Nonsense. I prefer the interpretation of storing an electronic agent on someone's machine (typically located inside their house) as quartering a soldier (or in this case, his equipment) as a supreme violation of the 3rd Amendment. It lends to reasoning that in the days when that Amendment was first written, the allowing of soldiers (or other government members) to usurp the rights of a homeowner as well as the (often) tremendous cost of resources for feeding and caring for said soldier (and associated equipment, they certainly didn't leave their firearms outside in the rain) was a source of immense displeasure among the colonists; so much so that they went to the trouble of making it #3 of the list of Governmental Don'ts. As electronic agents do consume resources, often as parasites (consuming processor cycles, disk space, and bandwidth), to the owners of said machines, and as they are acting on behalf of the government, it could be easily argued that they fall under a violation of the 3rd Amendment.
"No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." -> Now, some people will argue that it's in a manner prescribed by law, but the reality is that they are constantly switching attacks and methods to achieve their ends, with no care for the cost or the sanctity of the homeowner. A manner prescribed in law as 'whatever it takes' would fail most judicial smell tests. Again, as such, with no third-party oversight into clandestine home-spying operations, we have a huge violation here. However, in so far as the judicial branch is a little...behind the times, I fear that the entirety of our freedoms will be obliterated by appending "online" to the end of various security legislations, which would not pass otherwise.
I imagine someone more nuanced in the various legalities, and writings thereof, could make a good argument based off of this.
While lack of trust in the government here is a primary issue, a bigger issue is the fact that with some many mandated government back-doors in communications software, it's going to be a field day for crackers to get access to things they never dreamed of. This sh*t deals to be dealt with directly, and NOW!
Woah, woah! It's called a strategic retreat; nobodies running, they are just quietly walking very fast.
Why you ask? Because if they keep this up, they will be on par with the Soviet Union soon. And no one wants to be sent to the 'gulag' (Re-education camps).
Security measure -> give the pilots their own canteen, lock the door (and blast-proof it), ensure that they have something useful for dealing with problems if someone should somehow manage to get the damn door open (yeah, yeah, they don't want the liability of having guns -> I'm sure they'll change their mind with someone cutting through the door, to get them...perhaps some swords?; or just dropping the cabin pressure a little bit so the troublemakers take a nap...), and finally, if you're really paranoid, an automated guidance system with a 12-digit lockout code, changed once every two weeks or something...make it out of the same stuff they use with the black-box, so it can't be easily tampered with, and a reset code that forces the plane to land.
Indeed. And as various journalists have pointed out, putting aside the obvious overstepping of jurisdiction the government is engaged in here, the TSA security points have more holes than a termite-infested house. That's not, mind you, a call for a 'better' TSA with more aggressive security procedures, but a realistic point that if someone really wants to bring down a plane filled with people, they have, TSA or not, a fair chance of doing it. Perhaps better efforts should be spent on dealing with the circumstances that convince people that bringing down a plane is in their own best interest.
On the other hand, there was an article up here the other day where the FBI has been catching its own self-created 'terrorists,' so perhaps we should look into that problem first. A government which attacks itself, and the people that it was created to protect...marvelous; has anyone else ever seen such a curious invention?
They aren't, sadly, quick fixes. In the short term, they will cause a fair amount of confusion, and needless second-guessing of their worth; over the long term, the people will, assuming a not-so-clever politician doesn't try to recreate them, breathe more freely.
But there in lies the problem -> it will take several years for things to fully adjust, with many people on the fence about whether the changes will stick. You won't really feel the changes until the people are convinced that it's not all a ploy (no one will believe that they are permanent, any more than they do with the changes made today...they know a reversal or unbeneficial change to current legislation is always waiting, 6-12 months in the future). All the while the most vocal members, who previously benefited from the largess provided by those institutions, will be campaigning tirelessly for their reinstatement. If it does work, at the end of the day, the opposition will teach their children that things were better under the old way, at which point you will have another campaign in 15 years time, this time made up of more youthful people with more energy than those who originally brought about the change. Government is, like or not, a ceaseless war, to maintain or expand your rights & privileges; failure to defend your territory (various civil rights and economic freedoms) will see them swept out from underneath you; what more, do not assume that someone won't forge your signature to trade away something they do not own if they believe it gives them even a temporary advantage. Meetings closed to the public are typically a hallmark of this institution (the spade and dagger work is done before anyone can comment on it).
