A big problem with cloud computing at NASA is likely to be in the security of the virtual hosts deployed from the cloud. The science projects using these hosts are likely to downplay security issues, and to fail to comply with NASA security policies related to risk assessments and security controls based on system criticality. With cloud-based "Infrastructure As A Service" virtualization multiplying the number of entities needing to be managed/secured by reducing the costs of individual servers, it will likely proliferate the fundamental disconnect between policy and practice that exists at NASA today, unless significant management attention is placed on the problem.
I see this exacerbation of IT security issues as one of the most critical problems facing "cloud computing." I attended a talk by a VMware engineer who mentioned some things that VMware was doing to try and provide security services from the hypervisor for the VMs without the installation of individual agents on each VM, but I'm leery of this solution.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I would like to see another evolution of VM technology to a single O/S entity distributed across a cluster of hardware servers, with an industrial-strength O/S that goes back to the old mainframe-that-runs-many-applications model. Many applications, running under one secured O/S entity, with the O/S entity distributed across multiple hardware servers (with a uniform hardware environment provided by the VM abstraction layer) offers real benefits.
IT service delivery has seen an interesting history (from my perspective). At first was the mainframe. There was only one in most companies. It ran lots of applications. It had its dedicated staff to feed and care for it. It cost a fortune.
Then came the minicomputer. It too ran many applications. It had a semi-dedicated staff to feed and care for it. But there were many of them in an organization, because they cost a lot less money.
Then came PCs - they were often dedicated to a single application (at first) because of their limited computational processing power. But there were many of them, and they multiplied. Unfortunately, users had to take on a lot more management tasks, and many management tasks were left undone (backups, security...) But they were dirt cheap, and so they proliferated. So did management and security issues.
As PCs as became powerful servers they developed enough computational power to run multiple applications, but the operating systems they ran weren't trusted - if one app failed, often it crashed the server and took down the other applications running on the same server. So the "one application per server" model continued. Servers were cheap, so they multiplied. So did management and security issues. Eventually the power and cooling budgets for these servers were seen to be the hideous problem they are.
Now, the initial application of server virtualization has been to make better use of computational power going to waste from the "one application per server" model. Using VM technology, you can still have "one application per (virtual) server" but have multiple virtual servers running on one piece of hardware. This reduces your hardware (and power, and cooling) expenses, but doesn't do anything about your management issues operating hundreds of servers (virtual or not). Software licensing may also be a concern, especially for patching or security agents that still must be installed on every host, virtual or not.
Cloud computing (in its "infrastructure as a service" incarnation) appears to be a combination of the first approach to the use of VM technology with the idea that the "boiler room" IT staff can provide the infrastructure, while the business folks deploy the servers whenever/however they want. This appears to ignore the problems managing and security the individual servers, and in fact intensifies these problems by greatly increasing the number of managed/security entities.
It would be really nice if we could get back to the model where many applications run under a single managed O/S entity. To help maintain availability, however, that single O/S entity should be distributed across a cluster of hardware servers. Computing clusters have been around a while (VAXclusters were big in the late 1980s, for example) but they weren't then and aren't now deployed using a single O/S on multiple hardware platforms model. However, that is the model that VM hypervisors are approaching - they can automatically move VMs between hardware servers for load balancing and failure recovery purposes. How about moving this capability up a level so that the single O/S is automatically distributed across all of the hardware servers in the cluster? This, combined with operating system technology that guarantees one application crashing doesn't take out the whole O/S, might solve a lot of problems. It probably won't be sought out by the business organizations, but it could be a game-changer when implemented by professional IT staffs.
The "cloud" icon on a network diagram is often used to represent a portion of a network the details of which are not considered important for the purpose of the diagram. Whether or not that is because the person who drew the diagram didn't understand them is a separate issue. Perhaps the diagrammer didn't think his/her audience would understand them.
The "cloud" used in "cloud computing" seems to be used in two different ways. The first (less interesting) way is to describe IT services provided by a third-party, usually as a service, like an "application as a service" model. Gmail is a good example of this. The second (less abstract) way is to refer to an IT infrastructure including compute, communications, and storage resources that uses virtual machine technology to deliver "virtual servers" on demand either within an organization or to external customers - call this "infrastructure as a service."
