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On Monday, The Washington Post reported one of the most stunning breaches of security ever. A former NSA contractor, the paper said, stole more than 50 terabytes of highly sensitive data. According to one source, that includes more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the Tailored Access Operations. TAO is an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.
Attorneys representing Harold T. Martin III have previously portrayed the former NSA contractor as a patriot who took NSA materials home so that he could become better at his job. Meanwhile, investigators who have combed through his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland, remain concerned that he passed the weaponized hacking tools to enemies. The theft came to light during the investigation of a series of NSA-developed exploits that were mysteriously published online by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
[...] An unnamed US official told the paper that Martin allegedly hoarded more than 75 percent of the TAO's library of hacking tools. It's hard to envision a scenario under which a theft of that much classified material by a single individual would be possible.
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:07PM
I'm often stuck looking for an everyday example of someone being pedantic. Usually I have to refer to people who insisted that 2001 was the start of the millennium. Now I can also use this narrow-minded view of the word steal. But, keep in mind that, historically, when absolutely everyone uses a word to mean a thing the word didn't originally mean, the word meaning changes. No one throws the pedants a party for being right.
And if you're going to rely on a dictionary definition for your argument, make sure it's true for all cases. According to Merriam-Webster, this can still be defined as stealing:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steal [merriam-webster.com]
Definition of steal
stoleplay \ˈstōl\; stolenplay \ˈstō-lən\; stealing
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transitive verb
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2c : to take surreptitiously or without permission (steal a kiss)
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(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Arik on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:01PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @09:46PM
If you're asserting that precision and common sense are mutually exclusive, then I disagree with your premise. My comment was that one can focus on a facet of word meaning unnecessarily, and miss the entire point of an (attempted) discussion.
I am willing to risk the theoretical (but vanishingly small) possibility of a world where communication accidentally becomes impossible as you describe, rather than embrace people who intentionally choose to prevent communication. Particularly those who lord such obstinacy as "intelligence". In fact, there's a word to describe precisely that: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedant [merriam-webster.com]
Definition of pedant
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2b : one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge