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Embarrassing Stories Shed Light On US Officials' Technological Ignorance
colinneagle writes "Speaking at the SXSW Conference recently, Dr. Peter W. Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, recalled one U.S. official who was 'about to negotiate cybersecurity with China' asking him to explain what the term 'ISP' (Internet Service Provider) means. This wasn't the only example of this lack of awareness. 'That's like going to negotiate with the Soviets and not knowing what "ICBM" means,' Dr. Singer said. 'And I've had similar experiences with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi.' Similarly, Dr. Singer recalled one account in which Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful.' 'A Supreme Court justice also told me "I haven't got round to email yet" — and this is someone who will get to vote on everything from net neutrality to the NSA negotiations,' Dr. Singer said."
They've been doing it this way for centuries, why change now? besides, they have an army of clerks that know how to use email.
I've heard that government moves slowly, but having high-power officials 20 years behind the times seems a bit outrageous.
The monitor *IS* The computer as far as my parents are concerned
AOL *IS* the internet... and email....
The hard drive *IS* known as gigabytes
Im sure others have similar stories
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This is in some ways an advantage--SCOTUS is supposed to change slowly. But it also results in crazy rulings at times, like the idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in who you call. The judges who made that decision a few decades ago grew up when there were still *shared phone lines* between neighboring houses.
The guy who had to learn what an ISP was, or the guy who didn't know and didn't ask and made government policy on it anyway?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The article is basically a summary of a quote made in another article. Then the summary posted here is a summary of that summary.
You don't appear to need to be too smart to be in charge, just too old.
As of 2008, John McCain did not use a computer at all. I doubt he's learned since.
Its just a bunch of tubes.
Have gnu, will travel.
One of the first Oxymorons I'd ever heard mention of.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Their ability to scoop up such a trove of data on our use of the Internet seems really fearsome, but what is their actual ability to make use of the data? They could use their tools plus the US global enforcement powers to nail Internet frauds like the Cryptolocker ransomware, thereby redeeming the bad press they been getting since Snowdon. That they are not doing so tells me that they probably cannot do so.
What, no one? Oh, right, sorry...
EVERYONE SURPRISED, RAISE YOUR HAND
Ahhhh, I see now... Hey, look over there, an early-morning all you can eat buffet restaurant!
Ahem. That taken care of, I move we lower the age of candidacy for all public offices to 18. Do I hear a second?
I'm looking at you, Kathleen Sebelius. The healthcare.gov fiasco is just one obvious symptom. The world depends utterly on science and technology, but is being guided by people who I will describe politely as "technically challenged."
We've seen the results recently, and they're not pretty. I think our democracy itself is going to have to go through a thorough upgrade to remain viable. IQ tests for politicians? No, it's not egalitarian. It's not the American way. It may, however, allow the country to survive in something like its present form over the next century.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
But if he's to make a judgement on the topic surely he must either learn about the subject first or recuse himself.
01/01/01
That they are not doing so tells me that they probably cannot do so.
An intelligence agency doesn't (necessarily) do policework. They may (or may not!) drop a tip to the FBI when they come across something big, but for the most part the NSA doesn't care in the least about "minor" crimes like ransomware or carding or murder. Until something reaches the level of impacting actual national security, the NSA merely observes.
Also, don't mistake the useless fucks in Washington for the geniuses (not used sarcastically) that get invited to apply to the NSA - The former may effectively cripple the latter in practical matters, but the latter by no means count as technologically illiterate.
That acronym annoys me to no end. Are we in the days of Western Union telegraphs that charge per letter? Would it kill you to type out the Supreme Court?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Their ability to scoop up such a trove of data on our use of the Internet seems really fearsome, but what is their actual ability to make use of the data? They could use their tools plus the US global enforcement powers to nail Internet frauds like the Cryptolocker ransomware, thereby redeeming the bad press they been getting since Snowdon. That they are not doing so tells me that they probably cannot do so.
