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Opinion on phone records collecting

In the last few days, it has come to light that ten days after the Boston Marathon bombing, all phone records from Verizon have been collected. Some levels of the government have said this is warranted to help fight terrorism, with Obama talking about trying to find the right balance between privacy and national security. Many individuals feel though that such an action is an act akin to Big Brother from the novel '1984.' Personally, I feel that this is proof that privacy in the United States may now be irreversibly compromised.

Now, as somebody who saw the horrific footage of the Boston Marathon Bombing it was truly a tragedy. This was something where justice was demanded as it was a terrorist attack and rightfully so. With that in mind, one suspect has been apprehended and the other one killed. So let me ask what exactly warranted the order to track these phone records?

The reality is that when it comes to privacy, Obama has now stated two different things. In 2007, he stated that we would not conduct spying on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. However, this recent issue and his defense of phone record collecting has now gone completely at odds with what he has said in the past. As such, this leads me with no other option but to call him an outright hypocrite for what he has done.

In addition, the fact of the matter is that barring massive public outcry, nothing will truly be done about this matter. The reality is that I would love to see this happen as we need to make our voices heard like we did for SOPA and PIPA. However, with some politicians going so far as to call people bullies for doing such a thing, I question if they truly want to listen. With that in mind, I think there is a chance for politicians to be more resistant to listen to public outcry against this unless it was larger than what it was for SOPA and PIPA.

Defcon or Bust

Edit: I have updated prices to this when possible.

After a bit of a delay I am going to try to get some recommendations on this one. The fact of the matter is this, I have been a part of SX since April 2000 and having recently turned thirty, I have to admit that I am not getting any younger. Also, this summer may be the last, best opportunity for me to do something special as I am at the point where some of my commitments outside of the site are becoming more involved. (This can be a bad thing sometimes, but in this case it has actually helped me expand my knowledge immensely.) With that in mind, I think this may be my best chance to attend Defcon, but there is one thing that may stop it.

The reality is that I don't have much of any money as I am currently in the midst of getting a higher education. As a result, I have been looking at the logistics of attending Defcon and how much it would cost to see how I could possibly make this happen one last time. From this here is what I have seen in costs:

Transportation: $380
Lodging: $300
Defcon Pass: $180

Now the honest reality is that I expected to exceed $1,000 as that was the figure the last couple of years. This year however I have been much more fortunate with regards to my planning and pragmatism. At the same time though, this is a considerable amount of money for a full-time student so any help on ideas with how to minimize the financial burden of this trip would be appreciated.

Amp Blasts: The Finale

Today, I am going to blast the one person who since I started this whole thing, has had a blast coming for years. However, most people wouldn't think of such a subject getting blasted. The reality is that I am equal opportunity when it comes to blasting people though. As such, today, I will be blasting Amp.

The basic reality about Amp is that he has done quite a few things. There was his numerous screw-ups in his misspent childhood that he cannot remember. There is also the fact that he had huge issues with rage, coming off as being butt-hurt so much of the time. The biggest issue though is that when he points out a problem, most of the time he didn't even bother to offer a solution, which just made him a fucking asshole.

What makes his actions more egregious is this simple reality, he wasted a considerable part of his life with worthless pursuits that would yield nothing worthwhile. Lemme ask him what the end result of constant gaming from 2005-2008 yielded him? Oh wait, I don't need to ask cause we see that it got him nothing in the long run. The biggest sin he made however was this. At one point during this time, he was handed the holy grail of information in terms of programming, and threw it away like it was worthless. To me, he is truly a short-sighted fool for doing this.

Take it from me, Amp, when I say that Amp was a giant dumbass. It took him nearly dying to wake the fuck up and realize that he was wasting his life on worthless pursuits and was around people who didn't give two fucks about him. He woke the fuck up somewhat, but he needs to make damn well sure that he doesn't go back to the path of fail that he was in.

A quick heads up.

Gonna mention very quickly that I am planning on making my final blasts post at the end of the week. Also, around that point in time I will make an important newspost.

Amp Blasts: RaT

Disclaimer: This post is not only protected by our usage policy, I wish to give the additional warning that this particular blasts post is pure comedy. Most of what is said on here is to be taken as comedy and is untrue.

I am in the home stretch of the blasts posts essentially. With that in mind, I figure why not give my boss a good blast or two. Now, RaT's work has become rather legendary over the years and pretty much has been shown as being beyond reproach. However, did many of you know that RaT has a cocklust for Apple products?

