The service wasn't free of charge. Users paid $300 for lifetime support and purchased a product for real money with the understanding that the servers would remain in place to support the product. Oops sorry we changed our minds about those servers and nope not refunding any of your money.
On the other hand users didn't pay a cent for GMail.
You are referring to code produced by a government employee. This applies to products that the federal government pays a contractor to develop, the government is now supposed to include language in the contract stating the government owns the produced code and the code will be released into the public domain. You would be shocked about how much code the US Government has paid for but which the contractor claims to still own. Lots of code that runs our weapons systems is supposedly owned by the company that was paid to produce the code.
First world country here, the eastern plains of Colorado and trust me the DSL can be very spotty. Rarely have more than an hour or two of downtime a week but if that downtime is in the evening when I want to watch my movie on my 4k UHD, I will be very pissed.
Taxes should be seen as a way to fund needed government programs, and not as an instrument of social justice, as the two goals often pull in opposite directions.
Define needed government programs, because one person's needed program is the next person's waste.
We must pay for defense, defense spending is a waste and drag on the economy. We must pay for contraceptives, Planned Parenthood is an abomination.
ETC. ETC. ETC
What we really need to do is make sure that we raise enough money to pay for whatever we are doing. As a society we definitely can afford higher tax rates that we currently have. In the 50s and 60s our parents/grandparents had a much higher tax rate and built the Interstates, fought the cold war and funded the race to the moon. Today we are too cheap to raise the gas taxes to pay for the maintenance to those Interstates they built.
Gen-X my ass, Born in 1959 so I was 17 going on 18 when Star Wars was released and I ain't no Gen-Xer.
Saw it a dozen time in the old Orpheum Theater on State Street, Madison WI. Why the same theater? because in those the bid downtown theaters still had the pull to get exclusive showings for the blockbusters.
Both the local taxi companies and Uber/Lyft are special interests. If the fingerprinting requirement existed before Uber/Lyft entered the market then they need to abide by it. Just because "new" doesn't mean they get to play by a different set of rules.
The current workers won't take a 50% pay cut and we can't find qualified workers for what we are now offering so we need to fill the positions with H1-B visa holding workers.
They have restarted the tours but you need to register/schedule them way ahead of time. If you ask the guides they will usually try to show you most of the neat/unclassified stuff.
All my stomping around has been unguided and on my own and yeah the military can be really weird on what the consider classified.
Perhaps the coolest place of all that the Air Force sent me was Kwajalein atoll and was lucky enough to hook up with some guys that wanted to explore. As a firefighter way back then I got lots of time off to explore.
Fun fact about Cheyenne Mountain is I can prove the military has a sense of humor. There is a broom closet under one of the stairs labeled SG-1 for the entrance to StarGate and also one of the old mainframes had an official sign on it saying "WOPR".
Nearby are an old radar site in Caswell Me., a Nike sit in Limestone, and the old WSA area on the Air Base in Limestone.
Lots of old missile sites in ND near the site I sent you. Google Earth has an overlay that details a lot of them.
I've seen a lot of Cold War infrastructure working for today's Global Strike and Space Commands. Cheyenne Mountain fascinates me every time I go into it. Also a bunch of the space tracking sites that were put up in the '60's. Nothing like Uncle Sam paying for you to travel to those old sites.
On the WWII sites, if you ever get a chance to get to the Mariana Islands take it, from Guam to Saipan to Tinian. Soooo much accessible WWII history.
Yep completely misread, my apologies. I like to visit the old POW sites when I can, I first learned of them when the Air Force stationed me in Aroostook County, Maine. Cold War buff too. If you like cold ware history you should visit the old Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in North Dakota. http://www.srmsc.org/
Good Points, it seems some of the Gitmo mess goes back to designating the Gitmo prisoners as "unlawful combatants" to get around the Geneva Convention. Gee who would have thought inventing a new category of combatant would have cause unforeseen legal issues.
Chill, I just pointed that we have previously housed POWs within the borders of the United States without having constitutional issues. I did not imply that the camps were secret or anything, but many of the younger Slashdot readers may not have been aware of them.
The Middle East has been a mess since long before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, granted that didn't help but is wasn't the start by any means. See the Crusades.
German and Japanese POWs that were housed on American soil, I know of camps that were in Maine and Kansas, were not extended rights under the Constitution. If the Gitmo prisoners are POWs why would they be extended rights not extended to the WW2 POWs?