Publicly they come across as all inept and easily baffled by the vast volumes of data they have. That's the cover I'd assume if I wanted to convince you not to be too worried.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Speaking from professional experience, the biggest obstacle to following industry best practices is unrealistic time-to-market demands imposed by people with MBAs. The tech people know they're creating boondoggles; they just don't have a choice.
Here at Dell there's so many people who don't have a clue. I know there is technical people in this city, but Dell is too stupid to hire them and a lot of the good ones left with the VSP.
It's not that it can't do useful things for everyone; it's that you have to balance that against things like time wasted. For the head of a major agency with private secretaries and aids at her call, checking and sending emails might not be the best use of her time.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
HA... ha.... wait... that's seriously not funny.
That would be even *worse* than what they're doing now. Not only have they used their reach to get data on everyone to keep us safe from "terrorism", but now they use it to catch fraudsters!
In cases where a Supreme Court justice is completely ignorant of a topic, they really should abstain.
I thought this was a commonly known fact.
Okay, the cybersecurity negotiator ignorance is bad, the rest less so.
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
- Donald Knuth
The role of Supreme Court Justice is also "to be on the bottom of things". It is possible to understand enough about email to make good judgements about it without using it on a daily basis. The justices have to make weekly about subjects which they have absolutely no interaction with in their normal day-to-day life. From technical to finance to agriculture, no one can possibly be an expert on all the issues they hear. It is their job to constantly learn enough about a subject to know what is important from a legal and constitutional point of view. If they are failing to do this, then that is a legitimate complaint. The fact that they weren't familiar with "common knowledge" technologies before encountering them in court, or haven't chosen to incorporate them into their life isn't.
janet.napolitano@dhs.gov
http://whichwayhome.net/contact-secretary.html
President@ucop.edu
http://www.ucop.edu/president/
The Right Wing will make up anything. Slashdot's going to become something like the old guy's who watch Fox News all day become.
is not always the one with the knowledge about the product but the one with the people skills to manipulate the situation to their and your advantage these people usually have a very knowledgable person beside them who has poor people skills due to their single subject focus
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Actually this is why you should be very concerned about the NSA. The people doing NSA surveillance know what they are doing. The oversight does not. That is the scary thing.
The blind being led by the stupid.
There's nothing really wrong with having stupid people around. Someone has to flip the burgers. The problem is when the stupid don't know their place. This is what happens, and I bet this is only a small peak at the enormity of the situation.
As it turns out, the US does still do some manufacturing. The make Ego's, and they are fearsome(drooling) beasts.
You know of an IQ Test that can measure corruptibility? I don't think the problem with our elected officials is generally a lack of intelligence; it's a lack of character and responsibility to their actual electorate, rather than the highest bidder.
It's not just government officials. This is rampant in the work world. The higher up the food chain you look, the more you have "leaders" who openly reject technology and cloak themselves in their ignorance. They literally joke about how little they know in regards to their basic tools. I'm confident most of us can name at least one "superior" who held critical decision making powers in an organization who would print off their emails to read them rather than reading them on the monitor. Why are these people not being publicly shamed? Why are they not being openly mocked and degraded because they "haven't gotten around to email"? Yes there's more to life than eating, breathing, and living tech. That being said, they should feel fucking ashamed that they refuse to learn the basic tools needed to function in the modern world. This doesn't just apply to computer technology. Ignorance of everyday tools is rampant in our society. People can't figure out to pull their car over on the highway because they have a flat tire. They can't be bothered to check the oil in their engine. Replacing a light bulb is a monumental task. Hell, people can't even boil water for noodles without screwing that up! Shame them.
If it is any consolation, the level of competence of political decisionmakers in Germany is about at the same level. The ballpen is the last technological inovation they use.
Kathleen Sebelius was put in a politically impossible position. There was zero possibility of the technology supporting the ACA ever working as originally specced. She should have recognized this instantly, but even if she did, what could she have done?
Quite a few of our politicians are lawyers who have passed the BAR. A few others are MDs, MBAs and most are college educated.
I'm sure most would score in the bright normal range and above. What 110+ on Wechsler?
It's not so much intelligence of our politicians, but their ignorance and the fact that the electorate can be manipulated so easily as to get them to vote for these folks.
