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Los Alamos Missing Disks Never Existed
Hal9000_sn3 writes "Turns out that the investigations carried out at Los Angeles National Laboratory over a matter of stolen research were flawed...because the missing disks never existed. Kind of hard to defend against having lost something you allegedly had access to, if the thing never existed." From the article: "Eventually, four were fired for security breaches, one chose to resign under the threat of termination and seven others received various formal reprimands."
Thus again it it is proven that in an investigation like this the most important step is to find scrapecoats, even when the investigation itself is groundless.
No, nevermind they never existed in the first place.
Think of it as paranoia in action.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This article doesn't go into too much detail, and doesn't clarify why the people were really fired.
For example, if they didn't properly sign out the data and disks that they were borrowing, then they would be responsible for a mistake like this even if they didn't lose anything.
There should never have been a question about who had the disks in a properly run lab.
I'm glad to hear that the disks were not missing and in fact apparently never existed, but that only clears up one mystery.
Were the missing notebooks that were reported, alleged Chinese hack-attacks, accusations against Wen Ho Lee and all the other reported security lapses phantoms as well?
I'm a big tall mofo.
The XXX never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!
"The WMD never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!"
"The disks never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!"
Just fill in the blanks...
... numerous nuke experts convinced of having been disenfranchised in politically motivated "purges" and "sacked as scapegoats" ?!
Silicone Valley? I never would have thought...
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ECFA.
same way CIA actions help the safety http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/Fig htSmart18-11-2001.htm
four were fired for security breaches, one chose to resign under the threat of termination and seven others received various formal reprimands
All too often these matters are concluded by way of "well mistakes were made, lets just leave it at that and forget about it".
As a US taxpayer (which I'm not) I'd want an investigation into the basis for the allegations and who made them. If someone is wrongly accused then the accusators have to be held responsible for their errors.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
A very funny Monty Python skit. Except the Spanish Inquisition wasn't funny and like any witch hunt you will find witches even when there are none to be found. The equivilent of the Spanish Inquisition swooped down on these people and heads were going to roll. It doesn't matter that there were no disks to go missing in the first place. It only matters that it's perceived that something is being done to correct the problem - even if that particular problem doesn't exist. There is bound to be some problem if we look hard enough. The vengeful, righteous persecutors who went and gleefully destroyed people can sleep happily in their beds because they are under the misguided belief that they found and burned their nonexistent witches with the full backing of god and country. It's a shame they don't make children watch The Oxbow Incident (old black and white movie about hanging cattle rustlers who were not guilty - a study in mob justice)
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The best way to cover your butt when there is a problem is to make everyone believe the problem never existed, then divert attention to the other "more serious" problems in the organization.
How hard would it have been to make duplicate copies of the bar codes (or remove the original ones if you were actively stealing the disks) and place them where they could be found during an investigation.
The fact that they write off the un-used bar-codes without mentioning that good procedure would log bar-codes when they are used (not just when they are printed), makes this result suspicious.
More like
The disk never existed.
The disks were missing.
The security breaches were solved.
The disk were found back because the security was not that bad.
and last but not least.. the data was not that sensitieve.
Like a suspect pleaing to judge:
-I never did it.
- never was there.
-I left before it took place.
-The xxx forced me to do it. (not my fault.)
- I am sorry about it.
(b.t.w. perfect logic for a lawyer)
Okay, this isn't the BIG missing disk story of the Clinton era, this is a set of missing disks from last year. Kerry was trying to make political hay out of this for the election year so the Bush Administration did what it usually does. Shoot first, ask questions later so Kerry couldn't accuse the Bush camp of being lax on security.
So now the article screams false alarm and everyone appears to be lamenting the loss of money to UC and the loss of careers.
Valid points to be sure but... What's the bigger mystery? That top secret disks disappear from a research facility? Or that non-existent top secret disks get reported as disappearing from a research facility?
(Or in other words, did Karl Rove falsely report missing disks to make the Bush team look tough on security? Or did UC students falsely report missing disks to make the Bush team look weak on security?)
When I was a gov.contractor with a high level clearance, we had to go through all kinds of security steps in the handling of classified docs... One day I had thought my PHB had lost his mind..... I was wrong, it never exsisted to begin with. We did not have to report it though, because it did not have anything to do with "intelligence".