$220M per drone is not the fly-away cost that is the total cost of the project including R&D and ground equipment divided by the number of Global Hawk drones produced. Yes a real number of dollars spent but much of the R&D cost is applicable to follow on systems. Produce more Global Hawks and that $220M per Drone figure actually goes down. Not advocating for more Global Hawks but the fly-away cost is probably closer to $30M per drone.
The same cost calculation inflate the cost of a B-2 because when we originally anticipated the R&D spread over 100 planes it looked reasonable but when you reduce the buy to 16 planes you raise the per plane R&D cost by a factor of 6.5.
Oh and how many 747s have been produced to spread R&D costs over?
Umm, not illegal for a general citizen of the United States to obtain and possibly publish classified information, you might get a VISIT after the fact of publishing it asking you not to publish again and to withdraw the publication but not illegal unless you have signed a non-disclosure agreement when receiving a security clearance or you used illegal means to obtain the information. Settled pretty well during the '70s Pentagon Papers incident.
Cable work is often times contracted out. One contractor makes a bid including the time to remove the old cabling even though it isn't specced, another contractor leaves the work to remove the cabling out because it isn't specced. The lower bid is accepted and funded.
The customer then asks the winning contractor why didn't remove the cables, Response "Not in the requirements". Customer then goes back for additional funding which is denied and the old cabling never gets removed. Seen it happen many times when mainframe facilities were re-purposed with racks for X86 servers.
They used to but it is cheaper and probably more robust to rely on the Internet for communications paths. Not necessarily better but definitely cheaper.
Rate payers don't want to pay for it, but they sure do want to bitch about the overhead lines when the power goes out. It comes down to penny wise-->pound foolish.
The microwave comms are encrypted. You can intercept them if you like, but they are point to point and this can be detected. It isnt very easy to detect a tapped cable. In fact that is why agencies choose to tap cables.
The fiber cable comms are encrypted too and how to you detect that microwave transmissions are intercepted?
If your cables are in PDS it is very, very easy to determine that someone has penetrated the PDS and is possibly tapping your cable, also tapping if not done perfectly can result in signal degradation.
Slashdot Mirror
The service wasn't free of charge. Users paid $300 for lifetime support and purchased a product for real money with the understanding that the servers would remain in place to support the product. Oops sorry we changed our minds about those servers and nope not refunding any of your money.
On the other hand users didn't pay a cent for GMail.
See the difference?
You are referring to code produced by a government employee. This applies to products that the federal government pays a contractor to develop, the government is now supposed to include language in the contract stating the government owns the produced code and the code will be released into the public domain. You would be shocked about how much code the US Government has paid for but which the contractor claims to still own. Lots of code that runs our weapons systems is supposedly owned by the company that was paid to produce the code.
What do you mean I need a terminator, the cable just plugged right in?
First world country here, the eastern plains of Colorado and trust me the DSL can be very spotty. Rarely have more than an hour or two of downtime a week but if that downtime is in the evening when I want to watch my movie on my 4k UHD, I will be very pissed.
Taxes should be seen as a way to fund needed government programs, and not as an instrument of social justice, as the two goals often pull in opposite directions.
Define needed government programs, because one person's needed program is the next person's waste.
We must pay for defense, defense spending is a waste and drag on the economy.
We must pay for contraceptives, Planned Parenthood is an abomination.
ETC. ETC. ETC
What we really need to do is make sure that we raise enough money to pay for whatever we are doing. As a society we definitely can afford higher tax rates that we currently have. In the 50s and 60s our parents/grandparents had a much higher tax rate and built the Interstates, fought the cold war and funded the race to the moon. Today we are too cheap to raise the gas taxes to pay for the maintenance to those Interstates they built.
Gen-X my ass, Born in 1959 so I was 17 going on 18 when Star Wars was released and I ain't no Gen-Xer.
Saw it a dozen time in the old Orpheum Theater on State Street, Madison WI. Why the same theater? because in those the bid downtown theaters still had the pull to get exclusive showings for the blockbusters.
The link takes me to EarthSky.org so either Slashdot editors changed the link or you are full of shit.
Occam's Razor says Slashdot editors don't edit so well you can see what's left
Both the local taxi companies and Uber/Lyft are special interests. If the fingerprinting requirement existed before Uber/Lyft entered the market then they need to abide by it. Just because "new" doesn't mean they get to play by a different set of rules.
The current workers won't take a 50% pay cut and we can't find qualified workers for what we are now offering so we need to fill the positions with H1-B visa holding workers.
Welcome to Slashdot.
DataPoint 2200 and the Intel 4004?
They have restarted the tours but you need to register/schedule them way ahead of time. If you ask the guides they will usually try to show you most of the neat/unclassified stuff.