Seriously, he owns more Mac based products than anybody I know. The reality is though that in the late 2000s, he was recruited by Steve Jobs to harvest organs for him in the hope that one day, Jobs could continue living. The end result of this planned project was going to be the creation of Mecha-Jobs, a man who could forever make new products for Apple. However, Jobs decided to end this project after finding out that some of the organs were taken from Orphans from China by one of the other people working on this project, which horrified him beyond belief that they would use 'such cheap organs.'

Also, there are plenty of rumors of where RaT hails from. Well, I'm going to spill the beans on this and states he lives out in Montana. Seriously, its probably the perfect place to hide as nobody that we know thinks of anybody who has any involvement with this stuff coming from that state. Now that I've revealed that, I think I should hide for a while so that RaT doesn't try to relieve me of one of my kidneys. (*Gets in a car and drives to an undisclosed location.*)

Is setting up Debian hard?

Recently, there has been some discussion amongst some of my associates about if Debian really is as difficult as others make it out to be. One of the reasons for this discussion is the popularity of the Mint and Ubuntu distributions by the few people who I do know outside of SX who use Linux and their expressed fear of Debian being "too difficult." Personally however, I saw that after doing the initial setup work for a Linux server that it may not be as hard as many people think. As such, I decided to do two different methods of installing Debian to see how well it would work.

The first method in question was installing Debian with the desktop environment built in. This would allow for the GUI and most aspects of the system to be available immediately. This is good for users not familar with Debian and Linux, but does not give the best setup. First, the default for this is gnome, which does bother me a bit as I have a stronger preference for enlightenment. A more troubling development though is the usage of Pulseaudio, which upon further research found that real-time schedule handling introduces security issues and sometimes didn't work with programs such as Wine correctly. Overall, for somebody who has some knowledge of Linux, the desktop environment packages are not suitable for you.

Pls Save me from Ignorance

I need friends and Mentor that can teach me on how to become a better hacker...

An examination of .NET memory management

in recent years, there has been an increased focus on relying on the memory management given by Garbage Collectors. This can be seen in many college classes that have talked about how they have simplified this matter. With their increasing usage in Interpreted languages I can see how people would wish to focus on the program design and not so much the management of memory. However, I feel that the current garbage collectors used, particularly with the .net framework are ineffective at best.

Now before I continue, I will elaborate on what has prompted me to talk about this. Since September of last year I have been working on a project for one of the other members of the high council. For the most part, this project has worked pretty well. The one big issue however was the poor memory management from the .net framework.

The big issue at hand is this, the .net framework only uses garbage collector when memory is running out or when the program is not doing anything intensive. To me, this is hardly an optimal scenario and will make it run out of memory first. As a result of this, I am going against what Microsoft recommends and controlling many aspects of the memory myself to minimize the memory leaks inherit in their interpreter. There is only so much I can do though as the only way to get full control is to use unmanaged code, which would alienate other members of my team.

Overall, this experience has soured me on the garbage collection on many interpreters that are not proactive. Before people say garbage collection is good, then I want them to answer why they don't properly dispose of objects that are no longer in use?

Amp Blasts: IBM

Today I'm going after one of the biggest piece of shit companies that has any involvement in modern technology. I am talking about the company that Steve Jobs once likened to Big Brother. The company that is, in its own way, responsible for the suck that is modern gaming consoles. Today, it is IBM's turn to get blasted.

The reality is this with IBM, when I look at many of their efforts, it is a company stuck in the past. Many of the practices they employ with regards to development is old world. These practices involve tons of documentation instead of making a solid product. When I look at their source code, it actually makes me want to throw up a bit in my mouth as many times it is using twice as much code than what is needed for a simple solution and usually it is much slower as well.

Another reason for the hate is their processing technologies. These fuckers were partially responsible for Cell and PowerPC, which is used by the outgoing generation of gaming which was good, but each console saw their processors gimped in some way, shape, or form. Hell, they are the people who probably sold Nintendo on having a super low-end triple core processor that has cores only slightly more powerful than the single-cored Wii for the WiiU. Good job douchenozzles, I'm glad AMD replaced you.

The biggest problem is this. IBM decided to have executives in Washington to support CISPA. This to me is one of the most fucked up things I have ever seen and their willingness to compromise user privacy online is just awful. With all of this in mind, I say FUCK YOU IBM! Go change your name to Idiots, Bitches, and Morons cause it is the best description of your company!

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