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out of academic transparency

See all of those corporate logos all over Red Team's vehicles? Do you really think CMU published the coolest stuff they developed?

https://www.fastcompany.com/10...

http://www.equipmentworld.com/...

https://www.saic.com/

https://www.tttech.com/

jealously-guarded corporate secrets.

Patents are anything but that. In fact they tell the world exactly how you do something.

They don't need to break the encryption when they literally own the wires.

But that's the whole point of encryption. You don't trust the wires, so you secure communications over them.

They already have back-doors in the certificate infrastructure,

That's the bigger problem. Hierarchical structures are easy to break if one can attack a few points and get many keys. Peer-to-peer structures are more difficult to crack, as one has to go after a large number of peers. And between two trusted peers, there is no third party that can be subverted. I'm certain this is one reason for the continued propaganda campaign against peer-to-peer protocols. If you are using one, you must be trading ripped CDs, illegal copies of movies, CP, etc. And why the government interferes with operations like Apple's Facetime peer-to-peer operation using NSA fronts.

SAIC used to pretty much OWN the FBI's data center contracts. They are pretty much gone now, and Lockheed-Martin now runs the show out at Clarksburg, WV. . .

A gamma source used for X-raying that is powerful enough to go through 6 inches of steel would require a radiation exclusion zone around the vehicle. The driver would have to exit the truck and move outside the zone.

It really is a radioactive gamma source mounted on a truck. It's supposed to be used only on uninhabited vehicles. SAIC's "terms and conditions" for the thing are posted. Here's SAIC's disclaimer:

"Since VACIS inspection products use radioactive sources in this process, the End User is responsible for obtaining and abiding by all necessary and appropriate approvals from the applicable cognizant regulatory agencies or authorities in their country of use. Buyer/End User is responsible for safely operating the system in accordance with all SAIC instructions/manuals and training and any applicable regulations/requirements of the jurisdictions in which the system will be operated. Buyer/End User shall consult with the relevant licensing authority regarding whether and in what manner disclosures (including signage) should be made to persons who may be scanned by VACIS inspection products as incidental occupants of vehicles. SAIC is not responsible for any claims, actions or liabilities associated with the improper installation, operation or maintenance of the products. Improper operation would include, but not be limited to, failure to comply with any conditions, requirements, safety measures and procedures provided or required by SAIC and/or any cognizant regulatory agency."

Their video shows someone driving a car through the thing.

A gamma source used for X-raying that is powerful enough to go through 6 inches of steel would require a radiation exclusion zone around the vehicle. The driver would have to exit the truck and move outside the zone.

It really is a radioactive gamma source mounted on a truck. It's supposed to be used only on uninhabited vehicles. SAIC's "terms and conditions" for the thing are posted. Here's SAIC's disclaimer:

"Since VACIS inspection products use radioactive sources in this process, the End User is responsible for obtaining and abiding by all necessary and appropriate approvals from the applicable cognizant regulatory agencies or authorities in their country of use. Buyer/End User is responsible for safely operating the system in accordance with all SAIC instructions/manuals and training and any applicable regulations/requirements of the jurisdictions in which the system will be operated. Buyer/End User shall consult with the relevant licensing authority regarding whether and in what manner disclosures (including signage) should be made to persons who may be scanned by VACIS inspection products as incidental occupants of vehicles. SAIC is not responsible for any claims, actions or liabilities associated with the improper installation, operation or maintenance of the products. Improper operation would include, but not be limited to, failure to comply with any conditions, requirements, safety measures and procedures provided or required by SAIC and/or any cognizant regulatory agency."

Their video shows someone driving a car through the thing.

NASA are the admin, everything else is sub-contracted out...

Engineers are sub-contactors from the likes of SAIC ( http://www.saic.com/ ) & Booz Allen Hamilton ( http://www.boozallen.com/ ) aswell as the manufacturers (Boeing, ATK, Lockheed Martin, etc).
Launches are handled by ULA ( United Launch Alliance - http://www.ulalaunch.com/ )
In-space operations are handled by USA (United Space Alliance - www.unitedspacealliance.com/ )

Both ULA & USA are joint operations of Boeing & Lockheed Martin.

So yes, Boeing, et al. did handle all that :-)

Contact Us
We encourage you to contact us via the online resources listed below for a quick response. Have a general question concerning SAIC, but down't know who to contact? Call us at 703 676 4300

http://www.saic.com/contact/contact_community_relations.asp

Ethics concerns: 1-800-435-4324
Main business number: 1-800-430-7629

Snail mail:

SAIC
1710 SAIC Drive
McLean VA
22102

--------------
They encourage you to contact them.

