Uh...what? Streaming is...wow, a waste of bandwidth, and the cloud is...why am I paying someone else store my private data, when I can just keep it home, safe, and cost-free?
The thing killing optical media, recently, has been the fricking cost. Blu-Rays cost oodles, and store only slightly more than their predecessors...unless you factor in the multilayer johns which, some drives do not support, and which also cost an arm and a leg.
Of course we do. And that's sad....I think our enemies would be more afraid of us if we posted their every move on C-SPAN for the world to contemplate...using secret courts just convinces our populace that we have something to hide from them...
Lol, I was particularly touched that they consider insistence on having any rights to be symptoms of grandiose behavior, and evidence of psychological distress...I think some of the (everyone's favorite) DSM (perhaps one of the later editions) has, perhaps, one or two disorders which read something to that effect. And sadly, many years later, I can finally see exactly why they would think someone is insane for thinking that...because they're right; you don't have any rights, and that piece of paper is a lie. A convenient lie, but a lie; it may say you have freedom of speech and that your government is charged with protecting those rights...but no one who has studied the history of the United States can, with a straight face, say that it has given anything but lip service, when it suited itself, to the idea of freedom of speech. Your government...protecting your rights? There is no evidence of that...well, 1% evidence for, 99% evidence against it; a Stockholm syndrome patient is the only person who would, having carefully seen the truth, attest otherwise. Your government and you are the belligerents...and every day is a test to see who is taking more from the other; usually your government wins, simply by default...it can, with a wave of its hand, have its courts all stand up and say that black is white, and that freedom of speech does not cover certain kinds of speech, so help you God.
And let's be honest...it has failed the various tests for freedom of speech. Facebook postings leading to arrests? What kind of amputated mind considers such things? Why, if we prize a free and open society, are we seeing people maneuver to cut others down for opening their mouths, and speaking their minds? Do they, perhaps, think the whole freedom of speech thing is simply a ruse to find the rebels, infidels, and unlucky, and to remove them from the population? Or perhaps, they believe, cloaked in shadows, that others aren't, in turn, following them, and asking, "How much longer shall we let them harm the innocent?" 'Tis the wonderous thing I once learned, that the watchers never think they are being watched...that they alone are somehow isolated, and privy to things that no others can see, from their hidden vantage points. I say we have an open and free society, for what little that might be worth...and if anyone goes missing, we go looking for them.
Perhaps, but for someone who wants to yank thirty or forty cars off the street, with minimal risk, it might be worth a modest investment.
You'd need what, an electron microscope, some custom software to trace the images you scan and convert them back to logic, then someone to write an app / engineer some hardware to make it trivial for you to grab anything you want. Assuming you are grabbing thirty new VWs, at $20K / pop...that's $600K...so, the cost of an electron microscope (may or may not be costly...might get a second-hand one for cheap), and an Electrical Engineer @ 120K + Computer Scientist / Software Engineer @ 120K (so they'll actually do the work, keep their mouths shut, and provide 'updates' to the software / hardware they design at an agreeable rate, since 30-40 cars might easily become 3000-4000 cars provided you don't act like a Mafia-Don and try to kill the wrong people / short the wrong people ("Hey, they did the job; now let's double-cross them, and whack them, so we can keep their share, and they can't tell anyone..." -> Hollywood derp -> Good people are hard to come by, and even harder to replace); I say updates, because the car companies will begin changing stuff as soon as they hear that their cars are getting snatched, and updates are cheaper with people you know, who are 'happy' with you, than people who are PO'ed at you, or are dead).
Still, it seems a lot of work for little cash. Now, getting elected to the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve...well, they can just print money when they need a little more. Now that's thinking with your head.
Nice, but no. He's pointing out the obvious: Climate scientists are usually reliant on their own coding skills, which love it or hate it, are not quite on the same level (usually) as a Computer scientist / Software engineer.
And yes, little errors do matter, since a little error in a preceding calculation may be used in the next series of calculations, and so on...the snowball effect.
Well...let's look at this from a slightly Machiavellian viewpoint....the US military typically doesn't advertise its latest and greatest in weaponry...and even in times of major warfare, it usually isn't hard pressed to go any more recent than a decade back in terms of 'what does the cat have in the bag.'
What this means is...the US military probably has some directed energy weapons it wants to field test on the Chinese...and is looking for any volunteers. Because only if the 'threat' is big enough, and bad enough, can the military say "We had to take the gloves off...or at least remove a pinky finger slightly from one of the gloves, for a little cleaning, and possibly due to some pinching." What others think they see is a falling star...what they don't see are the people who put that star up there, who are busy huffing a satellite dish over the next hill, as part of the latest Fromhoffer experiment to see what happens when, I don't know, high-energy wide-beam disruptive ultrasound weaponry is used on large battalions of organic soldiers. Because lets be honest...like Russia, China has the numbers...and it's not like their leadership wouldn't expect to lose a lot of them in the field against the US...which is the perfect cover for some experiments...though autopsies might reveal that the entire legion had their eyes explode or something before they were able to get to their weapons...but who looks closely during a time of war?
