AOL email servers aren't quite the same thing as a personal server that was ran from out of your house. Let me give a direct analogy where "communications" is equated to "official funds."
Politicians shouldn't use personal email accounts for public business, like Pence did, because that's like taking your office operating budget and putting in you personal bank account at Bank of America. Mixing business and personal is bad, and any oversight depends on the bank providing accurate records in order to determine what was personal and what was business.
But Hillary went much further. She put that budget in her personal bank account, at a bank she owned herself, and then was able to delete any records she wanted with zero oversight.
No, it proves that the media now use the word "hack" to mean anything bad done with a computer. There's nothing political about it now, any more than there was eight years ago when they called it "hacking" when some guy got into Sarah Palin's e-mail account by guessing the answer to one of her security questions.
No, it doesn't prove that at all. I can find plenty of news articles from the past that clearly distinguish phishing scams from other things like trojans, worms, zero-day exploits, brute force cracks, and DDoS attacks. No, sir, it proves something else entirely which I'll get to in a minute, but first...
Let me say, I could have been a little clearer in my original post, so I can be magnanimous and say it's my fault you are confused. In my defense, my comment was an extemporaneous one, which I typed while on my break at work, and I was in a hurry... But I digress.
The most important sentence in my original comment was the first sentence, and it was, "Intelligence reporting has become too politicized as all this, "Russia hacked the election," bs is proving." Now, if I were to reword that, it would say, "Intelligence agencies have become too politicized and this, 'Russia hacked the election,' bs is proving it." I left room for you to create your own interpretation of what I meant by, "Intelligence reporting."
When I say, "intelligence reporting," I'm emphatically pointing my finger at the Obama administration, but you could include the media, because at no time throughout all this has the media pointed out that they're reporting on the Obama administration position, and it's coming from Obama's political appointees. Everyone of those people sitting in the front of the camera making claims about knowing what Putin thinks are all political appointees who wanted to serve Obama and serve at his discretion.
Maybe that explains the, "I just had to swallowed my pride again," look on Clapper's face in yesterday's hearings.
No, the fact is, we have Obama administration political appointees at the intelligence agencies going in front of cameras and saying things our intelligence agencies typically never would say. But what do actual CIA agents, like Ishmael Jones (alias) have to say about all this...
CIA intelligence reporting stating that the Russian government hacked the presidential election in order to elect Donald Trump is false. It is merely a political attack against Donald Trump with the goal of delegitimizing his presidency.
The depth and quality of the CIA reporting are too good to be true. A December 16 NBC report states, for example: “Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used.” Everyone knows that a great deal of hacking comes out of Russia. But evidence of hacking does not lead to the conclusion that there was a Russian government conspiracy to get Mr. Trump elected.
Such a conclusion would require access to Putin’s inner circle and knowledge of Putin’s plans and intentions. Any spy that close to Putin would be one of the best intelligence sources of all time.
I'll agree that "the CIA said so" is not sufficient evidence to prove that a thing happened. But you're suggesting that the CIA saying so is actually evidence that a thing didn't happen, and dude, come on, that's not what evidence is.
Well, sir, that's how it works in the world of spies. You realize the CIA coined the phrase, "Can neither confirm nor deny..." Do you know why?
The CIA and our intelligence agencies don't reveal information with the level of specificity Obama's cadre of political appointees have given, because our intelligence agencies don't want to give America's enemies any clue to what kind of assets, human or otherwise, are in place. If the information is publicly revealed at all, it's only after the asset is no use.
The only reason to send these political appointees out to say this was because there was a political decision by the Obama administration to do this, because the fact is, there's zero evidence Russia changed vote totals in favor of Trump, and any actual influence Russia had on the election is conjecture at best, but of course our enemies would always love to sow seeds of doubt and confusion.
The Obama administration, the DNC, the Clintons, and the media have a white hot hate for Donald Trump, and they are trying to poison the well. After inauguration you can count on the same group claiming a cover up when it's later concluded there was nothing to any of this, but politics.
In effect, the entire left wing is making happen what Russia wanted to see, because the left too d*mned petty to admit defeat, and would rather destroy and ransack the place, literally and figuratively, than give up power respectfully.
Don't forget how the Clinton's left the White House in 2001, and if you're too young to remember, just Google it.
Intelligence reports, secret service protection, and anti-nepotism rules make sense.