Have fun.

--
BMO

The answer is both gamma and x-ray. Odds are it is one of these: http://www.saic.com/products/transportation/icis/

Try to get a tech job with a gov't contracting company, like Lockheed Martin or SAIC. They pretty regularly have entry level tech jobs that only require 'ability to get a clearance'. Once you have a gov't issued clearance (either DOD, DOE, etc.), you're golden. The cost to the contractors for this clearance is around $10k-$20k. Once you have it, doors open as you're now cheaper to hire. Also, the contracting companies usually have their own online tech training and internal certs as well as tuition reimbursement (you're now an asset to them and the better trained, the more money they get hiring you out). Finally, the gov't isn't going to be outsourcing tech work. It all has to be done here in the U.S.

Good luck!

Having some asshat steal a computer full of data doesn't really happen that often to people who keep their computers locked in an office at their employer's campus.

Except when the people stealing the computers know exactly what they want and are usually rewarded by machines that are not as well protected/encrypted as some mobile machines are.

http://www.saic.com/cover-archive/announce/012805. html SAIC Defense Industry Big Wigs Data stolen

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13327187/ AIG customer and prospective customer data stolen "machine was password protected"

Your employee count is off by a hair.

SAIC employs "more than 45,000" folks.

Actually, I was involved with the initial U of IL prototype of the SAIT plasmascope back in 1975 (doing a 3D demo) during which transpants from the PLATO project to (then) SAI got small amounts of early stock before moving on to other jobs. I'm sure most of them haven't been notified and some of them have dropped off he radar completely.

Maybe after the FBI's Virtual Case File disaster, Microsoft Certified Partners will realize that you don't build a mission-critical application from the computer equivilant of Lincoln Logs.

you have a juicy government contracting job

and are spamming one of those pyramid-free-iPod schemes

I guess that I got lucky. My current employer was willing to hire me for a position that required a DoD clearance even though I didn't have one yet. I was young and willing to work for less money than I was worth because of the missing clearance. It took about 7 months for me to get my clearance, and in the past two years my salary has caught up to what I feel I'm worth to the company.

Raw data is available.

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/

http://weather.gov/noaaport/html/noaaport.shtml

Competing predictions are available, generally for a price however.

Example: http://www.saic.com/omega/

They have been busted in California for using revisions of the software on their machines which were *never* reviewed. How can you (or anyone) say that turning on the modem is the only way to modify votes when you have no idea what that software release contained? It was certainly never reviewed by the state or the (ahem) "independent reviewers" that Diebold touts so vociferously.

Besides that, who knows if someone doesn;t go visit the machine and touch a few key places on the touch screen to modify votes. Who says it has to be done remotely by modem or otherwise?

Please pull your head out of your ass and realize that people are fucking stealing our elections; Elections which are supposed to represent the very core of our so-called "democracy". You are the fucking reason they are able to get away with shit like this.

shsecret takes a file and splits it into N parts of equal size such that any M parts can be used to reconstruct the secret, but fewer than M will give absolutely no information about the secret. This program is written in strict ANSI C, so it should be completely portable. It is also hopefully simpler and more efficient than other implementations of the same algorithm.

put away your tin foil hat.
theres nothing to see here...
if your going to say SAIC is spooky you had better include Raytheon and TASC.
All in all, their just large companies in a focused industry.

My Dad is a senior scientist at SAIC. A few years ago they had a power failure at the office. He pulled his slide rule out from under his keyboard, and sat in the window with his notes and a pencil. The younger guys went home because the computers didn't have any power.

It makes my hair hurt to think about doing differential calculus like that; his data set was terabyte-size.

As Dr. Beyster, founder of SAIC said, "Those who contribute to the company should own it and that ownership should be commensurate to that contribution and performance as much as feasible."

The US military is working on VTOL UAVs such as Northrop Grumman's Fire Scout (e.g., for use by the Coast Guard) and Raytheon is building a Tactical Control System that allows one human operator to control multiple UAVs. Many other people also make VTOL UAVs, increasingly focusing on autonomous operations. (Nowadays it takes more than one operator to control a single UAV -- it would be nice to reverse that ratio in the future.) So I wonder what makes this Israeli drone so unique?

