But the boycott is not about a large group of people not liking the pasta, it's about a minority not liking what the CEO said, and a large group of people being manipulated into attacking him. If it was a boycott of pasta that were made with whale oil by young kids in poor countries, it would actually be a boycott of the product. But as long as the boycott is in reaction to what the CEO said, then it's a totally different matter. It's actually a blatant attempt at silencing an opinion, not an attempt at criticizing a product. And it makes the boycott totally illegitimate. If you pretend not understanding that, you are simply playing dumb.

Unfortunately, gay activists are often violent like this. They all too often launch vicious hate campaigns against anybody who simply voices vaguely anti-gay opinions. Come on, is it a victory that a guy was bashed for saying he does not want to put gay peoples in ads for... pasta?!? What is the connexion between homosexuality and pasta, seriously? Why should I have homosexuals in ads for pasta and not, say, people with blue hair or ugly people, other minorities that are all too often victimized. Why can't Barilla simply promote pasta, instead of being forced to promote homosexuality at the same time?

Let me be very clear. My own company does not intend to run ads with pasta in them. I hope that this won't cause me to be called a pastaphobic by all pasta lovers. I pray this won't cause a massive stir on twitter, a rally to arms of all the pasta lovers I insulted for not intending to prominently promote their lifestyle in my ads instead of promoting my products. And yes, I'm being sarcastic, because this is exactly what happened to the Barilla CEO.

As of me, I'm so tired of this gay activism that I will say "Go Barilla" on this one, and buy more.

Who says the general public doesn't care about it?

Polling shows that even back in July the US public knew the NSA was lying and disapprove of what's happening by 2:1.

But what can be done? "Outrage" doesn't achieve anything. It became abundantly clear the moment senior members of the military were caught lying and nothing was done, that what the public think doesn't matter. So why should the public make a fuss? Waste of energy.

CNN and the likes are just reflecting the fact that the general story is by now well known and not news. The NSA lies and is totally out of control. It does everything the most paranoid people ever imagined, and more. OK. Got it. Next story.

But make no mistake. The right people are still paying attention. Behind the scenes there's a lot going on in a lot of places. All kinds of people who previously would not have included government agencies in their threat models are now starting to do so. Change will take years, perhaps decades, and enormous amounts of technical talent is going to be wasted fighting the US government by trying to blind it with more effective encryption. Success is by no means guaranteed. But without a doubt those members of the general public who have the ability to take part in that are still paying attention.

i don't trust what the nsa says, does anyone?

they do everything in secret

they've been shown to have reneged on every assurance they've given so far

the nsa is a dagger pointed at the heart of our bill of rights, and operates with impunity of any oversight or control

the entire program needs to be wound down and focused on actual surveillance of actual terrorist targets, not this vacuum cleaner for everything

do we still have the backbone to press our representatives to ensure this is done?

Back then they didn't know they themselves had been spied on. But I agree. It didn't take a Kreskin to see the spying on Brazil revelations coming once they started. They should have stood up for it. In fairness to the region, other Latin American countries did.

You know, I've read this excuse a million times since Snowden did his thing, and I'm sick of it.

The problem is it's an abuse of language. Saying "Every country spies. It's one of those things governments are supposed to do" is nothing but rhetorical sleight of hand. The word spy conjures up cartoons of men in pork-pie hats and long raincoats following some traitor in a car. The word is loaded with cold war imagery. It reminds people of a time when there was an "us" vs a "them" and spying was a very small scale and targeted activity done against "them" or, at very least, those of "us" working for "them".

We need a new word to describe what's going on in todays world. Spying doesn't even come close to being the right word. How about totalitarian surveillance? But even that isn't strong enough to communicate the reality we are living in.

In today's reality there's no us vs them. There's no good vs evil, capitalism vs communism. There's just bureaucrats and their power, exercised over their own people as readily as over foreigners.

This is not only not "one of those things governments are supposed to do", it's often one of those things governments are expressly prohibited from doing by their own laws. And that's for good reasons!

Please, don't flatter the NSA by calling them spies. They aren't spies at this point. They are real life equivalents of O'Brien, the dedicated agent of totalitarian control in 1984. O'Brien is a far darker and scarier character than anyone who could be described as a spy.

there's a reason why they call it disruptive technology, scumbags

we don't need you

Why is it "evil" for Iran to want a nuclear bomb, given that Israel and the USA both hate them, and have lots?

BTW the USA treats anyone who holds any Iranian rial as having "illegal earnings" and punishes them severely.

The ability to instantly and unilaterally declassify anything, without any fear of retribution.

Fat chance.

Last item first, if you work with a general contractor, you should get the best results. Hiring a licensed electrician is a good idea, but you may also need to file paperwork with your city hall to have, or do, the work, documenting who is doing the work, any licenses required, when the work will be done, and schedule an electrician to confirm that the work performed meets any code requirements. I've lived in cities where skipping that would leave you liable for significant legal problems, and in counties where the only reason to file such paperwork was to have a record on file that the work was done, and the county didn't inspect because there was no budget for an inspector.

Next to last, this is one reason for the 'at desk level' outlets. I've gone as far as building a desk that had a power strip on a level between the desk and the wall for plugging things into, yet not sitting on the desktop. That solution also includes a shelf above the desk for equipment under test, stuff on display, and as a book-shelf for development tool references.

I do like the idea of the outlets 2 feet above the desk to plug things into behind the monitors. That said, I also like the idea of outlets being immediately behind computer monitors to allow you to plug those monitors in, without draging those power cords across a desk, or having to dig around under a desk for the power cord later on. Granted I like to mount flat panel monitors directly on the wall, and that can generate airflow tolerance issues, but then I'm not re-wiring the office either.

I can think of several things that may take advantager of a floor based outlet. The example I gave initially was a vacuume cleaner, which is somewhat facitious, as no one in their right mind would manufacture a corded vacuume with a cord so short that you had to find a new outlet to plug it in as often as I suggest. That said, if the room is large enough to have tables, couches, etc, positioned in the middle of the room, away from a wall, having an outlet to plug a lamp, or a laptop charger in seems to me to be a better investment than having an outlet stuck behind the couch over at the wall that you now have to stretch an extension cord from to use.

This also provides a recommendation for a ceiling based power outlet in that you may have a good reason to mount a projector there. In this case I really recommend treating that project as a built-in solution specific to the projector, but it may be used for other purposes, such as a wifi repeater.

No, no, no! The correct response is 'hire an electrician and carpenter to put in more electrical outlets around your room at all of the levels you expect to plug things in. Those locations should be 'every 2 feet in each direction across the floor so you can plug in your vacuume to clean the floor; one foot above the floor every 2 feet along the wall; 2 feet off the floor every 2 feet along the wall, (this one to support end tables being placed at any location along the wall); 3 feet off the floor every 6 inches, so people can plug things in that are siting on desks; and 5 feet off the floor so that people can install permanent lighting fixtures and mount wall clocks, these can be spread every 6 feet apart to reduce the appearance of clutter at 'eye level' for Steve Jobs family.

Remember to install only as many outlets on a circuit breaker as code allows, and that the sum of the possible current load of all of the circuit breakers for distribution from the circuit breaker box may not violate the code limits of the load for that box. (some regulatory districts provide for an 'oversubscription' allowance of 50% on the expectation that you are not going to put a full load on every circuit off of a breaker, but check with your electrician.)

The problem with sneakernet solutions is rarely the read/write time at either end. In almost all cases if you're organization is large enough to make use of high capacity circuits, you probably can't control the end-to-end security of your sneakernet for the data transfer any more.

You may use bonded couriors, but you very likely can't controll such things as bridge failures (rare, but anyone else wonder how much was paid for the cargo in the trucks that were on the I-35W bridge that collapsed August 1, 2007?) natural disasters (consider the number of transport trucks that roll on interstate freeways because of high winds, and compare the number of such incidents with the number of drivers of smaller vehicle accidents) and theft of cargo (how many times have we heard of the wide screen TV that someone is selling at below what should be cost, because it 'fell off the truck'?) I'm not even considering the primary reason that most carriers are bonded, employee theft, as that variety of issue applies whether the employee is of the courior, of your own company.