Why did we get a comment containing a link to a blog post about a news article elsewhere on the internet?
I mean, holy crap, Slashdot, can't you even bother to give us a link to the actual article anymore? We have to go on a link-to-a-link goose chase?
You're not concerned that the government is blatantly violating people's freedoms and the constitution it's supposed to be bound by? Huh.
Thank you Dave Raggett
BAM!
Yeah, I'd rather have an honest idiot than the current crop of half-smart criminals.
Although a really really smart crook wouldn't be so bad; after all, Bill Clinton was far better than the Cheney Regime.
I don't think it's fair to say Kathleen Sebelius was technically challenged because the healthcare.gov website didn't work on time. Even if it were her fault, that the healthcare.gov launch went badly, it wouldn't be because of her technical skills, it would be because of her managerial skills.
Just because someone set up accounts that her aides use doesn't mean she ever uses email. Idiot.
No, the rich can, silly.
It may, however, allow the country to survive in something like its present form over the next century.
Given that IQ tests are pretty useless at measuring, well, anything... Not really.
Protip, kids: George Bush and Barack Obama and even that guy who wanted to turn the government into a pizza joint all have IQs higher than the average Slashdotter.
Kathleen Sebelius
What, she drafted the law that said the government would magick up a website in a few months from rainbows and moonbeams?
The law set hard deadlines for a technology project nobody had ever tried before and that was just one of the signs that it was drafted by someone who had no idea how technological projects work in (or out of) government. The results would have been equally horrifying if congress had passed "The Moon Shot Act of 1961" after JFK's speech with a deadline of colonizing the moon by October 1.
IQ tests for politicians? No, it's not egalitarian. It's not the American way.
I'll say! What does IQ have to do with whether the person will vote for or against abortion?! You have to focus on what's important here!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It's no wonder your friend was confused...your "storage/memory" dichotomy is absolutely stupid.
For non-tech's, they expect the names of things to indicate their function somehow, and that will be somewhat analogous to non-computing usages of those terms. This is normal behavior.
To make "storage/memory" as the words for "Hard-drive" & "RAM" guarantees confusion.
1. We already have logical terms that roughly distinguish the two functions: RAM and ROM...there is **NO NEED** to add another layer of abstraction. New computer users have to learn the concept, so learning two new words is the same as learning to associate two old words with new meanings.
2. "storage/memory" are too broad and both words have the same connotation. There is no logical reason a non-tech could know which was which without someone telling them. "RAM" & "ROM" also require this, but their ackronyms have different meanings which denote the difference in function.
3. Some of "storage" is used as "memory"...some times HD's have a portion that is used to supplement regular RAM
I know 'RAM' and 'ROM' arent' perfect but that's a false bar for me to meet. No terminology is perfect, but using RAM/ROM would end all confusion on this topic permanently.
Really, it would....non-tech's can learn the difference between "BAKE" and "BROIL" then they can learn this.
Your friend is actually thinking more logically than you!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Can't expect the head of HHS to be a competent manager. That would be judgmental and incompatible with eloi culture.
Just add more to the pile. We can be sure that there will be no skillful people in Congress. Ever.
This is the result of people outsourcing their thinking to others. This is what happens when you have politicians running the show.
Given that IQ tests are pretty useless at measuring, well, anything...
Yeah? Well, I once blew through a company's "intelligence" test with a decent score, then took some silly "personality" test, then ran out and got an MCSD... and a company hired me for about $150k for herping and derping for 3 years. Easy, and fun- best job I ever had before I couldn't stand it any more and left to go do real work.
As long as people and organizations with cash think that the tests measure something, I'm cool with it.
You need to shut the hell up before you blow it for everybody.
Like Fawn Hall in 1986? Ollie North's secretary, who printed out his emails so she could shred them?