"The Fire Scout system, a vertical takeoff and landing tactical UAV, is in low-rate initial production for the U.S. Navy by [Northrop Grumman's] Integrated Systems sector. Fire Scout will fly at an altitude of up to 20,000 feet, and use an advanced payload with an electro-optical/ infrared sensor and a laser designator to survey littoral regions with pinpoint accuracy, giving military decision-makers the most current information about enemy resources and personnel on the ground. Fire Scout is a fully autonomous targeting and surveillance system that can fly almost silently above deployed Marines to watch for hidden enemies within 100 nautical miles."

"[Raytheon's] TCS, which allows the simultaneous control of multiple UAVs and their payloads from the same control station, was conceived as a joint-service program but never was adopted by the Air Force or the Army. The program is likely to survive, however, as a Navy-only system that eventually could be modified to accommodate UAVs from additional services, experts said."

Sure, I should've provided links to begin with. As far as the TOS systems go, they are proprietary usually and don't necessarily relate to your field anyhow. They're usually Oracle DB's with some type of application that sits on top of that.

As far as RFID goes, there are various vendors doing things for container terminal tracking, I don't know if they have technology that would apply to lab work or "smaller" and less rugged tagging needs:

Texas Instruments has a division:
TI-RFID at Texas Instruments

SAIC, really big contractor, interesting docs:
SAIC

The RFID Journal:
RFID Journal

Wherenet (RFID vendor):
Wherenet RFID Products

Transcore (RFID vendor):
Transcore Products, Services

I've had some conversations with SAIC types. Given a choice between civil liberties and cool surveillance technology, they will always pick the surveillance technology.

I was just reading an article in Business 2.0 (yes, I try to help out where I can) about a group called SAIC that does a lot of data mining and management for the CIA as well as many other aspects of the government. Apparently they do quite a bit of the security aspect of the CIA as well. Now if only they'd go public, their stock would be incredible...

The official line is : Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 company, is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States. We provide information technology, systems integration and eSolutions worldwide.

The important point is that we are very diverse. The best explaination of our corporate makeup is to describe a solar system of companies with SAIC corporate in the middle. The organzation is very flat and transparent.

As much as I like the cuetsy characterizations of SAIC as a spy haven with wizards and towers and stuff, the truth is less exciting. The vast masjority of our constacts are straight meat-and potato development and support work. We do just about anything tech related, and we do it very well. please disgregaurd the SIG below.

were awarded a contract to expand the seismic network used to do nuclear testban treaty verification, in competition with a company I do business with. Unfortunately, they were planning to use our equipment, apparently not realizing that we weren't going to produce the equipment unless we got the whole support contract. In the end I heard it turned into a real cluster-fuck.

Unfortunately, that will be $0.00 , since it's free open-source property.

As you said, the government doesn't enjoy invoking it's rights of Eminent Domain, because there's so much paperwork and doublechecking before the forced sale can move through. They really have to demonstrate that free-market purchasing has failed before this step can be taken.

If they wanted any piece of software or IP, they would certainly try to purchase it conventionally before starting the seizure process. And, if when they tried to obtain it, the author asked for some value greater than $0.00 in compensation, then they couldn't later claim that it cost zero dollars. The original developer could solicit a quote from SAIC or some other government software contractor, asking how much they would charge to deliver a product of equivalent functionality.

They probably wouldn't even notify him that it was being done.

I can tell you from experience that this is not the case. For one thing, actual government employees rarely do much programming. It's delegated to contractors with virtually the same legal status as Microsoft. (And, anything written by a 100% government employee is public domain anyway, so it's very likely the original author will get a copy of the changes offered him)

If the gov't decided they wanted to use Linux to run their new tanks or super-duper death ray gun, and Linus said "no"

He's already said yes, back when he choose the GPL license for his project. Linux is already used in some tanks (just experimental things, not fielded yet)

the gov't can do anything they want.

That may be nearly true, but most of us like to pretend there are things they can't do. But it's always true that "National Security" trumps many things, and in the past few years it may have become even more powerful.

Oh, I suppose that the article was posted by SAIC as "news" because they found the results of their test dubious? Right, the article is just what they need to sell more of their services to a broken OS built on a long discredited development model and designed by the marketing flaks you dismiss. Excuse me while I continue to expect more exploits and losses for corporations and individuals who continue to waste their money trusting Micro$oft.

To an explaination

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 29, 2002

SAIC Awarded Common Criteria Certificate for Microsoft Windows 2000 Operating System Evaluation

(MCLEAN, VA) Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced that it has received a National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) Common Criteria certificate for successfully performing the evaluation of the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system. SAIC's Common Criteria Testing Laboratory (CCTL) performed the evaluation and received the certificate at the Federal Information Assurance Conference (FIAC) 2002 in College Park, Md.