*shrugs* If bureaucracy follows its normal pattern, the TSA will not be shut down, but superseded by another (larger) boondoggle. Like the "Total Security Bureau" or something equally distasteful, which will cost 3 times as much as the TSA, and employ 1.5 times as many people.
At some point, the net drag effect from all of this internal spying and security will become large enough to cripple the economy. 1 person employed to work a farm, 2 people employed to watch him to ensure his doesn't engage in any 'un-American' activities. That sort of thing. With the rampant inflation, and possible food shortages, being clumsily linked to 'terrorists,' thus requiring more funding to 'thwart' them. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Nonsense. Assuming you are engaging in some...parlaying with a foreign power, you can give Uncle Sam a call, and he'll find an arrangement that will work to his, and sometimes your, benefit. Does anyone know if the CIA has a 1-800 number? I ask, because the amount of armaments we ship abroad to various groups dissatisfied with their host governments is truly staggering, and it lends to some thought that they must have some operators and an order fulfillment system at Langley somewhere. I mean, my God, the amount DHS must spend on freight costs alone should raise some eyebrows whenever our Legislature reviews their annual budget.
More realistically, the best of kind of operational security is to assume that any security system will be compromised. All the cryptography in the world can't help you if they put a physical key-logger on your machine, while you're picking up groceries.
"Exactly. If I got a file from a Ron Paul activist, and it was someone I knew, I'd run it without hesitation. How would I know the Paulbot friend had been arrested and his/her account was actually the DHS in disguise?" -> I do love the insinuation that the RP Libertarians would be engaged in some sort of subversive activity that somehow would require the attention of DHS (even the Amish get special love from DHS, because, you know, they pose some sort of a special threat, with all that barn-raising and selling of sweet corn from the back of a horse & buggy), but realistically, running executable set to you via a messenger service is almost never a good idea. I guess the way around that is to ask for a voice / video chat, and to have a single-use, personal code-word / phrase for "I've been caught."
"The guys in marketing usually have more sway with management, than the technical group, because they are better communicators/manipulators." -> which is a summary, albeit more concise, of what I just wrote.
"If the technical teams understood as much about how the average business leader thinks and communicates, as the marketing team does, then they wouldn't loose quite as much." -> In life, and in reality, you can only do one thing well at a time; you can do two things at the same time, but not as well. As such, a choice needs to be made here, and it takes some quiet meditation to make the right one; you can have your engineers, scientists, programmers et al. engaged in the usual skulduggery, interoffice politics, and brown-nosing games that many businesses engage in; or you can free them from that unnecessary burden, and allow them to focus their full attention on the problems and tasks at hand. The latter choice, by the way, provides more revenue and profit to both the company and shareholders, over the long term. Additionally, if and when it comes time to spin-off a division, the spin-off will typically have the technology and understanding to dominate their market. That's right, a spin-off that provides more fiscal opportunities than the initial IPO; you'll notice we haven't had many of those lately.
Now, my words may sound rather coarse to those who are used to yes-men and lapdogs breathlessly engaged in a prolonged version of the Sycophant Special Olympics; however, if you allow a moment to reflect on them, you may find that they are firmly supported by the pillars of reason and the historical performance of the firms that chose one method or the other has been reflected on the markets & other areas.
tldr; Shooting the messengers may ensure the message, when it finally does arrive, sounds more pleasant to the ear, but at the cost of its accuracy.
I'm fairly certain Jobs was a programmer (checking Wikipedia, he did a fair amount of work with Woz on circuit boards...); at which point, he already knew whether or not his vision, based off of past experience, was remotely feasible. His methods, while they worked, also caused many of those programmers to burn out very quickly.
And why not? At MS, an arguably more successful company than Yahoo, Bill Gates was known for inviting programmers into the meeting room, so he could understand what they were doing. And if they were pursuing a waste of company resources, he'd give them an earful.