Yet you had to spell out ISP in the summary? WTF?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The concept of email is simple: It's just really fast mail, except that the security sucks. For the post office to be as bad, it would have to copy each letter in each building and vehicle the letter entered and keep the copies poorly guarded for years. Seriously, a justice can quickly learn enough about email to judge sensibly. That doesn't mean they will, but it is simple enough to learn. The bigger issue is the excessive influence of money in all areas of government.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
Most people I know of my generation (born early sixties) were computer mad and spent their teens in their bedrooms programming away on Atari's, Apple IIs, BBC Bs and later C64s. Then the Nintendo generation happened and suddenly people knew squat about computers for a decade or so. It used to amuse me no end that I knew far more about competes and tech than people 10 to 15 years my junior who used to moan about how of course computers didn't exist when they were young. Now it's better but there's this blip where people just didn't do computers for a decade or so, except the nerds.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
No terminology is perfect, but using RAM/ROM would end all confusion on this topic permanently.
At the cost of introducing a different confusion. "How come I can write to read-only memory?"
right...it is theoretically possible to misunderstand....that's not a counterpoint.
**any** terminology can be misunderstood...that's not the test...the test is whether it is **intuitive** **logical** and most importantly **consistent**
Thank you Dave Raggett
Think about it, next time you wonder how on earth someone could come up with a law that is so far away from reality that it hurts. These people are the same the make laws concerning computers, the internet and everything connected to it. Most of the time taken verbatim from sources that have a rather intense interest in certain laws (aka "lobbying groups"), without even having the slightest idea what their laws will entail.
And this is why the whole crap is in the sorry state it is in today, with laws that are not executable, laws that make no sense, laws you cannot heed and laws that benefit a minority at the expense of everyone else.
And it's only half as dangerous as long as it's just domestic. It gets downright scary, though, when international laws get negotiated. Because one thing is certain: Whatever country can field the ones that can spell TCP/IP without too many accidents will be the one-eyed king amongst the blind.
Even though I'd fear that he'll just be the one eyed dummy that's being remote controlled by some corporate lawyer who DOES have an idea what he's doing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful
No, she knew how every email was scanned, so there was no way in hell she was going to use plain ol' email. She is just using the "I'm old so I don't use computer stuff" excuse to cover the real reason.
I would be concerned if it were effectively spying on us. If they really had the superpowers we fear, they could almost for free regain most of the public confidence they lost in the past year by nailing the Cryptolocker or Target perpetrators. And this would not be redoing routine police work, but attacking a problem that police, even if Nigeria had them, are clueless at solving.
"Internet service provider" is used to describe a provider of connectivity from an end user to the internet at large. "Internet service provider" is also used to describe a provider of a service accessible only over the internet. On more than one occasion I've seen it used one way where I was expecting the other way, i.e. I didn't know what the writer meant, and I had to find some other clarifying statement.
it is completely outrageous...the people who make the laws about a thing not knowing the essential function of how a thing works...that's the definition of legislative incompetence!
the problem is there is so much impoetence & misunderstanding about Tech that the relative measure for 'competent' is frighteningly low...
here's who to blame:
1. Politicians themselves. They're idiots if they don't try to understand what they're making laws about plain and simple. But it doesn't end there....if we're trying to diagnose this problem we have to look deeper. Any cursory look at **policy** will show that **Republicans** are by far and away the worst offenders. They wear technological & scientific ignorance like a badge of honor They're always against Net Neutrality.
2. Tech industry. Your Google's, M$, and even facebook.com's...they all throw money around to accomplish their *corporate* goals. They flood the conversation with PR & drown out any dissenting voices. They make anti-user moves, including monopolies, then lobby congress to avoid any anti-trust accountability. This all causes intense confusion in the literature!
3. Us...tech people. We do a shit job of explaining ourselves. We give new products idiotic and abstract names that alienate non-techs. We have a culture of **snobbishness** and **superiority** that leads us to be condescending & either *over-explain* or more often **over-simplify**
if you are a US citizen, you can make a difference in ***ALL THREE CATEGORIES*** starting today...stop voting for Republicans...stop giving shit stupid confusing names...and stop acting like knowing something that is confusing & only comes with trial and error makes you inherently superior!
tech is confusing...we helped make it this way...we can fix it!