If they ever get around to "the missing uranium actually never existed," then I think I shall disbelieve.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I hate to sound like this, but what does this have to do with my rights online?
Is it "Your Rights Online" or "Your Rights.... Online"?
Either way, it doesn't justify this article being submitted here.
Interesting story though...
If you can't mod them join them.
He said "I may have destroyed many innocent lives but at least I never claimed to have caught anyone. These guys are going to give witchhunting a bad name."
Oh, it could be a coverup. But inventory tracking in a secure environment would be a compelx system, a minor failure of which would look exactly like what we've seen.
The confusion, it turns out, was created by inventory bar codes produced for computer disks that have never been written, a department official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, this mistake, if it was that, is the best thing that ever happened to the place - there were multiple, serious problems with security and safety on the site that were addressed as a result of the hunt.
"Although multiple investigations have confirmed that the 'missing' disks never existed, the major weaknesses in controlling classified material revealed by this incident are absolutely unacceptable, and the University of California must be held accountable for them," Brooks said in a statement.
"Of even greater concern are significant safety weaknesses which came to light at approximately the same time," he added.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
I don't know this really sounds like a cover up to me.
"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine."
A few things about Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
They're under the direction of the Department of Energy and are managed by the University of California.
Across the street from both one finds Sandia National Laboratories, managed by Martin-Marietta.
Election-year antics with these two labs have become rampant of late: usually, the republicans go for security lapses and the democrats for environmental issues. This is in spite of the fact that the laboratories have a negligable environmental impact (the measuring devices at LLNL to detect toxic releases in the air from the research facility had to be brilliantly engineered to filter out the noise from the freeway 1 mile away, noise which is 1000 times larger than the "damaging environmental releases" they're supposed to detect and help prevent), and have an excellent security record (the "security incidents" are in fact created by failures in the security bureaucracy. If, for example, you have a policy to destroy secret documents after 20 years, and someone slaps a secret-document tracking program on top, suddenly the news reports "tens of thousands of secrets lost").
In effect, these have beome largely political attacks on the Secretary of Energy, a cabinet-level appointment, and through that person, to the president and party in power.
So why the "lax security" during a Republican administration? Those two labs employ something on the order of 15,000 people. THey're managed by the University of California. The University of California has one of the most solvent pension funds in the country. Martin Marietta(or Lockheed Martin, I forget. same company) has long expressed an interest in stretching their management across the street from Sandia to LANL and LLNL; in addition to the money they can make directly from government spending, they'll be free to raid that sweet pension fund.
Of course, I'm just ranting. The Bush administration has set a steadfast policy of protecting the country's resources against corporate raiders.
I think that this is actually the best that could have happened. First, the disks weren't stolen because they never existed. This means the disks weren't stolen. Disks not being stolen is a good thing. Secondly, alleged flaws in the security of the labs were found and fixed -- hopefully preventing anything from really being stolen in the future. Flaws being fixed is a good thing. We're up two and down zero. Cigars for everyone.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82
Some of the ranting on here about "scapegoats" seems to ignore that some of the people were guilty of security violations (an obvious cause for dismissal), but the violations were only found after an investigation was triggered on misinformation. It doesn't make those people any less guilty of their security violations.
The last two lines of the article should have made that clear, but I suppose most of the loud mouths never got that far.
Big difference. :)
sight unseen?
Does this mean that if I get into Berkeley or UCLA, it's gonna cost even more? I'm not a CA resident either...
I believe
Imagine investigating a story, reporting on an event before anyone else, even getting articles placed in other papers! It could be a dream job with people lining up to fund it. PLEASE consider what
Caveat, this coming from someone who just got a post rejected last week, but still there are a hundred geeks out there wanking on about two week old news and it's kinda dumb. Why not actually contact some congressional staffers and find out what's happening BEFORE the news breaks elsewhere? Like, news? You know?
This is the weak point of slashdot's dependence on user submissions. There aren't any journalist users who are going to submit first to slashdot. Solve for x.
I have to say that this sounds even worse than having lost two disks.
If the inventory of classified resources included completely imaginary items then how can it be trusted at all? If people assume that the inventory is wrong, then how will they know if something actually goes missing?
Sorry, but I agree with the government - if these guys managed classified data so poorly they deserve to be fired and fined.
