Several of you have been asking "could this program have prevented 9/11?". No, absolutely not. Did we all forget that after 9/11 all of the intelligence agencies dug into their records and found all kinds of warning signs and other indicators that 9/11 was going to happen?
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but the point is they had the intel necessary to predict and prevent this, but it was lost in the noise. What they need is not more electronic noise to sift through (and electronic wild goose chases to go on) but better human intelligence. Grepping through all of the worlds internet traffic and phone records is not nearly as useful as having a single agent embedded with a terrorist group or even paying a couple of informers in the "extremist Muslim" community.
One can reasonably argue that flooding the TLA agencies with this data will make their jobs harder and the overall counter terrorism situation worse. What it will accomplish however is pumping mullions of dollars into the private contractors, while allowing the intelligence agencies to justify raising their budgets and hiring more people to run this program. Which do you think is the real goal?
This is not about catching terrorists OR spying on Americans in an effort to turn us into a 1984 police state. It's about money, plain and simple.
However, a B.Sc. degree will still mean quite a bit.
I disagree, in 10 to 20 years a degree (or even lack of one) will be worthless as well. What will matter is what you did in those 10-20 years. The degree will get you in the door, but after that it is pretty worthless as well (at least in my experience in the industry).
I did the same thing around the time the colossal mess that was Fedora Core 3 was out. Most of the Linux users I know (which amounts to around 40 or so people I work with and know socially) have switched from Redhat to Ubuntu (or OSX) for desktops and laptops. And a lot of us have switched to Solaris 10/Express for servers. Naturally the Debian users I know still use Debian:)
Looking back, I should have left Redhat around 7.3, which was the last good and consistently stable RH release.
Sounds to me like he is trying to get Slackware 2 running on a 386 with one of those "CDROM connected to the sound card" setups that were so popular then.
Which is why Neverwinter Nights runs significantly better in Linux than under even a clean XP install on my PC. Curse them for not releasing NWN2 cross platform (of course, from what I have heard I am not missing anything)
Java came. Java went. It shall not be missed any more than Cadol II was.
Java moved to the server and Java developers still seem to be the most in demand by a significant majority (at least in the fortune 500 space I work in).
I agree, but that is the problem. Nobody has ever done large scale PKI right. Ever.
Revocation is STILL something that is generally broken in all of it's half assed attempts, and the scheme you mentioned had better have some second form of auth like password to decrypt the cert on the smart card or even a thumbprint scanner built into the card to activate the smartcard chip before it can be read. (I've seen it done, and it is possibly the only form of biometrics that seemed workable to me). Otherwise stealing the card is stealing your identity, and imagine the havoc someone could cause with that. Factor in the total trust the government (and everyone) will have in the card and ID theft will quickly become a "prove your innocence" type game that would be nearly impossible to win.
One problem is that to really do it right, it is going to be quite expensive. The national helpdesk costs ALONE just to deal with everyone breaking, locking themselves out, losing, etc. their card will be insane.
Did the city emergency response teams respond to this well? While it may not have been efficient, I think they responded as they should've. I think it was a very good test.
I think it was a horrible test. The "obvious bombs" were placed in their "strategic locations" for two weeks before anyone noticed and reported them. Obviously they were not real and the city overreacted (after learning they were not real) like frightened, clueless, bunny rabbits. But if they were real, I imagine they would have gone off in the two weeks they were there.
I'm beginning to think some people in the uber department and other groups are after more funding too. Lots of running about, looking busy and saying things along the lines of "what if it was real - we have to be ready" increases budgets and furthurs careers.
If it was real, they waited two weeks to do anything about them. I'm not impressed with their response.
Bombs or not, the city loses. They were not bombs, they were lite-brites. Kudos for the city in checking them out...however AFTER determining they were not bombs, they still announced publicly that there were several suspicious devices around the city, shut the city down, acted like they were in an episode of 24, and they are bringing obviously frivolously charges against the people Turner hired to do this. They KNOW it was not an attempted scare, it was a marketing campaign but they insist on treating it like they saved the day.
Read some of the Boston press. Unlike the rest of the world laughing at the frightened clueless rubes, they are congratulating themselves on the response and lecturing us all about how to live in a post 9/11 world.
