I've always been doubtful of OSX's crypto. At least with the past versions I was always worrying about side channel attacks.
Merely using encryption on your home folder is obviously going to leak information to unencrypted portions of the disk (not to mention spotlight indexing); but more insidious is default safe sleep (which will write out your encryption key to disk) and DMA enabled ports.
I've never used apple encryption on a disk until Lion - the few times I've tried to use filevault, it has ended in tears, pain and frustration (have you ever run VMware images on filevault? Yeah.)
The implementation in Lion is amazingly good; I do hope they close the DMA port issue though.
The author states Lion’s default Python install is a healthy Python 2.7.1.
I have personally had an unreasonable amount of trouble installing and using Python libraries and environments on Snow Leopard. I think right now I have at least 3 different versions of Python installed, each with various and disparate libraries. Has this been addressed in Lion? Getting Numpy, Scipy, etc to work is a chore; especially when comparing it to the Linux experience.
I used to have trouble getting numpy and scipy installed - until I started using homebrew. It blows MacPorts out of the water. Just make sure your architecture is set correctly as Jesse outlines in this blog post, otherwise you'll run into problems building the various C components with gcc.
What he said; use homebrew - judicious use of homebrew and virtualenv will save you lots of pain. I never install framework builds from python.org - I don't like installing things into /Library or ~/Library
I was shocked by two egregious prosecutions mentioned in the video:
Jake Baker
Arrested for posting rape/murder fantasy on the internet
case dismissed
Robert Thomas
Tried for transmitting porn on the internet
sentenced to three years in prison
We must remain guarded against such assaults, even to this day. I don't think there has been much of a shift in politicians' technoliteracy or indeed their ulterior motives.
The main subtlety is that they took personal information when they charged for their content (the decision specifically says there's no squashing of freedom of speech, since they could have screened out people from TN).
Someone signing up with an account from TN is therefore analagous to someone mail-ordering porn from TN, which would also be illegal under this law.
The article insists on the plant's low maintenance costs, so this may be a stupid question, but won't the greenhouse* have to be washed regularly of dust? I imagine the accumulation of detritus would significantly impact power production.
Edit: I previously had written mirrors. The concept art looked misleadingly shiny.
Compared to the cost of buying coal or natural gas and keeping all the machinery that moves and burns that clean, cleaning out the dust and debris this building takes in should cost relatively little.
if you think about the temperatures and pressures inside of modern combined cycle gas fired power plants, they need an exceptional amount of maintenance and repair. i'm sure the dirt loading is going to be a problem for these guys, but nowhere near the complexity and cost of super heated steam lines and huge boilers.
I don't disagree with what you wrote, but I too got tripped up on "cash in on guilt". I read it twice before deciding it doesn't mean cashing in on a person's inner turmoil, but rather exploiting the fact that the person is legally guilty.
The quote is much more sensible under that interpretation.
In context, I think it means the former. Not having the context available, your interpretation of the remarks at hand might make more sense.
However, a motif of Rand's is to moralize about capitalism and individuality. One of the themes, of which I think the current quote is an example, is that people have been trained to feel bad about their selfish impulses. Rand viewed the laws of her time as an outgrowth of the "evil" of altruism. As such, their "power" comes not just from being enforced, but from being held out as altruistic norms and carrying the moral weight that goes beyond their mere enforcement. As ludicrous as that sounds, I think I disagree with you and find it even more ludicrous that the antagonist actually wants to incarcerate people. To what end?
Also, the antagonist explicitly disavows that he want the laws obeyed, and also that they are even meaningful. He's trying to get people to live in fear.
> I think I disagree with you and find it even more ludicrous that the antagonist actually wants to incarcerate people. To what end?
The point is not to incarcerate people, but rather to gain leverage by being able to credibly threaten incarceration. This is standard operating procedure for prosecutors and police when dealing with confidential informants in drug cases. It's not such a stretch to think it may also happen in other cases.
This reads like a high school essay. In 1200 words the author manages to raise exactly one poorly backed point.
I've noticed lately the intensifying assault upon Google's citadel. I have some conservative acquaintances who lecture me about Google's evil ways - from how the company has attempted to destabilize the middle east to egregious violations of privacy. Not once have I heard them harp on Microsoft, or DRM, or Telcos. Frankly, I don't know where all this Google hate is coming from, but it must be an orchestrated effort by threatened industries.
We're already seeing a battle front in the mobile market, where no doubt spurious patents will be trumped up against Google. Anyone else care to chime in on developing fronts?
Though, true philosophers and poets do tend to be rich (showing that once needs are met, one has time to turn to richer thoughts).
That sounds a lot like there are no true Scotsman. Or perhaps it is better interpreted to mean only the truly wealthy can be true philosophers and poets. That may be the case...
I've never used I2P, but Tor also has hidden services, which can only be accessed through the network and do not require exit nodes. I imagine both Tor and I2P use similar routing schemes to achieve "anonymity".
http://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en
I am not too trusting of the architecture though, since there has been (at least) one significant practical break before. Also the hidden services are susceptible to DoS, despite the claims that to DoS one node you have to DoS the entire network.
Merely using encryption on your home folder is obviously going to leak information to unencrypted portions of the disk (not to mention spotlight indexing); but more insidious is default safe sleep (which will write out your encryption key to disk) and DMA enabled ports.