Clear, Dark Skies
{Jedi hand wave}
These are not the disks you're looking for.
Chip H.
I have no personal knowledge of the situation at Los Alamos, but the report doesn't surprise me. Security is only taken seriously when there are regular inspections and audits. Too many people will become complacent and let things slide if there is no mechanism to detect and correct problems. Good security slows things down and costs money, which makes it easy to rationalize cutting corners. Management often views it as a waste of their budget dollars.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There are a dozen scenarios that could involved non-existant, classified disks for which people should be fired.
-Person A creates a record of a disk, intending to classify a piece of media. Then doesn't. They forget to record the disk as destroyed.
-Person B repeatedly writes inspection reports stating that the non-existant disk in fact exists. This indicates that they are not actually doing their job of inspecting.
-Person C repeatedly signs off on the inspection reports that Person B writes, thus affirming the existance of a non-existant disk.
Regardless of the fact that the disk never existed, all three people should be fired. First, they were not doing their jobs. Second, and more importantly, they facilitate the work of people like Aldrich Ames. By not immediately reporting the disk missing (or non-existant) any could have stolen the disk, sold its contents and come back for more without anyone noticing.
the one who "had to resign" was an extremely resepected scientst and a member of the national academy of science. He was essentially a vice president at the lab and the only member of the NAS who was at that level of management.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Surely, the University of Texas wanting to take control of Los Alamos has nothing to do with it, wink. And of cause, the ex-governor of Texas was a completely uninterested party.
"Should the contract go to bid, the University of Texas might have an edge because it is in President George W. Bush's home state, said Pete Stockton, a senior investigator with the watchdog organization Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., a loud critic of UC. And Bush doesn't have close ties with California, which he lost in the 2000 election."
www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/5034980.htm
This article is the result of trult execrable reporting. The missing disks were the least of the problems at the lab. The investigations began after an administration change and BEFORE the missing disks story. There was a theft ring operating out of the lab that even included one person charging a Ford Mustang on her office credit card.
For references, read the local newspapers
www.abqjournal.com and thealibi.com
It's unclear whether this is because of a real screw-up, or it's a cover-up for some seriously bad leaked information, and they want to say that it "never existed" like how UFO's "never existed"...
stuff |
I thought they had been found? Who ever took them stashed them back under a copier of some other piece of office equipment so that someone would discover them?
No, it proves that security investigations that turn up security holes are very important, even when no damage has yet been done. Those people were fired because of actual unacceptable risks they created, discovered in the course of the investigation. If you want to talk about scapegoating, talk about the administration which jumped at the allegations, but never revealed that the actual damage was never done, because it would have been harder to spin that. Even though it would have reduced the fear among Americans that our nuclear programs are being compromised by active enemies. Who benefits from the increased fear?
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make install -not war
Anybody else see the irony of a story about typo sites being directly above this story given the obvious "Los Angeles National Laboratory" mistake (vs. Los Alamos National Laboratory)?
Even if you don't, it looks ironic to me.
I repeatedly submitted this story to /. back in July and even posted it in a comment:
1 6107
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=9827294&sid=1
Idiots.
I repeatedly submitted this story to /. back in July and even posted it in a comment:
1 6107
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=9827294&sid=1
Idiots.
Los Angeles National Laboratory doesn't exist. If you mean, Los Alamos National Laboratory on the other hand...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
The power of this piece isn't in the incident itself. It's in the political manipulations of such... But then this is on Slashdot under the heading "Your rights online"
Rights?
I wish I could provide names, so obviously this is nothing for you folks but unsupported rumor. Oh, well. An acquaintance of mine who works at Los Alamos claims that she was told by co-workers that some congressperson wanted the lab to be run by the university in their state, and rigged the whole thing to bolster the case for it. The gain was millions of pork dollars for that university.
Even if it was the worst coffee in the world. As long as it was within the norms of BOILING WATER I think it's safe to say it's expected to be hot.
... is 100C by definition [well average at the normal ground pressure for most places on earth...] ...
I'm sorry I don't care why they kept it hot, provided the water wasn't like >110C or so I don't see the claims.
Boiling water
That's like saying ice cream was too cold for being below zero C... I DEMAND MY ICE CREAM BE 23C like outdoors!!!
BBRRRRR cold!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
/. bro... that's not how things work.