But hey, these could have been bombs right? According to the Boston officials they looked exactly like bombs, were placed in strategic locations, and they feel justified in treating them as bombs... Well the "vigilant" city did not notice them for TWO WEEKS before panicking. If that is their version of a proper response to suspicious looking scary electronic devices in strategic locations, I'm not impressed.
We just told the terrorists two things: (1) you can probably do more moral and fiscal damage for your buck in Boston by leaving blinking circuit boards laying around and having the city shut down, or (2) If you do want to plant real bombs, we will take Boston's crack anti-terrorism unit around two weeks to notice them.
Because right now, you are the laughingstock of the US. Backwater hick towns in the south are laughing at what gullible rubes are you all are (I know, not everyone is, but you had widespread public panic when none of the other cities had a single incident over these signs). Not only were your people fooled and panicked by a light brite (which had been there for two weeks before anyone thought to call the bomb squad), but the police, city officials, up to the Mayor and prosecutors have all demonstrated a frightening lack of intelligence, reasoning, and common sense.
I know, in a post 9/11 world we cannot afford to depend on common sense and should rely on crippling fear and paranoia to get us through the day, but really. Even after learning their embarrassing mistake, the officials STILL continue to treat this like an episode of 24 and act like a terror threat had taken place. Heck, your news papers are playing along with the mass idiocy.
You would think after all the facts came out, the city would want this quietly brushed aside but it seems to be reveling in its paranoia and ignorance.
If a national ID card could be created that was truly impossible to counterfeit, that couldn't be used for identity theft, and that you could use for your driver's license, banking, passport, employment identification, and various other situations that require some other form of legal documentation (such as birth certificate, etc), I'd rather just have that than have to carry a dozen other things.
In a perfect world, yes. However in this world what will happen is that it will be counterfeitable (I think I made that word up), but everyone will believe it is not. So rather than do anything productive about identity theft, it will simply place the burden of proof on the victim.
"You have a government certified ID card which we are assured cannot be counterfeited, so your little claim about identity theft must be false, all those charges must have been by you, so pay up or go to jail."
That is the best case, the worst case is that something illegal is done in your name and you have no way of defending yourself, because a foolproof ID card was used. Believe me, the financial institutions would LOVE to be able to blame everyone else for identity theft and not have to eat the costs of it on their own. The government just wants people to think they are doing something productive about both identity theft and terrorism, but as usual this does absolutely nothing for either.
John Ashcroft used to be quite the defender of privacy as well. In Congress, he was one of the most outspoken critics of Clinton/Gore's Clipper Chip initiative on the grounds that it would give government way too much power to peer into the private lives of everyone. That was just lip service to oppose Clinton though, as he proved when he became AG under Bush.
I suspect this is the same thing, Hillery is just using this issue as a way to oppose Bush. I'm sure she doesn't REALLY believe it. Why would someone trying to get into power actively curtail that power?
Sorry but it is hard to follow politics and not be this cynical all the time.
Which probably means a major million dollar lawsuit in a civil court will be filed against some unsuspecting family with a linksys router running default settings. Aim the lawyers, prepare to devastate lives.
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Several of you have been asking "could this program have prevented 9/11?". No, absolutely not. Did we all forget that after 9/11 all of the intelligence agencies dug into their records and found all kinds of warning signs and other indicators that 9/11 was going to happen?
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but the point is they had the intel necessary to predict and prevent this, but it was lost in the noise. What they need is not more electronic noise to sift through (and electronic wild goose chases to go on) but better human intelligence. Grepping through all of the worlds internet traffic and phone records is not nearly as useful as having a single agent embedded with a terrorist group or even paying a couple of informers in the "extremist Muslim" community.
One can reasonably argue that flooding the TLA agencies with this data will make their jobs harder and the overall counter terrorism situation worse. What it will accomplish however is pumping mullions of dollars into the private contractors, while allowing the intelligence agencies to justify raising their budgets and hiring more people to run this program. Which do you think is the real goal?
This is not about catching terrorists OR spying on Americans in an effort to turn us into a 1984 police state. It's about money, plain and simple.