Thank you Dave Raggett
At least the government official asked. It's better to look like a fool before the negotiation than after. And since acronyms can mean different things in different contexts, the example cited wasn't even as dumb as it might seem at first glace.
I think one of the major issues here is that voting has become a joke. "We" (and I mean the collective American people, not just myself and the others responsible for the next statement) vote for these idiots based on the fact that they have someone sending amusing tweets and know how to talk in circles about things. We definitely don't vote for them based on anything reasonable (like experience, previous ACTUAL accomplishments, etc). If we want that to stop, we need to stop voting for prom queens and vote for a leader.
But if they just brought them in they'd be tipping their hand to all the terrorists and pedophiles they're watching!
No, most likely what will happen is the people involved will go against all better judgement and have drugs mailed to their home address or (or maybe fake IDs. From Canada. Which mysteriously gets opened by the mailman just for the hell of it), and then everything can come out in the resulting raid. Don't worry when they say they never ordered drugs in their life, that's what they all say.
Have gnu, will travel.
CantBeArsedToLoginToSlashdotAnymore writes -
So, why is this a surprise? At least this official asked rather than BS'ing their way through which is often SOP these days when the standard of high-level negotiation seems to be at a dumbed-down all-time low.
High court judges, diplomats, senators et-al are not meant to know what they are are talking about - seriously, they're not. They can't, the brief is too wide to have enough specialist knowledge to make a decision and the old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is terrifyingly true. Far more tech cock-ups are caused by people who think they know what they are talking about than by those without a clue who get advice when needed (of course, where that advice comes from is another matter entirely).
No, when dealing with China, I'd much rather have someone negotiating who has a reasonable knowledge of history, who understands the opium wars, the boxer rebellion and the Xinhai revolution (I wonder how many slashdotters beating their chest here could tick those boxes) than someone who knows their technical TLAs.
Patent lawyers still think PI is a physical number...
I find this just a bit ironic, laughing at him for not knowing the terminology, while having literally no conception of what his job is or what it entails.
Should the guy know what an ISP is? Yeah, sure. Maybe he's not competent because he doesn't know. But do you have any conception of what else his job involves? Do you know who else might have been sent to do it? Do you know who else is on the team, buttressing his weaknesses? Do you have even the faintest conception of what it even means to "negotiate cybersecurity with China"?
Government is a job, like any other job, in that it involves some highly specialized and specific requirements that look like irrelevant trivia to people not doing it. You're all programmers here, and I'm sure you get irritated when somebody dismisses some vastly complex task as a "simple matter of programming". It seems a little rich to be so unaware that the same goes for everybody else's job, even a "government job". The overwhelming majority of what you hear about "the government" is frank BS. I'd feel a lot safer if the voters took a bit more effort to understand what the government actually does and why. Hearing the same kind of Fox News-level anti-government propaganda from this supposedly-smarter echo chamber does not fill me with confidence. /dons asbestos undies
Politicians, judges, and other people in power are rarely young. So it stands to reason that they're "behind the times", though it is outrageous that they don't educate themselves on the issues and technologies they're supposed to oversee and negotiate about.
The simple fact of the matter is politicians are idiots who don't understand anything beyond getting bought off by lobbyists, screwing the public, and spinning things so they get elected again. I firmly believe that less than 10% of the politicians in the world are actually intelligent people out to do the best for society as a whole; I believe the other 90% are power-tripping freakazoids who don't understand anything more than "I want to be the boss."
Most of them would take a role as dictator in a heartbeat if they were given the chance.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It sure was nice when Slashdot showed the user id with the post, too.
It's not THAT surprising. She is a lawyer and Law Schools tend to beat common sense out of people pretty much the way that firefighter training beats the survival instinct out of people. It's pretty common for a lawyer to insist that a plain English sentence which would not be misinterpreted by anyone (other than a lawyer) has multiple possible meanings. She asked to have a term defined... even though she probably heard it before and probably used it herself. But in an "official" conversation her lawyer training kicked in and she asked to have the term defined "exactly." Lawyers can be that way when they don't rise above their training to learn how to communicate effectively while remaining precise.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
first, you posted the wrong link...here's the proper link: http://www.networkworld.com/co...
