> I'd take issue with them nominating themselves as the one true source

Who else would you trust? Their self-nomination only works because it's not really contested. Even if some support is given begrudgingly, and not everyone likes every campaign or press release, there is general acceptance that their motives are pure.

But more importantly, I don't think there's reason to be so pessimistic. In 1995 they said we'd never have a decent GUI desktop. In 1997, they said we'd never have a free web browser. Then they said we'd never have a free office suite. Then they said we'd never have specialised applications like video editors...

The trend I see, is that we keep surprising ourselves with how far we're getting. There's room for optimism here!

So I've got one person replying to me saying FSF is too "fundamentalist", and I've got you saying they're too lax and are letting too much slip through.

The general theme is that some people will look for even the smallest error just to avoid acknowledging good work.

Why do I say "probably" in my previous post? Because you and I don't know what the firmware in our microwaves do. It's probably fine. There haven't been any big microwave firmware scandals that I'm aware of. (And if I didn't say "probably", you'd say "How can you know?!")

Regarding FSF's statement, they said "no proprietary firmware options". Options. Whatever firmware could be removed has been removed.

Is the HDD firmware a problem? I don't know. I don't know personally, and I don't know what FSF's take on it is.

But even if you did find some flaw, the right thing to do is say "Well, FSF is definitely 95%, and well done to them for their effort, but I'd like some discussion on this other 5%".

haha, someone modded my two comments down because they disagree.

I guess they want FSF to do everything and hand it to them on a plate, free, user-friendly, zero cost.

> Is the harddrive running open-source firmware too?

A disingenuous double attack.

First: "Since I can't be perfect, why should I make any effort at all?"

Second: "FSF is has compromised! that makes them insincere"

The answer is that no, the hd firmware isn't open. Like the firmware of a microwave or common wristwatch, it's probably impossible to put new firmware on it, and it's probably not a problem.

A line has to be drawn somewhere, so FSF's line is: if the software (including firmware) can be updated, it must be free. The philosophy is that if it's complex or important, then the vendor will create a way to update the firmware. If the firmware can't be updated, then the code is probably sufficiently mundane as to be ignored, just as circuits are ignored.

> no understanding of the importances of "just works"

That's not their part of the job.

Various entities can label something as user-friendly. FSF is pretty much the only entity that can label stuff as free.

This is one laptop. Hopefully next year there'll be twenty, and then someone can take on the job of announcing which is the most user-friendly of the twenty free laptops.

Dear Girl-in-training,

It is entirely too freaking easy to accuse Mr. Snowden as a coward.

But before you point that accusing finger of yours at Mr. Snowden, why don't you ask yourself "What are you" first ?

At the very least, Mr Snowden has exposed the wrongdoings of the power-that-be.

What have you done that can even begin to compare to what Mr. Snowden has done ?

Are you going to join Cold Fjord in becoming NSA's sock-puppet, Ms. Girl-in-Training ?

Shutting down the NSA is no longer sufficient !

They have such control over all the apparatus right now that even if we managed to shut down NSA now they can set up a super-NSA the very next minute - and they can do it totally LEGAL (remember, they have total control over the LAW ) and there is NOTHING we can do about it.

What is required is much more than shut down the NSA - what is truly required is a TOTAL OVERHAUL to the ENTIRE SYSTEM !

America is my country and I know this for a fact - my country is famous for having its own presidents assassinated.

Abe Lincoln and JFK, remember ?

Only crooks can become the POTUS.

Honest ed will never last a day in La Casa Blanca.

Dear VortexCortex,

I have read many of your comments and I must thank you for the many informative and insightful leads that you have provided.

Now, back to the very thing that I've quoted.

If I were the NSA, I could turn your proposal on its head - that is, I, as the all-knowing spook with all kinds of network throughout the world, could easily import terrorism into the United States of America and create A HELL OF A LOT OF PROBLEMS for the Americans.

And I, as the NSA, could also provide the jihadists some fancy gadgets (mini nukes or dirty bombs, for examples) to aid them to accomplish their "allah u akbar" campaigns by flattening some 2nd-line cities in the U.S. of A.

And when that happened, the Americans will die in the MILLIONS, and everyone, including those who oppose the NSA, will demand to PUT ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCE BEHIND NSA to "fight terrorism".

Want proportional funding? NSA could, in theory, turn that game into their advantage, in a split second.

Treason, you say ?

Treason ? Isn't what NSA been doing right now anti-constitutional ?

NSA dogs DARE to LIE UNDER OATH IN THE CONGRESS. What else is there that they dare not do?

The panel is a dog and pony show.

It's a circus-like entity to fool us into believing that "CHANGE IS COMING" while actually there will be NO CHANGE.

They understand that the people are VERY UNHAPPY about what NSA has done to us.

They understand that they can't go on doing the same old things the same old ways - but they also know that they have to CONTINUE TO DO THE SAME OLD THING, that is why they put up this fucking dog-and-pony panel publicly stating their so-called "82 recommendations" and hope that by doing so people will be "satisfied" and will not pay so much attention to what they do anymore.

I can bet every last penny that I have that at the end of it the SAME OLD THING WILL STILL BE DON and the only difference is that THEY WILL DO THE SAME OLD THING IN A NEW METHOD.

Or to put it another way --- even after Obama approved all the 82-recommendations (even if it's 820,000 recommendations) the end result will be SAME WINE IN DIFFERENT BOTTLES.

The only effective thing that we need right now is to CHANGE THE SYSTEM.

Anything short of that --- ie., keeping the same old system --- will not work, because it's be manned (and womenned) by the same batch of fuckers, and they will be continuing what they do.

But modern humans are not from ONE SINGLE stock either.

For example, the Denisovans have offsprings, but only part of the modern humans are their offsprings.

And then, while most modern humans have Neandertal genes inside them, some modern humans do not.

Hi.

the Nyquist limit of the audio sampling hardware of a cell phone over instruction rate of a modern CPU is a pretty small fraction.

The "audio" in question is most likely all below 24 kHz, that being the Nyquist limit for the 48 kHz sampling hardware, unless it happens that some phones can actually sample faster, and have microphones that can respond to higher frequencies.

The instruction rate of the CPUs in question is many times that frequency.

It doesn't sound likely.

Using multiple cores turns out to help the attack (by shifting down the signal frequencies).

Say what? Through what mechanism would multiple cores shift down the frequency? And what about parallel instruction streams contributing to noise?