And Gates was / is a programmer. Lacked the degree (at the time), but still had the skill-set to know when someone was pursuing a detrimental path.
"At some point you have to be able to direct/motivate/drive multiple people to accomplish higher productivity." -> And that's the problem, right there. Management doesn't 'get' tech, or the people who are techs. I am going to paraphrase from Discworld (Small Gods) here, and say that some people are like sheep, and need to be driven; others are like goats, and need to be lead. There is a world of difference in the approaches here.
And like it or not, trying to manage programmers is like trying to herd cats. They respond best if you have an architect who actually knows what he or she is doing, someone who leads by example, by being in the trenches with them, rather than directing orders from on high.
Or you could study CS, and start your own company with you at the top.
If you're working at a place where there's a glass ceiling, but a place which cannot exist without people like you, then you're in the company of idiots.
Sadly, I've seen a few companies run like this. Typically, the founders had technical degrees, or if they had business degree, they minored in an appropriate technical field (so they could understand what everyone else was saying, without hand-holding). A generation or two later, marketing is running the show, with the techs being treated like sharecroppers working on mastah's fields. Why does this always seem to happen? The techs focus on skills that are useful, while the marketing people focus on being liked. So when a vote comes down to install the next CxO, the most charismatic, but somewhat clueless person, with lots of 'spunk' is chosen. And what's good for marketing is typically not good for HR, Legal, Accounting, or Tech.
Yes and no. You typically wouldn't ask a Computer Scientist to appraise a painting, so why would you ask an Art Historian to come up with a new program to bolster the company's fortune?
Slashdot Mirror
And to think that some people argue that the IRS doesn't give as much as it takes...
Nonsense. I prefer the interpretation of storing an electronic agent on someone's machine (typically located inside their house) as quartering a soldier (or in this case, his equipment) as a supreme violation of the 3rd Amendment. It lends to reasoning that in the days when that Amendment was first written, the allowing of soldiers (or other government members) to usurp the rights of a homeowner as well as the (often) tremendous cost of resources for feeding and caring for said soldier (and associated equipment, they certainly didn't leave their firearms outside in the rain) was a source of immense displeasure among the colonists; so much so that they went to the trouble of making it #3 of the list of Governmental Don'ts. As electronic agents do consume resources, often as parasites (consuming processor cycles, disk space, and bandwidth), to the owners of said machines, and as they are acting on behalf of the government, it could be easily argued that they fall under a violation of the 3rd Amendment.
"No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." -> Now, some people will argue that it's in a manner prescribed by law, but the reality is that they are constantly switching attacks and methods to achieve their ends, with no care for the cost or the sanctity of the homeowner. A manner prescribed in law as 'whatever it takes' would fail most judicial smell tests. Again, as such, with no third-party oversight into clandestine home-spying operations, we have a huge violation here. However, in so far as the judicial branch is a little...behind the times, I fear that the entirety of our freedoms will be obliterated by appending "online" to the end of various security legislations, which would not pass otherwise.
I imagine someone more nuanced in the various legalities, and writings thereof, could make a good argument based off of this.
While lack of trust in the government here is a primary issue, a bigger issue is the fact that with some many mandated government back-doors in communications software, it's going to be a field day for crackers to get access to things they never dreamed of. This sh*t deals to be dealt with directly, and NOW!
Apparently this representative democracy likes being exploited and treated like a sex slave.
And that it doesn't bother you...is troubling, to say the least.
Woah, woah! It's called a strategic retreat; nobodies running, they are just quietly walking very fast.
Why you ask? Because if they keep this up, they will be on par with the Soviet Union soon. And no one wants to be sent to the 'gulag' (Re-education camps).
Call me when they get up to 10.
Hmm. So the FBI is into bondage...interesting. Wonder if they keep the fuzzy handcuffs in the dashboard compartment.