All my stomping around has been unguided and on my own and yeah the military can be really weird on what the consider classified.
Perhaps the coolest place of all that the Air Force sent me was Kwajalein atoll and was lucky enough to hook up with some guys that wanted to explore. As a firefighter way back then I got lots of time off to explore.
Fun fact about Cheyenne Mountain is I can prove the military has a sense of humor. There is a broom closet under one of the stairs labeled SG-1 for the entrance to StarGate and also one of the old mainframes had an official sign on it saying "WOPR".
Yep Loring AFB 84-Closure in 94.
Nearby are an old radar site in Caswell Me., a Nike sit in Limestone, and the old WSA area on the Air Base in Limestone.
Lots of old missile sites in ND near the site I sent you. Google Earth has an overlay that details a lot of them.
I've seen a lot of Cold War infrastructure working for today's Global Strike and Space Commands. Cheyenne Mountain fascinates me every time I go into it. Also a bunch of the space tracking sites that were put up in the '60's. Nothing like Uncle Sam paying for you to travel to those old sites.
On the WWII sites, if you ever get a chance to get to the Mariana Islands take it, from Guam to Saipan to Tinian. Soooo much accessible WWII history.
Yep completely misread, my apologies.
I like to visit the old POW sites when I can, I first learned of them when the Air Force stationed me in Aroostook County, Maine. Cold War buff too. If you like cold ware history you should visit the old Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in North Dakota. http://www.srmsc.org/
Good Points, it seems some of the Gitmo mess goes back to designating the Gitmo prisoners as "unlawful combatants" to get around the Geneva Convention. Gee who would have thought inventing a new category of combatant would have cause unforeseen legal issues.
Chill, I just pointed that we have previously housed POWs within the borders of the United States without having constitutional issues. I did not imply that the camps were secret or anything, but many of the younger Slashdot readers may not have been aware of them.
The Middle East has been a mess since long before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, granted that didn't help but is wasn't the start by any means. See the Crusades.
German and Japanese POWs that were housed on American soil, I know of camps that were in Maine and Kansas, were not extended rights under the Constitution. If the Gitmo prisoners are POWs why would they be extended rights not extended to the WW2 POWs?
$220M per drone is not the fly-away cost that is the total cost of the project including R&D and ground equipment divided by the number of Global Hawk drones produced. Yes a real number of dollars spent but much of the R&D cost is applicable to follow on systems. Produce more Global Hawks and that $220M per Drone figure actually goes down. Not advocating for more Global Hawks but the fly-away cost is probably closer to $30M per drone.
The same cost calculation inflate the cost of a B-2 because when we originally anticipated the R&D spread over 100 planes it looked reasonable but when you reduce the buy to 16 planes you raise the per plane R&D cost by a factor of 6.5.
Oh and how many 747s have been produced to spread R&D costs over?
Umm, not illegal for a general citizen of the United States to obtain and possibly publish classified information, you might get a VISIT after the fact of publishing it asking you not to publish again and to withdraw the publication but not illegal unless you have signed a non-disclosure agreement when receiving a security clearance or you used illegal means to obtain the information. Settled pretty well during the '70s Pentagon Papers incident.
Cable work is often times contracted out. One contractor makes a bid including the time to remove the old cabling even though it isn't specced, another contractor leaves the work to remove the cabling out because it isn't specced. The lower bid is accepted and funded.
The customer then asks the winning contractor why didn't remove the cables, Response "Not in the requirements". Customer then goes back for additional funding which is denied and the old cabling never gets removed. Seen it happen many times when mainframe facilities were re-purposed with racks for X86 servers.
And the likelihood of that happening is like 1:1,000,000,000. Let's get real. This is more useful for catching terrorists.
Let 'em look. I have nothing to hide.
Says the Anonymous Coward, what are you hiding?
They used to but it is cheaper and probably more robust to rely on the Internet for communications paths. Not necessarily better but definitely cheaper.
Rate payers don't want to pay for it, but they sure do want to bitch about the overhead lines when the power goes out. It comes down to penny wise-->pound foolish.
The microwave comms are encrypted. You can intercept them if you like, but they are point to point and this can be detected. It isnt very easy to detect a tapped cable. In fact that is why agencies choose to tap cables.
The fiber cable comms are encrypted too and how to you detect that microwave transmissions are intercepted?
If your cables are in PDS it is very, very easy to determine that someone has penetrated the PDS and is possibly tapping your cable, also tapping if not done perfectly can result in signal degradation.