A 12-year sysadmin sounds a lot like a long-term member of the Janitor's union to me.

I know somebody like that. They claimed to be a 'top tier software developer.' They were shocked when I mentioned I was still using Windows 2000 on some of my machines. They didn't seem to have ever heard of MySQL....

Larry Ellison has never been about 'making friends.' He makes acquaintance with co-conspirators.

Oracle makes Microsoft look like a troop of Eagle Scouts by comparison.

and permanently damaging the trust that people have in a connected society.

This part of it might be a good thing. People could use a wake-up call. The Internet was designed to be robust and decentralized. It's supposed to be able to recover quickly from centralized efforts to interrupt it.

There are lots of us who remember when there really wasn't any Internet at all, and we got by. Perhaps as an exercise the Internet should be interrupted for 24 hours every year or so.

Hardly the example we wish to set for our president to befall.

Definitely not. I want Obama to witness the unraveling and repair of all the damage he has done to our country in person. He can rattle around the globe for decades causing minor trouble like Jimmah has after he's tossed out of office. The important thing is for him to be shoved to the curb, and fast.

It does. Just making large numbers of copies of something that already exists isn't really 'creativity.' Especially if all you're doing is making large numbers of copies of recordings someone else being 'creative.'

Why would the NSA bother building some complex tech hack when two guys with guns and hand cuffs 'just plain work'?

Probably because of the camera crews thronging the President within 24 hours for an explanation.

Five years out of college they are less likely to be Democrats. Ten years even more so. And the progression continues.

Once the wetness dries off behind your ears, so to speak.

what matters is, at our current time and age, we, as human civilization, are abhorring that kind of practice.

So, essentially, your crowd is flaking out, but it's just a fad.

Good or Evil, nobody is getting hurt except seals. They deserve protection why exactly?

Because they're photogenic and much human empathy can be aroused when their images are printed on color brochures, pleading for money to 'save' them.

They have a long history and a proud brand reputation.

Actually, if companies like Victorinox keep doing stuff like this, they'll eventually erode the whole concept of 'Branding,' at least so far as the 'value' of a brand is the logo that can be slapped around on any other random crap a company has no particular expertise in.

We're in an era where this kind of 'branding' stuff is near epidemic. Big conglomerates think they can 'buy' a company solely for it's trademarks and set up dummy companies to rebrand crap with the 'esteemed' brand names and sell it.

It's a sign that a company has been taken over by it's marketing wing. And it makes me concerned. I'll probably have to do some research to find out what new brand of pocket knife to buy, since Victorinox is compromised.

So now, if somebody wants to sabatogue a data collection effort, they don't need to connect the storage device to a system and delete/scramble it's data. They don't need to do anything major to physically destroy the device. They simply need to learn the minimum 'tamper' thing needed to cause the storage device to brick itself. And the owner of the device probably doesn't even need to find out until much later, when it's too late, that the data is gone.

There's a reason we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and not the home of the terrorists, Saudi Arabia. It's because Saudi Arabia is already playing according to our rules.

True. Saudia Arabia is in agreement with us. Hence, their expatriates operate out of Afghanistan and not Saudia Arabia.

But you sounded for a bit like you had a point to make.

So the EU 'citizens' (subjects?) will enthusiastically pay 4000% more for their beef? It sounds like an interesting idea. I bet China would like some of that beef.

What a horrifying thought! I can't think of anyone that is still alive from back when I was that young and stupid that I want finding me.

Bingo. I can't believe we're this far in the thread before somebody says something that makes this much sense. Most of the people who are deeply into Social Networking at this point are still in one of their first cycles of social life. They're in the process of being young idiots and can't imagine they would ever think differently than they do right now.

I'm sure glad this crap wasn't around when I was in my 20's and 30's. All my idiocy was contained on BBSes that I am rock-steady sure nobody bothered to back up.