Finkployd
I'm putting my chances on a seedy looking K-Mart close by, but thanks for the tip.
Finkployd
Those will look really nice on the shelf next to the dozen or so PS3s I see in every store as I try to find a Wii :(
Finkployd
IBM and HP don't have UNIX systems anymore.
I have a lot of clients on AIX who will be shocked about that.
And before any of you start in on how AIX sucks, it has a logical volume manager that kicks the crap out of the toy that Linux has.
Finkployd
However, a B.Sc. degree will still mean quite a bit.
I disagree, in 10 to 20 years a degree (or even lack of one) will be worthless as well. What will matter is what you did in those 10-20 years. The degree will get you in the door, but after that it is pretty worthless as well (at least in my experience in the industry).
Finkployd
I've found two (both pretty good) options in PA. work for one of the many universities or telework for an out of state company.
I did option one for about 7 years, started option two last summer.
Finkployd
Eh pretty standard really. Same with downloading from IBM or Oracle. That is what gmail accounts are for.
Finkployd
I mean, since the overpriced, over hyped PS3 is doing such a bang up job against the Wii, why not scale back one of its best features?
Sony seems to have a strong need to shoot itself it the foot every chance it gets.
Finkployd
In the words of our glorious leader: "You forgot Poland"
Finkployd
I did the same thing around the time the colossal mess that was Fedora Core 3 was out. Most of the Linux users I know (which amounts to around 40 or so people I work with and know socially) have switched from Redhat to Ubuntu (or OSX) for desktops and laptops. And a lot of us have switched to Solaris 10/Express for servers. Naturally the Debian users I know still use Debian :)
Looking back, I should have left Redhat around 7.3, which was the last good and consistently stable RH release.
Finkployd
Sounds to me like he is trying to get Slackware 2 running on a 386 with one of those "CDROM connected to the sound card" setups that were so popular then.
Finkployd
Which is why Neverwinter Nights runs significantly better in Linux than under even a clean XP install on my PC. Curse them for not releasing NWN2 cross platform (of course, from what I have heard I am not missing anything)
Finkployd
Solaris 10 (06/06 release) gives you the option on install to either start all the usual services or SSH only.
Granted SSH only should be the default (and the only option imho), but it is a start.
The Service Management Facility at least provides a nice easy way to manage services (and is light years ahead of anything Linux has right now)
Finkployd
Java came. Java went. It shall not be missed any more than Cadol II was.
Java moved to the server and Java developers still seem to be the most in demand by a significant majority (at least in the fortune 500 space I work in).
Java != applets
Finkployd
Listen: This is a great idea if it is done right.
I agree, but that is the problem. Nobody has ever done large scale PKI right. Ever.
Revocation is STILL something that is generally broken in all of it's half assed attempts, and the scheme you mentioned had better have some second form of auth like password to decrypt the cert on the smart card or even a thumbprint scanner built into the card to activate the smartcard chip before it can be read. (I've seen it done, and it is possibly the only form of biometrics that seemed workable to me). Otherwise stealing the card is stealing your identity, and imagine the havoc someone could cause with that. Factor in the total trust the government (and everyone) will have in the card and ID theft will quickly become a "prove your innocence" type game that would be nearly impossible to win.
One problem is that to really do it right, it is going to be quite expensive. The national helpdesk costs ALONE just to deal with everyone breaking, locking themselves out, losing, etc. their card will be insane.
Finkployd
Did the city emergency response teams respond to this well? While it may not have been efficient, I think they responded as they should've. I think it was a very good test.
I think it was a horrible test. The "obvious bombs" were placed in their "strategic locations" for two weeks before anyone noticed and reported them. Obviously they were not real and the city overreacted (after learning they were not real) like frightened, clueless, bunny rabbits. But if they were real, I imagine they would have gone off in the two weeks they were there.
Finkployd
I'm beginning to think some people in the uber department and other groups are after more funding too. Lots of running about, looking busy and saying things along the lines of "what if it was real - we have to be ready" increases budgets and furthurs careers.
If it was real, they waited two weeks to do anything about them. I'm not impressed with their response.
