Whoah, whoah, whoah. None of that. No bashing and name-calling of each other (unless it’s in good fun).
Truth be told, I’m having a hard time following the connection between Debian, the NSA, Java, Oracle, President Bush and… Gaza? And… some sort of Jewish conspiracy theory?
That’s actually a fantastic idea, because it would be good public policy for people who don’t care about government data snooping, and because it would provide much data to snoop.
It falls down (yes I am treating your joke suggestion as serious, because it’s a really good suggestion) on two grounds, one weak and one not so weak. The weak one is that clearly anyone with something to hide won’t use this service. This is the underlying thing behind the intelligence community’s rage at Snowden; he compromised what were probably quite intelligence-profitable methods of gathering information (demand secret access to everyone’s gmail and dropbox), because now people with something to hide won’t use gmail either.
The strong reason (and I use “strong” here in the sense of “more strongly motivating to intelligence agencies”, not to indicate that I think it’s a better reason) is that that would involve not being sneaky and underhanded. There is an important linguistic point here: there’s a meaning of “secret” which is actually “unadmitted and more importantly unaccountable”, as seen in phrases such as “secret intelligence service” and (more commonly) “secret police”. The Gestapo, to pick a secret police example (substitute the AMAM if you’re inclined to quote Godwin’s law now) were most certainly not secret; the whole point was that everyone was terrified of them but that they could not be challenged or predicted. Everyone knows about intelligence agencies too (they have homepages these days) but they’re still largely operating in a 1920s “deny everything and remain invisible” mode. Upfront-ly saying “give us your data and we’ll be cheaper than box.net” – explicitly stating that it’s free and therefore you’re the product, rather than trying to conceal it – could well win them a whole bunch of custom (since they can underbid every other player) but would not be secret and so they won’t do it.
Ok Bryan, you… you… you… ווייכווארג קאָדער
Back handed complements in Yiddish I love it. Bryan has just been called “programmer”.
The serious point here is that we all have some things we would rather not have public knowledge and it’s too easy to create or exaggerate a threat to have people believing that it’s OK for our conversations to be spied on to catch that paedophile, or that terrorist.
In another thread on this forum dan posted a link to a pdf from the Scorched Earth Society which I think is relevant here.
The freedoms we have achieved are not universal, some countries are better than others, and they have been hard fought for over centuries. Yet, too many of us are happy to post intimate details of our lives to social media sites such as facebook and twitter. We are also tolerant of big industries as well as governments following our private instant messaging and e-mail.
…because there’s no point in having “freedom” unless you do something with it.
And I posted a link to a talk by Dan Geer “Cybersecurity as Realpolitik” that may be relevant here. Link here
Dan Geer (taking out of context):
“I’ve spoken elsewhere about how we are all intelligence agents now,
collecting on each other on behalf of various overlords.[RSA] There
are so many technologies now that power observation and identification
of the individual at a distance. They may not yet be in your pocket
or on your dashboard or embedded in all your smoke detectors, but
that is only a matter of time. Your digital exhaust is unique hence
it identifies. Pooling everyone’s digital exhaust also characterizes
how you differ from normal. Privacy used to be proportional to
that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed
but not identified. No more – what is today observable and
identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy
as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you
are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward
rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or
control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer
will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state
of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to
misrepresent yourself.”
It is disturbing that the people, like myself, who have a relatively small digital data footprint (or so we deceive ourselves into thinking) are saying “I don’t mind, I have nothing to hide.” (edit: I’m not saying that, just to be clear!) All it takes is a signature on a piece of paper and the “innocuous” activities that one is engaged in are now labeled “extremist”. And then the full attention of whatever intelligence agencies are upon that person who “has nothing to hide”.
Scenario 1: There is an armed guard standing in your yard. He will shoot you if you leave your house today. So you are stuck home, eating day-old pizza and watching soap operas. Which, you decide, is better than death.
Scenario 2: No armed guard. You can do whatever you want today. You decide to stay home, eat day-old pizza and watch soap operas. Because that’s an awesome way to spend a Friday.
Which scenario do you prefer to live in?
That should be a forum rule, from now on. All back-handed compliments must be in Yiddish.
Well, that depends. Did you heat up the pizza? And if so, how? And which soaps? New or classic? Details Bryan, details!!
Oh, man! Finally some questions that are pertinent to the original topic of this thread!
Cold pizza for breakfast, heated up in the microwave for lunch, heated up in the oven (on a cookie sheet) for a special dinner.
Original Dallas up until after JR gets shot. Then bail on that and switch to Dark Shadows - starting with the first 1966 episode.
After that, hop on the Internet and make several posts about how much better the original Dark Shadows was to the new movie reboot.
This is why you are you and I am me.
I watch The Young And the Restless.
As long as you’re not a OLTL watcher, we’re cool.
The second one. Which is what I was saying. We agree here, right?
[quote=“bryanlunduke, post:31, topic:293”]
Cold pizza for breakfast, heated up in the microwave for lunch, heated up in the oven (on a cookie sheet) for a special dinner.
A pizza stone is worth its weight in… Pizza stones. Makes for a nice crispy crust.
Wait. Yes?
Damn, I want pizza now.
Yes, perhaps @sil can change the name of thee thread to “Debian is, according to this person, owned by the NSA and also how to reheat pizza and some soap opera suggestions.” Or better, “How to reheat leftover pizza, soap opera suggestions, and some bits about Debian and the NSA.” 
Or just “Pizza”.
Just to drag this along…
One trick I learned was, if you are having a slice or two, to first, put it on a cast iron skillet on top of the stove. That crisps the crust up nicely, and then put it under the broiler to heat the top. I haven’t tried this on pan pizza though. Might have to use a lower heat, on the stove, with that so to heat it up through. I will also put, on left over pizza, Gorgonzola or blue cheese.
Edit: And…Heating up pizza for breakfast---- For extra protein, add an egg on top. You, then, may have to do something sacrilegious, eat pizza with a fork.