I believe there are actual conspiracies, but I believe they are so complicated and likely to fail in an embarrassing way that they are rare. Either side could have made gains here, but actually setting something like this up would have been incredibly risky - even an apathetic populace might take notice of propaganda games being played with nuclear weapons security.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Sometimes counterintelligence sets up big ruses to catch people without giving away the fact that they had a mole on the other side.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same was the case here. The FBI was looking for information on a known spy or source of leaks here (possibly one of the persons let go), but created the "lost disk" ruse not to give their hand away that they have penetrated the upper layers of the Chinese spy agency.
We don't have the whole story here. There is no actual explanation in the article as to why the persons who lost their jobs did, and there is no detailing of whatever actual security breaches may or may not have been discovered as a result of the clampdown initiated as a result of the not-missing missing disks.
But even if we never find out what happened, I don't mind. The frickin' Soviets would up with the Bomb because of security breaches at Los Alamos (remember the Rosenburgs?). Sure, the USSR would probably have figured it out by themselves eventually, but it was a screwup of the highest order to give them our nuclear secrets for free.
So, if these employees feel they were treated unfairly, too bad. It's cheaper for the government to pay out a few bucks on the occasional wrongful termination claim than to deal with the dissemination of some of our secrets.
I supposed I should state that I spent a summer at the lab as a college intern, working on something I cannot disclose.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Actually, the disks has an equal chance of existing or not existing before the investigation was opened.
But the official said the episode had helped discover and fix serious security breaches at Los Alamos, and therefore the department had no regrets.
I guess this gives a green light to government-backed fishing expeditions. Funny how heads rolled for a problem that didn't exist, but nobody is held accountable for the false information that started the whole mess. The Bush camp seems to thrive on imaginary monsters. I'm willing to bet that Los Alamos and WMD either are, or will be only the tip of the iceberg.
That scandal was during the Clinton administration. Apparently this was a new security review.
Clear, Dark Skies
Certainly true - in Lee's case, he was screwed even though he apparently did no wrong. But who can really know, amid all the lies and coverups? The unaccountability of DOE transcends every administration. The difference between Clinton's administration and Bush's is that we have to live with Bush for another 4 years. That's why this problem transcends mere partisan dimensions: we are talking about fixing an essential system, not just complaining about people we don't like.
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make install -not war
Did that guy find behind the copy machine?
Informatus Technologicus
Yea, but hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns, require skin graffs, and require 8 days hosipitalization is not too hot because there is another 30F until I get to boiling. It's a hazard to serve any drink above 140F. The coffee was at 185F, McDonald's knew it. At 185F the coffee is not consumable and the product (drinkable coffee) was defective. It's not like she was the first person to get burned, she was the 700th person McDonalds had known about with the same types of burns. All McDonalds had to do was lower thier coffee maker's temprature to be the same as the rest of the industry. She sued for to get help with her medical coverage, but the jury was so angry that McDonalds knew about the danger and let person after person get injured.
You're wrong about Wen Ho Lee. I worked for 18 months across the hall from him and continue to work in X Division to this day. Wen Ho repeatedly failed to safeguard classified information, which is a felony. The FBI didn't go after Lee because of his Taiwanese birth but because of computer logs showing that he'd been a Very Bad Boy. He broke a laundry list of laws intended to keep our nuclear secrets secret and had the Clinton Administration not tried to paint him as the greatest threat to America since the Rosenbergs, he'd still be sitting in jail where he belongs.
It's simple: anytime someone casts Wen Ho Lee as a wronged man, that person is wrong. Period, end of story.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Different disks, different investigation. You'd think Los Alamos would have learned after that previous investigation, but apparently not.
Clear, Dark Skies
I'm glad to have access to the firsthand experience of Lee to draw on - my knowledge, like most people's, is entirely through the filter of the mass media. Why do you think Lee's reputation is that of an innocent scapegoat? And has anything changed in X Division to ensure security protocols are obeyed before they set off alarms in the media? Other than just the usual CYA noise?
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make install -not war
That explains why UC said this about the investigation:
"Unfortunately, we deserve this," UC spokesman Chris Harrington said. "But what we have done is correct the problems and put the right system in place so that we don't have to take this type of hit again."
I doubt UC would be admitting guilt if the evidence wasn't pretty damning.