The second definition of "cloud computing" appears to be a big meme in certain government agencies. One place it appears to flourish is in science-oriented agencies where the scientists are convinced that they are better suited to run IT infrastructures than IT professionals (this is often a problem with scientists). The scientists salivate at the thought of reducing the official IT department to operating the cloud infrastructure (a boring, thankless task) while they, the scientists, cause all kinds of useful applications to blossom from the countless numbers of servers they can conjure up (virtually) now that they don't have to worry about real-world issues like hardware inventories, software patching, and security.
I suspect that "cloud computing" of the second variety is attractive to a variety of organizations beyond science-oriented government agencies for the same reasons. Just like the idea of freeing computing from the tyranny of the corporate IT department was fueled by the minicomputer and workstations in the 1980s, and then by the PC in the late 1980s and through the 1990s to today, it is being fueled by "cloud computing" dreams in the 2010s...
If you can find a way to deliver cloud computing (infrastructure as a service) that doesn't scale IT security issues linearly with the number of virtual machines that are built in the cloud, you may have a promising future.
This argument confused who needs to prove what. It is impossible to prove that the object isn't a cell phone, assuming that you need to prove it to people who seem quite willing to accept what science and physics so far tells us is impossible. However, no one needs to prove that it isn't a cell phone. In order to make an argument that time travel has occurred, it is necessary to show that the object *is* a cell phone, or at least some sort of mobile communications device, and that there is no more likely explanation for it than that. Since there have been a number of fairly credible alternative explanations given already, it is necessary for those who want to pursue the time travel option to show that those explanations are in fact less likely than the idea that it is a "cell phone." So far no one seems to have done that. Coming up with more and more far-fetched explanations of how it could still possibly be a cell phone is just, well, silly. Sounds like something out of Monty Python, in fact.
The argument advanced above seems to assume the existence of that which is supposed to be proven. It is not known that a time machine has been invented - it is being suggested that a time machine must have been invented in order to explain the appearance of someone apparently talking on a cell phone in a 1928 recording, when cell phones were not known to exist. To use the idea that if the time machine exists it would be easy to have a communicator that would work across time/space (remember that the earth, solar system, and even the galaxy are in constant motion and are now far removed from where they were at the moment of that recording in 1928) is assuming the likely impossible to prove the highly improbable, and making a circular argument. The presence of the "cell phone" is being used to claim support for the theory that there is a time machine, not the other way around. The fact that the concept that the person is talking on a cell phone is extremely unlikely makes it virtually useless as any kind of argument in favor of a time machine which is even more unlikely.
A cellular telephone system is termed cellular (i.e., being made up of cells) because it is designed to have small mobile radio transceivers that operate over a limited range, combined with a large number of small transmission/reception zones called "cells." If a "cell phone" is being used, it would require "cells," which would mean a large number of radio transceiver installations complete with antennas of some sort plus a backhaul capability to link all of the cells together (the backhaul may itself be wired or wireless).
So its a bit pedantic, but valid to question the use of the term "cell phone" when the cellular infrastructure is highly unlikely to be present. Unless, of course, it is being suggested that in addition to this "time traveler," a complete cellular telephone network has been transported into the past and hidden amongst the natives of that time.
The principle of Occam's Razor needs to be applied here... the folks that are pointing out that it can't be a cell phone without cell equipment are indirectly pointing out that the assumption that its a cell phone (or even another micro-miniature mobile communications device, possibly using direct satellite reception etc.), while perfectly reasonable and fairly parsimonious for our time, is extremely unlikely for that time as it requires the postulation of ever more complicated scenarios in order to make it work.
The idea that its either a person shielding their face from the novelty of being recorded or someone using a handheld hearing aid requires far less in the way of assumptions and what have become all-out flights of fancy. Occam's Razor is just a guiding principle and not a strict scientific law, but extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof, and such proof just isn't here.
The security at Hoover Dam was reasonable the last time I was there (a couple of years after 9/11/2001). I had my Leatherman Supertool on my belt when I arrived at the security screening across the dam from the parking lot where I had left my car. When I saw the magnetometers I sighed, because I didn't want to have to make the round trip to my car to stow my "dangerous item." So I showed it to the guard and he compared the length of the longest blade against a measuring stick. Since the blade was of legal length he gave it back to me and passed me on through the checkpoint.
