You don't have to invent anything. All you have to do is get the patent.
The hamburger, or a cure for AIDS can be done by anyone, but it will end up being the property of whoever has the most lawyers and lobbyists. So who's better off, us or them?
A General Products hull is "an artificially-generated giant molecule, with the inter-atomic bonds artificially strengthened", causing the hull to resist "any kind of impact, and heat in the hundreds of thousands of degrees" (from Flatlander). In Fleet of Worlds, the characters learn that the bonds of the giant molecule are "artificially strengthened" by a small power plant in the hull. By aiming a very powerful laser at it (since GP hulls are transparent to visible light), one can destroy the power plant, and destroy the hull. Gravity attracts the hull and its contents normally, but not even close approach to the event horizon of a black hole can damage the hull. However, tidal stress will kill anything outside the ship's center of mass (from Neutron Star), and the hull probably could not survive entering a black hole's singularity. Furthermore, a General Products hull can be destroyed by antimatter. Hyperdrive affects General Products hulls, since it is used by the ships to travel. From the text of stories involving stasis boxes, it is implied that the "hyperwave" pulses used for probing for them are not reflected by General Products hulls, though whether these are absorbed or penetrate is unclear.
Niven used a similar material scrith for the structural material of the Ringworld.
Scrith is milky-gray translucent in color, and is a nearly frictionless material. The fairly thin layer of scrith that forms the floor of the Ringworld blocks the passage of 40% of the Neutrinos that encounter it, equivalent to almost an Earth-lightyear of lead. It also absorbs nearly 100% of all other radiation and subatomic particles and rapidly dissipates heat. The tensile strength of scrith is theorized to be similar to the Strong nuclear force, with the Ringworld foundation only measuring about 30m (100 ft) thick. It is transparent to magnetic fields.
Due to its enormous strength, scrith is impervious to most weapons. A body (such as a comet or asteroid) striking with enough kinetic energy may be able to deform the Ringworld floor enough to puncture it. The Ringworld engineers used a device, called the Cziltang Brone in the City Builder language, to pass from the vacuum of the rim spaceports through the scrith to the habitable surfaces of the Ringworld.
You really think all this just started with Obama?
Then I have a question: do you hang your KKK robes in the closet where they won't get wrinkled but someone might easily see them, or do you fold them up in a drawer where they will get wrinkles, but it's likely that you would be found out?
You're right. The DHS/OPM are not trustworthy. As these events show, they are self serving bureaucracies that put their institutional welfare ahead of their institutional responsibilities.
But having no meaningful regulatory framework makes it all worse. Who's in charge? There's been a monumental screw up, but with no rules or formal chain of command how can responsibility be determined?
Without some kind of accountability the response will certainly be inadequate. If you want another horrible example of that, just look at all the financial sector. Irresponsible behavior lead to the 2008 crash, no individual or institution was held accountable, and now we are seeing another go round of grotesquely illegal activity.
My original point was that a combination of greed and irresponsible ideology has had a profound impact on US cybersecurity as a whole. Now we are paying for these mistakes, but given recent history (think the war in Iraq) it seems certain that nothing will fundamentally change. Those with critical responsibility fail miserably and they are not held personally accountable in any way. As long as that is "normal" we will continue to get screwed.
So now the Republican Congress is screaming about government cyber security, and demanding that the ebil imcompotent burocrats DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!!!
The trouble is, those same Republicans have derailed national cyber security regulations since Obama has been in office. It's all been channeled through the US Chamber of Commerce.
Comprehensive cybersecurity regulatory reform failed for the second time this year in the U.S. Senate, increasing the prospects that the White House will implement some of the bill’s provisions through an executive order.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 failed to get the 60 votes needed under Senate rules to bring the bill up for passage Nov. 14, 2012, most likely dashing any chance that cybersecurity policy would be addressed in the lame-duck session.
“Whatever we do for this bill is not enough for the Chamber of Commerce,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the floor immediately after the failed cloture vote. “Cybersecurity is dead for this Congress,” he added. Republicans blocked the same measure in August 2012, saying it would lead to more government regulation of business.
So that was pretty much the end of it. The Obama administration declared some executive orders, but that clearly did not have much impact. Up until this latest incident the Party of Ignorance (R) got what they wanted: keep you hands off my bidness.
So no one should be very surprised that this happened. There is no bright line between big government and big business when it comes to matters like cybersecurity. Particularly with the amount of outsourcing going on. Don't forget that the OPM breach was not simply in a government network, but at security contractor USIS.
