It depends on your intent. Are you trying to cover up a criminal act using VPN software? Are you knowingly writing VPN or encryption software to help commit a crime? Then yes, you have something to worry about. There are tons of examples of this in criminal prosecutions. Just because we use different technology these days doesn't change the way the law works. If I'm a security guard and I sincerely forget to lock a door, and the place I'm guarding gets robbed, I didn't commit a criminal act (though I might be negligent, and if I was really negligent -- like drunk or sleeping -- it may rise to criminally negligent act). But if I leave a door open as part of a scheme to rob the place, then my action (or inaction) is criminal because of my intent. Law enforcement and prosecutors can use all the facts and circumstances surrounding the acts to infer intent -- then a jury gets to decide if they proved it or not. In today's context of VPN and encryption software, the prosecutor can argue that the use of those tools is evidence of intent. A defense lawyer would argue otherwise. But ultimately, it's the jury's job to decide. That's why we have them.

Since we're operating under U.S. Federal law, our innocent until proven guilty developer will be able to force the prosecutors to prove their case and have a jury decide his fate. The government's case is this: if you're a developer of a legitimate remote admin tool and DRM tools, why are you marketing and supporting the product in a known criminally linked forum? What was your relationship with the convicted felon who distributed the Limitless keylogger tool? From the Krebs piece it appears he assisted (a prosecutor might say "conspired with") the developer of key logger crimeware to receive payments. This is a case of what did he know and when did he know it? This is not an easy case to prove, but there is probable cause to suspect something criminal was going on based on the totality of circumstances. The government will have its work cut out for it, but I think the "chilling" effect defense is weak. You're free to develop, market, and sell any type of RAT or DRM software you want. You cannot knowingly assist criminals commit cybercrime. Pretty simple in my book. If you think otherwise, hire a lobbying firm and buy your own legal exceptions to established laws like the gun lobby did ;)

I misread that line, and said to myself...How nice, librarians took over the school board. They must have grown tired of all the shhhhhshing, dewey decimaling, and restacking. They have finally risen in revolt wielding the charred remains of card catalog cabinets and horn rimmed glasses sharpened and honed into deadly shanks. The eyeglass chain lanyard turned garrote, used by the rampaging librarian death squads with great effect, is a testament to the fact that you can raise an effective army .05 and .10 cents at a time. In fact, the librarians have finally stockpiled enough glue from the envelopes of overdue notices that the NSA suspects a chemical weapons plant is in the works (and has the Israeli Mossad report to prove it). MI6 could neither confirm nor deny -- actually, they weren't sure if they themselves existed. The librarians assert that the glue will be used only for peaceful purposes, and they are well within their rights to stockpile and develop the resources they need to maintain librarian sovereignty. But alas, I digress. Librarians. Rise. Rise up and take what is rightfully yours..... The local school board. The sweet, sweet, school board -- and a bonny prize she is. Well I hope those librarians whoop them school boardians real good..... Oh wait, it's libertarians? Nevermind. P.S. There is a difference between sharpening and honing. Really. It's on the internet, see: http://lansky.com/index.php/bl...

Hold the phone. Joseph Campbell wrote more than Hero. But let's face it. Every story is a formula. Campbell illustrates this in Hero, but his larger point is that mythologies -- everything from Egyptian and Greek myth to the Bilble, to the Book of Mormon, to yes, Star Wars -- are stories that tap into themes common to all humanity. Campbell called it monomyth. Jung called it the collective unconscious. The problem we have today is that Hollywood is too busy treating storytelling like a business so it uses business school analytics to suck the soul out of its scripts. They are afraid to make a movie that people won't like. They want everyone not to hate it. Well, if your goal is not alienate anyone, you will achieve the exact opposite. No one will trust you, no one will believe you, and no one will care. It's called pandering, thank you, and welcome to the 2013 summer movie season. Hollywood plays it safe and sticks to audience response metrics and focus group re-writes. Well guess what? They don't work because storytelling by committee blows.

And if you think you can't apply Campbell's work to "deep character studies," you don't know the breadth and scope of his work, or that flawed characters are what makes the hero likeable or at least worthy of our interest. Perfect is boring. I would argue that the protagonists in 2001, the Sopranos, Game of Thrones, etc. have more in common with Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (Campbell's poster child for the flawed hero who's always getting things wrong by trying to do the "right" thing) than you know.

I guess the biggest problem is that our Hollywood storytellers are a reflection of our larger society and culture which in case you haven't noticed are in a bigger state of collapse than the summer box office receipts. But that thought is too depressing to delve into right now, even by /. standards.

...so now we know your password is password!

I use backblaze -- $47.50/year for a two year term and unlimited storage. For the mathematically challenged among us that's $3.96/month. Skip a couple cups of coffee a month and sleep better in more ways than one. As a bonus they show you how to build one of their 135TB storage pods here http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/ .

We are all only dancing on this earth for a short while.... so keep dancing. Otherwise it becomes about the artificial "preservation" of the person you love and care about more than anything else in world. And that can't be preserved. Both my wife and I lost our mothers young. Neither my mom nor my wife's mother got to see our kids, and that has always been hard. We often catch ourselves saying "Oh man, Mom would have loved what Jack said today." When we do catch ourselves in a moment like that we tell stories about our moms to the kids. We give them a sense of who they were -- not when there were sick or dying -- but from times when they were laughing, living, and vibrant. It was the late Richard Feynman who said "I'd hate to die twice, it's so boring." So my best advice would be non-technical. Do things together, but don't make it a "this will be the last time we get to do 'X' together" for the kids. No kid ever says to himself, "Hmm.. this will be the last time I will be climbing a tree." It just happens. Let your children get to enjoy knowing their mom and just talking without getting metaphysical. I would also involve music. It's a powerful mnemonic and gives your kids a sense of who their mother is and what she likes and doesn't like. After all, that's what it is to really know somebody. Go to a concert together. My wife's mom was a HUGE Willie Nelson fan. Her mom took her to see Willie -- it was one of her first concerts -- when she was all of about 10 or 11. When we saw Willie play last week in D.C. a flood of memories came pouring in. In a strange way, I feel I got to know my wife's mother a little bit (I never met her myself). There was no conscious effort to preserve anything, just the amazing power of the human brain to recreate a moment, an experience, an entire person, if only for a brief flash. Continue to make those memories. Continue to live and have as much fun as you are able. Continue to expose your children to your wife's inner light and her true person-hood. The four billion years of evolution packed into the human brain is the best "technological" solution I can think of. They won't forget her. They can't -- she's their mom.