Compare this to most of the federal buildings in Washington DC where even a tiny Craftsman keychain pen knife gets you denied access despite the fact that a sharpened pencil would be more dangerous. (In the example I saw, the individual holding the tiny personal grooming pen knife was a vetted IT contractor working for the agency whose building he was trying to enter. He asked the guard if the guard was letting the folks through with sharpened pencils. The guard was not amused.)
I agree that so far technology does not appear to be a huge differentiator in 5th grade education. My wife and I are technology professionals (I do networking, she does financial business systems) . We have a daughter in 5th grade and a son in 3rd grade at the same elementary school. The school system has a basic computer skills program (they learn to type and do basic computer interaction as a once-per-week lab).
A few years back (when my daughter was in 5th grade) the principal at the school got the PTA fired up to put in smart white boards (which the school system was stiff evaluating). They raised a lot of money over the next two years and put a white board in every classroom. At one of the PTA meetings my wife asked how they were going to manage technology refreshment for the boards and for the laptop computers that they were using to run the boards - she was told that was all taken care of...
We have observed the use of the boards now for several years across multiple teachers with both of our kids. They have been able to do some "cool" things with them, but no ground-breaking educational capability appears to have emerged. More troubling is the fact that the boards and the computers that power the boards have begun to have some problems and aren't being repaired quickly. Now that the boards have been around for a while, they aren't being used quite as much in some classes.
Its troubling to think of the $$$ that this kind of technology costs compared to buying text books and other educational aids, and its very hard to see the educational value. It has a high gee-whiz factor, but less of an educational benefit as far as we can see.
By post-war, I assume you mean the American "War for Independence," or perhaps the American "War of 1812." I think the failed innovations start at least as early as Babbage's Difference Engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
How does the fire department determine how many trucks to buy, personnel to hire, etc. if it doesn't know what its subscriber base is? In a government jurisdiction where the fire service is paid for by taxes, you can determine how to size the service by the number of households and other factors.
If no one had to pay for any fire protective services unless they actually used them, no one would pay for any protective services. Where would the up-front capital come from to purchase the equipment and hire the staff? What if a whole year went by without any fires because everyone was being careful? How would the staff be paid? How would the equipment be maintained? How would training be funded?
The homeowner is even more cruel; he not only failed to provide a safe environment for the pets, the fire was caused from carelessness, not as an "act of god."
Those who might be in church listening to such a sermon fervently believe that if you fail to ask the Son of God to save you, that you won't be saved. You will burn in hell for eternity. Just because you didn't ask to be saved.
How such a belief is reconciled with the message you quote above is an exercise for the reader.
When you think about it in that light, its no wonder that the people in that area don't see a problem with a house burning to the ground because the homeowner specifically chose not to pay his $75/year for fire protection services.
No lawyer will take it, because there isn't any basis for a case. I can understand why people who have never lived in an area without certain governmental services can be surprised by them being optional, but in the area where this happened, it is well known that if you don't pay for the fire service, you don't have the fire service. I lived in an area like this (in Tennessee). It wasn't a mysterious circumstance, it wasn't a surprise to him or anyone else. He had a choice to make, and he chose poorly.
Its not a volunteer fire department. It was a fire department from a different governmental jurisdiction. The guy chose to live in a jurisdiction that had chosen not to have a government-funded fire department. He had the ability to purchase (for $75/year) fire coverage from the other jurisdiction. He chose not to. He can't sue anyone for negligence. The only person who was negligent was him. Extremely negligent. There are some parts of the country/world where you could easily die by being as negligent as this guy was. Lucky for him, he doesn't live in one of those areas.
In these areas, it is extremely well-known that you don't have fire coverage if you don't pay for it. I'm not sure how he was able to get homeowner's insurance without showing that he had paid for the fire coverage.
I lived in Tennessee a few years ago; owned a house. It was clear that I wasn't covered for fire protection unless I subscribed to a service (Rural Metro, in my case). I subscribed. Its not rocket science. I liked the way that it worked.
I heard about a homeowner who had not subscribed having their house burn down; the fire company didn't put it out. One reason given was that the fire company's insurance would not cover them if they were putting out a fire at a house that was not a subscriber.
Its simple, really. You can live in a government-provided fire service area, and pay higher taxes. Or you can live in a lower service area, and decide which services you want, and pay for them.
Using the word "Cyber" in conjunction with "Security" for what used to be called "information security" or "information assurance" is currently all the rage in the government circles around Washington, DC. One company I know even dropped the word "Security" when talking about "information security." They just refer to it as "Cyber", as in "we have a new Cyber center" and "our Cyber organization now reports directly to the CEO." They appear to be on the way to transitioning the adjective to a noun, and doing so poorly.