Clear, Dark Skies
Disclaimer: I don't and can't speak for LANL. If you want the official word, call the Public Affairs Office and ask to speak to one of the mouthpieces there.
The primary reason Lee has the reputation as a wronged man is because Americans really, really liked "The X-Files". People _want_ to believe that the resources of the US government were brought to bear on an innocent man in an election year to promote or dissuade shadowy agendas hammered out by smoking men in darkened rooms. Even better that he was foreign-born of the inscrutable Chinese race, because now it means the shadowy government is racist, too, and didn't we always know THAT? OK, that's probably not the primary reason, but I do think it's a strong component. People pride themselves on "seeing through the lies". It means they're smarter than the evil government. It bolsters their self-esteem.
Another major component is that we are bound by the same rules Wen Ho was, only we actually do take them seriously. It's difficult to say much about what he did without violating classification rules. That puts Wen Ho and his defenders at an advantage in that they can say things like "Everyone at Los Alamos copies classified data onto unclassified media and takes it home"; we can't say "On this and this and this date, Wen Ho copied this and this and this computer file in violation of the Atomic Energy Act." We simply cannot talk about what he took and how he took it.
We have indeed seen many changes in policy and practice lab-wide since the summer of 2000. As fate would have it, this past summer's incident was a violation of procedures implemented in the Wen Ho fallout. Even more new rules and procedures have been piled on since the stand-down of operations. Some of those rules are subject to -- you got it -- classification and don't get talked about on the outside. Others are freely discussed. Suffice to say that after this summer, even getting one's hands on a piece of writeable media is a herculean challenge. Infrastructure is being upgraded and employee training has been augmented. We're better now than we were a year ago, and that was better than five years ago.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Everything you said confirms my own experience with people, the government, security and paranoia. Except the part about things getting progressively better :). That's reassuring - thanks for the insights, and for working to keep us all safe, including keeping our enemies safe from our mistakes.
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make install -not war
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think you should understand why they didn't take your story right away.
Sources... don't have reliable sources. Can't do nothing you know?
It's the only reason and a very good one.
Still mod parent up, I repeat. Mod him up.
It's funny how I make sense to others and not myself...
Remember the line in The Usual Suspects? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
First they say the files are lost. They can't find them, so then they conveniently say the files never existed. Nice work, really.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
This non-incident is another example of Bush Administration lies. The affected people should sue the Administration for false defamation of character.
If Lee had a long history of security lapses, how did things get so far? Why wasn't he disciplined or fired long before it ever became a criminal manner?
You say you were aware of his laxness and lapses. Did you ever try to do anything about it?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"In other news, officials at the pacific nuclear research facility have denied the rumor that a case of missing plutonium was in fact stolen from their vault two weeks ago. A lybian terrorist group had claimed responsiblilty for the alleged theft. Now, however, officials attribute the discrepancy to a simple clerical error."
Of course, anyone who's seen the movie knows that the "officials" were wrong about that "clerical error."
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Occams Razor...
It should be good for a laugh, since they weren't fired for losing the disks.
Clear, Dark Skies
It's a good thing this happened at Los Angeles National Laboratory. Since the lab doesn't exist, this means that there was never any problem. The disks don't exist, and there aren't any security flaws that exist, so literally nothing can be stolen in the future. Things are looking good. I'd say we're up three and down zero. Oh, I don't smoke.
I believe there are actual conspiracies, but I believe they are so complicated and likely to fail in an embarrassing way that they are rare.
You appear to be confusing cause and effect here. Whilst complex conspiracies, especially those involving many conspirators, are likely to be detected. Simple conspiracies, involving few conspirators, are less likely to be detected.
Could be the pluto "New HOrizons" mission - Los Alamos was supposed to be making Plutonium 238 for the RTGs. The delay could mean they are not ready for the Jan 2006 launch window..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Director Nanos single-handedly dealt an enormous blow to the American and world science by shutting down the operations at Los Alamos for MONTHS - all for nothing more than dominance games. If the Cold War were still on, I would suspect him of being a Russian mole.
Let me state that the knowledge of the total absurdity of the lleged "security breach" in Los Alamos is nothing new. Larry Barker of KRQE News reported that the scandal was fake in August 2004. Read the August 11, 2004 artile from Santa Fe New Mexican.
