06-22-2017, 10:24 AM
(06-21-2017, 02:37 PM)Galen Wrote:(06-21-2017, 02:04 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/j...index.html
Hey, Galen! Your opinion that Russian intelligence and security services did nothing to influence the 2016 election seems to be enduring a death by a thousand cuts.
Some republican left a bunch of voter data on an open server. Also reveals why putting shit on the cloud is a bad idea. More a case of stupidity by an individual rather than an intentional breach created by an outside party. You have once again revealed an inability to read as well a lack of understanding about technology.
I'm 61 years old. I was born closer to the horse-and-buggy days than I was to today. When I was a kid, 'Nineties meant the 1890s.. when there were still lots of Civil War veterans, when ragtime was the scorned pop culture, when one could snap up Impressionist paintings dirt cheap, when Mahler and Sibelius were composing great orchestral scores and Puccini was composing great operas, Southern blacks lived in abject fear of the Master Race, Ukraine was much like the 'Russia' that Sholem Aleichem depicted with his inimitable humor, and industrial workers worked seventy-hour weeks but were in the grave by age forty. Sure, I could have felt comfortable in such times -- but only if I were part of the economic elite or at the least the tiny middle class. I wouldn't like the politics; after all I hate the reactionary agenda of President Donald Judas Trump.
I'm old; I admit it. Sure, I might have a fantasy about some woman less than half my age -- but she would quickly remind me of how old I am. I can't keep up with technology and mass culture as I used to. If I had to do heavy labor for seventy hours a week, I wouldn't last long. Sure, I am more fit than most people my age. I could do a twenty-mile hike with no problem. Mass culture of my time? I relate more easily to the high culture of the 'Nineties, as in Mahler, Sibelius, and Puccini (that's just music). The 1890s. As for technology -- the computer technology that I use is about thirty years old now. But I am not technically trained, so even if I was alert to technological trends of when I was a young adult, I am not so now. I am alert to some concerns about security, as I made some jokes about North Korea and got a nasty virus on the computer. I would know enough to make sure that I not place confidential material where it can be hacked. Democracies tend to have elderly politicians and those often have nearly-elderly people managing the technology of electoral politics. That's one of the vulnerabilities of our system. Figure that the 25-year-old Russian university grad working for the FSB is far more tech-savvy than I am.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.