Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Chris Waugh,
That could be true without countering Lucy's question. Human intelligence could be applied to the electronic streams that make up so much of our communication, too. But yes, it's pretty clear you can easily avoid such scrying just by not doing your communication in that way, and is thus a highly appealing method to anyone actually doing anything really dodgy. So the question is actually "is such spying really effective?". It looks to me like it is a case of massively diminishing returns on something miserably small in the first case (genuine intel gleanable by intercepting electronic communications of unknown suspects).
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
doesn’t that mean that it must now be a choice between no effective spying at all (which may be how you prefer it, and that’s a valid position) or spying on everyone?
I guess it depends what one even means by "spying on". Is an automated scanner flagging some feature "spying"? What if the feature isn't even a human identifiable one, but something statistical that only an algorithm would even notice? Looking out for viruses, spam, and scams has been pretty routine for a long time, and involves algorithms pulling messages apart and "reading" them.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Medium term solution, sit up straighter.
Occupational therapy is quite a subtle business. It might be safer to say "try making some adjustments to your working ergonomics". Sometimes being more reclined is actually better, if the chair has lumbar support, and your arms are rested. Quite small changes to the various heights and distances of things most commonly used can translate into tensions disappearing, pains going away.
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Kumara Republic,
The GCSB blow-up seems to be a litmus test for how libertarian a libertarian really is.
ACT failed that one long ago. Immediately after 9/11, I remember Prebble carrying on at length in Parliament about how this was proof that the govt was being irresponsible scrapping the SkyHawks, which could have been used to shoot down the guy who dropped flour bombs on Eden Park during the Springbok Tour. He was so concerned about stopping a political expression that the idea of an unarmed plane being shot down over a densely populated area clearly didn't faze him.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Yes, when it's 37.5 tonnes of anything, one tends to think the ergonomics through. When it's just operating a tiny little mouse, it doesn't seem so urgent.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Sacha,
If ever I have a disconnected toilet I shall make sure to put a bucket under the pipes just in case*. Although the idea of keeping a savage dog down there and feeding it little dangling scraps of meat has some appeal.
*Has the advantage that you can pick it up and give it back to the person responsible.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Russell Brown,
At the UoA there's big signs on all the science block toilets saying tradesmen are not to use them. Are they especially punishing on toilets for some bizarre reason?
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Emma Hart,
There must be a way to make it work for both of you. Some tax-fiddle, perhaps?
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When I met the pair of you, standing mere inches apart, in a defensive huddle, standing conspicuously near a structural beam, I didn't think "married". I thought "more complicated than that".
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Russell Brown,
We actually have to make decisions about what we are prepared to allow to avoid risk.
Yes, and what we are prepared to endure, as well. Abstinence is a fail-safe form of birth control, for example.
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