduct will become common place. And so he goes public with the materials he took with him, holding a press-conference somewhere — say, in Switzerland.

Because none of the UK allies will have him, and he fears the Allies' long hand in neutral Switzerland, he takes refuge in Germany, where he is promptly drained of all the information he carries (in files and head)? Germans modify their encryption practices and Bletchley Park is no longer able to decode the communications.

Should the man's life not be hell after that? Or should he simply be hung for treason?

Meh. I'm 45, and see no reason to believe I won't be writing code for another 20 years. I work with several guys in their 50s and 60s.

I think most of the apparent dearth of graybeards is just the growth of the industry. If there are an order of magnitude more software jobs than when I started 20 years ago, and if software development is a career that people don't shift into at a later, but start young -- which does appear to be the case -- then we should expect 90% of positions to be filled by people younger than me. If you also factor in a fair amount of attrition from people choosing to shift into other careers, whether into other fields entirely or into sales or management, then you should expect that the number is 5%, or even less.

Not really. Both subjects, and plenty more, would be appropriate to ask in Russia. There is no shortage of problematic areas of human rights issues there, not to mention a growing list of incidents of aggression against its neighbors. Russia is choosing to revert to its Soviet past.

That kind of crappy comment gets old. Can you engage on this topic without personal smears?

You don't think there's a larger agenda here?

http://www.eutimes.net/2014/04...

White House counterterrorism and Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco gave a speech this week in which she urged parents to watch their children for signs of "confrontational" behavior which could be an indication of them becoming terrorists.
During the speech at at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government on Tuesday night, Monaco, who replaced John Brennan last year in overseeing the executive branch's homeland-security activities, said that parents need to be suspicious of "sudden personality changes in their children at home."
"What kinds of behaviors are we talking about?â she asked. "For the most part, they're not related directly to plotting attacks. They're more subtle. For instance, parents might see sudden personality changes in their children at homeâ"becoming confrontational."

Think of it as vectors. When active, you add your bit of force to the overall system, and can drive it. I'm confident that, had the Tea Party not risen up, for example, ObamaCare would have us much farther along the road to Single Prey-er. Doubtless you'll disagree, preaching paralysis as you do. However, I'll be able to look at the grandkids, when they ask, and tell them I didn't shovel s**t in Biloxi.

I'm not defending the game as anything other than evil. I'm saying that being a spectator is also useless. You don't improve the result with sideline kvetching.

You should pray carefully and consider to what degree any passage of scripture applies to you.

The only purpose of the whole corn ethanol debacle is to transfer vast amounts of money from the taxpayers and the gasoline-buying public to Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. Any other claimed purpose is, and always was, bullshit.

-jcr

How about a FED conspiracy theory, and plea for return to the gold standard?

| Leadership is essential. The difference is that in open source, you can't fire people, so you can't tell them what to do.

Open source doesn't have to be unpaid. Though often it is.

Make that "theirs" :)

Of course that error makes my thought completely null and void ...

Which makes them different from ... what liberal, anywhere?

Any liberal who wants to pay more tax can send the extra money right to the feds; they will take it gladly.

How many do it? Oh that's right, none (statistically, anyway). Because they want the feds to vacuum up someone else's money; not there's.