2nd, You commit fatal false equivalence. These two things:
1. ALL REPUBLICANS in lockstep opposing ***any*** net neutrality policies
2. ONE legislator **writing a letter** that does nothing more than **ask** for **another agency** to consider regulating something
false equivalence all over...1 is way different than 2. 1 is a baseball bat to the head...the other is...
3rd, everyone who understands the issue agrees Net Neutrality is the right course....only corporations & their GOP sockpuppets oppose net neutrality. However, ***regulating Bitcoin is a debatable policy*** Many would want some kind of government resopnse. I'm not saying its a good idea, or that i agree with the letter.
1 is different than 2...your comparison is full of logical error, false equivalence, trolling, and willful ignorance
Thank you Dave Raggett
When members of congress go on record to say the Earth is 9000 years old, the US has already set the bar extremely low for scientific or technical competency...
Maybe we can just send them all to Antarctica until they learn better. All of them, from all over the world. All that bloviating will keep the windmills going even if it doesn't manage to thaw the icecap.
The article says, "And I’ve had similar experiences with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi." But all of the article's examples are of American officials.
I wonder if the author meant, "And I’ve had similar experiences with Americans who dealt with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi."
I'm less interested in whether or not SCOTUS judges know what net neutrality is than I am about whether or not they know the US Constitution and SCOTUS precedent.
Do you actually think that British politicians or German politicians or politicians anywhere else are any better?
Angela Merkel's ignorance of the Internet has become a running joke in Germany.
yeah, the thing you (attempted) to link to was **NOT WHAT YOU CLAIMED IT WAS**
it was a **false equivalence**
again...google searching to find a non-abusive law that a GOP'er co-sponsored does not, in any way, counter or disprove my point...for the same reason as above...
**false equivalence**
you're dead in the water...just accept that things are different than you thought & adapt...take pride of it...only if you refuse to change are you being prideful
Thank you Dave Raggett
Many companies are working on persistent memory, that will make things all that more confusing.
You seem to actually believe what you're saying & so you need to be shown why your whole line of thinking is going to **guarantee** you will be in error.
Productive discussion is not about hacking the other person's language in order to jam, edgewise, some possible universe where the language the other person **might** be taken in a way that would not make their point so strong
It seems you have bought into this in your personal internal dialogue when deciding for yourself how you feel about something.
Whether it is with me or in your own head, when one side makes a valid "point" it must be **weighted** and analyzed rationally with the other points. One point in favor of doing something **isnt the same as** the point 'against' just by the fact that they are next to each other.
You have to go beyond finding any possible nitpick & think about the concepts. You'll see that your counterpoints are, as I said, not the same just because it might be technically valid. They are ***NOT EQUIVALENT***
just b/c a stool has 3 legs doesn't mean it will be level...each leg must be the same length...in that way the points you structure your argument upon & the points you counter must be comparable
Otherwise...you commit the logical fallacy of: FALSE EQUIVALENCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Thank you Dave Raggett
From the Declaration of Independence "... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...."
The Founders did not establish a Democracy, and you will find nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, The US constitution or the Bill of Rights the word "democracy" as they were actually against it for they knew it leads to oligarchy, which we are much closer to today.
Those who might argue the the Declaration fo Independence is not law, they are correct. But what they may fail to understand is its more important and more powerful than law, as it is the spirit and intent of all valid and legitimate law in the US. And any law that violates this is not law any more than you can have a legal contract to murder someone. The job of a US judge is to deal with the exception of law that do not fit the spirit and intent of the founders as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
The founders in writing the Declaration of Independence fired all government personnel past present and future who violate the spirit and intent of the founders establishing this republic. Once informed of being fired any (people funded) government employee continuing in such position is committing and act of impersonating such an employee and stealing funds from the peoples funding of government.
Yes the government has been hijacked. And the Founders even gave real life examples written in the Declaration of Independence, that the spirit and intent of the founders would not be misconstrued.
