Not going to rush out and preorder but I am now looking forward to it releasing and seeing my mate who will without a doubt have it on release day play it.
Might just tweak the rig so it is ready tho :friendly_wink:
Personally i'm pretty annoyed that people seem all to willing to let massive data mining operations know everything they have ever done on the internet because they are scared of the terrorists who have less chance in killing them than they have of being struck by lightning. How the fuck do NZers get to the point in not caring what the US does in the name of defending themselves against terrorism when NZ has barely been affected by it. God forbid what people will be willing to give up when really under threat.
Been thinking on this and for me there are different layers to my privacy
Our personal privacy is sacrosanct, no reading my mail, wiretapping without a warrant and general fuckery when I am going about my lawful business and living my life in an open and fair democracy.
My virtual privacy I seem to have another outlook on, I don't expect the same level of privacy when I am engaging with the internet. I don't feel very comfortable with the idea that they can store everything we have done on the net but how the fuck do they commit the man power to look through it all. Surely after time "they" would have to dump old useless data.
We are debating the US coming clean about what they are doing but how many other states are doing exactly this and more and we hear nothing about it. China are committing huge resources to this type of espionage, as I'm sure is Putin.
I think you would have to be very naive if you think this sort of data will only ever be used to stop terrorism. As a New Zealander would you be comfortable with the United States under someone like Bush using all of our government/business and citizens information for their own nations benefit? As the Snowden rightly points out if they allow this to continue and grow with the current rate of technology growth these tools will just get even more powerful and then it won't take much for some senator to decide this asset should be used for far more than terrorism.
Eg. The US might want to revoke our No nukes policy to allow them to use our ports to refuel their fleet, they then start blackmailing those in our government and threatening to release scandals or other personal information that would hurt their re-elections unless they vote to revoke.
Not that far fetched especially in a decade or two.
I dont think it is me being naive.
Of course they have to monitor the internet, it is such a powerful tool that doesn't respect many borders. I am reading more and more about Chinese cyber attacks on american sites both private and government. Israel (US) just set back Irans nuclear programme years with a cyber attack. This will imo become more common over time as the internets reach expands and we rely on it more everyday. The power of the internet was a big part in the Arab uprising, which I'm sure wasn't unnoticed by many governments.
Any super power will have to have a huge cyber team ( for want of a better phrase) to monitor and try to control the internet in their country against both foreign and local threats and to use the internet to fuck with their enemies.
It is simply too big of a tool to be left unchecked.
The pure weight of information they have to sift through on the net must mean they can only skim through the content using keywords etc and then zero in when they smell something fishy. Surely they can't store all that info. I don't think it will make much diff to the likes of us talking shit on a nz gaming site
As for your example, governments have been spying on and blackmailing each other since year dot so no change there. As they say in boxing, protect yourself at all times.
It's kind of complicated to explain while still omitting info that would have anyone understand.
Suffice to say what I did, made someone look pretty damn good, which in a nutshell is what I do for a living, however in this situation it's a little different which is why I'm throwing my toys out of the cot.
It's also mplimenta back-handed co.
Keep on doing the good work and your time in the sun will come, I know it is not comforting now but generally, good work doesn't go unnoticed.