A background investigation firm with OPM, DHS, and other federal agency contracts notified the government that it identified an unlawful breach of its network. In a statement posted on the website today, USIS noted that it was working with the government to determine the ‘nature and extent’ of the attack. They acknowledged that it appeared to be a state-sponsored attack.
The firm is already under fire for allegations of contractor misconduct. The Justice Department sued the company earlier this year for poor oversight of security clearance investigations, and a White House panel investigated bonuses received by USIS executives.
The DHS/OPM/whatever are doing everything they can to cover up what really happened, so the trail to the contractors has been rather effectively hidden. They primarily want to keep evidence of their vast incompetency out of the public eye. That is taking precedence over remedial action to address the breach. This is why they are leaving the roughly 4 million government employees at risk just hanging in the breeze. If they were to do the responsible thing and help the victims it would reveal how extensively they failed.
Remember, horribly incompetent government security contractors are the new normal: Blackwater in Iraq, the TSA meatheads who infest airports, and now this. No one should be surprised. And they should be even less surprised when no one is held accountable and nothing changes.
According to Oliver, there are 4.1 million people living in Puerto Rico and the island territories. Of that population, 98.4% are racial or ethnic minorities, none of whom have the right to vote in U.S. elections. According to Oliver, the more you look into the reasons that the U.S. territories don’t have voting rights, the harder it is to understand why these dated laws have not been changed.
Way back in 1901, it was said that the island territories were inhabited by “alien races” that couldn’t “understand Anglo-Saxon principles” and thus were denied the vote. That hasn’t changed, despite the fact that even at the time, American legal thinkers thought that the territories’ lack of voting power should only last for a limited time. Fast forward 114 years and the U.S. citizens living on these territories still can’t vote, which Oliver compares to failing to update your computer operating system for over a millennium.
But Puerto Rico is lucky compared to some of the other U.S. territories. American Samoans aren’t even automatically granted U.S. citizenship, which, according to Oliver, renders the “American” part as moot as the phrases “social media expert” or “People’s Choice Award nominee.” Instead, they’re considered U.S. nationals, but not citizens.
Over on Guam, 27% of the island is occupied by U.S. Navy and Air Force bases, and a staggering high number of Guam citizens are veterans of the U.S. military, but they still have no voting rights. Despite that, Guam holds a straw poll every presidential election and has higher voter turn-out than any other U.S. state — you know, the ones whose votes actually count.
Reading this, and based on my personal experience, I doubt it.
How many laws do attorneys have to break before they face something beyond a fine? 100? 1000? 10000? If you read the Prenda law articles, it's clear that if a non-lawyer did even one of those things, they would already be in jail by now. Those bastards lied their fucking teeth out, and made real good money doing so. And all they have to pay is a fine. BFD.
New policy. If you see someone in a car accident, or anywhere in public suffering a medical emergency, and you figure out it's a fucking lawyer, leave it to die or live on it's own. If we lived in a just world, you would be allowed to kill it.
I've earned my hostility. Some shithole incompetent attorneys made my life hell for five years or so. There were at least three of them who couldn't find their ass in a well lit room given a full set of written directions. They finally subcontracted to someone who knew what he was doing, and it got sorted out. I don't know what was worse: they fact that they took on work that was beyond them, or the fact that it took years for them to admit/realize they were complete losers.
Punch a lawyer in the face today. You'll be glad you did.
Yes, loaded firearms in public are not intimidating at all. No one would ever walk around with a loaded gun with the expectation that people would act differently because of fear of violence. No group with violent or anti-social tendencies, say biker gangs, drug dealers, or gang members would ever take advantage of carrying guns to enable their law breaking activities. There would never be a situation where having loaded weapons at hand would increase the likelihood of violence. Bystanderswouldneverbeinjuredbystraygunfire.
Have you ever worked for a politically connected US corporation? From your comments I assume not.
Every company has a PAC. Once you get to a certain level you had better be giving money to that PAC, or you are not a "team player". Good luck moving up in the hierarchy, or even keeping your job, if you don't.
I was in a smallish aerospace company (by now they've pass $1 billion in sales, which is not big in that industry), and I saw this first hand.
Grow up. There's no room for honest dissent in corporate culture. It's a subset of the reality that there's no room for honestly in corporate culture.
The Chamber is not overtly taking a pro-bribery position. Rather, its lobbying blitz couches the proposed changes as tune-ups, a few safeguards needed to protect against overzealous prosecutors.
"Our proposals are aimed at preserving existing law enforcement tools so that the government can pursue the bad actors while ensuring that the good actors have clarity and more certainty under the law, which is clearly lacking today," said Harold Kim, a senior vice president at the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform, in a statement to The Huffington Post.