I believe this is, ultimately, the only important question. We must build a defensive perimeter around the mangakas, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture (well, one of them....as they are purportedly working on the Gundam project, if Wikipedia is anything to go by). We will then extend the perimeter, as resources allow, to include the local convention centers, cosplay cafes, any and all restaurants serving sushi (shhh), and the 'Heavy' industries. All strategizing will take place either in Okinawa, on the beach, or at some abandoned Buddhist / Shinto temple in the mountains.
It may look like incumbent interests, right or, as usual, wrong, are working to carve up the public's attention so that they can remain in power...because they are.
If you tell them that normal people don't need 'their protection'...well, they manufacture circumstances where a public outcry occurs to prove you wrong. In short, they are people who need to feel needed...by taking care of someone else, preferably seen as less capable / intelligent than themselves, so that their selfless nature (need for attention) may be more publicly seen. Lol, I remember when they taught Christians to do good acts, and tell no one, so that God would have something nice to inform others of when they came to lampoon you...I suppose that went out of style at some point, or perhaps the culture has become so political that not walking around proclaiming that you have done something 'selfless' that day for someone else is grounds for others gathering stones.
It's almost as if these types do not see any inherent worth in themselves...nor do they understand the damaging effects of their actions, the false prison they've placed themselves in, or that they must, at some point, let the children make their own decisions and abide by those consequences...much like how their parents, and their parents before them, sat them on the proverbial throne (or behind the steering wheel of dad's priceless Mustang), guided their hand as needed, but let them understand that this is what it's like to be in charge (it's going to be scary, you're going to have to grow up, and you will, in time, have to make a lot of decisions which, love it or hate it, you will remember and wonder for the rest of your life if there wasn't a better way). The first time you get into a car accident, no one is Mr. Cool...not your parents, not your grand-parents, etc. The fifth time you get into one it will still be nerve-wracking ("Am I cursed?"), but you will at least be able to get the appropriate information out of the glove box, and move your car out of the way of oncoming vehicles...before accessing the realistic damage to the car (sheet metal looks bad, but cleans up strangely well with a rubber hammer....things look worse than they are...usually).
There, hmm, may have been some creative accounting responsible, on some levels, for that surplus. Plus there is that politician's favorite phrase, that makes, I imagine, every non-government accountant cringe..."projected surplus," which, in modern parlance, means rainbows and unicorns flowing out of one's butt. Any time you see 'projected surplus' in a report, I believe it's a keyword for "we're going to spend this magical surplus (i.e. money that may or may not be collected in the future, based off of fixed data points which, at the moment, suggest that we will be richer than the King of the Saudis) now, and make believe that later on, that money will still be there." In other words, 'projected surpluses' get spent in the present.
Well, you have to hand it to them...a cyber-war sounds a lot more juicy than a regular war -> less casualties (on your side), comfier seating and schedules, less risk, and better pay.
Of course, the reality is that a cyber-war is just the latest is the long series of handouts for defense contractors...more of an invention, really, than something substantial, and definitely not the way to go liberty-wise if you want to have any kids in the future and not regret it. But such is life.
The DoD, perhaps, is suffering from an inability, like many government agencies, of either hiring the right talent, or actually taking said advice one the talent is hired. Their network admins probably know several dozen ways until next Tuesday how to tighten security on their networks without impacting ease of use or efficiency, but are, in all likelihood, told to leave it to the security guys, or to do the plain minimal (because of policy). Going a step further, the network admins could even be so out of touch with control of their own networks, that they don't even get to decide what firewalls / switches / whatever are run on it (someone else, with purchasing authority, makes less than optimal purchases here, possibly).
No, no, this is quite fine so far as I am concerned. See, at some point, your biomarkers are going to need to enter an electronic system...and I'll be there to help them find their way to the right people....
It will amaze the Press that for fourteen years, that the one PD that has a history of assassinating suspects has, routinely, come back with clean results for violence biomarkers...no matter how many times they are tested. True, every time a test occurs, there is a rather large wire transfer from a nearby bank to an undisclosed account somewhere in Tahiti...but the good news is that Lt. Jake 'Mad Dog' Huntersmith has, according to these tests, a nature not unlike that of the Buddha himself. Not a violent bone in his body...no matter how much that video evidence of him backing his cruiser repeatedly over a suspect's leg while screaming "WHERE'S THE MONEY! WHERE'S THE MONEY?!" might appear out of context.
The 2nd Amendment isn't meant, necessarily, for the populace to storm the Senate every single time they pass something that is disagreed with; you do its proponents a dishonour to paint them this way.
The 2nd Amendment is a poison pill, a reminder in a way, for the day that comes sooner or later, as no government can resist decay, when its own must dismember it, turn the soil, and grow something new. It's there to remind them that what they are doing is the right thing, that they have the complete backing of the original progenitors of this government to slay the Leviathan when it forgets its contract, and believes itself to be God. That's so they do not shed a tear at its funeral, and do not tarry from the work that will need to be done, as quickly or slowly as they prefer, when the time comes. Contrary to the Supreme Court's belief that it is the sole interpreter of the US Constitution, a mistruth that has been propagated for far too long as it is, the power has, and always will, rest with the People. I do, however, find it touching that the US Government would prefer to hold court over whether it is following its own social contract inside one of its own courts....stocked with its own choice of judges.
Ah, but there's the myth...there are no good people, at the end of the day. There might be one person who is not particularly offensive, but the sad reality is that if you place them all in a room to come up with some laws or policies to govern something important, by the end of their terms many would not be unhappy to see them go.
Good and evil then become paltry evaluations for whether your own values jive with someone else's values, or conflict with them.
Ah, but the rich folk are made poorer by those fighter jets, tanks, and so on. I know it's cliche, but what the hell, I'm going to roll with that perennial favorite, the Romans here: part of their decay can easily be attributed to the hideous amount of wealth that was diverted to maintaining their military; at first, when they were conquering lands, rich in surpluses and trade routes and so on, the military could feed on these spoils of war; but in time...well, it took longer to build the Twin Towers than to destroy them, and so too does it take longer to build surpluses than to spend them; when the military runs out of external surpluses to liberate, a host country typically finds that internal surpluses (or, more likely, deficits) are inadequate to keep the military functioning. That does terrible things for moral. But I suppose they don't cover regular history when studying for Art History degrees these days...
Indeed. In a few generations, no doubt, they will interpret the US Constitution to read as something like 'oh, you have the freedom to say whatever you wish to say....and we have the freedom to punish you for it however we please.'
These are kids...put a lock on it, and they'll think you're trying to keep, I don't know, hundred dollar bills or something stuffed down the barrel from them...as some form of early Christmas present that they aren't supposed to find.
The proper approach, of course, is to drag your kids into the living room the same night you buy a gun, calmly take it out, put on a pair of ear muffs, then pull the trigger three times in quick succession. When their hearing comes back, they'll have learned an important lesson: if the sound of a gun can make you go deaf for several minutes / hours, imagine what the actual impact of a bullet could do. Then offer to take them out back, let them try on the bullet-proof armor, and find out first-hand what some harmless (haha) rubber bullets feel like when shot into someone's back. Point to said guns, when they say that they prefer not to, that these are weapons, much like the sharper steak knives you have at home, and they can not only make you bleed, but they can also make you hurt the entire time you are bleeding.
Finally, inform them that while sneaking into and out of the house is a time honored tradition / rite of passage, use a key and use the hall lights when moving about inside, no matter what time of night you get in.
Indeed. In much the same sense as the warrantless wiretaps got the nod because they would primarily be used on terrorists, and have since been found to be used almost exclusively on non-terrorist related crimes, there is a fair chance that the NSA is not watching only foreigners engaged in acts of sabotage, but is 'helping out' other agencies as well with their daily chores. That's on a broad basis -> on an individual basis, there are, no doubt, petty individual requests / favors being carried out, much like the rest of the government, with a lack of evidence being the sole reason that the agency itself has not been cleansed (well insulated is well insulated). If the NSA director told us that he knew for a fact that no one under his watch was engaged in acts of personal favoritism, I'd want to check it myself: as we've seen elsewhere, people of these personality types cannot help abusing the power that they've acquired...and I somehow doubt the NSA is stocked only with angels.
I'm going to add to this: part of the fun of a supernova is that with the amount of radiation being put out on all frequencies and in such great quantities, is that it would swamp the local star system. I mean, the moon itself, when reflecting that kind of radiation, might look as bright as the sun. What more, since it's swamping everything...it's not necessarily line of sight; i.e. the supernova might be coming in at one angle, but there is just so much radiation, playing with the gravity of our own sun, moon, and other planets / bodies, that it actually gets bent around a bit. What is gravitational lensing?
Or it could be a quasar, or a regular nova, or so on. Lots of astronomical phenomena that fit the profile.
Hmm. Possibly a supernova event, somewhat nearby (astronomically speaking, where nearby could be pretty far out)? The amount of radiation that would put out could light up the sky for some time. And it's not like people of that age had the equipment (solar filter) to look directly at the sun...the earth would continue rotating, as it usually does, but the continued light in the heavens would convince an earlier peoples that the sun must still be directly above them, because all light comes from the sun, or so it was believed in that age. We now know that a supernova, a distant event, is so catastrophically powerful, that it can not only bombard us with significant radiation, but also, if it's waaaay too close, strip the Earth of all life in a single instant.
And of course, as now, as in times past, when anything goes awry, people think it's a sign from their gods to go kill the other people who do not think like them, or to conduct a purge of the people who have not followed various social laws closely enough, or whatever. When it floods, it's a sign from their gods that they need to fight the people of the plains; when a volcano explodes, it's a sign that they need to fight the people of the mountains; when a new star is seen rising, it's a sign that their gods want them to fight the people of the sea; and when an old star disappears, it's a sign that their gods want them to fight the people of the hills. In other words, whenever there is any deviation from the static model of the world contained within these people's minds, they panic, assume they've done something wrong, or that something is amiss, and use the confusion as a cloak to launch an attack. Tiresome, really. A smarter approach is to remove yourself, and your people from any immediate danger (flood waters rising? let's go hang out on the higher plains for a bit, catch up with relatives, until they recede; and try not to look like an invading army...), and see if the problem persists.
