Shockingly, in many countries, it is still legal for the family of a recently-deceased private person to tell reporters to fuck off. And a few reporters still feel enough responsibility to the truth not to just print wild-ass guesses from random bystanders.

Article overlooks the other big backdoor which was installed in 2003: SELinux.

I still have no idea why my kernel would need an internal firewall, but I do know why the NSA would want to install one in mine and everyone elses'. Exactly how many more NSA scandals do we require before this "feature" is rolled back?

I'm sorry, this story is about US Adult test scores. Could you take your derailment discussion somewhere else please.

This, right here, is the usual logical error that gold bugs typically make. While the physical amount of gold in existence can't readily be changed (we'll neglect the small amount of 'new' gold added to the economy through mining), the supply of gold - reserves available for sale - and the overall demand for gold are very much vulnerable to both general volatility and deliberate manipulation. Changes in supply and demand in turn significantly shift the perceived value of gold, leading to swings in its market price and in its effective purchasing power.

This has been illustrated quite graphically over the last few years. Fifteen years ago, gold was trading below $300 US per ounce. Ten years ago, it was pushing $400. Five years ago, it was around $900. A year ago, it was nudging $1800. Now it has slid back down to $1300, and shows no sign of slowing its decline. There was a similar spike around 1980. There wasn't a sudden reduction in the amount of gold in the world over the last decade or so, but for some reason the price of an ounce increased six-fold (before plummeting again). Either U.S. dollars really did lose five-sixths of their value between 1998 and 2012 - a conclusion not supported by their ability to buy pretty much any good, commodity, or foreign currency - or the 'intrinsic' value of gold generally accounts for only a relatively small portion of its market price, and the majority of its 'value' is just as imaginary as that of any fiat currency.

The price of gold under the various iterations of the gold standard was stable not because of gold's intrinsic value, but because the currency (or currencies) pegged to it had a perceived stable value. In a very real and practical sense, the strength of the U.S. dollar was backing the price of gold for much of the 20th century, and not the other way around.

And the gold was backed by...?

It's awesomely shiny, and it has a small number of specialty scientific and industrial uses, but gold as gold isn't all that intrinsically valuable as a mineral; it's just rather rare and something that a number of societies historically used as one convenient medium of exchange.

You can't eat it. You can't drink it. You can't shoot someone with it. You can't get other people to do stuff in exchange for it unless there is a stable enough society that the recipients anticipate being able to trade it in turn.

Its market value is significantly more variable and volatile than that of the major fiat currencies. The price of gold backed with pure gold isn't stable or reliable from year to year, I can't imagine why we would expect a currency backed with it to be magically better.

It's pretty clear to me that IBM only care about a small number of things:
1) Protecting management, particularly US based management, no matter what.
2) Getting rid of costly first world employees (except in France, where lucky them, the law prevents this) and replacing them with much cheaper employees in India.
3) Driving up the stock price by doing #2 repeatedly until there are no more first world employees left to cut who aren't management.

I worked for a company who tried tactic #1 and #2. The company wasn't publicly traded, so they weren't doing those 2 things for the benefit of the stock price. But #1 in particular is a sure sign of a company that DOES ... NOT .... GET ... IT ... and is going nowhere quickly. IBM won't try to dethrone Google, even if they could, because it doesn't fit in with the agenda above.

An IBM developed Jeopardy playing supercomputer. A popular TV game show in which players must give the questions corresponding to a displayed answer.

Maybe.

42.

Exploit? All of that data is on an unencrypted USB stick on the table next to a marketing exec having an outdoor espresso lunch right now.

New rule of thumb for data: If you've collected it, the internet already knows.

To the jerk at the NIST who decided to take down dlmf.nist.gov, I have only this to say: The day you need to accelerate the convergence of a power series, I hope some jerk comes along and shuts down your resource website too so you know how irritating this is.

To everyone else, I say: Use the archive:
DLMF: Wayback Machine.

Instead, let's promote patience, compromise, and a steady societal change, rather than an overnight revolution.

Ah yes. The "Occupy" doctrine. Sit peaceably outside your opponent's house of crime and continually ask him to "stop being bad" until he stops being a criminal, or oppressor, or whatever. The sound of his boots continuing to trample your head should only strengthen your resolve to be the best non-commital, passive-agressive protestor you can be.

Or you can get up off your apathetic rear end and actually try to change things. Often this will require you do do things people currently running things don't like.

"...I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your immortal soul."

It makes it easier for crooked people in power to abuse the system and get away with it.

the US gets the press, but every country is doing as much as they can (and are able to) with the money and network taps they have in place.

I live in Ireland. I can pretty much guarantee you of three things.

1) The state lacks the expertise to snoop on any communications.
2) The state lacks the legal clout to force anyone to turn over their encryption keys.
3) The government would likely not survive the closure of an IT SME such as Lavabit -- and loss of associated jobs -- which resulted from direct government interference in that company's ability to operate in Ireland.

The rules that apply to the US government do not apply to every government. Some governments lack the skills, laws, and nerve to pull off what the White House/NSA is doing to US internet companies right now. More governments simply lack the money to pay for so extensive a network of surveillance and control.

there is no country that won't do this, no matter what they say. so stop thinking its the big bad old USA. its everyone, everywhere, who CAN do it.

That can includes more than simply being ABLE to do it. It includes being EMPOWERED to do it, being PERMITTED by the people to do it, and to being able to AFFORD to do it. Right now the US government is able, empowered, but only just about permitted and certainly not able to afford to continue to finance a spying program of this magnitude.

The Soviet Union exhausted both its finances and legitimacy in trying to keep its populace under control. Hopefully the US will not have to go through as painful a breakup in order to reverse its present trend.

You can take off your tin foil hat and turn off Rush and Sean from the radio. Yes, of course the government will try to redeem these and keep the money. That's how drug related seizures work. The government will not likely make any statement about bitcoin. It's just your paranoia that attaches some significance to what the government thinks of bitcoin. Let me guess - you're a "Let's go back on the gold standard" guy too, right?

I've switched to XFCE as well. Absolutely no problems. I was up and running at my original Gnome2 spped with half an hour. My only issues thus far have been with 13.04. A lot of the XFCE applets stopped working (as they were actually wrapped Gnome 2 applets), and there were themeing issues.

Personally, I don't care what Ubuntu do anymore. I've spent the last 4 upgrades fixing things they break for no reason and getting rid of horrible UI redesigns. I'm not waiting to see what they've broken in XFCE this time around. I'm moving to Mint on the next upgrade.