Finkployd
Bombs or not, the city loses. They were not bombs, they were lite-brites. Kudos for the city in checking them out...however AFTER determining they were not bombs, they still announced publicly that there were several suspicious devices around the city, shut the city down, acted like they were in an episode of 24, and they are bringing obviously frivolously charges against the people Turner hired to do this. They KNOW it was not an attempted scare, it was a marketing campaign but they insist on treating it like they saved the day.
Read some of the Boston press. Unlike the rest of the world laughing at the frightened clueless rubes, they are congratulating themselves on the response and lecturing us all about how to live in a post 9/11 world.
But hey, these could have been bombs right? According to the Boston officials they looked exactly like bombs, were placed in strategic locations, and they feel justified in treating them as bombs... Well the "vigilant" city did not notice them for TWO WEEKS before panicking. If that is their version of a proper response to suspicious looking scary electronic devices in strategic locations, I'm not impressed.
We just told the terrorists two things: (1) you can probably do more moral and fiscal damage for your buck in Boston by leaving blinking circuit boards laying around and having the city shut down, or (2) If you do want to plant real bombs, we will take Boston's crack anti-terrorism unit around two weeks to notice them.
Either way, mission accomplished.
Finkployd
Because right now, you are the laughingstock of the US. Backwater hick towns in the south are laughing at what gullible rubes are you all are (I know, not everyone is, but you had widespread public panic when none of the other cities had a single incident over these signs). Not only were your people fooled and panicked by a light brite (which had been there for two weeks before anyone thought to call the bomb squad), but the police, city officials, up to the Mayor and prosecutors have all demonstrated a frightening lack of intelligence, reasoning, and common sense.
I know, in a post 9/11 world we cannot afford to depend on common sense and should rely on crippling fear and paranoia to get us through the day, but really. Even after learning their embarrassing mistake, the officials STILL continue to treat this like an episode of 24 and act like a terror threat had taken place. Heck, your news papers are playing along with the mass idiocy.
You would think after all the facts came out, the city would want this quietly brushed aside but it seems to be reveling in its paranoia and ignorance.
Finkployd
If a national ID card could be created that was truly impossible to counterfeit, that couldn't be used for identity theft, and that you could use for your driver's license, banking, passport, employment identification, and various other situations that require some other form of legal documentation (such as birth certificate, etc), I'd rather just have that than have to carry a dozen other things.
In a perfect world, yes. However in this world what will happen is that it will be counterfeitable (I think I made that word up), but everyone will believe it is not. So rather than do anything productive about identity theft, it will simply place the burden of proof on the victim.
"You have a government certified ID card which we are assured cannot be counterfeited, so your little claim about identity theft must be false, all those charges must have been by you, so pay up or go to jail."
That is the best case, the worst case is that something illegal is done in your name and you have no way of defending yourself, because a foolproof ID card was used. Believe me, the financial institutions would LOVE to be able to blame everyone else for identity theft and not have to eat the costs of it on their own. The government just wants people to think they are doing something productive about both identity theft and terrorism, but as usual this does absolutely nothing for either.
Finkployd
Maybe he has a family to think about and doesn't want to #$%@ up their future for a short term thrill?
I sure as heck would not pay 31k for a quick space flight, that is four years of college tuition right there.
Finkployd
John Ashcroft used to be quite the defender of privacy as well. In Congress, he was one of the most outspoken critics of Clinton/Gore's Clipper Chip initiative on the grounds that it would give government way too much power to peer into the private lives of everyone. That was just lip service to oppose Clinton though, as he proved when he became AG under Bush.
I suspect this is the same thing, Hillery is just using this issue as a way to oppose Bush. I'm sure she doesn't REALLY believe it. Why would someone trying to get into power actively curtail that power?
Sorry but it is hard to follow politics and not be this cynical all the time.
Finkployd
Most people do not change carriers, they will be with them for at least two years anyway so why not get a cheaper phone out of it.
Finkployd
Which probably means a major million dollar lawsuit in a civil court will be filed against some unsuspecting family with a linksys router running default settings. Aim the lawyers, prepare to devastate lives.
Finkployd
I don't want to live in a world where that Family Guy quote is an obligatory response to ANYTHING.
Finkployd