We don't have 10% unemployment in the general area in which the Cyber Command draws its staff. I live and work in the area. For example, I posted two advertisements for sys admins several months ago; one focused on LAMP/PHP skills, the other ColdFusion skills. In 4 weeks I received about 7 preliminary applications TOTAL, none of them qualified.
Clearances are required, and in this area finding qualified, cleared personnel is difficult. This has driven salaries up to crazy levels. The government has shot itself in the foot by having too many positions requiring cleared personnel (when its not really necessary) and by not having qualified gov't. people overseeing the contractors. The contractors are able to "qualify" staff at levels that exceeds their real capabilities, which they are happy to do because they gov't. pays the contractor based on the staff members' salaries plus overhead. The economic incentive is not there for the contractors to keep salaries low.
For example, one multi-contractor project I worked on had one contractor poaching personnel from the other by offering them 20% to 50% raises. The folks stayed working on the same project, got a huge jump in salary, and the government just paid the extra freight. My company (a larger defense contractor in business a while) tried to discuss the relative insanity of this with the government customer, but the gov't. either couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it.
As for the idea of keeping the government "honest" with respect to the US Constitution: if you were hired at "Cyber Command", you would not be in a position to oversee operations and make sure the staff are obeying the constitution... you would have the choice of doing your job or resigning if you saw something you didn't like. The environment is murky enough that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to prove anything without a serious risk of losing their clearance (which would end the high salary gravy train) and possibly going to jail (for violating the terms of their clearance).
I thought one had to be traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light before relativistic effects were noticeable. Perhaps this effect is something not predicted by either the special or the general theories of relativity?
Perhaps the journalist in question should be submitted to intense acceleration in order to correct his/her frame of reference?
I suspect different states have different laws. I sold a house in Tennessee after I had relocated to California. I never saw the buyer and certainly didn't attend the closing. I think I might have assigned a power of attorney over to the real estate agent, but it was long ago so I don't really remember whether I did or not.
I seem to remember a scam in Canada regarding selling real estate that sounded the same as this Australian deal. Apparently legal structures are different, and with different outcomes; I believe that in the US a fraudulent property sale conducted without the knowledge of the real owner would result in the buyer having lost their money, not the real owner losing the property. That *seems* the more correct way to go, as the real owner wouldn't even know anything was happening, whereas the buyer would be engaged in a transaction for which they should get surety of the seller's ownership before forking over the money. At a minimum, its a good reason to make sure that the title insurance on the deal covers you the buyer in addition to the bank for the mortgage. I have always spent the extra $$ to make sure that the title insurance covered me as well as the bank.
Whether or not your local school milking more and more money from the federal government is good is an open question, is it not? Your assumption that the incessant tracking is good is based on the idea the the feeding at the federal trough is good.
Then again, perhaps your final statement is meant sarcastically?
I did send my 5 year old to school with money for milk or lunch, and I still send my 8 year old and 10 year old to school with real $$. The school's "debit card" program has both short-term and long-term negative effects.
Short term, the kids don't learn about handling money. This became evident when the curriculum got around to adding up dollars and change. My kids had no problem; most of the class struggled. (Oddly enough, the school apparently didn't see their own involvement in this debacle.)
Long term, the kids get trained into using plastic for every transaction... When they get older, they will use debit cards and credit cards to run transactions through the financial services processing machine where a) banks make money on every transaction, driving up costs for everyone, and b) everything can be logged and tracked for ?? purposes.
Just because technology is available and will make some small problems go away (the cafeteria workers like the debit cards because it speeds the lunch lines, kids can't lose their money) doesn't mean it should be used when there are longer term negative effects (little understanding of money, no hard-learned consequences from losing money). A few cheese sandwiches (all the cafeteria will provide kids who lose their lunch money) and my kids got a lot better at hanging on to their money.
Perhaps you could free yourself from the tyranny of data by just deleting the e-mail? You can keep a year or two around in your favorite e-mail tool, and just let the rest go... the alternative appears to be creating the digital equivalent of the old people living in houses filled with junk that they never do anything with.
Slashdot Mirror
"regular" people love the idea, too - Gmail, anyone? Google Calendar? Google Contacts?