But the Chamber's list of demands boils down to this: It wants four loopholes that companies could use to escape criminal liability -- and it wants the government to make a clearer demarcation between foreign officials they are not allowed to bribe and those they are.
The Institute for Legal Reform has been leading a powerful and unprecedented lobbying campaign to persuade Congress to rewrite key provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 35-year-old statute that criminalizes bribes to foreign officials, on the grounds that prosecutors have been enforcing it too aggressively.
In a letter to the Chamber released Tuesday, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) -- the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, respectively -- describe how committee staff looked through the institute's tax filings and found that 14 of the group's 55 board members between 2007 and 2010 "were affiliated with companies that were reportedly under investigation for violations or had settled allegations that they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
We're not talking chump change here.
The Huffington Post calculated last year that a mere eight members of the Chamber -- not all board members of its legal reform arm -- had altogether paid nearly $1 billion resolving FCPA charges in the last seven years.
So I would assume that the next step would be to legalize bribes in the US. We have it effectively anyway, so why keep the pretense that "all people are created equal". Remember that "corporations are people" and "some animals are more equal then others".
How does this question relate to the legions of Slashdot readers who are living in their parents basement? Are you deliberately trying to demean them and their lifestyle? Have you no shame?
Why is Hastert worth a story here as opposed to Martha Stewart? Although her crime was insider trading, she was convicted of conspiracy and lying to the FBI, which is one of the charges Hastert is facing
After a highly publicized six-week jury trial, Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators
Could it be that old white conservative politicians are worthy of defending against government over reach, and a liberal women is not? In her case the trigger was getting a stock tip, and in his case it was sex with a high school student he was coaching. Which is a greater abuse of position? Which of the two is more of a government victim given the nature of their initial offense?
Exactly. The Nature paper cites 47 references. The AIP article cites 56. Even with overlap, that is a lot of previous effort, most of which was government funded, And that's just he first layer. Each of those papers has a similar amount of previous research.
An army of very smart people spent a lot of time and effort to get to this point. Very little of that was paid for by private enterprise. It was almost completely government supported research. If you want to solve a big hard problem that is about the only way to do it.
Governments have the resources, stability and long term vision. For profit companies rarely have this combination. When they do, it's often a situation like the old Bell Labs days, where there was a government sponsored monopoly. The Bell system planners knew the needed something better then mechanical switches and vacuum tubes. They engaged in fundamental pure research into semiconductors starting in the 1930's, which led to the transistor in 1947.
Of course the remnants of Bell Labs are now completely out of the pure research business now. Given IBM's declining fortunes it's not clear how long they will keep up their basic research efforts. So if the government is not going to do it, no one will. In the current quarterly profit driven economy, there is no other option.
The real name of the Department of Homeland Security: the Department of Homeland Pork
The TSA clowns at airports are not government employees, they are private contractors. It the last resort for someone who wants to wear a uniform and have a badge but is too incompetent to be a mall cop. So it's no surprise that they have a 95% failure rate.
A huge chunk of taxpayer money gets wasted and there is little real world payoff. Make no mistake, the real big bucks go to the upper management, political insiders who grease the wheels for lucrative contracts. Just a division of the military industrial complex.
Another example: the Air Force just signed the very first contract with Boeing for commercial manned flights to the International Space Station. The Boeing crew vehicle hasn't even flown yet, unlike the SpaceX capsule which is now going through it's manned launch escape testing. Boeing is in bed with the AF, SpaceX isn't. All the AF guys know that they will just slide over to high paying jobs at Boeing when they retire, and there are lots of Congress Critters who get campaign contribution from Boeing, and want to protect defense jobs in their state.
Saving money? Competition? Innovation? Not even on the table. It's government of, by and for the insiders. And you are paying for it.
HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) continued to offer services to clients who had been unfavorably named by the United Nations, in court documents and in the media as connected to arms trafficking, blood diamonds and bribery.
HSBC served those close to discredited regimes such as that of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, former Tunisian president Ben Ali and current Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.
Clients who held HSBC bank accounts in Switzerland include former and current politicians from Britain, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kenya, Romania, India, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Lebanon, Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Paraguay, Djibouti, Senegal, Philippines and Algeria.
The bank repeatedly reassured clients that it would not disclose details of accounts to national authorities, even if evidence suggested that the accounts were undeclared to tax authorities in the client’s home country. Bank employees also discussed with clients a range of measures that would ultimately allow clients to avoid paying taxes in their home countries. This included holding accounts in the name of offshore companies to avoid the European Savings Directive, a 2005 Europe-wide rule aimed at tackling tax evasion through the exchange of bank information.
HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files.
Routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland.
Aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes.
Colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities.
Provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals.
So not only were they breaking US law, they were breaking EU law and the laws of various European governments, as well as Swiss banking regulations. The clients included members of outlaw regimes, international criminals, and citizens of countries who economies are in crippled in part because of corruption and the siphoning of national treasure by the elites.
So this is a story of international corruption on a massive scale. Nice to know that you are defending the "rights" of drug dealers, despots, crime bosses, dealers in blood diamonds,...
You mean foosball right? That table game with the handles that you spin around and try to put the ball in the slot at the end of the table?
Or do you mean soccer? That game that little girls play, and the boys who parents drive Volvos and are all named Brad?
Oh, that game they always seem to be showing in the Mexican restaurants. Lots of guys in shorts running around, never seems to end, the really boring one. Nobody gives a shit about that.
You mean there's a league?And a tournament? Why? Hell, even golf has more action that that, and golf is like watching paint dry. And there's always replays of football and basketball and college hoops and baseball 24/7, or NASCAR. Who would waste time with guys in shorts?
And that, in short, is the kind of response you would get from 99% of US sports fans if you told them that the US had lost the bid for the FIFA World Cup. Don't flatter yourself, nobody here even knows what it is, much less gives a damn.
Slashdot Mirror
The hamburger, or a cure for AIDS can be done by anyone, but it will end up being the property of whoever has the most lawyers and lobbyists. So who's better off, us or them?
Niven used a similar material scrith for the structural material of the Ringworld.
Then I have a question: do you hang your KKK robes in the closet where they won't get wrinkled but someone might easily see them, or do you fold them up in a drawer where they will get wrinkles, but it's likely that you would be found out?
But having no meaningful regulatory framework makes it all worse. Who's in charge? There's been a monumental screw up, but with no rules or formal chain of command how can responsibility be determined?
Without some kind of accountability the response will certainly be inadequate. If you want another horrible example of that, just look at all the financial sector. Irresponsible behavior lead to the 2008 crash, no individual or institution was held accountable, and now we are seeing another go round of grotesquely illegal activity.
My original point was that a combination of greed and irresponsible ideology has had a profound impact on US cybersecurity as a whole. Now we are paying for these mistakes, but given recent history (think the war in Iraq) it seems certain that nothing will fundamentally change. Those with critical responsibility fail miserably and they are not held personally accountable in any way. As long as that is "normal" we will continue to get screwed.
The trouble is, those same Republicans have derailed national cyber security regulations since Obama has been in office. It's all been channeled through the US Chamber of Commerce.
So that was pretty much the end of it. The Obama administration declared some executive orders, but that clearly did not have much impact. Up until this latest incident the Party of Ignorance (R) got what they wanted: keep you hands off my bidness.
So no one should be very surprised that this happened. There is no bright line between big government and big business when it comes to matters like cybersecurity. Particularly with the amount of outsourcing going on. Don't forget that the OPM breach was not simply in a government network, but at security contractor USIS.
The DHS/OPM/whatever are doing everything they can to cover up what really happened, so the trail to the contractors has been rather effectively hidden. They primarily want to keep evidence of their vast incompetency out of the public eye. That is taking precedence over remedial action to address the breach. This is why they are leaving the roughly 4 million government employees at risk just hanging in the breeze. If they were to do the responsible thing and help the victims it would reveal how extensively they failed.
Remember, horribly incompetent government security contractors are the new normal: Blackwater in Iraq, the TSA meatheads who infest airports, and now this. No one should be surprised. And they should be even less surprised when no one is held accountable and nothing changes.
1. Line the pockets of the rich entrenched power brokers.
2. Degrade the US technological base.
3. Send money and support technology for long term rivals.
Given the above it's a slam dunk. It's the American Way!
Corruption? Are you talking abut Russia or USAF/Boeing? I'm confused.
Funny and painful, as usual.
How many laws do attorneys have to break before they face something beyond a fine? 100? 1000? 10000? If you read the Prenda law articles, it's clear that if a non-lawyer did even one of those things, they would already be in jail by now. Those bastards lied their fucking teeth out, and made real good money doing so. And all they have to pay is a fine. BFD.
New policy. If you see someone in a car accident, or anywhere in public suffering a medical emergency, and you figure out it's a fucking lawyer, leave it to die or live on it's own. If we lived in a just world, you would be allowed to kill it.
I've earned my hostility. Some shithole incompetent attorneys made my life hell for five years or so. There were at least three of them who couldn't find their ass in a well lit room given a full set of written directions. They finally subcontracted to someone who knew what he was doing, and it got sorted out. I don't know what was worse: they fact that they took on work that was beyond them, or the fact that it took years for them to admit/realize they were complete losers.
