This is all a great theory, until the "data" in question is something like copy protection hackery that someone's high-end software puts on your SSD boot disk without necessarily telling you anything about it.

The only time I had an SSD failure, the hardware guys were great and got a replacement to me the next day, while it took literally weeks (and, in the end, a recorded letter threatening legal action) to get Adobe to let me use the software I already f**king bought on the same f**king PC it was always installed on, after I'd reinstalled everything on the replacement SSD.

If that had been an isolated occurrence, I might be willing to drop the point, but since I know of others who have also been screwed by Adobe's DRM/copy protection mess after a drive failure and I also know of other high-end software providers who play similar games, I don't think "just back everything up" is a good enough answer to unreliable drives. A drive failure typically costs some of us at least an order of magnitude more than just replacing the hardware itself once you factor in downtime, and we shouldn't have to mess around with RAID arrays of SSDs just to compensate for poorly designed products that fail unnecessarily.

It sounds like you know more about Thunderbolt than I. This statement seems odd, though:

> I don't see how you can implement a lower-level protocol (eg: raw thunderbolt DMA) using a higher-level ...
> That's like saying you'll implement Internet-layer frames only using TCP.

It's common to run lower level protocols on top of higher level, and I think you know that. PPPoE is just like that, isn't it?

If multiple people lied about it in order to cover up their incompetence and stupidity, especially the incompetence and stupidity of others, then that is in absolute fact a conspiracy.

Old twitch games are mostly garbage. Old strategy games can be pretty good (one the kids are old enough to be interested). Master of Orion 2 remains a great 4X game, for example, with a simple UI and just enough resource management to be interesting. Some of the older RPGs that were more plot than grind still stand up as well.

Note that you haven't actually changed the problem at all, just added humans to the system that needs to be better than 99.99998% accurate.

Though you have accurately identified one of the major reasons why the human part of the human/machine system will never achieve that level of discrimination: ass-covering.

In fairness, inside the USA is fair hunting areas for foreign intelligence agencies.

That fact highlights another issue, though, which is that even if all countries protect their own citizens from snooping by their own agencies (most don't, actually), this is easy for allied powers to work around through sharing agreements. "I'll spy on your people and you spy on mine, then we'll swap". We need to institute some protection against that as well.

None.

Do you have any? Note that I mean evidence, not supposition, not tenuous conclusions drawn from potential coincidences.

I regularly post views that the groupthink finds unpleasant, and I find the moderation system works pretty well. Getting modded "-1 I disagree" happens here, but most moderation is not of that sort.

Even global warming the biggest hotbutton issue right now on /. I think, will see +5 posts on both sides of the discussion. Most sites have people falling all over themselves to agree with one another, and dissenting voices often outright deleted and banned.

Even here in Canada, we're seeing an emergence of increased cultural aggression from the US and many American companies are trying to bring their American values to Canada. Traditionally, we're valued our social programs, healthcare and unemployment benefits as a cultural force that has helped us to provide better governance and lifestyle to the vast majority. The American (corporate) values are really starting to push the view of letting the aggressive superstar individual succeed and everyone else fail. I'm sorry if anyone is offended but today's American values tend to let the entire middle class suffer and hurt the lower class significantly. The old adage that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor has been tilted to the extreme in today's economic reality.

I'm American but love Canada; lived on the border for most of my childhood and worked there for 3 years. But you have to understand that nobody is "forcing" American values onto you. You always have to agree to it, whether it's because the American stuff is lower price or has better features, or in a contract negotiation they're big and you're small. You can always say no. If you choose not to, then it is you who are selling out your values, not the Americans who are forcing theirs upon you.

If you consider it to be "forcing" their values onto you when they sell a product or negotiate a contract based on what they want, then likewise if you try to buy a product or negotiate contract based on what you want, you are "forcing" your values onto them.