"SAIC is proud to have contributed to this Common Criteria milestone event and congratulates Microsoft for attaining this significant achievement in computer security," said Duane Andrews, SAIC corporate executive vice president.

The Windows 2000 operating system evaluation was conducted in accordance with ISO 15048 Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) Level 4 Augmented requirements and was evaluated against the Common Criteria Controlled Access Protection Profile, which is consistent with the commercial-level information security requirements for the Department of Defense (DoD). An EAL4 is the highest evaluation rating that a commercial CCTL can perform and Windows 2000 is the first operating system to achieve an EAL4 rating under the United States Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS).

"The SAIC CCTL took on a complex challenge, and we were successful in completing the evaluation of the Windows 2000 operation system," said Tammy Compton, co-director of the SAIC CCTL, and the leader of the evaluation team. "The common criteria evaluation methodologies we used were applied to Windows 2000 without using evidence from any previous evaluations. This led to the completion of one of the more challenging projects we have conducted, and we are confident of more successful evaluations in the near future."

"We have embraced the Common Criteria evaluation process from its inception, because we saw the high quality bar for security we could provide to customers," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president, Windows Server Group, Microsoft Corp. "With CC certification and the support resources we are releasing today, customers now have an internationally-recognized template for Windows 2000 that enables them to build an IT system for secure computing beyond that of any other commercially-available platform today."

Located in Columbia, Md., the SAIC CCTL is a division of SAIC's Secure Business Solutions and was accredited by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) in August 2000. SAIC CCTL was one of the first commercial laboratories to be listed in the NIAP's CCEVS. SAIC's Secure Business Solutions provides security solutions for networks and business systems. Its 500 engineers can assess, test, design, certify, deploy, and manage solutions for information and physical security, and train organizations to be a core part of overall security solutions.

Bellcore is now Telcordia Technologies, Inc. and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corporation. They still provide operational support systems for the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCS) and other telecommunications companties.

John presents his take on things in an recent Salon interview.

And what's SAIC up to these days (read John's interview)? Homeland security. They're on our side (cough).

This was my final year project thesis. Just remember the golden rule unstructured 2 structured == convert 2 XML I wrote a [very bad] program in C++/Perl/tcsh IPC=pipes to add XML tags to English, and then index them into a search engine which would use the lingual data stored in the XML tags to help the search.

NIST does a MASSIVE competition on this annually. I don't want to be an XML-buzzword whore <Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> (XML commando eats Green berets, C++, Java, Perl, COBOL for breakfast)</Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> but you can't beat XML for easily converting anything that you can make sense out of into computer readable format. Real h3cKoRs use SGML, but us underlings have to stick with things we can understand like XML. As for expandability, if we want to encode something else into the document, then just tag-it-and-go

It took me 200 hours to fish out all these links (before the Google days), I don't want anyone to have to waste as much time as I did feeding the search engines exotic foods. It's a year old so pardon me for the odd broken link, armed with these you could probably turn jello into XML ;-)

My favourite bookmarx
PROJect[21 links]
Beginners' Guide[13 links]
Berkeley Linguistics Dept. Course Summaries, general stuffzzzzzzzzzzzzzzCryptic IR Vocabulary defined
Explanations of weird words like hypernym zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHow do we produce and understand speech
How Inverted Files are Created - Univeristy of Berkeley zzzzzzzzzzzzzzNLP Univ. of Indiana, very good basics e.g. word sense d
Simple langauge - useful.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWhat is Natural Language Processing, links
What is POS tagging........ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguation defined
Word Sense Disambiguation in detail, scroll down far zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguator - LOLITA (tested at MUC-7 and SENSEVAL competition as best)
XML for the absolute beginner

HTML, XML stuff + parsers[19 links]
Apache plug-in that uhhh does stuff with XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzConvert COM to XML
convert XML, HTML to Unix pipeable formats zzzzzzzzzzzzzzconverters to and from HTML
expat XML parser zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHTML Tidy - converts HTML 2 XML + source code!!
Parse DB (RDBMS, whatever) to XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPerl-XML Module List
PHP Manual XML parser functions - what the hell are they talking about, PHP Virtual M... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPublic SGML-XML Software
Pyxie - XML Processor for Python, Perl, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSGML+XML tools.org
The XML Resource Centre - massive number of links zzzzzzzzzzzzzzW4F wrapper - wrapper converts XML to HTML
XFlat - convert flat file into XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML Parsers and other XML stuff
XML.com - Parsers, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML-Data Catalog System - uhhhh looks close
XTAL's general converter - convert anything 2 XML