'Tis amazing that we have all this knowledge, of where floods are likely, and so on, and yet due to corruption and graft, never actually get around to installing storm walls or better levies to deal with those floods.
The short answer is that you can't. Your boss, if he / she is a programmer, will go to bat for you, and say "this won't happen; deal with it." If they aren't, you're screwed.
See, in the business world, much to its caricature, there are people who think they are business-savy. They watch 'The Apprentice' with a notepad in hand, and think that when it comes time to handling outside work, it's all about how fiercely you negotiate. Your non-programmer boss, who got his start in sales / marketing, is used to promising people stuff that others need to deliver on...as well as combing over any problems when a 'whoopsie' happens (missed deadline, etc.); he is also used to the idea of pandering to the client, and doesn't understand the intricacies of telling the client, in non-subtle, but non-insulting language, that something simply cannot happen.
So, when your client comes to negotiate with your boss, he's going to give them everything for nothing; he doesn't know this, but he does it. He's going to ask for time estimates from a programmer, where things operate in a completely different kind of world (every project is a new set of problems, first rule; ergo, all time estimates are vague and unreliable...even for 'easy' projects, because of some stuff I will touch on later); he's going to take these time estimates, and shave them down...asking the programmer, "Can't we try to get this done by Tuesday? And we can fall back to Friday if it doesn't work out." The programmer, of course, will tell him the truth (the programming / mathematical truth), which is "Sure, we can try to get it done faster." But in reality, it's not a magic button that gets pressed to make things 'go faster.' So, your boss tells the client his truth, which is that the project will possibly be done by Tuesday. The client, hearing this, thinks that it might be done by Monday, but will begin annoying your boss via phone calls as of Tuesday.
Now, let's take a moment to look closely at some of the elements around this scenario: your boss is going to charge the client for a certain amount ($2K), based off of your low wage, long hours, and another project that will be coming up a few days later for another client (it's all about volume). The actual cost of the project is $3K, but after your boss is worked down in negotiations ("We need to keep this client / build a relationship. We'll make it up to you with more work down the line / another project from them that will be worth more at some point in the future."), it'll be $2K. Bear in mind that the Tuesday deadline is actually negotiated by this client as well...so from their viewpoint, they've gotten a pretty sweet deal according to Apprentice 101: by dominating your boss, they got him to place their project at the top of the 'critical priority' pile...and they saved themselves $1K.
Your boss, believing the lies of his industry, thinks he's building a relationship with the client...he's not, since the client will bounce as soon as he tries increasing the costs anywhere near market rate, and they know that they can tweak him at will to speed things up / shave costs because he's already done it once before. Meanwhile, you, the programmer, are doing $7K worth of work, and enjoying near constant panic attacks because -> the client submits development requirement changes piecemeal, via email, telephone, SMS, Skype, and toilet paper. Your boss, of course, will come to you, and ask you if you can just do these extra tasks...that they won't take too much extra time, right? Of course not...changing the backend from SQL to NoSQL, and the frontend from ASP.NET to PHP shouldn't take any extra time at all...you're a programmer...you're second-kin to a magic elf...you can just not sleep, and reach into your magic bag of tricks, and pull off this thing by Tuesday's lunch. And skilled salesman that your boss is, he's either giving the changes away to the client for free, or taking on an absurdly low number for the additional work ("It'll pay for itself in the long run, you'll see!").
Seriously. Binary might be faster, and that's cool: when it comes to sending / receiving data, compressed forms are awesome.
But yes, if there's an error...or if something doesn't work as expected, your choices may be a special tool to read the data stream, or trying to read it manually (which can, lacking practice, take a lot more of the developer's time).
Personally, I'd do what I normally do with other forms of storage: develop in human-readable, push to production in binary; boolean switch / comparable classes in the original code to swap back if / when some horrible error appears (and no one knows what it means, or why it's happening).
Dude, it depends if things are an employer's market, or an employee's market. If the US government needs a cracker that can slice through security like a hot knife through butter, and their choices are John Convict, or Joe Non-Convict, with the former being capable, and the latter not so much...well, would you prefer an employee that can perform the job, or not?
Of course, this sidesteps the entire issue of whether we should be engaging in such things to begin with. Nations spying on other nations has occurred since the beginning of civilization...and there's no reason for them to do otherwise (well, from their viewpoint, anyways; perhaps, if one pauses, and relfects that all nations who have engaged in this kind of warfare (and it is) have fallen, one would not be in such a hurry to emulate their possible mistakes).
Slashdot Mirror
Uh...what? Streaming is...wow, a waste of bandwidth, and the cloud is...why am I paying someone else store my private data, when I can just keep it home, safe, and cost-free?