The correction is simple, the taxpayers should be given voice where the individual taxes they pay they have say in how those taxes are to be used wile voting is a limited democratic supplement to the Republic in hiring who can best optimize the allocation budgeting of the people in generating team work benefits the people share in (the constraint of teamwork benefits is where taxpayers can chose). By chose the taxpayers can allocate all or some portion of their taxes to "decided by government - as a funding buffer" for which voters also influence the direction of such funding. The tax processors (who may be your neighbors) simple allocate funding as per taxpayers instructions.
Simple solution of putting control of the funding of government bank account in the hands of those it should be in, rather than the employees who have proven they cannot handle the bank account properly, and fail to budget while lying to the people in an illusion of being elected (approx 50% of the qualified voters did not vote this last election, making the "NO VOTE" the actual winner of the election. What ever government wants funding for they have to notify the taxpayers and request it.....meaning they have to be transparent!
The liars, cheats and warmongers who have hijacked the government do not like this solution. The Why should be obvious! These lazy have no real interest in the communication tools technology has provided for there scope of communication does not include the people, but just the few participating in the hijack. IOsolating oneself from the critical public for which you are supposed to work for is very telling of intent.
And how about the 24 billion lost from shutting the government down over it? Oh that gets a free pass, does it? The fiasco that cost 1/24th of that is the real problem.
We all know ISP standa for "Ikebukuro Shopping Park". (At least I figured this out after it appeared on my credit card statement a few times after shopping at the grocery store near Ikebukuro Station).
yeah b/c Democrats & Republicans are **exactly the same** on issues like:
net neutrality
abortion
science teaching in schools
foreign relations
civil rights
gay marriage
taxation
economic theory
affirmative action
criminal justice reform
privatization of government services
health care/"Obamacare"
prescription drugs & marijuana
**environmental issues**
I could go on and on...you're living in a fantasy that **allows you to sit on your ass and bitch** instead of **making the hard choices and working to improve**
all of the above issues have **policies** that Republicans & Democrats are at ANTIPATHY on
elections matter & you're an idiot to think otherwise
Thank you Dave Raggett
Come to think of it - I have not received an informative and useful mail for quite some time, besides this one about transfer of funds from prince of Nigeria but I am hesitating sttill....
I have counted 26 linked explanations what ISP means in this wiki article. I admit: big part of the list would be eliminated by context but not knowing what ISP means may be a sign of too many abbreviations being used and too few 3 letter combinations possible. It may be a sign of something else too....
Lately I have developed a habit of asking people what they mean by particular 'acronym' after I noticed that I often do not know what the conversation is really about and an old strategy of waiting for explanation that surely comes later is very often futile. I often encounter people that know as little as I do about what the particular 'acronym' actually means. After I started doing this at work, I noticed that there are quite some 'acronyms' that have no meaning whatsoever. To make an example not violating NDA - I take NDA which then is not Non Disclosure Agreement and not even Net Daemons Associates but Automatic Installation Procedure. I think there are people doing it on purpose... Damned terrorists!!!
You know of an IQ Test that can measure corruptibility?
Nope, but there is a test that works rather well. Have them run for office. If they can't raise the necessary funds they're probably incorruptible.
Again, they're still collecting our information. Are you not concerned by the constitutional and privacy violations?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Old People are resistant to change. News at 11.
I once had a computer science prof that refused to use email.
I do support for a number of different systems professionally, and I can tell you there are plenty of people that are very ignorant of technology, even though its basic usage is a big component of their job, and many are pretty flippant about "that computers stuff" etc... I mean nothing is funnier than belittling what I do right?
The techies are delivering. That's all the oversight cares about. Therefore the oversight DOES know what it is doing. It's getting data and it doesn't care how it gets it. That's RESULTS.
I believe the terms storage and memory are being confused.
Computer memory was defined as directly accessible by the CPU (MPU, whatever PU) and was generally, but not always, volatile. I.E. The address lines coming out if the processor were connected to the same chips as the data lines and good stuff happened.
