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ledgeon See No Evil: The Case of Alfred Anaya

By the same token though, the Tor developers had to have known that Tor would be used for distribution of child pornography, and gun manufacturers surely know that their guns will be used to kill innocent people.

ledgeon See No Evil: The Case of Alfred Anaya

Apparently he was also charged with two counts of intimidating a witness, which the Wired article does not mention, so maybe there is more to this story.

Either way, it saddens me to know that the instigators, aggressors, and profiteers of this "war" will never spend a day in prison.

ledgeon The Internet is a surveillance state

The way to fight this type of surveillance isn't convincing people to avoid working on such projects. That's hopelessly naive or incredibly optimistic. Change the rules of the game: Either make it illegal and enforce or spread proper privacy software like cryptography.

Why not simultaneously push for change in government, develop powerful and easy-to-use cryptographic tools, AND refuse to work on projects that are very likely to have a negative impact on society?

I don't deny what you're saying, that these projects will end up being built by someone (hopefully someone less qualified though, and at a higher cost to the contractee), but by the logic in your first post in the chain, anything could be justified morally as long as someone is paying you to do it. What's wrong with pulling the lever in the gas chamber? If you don't, the next guy will, right?

ledgeon Super Mario Bros Coin Sound (1985)

A rather well-known video of a guitarist mimicking the coin sounds with harmonics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFEepARd81g&t=0m25s

ledgeon The Internet is a surveillance state

What's being referred to is the development and implementation of a very specific technology produced by Narus, not some open-ended research project. See here for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_vs._AT%26T#Background_a...

I would not keep company with anyone desiring to be involved in a project like that.

ledgeon Apartments So Small They Can Only Be Photographed From Above

The size of the rooms in the dorm I lived in my freshman year were as follows:

" Single: 14’4” x 7’ ; Double: 14’8” x 14’4” ; Triple: 15'3" x 15'5"'' "

So the single room comes in at about ~100 sq. feet, and the double ~210 sq. feet.

Some of our facilities, like kitchens, bathrooms and showers, were communal however (I can't tell if this is the case in these apartments, but I can't see any bathrooms). Another big difference is that for nearly all college students, the dorm is not really their only home; everyone I know had a significant amount of stuff stored in their parent's house. I believe we were also provided a communal winter storage area for things like bikes, boxes of summer clothes, etc.

ledgeon The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble

I suppose it's possible that he thought being a drug mule was just one of the tasks he had to do to woo this woman. Which would be even more boneheaded than just falling for her innocently.

From reading the texts he sent from the airport, and the calculations he scratched out on paper at the same time, it seems that this is actually what he was thinking.

As far as I can tell, he planned to steal the cocaine from Bolivians, fly to Europe with it, and then share the proceeds of selling the cocaine with his new bikini-model Czech wife.