Intelligence reporting has become too politicized as all this, "Russia hacked the election," bs is proving. The Obama administration and the media claims that a phishing scam is the same as brute-force password hacking or using zero-day exploits, to me demonstrates very convincingly that there's politicization. But then if you consider the fact that a phishing is a scam that requires an ignorant participant, the fact the media and the democrats brush that under the carpet highlights the politics at play here. And don't even get me started on how if all this were real, the CIA wouldn't at all divulge it, because it could clue the Russians into how the information was acquired. Instead it would happen behind closed doors, and there's a huge potential Trump would be arrested for treason and put on trial, because there's zero chance the Russian would expose themselves to the potential consequences of such an act without some quid prop quo.
As for the Secret Service, given the animosity of the bureaucracy toward Trump coupled with the fact the Secret Service has proven vis-a-vis its attempts to smear those in the legislature through leaks, having an extra layer of protection against the bureaucracy might be a wise move for Trump.
And after dealing with the Clinton's since 1993, and the, "two for the price of one," attitude from the press and democrats during the 1990s and on, I can't get too worked up over nepotism.
Well, if so, then I'd think you know and understand the basics of phishing scams and computer security, and so holes in this story are obvious... For instance...
Isn't anyone going to tear apart those ridiculous multistep flow charts the Dept. of Homeland Security put out? Those flowcharts actually obscure the simplicity of a phishing scam, making it seem as if it's complicated and high tech. It isn't. It's just an email socially engineered to convince the recipient that it's a legitimate email, which then leads the recipient to install malicious software.
Isn't anyone going to point out it was the idiocy of John Podesta and DNC staff who compromised their email server? After all, they fell for these phishing scams, which most everyone who has email must contend, and in falling for these scams they compromised their own security. Republicans didn't do it to them, Trump didn't do it to them, and if Russians had anything to do with it, it's by virtue of the fact there are phishing rings run out of Russia.
And isn't anyone going to point out it was Hillary's own actions that lead to her email server fiasco? Hillary Clinton quit as Secretary of State in 2012, and kept her homebrew secret email server secret another 2 years until the New York Times stated the obvious, emails between Hillary and DoS staff wasn't between two .gov email addresses, but between clintonemail.com and a .gov. Did Trump force Hillary to do this too?
If you are going to believe all this hook, line and sinker, then it was seem the Russians and Trump would have to been planning this thing for at least four years.
No, I'd much rather have a public trial, so the American public has an even better idea of what Snowden took from SIPRNet... and if Snowden really is just another Daniel Ellsberg, then he should have faith in the American public to acquit him.
LEGOs. Yes, the basic building block of our youthful imagination also holds a rather ugly over-protective side, in which it uses whatever tool happens to be nearest by to smash up any use of its products that it doesn't fully endorse.
1. No... the OP wasn't clear, otherwise I wouldn't have asked.
2. I've already address the usage of the word "mocking".
And 3. as for the rest of you ad hominem... to suggest I somehow dislike humanity is ignorant, and to a large extent, hypocritical, considering you don't trust your fellow human beings enough to not act as an anonymous coward who's running around trolling people.
So really, not only are you a bore, but you're boorish.
"Again, there is no need for pseudocode to match a programming language."
I do agree, but it is important for pseudocode to follow logical conventions.
"You are making assumptions based on actual programming languages. Since the conventions of this pseudocode were not specified, it makes more sense to assume conventions that yield a sensible result, such as = meaning comparison."
No, not at all. I'm trying to NOT make assumption, which is THE REASON why I asked which language it was based on. Why is this important?
Because many programming languages allow for the use of an assignment operator within the conditions of an if-then statement.
For example...
if (!$results=db_query("SELECT * FROM table")) { Instruction for when the $results array is empty or the query failed } else { Instructions for displaying the $results array }
Not only is the if-then statement testing to see if the query output is null, but it's also assigning whatever values were returned from that query to the variable $results.
The way that Anonymous Coward wrote that pseudocode could very well be interpreted to say one of two things... either...
1. If a person is not white, they're the defendant and the defendant is guilty, or... 2. If a defendant is not white they're guilty.
Now, why is this important? It's important, because it's important to me. I want to understand exactly what that Anonymous Coward meant, and not make any assumptions.
Another Anonymous Coward said it was a joke, but given the nature of anonymous cowards, it's hard to tell if it's the same one or someone else. Either way, the pseudocode doesn't feel like a joke, but instead is making the statement that all minorities and poor people are found guilty, and if you're rich and white, you're not... oh, and that prison is slavery. That's some very racist comments to toss around as a joke.
"No, it's an if followed by a jump. If the goto executes, the next if isn't evaluated. That's generally what goto means."
Oh come now, just admit you have no idea what I'm talking about instead of feigning understanding... the fact is the OP wrote pseudocode that suggests if a person is not white, they'll be found guilty. That's it and no conditional branch for not guilty. The next if-then suggest that if the defendant is poor they're guilty, but this time it gives the "else" statement for innocence.