Security measure -> give the pilots their own canteen, lock the door (and blast-proof it), ensure that they have something useful for dealing with problems if someone should somehow manage to get the damn door open (yeah, yeah, they don't want the liability of having guns -> I'm sure they'll change their mind with someone cutting through the door, to get them...perhaps some swords?; or just dropping the cabin pressure a little bit so the troublemakers take a nap...), and finally, if you're really paranoid, an automated guidance system with a 12-digit lockout code, changed once every two weeks or something...make it out of the same stuff they use with the black-box, so it can't be easily tampered with, and a reset code that forces the plane to land.
Indeed. And as various journalists have pointed out, putting aside the obvious overstepping of jurisdiction the government is engaged in here, the TSA security points have more holes than a termite-infested house. That's not, mind you, a call for a 'better' TSA with more aggressive security procedures, but a realistic point that if someone really wants to bring down a plane filled with people, they have, TSA or not, a fair chance of doing it. Perhaps better efforts should be spent on dealing with the circumstances that convince people that bringing down a plane is in their own best interest.
On the other hand, there was an article up here the other day where the FBI has been catching its own self-created 'terrorists,' so perhaps we should look into that problem first. A government which attacks itself, and the people that it was created to protect...marvelous; has anyone else ever seen such a curious invention?
They aren't, sadly, quick fixes. In the short term, they will cause a fair amount of confusion, and needless second-guessing of their worth; over the long term, the people will, assuming a not-so-clever politician doesn't try to recreate them, breathe more freely.
But there in lies the problem -> it will take several years for things to fully adjust, with many people on the fence about whether the changes will stick. You won't really feel the changes until the people are convinced that it's not all a ploy (no one will believe that they are permanent, any more than they do with the changes made today...they know a reversal or unbeneficial change to current legislation is always waiting, 6-12 months in the future). All the while the most vocal members, who previously benefited from the largess provided by those institutions, will be campaigning tirelessly for their reinstatement. If it does work, at the end of the day, the opposition will teach their children that things were better under the old way, at which point you will have another campaign in 15 years time, this time made up of more youthful people with more energy than those who originally brought about the change. Government is, like or not, a ceaseless war, to maintain or expand your rights & privileges; failure to defend your territory (various civil rights and economic freedoms) will see them swept out from underneath you; what more, do not assume that someone won't forge your signature to trade away something they do not own if they believe it gives them even a temporary advantage. Meetings closed to the public are typically a hallmark of this institution (the spade and dagger work is done before anyone can comment on it).
Isopropyl alcohol. We can make everything clean if we can secure a large enough supply of it.
*shrugs* If bureaucracy follows its normal pattern, the TSA will not be shut down, but superseded by another (larger) boondoggle. Like the "Total Security Bureau" or something equally distasteful, which will cost 3 times as much as the TSA, and employ 1.5 times as many people.
At some point, the net drag effect from all of this internal spying and security will become large enough to cripple the economy. 1 person employed to work a farm, 2 people employed to watch him to ensure his doesn't engage in any 'un-American' activities. That sort of thing. With the rampant inflation, and possible food shortages, being clumsily linked to 'terrorists,' thus requiring more funding to 'thwart' them. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Indeed. I feel like I am watching a BOFH episode play out in real life.
Everything can be allocated behind the great white elephant of national security.
Nonsense. Assuming you are engaging in some...parlaying with a foreign power, you can give Uncle Sam a call, and he'll find an arrangement that will work to his, and sometimes your, benefit. Does anyone know if the CIA has a 1-800 number? I ask, because the amount of armaments we ship abroad to various groups dissatisfied with their host governments is truly staggering, and it lends to some thought that they must have some operators and an order fulfillment system at Langley somewhere. I mean, my God, the amount DHS must spend on freight costs alone should raise some eyebrows whenever our Legislature reviews their annual budget.
More realistically, the best of kind of operational security is to assume that any security system will be compromised. All the cryptography in the world can't help you if they put a physical key-logger on your machine, while you're picking up groceries.
"Exactly. If I got a file from a Ron Paul activist, and it was someone I knew, I'd run it without hesitation. How would I know the Paulbot friend had been arrested and his/her account was actually the DHS in disguise?" -> I do love the insinuation that the RP Libertarians would be engaged in some sort of subversive activity that somehow would require the attention of DHS (even the Amish get special love from DHS, because, you know, they pose some sort of a special threat, with all that barn-raising and selling of sweet corn from the back of a horse & buggy), but realistically, running executable set to you via a messenger service is almost never a good idea. I guess the way around that is to ask for a voice / video chat, and to have a single-use, personal code-word / phrase for "I've been caught."