A big problem with cloud computing at NASA is likely to be in the security of the virtual hosts deployed from the cloud. The science projects using these hosts are likely to downplay security issues, and to fail to comply with NASA security policies related to risk assessments and security controls based on system criticality. With cloud-based "Infrastructure As A Service" virtualization multiplying the number of entities needing to be managed/secured by reducing the costs of individual servers, it will likely proliferate the fundamental disconnect between policy and practice that exists at NASA today, unless significant management attention is placed on the problem.
I see this exacerbation of IT security issues as one of the most critical problems facing "cloud computing." I attended a talk by a VMware engineer who mentioned some things that VMware was doing to try and provide security services from the hypervisor for the VMs without the installation of individual agents on each VM, but I'm leery of this solution.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I would like to see another evolution of VM technology to a single O/S entity distributed across a cluster of hardware servers, with an industrial-strength O/S that goes back to the old mainframe-that-runs-many-applications model. Many applications, running under one secured O/S entity, with the O/S entity distributed across multiple hardware servers (with a uniform hardware environment provided by the VM abstraction layer) offers real benefits.
IT service delivery has seen an interesting history (from my perspective). At first was the mainframe. There was only one in most companies. It ran lots of applications. It had its dedicated staff to feed and care for it. It cost a fortune.
Then came the minicomputer. It too ran many applications. It had a semi-dedicated staff to feed and care for it. But there were many of them in an organization, because they cost a lot less money.
Then came PCs - they were often dedicated to a single application (at first) because of their limited computational processing power. But there were many of them, and they multiplied. Unfortunately, users had to take on a lot more management tasks, and many management tasks were left undone (backups, security...) But they were dirt cheap, and so they proliferated. So did management and security issues.
As PCs as became powerful servers they developed enough computational power to run multiple applications, but the operating systems they ran weren't trusted - if one app failed, often it crashed the server and took down the other applications running on the same server. So the "one application per server" model continued. Servers were cheap, so they multiplied. So did management and security issues. Eventually the power and cooling budgets for these servers were seen to be the hideous problem they are.
Now, the initial application of server virtualization has been to make better use of computational power going to waste from the "one application per server" model. Using VM technology, you can still have "one application per (virtual) server" but have multiple virtual servers running on one piece of hardware. This reduces your hardware (and power, and cooling) expenses, but doesn't do anything about your management issues operating hundreds of servers (virtual or not). Software licensing may also be a concern, especially for patching or security agents that still must be installed on every host, virtual or not.
Cloud computing (in its "infrastructure as a service" incarnation) appears to be a combination of the first approach to the use of VM technology with the idea that the "boiler room" IT staff can provide the infrastructure, while the business folks deploy the servers whenever/however they want. This appears to ignore the problems managing and security the individual servers, and in fact intensifies these problems by greatly increasing the number of managed/security entities.
It would be really nice if we could get back to the model where many applications run under a single managed O/S entity. To help maintain availability, however, that single O/S entity should be distributed across a cluster of hardware servers. Computing clusters have been around a while (VAXclusters were big in the late 1980s, for example) but they weren't then and aren't now deployed using a single O/S on multiple hardware platforms model. However, that is the model that VM hypervisors are approaching - they can automatically move VMs between hardware servers for load balancing and failure recovery purposes. How about moving this capability up a level so that the single O/S is automatically distributed across all of the hardware servers in the cluster? This, combined with operating system technology that guarantees one application crashing doesn't take out the whole O/S, might solve a lot of problems. It probably won't be sought out by the business organizations, but it could be a game-changer when implemented by professional IT staffs.
The "cloud" icon on a network diagram is often used to represent a portion of a network the details of which are not considered important for the purpose of the diagram. Whether or not that is because the person who drew the diagram didn't understand them is a separate issue. Perhaps the diagrammer didn't think his/her audience would understand them.
The "cloud" used in "cloud computing" seems to be used in two different ways. The first (less interesting) way is to describe IT services provided by a third-party, usually as a service, like an "application as a service" model. Gmail is a good example of this. The second (less abstract) way is to refer to an IT infrastructure including compute, communications, and storage resources that uses virtual machine technology to deliver "virtual servers" on demand either within an organization or to external customers - call this "infrastructure as a service."
