What do you mean by PRISM collaborators? I am genuinely curious because I feel like I missed when/where that was established.

To my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, PRISM isn't a system that companies subscribe to, but more of a government portal for requesting information from a number of companies in a legal fashion. Is this not correct? I admit I have not kept up with all of the bits of information released due to the high volume of speculations generated by just about everyone that talks about it.

We still don't really know what PRISM is or how it functions. It does appear that US companies did provide overly broad information to the US government using the following logic.

1. The US government gets massive amounts of information from these companies and can get this information in real time with no oversight,

2. none of these companies seem upset about it, which one imagines they would be if the US government was just stealing it without their permission,

3. and these companies have cooperated with the governments misinformation campaign (denials of "direct access" and such).

If they aren't responsible for initially giving them access, they are now responsible the governments continuing access since they have learned that the government does have access and they have not attempted to prevent the government from maintaining access and furthermore they have aided the government ability to maintain access by stifling public outcry about this access by lying to their users.

I think you are missing the context of the question (mpyne's comment). If the max that will logically be handed down is way below the summed offenses, why is it being used? It seems like it's a threatening tactic and yes, draconian.

But how else would you do it? You still have to let the guy know what the max sentence could be, whether it seems threatening or not.

Not entirely. For one Steam has offline mode which is certainly better than what MS was proposing.

To be fair, Steam became popular back when offline mode was really buggy and problematical; it's a lot better today, but back then is was not uncommon for it to just forget what it was doing until you could reconnect.

BS. It's possible to deal with the issues you mentioned and not screw your customers over. Even if it's not, it's still perfectly valid to be vocal about it.

The US is a republic.

Was a Republic. I think it could be argued that the US is no longer fully governed by the Constitution. The only debate, in my opinion, is when the Republic died. When Nixon killed the last part of the gold standard, unleashing perpetual war, and nearly unlimited funding for the military industrial complex (including the NSA / CIA / FBI) by printing / Federal Reserve financing? The 1930s when FDR massively expanded the reach of the Federal Government? 2001 under Bush? 1913 with the founding of the Federal Reserve?

Yes; a democratic republic, to be precise.

Non-democratic republics include 18th-century USA, where only white male landowners could vote. Democratic non-republics include the UK, which is a monarchy. "Republicanism" and "democracy" are orthogonal concepts.

This is simply nonsensical. Even the applications you listed don't just "do one thing". Vim and emacs have a trillion features each. Git has way more features than some other versioning systems. When does "one thing" turn into multiple things? Within the context of the thread - when did gmail stop doing one thing? When they added filters? When they added all of the labs features? With this current announcement? Do one thing and do it well is great but defining the scope of the one thing is not something to be taken trivially.

I think there are a lot of gaps within the primers too. With a degree in Mathematics and CS, I can only follow through midway most primers before requiring to find additional sources of information.

That being said, I really like them and I am a big fan of Jeremy's writing.

Just because you disagree with their actions it doesn't mean that they were just random script-kiddies. I am not a hacker but it certainly seemed like they had at least a modicum of true skill.

For some reason it seems that most people can't differentiate between the skill and morality of an action.

They did not have a modicum of skill. I'm neutral on their endeavours, however LOIC and SQL injection is skiddy stuff.

  | SQL injection is skiddy stuff

Why would a hacker use something overly complex when the site in question was vulnerable to SQL injection? Do true hackers with 'mad skillz' spend months to find truly unique hacks to express their artistry as well as their skills?

Why do you call those people hackers? Hackers build things, don't piss on other people's work.

Sorry. I thought that "black hat" was implicit.

LOIC, yes, but that was anonymous. SQL injection is a vulnerability - it does not make you good or bad for using it.

This exemplifies that making money and making a good product are two quite distinct things.

I'd be willing to give it a shot if you would like to partner up. I have reasonable (for some value) math chops. Email me at infrec.obs@gmail.com if you are interested.

Time-wise I can commit only a couple of hours a week so I don't expect much but it seems like it could be fun.

Any chance I could join in? ;)

I know a bit of JavaScript, but my math intuition is somewhat poor as well, so it'd be more so I can learn than anything else.

Sure, feel free to send me an email! It's all about learning and having fun.