rolux

14 ms·

91.
by rolux 13y ago
No, I'm just saying that working technology (like general purpose computers as affordable consumer goods) may be harder to ignore than "the voice of the people". (In Philosophy, you'd call this position "materialist
92.
by rolux 13y ago
Just two points: - That's why I prefer to think about protocols, as opposed to a system (i.e. global implementation of one or more generalized protocols) - You don't always have to solve the problem theoretically; solving it pract
93.
by rolux 13y ago
No, I mean protocols. While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accide
94.
by rolux 13y ago
> While I understand his personal reasons pj = Pamela Jones But yeah, it's devastating -- especially when it comes just one day after a editor of the Guardian states that they can no longer report on certain topics from London. It s
95.
by rolux 13y ago
I'd guess that the gain for Mr. Rusbridger is that he retains his privilege to be able to quote from similarly absurd conversations with government officials in the future.
96.
by rolux 13y ago
Agree. But, FWIW, Alan Rusbridger, the author of the article, explains in the comments that in this case, this would not be legal, as the conversations he is quoting from took place after he had agreed to keep names off the record.
97.
by rolux 13y ago
> I mean some of these people are really smart and understand how this spying can be abused. There must be something they know that makes them build or support these programs. Governments and security agencies want the Social Graph -- in
98.
by rolux 13y ago
Keep in mind though that if part of your loading time is parsing large amounts of JSON returned from your backend, this blocks the main thread and your loading bar will be stuck for that time.
99.
by rolux 13y ago
Trust me, I know such places, and I have no romantic notion of the Mafia. But I think there's a way to compare things that doesn't equate them. Same for the Greenwald quote in the grand-grand-grand-...-parent.
100.
by rolux 13y ago
While obviously, mafias and governments work on the same problem: How to govern, how to stay in power. Of course, a government has the power to brand a mafia as a criminal organization, but the line between legal and criminal can be very bl
101.
by rolux 13y ago
> It exists on both the right and left ends of the political spectrum. Even though those are relatively exotic forms, compared to the one that exists in the middle of the political spectrum.
102.
by rolux 13y ago
Adam Curtis just 10 days ago published a good piece on bureaucratic competence within the UK intelligence community: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER
103.
by rolux 13y ago
I don't think the UK government is just a US puppet here. A lot of materials that Snowden released are directly related to UK interests -- part of which is to at least be perceived as an autonomous entity that can make autonomous dec
104.
by rolux 13y ago
People don't care. Never did, never will. Yet, things do change, from time to time. One way out of this deadlock of apathy and perception of apathy would be to study -- in depth, historically -- what has made power erode, often in ve
105.
by rolux 13y ago
I'd rather see these powers as an institutionalized state of emergency. They're permanent -- there's no concept of "taking them away". And I'm not so sure about the role of the population either. It's not
106.
by rolux 13y ago
My hope is that Greenwald is not that easily provoked into making this a personal affair between himself and some government. That's part of what weakened Julian Assange's position, and I'm pretty sure Greenwald is aware of t
107.
by rolux 13y ago
> Would Greenwald have done a better service if he hadn't told the world what happened to his partner? I don't know--but maybe. Definitely not. And in the end, nothing happened to his partner. His rights were violated, for su
108.
by rolux 13y ago
Diversion of a plane carrying a head of state, to be precise. But yeah, it's not easy to imagine how such decisions are made. Of course, it's one of the features of authoritarianism that the display of authority trumps "tacti
109.
by rolux 13y ago
> they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation Intimidation is the purpose of anti-terrorism legislation. This is not an abuse of some exceptional powers -- it's their
110.
by rolux 13y ago
Quote: "Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they feel threatened by."
111.
by rolux 13y ago
Not sure if it's the beginning of the end. But of course, if you're a non-US corporation or government (or individual who wants to retain his or her privacy), then US-based cloud services are out. No Gmail, no iCloud, no Dropbox,
112.
by rolux 14y ago
If you read German, also take a look at this: http://www.gulli.com/news/12565-nachruf-guenter-freiherr-von... (scroll down for paragraph about Kim Schmitz) The basic idea would be that Megaupload looked very much like his mid-90s warez BB
113.
by rolux 14y ago
> If I am digitising an old text of unknown origin, and on a page it says "January 12", and on the page after that it says "January 15", can I represent those with a reference to an implicit but unknown year? I don't know the year, but
114.
by rolux 14y ago
For other - often difficult, and sometimes surprising - problems with time, see Peter-Paul Koch's excellent essay "Making <time> safe for historians": http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/04/making_time_...
115.
by rolux 14y ago
And someone please explain to me where the ~1.5 million dollars needed to defend oneself in a federal court actually end up.
116.
by rolux 14y ago
It may be good to see this in the New York Times. But others (like, for example, Glenn Greenwald, both at salon.com and at guardian.co.uk) have made this point many, many, many times. And at least Greenwald I think would agree that one shou
117.
by rolux 14y ago
So if that was the venture you wanted me to support ("convince voters to vote their interest, and thus for a very different type of president" - seems to be a venture with a "media" or "campaign funding" angle, and I agree, it's a hard prob
118.
by rolux 14y ago
I agree with your last point. But just putting a temporary cap on Ortiz' career doesn't seem like a big win to me, in the grand scheme of things. I know nothing about Massachusetts politics. Who knows she's not the "good cop", compared to t
119.
by rolux 14y ago
"Doing her job and obeying the law" is not an excuse. "Doing her job" would have been to tell MIT (or whoever was responsible for this affair to end up on her desk) to go away. Even though I am aware that's not how becoming a "career prosec
120.
by rolux 14y ago
Does anyone here seriously believe that she's going to be fired? And that Carmen Ortiz is such an exceptional case? There are hundreds of prosecutors in the US who routinely - even though against predominantly non-white and non-prominent de

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