If Canadian culture and values are changing, then it's because of the choices of Canadians. There's no American standing above you with a whip and chair forcing you to dance the American way. You always have a choice. The French (and to a lesser extent the Quebecois) understand this, and take steps to actively ban foreign cultural influences. I think it's a silly way to do it (IMHO individual freedom is more important than cultural preservation), but I respect that they're taking a stand to preserve their unique cultural values, even if costs them some trade contracts and international treaties. That is what it means to stand up for yourself, instead of blaming others for your own choices.

Don't take this the wrong way. I would dearly love for Canadians to "export" some of their values to the U.S. But you have to grow a backbone and be willing to take a stand and make the personal sacrifices that entails (like some people here refuse to buy from Sony for the rootkit fiasco despite drooling over the PS3 and PS4). If you just blame others for your own decisions to assuage your own guilt, you'll remain a pushover and lose more and more of your personal identity. So stand proud to be Canadian, and don't be afraid to refuse to buy American goods or to tell them "no" if it somehow infringes your values.

>DVDs .. external drives are invariably more costly and slower than internal drives

I tried about 20 drives and found that for optical, external is consistently faster with much lower cpu usage. I guess it's something about the controller that converts to USB and the few MBs of buffer in the enclosure.

Steve Jobs once said of adult content and Apple'attempts to keep it away from iOS a "people who want to see stuff like that should get an Android device". I took his advice. Apple truly believes that which web sites you visit in their business, that they should control or influence what you read. An iDevice is for listening to music you bought from Apple, the Apple approved version, for as long as Apple thinks is suitable.

On any other device, I just copy-paste my mp3 files. The Apple device also costs twice as much.

I realize there are counter-points to the above, but those are the reasons that I personally don't buy iOS, though I like my old Mac Pro and new MacBook Pro.

Listen, part of the reason anonymous (and to a lesser extent, pseudonymous) commenting is a good thing is because you can say something you wouldn't normally be able to say for fear of some sort of real life consequences. I'm not talking about "trolling," I'm talking about political opinions or affinity for ideas or concepts that are looked down upon in polite society.

That's really the conundrum here. To correctly target trolling means distinguishing between trolling and political opinions. And to distinguish between them means they have to have been written and read. By which point it's too late. Any preventative measures you can take to eliminate one eliminates the other (and vice versa - allowing one allows the other). Punitive measures leave the class you want to protect open to having their RL identity blown by someone abusing any method you implement to expose the RL identities of people deemed trolls.

There's no simple or single "right" answer to this. If there were, it'd have been implemented already. Moderation is only effective if the entire community takes part. Hired or anointed moderators don't work because they don't work as many hours as trolls (henceforth Ts to avoid the lameness filter) have free time. You need the massive power of crowdsourcing to keep the Ts at bay. And that still only works when the crowd willing to moderate outnumbers the Ts by a certain margin. The catch being that a concerted community effort to eliminate Ts actually encourages them, because Ts adore attention. Reading about the community discussing how to eliminate them just feeds their ego. The crowdsourcing has to be low-key and something that just happens without being discussed extensively.

This move away toward "real name" tie-ins is bad any way you cut it. Yes, it cuts down on "trolling," but the cost is too high. There are other ways to cut back on that, anyway, like hiring more effective moderation staff.

I've been on the Internet since the days when everyone used their real names and there was no anonymity (go read the Google Groups Usenet archives from the 1980s - everyone uses their real name and some even include their personal contact info in their signatures). All sysadmins voluntarily adhered to a practice of making sure nobody was anonymous because they feared the chaos which would arise from anonymous behavior. It isn't the terrible place you seem to think it is. It's different, but it's still functional. Just like the opposite places (like 4chan) are different but functional. Kinda ironic that you fear the non-anonymous Internet the same as they feared the anonymous Internet.

I think the way this is going to go is that some sites will be anonymous and some will not. The non-anonymous sites will have less trolling, but you know opinions will be more guarded. The anonymous sites will have opinions openly posted, but you know there will be trolling. When there is no single best solution, all solutions tend to be implemented in different places.

The solution is as simple as defunding the NSA. That will never happen, of course, since we have two big-government parties who only argue over where the ever-increasing government checks should be sent.