The second definition of "cloud computing" appears to be a big meme in certain government agencies. One place it appears to flourish is in science-oriented agencies where the scientists are convinced that they are better suited to run IT infrastructures than IT professionals (this is often a problem with scientists). The scientists salivate at the thought of reducing the official IT department to operating the cloud infrastructure (a boring, thankless task) while they, the scientists, cause all kinds of useful applications to blossom from the countless numbers of servers they can conjure up (virtually) now that they don't have to worry about real-world issues like hardware inventories, software patching, and security.
I suspect that "cloud computing" of the second variety is attractive to a variety of organizations beyond science-oriented government agencies for the same reasons. Just like the idea of freeing computing from the tyranny of the corporate IT department was fueled by the minicomputer and workstations in the 1980s, and then by the PC in the late 1980s and through the 1990s to today, it is being fueled by "cloud computing" dreams in the 2010s...
If you can find a way to deliver cloud computing (infrastructure as a service) that doesn't scale IT security issues linearly with the number of virtual machines that are built in the cloud, you may have a promising future.
This argument confused who needs to prove what. It is impossible to prove that the object isn't a cell phone, assuming that you need to prove it to people who seem quite willing to accept what science and physics so far tells us is impossible. However, no one needs to prove that it isn't a cell phone. In order to make an argument that time travel has occurred, it is necessary to show that the object *is* a cell phone, or at least some sort of mobile communications device, and that there is no more likely explanation for it than that. Since there have been a number of fairly credible alternative explanations given already, it is necessary for those who want to pursue the time travel option to show that those explanations are in fact less likely than the idea that it is a "cell phone." So far no one seems to have done that. Coming up with more and more far-fetched explanations of how it could still possibly be a cell phone is just, well, silly. Sounds like something out of Monty Python, in fact.
The argument advanced above seems to assume the existence of that which is supposed to be proven. It is not known that a time machine has been invented - it is being suggested that a time machine must have been invented in order to explain the appearance of someone apparently talking on a cell phone in a 1928 recording, when cell phones were not known to exist. To use the idea that if the time machine exists it would be easy to have a communicator that would work across time/space (remember that the earth, solar system, and even the galaxy are in constant motion and are now far removed from where they were at the moment of that recording in 1928) is assuming the likely impossible to prove the highly improbable, and making a circular argument. The presence of the "cell phone" is being used to claim support for the theory that there is a time machine, not the other way around. The fact that the concept that the person is talking on a cell phone is extremely unlikely makes it virtually useless as any kind of argument in favor of a time machine which is even more unlikely.
A cellular telephone system is termed cellular (i.e., being made up of cells) because it is designed to have small mobile radio transceivers that operate over a limited range, combined with a large number of small transmission/reception zones called "cells." If a "cell phone" is being used, it would require "cells," which would mean a large number of radio transceiver installations complete with antennas of some sort plus a backhaul capability to link all of the cells together (the backhaul may itself be wired or wireless).
So its a bit pedantic, but valid to question the use of the term "cell phone" when the cellular infrastructure is highly unlikely to be present. Unless, of course, it is being suggested that in addition to this "time traveler," a complete cellular telephone network has been transported into the past and hidden amongst the natives of that time.
The principle of Occam's Razor needs to be applied here... the folks that are pointing out that it can't be a cell phone without cell equipment are indirectly pointing out that the assumption that its a cell phone (or even another micro-miniature mobile communications device, possibly using direct satellite reception etc.), while perfectly reasonable and fairly parsimonious for our time, is extremely unlikely for that time as it requires the postulation of ever more complicated scenarios in order to make it work.
The idea that its either a person shielding their face from the novelty of being recorded or someone using a handheld hearing aid requires far less in the way of assumptions and what have become all-out flights of fancy. Occam's Razor is just a guiding principle and not a strict scientific law, but extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof, and such proof just isn't here.
The security at Hoover Dam was reasonable the last time I was there (a couple of years after 9/11/2001). I had my Leatherman Supertool on my belt when I arrived at the security screening across the dam from the parking lot where I had left my car. When I saw the magnetometers I sighed, because I didn't want to have to make the round trip to my car to stow my "dangerous item." So I showed it to the guard and he compared the length of the longest blade against a measuring stick. Since the blade was of legal length he gave it back to me and passed me on through the checkpoint.