As you've been saying, I can't take pseudocode literally and I'm not, which is exactly why I asked for clarification.
And given that you keep saying I can't take it literally, I can easily derive two meanings from that malformed attempt at pseudocode, and that is either... 1. All black defendants are found guilty, and all poor defendants are found guilty, or... 2. All poor black defendants are found guilty.
I do believe the writer literally meant #1, and that's how I rewrote my own pseudocode statement.
"The "else" and "end if" aren't actually necessary, so "perfectly valid" was maybe an overstatement."
ROFLMAO... not a programmer, are you?
The only people I know who use pseudocode are programmers, but whatever... the fact is, the only reason to use if-then statements in real life or in pseudocode is for conditional branching, and if you don't think a conditional branch for "innocent" is necessary, then we have a bigger argument than one over the interpretation of someone's pseudocode.
"But personally I didn't find it confusing, and the quality of the communication of ideas is what's important with pseudocode, not syntactic correctness - since there is no such thing."
What part of "uses the structural conventions of a programming language" do you not understand about pseudocode. I couldn't care less about syntax, and the proof of that is that I haven't once mentioned closing tags, now have i? But there is conceptual correctness, and that's where my focus is at, so if you're going to invoke the if-then paradigm in trying to explain something, you better fu_king well respect the concepts of nesting, assignments and comparisons when using pseudocode if-then statements.
But on a broader point... if you didn't find anything the OP wrote confusing and you're scolding me for requesting clarification, then I feel it's safe for me to assume you either agree with the OP or have no opinion on what he meant by his pseudocode.
I do have problems with it, but I want to know exactly what the OP meant, so I could better debate the point.
2. "The original pseudocode was perfectly valid." -- Smh... you have a weird definition of valid. Not only does this "valid" pseudocode not match any known programming language, but just in reference to itself, it's horribly malformed an illogical... not valid.
For example, what is this garbage;
If (defendant)=not_white {goto guilty} if (defendant)=poor {goto guilty} else {goto innocent} end if
First off, the single equal sign used in these if-then statements, such as this line, "(defendant)=not_white," aren't comparing, which is two equal signs "==", but is assigning, so that's the first invalidity in this pseudocode, that makes it less pseudocode and more a muddled mess.
Essentially the code as written is saying that "not_white" and "poor" are assigned as the "defendant", and so this code doesn't really testing to see the defendant race and income... I had to make the assumption it was comparing and not assigning.
Secondly, is that a nested if-then or what?
The first if-then, I assumed, was testing the defendant color, and the second if-then tests for income level, but it's ambiguous whether or not the income level test is nested within the color test... and determining nesting is as important as specifying AND versus OR when combining two search criteria.
Third, the final "end if" comment is irrelevant and redundant, because the closing bracket, "}", is the logical end of an if-then statement, and the second closing bracket in an if-then-else statement.
In the end though, the real test of validity is real life... you're being racist and bombastic to claim, either by assignment or by comparison, that all "not_white" or poor people are automatically the defendant and automatically guilty.
There's not one shred of validity, coding-wise or in reality, to any of that quote-unquote, pseudocode.
Re:
Re:
Oh please...
Politicians shouldn't use personal email accounts for public business, like Pence did, because that's like taking your office operating budget and putting in you personal bank account at Bank of America. Mixing business and personal is bad, and any oversight depends on the bank providing accurate records in order to determine what was personal and what was business.
But Hillary went much further. She put that budget in her personal bank account, at a bank she owned herself, and then was able to delete any records she wanted with zero oversight.
Re:
Re: Re: Re: Something to consider...
Re: Re: Something to consider...
No, it doesn't prove that at all. I can find plenty of news articles from the past that clearly distinguish phishing scams from other things like trojans, worms, zero-day exploits, brute force cracks, and DDoS attacks. No, sir, it proves something else entirely which I'll get to in a minute, but first...
Let me say, I could have been a little clearer in my original post, so I can be magnanimous and say it's my fault you are confused. In my defense, my comment was an extemporaneous one, which I typed while on my break at work, and I was in a hurry... But I digress.
The most important sentence in my original comment was the first sentence, and it was, "Intelligence reporting has become too politicized as all this, "Russia hacked the election," bs is proving." Now, if I were to reword that, it would say, "Intelligence agencies have become too politicized and this, 'Russia hacked the election,' bs is proving it." I left room for you to create your own interpretation of what I meant by, "Intelligence reporting."