Storage was defined as a place where data was stored ( duh;-). You had:
1. Primary storage a.k.a. memory; and
2. Secondary storage, a.k.a. hard disk. drum or tape, data in primary storage was copied via special hardware to/from a slower, generally less volatile, media that wasn't directly addressable by the CPU;
Stuff like SSDs, MMUs and caches of various flavours sort of muddy the deliniations a bit. It still works if you forget about what the thing is made of and think in terms of directly addressable and accessable. It explains why virtual memory systems look like "memory" but are actually secondary storage.
If you're negotiating the cyber security of a nation state and you don't know what ISP means then yes, it means you don't know what an Internet service Provider does, because that is a very basic acronym, used by the ISPs themselves. It means you're not even worth lobbying and it means you don't have the intellect or skill to recognize when the wool is being pulled over your eyes, for example, you would think charging for peering would be a good thing and you see no reason why packet inspection by an ISP is a bad thing. You are dead wrong in your opinion on this issue, and in a dangerous way. Requiring basic competency in the language you're speaking, whether it be English or tech isn't to be superior, it's because it's what's actually used on a daily basis.
Their trial courts were named "Supreme Courts" and their appellate courts, those that are normally Supreme in other states are call "Court of Appeals". It is an anachronism of history.
I don't mind these officials not knowing about technology as much as I am disturbed that they have no one on their team to ask about such things. If I were an official on any committee, I would like to have advisors who could answer questions or find the answers without having to step out of the people on my staff. Not having anyone like this shows a dangerous disinterest.
Yes, many politicians and government officials are idiots - and no politician has the local knowledge that individuals in their specific circumstances have when making decisions - so even the smart politicians cannot be smart about the specific decisions their policies will force. Because of exactly that, the guiding principle of public policy and government needs to be to maintain as light a footprint as possible in society, and foster non-government or local solutions to exist wherever possible.
It always boggles my mind how much of the techie crowd, especially developers, advocate for big government solutions to problems. The first principle of good programming is probably that top-down, monolithic designs are a bad idea, and yet that's exactly what Federal government 'solutions' to most problems are.
Kathleen Sebelius was put in a politically impossible position. There was zero possibility of the technology supporting the ACA ever working as originally specced. She should have recognized this instantly, but even if she did, what could she have done?
Quit.
I'm sure she's in a financial position where she didn't have to have the income, and if she had any integrity, she would walk. Further, when questioned by the press, she wouldn't give the 'spend more time with my family' canned response, she would be truthful.
She wasn't placed in a position. She sought out the position. As do all politicians.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think you're obfuscating the intent of this thread. The fact that a manager at her level possesses so little technical skills is a serious fault in her managerial skills. Considering the assets she controls, she should have had a team of ACA Website workflow 101 briefing her daily five times a week; enforcing a self-quiz weekly.
The fact that a manager at her level possesses so little technical skills is a serious fault in her managerial skills.
Does she posses fewer technical skills than we expect her to?! Is she supposed to be reviewing the source code to the website every night to make sure it's on track? No, she's supposed to hire experts that she can trust to perform these audits (i.e. managing).
And who knows, maybe she does lack technical skills. I have no idea. But whatever technical skills she lacks wouldn't matter if she was a good manager.
congressmen let industries write the laws that will regulate their industries? Maybe that's giving too much credit to congressmen to recognize and acknowledge their ignorance of many topics. Maybe they just do it that way because it fills their Cayman accounts with $.
And Oracle created my state's healthcare site and it completely failed also.
I get what you are saying, but I don't think the healthcare sites are a good example. Almost all large (very large) IT projects fail or go way over budget/time. The larger the IT project, the more likely it is to fail. That has been proven in history.
When you look at the top jobs in government or often, with appointed judges, (who have not shown great talent), these people assign critical tasks to subordinates to resolve or to provide a solution. They are the orchestra leader who cannot play an instrument, but their staff can.
Who goes to the contract signings? You know the answer! It is not the ones who did the work.
Actually the super rich and super powerful will have lots of flunkies to do things like carry their phone, make a call, take hard copy of e-mails etc. So they don't need to know about e-mail, ISPs and the like. OK