Punch a lawyer in the face today. You'll be glad you did.
Equivalently, "Fuck you".
I'm so glad you cleared that up for us.
Take your meds.
Scientology.
Beavis has a girlfriend? That's clearly a different universe.
it's a LOT bigger than I am
The fast food industry wants to help you close the gap.
Every company has a PAC. Once you get to a certain level you had better be giving money to that PAC, or you are not a "team player". Good luck moving up in the hierarchy, or even keeping your job, if you don't.
I was in a smallish aerospace company (by now they've pass $1 billion in sales, which is not big in that industry), and I saw this first hand.
Grow up. There's no room for honest dissent in corporate culture. It's a subset of the reality that there's no room for honestly in corporate culture.
This might be related to the fact that Chamber board members we in companies involved in bribery scandals when they were advocating these changes.
We're not talking chump change here.
So I would assume that the next step would be to legalize bribes in the US. We have it effectively anyway, so why keep the pretense that "all people are created equal". Remember that "corporations are people" and "some animals are more equal then others".
How does this question relate to the legions of Slashdot readers who are living in their parents basement? Are you deliberately trying to demean them and their lifestyle? Have you no shame?
Could it be that old white conservative politicians are worthy of defending against government over reach, and a liberal women is not? In her case the trigger was getting a stock tip, and in his case it was sex with a high school student he was coaching. Which is a greater abuse of position? Which of the two is more of a government victim given the nature of their initial offense?
An army of very smart people spent a lot of time and effort to get to this point. Very little of that was paid for by private enterprise. It was almost completely government supported research. If you want to solve a big hard problem that is about the only way to do it.
Governments have the resources, stability and long term vision. For profit companies rarely have this combination. When they do, it's often a situation like the old Bell Labs days, where there was a government sponsored monopoly. The Bell system planners knew the needed something better then mechanical switches and vacuum tubes. They engaged in fundamental pure research into semiconductors starting in the 1930's, which led to the transistor in 1947.
Of course the remnants of Bell Labs are now completely out of the pure research business now. Given IBM's declining fortunes it's not clear how long they will keep up their basic research efforts. So if the government is not going to do it, no one will. In the current quarterly profit driven economy, there is no other option.
The TSA clowns at airports are not government employees, they are private contractors. It the last resort for someone who wants to wear a uniform and have a badge but is too incompetent to be a mall cop. So it's no surprise that they have a 95% failure rate.
A huge chunk of taxpayer money gets wasted and there is little real world payoff. Make no mistake, the real big bucks go to the upper management, political insiders who grease the wheels for lucrative contracts. Just a division of the military industrial complex.
Another example: the Air Force just signed the very first contract with Boeing for commercial manned flights to the International Space Station. The Boeing crew vehicle hasn't even flown yet, unlike the SpaceX capsule which is now going through it's manned launch escape testing. Boeing is in bed with the AF, SpaceX isn't. All the AF guys know that they will just slide over to high paying jobs at Boeing when they retire, and there are lots of Congress Critters who get campaign contribution from Boeing, and want to protect defense jobs in their state.
Saving money? Competition? Innovation? Not even on the table. It's government of, by and for the insiders. And you are paying for it.
HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide millions
So not only were they breaking US law, they were breaking EU law and the laws of various European governments, as well as Swiss banking regulations. The clients included members of outlaw regimes, international criminals, and citizens of countries who economies are in crippled in part because of corruption and the siphoning of national treasure by the elites.
So this is a story of international corruption on a massive scale. Nice to know that you are defending the "rights" of drug dealers, despots, crime bosses, dealers in blood diamonds, ...
the US may be pissed at FIFA for losing their bid
You mean foosball right? That table game with the handles that you spin around and try to put the ball in the slot at the end of the table?
Or do you mean soccer? That game that little girls play, and the boys who parents drive Volvos and are all named Brad?
Oh, that game they always seem to be showing in the Mexican restaurants. Lots of guys in shorts running around, never seems to end, the really boring one. Nobody gives a shit about that.
You mean there's a league?And a tournament? Why? Hell, even golf has more action that that, and golf is like watching paint dry. And there's always replays of football and basketball and college hoops and baseball 24/7, or NASCAR. Who would waste time with guys in shorts?
And that, in short, is the kind of response you would get from 99% of US sports fans if you told them that the US had lost the bid for the FIFA World Cup. Don't flatter yourself, nobody here even knows what it is, much less gives a damn.
Telemarketers are human?
An equally valid statement.