Tribute to Bob Casale & Alan Myers has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.

Ok, you're lucky I upvoted before he got to the Alan Thicke part. Just sayin'.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Stephen Fry, Sarah Millican, Jason Manford, Bill Bailey, alan davies, qi' to 'Stephen Fry, Sarah Millican, Jason Manford, Bill Baile, qi, bowhead whale' - edited by eric3579

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There's an ongoing trial, Newegg vs patent troll TQP, who try to blackmail corporations by claiming a patent on SSL+RC4.

Yesterday, Whit Diffie himself was called upon as an expert witness. Check out this dialogue between him (D) and Newegg's lawyer Alan Albright (A):

A: "We've heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption. Are you familiar with that?"

D: "Yes, I am."

A: "And how is it that you're familiar with public key encryption?"

D: "I invented it."

Case closed, bitches!

(Not really, but it's an uppercut that TQP will not recover from, unless they supply the jury with enough blow to wipe out their entire memory.)

Frikkin' love Alan Watts-If you've never heard Alan Watts you don't know it yet, but you love him, too!

He looks like Alan Rickman and Nicholas Cage got into Brundle's Telepod by accident.
Unless it was not an accident....
MUHAHAHAHAHA!

I'd say he looks very similar to a bloated Alan Rickman

WHOA! Hijacked the Holy Father's throne, YOINK!

I ain't Catholic but I sure dig how this new pope rolls-He's not stambling around like some sedated stroke-victim either...like the last 3 creepy ones and, he's Argentinian (BBQ's @ Vatican City) and kinna looks like Alan Rickman

I'm guessing they're British from the 'Choose This' Trainspotting reference; the brief flash of Alan Sugar when they sing 'your boss'; and the licence plate and road markings.

They sound slightly central European but I think that's part of the synth pop parody

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The European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs had a hearing about NSA/PRISM/etc yesterday, with Jacob Applebaum and Alan Rusbridger amongst others. Greenwald was supposed to be videoconferenced in, but it didn't work for reasons unknown to me.

Two interesting bits of information:

1) Sweden is closely involved in the Fives Eyes program. They have an installation to monitor satellite communications and access to fibre optic cables that the members of Five Eyes don't have access to. No specifics were mentioned, but a quick glance at a map of long distance cables indicates to me that it's Russian communications they are interested in -- those run through Sweden.

2) Nations with access to PRISM/ECHELON besides the Five Eyes: France, Israel and Sweden. Likely to have access, though probably limited: Germany. Potential access, but unconfirmed: a total of thirty nations.

And, as a special bonus, the former chair of the special committee that authored the 2001 report on ECHELON said the following, paraphrased by me:

"If rentention of domestic communications meta data is deemed neccessary, the acquired data should not be stored outside of the respective nation. Normally, I'd say outside of the EU, but that just brings us back to the problem of GB and the GCHQ."

That's a high ranking EU official stating, on record, that GB cannot be trusted.

*dead -- "'Alan Ford Demands Rea...' The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement..."

Did you catch David Sirota's first piece over at nsfwcorp?

Saying Boo To A Ghost: It's No Secret Why Congress Fears Crossing The NSA

Money quote by Alan Grayson:

GRAYSON: It's possible - one of my colleagues asked the NSA point blank will you give me a copy of my own record and the NSA said no, we won't. They didn't say no we don't have one. They said no we won't. So that's possible.

Finally someone picked up the blackmail-angle of the NSA story. Maybe some day we'll even call it by its name: COINTELPRO 2.0

I just read Alan Rusbridger's comment on this mess and the following was more than I can take at 8am:

And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

GCHQ thugs destroying Guardian property on Guardian premises -- I did not expect it to escalate this quickly. The fact that Rusbridger published it on the blog section of the Guardian indicates to me that some sort of gag order was placed on the Guardian and that he stepped up and did this at his own risk.

Makes you wonder what kinds of data Snowden liberated from the NSA: the recipe for soilent green?