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Comment they're called "social circles". Facebook 2011 (Score 3) 260

> Is your social dynamic interest-driven or is it friendship-driven? Are you going there because there's this place where other folks are really into anime, or is this the place you're going because it's where your pals from school are hanging out?

I believe those different groups are called "social circles", and Facebook started supporting the concept in 2011, after Google+ made it central to their interface. Facebook is the MEDIUM for different grugroups to communicate. Facebook is not the group.

Yes, it would be weird if every group gathered at the same physical location. It would not be weird if they all drove in cars to get there. Facebook isn't a physical space that crams everyone together. It's a method of getting to different groups a person belongs to.

Comment flip the breaker = high degree of technical knowle (Score 0) 436

This article repeats an error that bugs me in so many "whodunit" cases. Disabling the transponders would require flipping a circuit breaker, so whoever did so had "a high degree of technical knowledge", the article says. Really? Flipping a circuit breaker off is that hard? The piece must have been written by a Yankee.

I notice the same thing in other cases - the bad guy built a pipe bomb, so he must have had explosives training. He connected it to a clock, so he must be an expert in electronics. I have yet to see any of these "must have been trained" bad guys do anything I didn't do when I was twelve years old.

Comment where are all the /.ers who said Obama didn't want (Score 0) 279

I'm wondering what happened to all the ./ers who argued that Obama would NOT actively try to remove the US from its unique superpower position. All those who said "he doesn't dislike America, that's ridiculous. His wife misspoke when she said they've never been proud of their country."

Comment save the data, don't depend on anyone (Score 2) 52

ANY company or service can go away or change.
That's why you keep a copy of the data, coordinates, etc. Then you can display that data with Google maps, openstreetmap, or a dozen other ways and you're not dependent on anyone.

If you keep a copy of your data, you don't need to decide based on one option having a 0.01% chance of going away versus another with a 0.02% chance.

Comment boiled frogs, would be my guess as a security prof (Score 3, Insightful) 154

My guess, as a security professional who could have been recruited for a three-letter agency, is that many of them are boiled frogs. There are technical challenges that smart geeks love, plus the whole hacker mystique, but you don't want to be criminal, so you go white-hat, hacking bin Ladin. That adds the whole "international spy" thing into it and maybe you help catch some really bad guys. That would be awesome, spying on al Qaeda. Hmm, if you expanded that technique you could catch a lot of bad guys. So you expand it to log calls to and from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. After a few years, you end up in a place you never would have knowingly sought to go.

Comment not claims: district court DID order preservation (Score 1) 59

The original FISA ruling was "because the court you're being sued in has NOT ordered you to keep them, that suit isn't justification to keep them".

Then, the federal district court did in fact order them to preserve the evidence. That's a fact, not a claim.

So FISA, consistent with its earlier order, now said "because the district court has ordered you to keep them, you should now do so."

There's no "claims" to it, the federal district court entered an order in open court. That order was discussed here on Slashdot a few days ago. The FISA court has simply acknowledged the fact that the district court so ordered.

Comment NSA hasn't been shitcanned, WWI programs continue (Score 1) 172

The NSA hasn't been cancelled, or even had a major budget cut. Ergo clearly bad government programs and agencies continue. Has even one person responsible for that mess been fired?

"Temporary" programs designed to address conditions during the great depression continue to this day.

Of course you can also find ridiculous examples of programs that worked well being shut down. It doesn't appear that there is any logic to it.

Comment not a bad idea. 2X private. But paperwork! (Score 2) 172

That may not be a bad idea, even if you are doing the same work twice. A project that Google or Apple would spend $100M on could pay $75M to the loser and $130M to the winner and still come out better than the current system.

However, to make it worth doing for $150M, you'd need to seriously reduce the government paperwork and delays, the layers of approvals for little minor stuff. Where I work, a government agency, the budget specificity is maddening. The state approves $X million for new computers, I had to spend $4,800 on a new workstation even though the old one has 16GB of RAM, four monitors, etc. A few months later, my UPS battery went bad and needed a $25 replacement. It's been weeks and I'm still waiting for approval to replace the battery.

My colleague saved $30,000 on a project by pointing out we had already purchased the thing we were supposed to spend $30,000 on. This is a big problem, trying to figure out how to send that $30,000 to /dev/null. We can't spend it on things we need, like batteries, because it's not approved for that use.

Comment not bad, DESIGNED to be fair, accountable not effi (Score -1, Troll) 172

It's not the the government is BAD, mkay. It's that the government is purposely designed for a specific role, with specific goals. The government is supposed to forcefully take from you, and spend about a third of your income. The government is responsible for bombing the correct people. Due to government's role, it's designed for justice, fairness, accountability to the public, etc. It's not designed to be efficient and effective. The North Korea government gets shit done - Lil Kim gives an order and it's done. We don't WANT our government to operate that way.

My company had North Korea style efficiency - when the founder and president made a decision, it was quickly carried out. In the US government, youneed ccongressional hearings in both houses of Congress before you make a decision. You also need to find out what the voters think. How about the AG and SCOTUS - are we even allowed to change the healthcare? There's a reason Hillary Care (aka Obamacare) took eight years while a corporation can change its health plan in a month, and that's as it should be. Good government is slow, deliberative government. Tyranny is fast and efficient.

So no, government isn't bad. I'd rather have government courts than private courts, because I want deliberative, fair courts that take their time. I wouldn't want government email - I want my email to be fast and reliable, and I don't need to vote on the UI, I can always switch clients or providers if the UI is really bad.

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