"The guys in marketing usually have more sway with management, than the technical group, because they are better communicators/manipulators." -> which is a summary, albeit more concise, of what I just wrote.
"If the technical teams understood as much about how the average business leader thinks and communicates, as the marketing team does, then they wouldn't loose quite as much." -> In life, and in reality, you can only do one thing well at a time; you can do two things at the same time, but not as well. As such, a choice needs to be made here, and it takes some quiet meditation to make the right one; you can have your engineers, scientists, programmers et al. engaged in the usual skulduggery, interoffice politics, and brown-nosing games that many businesses engage in; or you can free them from that unnecessary burden, and allow them to focus their full attention on the problems and tasks at hand. The latter choice, by the way, provides more revenue and profit to both the company and shareholders, over the long term. Additionally, if and when it comes time to spin-off a division, the spin-off will typically have the technology and understanding to dominate their market. That's right, a spin-off that provides more fiscal opportunities than the initial IPO; you'll notice we haven't had many of those lately.
Now, my words may sound rather coarse to those who are used to yes-men and lapdogs breathlessly engaged in a prolonged version of the Sycophant Special Olympics; however, if you allow a moment to reflect on them, you may find that they are firmly supported by the pillars of reason and the historical performance of the firms that chose one method or the other has been reflected on the markets & other areas.
tldr; Shooting the messengers may ensure the message, when it finally does arrive, sounds more pleasant to the ear, but at the cost of its accuracy.
I'm fairly certain Jobs was a programmer (checking Wikipedia, he did a fair amount of work with Woz on circuit boards...); at which point, he already knew whether or not his vision, based off of past experience, was remotely feasible. His methods, while they worked, also caused many of those programmers to burn out very quickly.
And why not? At MS, an arguably more successful company than Yahoo, Bill Gates was known for inviting programmers into the meeting room, so he could understand what they were doing. And if they were pursuing a waste of company resources, he'd give them an earful.
And Gates was / is a programmer. Lacked the degree (at the time), but still had the skill-set to know when someone was pursuing a detrimental path.
Logic is a science. Good logic is an art. ;-)
"At some point you have to be able to direct/motivate/drive multiple people to accomplish higher productivity." -> And that's the problem, right there. Management doesn't 'get' tech, or the people who are techs. I am going to paraphrase from Discworld (Small Gods) here, and say that some people are like sheep, and need to be driven; others are like goats, and need to be lead. There is a world of difference in the approaches here.
And like it or not, trying to manage programmers is like trying to herd cats. They respond best if you have an architect who actually knows what he or she is doing, someone who leads by example, by being in the trenches with them, rather than directing orders from on high.
Or you could study CS, and start your own company with you at the top.
If you're working at a place where there's a glass ceiling, but a place which cannot exist without people like you, then you're in the company of idiots.
Sadly, I've seen a few companies run like this. Typically, the founders had technical degrees, or if they had business degree, they minored in an appropriate technical field (so they could understand what everyone else was saying, without hand-holding). A generation or two later, marketing is running the show, with the techs being treated like sharecroppers working on mastah's fields. Why does this always seem to happen? The techs focus on skills that are useful, while the marketing people focus on being liked. So when a vote comes down to install the next CxO, the most charismatic, but somewhat clueless person, with lots of 'spunk' is chosen. And what's good for marketing is typically not good for HR, Legal, Accounting, or Tech.
Yes, but in the scenarios you are referring to, they have the skill-set, minus the piece of paper.
What do you do if they have neither the skill-set, nor the piece of paper, but are placed into the position of handling those who have either or both?
This may be too early, but didn't you hear? He has a law degree -> it's say so right there on his resume.
Yes and no. You typically wouldn't ask a Computer Scientist to appraise a painting, so why would you ask an Art Historian to come up with a new program to bolster the company's fortune?