Compare this to most of the federal buildings in Washington DC where even a tiny Craftsman keychain pen knife gets you denied access despite the fact that a sharpened pencil would be more dangerous. (In the example I saw, the individual holding the tiny personal grooming pen knife was a vetted IT contractor working for the agency whose building he was trying to enter. He asked the guard if the guard was letting the folks through with sharpened pencils. The guard was not amused.)
So far the numbers have not been independently verified, correct?
I agree that so far technology does not appear to be a huge differentiator in 5th grade education. My wife and I are technology professionals (I do networking, she does financial business systems) . We have a daughter in 5th grade and a son in 3rd grade at the same elementary school. The school system has a basic computer skills program (they learn to type and do basic computer interaction as a once-per-week lab).
A few years back (when my daughter was in 5th grade) the principal at the school got the PTA fired up to put in smart white boards (which the school system was stiff evaluating). They raised a lot of money over the next two years and put a white board in every classroom. At one of the PTA meetings my wife asked how they were going to manage technology refreshment for the boards and for the laptop computers that they were using to run the boards - she was told that was all taken care of...
We have observed the use of the boards now for several years across multiple teachers with both of our kids. They have been able to do some "cool" things with them, but no ground-breaking educational capability appears to have emerged. More troubling is the fact that the boards and the computers that power the boards have begun to have some problems and aren't being repaired quickly. Now that the boards have been around for a while, they aren't being used quite as much in some classes.
Its troubling to think of the $$$ that this kind of technology costs compared to buying text books and other educational aids, and its very hard to see the educational value. It has a high gee-whiz factor, but less of an educational benefit as far as we can see.
By post-war, I assume you mean the American "War for Independence," or perhaps the American "War of 1812." I think the failed innovations start at least as early as Babbage's Difference Engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
How does the fire department determine how many trucks to buy, personnel to hire, etc. if it doesn't know what its subscriber base is? In a government jurisdiction where the fire service is paid for by taxes, you can determine how to size the service by the number of households and other factors.
If no one had to pay for any fire protective services unless they actually used them, no one would pay for any protective services. Where would the up-front capital come from to purchase the equipment and hire the staff? What if a whole year went by without any fires because everyone was being careful? How would the staff be paid? How would the equipment be maintained? How would training be funded?
The homeowner is even more cruel; he not only failed to provide a safe environment for the pets, the fire was caused from carelessness, not as an "act of god."
Those who might be in church listening to such a sermon fervently believe that if you fail to ask the Son of God to save you, that you won't be saved. You will burn in hell for eternity. Just because you didn't ask to be saved.
How such a belief is reconciled with the message you quote above is an exercise for the reader.
When you think about it in that light, its no wonder that the people in that area don't see a problem with a house burning to the ground because the homeowner specifically chose not to pay his $75/year for fire protection services.
No lawyer will take it, because there isn't any basis for a case. I can understand why people who have never lived in an area without certain governmental services can be surprised by them being optional, but in the area where this happened, it is well known that if you don't pay for the fire service, you don't have the fire service. I lived in an area like this (in Tennessee). It wasn't a mysterious circumstance, it wasn't a surprise to him or anyone else. He had a choice to make, and he chose poorly.
Its not a volunteer fire department. It was a fire department from a different governmental jurisdiction. The guy chose to live in a jurisdiction that had chosen not to have a government-funded fire department. He had the ability to purchase (for $75/year) fire coverage from the other jurisdiction. He chose not to. He can't sue anyone for negligence. The only person who was negligent was him. Extremely negligent. There are some parts of the country/world where you could easily die by being as negligent as this guy was. Lucky for him, he doesn't live in one of those areas.
In these areas, it is extremely well-known that you don't have fire coverage if you don't pay for it. I'm not sure how he was able to get homeowner's insurance without showing that he had paid for the fire coverage.
I lived in Tennessee a few years ago; owned a house. It was clear that I wasn't covered for fire protection unless I subscribed to a service (Rural Metro, in my case). I subscribed. Its not rocket science. I liked the way that it worked.
I heard about a homeowner who had not subscribed having their house burn down; the fire company didn't put it out. One reason given was that the fire company's insurance would not cover them if they were putting out a fire at a house that was not a subscriber.
Its simple, really. You can live in a government-provided fire service area, and pay higher taxes. Or you can live in a lower service area, and decide which services you want, and pay for them.