The thing killing optical media, recently, has been the fricking cost. Blu-Rays cost oodles, and store only slightly more than their predecessors...unless you factor in the multilayer johns which, some drives do not support, and which also cost an arm and a leg.
Of course we do. And that's sad....I think our enemies would be more afraid of us if we posted their every move on C-SPAN for the world to contemplate...using secret courts just convinces our populace that we have something to hide from them...
Lol, I was particularly touched that they consider insistence on having any rights to be symptoms of grandiose behavior, and evidence of psychological distress...I think some of the (everyone's favorite) DSM (perhaps one of the later editions) has, perhaps, one or two disorders which read something to that effect. And sadly, many years later, I can finally see exactly why they would think someone is insane for thinking that...because they're right; you don't have any rights, and that piece of paper is a lie. A convenient lie, but a lie; it may say you have freedom of speech and that your government is charged with protecting those rights...but no one who has studied the history of the United States can, with a straight face, say that it has given anything but lip service, when it suited itself, to the idea of freedom of speech. Your government...protecting your rights? There is no evidence of that...well, 1% evidence for, 99% evidence against it; a Stockholm syndrome patient is the only person who would, having carefully seen the truth, attest otherwise. Your government and you are the belligerents...and every day is a test to see who is taking more from the other; usually your government wins, simply by default...it can, with a wave of its hand, have its courts all stand up and say that black is white, and that freedom of speech does not cover certain kinds of speech, so help you God.
And let's be honest...it has failed the various tests for freedom of speech. Facebook postings leading to arrests? What kind of amputated mind considers such things? Why, if we prize a free and open society, are we seeing people maneuver to cut others down for opening their mouths, and speaking their minds? Do they, perhaps, think the whole freedom of speech thing is simply a ruse to find the rebels, infidels, and unlucky, and to remove them from the population? Or perhaps, they believe, cloaked in shadows, that others aren't, in turn, following them, and asking, "How much longer shall we let them harm the innocent?" 'Tis the wonderous thing I once learned, that the watchers never think they are being watched...that they alone are somehow isolated, and privy to things that no others can see, from their hidden vantage points. I say we have an open and free society, for what little that might be worth...and if anyone goes missing, we go looking for them.
Perhaps, but for someone who wants to yank thirty or forty cars off the street, with minimal risk, it might be worth a modest investment.
You'd need what, an electron microscope, some custom software to trace the images you scan and convert them back to logic, then someone to write an app / engineer some hardware to make it trivial for you to grab anything you want. Assuming you are grabbing thirty new VWs, at $20K / pop...that's $600K...so, the cost of an electron microscope (may or may not be costly...might get a second-hand one for cheap), and an Electrical Engineer @ 120K + Computer Scientist / Software Engineer @ 120K (so they'll actually do the work, keep their mouths shut, and provide 'updates' to the software / hardware they design at an agreeable rate, since 30-40 cars might easily become 3000-4000 cars provided you don't act like a Mafia-Don and try to kill the wrong people / short the wrong people ("Hey, they did the job; now let's double-cross them, and whack them, so we can keep their share, and they can't tell anyone..." -> Hollywood derp -> Good people are hard to come by, and even harder to replace); I say updates, because the car companies will begin changing stuff as soon as they hear that their cars are getting snatched, and updates are cheaper with people you know, who are 'happy' with you, than people who are PO'ed at you, or are dead).
Still, it seems a lot of work for little cash. Now, getting elected to the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve...well, they can just print money when they need a little more. Now that's thinking with your head.
Nice, but no. He's pointing out the obvious: Climate scientists are usually reliant on their own coding skills, which love it or hate it, are not quite on the same level (usually) as a Computer scientist / Software engineer.
And yes, little errors do matter, since a little error in a preceding calculation may be used in the next series of calculations, and so on...the snowball effect.
Well...let's look at this from a slightly Machiavellian viewpoint....the US military typically doesn't advertise its latest and greatest in weaponry...and even in times of major warfare, it usually isn't hard pressed to go any more recent than a decade back in terms of 'what does the cat have in the bag.'
What this means is...the US military probably has some directed energy weapons it wants to field test on the Chinese...and is looking for any volunteers. Because only if the 'threat' is big enough, and bad enough, can the military say "We had to take the gloves off...or at least remove a pinky finger slightly from one of the gloves, for a little cleaning, and possibly due to some pinching." What others think they see is a falling star...what they don't see are the people who put that star up there, who are busy huffing a satellite dish over the next hill, as part of the latest Fromhoffer experiment to see what happens when, I don't know, high-energy wide-beam disruptive ultrasound weaponry is used on large battalions of organic soldiers. Because lets be honest...like Russia, China has the numbers...and it's not like their leadership wouldn't expect to lose a lot of them in the field against the US...which is the perfect cover for some experiments...though autopsies might reveal that the entire legion had their eyes explode or something before they were able to get to their weapons...but who looks closely during a time of war?