When I say, "intelligence reporting," I'm emphatically pointing my finger at the Obama administration, but you could include the media, because at no time throughout all this has the media pointed out that they're reporting on the Obama administration position, and it's coming from Obama's political appointees. Everyone of those people sitting in the front of the camera making claims about knowing what Putin thinks are all political appointees who wanted to serve Obama and serve at his discretion.
Maybe that explains the, "I just had to swallowed my pride again," look on Clapper's face in yesterday's hearings.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvCtpBztJjZBmFsJA9j4RYUHH5Vk
No, the fact is, we have Obama administration political appointees at the intelligence agencies going in front of cameras and saying things our intelligence agencies typically never would say. But what do actual CIA agents, like Ishmael Jones (alias) have to say about all this...
Th at's a nice segue to your closing comment...
Well, sir, that's how it works in the world of spies. You realize the CIA coined the phrase, "Can neither confirm nor deny..." Do you know why?
The CIA and our intelligence agencies don't reveal information with the level of specificity Obama's cadre of political appointees have given, because our intelligence agencies don't want to give America's enemies any clue to what kind of assets, human or otherwise, are in place. If the information is publicly revealed at all, it's only after the asset is no use.
The only reason to send these political appointees out to say this was because there was a political decision by the Obama administration to do this, because the fact is, there's zero evidence Russia changed vote totals in favor of Trump, and any actual influence Russia had on the election is conjecture at best, but of course our enemies would always love to sow seeds of doubt and confusion.
The Obama administration, the DNC, the Clintons, and the media have a white hot hate for Donald Trump, and they are trying to poison the well. After inauguration you can count on the same group claiming a cover up when it's later concluded there was nothing to any of this, but politics.
In effect, the entire left wing is making happen what Russia wanted to see, because the left too d*mned petty to admit defeat, and would rather destroy and ransack the place, literally and figuratively, than give up power respectfully.
Don't forget how the Clinton's left the White House in 2001, and if you're too young to remember, just Google it.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvCtpBztJjZBl3aNEX4r6Zceqh9g
Something to consider...
Intelligence reporting has become too politicized as all this, "Russia hacked the election," bs is proving. The Obama administration and the media claims that a phishing scam is the same as brute-force password hacking or using zero-day exploits, to me demonstrates very convincingly that there's politicization. But then if you consider the fact that a phishing is a scam that requires an ignorant participant, the fact the media and the democrats brush that under the carpet highlights the politics at play here. And don't even get me started on how if all this were real, the CIA wouldn't at all divulge it, because it could clue the Russians into how the information was acquired. Instead it would happen behind closed doors, and there's a huge potential Trump would be arrested for treason and put on trial, because there's zero chance the Russian would expose themselves to the potential consequences of such an act without some quid prop quo.
As for the Secret Service, given the animosity of the bureaucracy toward Trump coupled with the fact the Secret Service has proven vis-a-vis its attempts to smear those in the legislature through leaks, having an extra layer of protection against the bureaucracy might be a wise move for Trump.
And after dealing with the Clinton's since 1993, and the, "two for the price of one," attitude from the press and democrats during the 1990s and on, I can't get too worked up over nepotism.
Re: Wait a sec, isn't this supposed to be Techdirt?
Wait a sec, isn't this supposed to be Techdirt?
Well, if so, then I'd think you know and understand the basics of phishing scams and computer security, and so holes in this story are obvious... For instance...
Isn't anyone going to tear apart those ridiculous multistep flow charts the Dept. of Homeland Security put out? Those flowcharts actually obscure the simplicity of a phishing scam, making it seem as if it's complicated and high tech. It isn't. It's just an email socially engineered to convince the recipient that it's a legitimate email, which then leads the recipient to install malicious software.
Isn't anyone going to point out it was the idiocy of John Podesta and DNC staff who compromised their email server? After all, they fell for these phishing scams, which most everyone who has email must contend, and in falling for these scams they compromised their own security. Republicans didn't do it to them, Trump didn't do it to them, and if Russians had anything to do with it, it's by virtue of the fact there are phishing rings run out of Russia.
And isn't anyone going to point out it was Hillary's own actions that lead to her email server fiasco? Hillary Clinton quit as Secretary of State in 2012, and kept her homebrew secret email server secret another 2 years until the New York Times stated the obvious, emails between Hillary and DoS staff wasn't between two .gov email addresses, but between clintonemail.com and a .gov. Did Trump force Hillary to do this too?
If you are going to believe all this hook, line and sinker, then it was seem the Russians and Trump would have to been planning this thing for at least four years.
(untitled comment)
(untitled comment)
Re:
(untitled comment)
(untitled comment)
Re:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Whatever.
