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Comment Re:No media server support upsets me (Score 1) 312

by barlevg (#45290781) Attached to: Sony Issues Detailed PS4 FAQ Ahead of Launch
I'm a firm believer in not getting any new console until you absolutely have to (read: until there's a game you really want to play that's only on that console). If good titles are scarce (::cough:: 3DS ::cough::), it means you get to wait for the price drop / patching / additional features / new version.

Submission + - FAA Says You Don't Have to Shut Off Your Electronics On Flights Anymore (blogspot.com)

Submitted by quantr
quantr writes: After years of will they or won't they, the US Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has finally given permission for airlines to allow passenger to use personal electronics for the entirety of their flights. Translation: You don't have to shut down your phone anymore. Finally.

Comment Flawed premise (Score 4, Funny) 167

by barlevg (#45289513) Attached to: State Technology Taxes Face Stiff Resistance

As the nation moves from a tangible goods-based economy to a service-based economy

Because in the future, we will all move out of our houses to live in the cloud, we'll forego food in favor of HTTP cookies and email spam, and we will transport ourselves to our destinations not with cars but with through internet traffic.

Now, I know what you're thinking--we'll still need to buy computers to make this magic happen. But, you see, in the future, all of our computers will be virtual machines.

Comment The post-it note (Score 2) 394

by barlevg (#45284209) Attached to: NSA Broke Into Links Between Google, Yahoo Datacenters
There's a "conspiracy theory" detail getting lost in all this discussion: the person who wrote the post-it note the Washington Post is featuring put a smiley face on the Google front-end server next to "SSL Added and Removed Here." To me, that says that they think that SSL encryption is just adorbs, implying they have a way to break it.

I have a theory, based on absolutely nothing.

I think a mathematician working for NSA solved Riemann's years ago and, consequently, NSA can break any internet encryption.

I'm actually okay with this. But it seems awfully cruel to keep the proof secret from the poor mathematicians who've spent their lives trying to solve it.

Comment US Marketing Ploy? (Score 4, Interesting) 394

by barlevg (#45283847) Attached to: NSA Broke Into Links Between Google, Yahoo Datacenters
From this article, an interesting rationale for why they would use MUSCULAR when they have PRISM:

There are some obvious reasons: The operations take place overseas, where many statutory restriction on surveillance don't apply -- and where the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) has no jurisdiction. In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011. So if the NSA decides to harvest that data on foreign soil, it can skip most of the oversight mechanisms.

We've seen a lot of articles recently about people demanding companies not host their data in the US so that they're not subject to PRISM. But if PRISM has more oversight than MUSCULAR, and MUSCULAR is only allowed to be used OFF of US soil, then it seems like the safest place for your data is in the US, after all.

Comment Re:Why the secret data collection? (Score 5, Informative) 394

by barlevg (#45283763) Attached to: NSA Broke Into Links Between Google, Yahoo Datacenters
Read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/30/prism-already-gave-the-nsa-access-to-tech-giants-heres-why-it-wanted-more/?hpid=z1

There are some obvious reasons: The operations take place overseas, where many statutory restriction on surveillance don't apply -- and where the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) has no jurisdiction. In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011. So if the NSA decides to harvest that data on foreign soil, it can skip most of the oversight mechanisms.

Submission + - NATO Allies France And Spain Provided Phone Records To NSA (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Washington Post reports, "The director of the National Security Agency on Tuesday dismissed as “completely false” reports that his agency swept up millions of phone records of European citizens, and he revealed that data collected by NATO allies were shared with the United States. ... foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the spy agency — an operation that was misunderstood by French and Spanish newspapers that reported that the NSA was conducting surveillance in their countries. “This is not information that we collected on European citizens,” Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee. “It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations.” .... The French and Spanish intelligence agencies have had extensive, long-running programs to share millions of phone records with the United States for counterterrorism and defense purposes ... The information was not phone calls’ content but records of phone calls or “metadata’’ ... “We share information with many countries.” The information focused on Afghanistan and “elsewhere outside of France,” the official said. The official described a similar arrangement with Spain, whose intelligence agencies shared information they collected overseas with its U.S. counterparts." — More at the Wall Street Journal.

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