I believe this is, ultimately, the only important question. We must build a defensive perimeter around the mangakas, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture (well, one of them....as they are purportedly working on the Gundam project, if Wikipedia is anything to go by). We will then extend the perimeter, as resources allow, to include the local convention centers, cosplay cafes, any and all restaurants serving sushi (shhh), and the 'Heavy' industries. All strategizing will take place either in Okinawa, on the beach, or at some abandoned Buddhist / Shinto temple in the mountains.
It may look like incumbent interests, right or, as usual, wrong, are working to carve up the public's attention so that they can remain in power...because they are.
If you tell them that normal people don't need 'their protection'...well, they manufacture circumstances where a public outcry occurs to prove you wrong. In short, they are people who need to feel needed...by taking care of someone else, preferably seen as less capable / intelligent than themselves, so that their selfless nature (need for attention) may be more publicly seen. Lol, I remember when they taught Christians to do good acts, and tell no one, so that God would have something nice to inform others of when they came to lampoon you...I suppose that went out of style at some point, or perhaps the culture has become so political that not walking around proclaiming that you have done something 'selfless' that day for someone else is grounds for others gathering stones.
It's almost as if these types do not see any inherent worth in themselves...nor do they understand the damaging effects of their actions, the false prison they've placed themselves in, or that they must, at some point, let the children make their own decisions and abide by those consequences...much like how their parents, and their parents before them, sat them on the proverbial throne (or behind the steering wheel of dad's priceless Mustang), guided their hand as needed, but let them understand that this is what it's like to be in charge (it's going to be scary, you're going to have to grow up, and you will, in time, have to make a lot of decisions which, love it or hate it, you will remember and wonder for the rest of your life if there wasn't a better way). The first time you get into a car accident, no one is Mr. Cool...not your parents, not your grand-parents, etc. The fifth time you get into one it will still be nerve-wracking ("Am I cursed?"), but you will at least be able to get the appropriate information out of the glove box, and move your car out of the way of oncoming vehicles...before accessing the realistic damage to the car (sheet metal looks bad, but cleans up strangely well with a rubber hammer....things look worse than they are...usually).
There, hmm, may have been some creative accounting responsible, on some levels, for that surplus. Plus there is that politician's favorite phrase, that makes, I imagine, every non-government accountant cringe..."projected surplus," which, in modern parlance, means rainbows and unicorns flowing out of one's butt. Any time you see 'projected surplus' in a report, I believe it's a keyword for "we're going to spend this magical surplus (i.e. money that may or may not be collected in the future, based off of fixed data points which, at the moment, suggest that we will be richer than the King of the Saudis) now, and make believe that later on, that money will still be there." In other words, 'projected surpluses' get spent in the present.
Well, you have to hand it to them...a cyber-war sounds a lot more juicy than a regular war -> less casualties (on your side), comfier seating and schedules, less risk, and better pay.
Of course, the reality is that a cyber-war is just the latest is the long series of handouts for defense contractors...more of an invention, really, than something substantial, and definitely not the way to go liberty-wise if you want to have any kids in the future and not regret it. But such is life.
The DoD, perhaps, is suffering from an inability, like many government agencies, of either hiring the right talent, or actually taking said advice one the talent is hired. Their network admins probably know several dozen ways until next Tuesday how to tighten security on their networks without impacting ease of use or efficiency, but are, in all likelihood, told to leave it to the security guys, or to do the plain minimal (because of policy). Going a step further, the network admins could even be so out of touch with control of their own networks, that they don't even get to decide what firewalls / switches / whatever are run on it (someone else, with purchasing authority, makes less than optimal purchases here, possibly).
No, no, this is quite fine so far as I am concerned. See, at some point, your biomarkers are going to need to enter an electronic system...and I'll be there to help them find their way to the right people....
It will amaze the Press that for fourteen years, that the one PD that has a history of assassinating suspects has, routinely, come back with clean results for violence biomarkers...no matter how many times they are tested. True, every time a test occurs, there is a rather large wire transfer from a nearby bank to an undisclosed account somewhere in Tahiti...but the good news is that Lt. Jake 'Mad Dog' Huntersmith has, according to these tests, a nature not unlike that of the Buddha himself. Not a violent bone in his body...no matter how much that video evidence of him backing his cruiser repeatedly over a suspect's leg while screaming "WHERE'S THE MONEY! WHERE'S THE MONEY?!" might appear out of context.
The 2nd Amendment isn't meant, necessarily, for the populace to storm the Senate every single time they pass something that is disagreed with; you do its proponents a dishonour to paint them this way.
The 2nd Amendment is a poison pill, a reminder in a way, for the day that comes sooner or later, as no government can resist decay, when its own must dismember it, turn the soil, and grow something new. It's there to remind them that what they are doing is the right thing, that they have the complete backing of the original progenitors of this government to slay the Leviathan when it forgets its contract, and believes itself to be God. That's so they do not shed a tear at its funeral, and do not tarry from the work that will need to be done, as quickly or slowly as they prefer, when the time comes. Contrary to the Supreme Court's belief that it is the sole interpreter of the US Constitution, a mistruth that has been propagated for far too long as it is, the power has, and always will, rest with the People. I do, however, find it touching that the US Government would prefer to hold court over whether it is following its own social contract inside one of its own courts....stocked with its own choice of judges.