To conclude, I am much saddened by the mindless regurgitation of the official lies in this thread.
Whats all this I hear about missing risks? Is that supposed to be a bad thing? If you want to find risks you could take up parachuting or hang gliding but I think most of us would prefer to miss risks. I think missing risks is a good thing.
Excuse me, but thats missing Disks, not missing Risks.
Ohhh... Never mind.
Agreed, but political conspiracies are seldom small and simple - the conspiracy theories that are commonly tossed about would have to be massive byzantine things run by precognitive geniuses.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I don't know what was known about Lee's behavior prior to the first public airings. I do know that when his security clearance was pulled and he was banished to unclassified work, the investigating Feds expressly forbade notification of that, so he was able to engage in some "social engineering" and do more dirty deeds. That's right, the Department of Justice left a criminal in a sensitive position in the hope that he would do something even worse that they could nail him for.
As for my own knowledge of his conduct, I did not know he was coming in to his office in the middle of the night to download files. Many of us knew he was an underperforming employee with weak skills in the job he held. We did not know he was breaking the law. We found out at the same time the rest of America did -- although by virtue of working here and having clearances, we found out a bit more.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Thanks for your forthrightness. Given that there is no way to check that you are who you say you are, you sound convincing and you've probably saved me from the embarrassment of defending Lee as a martyr. Thank you for sharing your insiders view point.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I work for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is a sister lab to Los Alamos National Laboratory. I can tell you that our system for tracking classified removable electronic media (or CREM in our PHB vernacular) is atrocious! We are FORCED to use a EXTREMELY POORLY designed and implemented database for tracking CREM. This database was designed to track PAPER DOCUMENTS, as are most of our procedures. There is no enforcement of unique records or entries. i.e. we don't track media (and media serial numbers or other unique identifier), we track labels printed on Dymo thermal printers that can be made by ANYONE.
Our group of system administrators have been pointing out the flaws in the handling and tracking of CREM, and proposing solutions for over five years. Middle management doesn't have the will or desire to expend the effort it would take to overcome the inertia of our bureaucracy. When the shit hit the fan (and press) last summer we thought management would finally listen to us and implement some of the changes. Not. Our culture does not include the idea of management being responsible for the actions of those they manage. Period. Nor do they have any worries of being fired for the actions of those they are nominally responsible for. There was a bunch of meetings, etc., but NO REAL CHANGE. They finally listened to our proposal of moving to diskless desktops. This pleased the users: they didn't have to put up with the hassle of dealing with CREM and being responsible for it. Of course, the data has to go somewhere, which meant that now single system administrators were responsible for hundreds of more pieces of CREM than before, and are primed for becoming the scapegoat when some secretary screws up an entry in our nominal database and DOE goes looking for some non-existant piece of CREM (similarly to what happened at Los Alamos).
Argh, I could go on, and on, and probably get myself into trouble. I am just so damn frustrated with Lab culture, and how this shit has landed on those who warned of this YEARS ago and were ignored.....
There's a little thing called due process which McCarthy ignored, which made absolutely everything he turned up questionable and worthless - it is very hard even with hindsight to work out what was real and what was supposition and invention. It was only after McCarthy went after General Marshall, who was overseeing two theatres of war while McCarthy was hiding behind the couch - that it was shown how much of a fool McCarthy was.
McCarthyism is gnerally held up as an example of ignoring due process, the constitution and generally being an idiot. A "kill them all and let God sort them out" attitude may catch one or two guilty people, but generally a more targeted response is warranted. Looking back at post-war history, how can any sane person suggest that Stalin had a revolution planned out for the USA - he may have killed more of his own people in a brutal reigime than were killed during WWII, but world domination is the stuff of Bond films.
McCarthy took a percieved problem used it as an excuse to gain incredible amounts of personal power - any real threats were secondary. The bigger the scare the greater the justification McCarthy could use for going around the professionals and taking his own amataur approach. What is a democracy without justice?
Which has proved a goldmine of information - records have been well kept, even to the extent that there are records of orders as to which records have been destroyed (eg. records of massacres) and helpfully summarise them - just to show that there was an attempted cover up by a paticular official and this is the information they were trying to hide. Until very recently we called the main interrogation techniques of the NKVD - sleep deprivation and breaking fingers - by the name of torture. In my opinion we should go back to calling it torture and not practice it as a state.I'm sorry I don't care why they kept it hot, provided the water wasn't like >110C or so I don't see the claims.