other Background[8 links]
Is Linux ready for the Enterprise, scalable... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzLinux reliability
Linux Versus Windows NT, Mark(sysinternals bloke) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPC reliability (pcworld)
SPEC - Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSystems benchmarks
TPC - Transaction Processing Performance Council zzzzzzzzzzzzzzUnix Beats Back NT In EDA Workstation Arena
Proper TREC(-8) QA systems[2 links]

pg. 387 LIMSI-CNRS pretty deep parsing[2 links]
More links....
NLP, IR links - lots to corpii, etc.

pg. 575 U. of Ottawa and NRL (shit system, got 0%)[1 links]
LAKE Lab
pg. 607! University of Sheffield (crap system, but OPEN SOURCE!)[2 links]
GATE - FREE IE app w`source code
LaSIE - ER, coreference, template (cv)

pg. 617 Univ of Surrey (inconclusive matches)[2 links]
System Quirk - Or is this their search system..... Hmmmmmm
Univ of Surrey - pointers (hopefully this is their WILDER search system...)

SMU - Pg. 65[1 links]
Natural Language Processing Laboratory at SMU

Textract[2 links]
Cymfony - Technology
Textract - State of the Art Information Extraction

Xerox uhhhhh maybe[1 links]
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
(OVERVIEW) 1999 TREC-8 Q&A Track Home Page
NLP bloke, Univ Sussex


Tcl-Tk[4 links] Tcl tutorial
Tcl-Tk Contributed Programs Index
Tcl-Tk Resources, sources
TclXML - manipulating XML using Tcl-Tk
Artificial Natural Language - Is this what I'm trying to parse into...
Comparison of Indexers - Prise vs. Inquery vs. MG, etc.
Eagles - Language Engineering Standards
Language Technology Group - lots of modules!
LDC - Linguistic Data Consortium, lots of corpora
Lexical Resources
Links 2 resources, indexers.....
Lots of IR stuff, University of uhhh
Managing Gigabytes Indexer
Managing Gigabytes Manuals and stuff
Htdig search system
NLP & IR (NLPIR, NIST) Group
OVERVIEW OF MUC-7-MET-2
Perl XML Indexing - XML search engine type thing
Phrasys Language Processing Software Components (money)
QA HCI bullshit
SIGIR - TREC-type thing, resources
SMART indexer system documentation
Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) Home Page
The Natural Language Software Registry
Thunderstone IE and IR products
WordNet - FREE DOWNLOADABLE lexical English database

Page created with URL+, nice utility for working with internet shortcuts

SAIC's Digital Video Audit System sounds like a really good fit for what you're looking to do. Check it out at http://www.saic.com/products/transportation/digita l/. Records and plays back simultaneously, availble through LAN or WAN, Searchable by time, date, location, etc. Top-notch stuff.

....and all hell would break loose if the taxpayers found out how much SAIC bilked Uncle Sam for those P-90's! Take some cheap commodity x86 hardware, slap it in an olive drab case, put an IDE hard drive in a removable metal case, and call it an "LCU" --lightweight computer unit. Charge the taxpayers more than what a Lexus costs. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Science Applications International Corporation is not siac. SAIC is much spookier. You need a hairy security clearance for much of the stuff they do.

The trick isn't to find a small company (we're 41,000+) - it's to have something to offer the company. Even better, be able to offer them something they can't get anywhere else.

Most kids today, even at 16, aren't mature enough to handle a real job. I'm 20, and I have a career job. I couldn't have done it at 16. 18, maybe. 19, I did. You need to be human. Not cocky. You need to understand that you probably don't have all that much to offer that they can't get from someone that's probably more reliable than you are. Why hire a 16 year old to do shell scripting when you can get a 25 year old that has reliable transportation and a few years of work experience?

Younger kids have too much working against them: issues that employers don't want to deal with, lack of experience, lack of a degree (which tells an employer "Hi, I'm tough enough to stick out 4 long years to get this piece of paper" - lucky, I got by without this one), etc.

My advice to the kids: get a job at Pizza Hut or the local grocery store or Wal Mart and start saving your cash. Get your own computer to practice stuff on. Get good with UNIX (a *lot* of companies need people with UNIX experience). Start programming. Send your resume not to 5 companies, but to 500. Develop your own style. Make a good impression in an interview. Ask your dad how to do this. Life's not easy. There aren't career jobs for 16 year olds. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll be ready for one by the time you're 19. Start now.

