why that was nice

[Mitch86 5,000+ posts]

Is it bad that this made me laugh out loud?

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

Is this a serious question? because it insited a rather large amount of derogatory remarks on the first couple of pages. Why would you be so specific about the type of cancer and so vague about the mental affliction, the "retarded" generalization is what starts tings off on the wrong foot. eg. had you said "would you rather have a Dandy Walker kid or one who would die of leukemia?" I am sure the responses would have been different, you may have recieved some sensible answers. I would be willing to bet that without Googling it the dumb a$$es with the smart comments wouldn't even know what Dandy Walker was.
I am sorry if I took the line of questioning in the wrong spirit. If you are looking for actual answers, I think it is a great subject of discussion, however if it was done in with any other intention, I hope some stronger thought will go into making threads like this i the future.

I'm betting that 95% of people posting wouldn't have put the effort into googling dandy walker and would have assumed it meant a ****.

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

I'm betting that 95% of people posting wouldn't have put the effort into googling dandy walker and would have assumed it meant a ****.

I would not have spent the time to look it up, but I would have guessed crazy person.

 

[Mitch86 5,000+ posts]

I wouldnt name my kid Dandy Walker...

 

[quakerroatmeal 10+ year member]

In my definition, a retard is a person who acts like an idiot. And a sick/disability person is a mentally ill person. I hate when people call mentally ill people retards.

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

I think in it's proper use, retard is actually a verb.

When my ex worked at subway, they would "retard" the bread overnight to keep slow down the yeast.

 

[bds0688 10+ year member]

Christ, Seattle to SD. How do you handle such a transition?

 

[traksta15 10+ year member]

with a ***** mom you'd have a lot of cool "uncles"

 

[kmanian 5,000+ posts]

I wouldnt name my kid Dandy Walker...

now thats funny:laugh:

 

[quakerroatmeal 10+ year member]

Yeah I meant the way I use it.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

The nation's top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon! is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens' Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst.

That's according to a sprawling 18-page story on the Director of National Intelligence by Lawrence Wright in the January 21 edition of the New Yorker. (The story is not online).

In the piece, McConnell returns, in flamboyant style, to his exaggerating ways, hyping threats and statistics to further his bureaucratic aims. For example, McConnell regurgitates the hoary myth that computer crime costs America $100 billion a year. THREAT LEVEL traced down the source of that fake-factoid in September to a former privacy officer for the state of Colorado.

Presumably using unsupported stats like that, in May 2007 McConnell convinced President Bush that a massive cyber-attack on a singe U.S. bank would be worse for the economy than than the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, the article reports. In response, the NSA developed a mind-boggling, but still incomplete, plan to eavesdrop on the internet in order to protect it.

In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

It says something ominous about McConnell's priorities if he believes a DDOS attack on Bank of America, or even a computer intrusion that wiped out its database (and magically purged its backup tapes), would be worse than an attack that killed 3,000 Americans.

Still, it's hardly a surprising plan -- given that McConnell was one of the main backers of the Clipper Chip, the government's failed, early 1990's proposal to put a backdoor in every encryption product.

McConnell also makes an astounding assertion that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recently crippled the NSA's overseas signals intelligence collection with a string of soft-on-terror rulings.

McConnell said that federal judges had recently decided, in a series of secret rulings, that any telephone transmission or e-mail that incidentally flowed into U.S. computer systems was potentially subject to judicial oversight. According to McConnell the capacity of the NSA to monitor foreign-based communications had consequently been reduced by seventy per cent.

In other words, McConnell claims the NSA couldn't intercept a terrorist's e-mail by tapping a fiber optic cable in Pakistan, if there was a chance the message would pass through a U.S. router or end up in a Hotmail account.

I'm no rich man, but I'll bet any reader $1,000 that, when and if those rulings are ever released, we'll see they say no such thing. Send me an e-mail to take me up this bet. U.S. government officials are welcome to participate.

The FISA law that created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court only applies to intercepts that physically happen within the borders of the United States. The NSA has always been free to intercept foreign communications overseas -- the mission for which they were created and funded -- even if the call passes through a U.S. switch.

So in the case of the now debunked Iraqi kidnappers anecdote that leads off the New Yorker story, the NSA would only have needed to get a court order if its Iraqi targets initiated communications that flowed through U.S. servers or switches and the NSA decided to tap them physically at a United States internet or telecom facility, by burglarizing it, digging up its cables or getting the company to cooperate. (As for why that happens and how common it is, check my story: NSA's Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became the Switchboard to the World.)

Simply put, the FISA law is intended to prevent the NSA from operating inside the United States.

In any event, that restriction collapsed this summer with the fear-induced, strong-armed passage of the so-called Protect America Act. That law radically re-architected the nation's surveillance apparatus.

Now the NSA can turn Gmail's servers and AT&T's switches into de facto arms of the surveillance industrial complex without any court oversight.

And though the law ostensibly sunsets in February, any orders in effect at that time will have power for another 12 months. Moreover, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is reportedly planning to discard legislative attempts to rein in these new powers and will instead simply push to extend the current scheme another 12 months.

In short, McConnell's politically convenient exaggerations have already worked well for him in winning domestic spying powers, despite their flimsiness under any real scrutiny.

That track record bodes ill for anyone concerned about his new plans to push for sweeping and unnecessary powers to put the NSA in the wires of the internet in order to prevent a computer attacks.

Makes me proud to be an American.

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

Interesting. I spent 2 hours last night trying to figure out how these options are taxed. I guess after the first few searches, someone from the IRS should contact me.

I wonder if Google will sell the info to the government. I don't think they could just "take" it on such a mass scale.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

If you want my honest opinion this is the type of thing, like torture, that the government should do but not make legal or admit to.

That way if they get out of hand and the public becomes aware of it, then they have to knock it off or face the electorate.

This is NOT the type of thing that should be policy.

 

[tappin_azz 10+ year member]

thats the truth. there are just some things the general public shouldnt know.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

thats the truth. there are just some things the general public shouldnt know.

And there are some thing that the government probably should do, but should also fear that the general public will find out about. ..