I only win if I gain something, but all I've done is waste my time explaining my request for clarification.
Now you can kindly go screw yourself... I won't be responding to you anymore... or any of the Anonymous Cowards on this thread.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
2. I've already address the usage of the word "mocking".
And 3. as for the rest of you ad hominem... to suggest I somehow dislike humanity is ignorant, and to a large extent, hypocritical, considering you don't trust your fellow human beings enough to not act as an anonymous coward who's running around trolling people.
So really, not only are you a bore, but you're boorish.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I do agree, but it is important for pseudocode to follow logical conventions.
No, not at all. I'm trying to NOT make assumption, which is THE REASON why I asked which language it was based on. Why is this important?
Because many programming languages allow for the use of an assignment operator within the conditions of an if-then statement.
For example...
Not only is the if-then statement testing to see if the query output is null, but it's also assigning whatever values were returned from that query to the variable $results.
The way that Anonymous Coward wrote that pseudocode could very well be interpreted to say one of two things... either...
1. If a person is not white, they're the defendant and the defendant is guilty, or...
2. If a defendant is not white they're guilty.
Now, why is this important? It's important, because it's important to me. I want to understand exactly what that Anonymous Coward meant, and not make any assumptions.
Another Anonymous Coward said it was a joke, but given the nature of anonymous cowards, it's hard to tell if it's the same one or someone else. Either way, the pseudocode doesn't feel like a joke, but instead is making the statement that all minorities and poor people are found guilty, and if you're rich and white, you're not... oh, and that prison is slavery. That's some very racist comments to toss around as a joke.
Oh come now, just admit you have no idea what I'm talking about instead of feigning understanding... the fact is the OP wrote pseudocode that suggests if a person is not white, they'll be found guilty. That's it and no conditional branch for not guilty. The next if-then suggest that if the defendant is poor they're guilty, but this time it gives the "else" statement for innocence.
As you've been saying, I can't take pseudocode literally and I'm not, which is exactly why I asked for clarification.
And given that you keep saying I can't take it literally, I can easily derive two meanings from that malformed attempt at pseudocode, and that is either...
1. All black defendants are found guilty, and all poor defendants are found guilty, or...
2. All poor black defendants are found guilty.
I do believe the writer literally meant #1, and that's how I rewrote my own pseudocode statement.
ROFLMAO... not a programmer, are you?
The only people I know who use pseudocode are programmers, but whatever... the fact is, the only reason to use if-then statements in real life or in pseudocode is for conditional branching, and if you don't think a conditional branch for "innocent" is necessary, then we have a bigger argument than one over the interpretation of someone's pseudocode.
What part of "uses the structural conventions of a programming language" do you not understand about pseudocode. I couldn't care less about syntax, and the proof of that is that I haven't once mentioned closing tags, now have i? But there is conceptual correctness, and that's where my focus is at, so if you're going to invoke the if-then paradigm in trying to explain something, you better fu_king well respect the concepts of nesting, assignments and comparisons when using pseudocode if-then statements.
But on a broader point... if you didn't find anything the OP wrote confusing and you're scolding me for requesting clarification, then I feel it's safe for me to assume you either agree with the OP or have no opinion on what he meant by his pseudocode.
I do have problems with it, but I want to know exactly what the OP meant, so I could better debate the point.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
2. "The original pseudocode was perfectly valid." -- Smh... you have a weird definition of valid. Not only does this "valid" pseudocode not match any known programming language, but just in reference to itself, it's horribly malformed an illogical... not valid.
For example, what is this garbage;
First off, the single equal sign used in these if-then statements, such as this line, "(defendant)=not_white," aren't comparing, which is two equal signs "==", but is assigning, so that's the first invalidity in this pseudocode, that makes it less pseudocode and more a muddled mess.
Essentially the code as written is saying that "not_white" and "poor" are assigned as the "defendant", and so this code doesn't really testing to see the defendant race and income... I had to make the assumption it was comparing and not assigning.
Secondly, is that a nested if-then or what?
The first if-then, I assumed, was testing the defendant color, and the second if-then tests for income level, but it's ambiguous whether or not the income level test is nested within the color test... and determining nesting is as important as specifying AND versus OR when combining two search criteria.
Third, the final "end if" comment is irrelevant and redundant, because the closing bracket, "}", is the logical end of an if-then statement, and the second closing bracket in an if-then-else statement.
In the end though, the real test of validity is real life... you're being racist and bombastic to claim, either by assignment or by comparison, that all "not_white" or poor people are automatically the defendant and automatically guilty.
There's not one shred of validity, coding-wise or in reality, to any of that quote-unquote, pseudocode.
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