Ah, but there's the myth...there are no good people, at the end of the day. There might be one person who is not particularly offensive, but the sad reality is that if you place them all in a room to come up with some laws or policies to govern something important, by the end of their terms many would not be unhappy to see them go.
Good and evil then become paltry evaluations for whether your own values jive with someone else's values, or conflict with them.
Ah, but the rich folk are made poorer by those fighter jets, tanks, and so on. I know it's cliche, but what the hell, I'm going to roll with that perennial favorite, the Romans here: part of their decay can easily be attributed to the hideous amount of wealth that was diverted to maintaining their military; at first, when they were conquering lands, rich in surpluses and trade routes and so on, the military could feed on these spoils of war; but in time...well, it took longer to build the Twin Towers than to destroy them, and so too does it take longer to build surpluses than to spend them; when the military runs out of external surpluses to liberate, a host country typically finds that internal surpluses (or, more likely, deficits) are inadequate to keep the military functioning. That does terrible things for moral. But I suppose they don't cover regular history when studying for Art History degrees these days...
Indeed. In a few generations, no doubt, they will interpret the US Constitution to read as something like 'oh, you have the freedom to say whatever you wish to say....and we have the freedom to punish you for it however we please.'
These are kids...put a lock on it, and they'll think you're trying to keep, I don't know, hundred dollar bills or something stuffed down the barrel from them...as some form of early Christmas present that they aren't supposed to find.
The proper approach, of course, is to drag your kids into the living room the same night you buy a gun, calmly take it out, put on a pair of ear muffs, then pull the trigger three times in quick succession. When their hearing comes back, they'll have learned an important lesson: if the sound of a gun can make you go deaf for several minutes / hours, imagine what the actual impact of a bullet could do. Then offer to take them out back, let them try on the bullet-proof armor, and find out first-hand what some harmless (haha) rubber bullets feel like when shot into someone's back. Point to said guns, when they say that they prefer not to, that these are weapons, much like the sharper steak knives you have at home, and they can not only make you bleed, but they can also make you hurt the entire time you are bleeding.
Finally, inform them that while sneaking into and out of the house is a time honored tradition / rite of passage, use a key and use the hall lights when moving about inside, no matter what time of night you get in.
Perhaps our criminals, like our police and military, are simply more weaponized than those of your country?
Indeed. In much the same sense as the warrantless wiretaps got the nod because they would primarily be used on terrorists, and have since been found to be used almost exclusively on non-terrorist related crimes, there is a fair chance that the NSA is not watching only foreigners engaged in acts of sabotage, but is 'helping out' other agencies as well with their daily chores. That's on a broad basis -> on an individual basis, there are, no doubt, petty individual requests / favors being carried out, much like the rest of the government, with a lack of evidence being the sole reason that the agency itself has not been cleansed (well insulated is well insulated). If the NSA director told us that he knew for a fact that no one under his watch was engaged in acts of personal favoritism, I'd want to check it myself: as we've seen elsewhere, people of these personality types cannot help abusing the power that they've acquired...and I somehow doubt the NSA is stocked only with angels.
I'm going to add to this: part of the fun of a supernova is that with the amount of radiation being put out on all frequencies and in such great quantities, is that it would swamp the local star system. I mean, the moon itself, when reflecting that kind of radiation, might look as bright as the sun. What more, since it's swamping everything...it's not necessarily line of sight; i.e. the supernova might be coming in at one angle, but there is just so much radiation, playing with the gravity of our own sun, moon, and other planets / bodies, that it actually gets bent around a bit. What is gravitational lensing?
Or it could be a quasar, or a regular nova, or so on. Lots of astronomical phenomena that fit the profile.
Hmm. Possibly a supernova event, somewhat nearby (astronomically speaking, where nearby could be pretty far out)? The amount of radiation that would put out could light up the sky for some time. And it's not like people of that age had the equipment (solar filter) to look directly at the sun...the earth would continue rotating, as it usually does, but the continued light in the heavens would convince an earlier peoples that the sun must still be directly above them, because all light comes from the sun, or so it was believed in that age. We now know that a supernova, a distant event, is so catastrophically powerful, that it can not only bombard us with significant radiation, but also, if it's waaaay too close, strip the Earth of all life in a single instant.
And of course, as now, as in times past, when anything goes awry, people think it's a sign from their gods to go kill the other people who do not think like them, or to conduct a purge of the people who have not followed various social laws closely enough, or whatever. When it floods, it's a sign from their gods that they need to fight the people of the plains; when a volcano explodes, it's a sign that they need to fight the people of the mountains; when a new star is seen rising, it's a sign that their gods want them to fight the people of the sea; and when an old star disappears, it's a sign that their gods want them to fight the people of the hills. In other words, whenever there is any deviation from the static model of the world contained within these people's minds, they panic, assume they've done something wrong, or that something is amiss, and use the confusion as a cloak to launch an attack. Tiresome, really. A smarter approach is to remove yourself, and your people from any immediate danger (flood waters rising? let's go hang out on the higher plains for a bit, catch up with relatives, until they recede; and try not to look like an invading army...), and see if the problem persists.