Using the word "Cyber" in conjunction with "Security" for what used to be called "information security" or "information assurance" is currently all the rage in the government circles around Washington, DC. One company I know even dropped the word "Security" when talking about "information security." They just refer to it as "Cyber", as in "we have a new Cyber center" and "our Cyber organization now reports directly to the CEO." They appear to be on the way to transitioning the adjective to a noun, and doing so poorly.
We don't have 10% unemployment in the general area in which the Cyber Command draws its staff. I live and work in the area. For example, I posted two advertisements for sys admins several months ago; one focused on LAMP/PHP skills, the other ColdFusion skills. In 4 weeks I received about 7 preliminary applications TOTAL, none of them qualified.
Clearances are required, and in this area finding qualified, cleared personnel is difficult. This has driven salaries up to crazy levels. The government has shot itself in the foot by having too many positions requiring cleared personnel (when its not really necessary) and by not having qualified gov't. people overseeing the contractors. The contractors are able to "qualify" staff at levels that exceeds their real capabilities, which they are happy to do because they gov't. pays the contractor based on the staff members' salaries plus overhead. The economic incentive is not there for the contractors to keep salaries low.
For example, one multi-contractor project I worked on had one contractor poaching personnel from the other by offering them 20% to 50% raises. The folks stayed working on the same project, got a huge jump in salary, and the government just paid the extra freight. My company (a larger defense contractor in business a while) tried to discuss the relative insanity of this with the government customer, but the gov't. either couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it.
As for the idea of keeping the government "honest" with respect to the US Constitution: if you were hired at "Cyber Command", you would not be in a position to oversee operations and make sure the staff are obeying the constitution... you would have the choice of doing your job or resigning if you saw something you didn't like. The environment is murky enough that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to prove anything without a serious risk of losing their clearance (which would end the high salary gravy train) and possibly going to jail (for violating the terms of their clearance).
I thought one had to be traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light before relativistic effects were noticeable. Perhaps this effect is something not predicted by either the special or the general theories of relativity?
Perhaps the journalist in question should be submitted to intense acceleration in order to correct his/her frame of reference?
I suspect different states have different laws. I sold a house in Tennessee after I had relocated to California. I never saw the buyer and certainly didn't attend the closing. I think I might have assigned a power of attorney over to the real estate agent, but it was long ago so I don't really remember whether I did or not.
I seem to remember a scam in Canada regarding selling real estate that sounded the same as this Australian deal. Apparently legal structures are different, and with different outcomes; I believe that in the US a fraudulent property sale conducted without the knowledge of the real owner would result in the buyer having lost their money, not the real owner losing the property. That *seems* the more correct way to go, as the real owner wouldn't even know anything was happening, whereas the buyer would be engaged in a transaction for which they should get surety of the seller's ownership before forking over the money. At a minimum, its a good reason to make sure that the title insurance on the deal covers you the buyer in addition to the bank for the mortgage. I have always spent the extra $$ to make sure that the title insurance covered me as well as the bank.
Whether or not your local school milking more and more money from the federal government is good is an open question, is it not? Your assumption that the incessant tracking is good is based on the idea the the feeding at the federal trough is good.
Then again, perhaps your final statement is meant sarcastically?
I did send my 5 year old to school with money for milk or lunch, and I still send my 8 year old and 10 year old to school with real $$. The school's "debit card" program has both short-term and long-term negative effects.
Short term, the kids don't learn about handling money. This became evident when the curriculum got around to adding up dollars and change. My kids had no problem; most of the class struggled. (Oddly enough, the school apparently didn't see their own involvement in this debacle.)
Long term, the kids get trained into using plastic for every transaction... When they get older, they will use debit cards and credit cards to run transactions through the financial services processing machine where a) banks make money on every transaction, driving up costs for everyone, and b) everything can be logged and tracked for ?? purposes.
Just because technology is available and will make some small problems go away (the cafeteria workers like the debit cards because it speeds the lunch lines, kids can't lose their money) doesn't mean it should be used when there are longer term negative effects (little understanding of money, no hard-learned consequences from losing money). A few cheese sandwiches (all the cafeteria will provide kids who lose their lunch money) and my kids got a lot better at hanging on to their money.
Angles, Saxons, even Jutes - does it really matter?
Perhaps you could free yourself from the tyranny of data by just deleting the e-mail? You can keep a year or two around in your favorite e-mail tool, and just let the rest go... the alternative appears to be creating the digital equivalent of the old people living in houses filled with junk that they never do anything with.