You can't superheat coffee like that, it'd vaporize. The problem was, they handed an older lady a cup of near boiling temperature coffee into her moving vehicle. The lawsuit wasn't because the coffee "was hot" -- it's because it "was too hot to be safe for a drive-through". Cars and old ladies are proned to spilling stuff (they both shake). Everyone likes their coffee hot, but not scalding hot.
That's like saying ice cream was too cold for being below zero C... I DEMAND MY ICE CREAM BE 23C like outdoors!
Well, if the ice cream left your mouth/lips covered with scars for being -200C you might have a similar case.
There are plenty of cases where people harm themselves and sue for it. This isn't one of them.
Well .. I realize that this could just be me failing to see through the misinformation. But.
Why should I now believe that the disks never really existed? What makes this later finding any more competent than the earlier finding that disks were missing? In either case the cause is that the recordkeeping was sloppy and/or human mistakes were made.
If this later finding is accurate, it surely sucks for those who lost their jobs over the earlier mistake. But in any case, the mistakes -- whoever is making them, and whatever they are -- need to stop.
This space intentionally left blank.
...thinking that they'd simply rigged the voting machines more effectively after a few years in power. No dubious court cases needed now that the process is streamlined.
Personally, my wish is not so much that any particular Heckle or Jekyll gets into power, but that there was a party or leader which/who didn't suck.
Bush's crew mostly have their heads so far up their ass in search of religious rightness that they need air pumped in through their navels. Kerry's crew would happily rip up and trample over an emormous number of "traditions" without stopping to notice how well they've worked for centuries, nor stop to ask themselves why this might be. Neither side has a handle on what separation of church and state actually means.
No other party is going to get a look in any time soon (not that the alternatives are exactly confidence-inspiring) and there's no way to elect people even on a case-by-case basis, let alone on practical merit or anything other than "team politics".
Conclusion: the USA is screwed and is going down big time over the next decade or few. Which is not going to be a happy event no matter how yankophobic one is since they're also the world's most potent industrial and military force.
It would take a series of major miracles for the USA to recover its original purpose, character and vitality again.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ironic? It precipitates airborne particles while you watch. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Dave: The door won't open HAL, let me in! HAL 9000: I don't know what you're talking about Dave
"It's a hazard to serve any drink above 140F. The coffee was at 185F, McDonald's knew it. At 185F the coffee is not consumable and the product (drinkable coffee) was defective."
Well, then coffee has to be considered an inherently hazardous product. I guess we should ban it completely. It's funny, after about 30 seconds of searching I found some interesting information about coffee from a manufacturer of brewing equipment. Ideal holding temps of 175 to 185 degrees F. Ideal serving temps of ~155 to 175 degrees F. Just because a court found certain "facts" to be true doesn't mean the court isn't full of blithering idiots....
A few points. You are wrong. Many people are stupid. And bad things happen to good people all the time. That's why you should always carry health insurance in the US.
Someone like Karl Rove?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Are you now, or were you ever a reader of Slashdot? :)
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
Hmm, maybe Miller denied any connection at the time of writing to avoid getting into hotter water than necessary (maybe), but in more recent writings, he certainly makes the relationship explicit. Take this quote from a June 2000 interview with the Guardian, for example:
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
I think you're confusing mass with massive.
One of the keys to determining which weapons are supposed to be legal for use in warfare is discretion. i.e. A gun is strictly under a person's control and may be fired at the wrong target but is always fired at a target, though this is often abused, of course.
Firebombs, cluster bombs, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, etc. are inherantly designed to kill people in an area rather than take out a particular target. The US's prohibited use of cluster bombs, and our use of DU, for example, should be considered use of weapons of mass destruction given the degree of civilian damage that they cause.
Frankly, the notion of 'illegal weapons' seems to have been used more as grounds for prosecuting defeated leaders as opposed to actually improving the 'morality' of warfare. As I think Sherman said "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."
While it i
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Um...last time I checked people liked McD's coffee because...wait for it...it was hot. And when you went through the drive through the coffee would still be hot enough to be hot on your tounge when you got to your desination, or a few miles down the road, or after you've eaten your food...
never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes