When you're feeling miserable about the world, perfect typing is not a high priority (particularly if English is not your first language).

You understood what I was trying to say, why be a dick about it? FOR FUN? You asshole. You complete wreck of a human being. Do you enjoy making a sad person even worse? Will you see this as one of the highlights of your existence?

Think I'll just kill myself. The world isn't getting any better if no-one cares. We've lost all hope.

Oh fuck you. My post was basically a cry for help and you come here with your superiority complex. Maybe I'm suffering a bit of disillusion here because I'm helpless in a shit world. Could have given some advice you know.

The more I read of Slashdot (and to an extend Ars Technica), the less I want to continue reading. All it is these days is NSA, NSA, NSA. It's too damn depressing and what's worse, it's one of those situations where it's

(a) an intangable threat (you will probably never suffer directly because of what they're doing, but it still feels wrong)
(b) related to (a), it's something that the wider public doesn't know about and would be hard-pressed to convince is a threat without sounding like a looney
(c) cannot be overcome (moving to Linux for example doesn't change much if the network can still be tapped, and evidently TOR is now comrpomised), short of abandoning technology and reverting to primitive technology for, again, a hypothetical threat that will probably not ever affect us DIRECTLY, but still something we know shouldn't be happening.

I just want to read about science and technology, interesting shit. Seems impossible to do that anymore since clearly NSA stuff rates rather highly.

TL:DR - what's the point of knowing how evil things are if tangible, WIDESPREAD changes aren't going to happen due to our lack of power? You just become miserable, while everyone else is (relatively) happy because they don't know. There's a reason ignorance is bliss is a saying.

It seems everyone wants their bit of drama and news headlines these days. Nothing is sacred anymore - doing things with a modicum of respect and class is too boring.

Having said that, science doesn't have to be completely serious all the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9007_James_Bond)

Yeah I suppose that's true. But then you start to go down the path of wondering just how much of your system CAN you trust. What if your compiler, or the compiler used to build your distro, was compromised without anyone's knowledge? There's a famous paper about the issue (https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf) and it's hard to believe at least someone wouldn't have attempted a nefarious use of the concept. What if some of the microcode which directly controls your hardware has been compromised, before it was even sold?

Taken to its extreme, you basically can't trust ANY software or hardware that you didn't build yourself. So what then? May as well give up on technology by that point. The only realistic choice we have is think logically, rationally, and decide on what level of protection we can live with, and what's within the realms of danger and what's likely to be compromised.

Relax already. The code for SELinux is freely available and I can guarantee you, well vetted by now. If it had a backdoor, someone would have noticed. I would have thought Linux users of all people, knowing the benefits of open-source code, would be less likely to be showing knee-jerk reactions about this sort of thing.

Be paranoid sure, but sometimes a bit of thought and logic can make you rest easy at night. It's a shame a well-designed security architecture is now tainted simply because it has the acronym NSA associated with it.

The closest thing to a *smart* decision was russia's ethically questionable decision of playing the neutral party and selling weapons to both sides

Reminds me of a quote from the (Russian, coincidentally) protagonist in Lord of War:

Yuri Orlov: I was an equal opportunity merchant of death. I supplied everyone but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-model Uzis to Muslims. I sold Communist-made bullets to Fascists... I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were fighting my fellow Soviets. I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Not on any moral grounds: back then, he was always bouncing checks.

No. The New Zealand bill was a scam, and all the news coverage screwed up and fell for the scam.

It's gotten to the stage where I've become so cynical about the tech industry, that if I hear what sounds like good news, it's probably not, or is more upbeat than it actually is. I don't even need to do any in-depth research - it's probably going to be an accurate assumption, and generally is. As end-users (I hate the term consumers, as if that's all anyone does anymore) we have very few genuine victories for our rights anymore.