As you may or may not know, StarOffice will need to be segmented for the DII COE. Segmentation is the process of putting the program into a particular format so that it can be installed with no worries. As one of the lead segmenters in my division, I can tell you that we only develop segments for four platforms: Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX (10.20 and 11.00) and Solaris (2.51, 7 & 8). It will *not* be installed on Linux machines. I know that they mention it in the article, but that's not the way it is. DISA has, as far as I am aware, no Linux machines in production environments, because they don't consider them to be as reliable as Solaris. HP-UX is being phased out, but they still have a lot of HP machines, so it's going slowly. I'm sure they would use Linux, but where do you get support? They can't get the support Sun offers. When a Sun box breaks at my office, Sun has a guy there to fix it within an hour of our call. Linux just can't offer that yet.

My point is this: Solaris is the platform of choice at DISA. It doesn't give us an opening - it gives Sun an opening, allowing them to say "hey, look, you can write Word files on Solaris! Don't buy Windows!" Linux isn't in use at DISA. The only group this is good for is Sun.

For example, I recently proposed that, instead of sending me to a class to become intimately familiar with Solaris and Sun's hardware (my work involves Solaris on a daily basis), the company buy me a SunBlade 100 and a few hundred dollars worth of books. This would, of course, save considerable money for the company. My manager liked the idea, but that's pretty unimportant, because most Fortune 500 companies have a strict set of rules when it comes to computer usage/acquisition. I couldn't get a home-built computer for my desktop here if I wanted to, because corporate policy, for uniformity, dictates that we buy the Dell OptiPlex.

Unfortunately, it's much the same way with software. I do happen to run Linux here as much as possible, but I'm forced to dual-boot it with Windows 2000, because it's the company standard. Not because we were forced into it by Microsoft, but because we need to have that assurance that it's going to work and not need to worry about permissions.

I'm as big a fan of Linux as anyone, and I've been using it since 1996 now (good ol' Slackware 2.x days)... but the Fortune 500 just isn't ready for it.

it's a smaller market for privately traded stock, but it can still be bought and sold. Some large corporations (like SAIC) "calculate" the "value" of their stock and handle trading.

If you're willing to work for a company that contracts with the federal government, you should have little trouble finding work in Europe. Particularly if the contract is for the Department of Defense, you may fall under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). If so, the first $75K of your income is exempt from US taxes and it is possible not to be taxed by the host nation either.

Specific companies I know of include Logitech, Mitre, and SAIC.

The NSA's Linux version is from SAIC, I believe. And I'm not sure where a separate agency like NASA falls in the law.

While you will find some of the bureucratization in these organizations that you find in government, you will also find people who would be sympathetic to open source. Being as these are well-establined outfits that regularly win contracts, these are good allies for the open source movement.

Actually there is an entire field of neural network vibration control that started out as adaptive vibration cancellation. In a 1989 demonstration for the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, SAIC had a demonstration where they placed 1, then 2 then 3 accellerometers at various arbitrary places on a 3D grid structure being stimulated by some vibrators similar to those spoken of in the article here. Then the outputs of those accellerometers were fed as "pain" signals to a recurrent neural network that controlled some other vibrators. When the neural network was turned on, the vibrators under its control would vary frequency, phase and amplitude until vibration was cancelled out at precisely the 3 locations at which the accellerometers were placed. You could then pick the accellerometers up and put them back down somewhere else and the neural network would adapt within a few seconds, cancelling out its painful inputs.

oops - messed it up last time! Doh!

at this url: http://research-cistw.saic.com/cace/dte.html

(Hope that someone reads down far enough to moderate this up). The site has a good explanation of what DTE is, but I don't know how active they are.

They have a patch against 2.2.13, which was created on Dec 13 1999. So its not too out of date, though it will have to be forward ported to 2.3 I suppose...

Maybe the NSA should be spending their money elsewhere - or maybe they should clue up to what open source is all about.

I wonder what is covered by the patent Secure are so proud of?

at this url:

(Hope that someone reads down far enough to moderate this up). The site has a good explanation of what DTE is, but I don't know how active they are.

They have a patch against 2.2.13, which was created on Dec 13 1999. So its not too out of date, though it wil have to be forward ported to 2.3 I suppose...

Maybe the NSA should be spending their money elsewhere - or maybe they should clue up to what open source is all about.

I wonder what is covered by the patent Secure are so proud of?