With corporations, unless they are some group like the EFF and "profits be damned we'll fight for our customers rights" the various legal requests, etc. will make fighting it so expensive that they eventually comply...

Unfortunately, when it comes down to the individual, things happen.

"Anonymous drug tip" results in a SWAT raid at 3am where you are shot. Or your family is shot. Same with "anonymous terrorist tip". Or "opps wrong address".

Ok, I'll turn down the paranoia...

"Sir, we'd really like to check things out but don't have time to get a Warrant. Do you have something to hide?"

or

"Well we know we can't legally get a warrant, but we can harass him with various criminal charges until his lawyer fees bankrupt him or until he complies".

Or I'll turn the geek paranoia back up

Slowly but surely over a number of years a back door has made it into GCC and other critial parts of the compiling tool chain that those "terrorists and criminals who use black terminals wtih white text instead of Windows Vista" use... and between access at your ISPs end and exploits that are now present on your computer, via kernel or userland stuff, and they manufacture the evidence or just suck it all off your computer.

Had to pick "other" because I use different distros for different tasks

Desktop or laptop? Current leader and favorite is Mint

Servers? Debian...

Lets hope he's got all his tax documents in line with the BATFE ....

Try working for a small community college or county school board.... we've been trying to hire someone to teach our cisco classes, but HR and Administration won't let them make more than a starting English teacher - about $49k/yr

Gotta have a masters or 18 hours post grad classes in certain technology fields, plus various Cisco certs. Do you honestly think we can fill that position? We've been trying for ages... the last person in the position didn't mind the pay since he had already retired once and teaching the courses were a hobby for him...

Right, which is why you hire no one, wait a week, repost job with slightly different title or description and a super low pay rate.

I've made keys for a simple Master brand lock using a Xerox copy of the key (yes, it was made on a Xerox machine). And yes, the cloned key worked.

Here at work we have these weird keys that don't have teeth - they have variable diameter and depth partial spheres cut out of the sides. Heard the last locksmith mumbling something about having to send them off to some place in Germany that still has dwarves working by the light of a lava flow from a volcano to get them duplicated... will be sending this article to the new locksmith who seems more competent but mumbles a lot anyway.

The only things I've done wiht my (camera-less and microphone-less) Samsung Smart TV is watch the occasional youtube video with the kids and use the netflix built into it.

And since if the kids get into Netflix it eats my bandwidth so I can't play Xonotic, I usually just leave the TV's network cable unplugged. Fairly secure, no?

they still sell phone switchboard systems that by default can be accessed by telnet with no password I disagree.

Not sure how I feel about this. Is no password better than "admin" or "password" or "1234" for the default password? Lets face it, each device that ships is going to have a default way of accessing it for configuration.... The problem really lies with the people that *leave* it at that configuration.

Skeet/trap clays take 7 or so pellets hitting it to break nicely. Competitive trap shooters with great handicaps stand 27 yards back from the bunker, clay isn't visible above the bunker until it has traveled another 5 or 6 yards... And it is moving at about 60mph out of the gate. Then ya gotta find it, get a good sight picture, and then shoot it. Granted, the target is flying mostly away from you, not complete left to right (or right to left) like the center stations when shooting skeet.

Using a larger shot size 50 to 60 yards isn't unreasonable for a practiced shooter to get enough hits to damage a drone. Damage enough to bring it down? Dunno... but multiple shots would almost guarantee it.

Probably wanted to avoid "Holy Grail" since it would make the thread devolve into a Monty Python quote fest... not that there is anything wrong with that.

Whether we pay too much in taxes or too little, for sure we aren't getting our moneys worth

Yup, and if I remember the post from when I was banned from their forums for giving instructions on how to set a root password to enable su or even direct login they do it for security reasons...

Only if you are offering new versions of stuff or offering support of new stuff. The hardware certainly hasn't changed, and as long as you are only offering support/updates for the version of the OS that was current at the time, then the patches/updates/etc. all still work fine.

Now, if someone is using old hardware with newest releases of software, I see a problem with it working, and yes, it would cost some company money to support it - someone would need to write the code or modify the existing. But even then, hardware obsolescence may take care of the issue for you. Windows 7 doesn't need drivers or firmware for a 3com network card plugged into a MCA slot 'cause no computer with MCA slots is capable of running any version of Windows... they could barely crawl with Windows 2.0.

Buddy of mine would put on porn tapes of just snippets of action during parties - no lighting effects, no music, just 10 to 30 second clips of raw hard farking in various gender combinations. Then mute TV, play at 2x speed, and crank the stereo up. Seemed to work well.