'Tis amazing that we have all this knowledge, of where floods are likely, and so on, and yet due to corruption and graft, never actually get around to installing storm walls or better levies to deal with those floods.
Any chance they'll get this one branded a traitor by the end of next week?
The short answer is that you can't. Your boss, if he / she is a programmer, will go to bat for you, and say "this won't happen; deal with it." If they aren't, you're screwed.
See, in the business world, much to its caricature, there are people who think they are business-savy. They watch 'The Apprentice' with a notepad in hand, and think that when it comes time to handling outside work, it's all about how fiercely you negotiate. Your non-programmer boss, who got his start in sales / marketing, is used to promising people stuff that others need to deliver on...as well as combing over any problems when a 'whoopsie' happens (missed deadline, etc.); he is also used to the idea of pandering to the client, and doesn't understand the intricacies of telling the client, in non-subtle, but non-insulting language, that something simply cannot happen.
So, when your client comes to negotiate with your boss, he's going to give them everything for nothing; he doesn't know this, but he does it. He's going to ask for time estimates from a programmer, where things operate in a completely different kind of world (every project is a new set of problems, first rule; ergo, all time estimates are vague and unreliable...even for 'easy' projects, because of some stuff I will touch on later); he's going to take these time estimates, and shave them down...asking the programmer, "Can't we try to get this done by Tuesday? And we can fall back to Friday if it doesn't work out." The programmer, of course, will tell him the truth (the programming / mathematical truth), which is "Sure, we can try to get it done faster." But in reality, it's not a magic button that gets pressed to make things 'go faster.' So, your boss tells the client his truth, which is that the project will possibly be done by Tuesday. The client, hearing this, thinks that it might be done by Monday, but will begin annoying your boss via phone calls as of Tuesday.
Now, let's take a moment to look closely at some of the elements around this scenario: your boss is going to charge the client for a certain amount ($2K), based off of your low wage, long hours, and another project that will be coming up a few days later for another client (it's all about volume). The actual cost of the project is $3K, but after your boss is worked down in negotiations ("We need to keep this client / build a relationship. We'll make it up to you with more work down the line / another project from them that will be worth more at some point in the future."), it'll be $2K. Bear in mind that the Tuesday deadline is actually negotiated by this client as well...so from their viewpoint, they've gotten a pretty sweet deal according to Apprentice 101: by dominating your boss, they got him to place their project at the top of the 'critical priority' pile...and they saved themselves $1K.
Your boss, believing the lies of his industry, thinks he's building a relationship with the client...he's not, since the client will bounce as soon as he tries increasing the costs anywhere near market rate, and they know that they can tweak him at will to speed things up / shave costs because he's already done it once before. Meanwhile, you, the programmer, are doing $7K worth of work, and enjoying near constant panic attacks because -> the client submits development requirement changes piecemeal, via email, telephone, SMS, Skype, and toilet paper. Your boss, of course, will come to you, and ask you if you can just do these extra tasks...that they won't take too much extra time, right? Of course not...changing the backend from SQL to NoSQL, and the frontend from ASP.NET to PHP shouldn't take any extra time at all...you're a programmer...you're second-kin to a magic elf...you can just not sleep, and reach into your magic bag of tricks, and pull off this thing by Tuesday's lunch. And skilled salesman that your boss is, he's either giving the changes away to the client for free, or taking on an absurdly low number for the additional work ("It'll pay for itself in the long run, you'll see!").
So, Monday
So...you want to make it easy for them?
Seriously. Binary might be faster, and that's cool: when it comes to sending / receiving data, compressed forms are awesome.
But yes, if there's an error...or if something doesn't work as expected, your choices may be a special tool to read the data stream, or trying to read it manually (which can, lacking practice, take a lot more of the developer's time).
Personally, I'd do what I normally do with other forms of storage: develop in human-readable, push to production in binary; boolean switch / comparable classes in the original code to swap back if / when some horrible error appears (and no one knows what it means, or why it's happening).
Dude, it depends if things are an employer's market, or an employee's market. If the US government needs a cracker that can slice through security like a hot knife through butter, and their choices are John Convict, or Joe Non-Convict, with the former being capable, and the latter not so much...well, would you prefer an employee that can perform the job, or not?
Of course, this sidesteps the entire issue of whether we should be engaging in such things to begin with. Nations spying on other nations has occurred since the beginning of civilization...and there's no reason for them to do otherwise (well, from their viewpoint, anyways; perhaps, if one pauses, and relfects that all nations who have engaged in this kind of warfare (and it is) have fallen, one would not be in such a hurry to emulate their possible mistakes).