That sounds pretty speculative to me. [citation needed]

Dude, spoilers! ;)

While I appreciate your honest opinion, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that very little of this can be categorized into "black" or "white"; at least not yet. I not only respectfully disagree with the absolute premise that you offer, I also disagree with the absolute premise taken up by most of those who have replied to you. There are many questions that need to be answered before these kind of conclusions can be drawn.

It is clear that Snowden did violate his confidentiality agreement - there is no arguing this. He broke the law, and I'm not going to dispute it. The legality of the program at-large, however, has not been established. You are correct that the program was authorized by Congress. Suggesting that the program was deemed legal by the court system is dubious, at best. The existence of FISA courts, where federal judges review and grant surveillance warrants does not qualify as judicial review and does very little to validate that the program meets constitutional standards. If it is established that the program violated the constitution (the highest law of the land), it will be the government who violated the law, and covered it under a veil of secrecy. If this is the case, it is a serious violation of the trust of the American people; and whether or not it prevent terrorist attacks is irrelevant, as the ends don't justify the means (IMO). The government can't have it both ways - holding citizens accountable for following the law when it doesn't adhere to its own laws.

I'm also curious about you meant by Snowden doing this for his own gain. What did he have to gain? Notoriety? It seems to me that he had more to lose than he had to gain...but then again, I do not understand the desire for notoriety, and would prefer to avoid the public eye. Either way, until the program is understood and scrutinized, I don't think that it's fair to categorize Snowden is a whistle-blowing patriot or a traitor (yet).

I hope that we do the right thing here and analyze the program; asking the necessary questions to determine what is constitutionally acceptable. Further, I hope that my fellow Americans think long and hard about the implications of programs like this. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the government warehousing massive amounts of data about its citizens, even if mining it takes a warrant from a secret court. I understand the argument that companies are already doing this (to an extent)...but what differentiates them from our government is that they don't have the power to incarcerate or kill people. Now, I'm afraid that our government will sweep this under the rug, preventing any honest dialog in the name of national security. I honestly believe that even if this program is legitimate and legal, the ability to secretly monitor Americans will eventually be abused; if not by this government/administration, it will be by another one.

I suspect that this is the same resistance to a third party pushing content that nearly every IP owner has shown over the years. It has nothing to do with being compensated. It is likely easy to grab viewer metrics from Aereo and renegotiate the value of those viewer impressions with advertisers. I'm guessing that Fox just wants that control - they want to roll their own service, the same way that all of the music publishers wanted to roll their own streaming/subscription service, the same way that the cable companies want to roll their own VoD service, and the same way that the film studios want to roll their own VoD service.

It's no secret that these groups have all failed. The music industry tried and failed over and over again, with Apple dominating that marketspace now (and the IP owners are still managing to be compensated for this). The cable companies and film studios have also failed to run their own VoD services that are competitive with Netflix, yet they are all compensated for their IP streaming. This is just the same repeat behavior.

I'm no expert, but it would seem to me that content producers might want to stick to their core competencies, and excellence in broadcasting (or lack thereof) is showing to be unequal to excellence in developing a digital distribution model. They've failed over and over, while the third parties have succeeded almost exclusively...and in spite of lack of cooperation from "legacy" media. I know that the legacy IP owners want to maximize their profits and control by running their own digital distribution networks, but this seems akin to having their cake and eating it too - and it has proven to be historically risky.

I can't speak to the rest of your post, but the rules for what items can be carried onto a plane change fairly frequently. Your data may have been superseded. I fly every week for business, and can attest to this. However don't take my word for it - a lighter can be lawfully carried onto a plane. With regard to video game consoles, there are rules for those, too. Even the rules for small knives and some sporting goods are changing. This is not to say that I think that I'm a fan of the TSA. I'm just providing more up-to-date information than what you have experienced that may help you to rephrase your premise. Also, from my experience, although the rules are published and are fairly consistent; how they are enforced is not. A good example of this is how rules are enforced in small regional airports. Generally, the TSA officers in the tiny regional airports have a lot of time on their hands to do things like re-run carry-ons through an x-ray machine, excluding my eyeglass cleaning fluid (etc).

I'm with you, and am glad that someone else posted this first. I can't stand Ticketbastard, and they have exclusivity agreements with most of the venues in my country. This means that they will receive a fee for ever live performance that I want to attend, regardless of whether or not I want to use them. Fees on top of fees on top of fees that are already included in the ticket price. They haven't done much to curb the secondary market; there is no incentive for them to do so.

They add absolutely no value, and have done little to bring ticket sales into the digital age. Thanks for nothing, Ticketmaster. You guys suck more than any other company in the country.

But there were batteries and electrical tape. Anything with batteries and duct tape must be a terrorist plot...especially when Mooninites are involved.

To answer my own question, my assertion was correct. With physical access to the device, brute forcing the PIN protecting the disk encryption is trivial. The million dollar question is: how to sufficiently protect a key in a manner that can be quickly and conveniently unlocked by an average user?

Admittedly, I have never used Android device encryption and do not know the specifics of how it works. However, reading the article, what is the big deal about brute forcing a 4-digit PIN on a device that one has local access to? Could the encrypted FS be dumped and brute forced in software? What am I missing?

I see what you mean...not that N. Korea isn't a humanitarian disaster right now - I personally find (what I know of) the conditions in N. Korea absolutely deplorable. I understand that China is not stuck with it entirely (at the moment), but they're certainly kicking the can down the road by providing the political and financial support to N. Korea that they are...not to mention providing tacit approval of N. Korea's activity by their actions. Do you think that China sees regime collapse as an eventuality? What kind of bad behavior would N. Korea have to exhibit to provoke China to abandon support?

Further, could S. Korea still be considered a "puppet" of the US if there were no longer a threat from the North, under declaration of war? If unification happened, how long would the US military bases in (future-former) S. Korea remain? I do not think that it's in America's best interests (or within the scope of the mission) to maintain those bases after we are assured peace.

IMO, this is on /. because some of the Slashdot discussion has a shot at being more insightful than mainstream coverage does.

Try "password1". It's uncommon, and nobody will ever guess it.

Ha! Bash.org reference FTW!

This is the hardware device. There is more information about CDN deployment (as well as some specs) available on that page as well.

Yes. I'm surprised that nobody else has read into this. All Netflix is doing is localizing their content in a small, 4U appliance inside of the ISP's.

From what I can tell is that this has potential to be a win for everyone. As you say, this is a win for ISP's, as it cuts down on internet traffic at their peering points - where things tend to be the most expensive - it keeps traffic inside of their network. This is also a win for the consumer, as it can deliver higher quality video. This is also a win for Netflix, because they can lower their internet bandwidth costs by moving their content to these localized (or regionalized, as the case may be) appliances once and serve streaming content to all customers on an ISP's network.

...or perhaps I'm missing something. Feel free to educate me if I am.