So I know it might only be a name, but what's the Beijing Armed Police Corps doing running a hospital?
That's more terrifying than the regular terrifying news that comes out of China these days.

So if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, it really doesnt't make a sound?

How is this different to what the NSA, GCHQ et al were (or are) doing? It's ostensibly for a different purpose, but presumably would have to work on a pretty similar dataset. That is to say: watching who's calling who, in realtime. And do they collect everyone's data for analysis, but only "use" it if you opt-in to the service, or do they only analyse your calling patterns if you opt-in?

This is a fine contribution to what might be the most positive and constructive thread I've seen on slashdot for some time.

Yeah, this kind of thing has been around for a while.

These days the added latency of going through the kernel IP stack is generally measured in micro rather than milliseconds but the difference is still the same order of magnitude. Solarflare, Mellanox and others will happily sell you expensive Ethernet network cards that come bundled with drivers that let you bypass the kernel IP stack. The stack itself isn't especially slow but the system call and extra memcpys still do all add up. I've also seen an in-house user space stack built largely on top of lwIP.

So I'd agree that none of this particularly new, but I reckon it's still interesting that the BBC is using it. Maybe that'll help spur more widespread adoption.

It's interesting for a couple of reasons. Given that the sender intended to send the details somewhere, I'd be really interested to know who the intended recipient was and for what reason.

Even more interesting, I never quite realised that heads of state would have (or then use), a passport. Surely no one actually checks it? I mean, I was once stuck in an immigration queue at JFK behind Paddy Ashdown, just after he stopped being something like the NATO-imposed governor of Bosnia and was an ordinary human again. He was relaxed, but his diminutive aide was not happy that Lord Ashdown had to wait. Fascinating people watching. But a proper bona-fide head of state?

they've already put some employees on paid leave until medically cleared

Would this be mitigated by Disney *always* providing paid sick leave? The quote in TFS suggests that this might be the exception rather than the rule. If you encourage employees to come in to work while they're sick, or even hide their symptoms, then I guess you're more likely to see illnesses spread...

I agree and that's not what I said and not what TFS or TFA is about - they're about targeted surveillance of lawyers. Which is always wrong, with a few possible but very rare exceptions. Targeting lawyers of people who criticise the government is clearly wrong and a blatant abuse of power.

I don't think I'm completely ignorant of history (although I wouldn't would I), but I might disagree with you about how we solve the problem. And as I said above, there is clearly a problem that needs fixing.

That's not what I said and not what I believe. It's not what TFA is about either.

I am dead set against that. The only example I gave was spying on a foreign leader which, as I said, I consider distasteful but (sometimes) necessary. You can, and quite possibly do, disagree with that and that's fine.

Whilst I don't believe I'm an apologist, debate and dialogue is what we're having here, and you'll see a previous comment of mine above where I said it's a good thing that we're outraged. And yes, I'm outraged if the government and/or intelligence agencies have been abusing their power. That doesn't necessarily mean that breaking the attorney-client privilege is always a bad thing and to be clear, it absolutely doesn't mean it's a good thing either. It's not too hard to come up with a (very unlikely but not impossible) circumstance where the majority of citizens would agree it was the right thing to do in that very individual and specific circumstance. My position is simply that I favour more scrutiny and accountability rather than more laws and absolute rules - never say never, but you must be able to, and made to, justify why you're doing something as a spy.

It's a nice thought but I don't think that works in the imperfect world we live in. We don't only spy because everyone else does (though I dare say there's an element of that). There has to be some way of letting the security services in their various forms do what they need to do. And to be clear: I think "need" here means what we the people as a democratic majority agree they need to do. (We the people also need to be realistic about the world we live in in doing so). Slightly changing tack as well: It's good and healthy that everyone's angry if someone abuses a position of responsibility and power. We just need to channel that productively so we make sure we don't throw the baby out with the bath water when we fix the problem. I also think that engineering a culture in our intelligence agencies that shies away from any abusive practices. You want people to avoid abusing power because they think that's right, not just because it's against a law or rule of some kind. My gut instinct is that the culture is probably well intentioned. Caveat the road to hell etc...

No argument from me there, but how do we balance this against other nations or groups that don't play by the same rules? (However limited or flawed the home laws might currently be).

Spies should listen in to whatever they need to listen in to. That's what they're there for. Nations spy on other nations. It's not pretty, but it's reality. That might include otherwise privileged or sensitive conversations - I bet Angela Merkel would feel that her conversations are in some way "privileged" (clearly not in an attorney-client sense). The worrying aspect here appears to be if, when, and how that data might have been passed to other areas of government. Passing, say, data gained from spying on defence lawyers and passing that to the government prosecutor should be criminal.

Absolutely. It just seemed counter intuitive to me. I had a (perhaps naive) belief that things like the Challenger or Abrams were the largest armoured vehicles on the battlefield.

From TFA:

So my first thought was surely not - the Challenger 2 is a main battle tank and must be bigger. But it turns out I was wrong. The Challenger 2 is still 20 tonnes heavier, but significantly shorter in height:

Challenger 2: Length 27ft 3 x Height 8ft 2 x Width 11 ft 6
Scout SV: Length: 25ft x Height: 9ft 10in x Width: 11ft

Crudely multiplying those numbers to get an approximation of volume gives the Scout SV the edge (just).

Yes, and I had read that before posting my comment. I want to believe, but find it harder to do so recently. To state the obvious: Dice have a credibility problem with some of the slashdot crowd. They need to go out of their way to avoid the *appearance* of paid-for-journalism. IMHO they didn't get this one right. However well intentioned it may or may not have been; it doesn't *appear* to be well intentioned. It's not the first time, and I dare say it won't be the last. They should be worried when their audience stops calling them out on it because we'll have given up caring at that point. I don't want to give up caring, but sometimes they make it hard.